[SS 1.2] Necron Warriors - The Crux of the Necron Problem

[Gannadene]

I think SS Necrons are balanced well, but where they fall apart entirely is Warriors. I'd like to explain why I think that is. I'll leave vehicles entirely out of the equation, as I want to focus on infantry options, which are the primary force of the Necron military. Look at the Necrons' infantry options:

*Pariahs - fast-moving melee secondary commander
*Necron Lord - fast-moving primary commander
*Wraiths - fast-moving melee unit
*Flayed Ones - very slow tank/melee units

Let's stop there for a moment. I've already named off over half of the Necrons' infantry options, and they're all melee. Half of those options are Commander units.
The other half have serious limitations:

*Wraiths are not an option in T4 games. In early tiers they are relegated to being used against Tau and Eldar. They cannot reinforce, and are sometimes lost from reference keys when they are KDed. They are definitely lost from reference when they resurrect. They cost 2 pop, despite being a single unit, and have little to no use beyond T2. The bottom line with Wraiths is that they are not a fast Flayed One squad. They cannot take hits, and despite being able to approach while invulnerable, they fall very, very quickly. As a result, they are inconsequential in T4.

*Flayed Ones are too slow to catch anyone that is even half-heartedly microing a squad. This results in players using them for base spam, or as "linebackers" for ranged squads. They have no squad cap, and they have a lot of health, so this only reinforces the use of this tactic.

Now let's consider the Commanders:

*Pariahs are a wonderful unit. They are difficult to take out without proper firepower, and have an interesting ability in lowering maximum health. However, they are truly a disruption squad, not one made for damage. They tend to knock back enemies more than damage or kill them. They do, however, work well against relic units or larger units like Daemon Princes. This does tie them all up into one target, however.

*The Necron Lord is the ONLY infantry unit the Necrons have that actually has an active ability, aside from the standard teleport function. The three special abilities a Necron Lord actually gets are often very easy to counter, either working or not working at all, or cannot be used actively. Some are debatedly necessary just to keep your Necron Lord alive throughout the game, such as Phylactery or Phase Shifter. So, a Necron's arsenal of special moves is usually limited to a SINGLE ability across EVERY unit on the field, like Solar Pulse.

As you can see, Necrons' melee options are fairly static. Flayed Ones, by necessity, make up the bulk of a Necrons' late-game melee force. These units do not have any special abilities, aside from the limited use abilities provided by the Necron Lord. Necron melee units are typically disruption units. They are not made for fast approach and fast killing power.

Now, let's look at the infantry ranged options:

*Immortals - fast-moving, vehicle-centric units
*Warriors - slow-moving, infantry-centric units

You will notice there are only two options. This is where Necrons begin to break down as a T4 force. As melee units are not the primary damage dealers, and are made primarily to tank or disrupt, the task of dealing damage is left to the ranged infantry. What are their limitations?

*Immortals' primary problem is their very low health. They die amazingly fast, and have a very low number of units per squad, meaning that once they begin to take damage, it's nearly impossible to save them through reinforcement. This is not unfair, as they have both wonderful vehicle and building damage, and enough infantry damage to almost mete out the same damage as a fully reinforced Warrior squad does. Their health alone is what keeps them from being used as a Necron's primary ranged infantry option.

*Warriors are very slow, have a short range, deal an inadequate amount of damage, take up 3 population, are difficult to build quickly, deal next to nothing in damage against buildings and vehicles, and also have a very, very low amount of health in comparison to their many other shortcomings. Warriors are, without a doubt, the game-breaking problem for Necrons.

Let's look at the tabletop version of Necrons for a moment. What's most important for them? Formation. (Remember that.) Warriors make up the bulk of Necron forces on the tabletop for various reasons. They typically hold close to the Necron Lord and the Monolith and make use of the WBB (resurrection) rule to revive. A common complaint with Necrons is that they have basically one or two ways to play them. They're boring. Ignoring that, if it works, it works. DoW is meant to carry this over. Now, can you play this way in DoW? No.

A typical formation a TT player might use in DoW would probably look something like this: A Restored Monolith, with four squads of Necron Warriors (12 pop) placed directly in front of it. Amongst their ranks is a Necron Lord with Resurrection Orb, possibly Phase Shifter or Solar Pulse, perhaps Phylactery. All of these units will likely be on a Ranged stance (F2) to keep the Necron Lord's Resurrection Orb ability passively affecting them all, and enhancing the chances for the WBB rule to occur. To the sides of the Monolith will, likely, be two squads of Immortals (4 pop, 16 total). Although we are ignoring vehicles for the most part, there would also be Tomb Spyders involved, picking up bodies and adding back Warior squads when they finally do fall. Pariahs are not a popular choice in TT play due to their awkward pacing. I do not believe our theoretical TT player would pick them up. Instead, the rest of his force would likely be either additional Warriors or Flayed Ones. (Wraiths also have issues in TT.) Let's say he chooses to include 1 Flayed One squad (3 pop, 19 total). That takes us to 19/20. Let's go ahead and say that he's collected some bodies and now has 2 more (3 total) Flayed One squads, for a total of 25/20 population. He intends to use these units to deep strike towards isolated targets, damage or kill them, and then teleport back while the rest of the formation successfully holds. Would this formation, which would be quite typical and moderately successful in TT play work in DoW? Of course not.

Why would it not work? Warriors. The Warriors would die so quickly that nothing else would be able to do its job. The theoretical notion of how Necrons should work is that they should revive enough and take enough damage for Tomb Spyders and the Necron Lord to continue to replenish their ranks. Even more than that, they are meant to TANK damage, while barely outputting any of their own, and slowly wear down an enemy force. In DoW, a force like this would easily be obliterated in seconds with a mass of bolter fire. A Warrior, operating at a mere 850 health, would revive at 30% of that health (255 health). That 255 health will last the unit long enough to complete its revive animation, at which point it will immediately die again. The Warrior force would crumble in seconds, and the entire formation would fall apart relatively quickly.

TT is obviously not DoW. But how did the fluff and TT translate to DoW? Obviously, melee units are not meant to be the bulk of a Necron force. They are slow and disruptive, not long-ranged and high-damage. Obviously. With only two infantry options, one must be the primary force. Immortals cannot be, for reasons explained. This leaves Warriors. Warriors are meant to be the primary force upon which the entire army (and FORMATION) of the Necron army forms. Necrons are meant to hold that formation and to work as a large force, rather than splitting up. Thus, the success of an army depends on the ability of a Warrior squad to successfully maintain a formation.

Without a successful formation, Flayed Ones, Pariahs and the Necron Lord have to cover even more area. This extends the line of attack and spreads apart individual units, making them easy to lure off and surround. When this is not the case, melee units become clumped together, and fumble around buildings and each other to reach their targets. This becomes wasted resources, as only a handful of the units are actually doing anything relevant. In any case, you do not want a very large force of melee units - especially not very slow ones that are not made for taking targets down quickly.

The inadequacies of Warriors leave Immortals to take the role of primary damage dealers. Obviously, this does not work well. They die so easily that they are forced to move inside of a melee formation (like a quarterback in the pocket of his linebackers) to avoid melee attackers. This leaves them very vulnerable to ranged attacks. They can hold far away from combat, but this leaves them very vulnerable to attack, and excludes them from what they should be doing: removing important vehicular threats, and buildings. They are a good unit, but they have no business doing the Warriors' job for them. It creates an unstable formation, which means enemies are not controlled and your own force is erratic and unbalanced.

Inevitably, the issue with Necrons is that for how they exist in DoW, Warriors need to be able to tank damage, while having a very short range and inadequate firepower. A Necron player should not be microing his units' abilities so much as attempting to position them properly, for maximum affect of passive abilities and holding a formation. The only thing SS 1.2 does NOT get right in this regard is the Warriors' ability to tank damage. In DC 1.2, this was done - more or less - correctly, but due to what I chalk up to as politics, vocal players that were as mad at DoW Necrons as TT players are at TT Necrons for their ability to withstand huge amounts of damage and slowly wear people down, eventually resulted in what is debatedly the worst race in SS 1.2.

Necrons do not necessarily need more firepower, more range, a change in Wraiths or for Tomb Spyder scarabs to be returned to a melee-capable unit. They need Warriors to be able to do what they're meant to do: withstand large amounts of damage through having a decent amount of HP to go with their ability to resurrect, ignore terrain modifiers and be replenished by Tomb Spyders on the field. It is my opinion, as a result, that Necrons simply need another Warrior health upgrade, in addition to a slight modification to their revive ability (which also includes the Resurrection Orb modifier).

Having more resilient Warriors will result in better formations, which will result in less dependence on Flayed One spam (which is not fun for either party) and less chance of an entire Necron military (which is very hard to produce to begin with) being completely wiped out in less than 30 seconds.

[KotCR]

Relic tried this. Having more resilient Warriors ended up with them just marching into the opponent's base, shrugging off all enemy firepower, and levelling everything. They were unstoppable. Good for fluff, maybe. Not for balance.

Also I'm not sure where you got the 'mere' 850HP from (isn't it 870HP?). 870HP is huge for a basic ranged unit; Compare to the basic ranged units of other races (fully pimped out of course):
SM Tacticals = 488HP @ 50 req.
CSM Tactical = 475HP @ 50 req.
SoB Squaddie = 363HP @ 35 req.
Dark Reaper = 597HP @ 70 req.
Guardsman = 385HP @ 20 req.
Fire Warrior = 574HP @ 70 req.
Shoota Boy = 416HP @ 35 req.

The Necron Warrior is clearly in the win in the HP stakes, and at the cost of just 30power, in comparison to other races is still probably a bargain. As it is, the first three members are free.


They cost 2 pop, despite being a single unit, and have little to no use beyond T2.
No matter what you think of their combat abilities, they'll be useful all the way to T4 because they are one of the game's best and most effective units for decapping. Hereto, not useless.


Flayed Ones, by necessity, make up the bulk of a Necrons' late-game melee force. These units do not have any special abilities,
I'd say AoE Morale Drain definetly counts as a special ability. Powerful one at that.

I'll see what others think;
But still congrats on the well thought out and presented post, but I'm afraid I don't agree.

[steel_tomatoes]

As it is, a NW march can be practically impossible to stop.

If you want to buff their health, at least nerf their dps. However, since they are the Necrons primary infantry killer, you might find that they simply struggle to kill anything if you nerf dps.

You can't have everything, ya know? High HP, high dps, high mass etc.

Admiteddly NW don't scale as well as other ranged specialists, you have to use some cunning to get them close enough without getting mowed down by assault cannons etc. Like solar pulse, teleport on mono, etc.

[Gannadene]

Yes, 870. Was operating on memory.

Flayed Ones' morale drain is a passive effect, not a controllable ability you can use to instantly affect the course of a battle. I'm not counting passive effects due to the fact that you can't turn the tide of an existing battle with anything but an active effect. (Otherwise, it's not turning the tide. It's just natural progression.)

As far as Wraiths, you can believe their decapping ability makes them useful in T4; I'll just disagree. The only time I keep one around is for CnH, and even then they won't remain invulnerable long enough to fully decap a crit, if there're enemies nearby. It takes a concerted effort at times that I'd sooner put in the hands of a larger force.

As for Warrior's seemingly superior health, other units have a lot more going on for them. I'm sure you'll admit that much. Attaching other units, greater firepower, greater range, better movement rates, the ability to gain advantages using cover, special abilities, passive benefits, etc.

What I WILL concede is that adding more health doesn't do much but take the short route out of the problem. There's a difference between tanking and absorbing damage, albeit minute. Necron Warriors need to tank - not to have a large pool of health that will eventually fail.

Let's say we have a theoretical unit that only has 100 hitpoints but only takes 1 damage per hit, on average. Let's also have another theoretical unit that has 1,000 hitpoints but takes 100 damage per hit, on average. The first is a tank, in that it has the ability to withstand damage by negating it. (Armor over health.) The second is a sponge, in that it only has a large amount of health that will eventually run out. The first example will still be a tank even with only 10% of its health remaining. With 10% of the second example's remaining, it's just another unit.

I have no problem with being able to take down Necron Warriors easily, as long as it's reasonable. Another disadvantage I did not list is that Warriors do not regenerate health in combat. This makes them sponges, not tanks, regardless of how much health they might ever have.

So, I'll give you that. There are two options I can immediately think of:

1) Armor upgrade. I don't care for this option. It affects too much and has too many benefits, and potentially downsides, depending on your MU. It'll essentially just be a tradeoff.

2) Health regeneration. Not necessarily gaining +pips of health, but also the possibility of gaining back lumps of health.

I'm more partial to this method, but less convinced that it would work. If a unit has 10 health and regenerates 1 health each second, and faces a single enemy that deals 1 DPS, it will be able to tank the damage. If that same unit has 100 health and no regeneration, its health will eventually fail.

I'm not sure if it's possible, as far as code goes, but it may also be possible for Warriors to gain back health under conditions:

*when a nearby unit revives
*upon killing an enemy
*upon having a nearby friendly unit die
*etc.

I think having a reward of some sort would be more effective at creating a tank in DoW than increasing armor or adding health regeneration. I believe that because it has incentives. If you were to make Warriors gain a small bit of health upon making a kill (just as an example), you can't march your Warriors into a base and start destroying buildings while ignoring enemies, because your health will eventually falter. If you destroy an enemy force first, your Warriors will have tanked through the battle, assuming they aren't immediately overwhelmed.

The downside to methods like this is that it's feast or famine. You either win out or lose everything, which is all right by me, as long as it's Necrons, as that principle governs almost everything Necrons do.

[steel_tomatoes]

what about a T4 or possibly T3 upgrade that gives the warriors better regeneration and/or hp, from the summoning core, for another 200 power?

I just don't want to see anything to buff krons anytime prior to T3

[PandaMine]

@KotCR you see you have the same problem that other people have

The problem with Necron Warriors before was that at earlier tiers (T1-T3) they would do as you said, they had so much HP and so much damage that yes they could literally base rape

But at T4 tell me this, how is it any different to IG base raping with GM+Priest/Commi with Plasma, or CSM base raping with Plasma (or even bolters) or SoB base raping with Pent's or a hell of a lot of other things.

Gannadene said very correctly that they ARE supposed to be tanky and they ARE supposed to have a lot of firepower. This is what Necrons have to make up for a shitty start, very low pool of units and above all pathetic mobility apart from defending their own base.

There are plenty of ways to take down a Warrior army in T1-T3 just by outmaneuvering them (as you should be able to both in Relic games and in TT).

All I am asking (and others) is to simply put a T3/T4 upgrade that would bring Necron Warriors back to how they were in DC 1.2. Remember people that they are supposed to be tanky and outlast the enemy THAT IS WHAT NECRONS ARE ALL ABOUT.

Currently warriors outlast shit because they because of their HP/movespeed they die before even being able to shoot anything. The HP nerf was too much considering that Warriors apart from Destroyers is the only thing that Cons have which are IF, and at 21 range (which is after disruption field upgrade) they can't even attack anything before dying.

In TT at least, Immortals did both high damage to inf and vehicles, I can see how that can be a problem in SS, so at least give an upgrade to Warriors to fill in that gap

[Gannadene]

what about a T4 or possibly T3 upgrade that gives the warriors better regeneration and/or hp, from the summoning core, for another 200 power?

I just don't want to see anything to buff krons anytime prior to T3

Necrons are fine pre-T4. They just fall apart if they have to go head to head with a teched out T4 MU.

I feel like adding health isn't the way to go, but due to the way the engine works, it may be the only way to go. They wouldn't need much more health - just enough to survive the massive damage that gets thrown around in T4. Buffing them from 870 to near 1000 would be more adequate, although, of course, they probably wouldn't be able to survive for any length of time (which smacks of not following the fluff.) Giving them the ability to regenerate health as their final upgrade may be fine, depending on how much health they can regenerate.

Trying to determine what can be done about their survivability versus making them a problem is why I started the thread.

[PandaMine]

Alternatly they can fix the res casting time and the range problem and make NW res at 100%HP

That would at least give them more staying power

EDIT: They can also bring back the Necron Range to how it is appear, I think the bigger problem is that although they are tanky they cant even reach anything to damage it so they aren't doing anything

[Gannadene]

The problem with making Necrons resurrect at maximum health is the same problem Immortals have with resurrecting, period: getting up to meet a storm of bolter fire is no better than staying dead. If the Warriors are overpowered and have all of their precious health bled away before they can get to their target, the small number of WBB interventions that will crop up won't be enough to save a group of Warriors.

Another problem is that it makes lower tiers less balanced. If you only have 3 Warriors in T1 defending against an early rush, and one of them gets back up at 100% health, that is a very big benefit for that time period of the game.

Altering the amount of health they retain after a resurrect across tiers via upgrades, or via Monolith construction, is another alternative, however.

[PandaMine]

I think the range is the main problem when I think about it, what happens now is their range is so shitty that before they manage to reach anything to shoot and damage it they die, and its the only range IF options that cons have apart from Destroyers which aren't really viable for dealing with massed range inf

[Gannadene]

Warriors don't have the firepower to take out enemies without sustained fire. If you start moving their range out, they become less about tanking and more about just being a general unit type.

That said, in T4, their low FOTM penalty doesn't see much use, since they don't have the range for it to be used.

[PandaMine]

Their range in DC 1.2 was fine, being really tanky is nice but if you don't actually do any damage then there is no point, you just get mowed down without touching them

Remember in TT, Immortals did about the same damage to Inf as they did to vehicles, so there wasn't that problem. In SS however they don't do any respectable damage to inf, so its either up to the warriors (or possibly buff Immortals damage against inf, I don't see that happening though)

[Akagi_Ryu]

I remember long ago there was this exp pack called DC wich introduced this fine race we know as 'crons.
Back then they ware depicted as you say, they ware bulky, had loads of DPS and ware slow as heck. Problem is they ware plainly IMBA, especially on smaller maps where mobility played no role whatsoever. You also forget that in TT they do not have the most powerful turrets in the game, wich unlike other races, are sometimes a pain to kill without losses.

It's obvious you can't play 'crons as you would in TT (granted my chaos minis never faced crons, but I get the idea how they are played well enough) but that does not mean that they are weaker.

Formation is still very important, since as I'm sure everyone agree, charging the oponent with 3 blocks of warriors spells doom for the nec player.

Also, I do NOT agree that Flayed Ones ability doesn't count, it counts, it RELLY counts when they deep strike just to the side of those 3 squads of guardsmen who keep pummeling you with those pesky shots and not only take their aim away from your warriors, but also brake their morale in an instant

[zakublazer]

Perhaps, and this IS just an idea. Each mono upgrade can decrease the time it takes to reinforce the NW?

That would seem more fluffy as the Necrons wakes up more they can bring more warriors into combat faster. getting faster reinforce would allow the NWs to weather much more firepower.

I like the idea implemented by DCpro that NWs reinforce faster when they are close to the monolith. We know this can be done. perhaps we can make it so that being around the NL or the mono allows the NWs to reinforce faster? we can even make this the new power of the Res Orb, as you can explain the new warriors as just the old one getting back up.

just some ideas i came up with, maybe just get rid of the reinforce timer scaler cause later in the game getting a squad of NW takes really really long, and you lose them a lot faster.

[PandaMine]

@Akagi_Ryu

The problem was not necessarily that they were "bulky, had loads of DPS and ware slow as heck" but that they were bulky, had loads of DPS and ware slow as heck in T1-T3. That was essentially the problem, in smaller maps you couldn't survive against cons in T1-T2 because of wraith spam and then FO spam. Warriors were also too tanky and did too much DPS early, im not saying that.

Currently all of cons units have been nerfed so drastically that it is actually quite difficult to play them effectively now (i.e. they have been overnerfed). Necrons are supposed to be bulky, have loads of DPS and ware slow as heck, thats their theme. Currently in playstyle they are wannabe necrons and not actual crons. All we are asking is to buff Warrions in T3/T4 as they were back in DC, problem solved

On another note, the major complaint against cons in DC was actually their economy, which was practically impossible to break (and for that reason they kept on sending out warriors and wraiths without having to give up teching and what not). Currently their economy has been cut down so much that you often have to make a choice between killing FO/Wraiths and disruption field

[Gannadene]

Didn't consider faster reinforcement. That might help somewhat, although you'd have to be careful not to overdo it. Necron economy is rather fragile in T4, since your enemies' economy can expand exponentially, and a Necron economy cannot. You can reach 30 generators, although realistically, you'll be lucky to build 15 without tearing your hair out.

Akagi, look over the subsequent posts. No one wants Necrons to be as problematic as they were in DC. That's what the whole post is about. Is it possible to make them into tanks without making them a pain to destroy? As for turrets, they're very powerful, but also fairly slow to fire and easy to destroy. They waste a lot of firepower by condensing it into single shots against weak infantry. Plus, Necrons can't exactly carry the turrets with them when they want to assault a base. This is why the discussion is about infantry.

I'm not sure if it's possible code-wise to make Warriors have a benefit from being near a Monolith. There are plenty of other AoE benefits from other units, though. You would think, considering that the TT basically orients completely around using the Monolith to buff local units, that DC 1.0 'Crons would have had that as a major staple.

[PandaMine]

Remember they are supposed to be a pain to destroy, however thats the price you pay for letting crons reach that stage (same as the price you pay for letting IG or Orks reach that stage). You could even, in DC 1.2, counter them in T4 with almost any race, the problem was that no race could either survive against crons (in smaller maps) or harass them properly because of their "necronomy". If you actually played a game where a race like Eldar or Tau could survive against crons up until T4, im pretty sure Prisms/Warp Spiders/Vypers or FW spam with HH and Kroot Carnivors (you need to use the Kroot Carnivors so they get disrupted from mono and not your FW) then it was even possible to kill crons in T4.

Gannadene also has a really good point that Cons currently are reliant on mono/NL to do anything of use, which isn't a really good thing

[Orgad_E]

you need to use the Kroot Carnivors so they get disrupted from mono and not your FW

well most players manually tell the mono what to attack... and no player who has played more then a week will use carnivores after T2 (usually dont use it after T1 though).

[PandaMine]

FW's would outrange a mono, the point of croots is to block the pathing of the mono so it doesn't the mono won't end up hitting you're FW

Also you WOULD use kroots if cons are using Nightbringer for the same reason. You don't have cant use Krootox's/Hounds since you wen't the montka path, and crisis suit aint gonna do anything at that point

[zakublazer]

FW's would outrange a mono, the point of croots is to block the pathing of the mono so it doesn't the mono won't end up hitting you're FW

this is wrong, Mono have 55 range, upgraded FW have only 50 with kauyon upgrades.

[PandaMine]

You don't target the mono with FW, you target the necron infantry INFRONT of the mono

Thats why you use a couple of croot squads to block the pathing of the mono to prevent it from reaching in range of your FW, and you use PF with mark target + HH to eliminate the mono.

If you are targeting the MONO with you're FW then something is seriously wrong with how you are playing Tau

[Gannadene]

Back on track.
:p

[KotCR]

Bear in mind guys I'm not saying that there should not be any changes to Necrons at all; I'm just saying extra HP isn't the solution. They have plenty of that already.

[slay2rr]

NW's health are fine in early teirs but upon reaching T3-4, their health doesn't stand up to the mass fire power that out range the NW usually by more than 10 range. So how about giving them like 130 or so hp(back to the DC1.2's 1000hp) upon constructing a energy core, or maybe give them a third disruption field upgrade at T3?

[Pseudonymn]

I like the idea of a T3/4'ish DF upgrade. It doesn't have to buff their HPs much at all, if any, but the big thing is definitely their range in T4. Long range shooters, particularly Kauyon-path Tau destroy NWs before they can do any damage whatsoever. The few that remain and do manage to fire off a few shots get loled in melee by Kroot while FWs throw up a shield, toss nades and blast the rest of the army into nothingness.

[Old Painless]

They simply need more range in the late game, that's all i need them to have anyway.

The lack of health regen in combat seems odd.

[Chaingun]

/Agree to (slightly) buffing basic nec inf in T4.

Weak T4 inf was a problem for necron even in DC1.2. (Although in 1v1, the necron would usually crush his opponent prior to T4 so much that T4 wasn't a problem. It was more noticable in team games.)

[mlai]

There is a lot of theorycrafting in this thread, but the basic point that Necron Warriors are weak is true. A third upgrade in tier 3/4 that buffs Warriors back to DC 1.2 stats is doable IMO. DC 1.2 Warriors fall easily enough to tier 3/4 firepower.

I would like to see Necron resurrection tweaked to actually work. It's ok that they only resurrect to 30% full health, but right now the resurrect range is too short and the initial delay too long, so half the time units that are resurrecting fail to finish properly.

[Rotlung]

I'm not sure how fluffy it is to have multiple monoliths, but perhaps Necron Warriors' health and range could be buffed with each monolith? Since they only have 3, perhaps the 3rd monolith would bring them to DC levels?

Hmm then again an additional upgrade would be simpler. Buff to range and a bit of health. It's kind of odd that Necrons have so little to research, even in top tier.

[PandaMine]

@Riotlung

I don't think that will work, currently getting multiple's monos with crons isn't really feasible in a normal game due to the economy nerf

[Makenshi]

It may be imba, I don't know... but what about this:

T1: 20% chance of WBB (Will Be Back)
T2: 40% chance of WBB (Will Be Back)
T3: 60% chance of WBB (Will Be Back)
T4: 80% chance of WBB (Will Be Back)

Not including Ress Orb and stuff

[Old Painless]

It's 450 for the second monolith and 340 for just the 2nd teir upgrade. The cost of scaling troops via this method is horrendous.

Yes, you can scale them with 3 monoliths but thats 2830 power to get all the way, when a new warrior is 35. Clearly not worth the cost.

There may be a point where the second monolith and the teir 2 upgrade is better than disruption field but the time and rescources to build and upgrade a 2nd mono, coupled with the fact that you have to wait 170 seconds for the actual bonus to take effect mean it is a long, long game to play.

I've never seen anybody but me build more than one monolith anyway !

If you wanted to change it so the benefits are spread across building the mono, T2 research and T3 research equally then thats a lot more viable. Currently ..... meh

[Rotlung]

Necrons that eventually self-repair through WBB immediately join the nearest unit and in coherency. It might look odd for corpses to disappear and suddenly reappear with a squad as a freshly-reinforced warrior, but that could help keeping them alive a little longer.

I'm pretty sure they don't take longer to res than to reinforce...

[War-Reborn]

Warriors do suck later in the game, but to be honest they did in dc post patch aswell, the trouble with a warrior squad, is that it may have 1000hp/870hp whatever but it does like 150 dps to heavy med, and a tac sqaud with weapons will do 300 at much longer range, it don't take long to work out that man for man they are hugely inferior

Having said that they are also a lot cheaper, personally i'd rather see wraiths given a upgrade in tier 3/4 rather than warriors get more powerful, in the period that wraiths are useful, they support the slower infantry very well and it's that loss later in the game that exposes warriors to levels of firepower they can't withstand

[KotCR]

A T3 upgrade to bring their range up to the standards of most other units (i.e. 25) sounds reasonable. Still don't approve of extra HP though. A bit of increased regen also wouldn't hurt though.

@mlai/Makenshi
I would like to see Necron Self Auto-Rez play a more prominent role in the Necron mass, but I have a feeling some of your numbers would be too high Makenshi. Increments of say 5, with a quick jump at the end would make more sense (so T1 30%, T2 35%, T3 40%, T4 50%). The hitpoints they ressurrect with could also scale per Tier, to about the same percentages as the chance of rezzing.

[PandaMine]

Agreed that necron rezzing needs to be fixed, currently its actually more of a disservice then a help since its better to re-incorce at 100% HP, then having to wait for a con to res, and 90% of the time that rez'ed cron will fall back to the ground because you are out of range (or you're squad dies)

@KotCR is there any reason why you are against a HP buff in T4?

There are numerous other inf in T4 that have ~1000HP, much higher range and much better firepower then warriors, and with the recent economy nerfs its not like crons can fully spam as they did before

EDIT: Remember warriors still have morale (400) and cons don't have any ability at all to recover morale, so its not like warriors are without weakness's

[KotCR]

Those infantry are all elites, and consequently are hardcapped. Necron Warriors are not.

I'd rather not turn end-game Necron into a Winter Assault race.

EDIT:
Remember warriors still have morale (400) and cons don't have any ability at all to recover morale
Neither do Terminators, Crisis Suits, Warp Spiders, Kroot Hounds who all have morale.

[PandaMine]

On the other hand warriors are the only usable inf that crons have at level 4.

Not true for all races though, Tau has carnivors which can get 9.5k HP (ethereal + shaper + full HP bonus from carnivor). Tau also have 8k HP kroot hounds with shapers

There are howling banshees which come close for elfs

Remember that most inf elites are either morale immune or have lots of abilities to buff them, warriors don't. In fact the only help warriors get is from the NL. The fact that they do have fairly low morale (400), means I really cant see warriors running through an army in T4 to get into an enemy base and be on full morale.

Also warriors do comparatively shit damage to buildings

Trust me it won't compare to anything like PSM spam in WA

EDIT: On the other hand SM have plenty of abilties to restore/reduce morale (or break morale of opponent). Crons don't.

As I said before, if crons were morale immune (or they had something like rally squad, or combat drugs or whatever) then I would see you're point, however they are not morale immune, in fact due to their slow movespeed and cron not having any morale modifier spells they are MORE vulnerable to having their morale getting killed then other inf in T4

EDIT2: BTW kroot hounds with shaper and ethereal have 1200 morale, which is shitload of morale. Crisis suites are totally different uni, don't know why you are mentioning them, warp spiders have much higher range and can TP and terminators likewise terminator squads have 750 morale, which is almost double of warriors

[KotCR]

SM have only one morale regrouping ability, that's Rally. It's only availiable on squads with Sergeants. The Terminators don't have access to it (one of the reasons Terminators actually sucked in vanilla DoW in the grandscheme of things, seems they didn't have much better basic Morale than Tactical Marines there).

Necrons also have their own amount of Morale Immune troops. Their own elite, the Pariahs, are morale immune. The un-hardcapped Flayed Ones are morale immune, as are Wraiths.

You say that SM has abilities to compensate for morale vunlerability of their elites through draining the enemies morale; Well so do the Necrons. Have a look at the Flayed Ones again.


On the other hand warriors are the only usable inf that crons have at level 4.
All Necron infantry is perfectly usuable at T4. What you mean to say is that Warriors are the only viable ranged anti-infantry troops that 'crons have at T4.

EDIT:
.
Crisis suites are totally different uni, don't know why you are mentioning them
No they are not, in the sense that I'm using them. They are an elite infantry unit with Morale and no Morale restoration abilities. Kroot Hounds, Crisis Suits, Terminators, Warp Spiders (whom are imba BTW - despite having morale weaknesses), are all elite infantry.

You are still comparing Necron Warriors to elite infantry. This is why you are wrong and were you are going wrong.

Necron Warriors are not elite infantry. They should not have elite infantry HP levels.

[Rotlung]

If it matters, terminators not only have more morale than most units, but they also take less morale damage.

[War-Reborn]

They may not be elite infantry, but they end up having to fight vs elite infantry at lot of the time as crons only get 1 elite squad, warriors need to plug the rest of the gap and so end up going against all manner of things late game, elites, upgraded tier 2 troops etc nearly all of which, does substancially more dmg, which means in game terms unless you have 3 times as many troops you loose

Things like solar pulse etc were meant to be a counter for this allowing your warriors, time to get in an cause dmg, as were wraiths tieing up squads etc, giving your warriors support so they can advance without getting anilated. But wraiths fall by the wayside and the result is no solar pulse rdy, all your men are gonna die and although the charge time on solar is fast it's not really fast enough to be your only support for warriors late game

Increasing the range will have little effect in tier 4 imo, even if you drop a warrior squad slap bang next to a tac sqaud, csm sqaud etc it will get pummelled, because while it's hp may be higher that does not compensate for the fact that it's dmg is substancially lower, it's basically an inferior unit at this point in the game to most other races basic, let alone advanced troops, short of a massive buff which i don't think anyone wants, the best ways for warriors to remain competive is for the support units to be worked on like wraiths, if these units remained usefull warriors would function far more effectively

[KotCR]

They may not be elite infantry, but they end up having to fight vs elite infantry at lot of the time as crons only get 1 elite squad, warriors need to plug the rest of the gap and so end up going against all manner of things late game, elites, upgraded tier 2 troops etc nearly all of which, does substancially more dmg, which means in game terms unless you have 3 times as many troops you loose
Agreed. So they should have HP levels that are a cross between that of elite infantry and regular infantry.

Oh wait. They do.

[Gannadene]

For reasons I've already stated, I don't think Necrons need their maximum health increased.

I don't believe DC 1.2 balancing is right, either, because 1.2 had its own problems. Moving them up to 1,000 health and giving them back their range will help, but those numbers were changed for a reason.

Reading the responses, what I'm settling more on is giving them the ability to regenerate health and slightly increasing the chances of WBB in T4. My reasoning behind this is that Necron Warriors do NOT regenerate health currently because it encourages the WBB rule to occur. Warriors' large health merely compensates for this lack of regeneration. Altering how WBB works and how regeneration works for T4 Warriors may even allow for Necron Warriors to have their health reduced.

It may be possible to link this with Monoliths, in the same way that FOs and the Necron Lord have their health tied to it. It's important that upgrades via new Monoliths do not become a necessity, however. The FO buff rarely sees action because the game is often over before then. That's why I'd advocate any sort of buff beginning with either Enhanced Field Disruption or a theoretical Advanced Field Disruption.

Right now, Warriors are damage sponges, not tanks, as I've already covered. Giving them more health won't make them better - just more of a problem. When the WBB rule activates, Warriors basically turn back into T2 infantry - they only return with 30% health, which they will never regenerate in combat.

Let's say an Advanced Field Disruption gives Warriors health regeneration, and moves their chances of reassembling from 25% to 35%, in addition to allowing them to be restored with 40% health instead of 30%. Additional Monolith upgrades (6 possible across 2 Monoliths) increase Warrior health by 15 and their chance to revive by 2%, for a possible maxed out Necron of 960 health with a 47% chance of using the WBB rule. This would be fluffy, in terms of Necrons needing a lot of time to get to the point that they're actually quite dangerous. It would also ensure that most matches AGAINST Necrons will not change much from what they currently are in SS, aside from having Warriors simply withstanding long-term battles a little easier.

[SpArTy]

Only problem with NW is that first crucial upgrade is not efficient enough. A drop in cost or build time would resolve it.

As for the rest of cron, the Artifiact, some NL abilities and second mono are overpriced slightly.

Beyond that there is nothing wrong with cron, don’t overcomplicate things.

[Gannadene]

Only problem with NW is that first crucial upgrade is not efficient enough. A drop in cost or build time would resolve it.

As for the rest of cron, the Artifiact, some NL abilities and second mono are overpriced slightly.

Beyond that there is nothing wrong with cron, don’t overcomplicate things.

Ha.

[ImmortalChaos]

But he's right you know.
I don't see necrons struggling at all with just a few changes to make their vital abilities more available early on.


Late game necs are already pretty much fine IMO, especially now that they can afford the globals. Destroyers are as kickass as ever, the C'tan upgrades are quite potent, and while I'd maintain that the monolith could use an extra 2500 HP (So it actually totals at 10000 instead of 7500), I really don't see any gaping holes in their gameplay.

Flayed ones may have a hard time catching things, but late game, they can get something like 1500 HP each. Just getting 3 monos up and spamming flayers works for those huge teamgame/FFA situations where you actually need something in t4.

[SpArTy]

Ha.
You dont have a clue :\

Allow me to summarise;

Fluff = not DoW.

Your proposed buffs = DC.

Me no want DC.

[Gannadene]

How exactly anyone can dare to make the claim that T4 Necron Warriors are fine (or that T1-T3 Necrons need more help) is beyond me. I chalk it up to politics, and people being afraid of no longer having Necrons to waltz over for free wins in SS.

[Cat_Dance]

Wow seriously? Crons weak in t4? Warriors are fine then because you have tombspiders to manufacture them right on the field. When you have enough obelisks, their reinforcement time is rather good. They can tank fine, provided you actually use your abilities and not just march NW's into a t4 army..... Really, youre comparing NW's in a vacuum. Try moving up slowly, letting the NW's start to take damage, then jump in with your NL and use a solar pulse, chrono and drop some fo's in. Also they have THE best disruption in t4 (except for maybe the BB). When you understand how to play crons, their t4 is fine, its their earlier tiers that could use a slight buff.

[Gannadene]

What you're incorrectly assuming is that all of your enemies' units will be lined up and grouped together, and will stay perfectly still, and fail to use any skills to counter Solar Pulse.

Just because you CAN counter a T4 race doesn't make Warriors good, or a Necron T4 army good. If you COULDN'T, it would be a game-breaking balance problem that would have been patched long ago. There's a reason why Necrons are widely considered the worst or second worst SS race. You seem to be describing Necrons from an opposing players' point of view, and have little experience playing as them.

[Pseudonymn]

Cat Dance, what are you talking about? They have the worst reinforcement time of any faction! No one takes as long to fully reinforce their basic infantry squads to full as the Cron do, even with obelisks. With a full complement of obelisks (or in combination with a CP or two), the best they can manage is 16.5 seconds. That's double or worse just about every other faction's reinforcement time.

Look, people, nobody wants to see the Necron given the ability to go on their lolparades again. But then again, that was only ever a problem in early tiers and, especially, on smaller maps where requisition resources were scarce for other factions in opposition to the Necronomy. Even with the proposed changes, by the time T4 rolls around, people should have enough forces and tech on hand to put the brakes on the 'Crons NW Walk of Doom and stop the lolparade before it gets to their base... and, if they played it out well, still be in a good position to send reprisals when the dust settles.

Asking for a moderate buff to their T4 through researches that only become available at that time, at a further cost, is not going to improve their ability to gain these early game "easy wins" that people are so afraid of.

[slay2rr]

Pseudonymn, crons get time bonus when they build listening posts(or whatever it's called). Thats why necrons need some map control to speed things up. Other factions units like IG, SoB, CSM, SM also need time to upgrade heavy weapons, which take time as well.

Give NW +4 range upon building energy core, so they can have 25(normal) range.

[Cat_Dance]

Lol i have no experience playing them? Yet you're claiming their early tiers are fine in competitive play, but their lategame is poor... They are considered a weaker race because they get hit hard by other race in t1-t3, not because their t4 is lacking, seeing as t4 rarely comes into play in an actually competitive game.

Their t4 has some of the best disruption in the game (mono obviously) keeping groups of infantry on their asses. Lord destroyers can use stasis field to freeze units. Solar pulse+chrono+Fo's disable firing squads. TS's can manufacture troops right behind your advance. There is no real reason why you shouldnt be able to get into firing range if you are t4. Seriously, consider all of a race's abilities before you go calling their t4 weak because you think their infantry isn't good enough.

Not saying that cron isn't a weaker race, just that their weaknesses are in the early game. Slight buffs in t1-2 would bring them in line, their t4 is fine.

[Gannadene]

Many games never move beyond T3 to begin with. I rarely hear Necrons accused of being weak in T1-3. I hear complaints of their economy being weak, to which I once agreed. The 1.2 buff has alleviated that to some degree. So, no, I don't agree that their primary weakness is in T1-3. That would indicate that their strength is in T4, which it isn't. Not a lot changes in T4 aside from the Monolith. Most of the upgrades that make a T4 infantry force what it is are available throughout T1-3.

If anything, they're weak throughout all tiers. I have no problem with how Necrons are balanced in T1-3, but they don't stack up to most T4 forces without a lot of good fortune in using abilities. Most of it comes down to whether your opponent messes up, rather than how well you played. That shouldn't be the case, especially not with Necrons - the race that allegedly "steamrolls" with a very weak T1 start and finishes as one of the most powerful races.

[PandaMine]

@kotCR

You are the one comparing them to elite infantry with 1k HP per squard when I have blatantly shown that Necrons in DC 1.2 are no where as near as powerful as elite infantry with 1k HP per squad member and 25 range. You're complaint about buffing warriors HP is, that they like elites, would do things such as walk through bases ignoring focus fire (which isn't gonna happen in T4, you can't ignore T4 focus fire) and start raping buildings.

There are however numerous reasons why warriors cannot do this and thus why even with 1k hp per squard member are not comparible to elites
1. They have very low morale and no method of increasing/replenishing morale or reducing morale damage. All of the other elite units have this in one form or another
- Kroots have 1.2k Morale, incredibly high for any unit
- Warp Beast Packs have tame beast, as well as combat drugs
- PSM are morale immune
- Ogyrins can be attached with priests + commies
- Terminators have 750 morale, recieve less morale damage and can be attached to FC/Chap/Librarian to boost morale
- Nob Squads can be attached to Big Mek or Warboss to increase moral regen, orks also get a huge morale bonus in general from mob bonus
- Howling Banshees dont get any morale bonus's (generally because eldar units don't have high morale) however they have war cry which does serious morale damage. They are uncapped too
- Seer Council again have 1.2k morale (also have commander armor +conceal). They also embolden, which further boosts morale
- SrS likewise can have commanders attached to boost morale recovery
What do warriors have?
NOTHING
The mere fact that they only have 400 morale which doesn't scale and crons have NO abilities/spells etc etc to boost morale regen/amount means that not only do warriors have crappy morale to start with, when broken is there isn't anything you can do apart from waiting

This COMPOUNDED with Warriors completely horrible movespeed means that they are going to take an incidious amount of punishment. If a unit moves as slow as a dead turtle I god damn expect it to have a large amount of HP to make up for it. Necron Warriors are not PSM's, they cannot run around with their 14 movespeed doing hit and run attacks. Warriors cannot retreat at all, they are basically forced to stay in battle because at least that way you would damage the opponent instead of dying trying to run, where as almost every other squad apart from SrS have high movespeed to move in and out. Likewise the crons have no snares (grenades, disruption apart from Mono, missiles etc etc) to hamper movement of opposing units for their warriors to chase, the only thing is SF. It is very EASY to run from a cron army, not the same can be said about other races

For all these reasons they are much less effective then elites, and for the same reasons there should be NO issue buffing their HP to 1.k with a T4 upgrade (where many other races get such HP elites in T2/T3).

Necron Warriors has so many god damn weakness it isn't funny, buffing their HP up to 1000 is not going to suddenly move them up to par with elites. They were not even that powerful in DC 1.2, the problem with DC 1.2 was the necronomy, wraiths, FO and NL. Necron Warriors were just seen as powerful because ontop of what all the other strengths necrons had it was unbearable.

[Old Painless]

Necrons are not forced to stay in a fight they are losing, they can all teleport out of there in one go, Immortals were added to the list of units which could teleport to make this a more easy to use tactic i believe.

Necron warriors were seen as powerful because you could have a screen full of highly durable units on constant overwatch.

They don't need any more HP, with the lords tricks they just need a little more range to start doing the business in a fight as they walk to the enemy a bit sooner.

Your lord teleports straight in which takes zero time, you use SF etc and teleport in your flayed with again takes zero time, then your warriors are just about in range as they started walking in as your lord chose where to teleport. All they need is a bit more range to deal damage a tad earlier as they walk in and make the period of time they are doing damage for a little longer as they enemy runs away, IF you got it right.

If your not using the Lords powers your going to lose any fight you go into.

If you don't bring at least 1 Flayed Ones squad your just making it more difficult for yourself than it needs to be.

[PandaMine]

Necron Summoning has a cooldown, and it can't really be used to re-engange an enemy (by retreating I mean retreating and re-engaging)

Necron Warriors were seen as powerful because they had to much HP in TIER 1-3. This was true, and it was nerfed

Im talking specifically about T4, where Crons do not have the HP needed to do what they need to do. I know the lords teleport with SF etc etc, that however means your army is over reliant on your NL (which is not a good thing). Yes you are supposed to have FO's/Immortals in your force, but as it stands FO almost die instantly to anything in T4 (and FO deep strike is not instant) and Immortals are just AV.

The big bulk of your army are necron warriors, always has been and will be. If the majority of your army can't do what they are supposed to do then you have big problems and relying on relic units/NL is not a good balance argument.

As it stands, Warriors already have shitty re-inforce time, and crons have been nerfed so badly in T1-T3 that they deserve to rape any army tenfold in T4. Currently IG and orks outclass in them in every area

Warriors desperatley need their HP buffed to 1k, range increased to 25 and possibly a slight re-inforce time buff (or fix the bloody res'sing issue) JUST for T4. This can be done with one final upgrade of DF

[edbop]

honestly mate they don't. painless is probably right about a slight increase in range but that is it. i don't understand why so many nec players seem to think the nw spam should be a viable tactic. use the rest of your possible army. there aren't many troops that are as viable in t4 as they are in t0.

[PandaMine]

The fact that warriors are the only things useful against INF and the only usable unit that crons have in T4?

Crons are supposed to be less versatile, thats how they are in TT. In TT the majority of their army is warriors, backed with immortals/FO and their hovercrafts. Same thing goes for SS.

Unless you want to revert back to the old days where you want to buff FO so much that they become imba again so they are usable in T4 apart from their morale damage and tying up ranged units in melee for the limited time they can do it

[MaddoxX]

in T4 FO could have an upgrade that enable them to have a one time jump/teleport of short range that deal morale damage, this will make them viable in higher Tiers.

[Old Painless]

Woah there PandaMine, lets not go down that road just yet.

NW are not the only good necron unit versus infantry and there certainly not the only useable unit in T4!

Heavy destroyers have absolute buttsekks with vehicles and buildings, destroyers are pretty damn good against infantry, all the other types of troops are a little more specialised and need a bit more thought at to when best to use them but Flayed are rediculously good versus infantry, drop 2 squads in an infantry mass, have a cup of tea and use some stalling tactics while you wait 20 seconds, then watch as the entire enemy army gets red markers round them and they all break.

Voila, your enemy now only does 10% or so damage to your units, and you call that bad ? That's a HUGELY powerful tool.

You have lord destroyers which can freeze multiple enemy squads or even your own to protect them if needed, you can nab enemy tanks and iirc the time needed to posses has been shortened, pariahs seem to live forever on overwatch, still even though they have been nerfed.

Its not all bad you know.

Even attack scarabs which are only good versus air units now still rape the absolute snot out of any other flyer !

If your trying to use the same old 'wall of NW' tactics you will fail.

[corncobman]

Just increase the range of the Warriors weapons via research. That's all that's needed IMO.

[MaddoxX]

At higher Tier mass HQ if you have a standard or more army on field this will make them all like 2* hp.

[Gannadene]

In my experience, Warriors have more use when you do not build Pariahs (which eat up 4 pop in an already high pop army list). That allows you to skip an Immortal and split the difference between a Warrior and FO squad. Contrary to what may seem conventional logic, the extra 8 Warriors and FOs make a world of difference, despite losing the great capabilities of your Pariahs.

It's important when balancing races not to forget that the differences in power can be altered by the liberal use of abilities. However, it should also not be forgotten that abilities do not make a race. Arguing that Solar Pulse or Phase Shifter, or some other active ability, hands down, allows Warriors to operate without regret is simply wrong. You can only learn this through experience using the race.

As far as range goes, you can go that route, but it tends to shift Necrons more into the realm of a normal race. It goes against their thematics. You can easily skip this with no argument from me. I'd more than welcome Necrons actually being able to trade fire with Tau griefers, or especially Eldar players with FoF. If an Eldar player decides to snipe at your forces and run away when you choose to chase after them, turning and firing at you the entire way, there's no way for you to counter it. Warriors aren't fast enough, and they don't have the range. They also don't have the regeneration to restore the minor health they're losing in the process. The only thing you can do is huddle in your base, or try to ignore their forces and assault their LPs. It's quite frustrating having no options to chase down griefers, in this case. I'm sure someone has an inane "solution" to this, though. Someone always does.

[edit]: As far as Destroyers go, remember that you aren't playing with a standard economy. At 250 energy, pumping out Destroyers, especially if your opponent has fast vehicle-counter units on the field, can be a death sentence for your economy. They're a risk to produce, given how arduous the Necron economy is, as far as slow teching goes.

[santiago4ever]

Necron Warriors are fine, you're just using your NL the wrong way :P Don't get solar pulse unless you absolutely have to get it, wait and get the most awesome NL ability instead, the one that will make your opponents whole army break and run straight into your NW mass \o/

This is if you're going to NW heavy lategame, if not you might want to try other venues. Solar Pulse is for if you think you can push the advantage in early T2. You can also skip phase shift if you play cautiously with your NL and go for something else instead.

[SubakuGaara]

bump. NWs aren't weak at all in 1v1 play. Focus on the Nec Lord using his abilities to support them.

[slay2rr]

People saying Necrons are weak need to use different units at T3-T4, Pariahs are awesome, they do take 4 cap but they have insanely fast reinforce time, good damage and that hp decrease ablility, plus they have a huge 5hp regen. Use destroyers and hvy destroyers, use other infantry other than NW, NW are not elites, the first 3 are free for goodness sake, how imba do you want them to be?

[PandaMine]

Problem with destroyers is as Gannadene has mentioned, they kill your economy considering the amount of power you are getting and the DPS return's you get.

Destroyers aren't actually that useful in heavy full squad clashes that you find in T4, for 250 power you are getting 63.0/126.0/105.0/94.5/73.5/52.5 DPS against infantry. In comparison, a full squad of warriors has 92.7/216/155.4/139.1/108/77.59 DPS against infantry, thats quit a big difference (this is even after the damage nerf).

Destroyers also get instantly raped by AV due to their shitty HP

Pariahs although great, against INF they don't actually do a lot of damage because they end up doing so much disruption that it takes them like a year to kill a single inf squad. I have seen 2 GM squad kill a pariah squad because it took the pariahs like 40 seconds to kill the 1 GM squad because they disrupted and then they have to run to where the GM's got disrupted to and repeat.

Granted they are very useful against tanks/ubers/buildings but definitely not as useful against INF compared to the other CC specialists mentioned before

@slayer

Im sorry but currently crons get raped by most well played races in T4, why don't you actually try playing them against a person?

[Pseudonymn]

Someone mentioned Attack Scarab swarms earlier and, I know it might seem off topic to bring them up again but, I was wondering if anyone else feels that making them air-to-air only was an uncalled for nerf? Was it even intended that way, or was that just IL fudging things up again?

They were great, though expensive, in a pinch when you needed to tie up a ranged squad and you had nothing else to fall back on while your NWs closed into range. Does anyone else feel that moving Scarabs back to ground ops, as well as air, might help spread the load a little bit and make NWs a little more viable?


How imba do you want them to be?Nobody, but nobody, has been suggesting that we make NWs IMBA in the slightest. But neither should they be left UP as they are in late tier games. The pendulum swings both ways and has to come to rest at some sort of middle ground eventually.

[Gannadene]

Scarab swarms were never exactly super useful, although I dare you to find a SS replay in which someone uses them productively, if at all. Their very existence is a joke.

I've found people are incredibly gunshy about buffing Necrons at all due to DC. It's understandable, if not frustrating.

[PandaMine]

The main problem is not necessarily that people are gushy about Necrons due to DC 1.2, the BIGGEST problem is that they do not know where the imbalance lies.

Its very easy for a few major imbalances to make it "seem" that the whole race is entirely imbalanced, which is quite wrong.

Necron Warriors were never imbalanced to start off with (possibly slightly in earlier tiers with their high HP, that was however fixed). It was just when crons sent did constant FO and Wraith spam along with NL to obliterate your army and then you found yourself with warriors in your base that you can't kill because your army just died

This is the exact same thing that happened to BroadSides, in my opinion they are currently one of the worst AV's, especially after their 33% damage nerf you need to spend like 6 or so squad cap to get any decent AV. Thats not even taking into account how immobile they are, extremely vulnerable to ranged fire (such as from HB or plasma) and have an enourmous set up time. The only saving grace that tau has if they go on the Kauyon path is cuda's, as SS in T3/T4 only last long enough to use EMP on tanks in long battles.

Everyone was however making the same complaints that they are currently doing with Cons that Broadsides do too much damage, what they don't realise is if their army wasn't wiped by FW's in Tier 1/2 then broadsides wouldn't be a problem at all

[Rotlung]

Admittedly, the broadsides aren't all that powerful, with the main damage dealt by fire warriors. However, it does get disconcerting when you see one member of a squad fall each time a broadside unleashes its railguns.

Perhaps Flayed Ones and Wraiths should get nerfs and the Warriors get buffs? :p

[Orgad_E]

SS in T3/T4 only last long enough to use EMP on tanks in long battles.

thank god someone said that...

people always say how imba the Tau av is due to SS being invisible anti vehicle. the only thing SS are good for after T2 is emp... and now that got nerfed... and so did the cuda D:

[bman3k]

A 10% damage nerf is nothing

[Rotlung]

If I remember correctly, the nerf they got was only damage against commanders...

[Compeador]

I take offense to the statement that wraiths aren't useful. Wraiths are probably the most useful, most spammy, and most effective melee unit in the game, especially for cost.

Also, if your necron warriors are failing hard in lower tiers, it's because your unit mix and necron lord are not being used very well.

Also don't forget that necron gets free units through all tiers, and res orb and tomb spyders enhance that by a great magnitude.

Everything necron has is good, there's really nothing in the race that's not useful or not competitive, and they're pretty decently balanced (besides wraith spam) in my opinion. That's one reason the only balance change for them in 1.1 was the global econ upgrades.

[mlai]

Then how do you "top players" explain how even in DC 1.2, Necrons were considered OP in 1v1 but were considered UP in team games?

Doesn't that mean Necrons even in DC 1.2, weren't powerful in late game? If even OP DC 1.2 Necrons are weak in late game, then how can SS 1.x Necrons possibly be "balanced" late game?

[_McGr3g_]

by whom they were considered UP in team games? u played against some gawd clans or do you base your statement on some random team games? coz u r seriously wrong dude.

[PandaMine]

Scarab swarms were only useful for these things
1. Against undefended broadsides (the broadside will waste its rail on a single scarab, a full scarab army can kill broadside incredibly quickly)
2. Undefended artillery (basilisks/whirlwind/hellfire/looted tank)
3. Relic units that don't have AoE (GK) and other big tanky units with no AoE

Now they are about as useful as a mushroom

[mlai]

by whom they were considered UP in team games? u played against some gawd clans or do you base your statement on some random team games? coz u r seriously wrong dude.
I base my opinion on general forum sentiment during DC days, seeing as how I don't play team games or QS. The general sentiment that DC 1.2 Necrons weren't powerful in late team games were never seriously challenged.

We're not talking about the unpatched DC 1.0 Necrons that had imba Rez Orb and ridiculous max rez cap.

[Gorb]

Also don't forget that necron gets free units through all tiers, and res orb and tomb spyders enhance that by a great magnitude.Yes, Necrons get free units. Yes, they are tough, and yes, the NL is a teleporting fun machine of death. However, look at the ability side of things. What abilities do the Crons get? Well, apart from the Lord, they're left with a couple of passives (FO, Pariahs) and the fixing-broken-shiz-machines that are the Tomb Spyders.

Other races get far more devastating abilities to use to hold back the (slow) Necron advance. Your Spyders actually have to survive to harvest the fallen Crons. The NL can't be attached, and so is singled out by a helluva lot of stuff (unit + character bashing him, various abilities like the Vindicare sniper - it won't kill him, but it'll hurt).

Necrons in 1v1 - pretty damn effective due to T1 NWs and NL. In team games? Don't make me laugh, two commanders can down the NL and then just put a few turrets around his body. Voila, the NL player no longer has a commander (unless the game drags on as far as T4 and Essence of the C'tan comes into play).

[PandaMine]

People are also forgetting the spyders have jack shit HP for a walker, they go down to AV so fast it isn't funny

The other main problem's that Necrons have (apart from Warriors) is that the Necron's effectiveness is now totally reliant on NL and Mono and this is NOT a good thing. A race that relies on a uber relic unit or a commander to be effective is not a good thing

As mlai said, yes its true that Crons were hell powerful in DC 1.0 with Res Orb, however in DC 1.2 the crons power comes from FO/Wraiths, Lightning Field and Solar Pulse. No one really questioned crons turtling power in T4 DC 1.2 because

1. No one survived against Crons until T4
2. If they did survive, Crons would have killed any opposing players econ so badly that most likely the crons would have an army of twice the size along with mono

If people don't believe me they can easily do a test, do a 1v1 game with Crons in DC 1.2 and some other race that isn't chaos (because of their crappy T4). Don't harrass eachother and let both races build up an army (make sure the map has 2 relics), and then do a final clash in T4.

You will see that in DC 1.2, it is quite manageable for the other race to come out victorious, incredibly easy if crons don't have mono

[ImmortalChaos]

I base my opinion on general forum sentiment during DC days, seeing as how I don't play team games or QS. The general sentiment that DC 1.2 Necrons weren't powerful in late team games were never seriously challenged.
Necs in DC1.2 certainly didn't have an uber T4, but their early game still rocked most other races and they were just as imba as in 1v1 if used correctly.

[Gannadene]

I think what's distracting a lot of people is that they're looking at the stats without considering abilities or micro, beyond Solar Pulse or NS, or whatever.

[PandaMine]

IG and Orks, easily raped Crons (if they survived) in T4 in DC 1.2. Now they are much worse, which isn't too good.

Hell if you don't want to buff Necron Warriors HP, give NL back his res orb from DC 1.0 :nyah:

[_McGr3g_]

[DC]scarab swarms + TS vs. hq = win.

now when u added 'late' to team games i guess u r talkin bout qs, 4v4 and 3v3 on kasyr like maps, ye, they werent so strong in this ones. in 2v2 and normal 3v3 maps(the ones on which u actually fight before t2) they did more then fine. ecobooming allowed to tech much faster then other races. they werent top notch, but far from UP.

anyway, back on topic. i doubt we will see any buff to cron infrantry, demand is not very popular and if u look at late game balance *coughavatarcough* this never was relic priority. anyway, gl.

[ImmortalChaos]

IG and Orks, easily raped [everyone] in T4 in DC 1.2Fixed.



scarab swarms + TS vs. hq = win.I don't even think they can attack buildings...

[PandaMine]

Scarabs only attack air units now, which as I said before, makes them as useful as mushrooms

[ImmortalChaos]

If there is anything necs have that desperately needs a buff, it's the attack scarabs.

[Avatar 720]

If there is anything necs have that desperately needs a buff, it's the attack scarabs.

Oh, the ones that ate my 3 tempests before they loosed off their second missile each? They may only attack air units now, but they're damn good at their new job.

Yesterday I went up against 2 necrons with my spess marines and a spess marine ally. He went for turtling the crit locs and focussing on CC harassment, I went for teching. The plan was that he used resources to build ass marines and spess marines and turrets, whilst I teched up to at least the machine cult, at which point I would start assembling dreadnoughts for harassment and an army of plasma. What went wrong was how we underestimated the enemy. Because my ally sat there and did nothing, the enemies were allowed to assemble armies, so when I got my scouts forward to scout the way for my dreads (cloacked plasma scouts ftw!) I was met by imba turrets, solar pulse necron lord and an army of warriors and immortals.

My scouts survived and reported the army location and prepared my own army. My ally noted the army location and attacked with his 3 or 4 ass marine squads. They jumped in an half of them were killed in mid-air, the others were demoralised, sergeant-less and were ripped apart. That army then attacked me. At that point I had 2 plasma scout squads (8 plasmaguns total) and 3 full squads of plasmagun toting marines + FC + dreadnought + hellfire dreadnought. I got my ass handed to me. I ran down to the point I had pinged as the meeting point as my scouts went ahead to harass the army.

This is where I don't get how people say necron warriors just die. 8 plasmaguns focus-firing on a necron warrior squad yeilded 4 casualties before my army was met. Solar pulse was let off, the necron's ally necron dropped flayed ones behind my army to stop a retreat and my dreads were downed in seconds by the immortals. The necron lord locked my tac squads in melee whilst the flayed ones reached them then progressed to the other squads. After my dreads ent down, the immortals joined the CC fray.

It ended with 90% of my army dead and 40% of his dead, he only pulled back because my ally had re-built and had launched a melta-bomb crusade against his monolith with his new ass squads. If you can use necrons effectively, by all means, do, but necron warriors are not supposed to be used as tanks. Their low morale makes it easy for them to break and their slow movement impedes them a lot. Basically, teleport a lord in, drop flayed ones behind the army, drop solar pulse, immortals come in and base-bash/vehicle bash and then the warriors trundle in and blow apart the enemy infantry. Immortals can do CC, they're not a CC-less unit. Instead of having them sit there and complain about their lack of shooting damage against infantry, take the advice of the tooltip and engage infantry in CC with them. They have low health because most vehicles won't last long, they aren't meant to be in long fire-fights with infantry, try getting them into CC with a tac squad and note the damage difference against them, you won't take as much but you'll deal out more. Warriors aren't halfbad in CC either, their knockdowns can be quite useful.


I don't even think they can attack buildings...

Try and quote the whole sentence next time...


[DC]scarab swarms + TS vs. hq = win.

[Compeador]

The reason a lot of "top" players didn't rebuke complaints about "bad" Necron tier 4 and weakness in team games is bc .... well honestly we really don't check threads like this very often bc they're a waste of time and are usually full of people whose arguments are weak or biased and typically only apply to kasyr games where sm and chaos rule the field anyway.

In short, we don't care.

So here, let's break a trend of no comment on necron tier 4. The reason they don't seem very strong to you is because in your games, the bases are so far apart and so hard to get into and so easily teched that the slow moving and devastating necron army never really gets the chance to bring its full force to its enemy's doorstep. Necron tier 4 is incredibly powerful, necron as a race is quite powerful. Not the best bc tbh there's some really broken stuff other races have but Necs are very well balanced in SS (besides wraith spam). Early game too. And nec warriors fit into the race very very well.



Oh, and the attack scarabs need no buff. lol. Best anti-aircraft in the game thanks. You're pretty much immune to Hell Talon harrassment unlike any other race in the game kthnksbai.

[Pseudonymn]

^ Is that a "top" player's opinion? That last bit sounds especially sketchy:


Oh, and the attack scarabs need no buff. lol. Best anti-aircraft in the game thanks. You're pretty much immune to Hell Talon harrassment unlike any other race in the game kthnksbai.
Insufficient. They are also the only flier in the game that cannot engage ground targets, and they are still expensive as fuck for what they do.

They can't even catch most other faction's fliers to start with, and you're stupid if you're leaving any of them in combat with them. The two fliers that they can catch (ie: LSTs, FBs - I don't include the MB because it has only one point less movement speed @ 42 vs 41) are still just fast enough to lead them on a wild goose chase at best, to AV support at worst where the little buggers get slaughtered. For a "flier" whose only means of attack is to close to melee, they are WOEFULLY lacking in the speed department. Try to catch an Eldar flier? Fuggetaboudit!

And then there's their cost:


Maintaining the base reinforcement rate of just one squad requires an power income rate of 57, and that's before the reinforcement time reduction from Obelisks is factored in. And that's before the repair costs on the TS for building them to start are factored in.

Anyone who suggests that the Scarabs as they are now are fine is a sodding bluffer and shouldn’t be believed. :p

And IL were idiots for making them air-to-air combatants only. There are some shinging examples of bad fluff in the DoW franchise, but this one takes the cake.

[Compeador]

Is that a "top" player's opinion?
yes.


Try to catch an Eldar flier?

what use is a nightwing in the eldar vs necron matchup anyway? Nothing.




They're fine, useful, and if what they do is nothing more than keep any air units from harassing your eco or your troops, then the mission is accomplished. And fluff has always taken a backseat to balance in this series. Otherwise space marines would pwn everything.

Besides, the thread is about nec warriors. On topic please.

[zakublazer]

As a Noob player, i say Nec Warriors reinforce too slow and build too slow after 2 squads, getting more than 3 squad is beyond my tiny attention span.

they should wtfpwn everything, except me.

PS, i do believe the scarabes can actually stop the marauder from demolishing your gen farm in one run by staying infront of it. the bombing run just stops. They die a bit too quickly though.

[ImmortalChaos]

@Avatar_720: He only edited that in after I pointed it out. Heck, at the time of my quoting, I quoted his entire post. Now it's got a tag and a paragraph. :p

[Xanthian]

Problem with destroyers is as Gannadene has mentioned, they kill your economy considering the amount of power you are getting and the DPS return's you get.


Destroyers aren't actually that useful in heavy full squad clashes that you find in T4, for 250 power you are getting 63.0/126.0/105.0/94.5/73.5/52.5 DPS against infantry. In comparison, a full squad of warriors has 92.7/216/155.4/139.1/108/77.59 DPS against infantry, thats quit a big difference (this is even after the damage nerf).

Destroyers also get instantly raped by AV due to their shitty HP

And here we reach another crux of the problem. A necron player that doesn't know how to play.

On the one hand, you're complaining about destroyer dps, and on the other, others are complaining about wraith durability. All of this is coupled with complaining about destroyers getting owned by AV.

Apart from tankbustaz, which AV unit can kill a destroyer in melee? And what's stopping you supporting your destroyer with immortals?? (For the necron player who doesn't know how to play, immortals can't be tied up due to nob-level damage with huge disruption, they have to be shot at by ranged units or melee'd by melee specialists, and destroyers are a counter for both, being able to shoot melee specialists and melee ranged units with their high mobility.)

I'm not saying necrons don't have problems. But I am saying march of death + necron lord abilities (pick one, they're *all* good) + deep striking into defensive teleport makes necrons harder to punish than any other army if used appropriately.

[PandaMine]

Im saying that for the amount of economy you spend into making destroyers they give crap returns. Hell even the relicwiki says that destroyers/heavy destroyers are expensive for what they do.

Most players are forced to get destroyers to keep up, because any race needs tanks if they want to survive, its just that Destroyers/heavy destroyers are definitly not the best tanks in the game.

Also the fact that Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers get tied up in melee is actually more of a disadvantage then an advantage, because they do far more damage in range then in melee. Unless you are using them to up ranged squads in melee combat (??????) the other races tanks are generally a lot better. It may do nice melee damage, but its a single unit and not a squad. In fact most inf squads could most likely out melee it, (apart from maybe obliterators)

If it had better FotM then it would be a lot better


I'm not saying necrons don't have problems. But I am saying march of death + necron lord abilities (pick one, they're *all* good) + deep striking into defensive teleport makes necrons harder to punish than any other army if used appropriately.

Any race can do the same, not just crons.

[Pseudonymn]

what use is a nightwing in the eldar vs necron matchup anyway? I was thinking about team games, but w/e.

[slay2rr]

PandaMine, the only reason you feel that destroyers are expensive, is because necron infantry are too cheap, destroyers/heavy destroyers weak? what are you talking about? 2000/3000hp is quite decent for T2-T3, if you cannot micro your destoryers to avoid AV, or use NW/FO to screen them from enemy melee units, it's not because they are weak, but because you're not using them the right way.

[PandaMine]

Slayer have you seen the state of crons economy lately?

I feel that Destroyers are expensive maybe because they actually ARE expensive. Compared to every other race, their tanks grants them more benefits from gold then Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers.

Also crons in their current state enter T3 (destroyers/heavy destroyers are considered T3) much longer then the other races, unless you have of course been left alone for the whole game

[Xanthian]

Most players are forced to get destroyers to keep up, because any race needs tanks if they want to survive, its just that Destroyers/heavy destroyers are definitly not the best tanks in the game.

And if you're using destroyers as tanks, you're doing it wrong. Necron warriors are your tanks. Destroyers are your tie-up and mobile anti-melee ranged unit.

Alternatively, if you're suggesting that every race actually needs durable vehicles to win (as opposed to durable units in general), I'd introduce you to orks and DE. A very large number of players don't build vehicles unless they need to counter heavy weapon masses or need a transport. And the destroyer fits the first category perfectly


Also the fact that Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers get tied up in melee is actually more of a disadvantage then an advantage, because they do far more damage in range then in melee. Unless you are using them to up ranged squads in melee combat (??????) the other races tanks are generally a lot better. It may do nice melee damage, but its a single unit and not a squad. In fact most inf squads could most likely out melee it, (apart from maybe obliterators)

Destroyers have a very respectable 41.3 dps across the board to all infantry, on a platform with 30 move speed, when *all* ranged infantry that can equip heavy weapons has in the ballpark of 1-2 dps against it in melee. Notice how the destroyer is the perfect tie-up for heavy weapons who are the only things I see people complaining about with necron warriors?

The relic wiki is borked, since it suggests tying up destroyers (which unit's going to be mobile enough to do that except maybe stormboys?), then in the very same paragraph tells you to be wary of your AV getting tied up and killed in melee by it.

The destroyer, for all intents and purposes is a wraith with brilliant shooting, faster move speed, way more durability, but no detection or decapping potential.


Any race can do the same, not just crons.

Orks get one teleport for one squad, SM gets the deep strike and a slow teleport on termies. Chaos gets a deep strike on some units and a teleport on oblits. Barring any lapses in memory, that's pretty much it. That's a far cry from an early-game deep-striking melee unit, a hugely teleporting hero, and all infantry being able to teleport back to base.

Yes, other races have mobility options such as transports, eldar scramjets, or IG tunneling, but these aren't an unstoppable retreat tactic that always works. They can still be countered and shut down. (Ok, maybe eldar scramjets are comparable.)

The one sentiment I can share is that the fotm issue certainly does affect destroyers a lot. Just as it affects pretty much every vehicle that doesn't have a flamer.

[PandaMine]

The wiki states that you need to be careful of SMALL AV squads getting tied up to it in melee, since the destroyer does large damage to single targets (in melee and range). When you are however up against 2-3 scourge/tankbuster etc etc squads then it will easily get outmeleed

Obviously Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers are not supposed to be used in the front line (when I mean tanks, Im talking about vechiles in general and not units that are soaking up all the damage). The issue is however, which you still haven't realised or rebutted against is that Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers are very expensive for the cost, and although they have nice mobility, as I said mobility without high FotM especially on units like Destroyers they are mediocre at the best

The only cron units that can Deepstrike is FO, which past T2 get obliterated with any ranged firepower. They also move slow as hell and can't catch up to anything. The fact that they can deepstrike is their only saving grace, and more often then not they are used to defend your immortals behind your mono or to temperarily tie up ranged squads (which they can't do for too long thanks to crappy movespeed). Yes FO are powerful in T1/T2, but thanks to the recent economy nerf's to Crons, you would be lucky to deepstrike them more then 2 times without killing your tech

Remember that just because a unit is used doesn't mean its balanced, cron players are basically forced to use FO/Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers in T3/T4 because they have no other options, crons have the least units available out of any race.

SM can also deepstrike Dreads, which are fuken nasty when you find them running around in your base. Chaos can deepstrike RANGED units that do massive AV damage, as well as deepstrike another one of the most powerful ranged squads (Obliterators).

The fact is, that currently necrons are completely reliant on Mono/NL to be of any use in T4 (and NL for pre T4). Any race that is reliant on relic units or their lord is not good at all.

Also up until T3.5/T4, transports are an unstoppable retreat tactic in most situations. Necron Summoning is obviously handy, but only works on your own base (and has a CD) where as transports take you everywhere.

Orks and DE still build tanks, just not as much as other races. Wartrukk spam with Bomb Chucker and AV is bloody nasty if you're orks, and DE do jetbike spam (doesn't help that their DIAS takes up 6 pop). You will rarely find a game where a race gets no vechiles in T4 (if they reach that).

As it stands Warriors with their horrible re-inforce time, pathetic movespeed and crappy range have more weakness then strengths (now their only strength is high HP). NL/Immortals are the only outstanding units that Crons have, a lot of their other units are seen as decent to shit (scarabs for example). Their only saving grace in T4 is mono, without it they get raped by any other race in T4, especially against massive ranged firepower

[Compeador]

the recent economy nerf's to Crons

What nerfs? All I saw were buffs.


Yes, other races are more mobile. Um, duh. We know that. What, you want more mobility or something? That's not the way cron plays.


Aaaand no, they're not completely reliant on mono or lord, though a cron without a nec lord is a stupid cron indeed.

Nec warriors, slow and plodding as they are, are devastating when they get into range. They have massive HP. They can sorta kinda deepstrike due to spyders.

Destroyers always return their cost in enemy losses... they're like having 2 and a half land speeders, hence the high cost. Destros are gooooooooood vehicles.

Crons are fine. Very well balanced, nothing broken about them except wraiths.

[Rotlung]

As a Noob player, i say...
You see, that's why people don't listen to us... ;)


The issue is however, which you still haven't realised or rebutted against is that Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers are very expensive for the cost, and although they have nice mobility, as I said mobility without high FotM especially on units like Destroyers they are mediocre at the best
Eh? Wasn't it supposed to be the other way round? Fast units can stop and shoot and all that (think Eldar). It's more imperative for slow units to get good FotM, which is exactly what Necron Warriors are (which is the main focus in this thread... by right). Because they are slow, their high FotM (relatively) would allow them to continue to walk and shoot and not stop. A very fast unit doesn't need FotM when it can easily just stop and shoot. Granted, they can be tied up, but Dark Reapers can be tied up too, have absolutely no FotM, and move slower than Destroyers even with FoF. It's only their improved range and damage that make sense for them.

Regarding HP and cost, let's talk about the Heavy Destroyer and compare it with a Dreadnought. Dreadnought has 4780 and Heavy Destroyer has 3000 for same armour type. Dreadnought costs 170 req and 305 power 3 support cap, Heavy Destroyer only costs 300 power and 3 support cap. The power cost difference is negligible. Dreadnought costs req (and the inevitable vehicle cap upgrade). It generally seems pretty fair to me, considering that the Heavy Destroyer has 30 speed, compared with the Dreadnought's 18. Even if speed isn't a factor, the Heavy Destroyer isn't a sloppy unit at all.

Let's not even begin talking about the Vehicle Low 1050 HP of the Land Speeder.

Hmm... is this thread still entitled "Necron Warriors - The Crux of the Necron Problem", or is it Destroyers now?

[Gannadene]

As far as Destroyers go, they're there to offset the plodding, short-ranged Necron army. They do that well, although they're incredibly expensive for the time you need them in most often. Like I said before, they're usually a big risk. If you see a single Sentinel, enemy Immortals, whatever, you might as well just forget about using your Destroyer for the time being - at least until you can field something to counter the counter, which may take a while, considering how slowly your reinforcements might arrive.

As far as Warriors go, most of what allows them to function are other units. They require a Lord or Destroyers, Wraiths, Pariahs - even FO if they can actually keep their targets still - to operate like they should. I don't agree that's NOT how a race should work. Necrons do get the shaft as far as options go, however. Most of their more reliable answers are either quite expensive or limited in number. It's not as though Warriors have a short term Phase Shifter or FoF built into the squad that they can use if your Lord finally kicks the bucket.

That's one reason why I disagree that T4 Necrons have it made. Greater numbers, possibly more strenuous resources, but limited means to counter large masses. Your Necron Lord, by that point, will be your answer. If he goes down for whatever reason (and his Solar Pulse or NS with him), you don't have much of a way to protect your forces against turret farms, artillery or heavy bolters. Everything revolves around the Lord (as it should). Warriors just need a way to offset this slightly in T4, when the Lord's range and abilities are no longer sufficient to counter a full army. The most obvious answer to me are Lord Destroyers' stasis field, just to counter infantry long enough to minimize damage. This isn't reliable or realistic in some situations, however.

Most of any problem T4 Necrons have is with assault, or defending against bombardment. With assault, I have less sympathy because the Lord should be around, and defenses should naturally be condensed. With bombardment (or long range griefing, whatever) there are fewer options. It can be said that as playing Cron, if you allow this scenerio to happen at all, you haven't been doing your job. I agree, but I feel like Warriors do need some minor compensation to make them more reliable in these kinds of situations.

Yes, Warriors do work fine now. Mostly. They don't need much, but they need something, whether you agree or not.

[edbop]

you might as well have written i'm right and you're wrong at the end of that post.

[Gannadene]

I actually noticed I was late for a class and had to leave it like that, heh. I was going to say, "I feel like they need something to help them over the hump in certain situations. If you disagree with that, I'll just have to agree to disagree." Just didn't have time to stop, backspace, think and type. (I ended up three minutes late, after driving like a madman.)

But anyway, my basic point was that Warriors are fine most of the time, but there are certain situations for Necrons that are next to impossible to deal with, at no fault to the player. Most of that comes from the lack of options that are readily available. There's a fine line between making them overpowered to compensate for those times, or adding content to accessorize them for those type of events.

The problem is that since Necrons are so unlike the other races, it's difficult to add a simple buff without further complicating things for everyone else.

[dreadlord]

I posted this already some time ago, but I think the problem of the warriors is that they scale so bad in higher tiers.

So my idea was that the Necron Warriors could gain health with the monolith upgrades like the flayed ones.
For every upgrade add 20 hp.
So with the usual 1 Monolith they will get fom 870 to 910.
But if the game takes longer and you stay a while in T4 it would be possible to get a max health of 990.

[Gannadene]

I posted this already some time ago, but I think the problem of the warriors is that they scale so bad in higher tiers.

So my idea was that the Necron Warriors could gain health with the monolith upgrades like the flayed ones.
For every upgrade add 20 hp.
So with the usual 1 Monolith they will get fom 870 to 910.
But if the game takes longer and you stay a while in T4 it would be possible to get a max health of 990.

I think that'd actually help make Necrons a little more competitive, and a lot more interesting (and fluffy in terms of their gaining momentum)... but don't ever see it being added. Most people would freak out.

[PandaMine]

@Compeador

There are a lot of valid reasons why your NL would die in T4
1. He can't be attached to any squad (therefore he gets the majority of focus fire)
2. His tier 4 HP isn't that great
3. He has to TP right into the middle of the army
4. T4 often have so much firepower that it isn't uncommon for unattached commanders to die in a second

Even if NL does have phylacentry, the army would just aim for your warriors instead of NL, in which case your warriors get raped. NL also has TP to get away, odds are however that he will have such low health that he won't be able to contribute anymore unless you're army has won and you are just cleaning up with him

How are they not reliant on NL or mono? Seriously think about what you are saying. WTF are slow moving units with no firepower going to do? Imaging you have 4 warrior squads move up into your army, with a couple of immortals and maybe 2/3 destroyers AND/OR heavy destroyers, you are SM and have SMS raping them with heavy bolters, in which around 3-4 seconds most likely 2 warrior squads get raped. The cron player at this point would probably deepstrike FO to try and tie the SMS into melee and damage their morale, however they are so god damn slow that the SMS just dance away and can use rally squad to recover morale. Any AV would take care of the Destroyes/Heavy destroyers in seconds, hell a SMS squad of missile launchers could do it

Don't go on about wraiths because they do jackshit in big battles unless you are stupid enough to focus fire them. Versing crons without a lord or mono in T4 is like shooting fish in a barrel, they are so slow and none of their units have so much firepower (except for immortals AV) that they pose a threat.

Im not saying that they are supposed to have more mobility, they are supposed to slow and so we should leave it like that. However in TT, NW have more HP, more range and more damage so they can at least, in T4, survive against the massive firepower and more importantly ACTUALLY DEAL some damage. There is no point in being tanky and soaking up damage if you don't actually do anything, and currently in order for crons to do anything they need Mono and/or NL

[GrimDark]

*killed 4 players on FFA while playing Necs*

Heh, what? Necs underpowered? Tell me more.

Sure, NW die do CoW shees, warp spiders rape them (like just about everything), but isn't that true that necs get invisible army?
Or "I win" abilities?
Best turrets ever?
DP level NL after upgrading few monos?
The only indestructible unit in the game?
Most durable FREE troops early/late game?
Awesome elite CC unit?
Indestructible decappers?
DS'ing whole pop cap of troops only if a single obelisk is nearby?
Morale killing "OMGFLAYEDRUNRUN" always DS'ing CC unit?
Best fotm?
Ressurecting troops?
Possibility to recycle dead troops for free?
Ability to ignore point decay as a only race in the game?

Bad points:
They are slow. Most of them that is - finding those pesky eldar on a big map is annoying.
Only one NL.
NW can't outshoot plasma/HB's (well huh)
Mono will not win alone. Then again it's a mobile base.
So-so "walker". But it's not his primary function so who cares.
At least two tiers with one production building.

You guys are doing this wrong.

And hey - in DC I beat plenty of other necs - 'couse they blindly belived in their flayed rush/warrior mass. You could not do it then, so trying to return to "good old days" it will not help. Only few creative nec's got me, and they had Skills and some imagination.

And I don't mean full pop cap of flayed.

PandaMine - that situation you described is simple, but with wraiths. Only a fool will walk in to a ready enemy. Usually I use NL to distrupt enemy (lol flare/scream thing). But in this case wraith with it's ability on just fly's by (you can drop 2-3 squads of flayed now to move enemy out of cover - for 3-4 seconds they will be invincible and he will have to relocate heavy weapons, you can now get him with his pants around his ankles now) or continue with wraith to his base. Drop flayed near his gens - receive panicked opponent.

Most of his troops (if not all) should rush back to save his base ("he's doing flayed bomb on me!!!") while you just walk in on his position and kill what he left behind. Now HE has to walk in under your barrels. Fun eh? With added Deceiver/fake mono combo it's even more fun.

And I mostly play Chaos...

[Gannadene]

"Scream Thing"

It would seem your purported domination of Necrons would indicate there is a problem with the race. But I suppose you're just -that good,- right?

[slay2rr]

@PandaMine

NL don't have good hp? are you out of your mind? fully upgraded NL have 4500hp, name me another commander that tops thats?

"4. T4 often have so much firepower that it isn't uncommon for unattached commanders to die in a second"

So your saying that a daemon prince dies in a few second? why the hell would a chaos player bother with DP?

You should know that DP only have 500hp more than NL, also daemon high is not as good as commander.

[Pseudonymn]

The only indestructible unit in the game?*Shakes head*

Sophistry. An "indestructible unit" implies that it would last for the remainder of the game once deployed. If you are referring to Essence of the C'Tan, as I believe you are, it only lasts for 60 seconds and can be disrupted by unit abilities (ever had him locked down by AssTermies?) before it literally self-destructs. While it doesn't take damage for those 60 seconds, it is far from being "indestructible". No other unit in the game has such a predictable lifeline - not including Tau Holograms, as they aren't true units by virtue of their doing no damage (though they can make equally good damage sponges).

[Orgad_E]

also daemon high is not as good as commander.


no quite true.

unless its a few anti deamon weapons like GK or commanders, deamon high is wayyyy better- check the regular troops damage vs it (like fw, GM,warpspider/reapers etc etc)

[Xanthian]

Check the destroyer's melee damage vs commanders and daemon_high.

Sorry, it begged to be comic-flamed. :p

[PandaMine]

@slayer

Yeah, crons really have the economy to create multiple monoliths in SS 1.2....... AND upgrade them fully .......

I mean we all have the money to build another 4 restored monoliths to bring NL up to 5000HP, because crons happen to be the worlds best bankers....

Give me break

[The_nuketrooper]

Alot of players are not using their NL to the max ,and then bitch about the crons being UP.Early game chronometron,phase shifter and solar pulse make the lord a real nightmare (after that you can delete the FA ,to get some power back). You can't kill the thing- and with phase shifter he(it?!) phases the rest of the troops ,not only making them invulenrable ,but actually healing them.When the enemy tries to run away ,chronometron gives your warriors a chance to catch up and do damage.

In T4 you usually need to get the essesnce of the C'tans first ,and then the monolith. Jump in, Decieve some of his troops , bug any attached commander (lol if you manage to perma-decieve a chappy),set anything that remains on hold fire ,then teleport the army to the fake monolith to murder the rest.
Lord destroyers can use stasis field to get the ubers out of the game and even t4 tanks - since most players will outright delete them if they see the LD trying to cap them. The bastards are really hard to spot in a tight fight and personally I tend to mistake them for regular distroyers and miss them ..needless to say that causes me alot of pain ;]

Bottom line - I don't think the crons are underpowered ..not after I had my ass handed to me yesterday 7 times by a cron player.

[PandaMine]

That is what I am exactly saying however, no decent player versing crons should let them get a relic, because currently they are pretty weak in earlier tiers (not as bad as SM but not that much better).

They are currently reliant on the lord and on a relic (for mono, deciever/nightbringer)

[The Deciever]

deciever\nightbringer doesnt require relic


EDIT: sorry didnt realise you said "necron lord AND relic"

[The_nuketrooper]

The essence requires no relic. Unless my info is outdated? I think crons are not more reliant on their lord than is let's say IG on their command squad (I recently haven't seen any complaints from people that they are forced to get the command squad in order to survive) . In the early tiers you can use the lord to give your troops time to close in . Just as the CS ties the enemy and harasses the base. So what's wrong with that ? The artifacts from the FA will help you stay on even grounds with the enemy in the early tiers .

When it comes to t4 ,few races do not need their uber units to win the fight

[edbop]

That is what I am exactly saying however, no decent player versing crons should let them get a relic, because currently they are pretty weak in earlier tiers (not as bad as SM but not that much better).

i think you must be playing a different game mate.

[PandaMine]

Have you play Necrons in SS at all? Necrons in DC are TOTALLY DIFFERENT to necrons in SS. Unless you are Tau or IG, you have no god damn excuse for raping necrons back to front. The fact that they have to build like 50 million gens, wait years to get their warriors running (before they get spyders) in order to get a decent army and the HP of the lord was nerfed so its worse then the FC.

On another note, how the hell are IG reliant on CC? They only need CC to survive early game, in T3/T4 when you have a zillion GM smashing at you with plasma and all morale immune thanks to commi, CC is going to do jack shit in that situation. IG are god damn powerful enough without their CC in later tiers

Look the I don't mind the whole each extra mono grants HP bonuses to flayed ones and NL, however in the current state the necro economy is in its like saying, "you're gonna get this big zappa gun that can obliterate everything" however "it will cost you 2 gazillion dollars"

Building extra mono's AND upgrading them not only takes a long time (and a hell of a lot of space considering the shit ZoC they have) and a LOT of energy. The problem is that Crons, UNLIKE other races, cannot get more then +150 energy unless they fill half the map with gens which will take like a year.

Mind you I can see potential with FO getting 10400 total HP in a squad with 2 extra engaged monoliths, however I don't really see them getting there

[The_nuketrooper]

First of all it's CS(command squad) ,second by the time you have fully kitted,priested,commied gms you will be behind in tech . And third -yeah, CS is very sucky in later tiers due to their crappy abilities - like the jack-shit-doing CotM,lighting arc,strafing run,fanaticism and the so useless detection.

Back to necrons.
Economy is something you need to build .Every race has to build their economy before they can mass their troops. Crons need generators.Only. Other races -need LPs and generators. If the map offers few SPs all other races eat dikksandwiches .
I agree that the building time for the gens could use some cut-cut and/or the time before the decay starts should be increased . That is open for discussion I think

But you are right - dc and ss crons are very different. DC crons were pretty much attack-move race. I don't want them back.

[Rotlung]

Hmm, if it matters, obelisks reduce build times, so plasma generators would get up quicker and generate a greater absolute quantity of power... :p

[PandaMine]

I just edited the post

The problem SPECIFICALLY with crons economy is that you will be luky to get +100 considering that its limited by only by how many gens you make, and after you make your 5th gen it takes like a year to build another one. Where as other players in T4 can get + 200 in power (or even more) if they do full research, have a slag or two and remember to destroyer and rebuild gens to bypass decay (and their economy exponentially grows with strategic points), the Necrons economy actually gets SLOWER later into the game and not FASTER

@nuketrooper

Strafing run is kinda useless (it only does 1/3 damage), im not saying that CS is useless, but compared to what the rest of IG can do, they are definitley NOT reliant on CS. BTW later in the game its recommended to remove that psycher in you're CS (i.e. don't rebuild him if you're CC dies) and instead attach him to one of you're GM squads hanging around, because late game CS needs to be fulled completely with priests and possibly a commisar (you only need psycher early because its cheaper and you don't have a meat shield then)

EDIT: I don't even think that obelisks reduce build time for gens (or if they do it seems to have minimal effect). It appears that after you're 5th gen, they take a hell of a lot of time to build (even if you have +100% for research, just tried it)

[Rotlung]

Or you can equip the CS with a priest and 3 psykers for ability spamming up to thrice a row, each.

That's 3x CotMS, 3x Lightning Arc and 3x Strip Soul. The Priest is for getting the group out of nasty situations when your micro makes a mistake. Of course, for lategame such a configuration would be on ranged stance...

And yeah, you're right. Obelisks affect unit building times, but not building building times.


When finished the Obelisk gives the following benefits (limit of 66% on all three):
Research Time is reduced by 10% (does not effect Monolith, Obelisk, or Gauss Turret upgrade times)
Reinforce Time is reduced by 10%
Build Time for Infantry and Vehicles is reduced by 10%
The time bonus displayed is the portion of the maximum 66% bonus achieved.

[GrimDark]

Tsk. I'm a hardcore CSM player, I only play other races only once per holidays.

And no, I'm not uber in necs, but since 90% players out there tries the same old thing time and time again winning with them is not that hard - no one expects you do something else.

Power - with 2 slags you can laugh at any other player. Last game (yes, I do play in SS. Everything costs a bit more and flayed are more squishy - everething else feels the same) with 2 slags and about 5 gens - had more but they were nuked every 20 seconds - I played all out fight with 3 players on three fronts. Only after several minutes my economy started to collapse. But then I built tomb spyders, started using res orb more and laughed at pathectic attempts of the enemy to match my output.

Free immortals/flayed? Yes please.

Oh, and ass termies getting busy with the nightbringer for 60 secs? While my pariahs rape his asscannon termies? And then asstermies from behind while they are still busy with NB?
Hell, it's the best scenario ever.

Also: commander>daemon high - AT weapons make DP cry.
Some numbers:
SM TW rocket turret:
Commander: 10.0
Daemon high: 61.5
Eldar D-Cannon:
Commander: 1.3
Daemon Prince: 52.5 (50x more! )

Most (if not all) walkers are dealing more damage to daemons too.

[The_nuketrooper]

On the side note -the strafing run is used to disrupt and break squads -not kill them . Get a gm squad for the HQ psychers and you will really fall back in tech and screw yourself with masses of soldiers who bump into one another creating pathing nighmare that hurts you more than it hurts the enemy

"if they do full research, have a slag or two" - the word "if" is should not be present in any discussion of balance .Also you make it look easy to get not one ,but even two slag deposits . Which is ofcourse not the case,besides not every map has a slag deposit. And weren't the NWs the core problem of the necrons ? Why are we discussing the economy ?

[simanos]

"Why are we discussing the economy ?"
Because how else can we say if NW reinforce cost is ok (or conversely NW dps, range and hitpoints (and other stats) are fine for cost?

"Ability to ignore point decay as a only race in the game?"
OK enough with all the Necron haters here. You guys are nearing the sucking level of Eldar haters (the ones I hate most are Chaos fanboys). Let us examine Necron economy:

The Necrons are hit the worst from decay. They only have one type of income, power. It is not unusual for other races requisition+power to equal twice the Necron power income. In fact it is quite common. Keep that in mind when comparing costs. When it comes to decay, Necron generators suffer from it. Points can change hands and reset decay, generators can be deleted and rebuilt rather easily EXCEPT Necron generators. You always pay the worst penalty (cost and time) for deleting and rebuilding a Necron generator. That's part of the reason they suck in long games and Tier 4. I think Necron Generators should not decay at all or their cost-plan should be normalized. I'm not sure but I think their build time is also wrongly computed. It should be 22% extra per gen meaning 220% extra build time (320% total) after 10 gens. However it is multiplicative ending in near 598% total build time cost after 10 gens. Your call.
Then there's the Big Gen (slag). The Necron one costs 250 power. This means it costs way more than for other races. It also gives +30 power and not +40 as other races' Big Gens. Normal gens are better than it till you have 4 built. For other races a slag is better than any gen (by around 240%). The income is better for the Necrons though (+30 doubled is better than +40 straight for others) so this balances out a bit.

Because of this economy, Necrons are too map dependent and impossible to balance. If a map has about 3-4 points per player Necrons might have the advantage economy-wise. But if it has like 5-7 it slowly becomes a slap in the face. How can this be combated? Other than making Obelisks affect Necron eco more than just being glorified WAAGGHH banners for robot-dudes there are many ideas that are too radical to make it in for a patch to a dying game. I'm open to suggestions on this issue guys.

So, now that we established that Necron power*2 = req+pow... hmm well not really. Necron economy starts growing fast and cheap, but quickly slows down to snail pace and damn expensive. At the start Necron power*1.5 might equal req+pow, but after 20 minutes it is more like *2.5, after half an hour it's more like *3. To top it off the Necron economy is the most vulnerable by FAR, easy to cripple with one strike.
Lets forget of that complication for a moment and re-compare Necron units. Someone said Dreadnought costs 170+305 while Heavy Destroyer "only" 300 power. Yeah, "only"... Destroyers and Heavy Destroyers need a pop cap of 2 not 3 and a cost decrease of 33% too (or a similar buff to hitpoints and dps if they remain pop 3 and cost 250/300). Tomb Spyders are far better as are Lord Destroyers. Those deserve pop 3 more, but then TS have to be buffed a bit, if not in dps or Health then in carrying capacity or efficiency. (It also makes it frustrating how you usually end up with 18/20 vehicle pop used currently). Scarabs are just LOL. 95 hitpoints for 20 power, a slow, melee flyer only attacker. Enough said.
And Necron turrets are not the best. They are the most expensive by far (125x2=250 vs 90+45=135) and their dps and hitpoints are the same. Only after the upgrade do they gain ground. They don't gain any hitpoint/cost though. The only thing going for them is the dps to inf (other upgraded turrets only harm vehicles much). BUT they also lack in range (35 vs 40) and knockback (for rockets, D-cannon has AoE).

So lets go on to the infantry at last. Let's look at speeds.
NW 10
FO 10
Immortals 12
Wraith 24
Pariah 14
NL 16
Wraith has barely FoF speed and 16 is the norm. FO at 10 are almost immobile for a melee unit. Their usability depends on skill level (more effective on lower skill levels). If the Monolith cost was more like 300->600 instead of 450->900 maybe FO would be imba with hi hitpoints... but it isn't.
Necron Warriors start off cheap, but that only serves to fuel antipathy against Necrons. One forgets the fact that other than a rush (good luck with 10 speed, 17 range), 6 squads of 3 NW are very slow to come out a single Monolith (another handicap) and won't do much alone. A Necron has to try and save every scrap of power he can, I think many are neglecting Tomb Spyders. Even so the easiest way to use TS is if you have 2 Monoliths and spam NW to defend your base so that the TS can gather corpses relatively unharassed. But the hi cost prohibits this. I think double Monolith strategy should be made more affordable with lower cost or higher starting power. Another sore issue is health regen. These NW only regen 1 hp/sec (0 in combat). They rise from death/0 health, but then go on for ever at low health. I think this is better than buffing the % of health they rise with. This could be synergized with researches or with "medic" units like the Spider or the Monolith or Lord.
If NW were single unit squads like Wraith I bet they would also be repairable like Wraiths (yes you can repair them). For Wraiths what I would like to see is a squad of 2 members OR pop cost 1 with hard cap of 3.

Obviously giving all this to Necrons might overpower them again.
My suggestion is to firstly buff Disruption Field (first upgrade) to also give +4 range for NW. 17/21/25 seems fair. Also add +1 health regen with each upgrade
Then remove decay from generators (Necron only or for every race, I don't care). This shouldn't affect 1v1 much, but more so long team games where Necron are claimed to suck more.
Then check balance.
If it wasn't enough then start adding other changes.

[Melonplant]

The Necrons are hit the worst from decay.

Yeah, late game crons are always DYING for more power. As their economy sinks to the lowest depths of numbers, their monolith lies silent as the player awaits for his +2 power income to give him the resources for his next destroyer.

Only thing limiting a cron player is the number of monoliths churning out the undead machines. Necrons aren't great, but their economy isn't touched by decay. If you can honestly be in t4 without 500+ power floating I'd say you're approaching pro levels of play!

[simanos]

Melonplant have you actually tried it?
I just proved with reasonable arguments that decay affects Necrons, but if you just say so, sure their economy isn't touched by decay.
Your first paragraph was sarcastic, but it happens to be true.
Heh this reminded me of George Carlin, so are you openly a Necron-hater or do you happen to be one :p

[MoschBoy]

This shouldn't affect 1v1 much, but more so long team games where Necron are claimed to suck more.
since when do necrons suck in team games? especially long ones? this somehow goes WAAAAY past my experience with them.

[Gannadene]

To say that Necron economy isn't hit hard by decay is... well, unbelieveable. If you stick with just 10 generators in T4, and you're on a map that will demand attrition (FFA of some kind) then your economy will be eating dirt if you've been under constant attack all game. I typically try to have at least 15 generators if I have to get into T4, and that's just a start. It'd be great to have all my scarabs in the field, decapping points and repairing units, and my Monolith, but I need them back at my base, spending 9 minutes to construct a single building. That said, I don't have a big problem with T4 economy unless I enter T4 in bad shape, which doesn't happen often.

As far as early economy... that's part of being a Necron. I won't ask for any buffs, as I think it works fairly well right now.

For instance, lately I've been experimenting on focusing on skipping my Lord so that I can push for a Summoning Core at my 125e generator limit, then immediately go for the first Disruption Field upgrade. Reinforcing a couple of units in the first 3 man squad isn't too demanding. Early game is high risk for Necrons. The first four minutes will win or lose you the game in many cases. Everything revolves around pushing your early economy as far as you can, which means really managing your units well so you don't clog up your Monolith or drain your own economy. This is how it should be. What should NOT be is later in the game, still having issues with your economy.

What many people fail to understand about Necrons is how heavy investments are. "Build a Destroyer." "Build another Monolith." "Invest in the C'Tan upgrade." As though that was actually reasonable. As though it'll just appear out of thin air. Necrons aren't like other races. They can't split their costs, and they don't get investments for upgrading their defenses. If you invest energy in one unit, you can't turn around and invest requisition in another kind of unit. If you're at 0 resources, you're at 0 resources. Necrons can't build a vehicle that costs 250 requisition and only costs 10 energy and then a unit that costs 10 resources and 250 energy. There's no offsetting costs. There's ONE resource pool, and it doesn't go up easily. When you invest energy in something, it's gone forever. And everything costs a lot of energy to make its use worthwhile. If you can't grasp the difficulty of not being able to halve your costs between multiple resource options, you don't have any business talking about investment returns in Necron economy.

But anyway. I have no issue with the 1.2 economy. My only issue is with the lack of counters for late game situations. Warrior health upgrade was just a quick fix for that. Extending their range would also help. Upgrading their economy will not. Having infinite resources does you no good when your units produce, reinforce and move slower than Christmas. That's not how Necrons work. Feast or famine.

[Melonplant]

I have my resentments from dark crusade, I'll admit, but I know that crons are reasonably balanced now and have some strategy built in to their game.

You started your "reasonable" wall of text argument with an extremely false statement. Necrons are affected LEAST by decay because

Decay affects late game only.
Necrons aren't eco starved late game
They can rebuild their plasma gens if it gets to the point of silliness, and pay the reduced cost as such.
Other races have to ask their enemy necron "plz decap my points!" to regenerate their decay (didn't even know that could happen!)
Time does not decay.

Maybe with some serious overwatch and some team mate donations of power you can drop the float, but necronomy has always been silly complicated to balance and frankly it's been all but abandoned at this point. Balance an army that has little restrictions on resources past minute 10 or 15 is the balancing game for necrons.

[GrimDark]

Necrons reset decay? Whoa. That changes a few things, and increases the chance that some enemy nec will grab by accident some of my points.

And yes. Too many necs want a return to DC days. Also, gen decay rarely kicks in if the opponent is worth a dime - often some/most gens are destroyed in enemy suicide raids in an attempt to slow down necs raise to power.

[PandaMine]

I actually had a "big" think about this, and I think the following would do quite a bit to fix nec's problems (combination of ideas)

1. Necron Generators no longer decay (their economy early is alright to mediocre, late game its just shit at the time they need to turtle). Also fix the build time for them, because as Simanos stated

I'm not sure but I think their build time is also wrongly computed. It should be 22% extra per gen meaning 220% extra build time (320% total) after 10 gens. However it is multiplicative ending in near 598% total build time cost after 10 gens. Your call.
I think I agree, because the build time for gens seems WAY too long after about 6-7 gens
2. Necron resurrection fixed - casting time improved, remove the range limit, possibly buff the revive health % to 40-50% and not 30% (would also make res orb more viable)
3. Increase ZoC for mono's, as it stands and considering how many gens you have to build, I have no idea why it is so bloody small compared to other races. Increase it to normal
4. Redistribute the additional monolith power. As it stands, I can see a problem with FO becoming way too strong, with just 2 extra upgraded monoliths you have 9200 Heavy Infantry morale immune + passive moral degen uncapped squads that do CC damage on par with other CC squads. Seeing as how the first change would improve their economy (and increase the chance of them actually getting multiple mono's) how about split the HP bonus between NW and Flayed ones. Currently (grabbed from the wiki) FO get 150/300 HP every unit for every awakened/enganged monolith. This means that when you upgrade your own monolith to enganged FO's have 6800 HP, another enganged monolith adds 2400 HP (making it 9200, thats already more then almost every other elite squad) and another adds 2400 making it 11600 HP.

In my opinion thats a bit much, I propose that along with the range upgrade (which can be slightly upgraded through DF) that each awakened/enganged mono will increase the HP for FO by 100/200 and NW by 50/100 (along with the economy fix this should be crons playable.

What you guys think?

[Pseudonymn]

Agree. Gen build time progression needs an upper limit; long enough to penalize gen spam (resources tied up in non-productive buildings + returns over time for the investment) but no so long that it takes the same amount of time to complete one as it takes for most people to complete a single skirmish round. These 15 minute build times are pretty ridiculous.

With #3, OR, move the frickin TS corpses out of the damned way! I hate how on some maps a poorly placed gen can mean a trapped TS. RAWR!

[slay2rr]

Only crons gens decayed in DC1.0, relic later thought that all gens should decay, and thats why we have decay for other races.

Why the hell shouldn't necron have decay, do you want to bring back their uber economy back like in DC?

[PandaMine]

Maybe because in late game they are lucky to get +150 or more for power where as every other race gets like +250/100

Maybe you should read simanos post, crons are hugely disadvantaged right now in terms of economy, not only are they totally reliant on power, which gets exponentially WORSE as you progress into T4, they are also the only race that can't solve the decay problem by rebuilding gens, and their SOLE income comes from gens

On another note, decay was added in to slow turtling tactics in general, we are also trying to distance ourselves as much as possible from DC crons. SS crons are no way near as imbalanced in DC crons, in fact the necromony went from being the strongest economy in the game to the weakest in SS

EDIT: And on a further point, the crons economy was rigged in DC at T1-T2, (it was probably rigged in T3-T4, but no one lasted that long against them). Now the fact that the cost per gen has increased and their build time is insane, they really need something to help them survive with their econ in T4. Also the powerbonus from the energy grid researches have been decreased from DC

[Dexter099]

If we really wanted to make Necrons like TT, we'd give them the same amount of armor like SM tacticals, with maybe a bit more health. Then, we'd give immortals more firepower and hitpoints. Destroyers wouldn't get + hitpoints, just + a lot of damage. And the flayed ones would move at normal speed (I4) yet be only as good at combat as an assualt squad.

That would make 'crons more like TT.

[Melonplant]

No that would make crons more like SM :-P

[PandaMine]

@MelonPlant

I seriously do not see how you can rebuild gens with crons to prevent delay considering that after 10 gens (which is usually when decay starts kicking in) it costs like 300-400 energy and 10 minutes to build a single gen

[Compeador]

bc if you delete all your gens and rebuild them, you start fresh with a new economy and with the starting build speeds.


I can't believe people actually think necrons need any help whatsoever. Name me one matchup that necs have a horrid time trying to win. None, they have a decent chance vs all the races which is something that can't be said for the rest of the 8 races.

[MoschBoy]

Maybe because in late game they are lucky to get +150 or more for power where as every other race gets like +250/100
first of all, thats just plain bullshit. if you keep an eye on your gen building and your eco upgrades. you will have at least 250, 300 energy income lategame. and if the decay starts, delete the gens and rebuid them. i have played god knows how many team games with necrons, and not a SINGLE time i had ressource problems. NOT A SINGLE TIME. and i am sure as hell only a medicore necron player.

i detect serious no-skill players here, not a balance problems. "huhu, necron isnt free win anymore and i need to think and know my race.... BUFF BUFF BUFF, whinewhinewhine.".

[Melonplant]

They decay to a minimum of +2 I believe. Just delete your +2's every now and then.

And get the universal upgrade. You're gimping yourself if you don't.

I had to ignore the post with the guy saying he had a minimum of 15 generators. You have to at least check your bs before you make it up. Freaking 5 minute build time if you have massive map control.

[Danustar]

Back to the point of Warriors - specifically their scaling into later tiers - I've had a brain explosion:

Reduce Pariah's squad cap from 4 to 3.

This would give just that extra bit of breathing room in the infantry cap mid-late game where individual Necron troops don't quite stack up. Instead of overbuffing a very capable unit, depending on army composition, this could simply mean an extra squad to bolster the ranks at a time in the game when that doesn't mean insta-win.
It would also bring Pariahs more in line with other elites cap-wise, eg Ogryn, Warp beasts, PSM, Terminators etc.

I realise that this disregards any resurrection pop advantages but I really don't believe that resurrection abilities are as beneficial as they might seem.

Just a thought.

[simanos]

LOL@Moschboy ork fanboy :p
300 income for Necrons lategame means like 20 gens (with upgrades). That's 500 power cost for the last gen(20th) and 44 times build time or near 2000 seconds that's like half an hour.
SHUT UP ABOUT US BEING NOOBS PEOPLE!
My race?! I don't even play Necrons (I think you are projecting fanboy :p). I consider them the newbie race. Less units than ALL other races, no leaders for squads, less active abilities, less researches (by far), 1 producing building (doh) AND 1 FREAKING RESOURCE INSTEAD OF 2!

The decay issue is only solved if you delete ALL your gens and start rebuilding from scratch. If you do that you lose the game. Since the gens have longer buildtimes it also means they are in different states of decay. This just isn't working right.

My proposition of no decay for Necron gens is something I propose for all races. It doesn't make any sense. Point decay is one thing. It makes sense. You can't "delete" a point and recapture it for no decay. It is silly to delete gens and rebuild them. That's why it wasn't in vanilla DoW. The Points are (or should be) a fluid thing as war rages on. They change hands and are meant to push you to conquer new territory and not turtle. Generator decay does no such thing. You can't go out and conquer new gens. You simply rebuild the ones you have.

My other suggestion is to put an ability in Necron gens that for 50 power you can "flash" a particular gen to remove its decay. This avoids the complexity of necron gen costs issue and is fair to all races.

The point was that when comparing unit costs you have to double the Necron power cost to be fair (since they have half the economy in mid game). A NW costs 35 power, that's equal to 70 req (a tau warrior for instance or 2 battlesisters).
Again see my suggestions for what I propose. I discuss a lot of things, but propose only 2 small changes for starters.

"You started your "reasonable" wall of text argument with an extremely false statement. Necrons are affected LEAST by decay because

Decay affects late game only.
Necrons aren't eco starved late game
They can rebuild their plasma gens if it gets to the point of silliness, and pay the reduced cost as such.
Other races have to ask their enemy necron "plz decap my points!" to regenerate their decay (didn't even know that could happen!)
Time does not decay."
LOL false statement indeed.

Decay affects lategame only:
-how does that mean it affects Necrons the least? Unless you mean that they are imba early on and don't get to late game. Necrons are not Tau or DE. WAKE UP! This isn't DC, it's SS! Go play a game.

Necrons aren't eco starved late game:
-Every race played skillfully can be eco starved late game. Especially one with 1/2 the income of others and decay affecing 100% of its income instead of just part of it. Necrons get some free units, but reinforcing isn't free and vehicles cost too much. You can't win late game with unreinforced NW squads.

They can rebuild their plasma gens if it gets to the point of silliness, and pay the reduced cost as such.:
-Did you miss the part where this is only easy for other races? Are you suggesting to delete all 10 or so gens at once and start over? Do you know how long it takes to build em again? How much it will cost? How will you survive with next to no income for so much time? Noob much?

Other races have to ask their enemy necron "plz decap my points!" to regenerate their decay (didn't even know that could happen!):
-Points do change hands in a game. Necron gens are very easy to destroy and totally cripple the Necron player. You didn't know such basic stuff you admit. It's nice you admit that at least.

Time does not decay.:
-Do you mean the time bonus from Obelisks? That's not income dude. It counters a handicap for the most part. It doesn't give a clear bonus.

"I had to ignore the post with the guy saying he had a minimum of 15 generators. You have to at least check your bs before you make it up. Freaking 5 minute build time if you have massive map control."
-Too bad, he actually made some good points. But why don't you use that build time argument against your fellow Necron-haters? Like the ones who talked about 300 power income in late game (20 upgraded gens LOL). Or yourself when talking about decay not affecting Necrons.

Seriously people, we get it. DC made you hate Necrons. TT probably made you hate Necrons too. I've heard it all before. Lets talk balance please, not emotion.
Danustar I think the problem isn't (only?) that Pariahs cost 4 pop (more than any other elite squad). It's that NW cost 3 pop in the first place (and Wraiths 2 pop).
Immortals cost 2 pop and they are worth it. NW aren't worth 3 pop. They barely do more dps than immortals (for same pop 6) to inf with less range and speed. They do far less melee damage too (not to even mention dps to vehicles). Only thing Immortals lack is hitpoints (mostly after the important second NW upgrade this is apparent). FO also may suck for 3 pop being a SLOW melee unit. Their morale damage AoE is the only thing that balances them. Same with Destroyers (heavy too). They are worth 2 pop and 2/3 the current cost. TS should be pop 3 instead and Lord Destroyers only. Let's not even talk about Scarabs...
Resurrection is not that good really. 25% chance with 30% health means an average of 7.5% more health (25%*30%=7.5%, I'm simplifying a bit here I know*). BIG DEAL! Now if they had some way to repair damage fast it would be different maybe. Ressurection orb at least should give more starting health with its one time ability.
Do you see me suggesting ALL this? No, I suggested 2 small tweaks and then we'll see.

*Because of secondary (and later) resses the correct % is a series:
25%*30%+25%^2*30%+25%^3*30%...
my 7.5% should be near 10%
Not that anyone here cares for correct math, they prefer to imagine things and pretend, to fit their rationalizations.

[desocupado]

Hey, the idea to "flash" a gen is very good. But 50 power is way too low. It needs to be something like 100, 150 maybe.

[simanos]

Yeah, 50 was a ballpark number. Feel free to change it. Anything would be better than the current situation.

Ideally it should be not a fixed number but instead relevant to the decay of that particular gen. For example if the gen goes from +10 to +8 then 50 cost, if it goes to +6 then 100 and so on (25 cost per "step" sounds more than fair).
Hmm, on second thought it wouldn't work right (even if it was moddable/doable in the first place). Because the decay starts after 15 minutes (or so) and then goes linearly for another 15 minutes (or so) it would always be better to pay the small cost when it starts (+9 to +8) and get the "free" 15 minutes of no decay.
So yeah a flat "flash" value works better.

[GrimDark]

SHUT UP ABOUT US BEING NOOBS PEOPLE!


I don't even play Necrons

Wat.



Ok, lets ignore that for a second.

Flashing gens? K, no prob.

Give me then flashing LP's for 70/50 and I'm cool with the idea.


...Not.

[MoschBoy]

LOL@Moschboy ork fanboy
yes i am.and thats why i dont play ork in SS and DC - because i feel like cheating the ork playstyle. DC and SS orks are a joke from a fan-point of fiew.


300 income for Necrons lategame means like 20 gens (with upgrades). That's 500 power cost for the last gen(20th) and 44 times build time or near 2000 seconds that's like half an hour.

well, i really dont know what you are wasting your power on, but 500 energy for a gen lategame really isnt much of a problem. i mean, if you are SOMEWHAT competent and dont have to rebuild your army every 5 minutes, what the f* do you spend your energy on to be unable to afford 500 energy for a gen? and build time? well, 1 scarab will be free anyway lategame. additionally, there are the termo plasmagens on many big maps you can build to boost your income -and they dont even suffer from stacking build time.


My race?! I don't even play Necrons
i play all the races.granted, i dont play ork and necron competively, but i play all races in team games. and you? you think your arguments are valid after you say " hey, but i dont even play the race..."



The decay issue is only solved if you delete ALL your gens and start rebuilding from scratch. If you do that you lose the game. Since the gens have longer buildtimes it also means they are in different states of decay. This just isn't working right.
i dont know, but dont you have some system when placing your gens? you know, left to right, something like that? oh, sorry.... you dont even play necrons to start with.


The point was that when comparing unit costs you have to double the Necron power cost to be fair (since they have half the economy in mid game).
why do you think they have half the eco?? and when talking about warriors, lets start with the fact that the starting squad is FREE to begin with.... hmmm, maybe you overlooked this when NOT playing the race??


Like the ones who talked about 300 power income in late game (20 upgraded gens LOL). Or yourself when talking about decay not affecting Necrons.
yes, lategame this is pretty normal...maybe play the race??

honestly, whats the point of giving advices or making suggestions if you dont have any actual experience with playing the race - or, more importantly, with playing half decent games.

[The_nuketrooper]

Just to add -you know that there are 4 lights on the gens that change colour from green to red? Indicating the decay? You can use that to quickly spot those gens that should be deleted and then -rebuilt.

[Gannadene]

I'll reiterate that I don't have a problem with Necron economy, late-game. In my experience, the only time I'm truly hurting for resources is when I've been pressured the entire game, and am having a hard time trying to keep my units up, just to defend myself. This typically only happens in team games - at least for me.

For as long as I've played Necrons, I've never thought about it, but do Monoliths add an energy income when they're built? How about when they tier? I'm fairly certain it's +10, but I might be imagining things. I can't believe I never thought about it.

If you've ever gotten near 20 generators, you know that if you queue up three generators to be built, by the time the third is completed, the first of those three will already be decayed. To me, that's more ridiculous than the construction time, which is probably far too long to begin with.

Once again, it's not a major concern to me, but it would be nice if the construction time for generators suddenly shot up in scaling at a certain generator, but capped. I know generator number 30 is certainly not necessary or feasible, but the very idea of how long it takes to build it is certainly laughable.

Sometimes, I just assume use my Scarabs to spam Summoning Cores across the map to block off areas. It'd be a more productive use of their time, if the game has become drawn out and defensive (which I don't think is prudent for a T4 Necron, but anyway.)

[Lancer]

Just to add -you know that there are 4 lights on the gens that change colour from green to red? Indicating the decay? You can use that to quickly spot those gens that should be deleted and then -rebuilt.

As mentioned before, the exponentially-increasing construction times (and to a lesser extent, the linearly increasing cost) for generators make that unfeasable. Even with only 10 generators out, deleting & replacing the first generator to decay would take 4 1/2 minutes and cost 225 power, leaving you with only 9 functional generators for that time being.

Furthermore, as generators under construction count against you in terms of cost and build time for the next, replacing the next generator to decay would still take 4 1/2 minutes, cost 225, and deprive you of yet another generator for that duration.

As the number of generators you have out increases, the cost and time you need to spend to replace decayed generators gets worse.

[need2improve]

And how long would it take a replaced generator to pay off its own build cost?

[SpArTy]

Only problem with NW is that first crucial upgrade is not efficient enough. A drop in cost or build time would resolve it.

As for the rest of cron, the Artifiact, some NL abilities and second mono are overpriced slightly.

Beyond that there is nothing wrong with cron, don’t overcomplicate things.
...

[zakublazer]

who did you get that qoute from Sparty? that's epic.

[The_nuketrooper]

When you lose/delete the generator the price/time for a new one goes down. Isn't that true? I am pretty sure it is but I will lab it now.
Edit -probably misunderstood the post . Anyway -the price drops and you get proportional ammount of power back. To make replacement of generators worthwhile one may need to delete them in "batches". Still I am yet to find myself in need to do that with the crons.

[PandaMine]

@MoschBoy

man ffs, do you seriously know how much energy crons have to invest in building gens to get a decent income?

To just get 10 gens, thats an investment of 1675 power and a hell of a long time. 500 energy late game IS a problem when you don't have any power late game because you spend ALL of it building gens and doing researches/upgrades/techs that cost in the vicinity from 500-1000 power.

I mean, yea sure, crons are fine if someone doesn't attack you, at all, for 40 minutes so you can get your +15 gens up and running.

How the hell are the necrons supposed to find the power to destroy/rebuild gens to prevent decay when they already spent something like 1600 power to get a decent amount of gens and that you will be rebuilding the last gen, which will take like 10 or so minutes and something like 400 power.

When I was posting yesterday I was just playing crons against an easy opponent to see how their economy realistically went into T4, with 4 scarabs constantly building gens and an extra 2 monoliths to get the bonus's on FO/NL. Against an easy opponent you only get attacked by like one squad

I always BARELY had enough power to get into T4, I only managed to get 3 reinforced squads of FO, 1 reinforced squads of pariahs, 3 reinforced squads of NW, 3TS and an NL with shroud/lightning/veil in around 30 minutes (not all at once btw). So unless you guys think that that such a small army would keep you alive for above 30 minutes, you really have to either kill your economy or kill your army

@NukeTrooper
Killing gen's in patches in is even worse, because then you have to spend more energy and more time to get them back.

[corncobman]

3 reinforced squads of Pariahs?!?!?!

I hope that was a mistake.

[PandaMine]

Yeah may bad, I just ment 1 (edit it now)

[Rotlung]

I always BARELY had enough power to get into T4, I only managed to get 3 reinforced squads of FO, 1 reinforced squads of pariahs, 3 reinforced squads of NW, 3TS and an NL with shroud/lightning/veil in around 30 minutes (not all at once btw). So unless you guys think that that such a small army would keep you alive for above 30 minutes, you really have to either kill your economy or kill your army
I always have barely enough resources to get into T4 because of all the constant fighting. I've always thought the generator decay issue was for games lasting well beyond T4.

[Lancer]

When you lose/delete the generator the price/time for a new one goes down. Isn't that true? I am pretty sure it is but I will lab it now.
Edit -probably misunderstood the post . Anyway -the price drops and you get proportional ammount of power back. To make replacement of generators worthwhile one may need to delete them in "batches". Still I am yet to find myself in need to do that with the crons.

Deleting a completed generator will return 3*(n-1) power, where n is the number of generators you have out at time of deletion. At 10 generators, that's 27 power returned.

The build cost of a generator is 25n power, and the build time is 45*1.22^n seconds. Since you just deleted one generator, you are back to 9 generators Thus the build time is 45*1.22^9, approximately equal to 270 seconds (4.5 minutes), and the build cost is 25*9 = 225 power. Even factoring in the return from deleting the generator (changing the net cost to 22n+3), you still need to spend 198 power and go without the output of that generator for the duration.

[The_nuketrooper]

Oh my bad -deleting (let's say) 5 gens so you can start rebuilding from <200 is ofcourse more expensive and time-consuming than deleting a gen ,then raplacing it ,then deleting another ,than replacing it ,and so on ,every one of which costs over 200 and build for the same time as the one before it :)



Crons with 10 generators get +110 ,10 gens and 1st econ upgrade = +137 . How that is low -I don't really know. (btw the described "small" army+ 2 spare and upgraded hqs ammounts to over 4500-5000 power and 22/6 cap )
Buildings busy with upgrades ? Right - the summoning core has the incredible selection of 3 upgrades, one of which is 75, the others - 200 . Even combined they don't make 500 :)
Generators have 2 - 350 and 550 and energy core has the the essence of the c'tan which is 750.
The only things "in the vicinity from 500-1000 power" are : 2nd global power upgrade (1 time only) , essence of tEh C'tan (1 time only) ,3rd HQ (er..1 time only ,unless you manage to lose it )and the restored monolith.

Decay may hit you theoretically in prolonged team games. I personally think it hits the other races somewhat equally. True -the others can delete and then rebuild the generators,which provide them with secondary resource. But they cannot do so with the listening posts ,which provide the primary resource,unless somebody decaptures the point.

@Lancer -situation where you would like to delete a gen is when it is so decayed ,that it is economically feasible to destroy it in order to get a fresh one with maximum output. Deleting gen that makes 8 in order to get a new that gives 10 isn't profitable. Deleting generator that produces 4 in order to get a new one ,which provides you with 10 is profitable. In the long term you will get more benefits of that new gen,despite spending some time with lower income. It is situation-dependant.

[PandaMine]

Nuketrooper, you have to look at the bigger picture

+137 isn't low, spending 1000+ power to get that +137 is low. Its not that fact that crons don't get a high income, its the fact that they have to pay a shitload to get that high income, which is why when I play them I always find myself scrapped for cash

With the other races, capping strategic points is FREE, putting LP1's on the strategic points cost 100 req for most races, improving econ and paying itself off for most races in 75 seconds, and the first upgrade in 3 minutes.

On the other hand, when Necrons build a gen in late game, it pays itself off often in 10-20 minutes (if not more) and a lot of time.


Decay may hit you theoretically in prolonged team games. I personally think it hits the other races somewhat equally. True -the others can delete and then rebuild the generators,which provide them with secondary resource. But they cannot do so with the listening posts ,which provide the primary resource,unless somebody decaptures the point.

This is wrong however, because
1. The ENTIRE necron economy gets decayed, instead of just req for the other races
2. Taking into account what I just said previous paragraph, other races pay off the economy a lot better then crons
3. Even with LP decay, it is a lot easier to get +200 req (with around 7/8 lp's and upgrades) then it is to get something like 150 power with crons. Capturing points is free, building LP pays itself off in 75 seconds, another upgrade 3 minutes. How much do gens pay themselves off in?
4. It is practically unfeasible for necrons to deal with gen decay

[Old Painless]

If i build more than about 6 gens by the time i hit T2 i dont have the rescources to build an army. lol

You can quite easily spend all your power on getting more power.

[The_nuketrooper]

Ok, on how many maps can you capture 7-8 strategic points ,without already winning the game? Second - short of req = no units, doesn't matter how much power you have. Third - upgraded listening posts may take between 3-6-7 minutes to pay for themselves,depending on the econ upgrades and the upgrade level(lp2/lp3). The reason why necron generators repay the investment more slowly is the crons can get their builders and basic infantry squads (in t2.5 even their more advanced infantry) for free.

Hm I will have to look at the DC 1.2 to SS change log to see how the necron economy turned from ustopable sekksmashin into a pile of (s)crap

[PandaMine]

Im talking about T4, where it isn't uncommon to have more then 5 LP's captured

EDIT: Crons economy in T1/T2 isn't that bad, (it was imba in DC not because of the economy itself but because of things like Wraith spam and FO) but the fact that you start with less power, the global power upgrades are more expensive and give less returns, you are forced to make multiple monoliths to tier up, monoliths themselves cost a lot more power and energy, research in the energy core has increased in power and the increase in build time and cost to gens, it all adds up.

Hell the economy in DC in T4 probably wasn't so different compared to SS, the difference is that in SS its a lot harder to get to T4 and in DC no one survived against crons in T4. In SS you have to spend like 1000-2000 power to get a decent economy and to tech, in DC it was probably half that

[ImmortalChaos]

1. The ENTIRE necron economy gets decayed, instead of just req for the other races
Gens for all races decay too.

[PandaMine]

Except they can rebuild gens without any trouble

Very different for crons

[Arcinatus]

thing is though, when strategic points / relics / criticals (crits decay right?...) decay, they stay that way, cant rebuild a LP to fix the problem

[slay2rr]

PandaMine, the fact that you said DC crons were imba not because of imba is juat bullshit, the economy was unstoppable.

Arcinatus, they can renew if it was decapped, but it is unlikely your enemy to decap it just for you to cap it again. So yeah finnish the game fast don't get into a deep decay.

[PandaMine]

Man can you learn to read, I said the DC economy in T4 and I repeat again T4 was not imba


Hell the economy in DC in T4 probably wasn't so different compared to SS, the difference is that in SS its a lot harder to get to T4 and in DC no one survived against crons in T4. In SS you have to spend like 1000-2000 power to get a decent economy and to tech, in DC it was probably half that

Can you please stop quoting me out of context

[MoschBoy]

Man can you learn to read, I said the DC economy in T4 and I repeat again T4 was not imba

yes, but the necron race is/was/whatever damn friggin strong in tier 4.


Hell the economy in DC in T4 probably wasn't so different compared to SS, the difference is that in SS its a lot harder to get to T4 and in DC no one survived against crons in T4. In SS you have to spend like 1000-2000 power to get a decent economy and to tech, in DC it was probably half that
this only requires an additional amount of skill from the necron player side. where is the problem?? sure, in DC necron didnt need any skill at all to be played. now in SS they actually must be played good in order to compete. i really cant see a problem with this. necons compete with every other race in the game as long as the player knows what he is doing. what exactly is your problem with that "change"?

[War-Reborn]

All this talk about power decay, is way wide of the mark, it does not properly kick in till you have been playing for quite a while.

As cron you get around 10 or 11 gens as you work your way up to tier 4, then once your settled in tier 4 your next upgrade is usually a 2nd monolith, as it allows you to produce more quickly, it also provides 10 power and does not decay, at this point in the game with the power upgrades, additional monoliths etc, your economy should be in a perfectly acceptable place, by the time proper decay set's in.

Other races get power decay too, and they also get req decay, which cannot be fixed unless someone decaps your point, so can we just move the whole topic away from something that is a total non issue in 1 v 1 because games never last that long and a total non issue in big team games, because of slag gens and the fact that once you get to tier 4 you will continue to improve your power grid via additional monoliths, and global upgrades and this allied to those 10 or so gens, even if they are decaying will give you ample power to continue to expland the grid if you need too.

[simanos]

OK because your skulls are dense I'll explain slowly.
When I said I don't play Necrons I meant I am not a Necron fanboy that plays them almost exclusively. I don't like them because they are weak and not complex (newbie). I get them with random occasionally or just for fun or RP.

Grimdark, I won't say you don't have a point there. It's just that Points do change hands during a game and Necron gens aren't replaceable as other races. Look at it this way. Any race can delete a gen that it payed 135 (or 150 or 165) for and get back 10% of that and rebuild a new gen for same cost and more importantly same build-time AND you get 50 pow GIFT on completion. Necrons get 3 pow back per gen and have to pay 25. So if he has 20 gens he gets 60 back and has to pay 500. or at 10 it's 250-30. 220 pow for Necrons is worth about double that in req for other races so decay really kills them dead. And on top of that is the build-time. IT'S HUGE! 30 minutes to build a gen is not funny. That's why flashing should be restricted to gens and I don't mind if all races get flashing gens. I think it was better before decay was inflicted on gens at all. Also think of the Necron description as a never ending tide that can't be stopped. As it is Necrons are the opposite. Hold them for long enough and their batteries run dry. Not even energizer bunnies save them :p

MoschBoy, you fail. Your arguments fit a FFA at best not a tough team game. If you pay 500 for a gen that means 8.33 minutes before it even start making a profit, plus 31 minutes build-time that is... Oh and if you deleted a decayed gen (+4) that means you lost 720 more pow income total during that half hour.
And your comment on the gens, left to right amazing. You do understand that order doesn't matter for costs. The new ones cost according to how many are around already, not according to the last gen you destroyed. Not to mention that building all your gens in one place left to right and so on means you can be raped easily by a raid.
At least you admit you're a fanboy. Go back to not playing orks.

It's obvious here who hasn't played the Necrons and so I am fed up with this thread.
My only suggestion was +4 range to first upgrade of NW anyway. And a deal with decay.

PS: BTW, I'm fairly sure the Necron generator lights anim was broken (it was fixed in the bugfix mod, not sure if Relic fixed it) not that it matters, just a funny thing.

[slay2rr]

Whats wrong with the generator lights for crons?

[PandaMine]

Man I just played a game where I got both my economy and army raped with equal map control by an opposing eldar player.

The Necron economy is not good because YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT VERY DEARLY. How much does it cost a race to get 4-6 gens up and running? 600 - 900 req. How much does it cost for a race to capture points? Nothing. How much does it cost for an LP1? Usually 100/75. How much req do they get in return? About 12 on average.

So can people please explain to me, how the hell a great economy requires you to pay 200+ for each generator, along with a hell of a long amount of time is a great economy?

Newsflash

IT ISN'T
Crons were imba in DC because every single unit they have in T1/T2 because every unit they produced covered their cost to what they do way too easily. Wraiths, only costing 65, could kill multiple ranged fully req'd FW squads which would cost 400-500 req. Necron Warriors, which were free, had a ridiculous amount of HP for T1/T2, meaning they could even tank against 2 or 3 squads at the time. NL only costs 150, for a lot of other races its a lot more. You only need to fully req'd FO (which is the first time that crons started using money, however because they saved in the other areas they would have a surplus) to start reaking havoc in anyones base.

There is a very BIG difference between having a fantastic economy and having units that pay for themselves way too much. In the crons case, their units were so god damn cheap in T1/T2 for what they did that they always had a surplus of power simply because they didn't SPEND a lot of it.

There is very little difference in the economy in T1/T2 between SS 1.2 and DC 1.2. The actual difference is that every single unit in SS 1.2 available in T1/T2 is a hell of a lot weaker, because of this they would die (pending whether or not you have summoning at this point) or you would be forced to get more units, which either does cost you power (wraith/FO) or a hell of a long time in the case of Warriors, which does end up killing your tech.

@MoschBay
Wan't to back up what you are saying about crons in T4? Why don't you actually play a game, with Crons in DC 1.2, wait till both races get to T4 (don't harras eachother), get relics if you wan't, and I will garuntee you if played well almost any race (apart from possibly Chaos) can defeat Crons in T4.

I do not have problems with the Crons economy in T1/T2, thats fine, because you actually have to PAY for you're units in T1/T2. The problem is that in T3/T4, the difference between DC and SS is vast. In DC the upgrades to power were a lot cheaper (and gave better bonuses), the research's were not that expensive, gens gave more power and the time difference in building gens was huge. The other races in this situation get around double the income you do. Especially when you get your second monolith, it takes you like 10 minutes to get a single gen up, thats pathetic. When decay starts getting in, its like impossible to get over +200 because you will lose more power then you can build.

People need to realise where the problem lies and not just blame it on the first thing they see, problem in DC was that wraiths, which cost 65 could kill squads that cost 500. NL, which cost 150, had TP and exceptionally high damage to building_low meant he could base bash better then almost any other commander. Now he has the lowest melee damage out of any main commander apart from possibly Farseer or TC unupgraded (and there are no upgrades to improve NL's damage). FO's in DC had 50% chance to revive and did like double the damage to buildings, yet again this got nerfed in SS. We had the bugged lightning field, which insta gibbed squads as well

[simanos]

this only requires an additional amount of skill from the necron player side. where is the problem?? sure, in DC necron didnt need any skill at all to be played. now in SS they actually must be played good in order to compete. i really cant see a problem with this. necons compete with every other race in the game as long as the player knows what he is doing. what exactly is your problem with that "change"?
This is exactly the problem. Necron were imba in DC. They were nerfed and nerfed and then SS came out and they were nerfed again. But they were already hated from the start so people continue hating them now. In TT they are hated too from what I gather. This has made it possible for Necrons in SS to suck and almost no one to care.
"This only requires an additional amount of skill" is a stupid excuse. It can be used for any nerf on any unit of any race. Let's be sane and admit that Necrons do suck. Top players don't use them do they?

The problem is the Necron race is the most unfinished and stupid illogical race in DoW. Probably in TT too I guess. Even right away one can notice that for instance Immortals are supposed to be rarer than NW. They are the favored of the C'tan:
"Those favored Necrontyr who were among the first to give up their flesh and embrace the metal were rewarded by being Immortals. They are more durable, heavy variants of the Warrior and they wield Gauss Blasters, calibrated for maximum effectiveness against infantry. Immortals are fully capable of taking down vehicles with their Gauss weapons as well."
Let's forget the anti-inf thing (balance) and think about how a NW squad costs 3 pop and an Immortal squad 2 pop. For 6 pop you can get 16 NW or 15 Immortals. They both cost 35 power and lets not get into reinforce and build-times. Then the Immortal has 450 hitpoints while the NW has 530/580/870.
They should have at least doubled up Immortal units. Cost 70 with 900 hitpoints and near double dps (the battlecruiser effect is minor but you can adjust for it too if you must). Then the ratio of Immortals to NW would look more logical. NW squads should propbably cost 2 pop and have 2-6 (start-max) members and Immortals cost 3 pop and have 2-4 members (the doubled ones).
Balance-wise this wouldn't change much. I just mention this because it highlights how LITTLE thought was put in the Necron faction. The more you investigate it the more apparent it is they are half a race. No squad leaders, few researches, 1 resource, etc etc...

PS: A fun idea would be for FO to be able to bury themselves in the ground and become infiltrated.

[PandaMine]

Necrons are not supposed to have many units or researches, thats one of their weakness's and is one of the themes about the race. The TT version of Necrons is fine, and the people that wine about Necrons in TT wine because the verse them in head on battles which is necrons strongest strength (same reason why people wine that DE in TT are shit because they do head on battles with DE). People just hate necrons because they don't know how to kill them properly. Necrons skill is supposed to be in the decisions you make about their economy, which is very polarized (either incredibly powerful or incredibly weak). In TT a simple decision means life or death with necrons, and there is a lot of prediction because all production is tied up in a single building, tech or build at the wrong time and you pay for it

In any regard, the race is badly implemented in DoW

The only race that is currently and properly imbalanced in DoW is Eldar, other races like Tau and DE comp players just use exploits (jetbike spam ftw) which relic hasn't bothered fixing yet. On the other hand, Eldars units have way too many HP for a race that is classed to be fragile (I mean have a look at fragons) as well as having units that are the strongest in every class

[MoschBoy]

And your comment on the gens, left to right amazing. You do understand that order doesn't matter for costs.
and you dont seem to understand that there are players who actually have a system building their structures. because thats all i have said - you complained about NOT knowing which generator is depleated, and i told you, that using a system when building them (like from left to right) will help you identify and manage those decaied gens. however, your stupidity failst to notice that - even after someone posted about the "red lights" - which are also quite helpful.

you know what? bevore you continue your wannabe bashing of me, i want you to post a replay where this really becomes a problem; and i can tell you 1 thing: this wont happen, because

1. i am almost 100% sure you wont get a game where decay becomes a problem.
2. i am also almost 100% sure that i can explain all your problems with playing necrons based on your skill, or, more likely, on your LACK of skill with the race.


Man I just played a game where I got both my economy and army raped with equal map control by an opposing eldar player.
see, here starts the problem : a medicore eldar player will rape any necron who isnt really good. and sorry, i seriously doubt you fall under that category. taking eldar for balance reasoning is a joke because eldar is stupidly OP in the right hands.

[PandaMine]

No I am saying that the eldar I versed, we purposely did not harass eachother until T4. Eldar had a much better economy, and teched a lot more. By T4 eldar had around +10000 req and +45000 power, I had +5000 power.


and you dont seem to understand that there are players who actually have a system building their structures. because thats all i have said - you complained about NOT knowing which generator is depleated, and i told you, that using a system when building them (like from left to right) will help you identify and manage those decaied gens. however, your stupidity failst to notice that - even after someone posted about the "red lights" - which are also quite helpful.

I realise when a gen decays you get red lights (it happens for every god damn race), what is your point?. Could you please explain why everyone, except for you and slayer, agrees that in SS necrons by far are not a top pick, in fact I would go as far to say they are the lowest pick.

Can you also please point out and tell me where I said that I didn't know which gen is depleted?

Also it is a very well known fact that crons are by far the noobiest friendly race to play, you don't need skill to play crons. Necrons do not compete at all, almost every person posting in this thread has not shown any substantial arguments or replays proving that crons can be played effectively against any decent player

[MoschBoy]

Can you also please point out and tell me where I said that I didn't know which gen is depleted?
this was the other dude.


Could you please explain why everyone, except for you and slayer, agrees that in SS necrons by far are not a top pick, in fact I would go as far to say they are the lowest pick.
there are more ppl telling you that necrons are compatible, especially in team games and game beyond tier 4, not just me and slayer. i mean, sparty brought my thoughts about the ppl complaining here to a good comclusion - just go 1, 2 pages back and read his comment....

[PandaMine]

There is you and slayer

That is about it

[slay2rr]

I agree crons are not top pick, and in some cases a bit underpowered.

I suggested that NW need a slight buff(range or HP) at T3 or T4. I was merely saying that finally in SS their econ is no longer the imba DC econ, and should be kept that way.

[PandaMine]

If you read my earlier post, Necron economy was not imbalanced in DC, it was the fact that all of crons units/researches/upgrades cost nothing in T1/T2 especially for what ability they provided.

Crons economy SEEMED imbalanced because they practically never spent any power in earlier tiers. Warriors were free, wraiths were 65, NL was 150, core is 200 (to tier up), awakened monolith was cheaper at 300. Everything about crons in T1/T2 was either cheaper/free or was a lot more powerful then in SS. The actual economy (i.e. how much power you get) between SS 1.2 and DC 1.2 is minimal if non-existant. Its only in T3/T4 that crons economy in SS starts going down the drain because of ridiculous build times, almost every tech increased in price, units in T1/T2 usefulness was cut dramatically, power researches give a lot less (and cost a lot more) is where you REALLY start feeling the pain, but mainly and most of all the RIDICULOUS build times. I totally agree with Simanos, the formula for build times was changed in SS, and they build a hell of a lot slower in SS then they do in DC. The difference in earlier tiers is like 10-20 secs which isn't too much, but in later tiers when you are spending more then 5 minutes to a build a gen, things are getting kinda stupid.

Its almost impossible to get over +200 power in any cron game, you would be lucky to get +150 in any normal game which barely cuts it, as numerous other people have said, they are always short of power with crons in T3/T4 and that is not normal especially when your scarabs are spending 24/7 building gens when they could go around capping LP's to deny the opponents economy using necron summoning (or being used as free detectors)

[MoschBoy]

panda, i suggest you read the comments on your posts of the more senior members.

[PandaMine]

Yes I have
KotR
Only issues he has is buffing Necrons HP to 1k per squad member, he was fine with almost all other suggestions
nuketrooper
Thinks that necrons are playable however agreed that the economy for crons in SS 1.2 in T3/T3 was reduced to garbage
Gannadene
Earlier on he said he had problems with crons economy, later on he said its fine. Warriors need a buff in HP/range and possibly some other units
Simanos
Crons are totally borked, economy system and race design is totally screwed
Mlai
Agrees that Crons in T3/T4 where never powerful apart from DC vanilla, and I agree with him where he said that no one challenged crons power in T3/T4 in DC simply because no one survived against crons that long
Pseudonymn
Agrees crons that are in need for buffs both to the economy and warriors
Old Painless
Skeptical about buff to crons in general, however agrees warriors needs a buff and later commented that he also always finds himself out of power playing crons because all of the power is spent on gens
ImmortalChaos
Also said that crons are in need of a buff, and agreed that they were never the powerhouse in T3/T4 apart from vanilla DC with res orb
Xanthian
Said that the crons are fine and accused people of not knowing how to play them properly
Riotlung
Agreed that crons needed buffs to help their economy

I know what other people have said, I am not blind. The only people that disagree specifically with what I am saying (apart from the few random posters that only posted once or twice in the thread) are you, mochboy, KotR about the warrior health, Gannadene to some point about the crons economy and Xanthian saying I do not know how to play crons properly

[Latias418]

Crons economy SEEMED imbalanced because they practically never spent any power in earlier tiers. Warriors were free, wraiths were 65, NL was 150, core is 200 (to tier up), awakened monolith was cheaper at 300.

Something tells me you don't play Necrons, with everything you forgot. Warriors were free? I have yet to see a Necron who got by with unreinforced warrior squads. NL was 175, minor nitpick there. Disruption fields was 200, which you somehow forgot about. Flayed ones at 120, which you also forgot. And let's not forget that for say a +90 eco, you would end up spending around 550ish power... You also forgot the archive which is 150 if you decide to get it, and the cost of it's artifacts. You would also end up spending 100-150 power on obelisks. Not much, but it's there.

To say Necrons spent almost no power in DC t1 is extremely ignorant. The only things you included were the bare minimum for getting to t2, with wraiths thrown in. You also said they spent almost no power in earlier tiers, which leads me to believe you think they spend little power in t2. Which is very, very untrue. 205 for a full immortal squad, 250 for the gsc, 150 for phylacetery (Sp?), 250 for either of the vehicles which was a very steep cost, and another 200 for moar disruption fields. There was much less to spend on in t2, but every thing in it short of wraiths with wraithflight was hella expensive.

The only way Necrons didn't cost much in the first two tiers was if you fast teched to t3/t4... and necrons didn't really do that, considering t3 consisted of a single elite and an expensive anti-tank vehicle.

[PandaMine]

You forgetting that Crons had no rax at all? Upgrades where cheaper, it was a common tactic to get 3/4 unreinforced NW in DC 1.2 before you tiered for FO.

I said that the cron units either cost very little OR where way too much power for what were paying for[/b]. Wraiths, for 65 power could take on almost 2 ranged squads, disruption fields, although at 200 power, increased the HP for each Warrior by 100 (iirc) and damage by 33% which is by far the best bonus for an upgrade. FO required power, but for how much power you are spending they were way too powerful, especially considering that you only need 2/3 of the things to tear apart a base (with their res time at 50% as well, and -5 morale for each squad member). Immortals likewise, with their range and fast reinforce time + damage were very powerful for their mere cost of 135/35 (they still are, but as I mentioned before the only unit on crons that are powerful). What was "hella expensive" gave a "hella" lot more bonuses then it should have (why do you think current DF only gives 50 HP per squad member from the previous DF which gave 100 HP, thats double the difference)

I mean seriously compare that to a fully equipped GM squad with leaders, last time I remember that cost something like 700/300 in total, or what other race. Crons do not have to make rax, only have 1 buildings to tech to T2 and another to T3 and another to T4 and the rest are gens. In the schemes of things, they are by far the race that have to pay the least (back in DC). Once everything was researched with archives, you could delete it to get more power back. When you compared to other races in DC, what cost a lot for crons gave them so much of a bonus, and what didn't cost (or cost almost nothing) a lot gave decent bonus.

250 power for vehicles (we are getting into T3 now) is bloody cheap compared to the other races counterparts (often something similar to 100/250).

35 reinforce is CHEAP, almost EVERY cron unit only has 35 reinforce for power, sluggas are equal, only thing on the top of my head that beats that is cultists or GM and some other qwerky units. Obelisks only needed to be upgraded if you were attacked, because unlike other races, there is no benefit (apart from defense) for going above LP1 (which was 25 power, nothing compared to 100 req for most other races)

EDIT: Pariahs also have 50 reinforce, which is the cheapest reinforce cost for any elite squad iirc

[Gannadene]

I actually said T4 economy was sometimes a problem, but didn't really have an issue with it.

I seem to recall also saying that I used to have issue with the economy until the patch.

Could be imagining things though.

[PandaMine]

You said that the economy got buffed in the 1.1 patch (both power upgrades cost were reduced) but you were unsure as to whether that was enough

In any case, getting +90 in DC happened at mid/late T2 or into T3. In SS it happens in mid T3 and requires constant scarab gen building 24/7 to get higher

EDIT: In fact iirc, most people didn't have a problem with the amount of power they were getting from the necronomy, but the fact that it was impossible to break/harrass crons economy early game because of turrets/NL/Wraiths/FO being so powerful at the time (and NW and scarabs costing nothing). What also pissed off people so much was that crons had a decent economy with no map control whatsoever (which made it even harder to break in earlier tiers considering how difficult base bashing against crons in DC was)

[The_nuketrooper]

PandaMine ,WHEN exactly did I say the necron economy was reduced to garbage? I was stating the freaking OPPOSITE thing. Do you even read ? Please, if you like to embarrass yourself ,don't try to drag others with you.

[Latias418]

You forgetting that Crons had no rax at all? Upgrades where cheaper, it was a common tactic to get 3/4 unreinforced NW in DC 1.2 before you tiered for FO.

Crons had no rax, therefore they payed the least amount of resources automatically? It's a 100-300 req difference... and personally myself I've never seen someone build four NW squads and then not reinforce them in dc. I don't really see what's stopping you from rushing the necron and killing a squad when only 1 or 2 are out, setting them back a while. Also, a barracks and 2 gens on average would be around what necrons pay for their +90 eco.


I said that the cron units either cost very little OR where way too much power for what were paying for. Wraiths, for 65 power could take on almost 2 ranged squads, disruption fields, although at 200 power, increased the HP for each Warrior by 100 (iirc) and damage by 33% which is by far the best bonus for an upgrade. FO required power, but for how much power you are spending they were way too powerful, especially considering that you only need 2/3 of the things to tear apart a base (with their res time at 50% as well, and -5 morale for each squad member). Immortals likewise, with their range and fast reinforce time + damage were very powerful for their mere cost of 135/35 (they still are, but as I mentioned before the only unit on crons that are powerful). What was "hella expensive" gave a "hella" lot more bonuses then it should have (why do you think current DF only gives 50 HP per squad member from the previous DF which gave 100 HP, thats double the difference)

I never said that dc crons weren't insanely cost efficient. The argument was that you weren't paying much power in t1 and t2, nothing about how good the stuff you were paying for was.


I mean seriously compare that to a fully equipped GM squad with leaders, last time I remember that cost something like 700/300 in total, or what other race. Crons do not have to make rax, only have 1 buildings to tech to T2 and another to T3 and another to T4 and the rest are gens. In the schemes of things, they are by far the race that have to pay the least (back in DC). Once everything was researched with archives, you could delete it to get more power back. When you compared to other races in DC, what cost a lot for crons gave them so much of a bonus, and what didn't cost (or cost almost nothing) a lot gave decent bonus.

It was 320/40 for a commisar and 9 gm, I have no idea where the hell you're getting 700/300 from. Every race only needs one building to tech to t2, eldar doesn't even need any. Again, we aren't talking about how effective the stuff you were paying for is...


250 power for vehicles (we are getting into T3 now) is bloody cheap compared to the other races counterparts (often something similar to 100/250).

No, destroyers and spyders are t2.5, which is for all intents and purposes t2 and you know it. 250 power is hardly cheap, it's about the same as other races. 100 req for a vehicle in addition to the power really isn't a huge deal... it's only 3 sluggas!


35 reinforce is CHEAP, almost EVERY cron unit only has 35 reinforce for power, sluggas are equal, only thing on the top of my head that beats that is cultists or GM and some other qwerky units. Obelisks only needed to be upgraded if you were attacked, because unlike other races, there is no benefit (apart from defense) for going above LP1 (which was 25 power, nothing compared to 100 req for most other races)

Other races did not pay NEARLY as much as you suggest for their LP1s. Eldar payed 30, Orks n Chaos payed 40, and the rest payed 50. You're forgetting the 50 req refund. 35 power is admittedly cheap, but everything adds up, and necrons may pay the least, but it certainly wasn't by a large margin. And it wasn't next to no power.

[PandaMine]

I am saying, that the necron economy is reduced to garbage in T3/T4. The problems crons had in DC is that they could free build units without much penalty to their economy, now it has been fixed due to the huge number of nerfs to early game units (FO/Wraiths/NL/Warriors).

In T3/T4, for DC the economy was still good for crons, considering they payed close to nothing in T1/T2, you would have broken the enemy economy so bad and their teching was cheap (especially the power research, gave too much returns for it cost, again the main problems with necrons in DC). However in T3/T4 for crons in DC it is a VERY different story, main problem being Gens build time/power cost giving is insane (giving pathetic returns), the future techs cost an insane amount of power and researches are quite expensive (deciever/nightbringer research's cost 750, I think this is one of the highest). If you didn't get artifacts earlier and waited for the lategame ones (shroud, veil etc etc) that will also cost you.

Basically as a percentage this is how in my opinion the economy is rated (this is not taking into account how cost efficient structures/buildings are)
DC
T1 = 90%
T2 = 80%
T3 = 75%
T4 = 75%
SS
T1 = 80%
T2 = 75%
T3 = 50%
T4 = 45%

@nuketrooper

Hm I will have to look at the DC 1.2 to SS change log to see how the necron economy turned from ustopable sekksmashin into a pile of (s)crap

@Latias
For starters, is there any reason you would refend LP's 1 unless they are decaying? An LP1 pays for itself in 3 minutes, and continues to give more req until decaying starts happening. The issue is that race, in earlier tiers will still have to pay the standard 100 req, which means at the time they are building the LP1 they will have less resources for other things to boom their economy or army

Spyders, for a walker in T2.5, 250 power is cheap. Talos is 100/300, Dread is 170/305, WL is 100/250, killa kan is 190/275. As you can clearly see every walker is more expensive (usually by double) then a spyder.


I never said that dc crons weren't insanely cost efficient. The argument was that you weren't paying much power in t1 and t2, nothing about how good the stuff you were paying for was.

Ok sorry let me rephrase that, you were paying close to nothing, which meant you can spam 4 FO's and rape anyones base, which was the whole problem in DC. You honestly think that if units that practically cost nothing in T1 or so cost effective you only needed a 1-2 squads, that the player is just gonna sit there and watch his power rise? Why the hell do you think that FO's were spammed so much, hmm maybe it is because that crons spent close to nothing in T1 (as well as having an economy not effected by map control which was pretty strong at the start, but repeating again the economy itself was not imbalanced as people think) that they had the power to do so in the first place .

[mlai]

Guys, forgetting the argument over whether SS 1.2 Crons can fight worth their cost in tiers 3/4, forgetting whether or not games go that far that decay becomes an issue...

Isn't it without question, that 10 minutes to build a single gen is a ridiculous nerf? It doesn't matter how good a Cron player you are... you will need 10 minutes to build that gen. How does that not screw over the Cron player in an 8-player FFA?

The gen build time basically caps the Cron player below a certain practical power ceiling. Now, that's fine. For the other players, the number of SPs on the map cap their req ceiling. So the question comes down to whether the Cron's effective power ceiling is equivalent to the req ceiling of another race on a large map (which is where this matters, so don't bother saying "but there's only 5-7 SPs you can take (home SPs + contested SPs) on a 1v1 map!").

[Old Painless]

By the time you get to gen #8 its taking a long time to build. After that it tends to get a bit silly.

To make things easier all the way through you could have the HQ give 10 more power than it currently does. No playing with gen scaling required.

I typically find that the time between gen #1 and gen #6 is my leanest period. The faster i want to get to #6 the less troops i have at the start and if an enemy masses troops i sometimes cannot keep up in any way, shape or form with his mass and get completely steamrollered. I sometimes find myself spending all my available power on more gens in big team games where i am not under much threat of immediate attack.

Thing is, if i pay more for gens to get more warriors or artifacts i have a smaller army, if i pay more for warriors or artifacts i limit my overall economy.

Finding the balance between the two is quite difficult for me.

[MoschBoy]

cheapen the first global, this should do the trick. i find cron eco hard to balance due to its uniquiness. how about connecting build time with with LP number?

[simanos]

Moschboy, SHOW ME where I said I didn't know which gen to delete. Are you reading comprehension challenged or are you not reading my posts at all?

Please show me all these replays of top players dominating SS with Necrons. Who plays Necrons competitively anyway? Name a couple of known players who play Necrons more than 1 in 9 games (randomers).

[Old Painless]

Mosch i find my overall early eco is poor rather than requiring a cheaper first global.

Simanos, at the very least thats poor form dude.

Pandamine, i support only increases in warrior range.

[simanos]

I'm sorry. It feels like diversionary tactics. He's bringing up an erroneous assumption over a point I didn't make (he misunderstood) and not responding to the real issues.

My suggestion was also (like you) only a +4 range for NW from their first upgrade (like they used to get) and some minor regen bonuses to make resurrection more worth it (since Necrons lack medic equivalent). Then check balance again.

But the decay issue has to be solved too. At the very least flashing gens should be available. It is stupid for all races to destroy a gen and build a new one, but for Necrons it is IMMENSELY impractical too! Maybe if the 22% build-time penalty was additive instead of multiplicative it would be better.
I think the flashing cost can be easily figured out for races, gen made with 150 req gives 50 pow gift so 100 cost. Deleted gen gives 15 req back so that makes it 85 cost to flash the average gen. Lets make it a round 100 req (or 75/25 or whatever) to account for less hassle and no builder required. With the halved eco of Necrons this means 50 pow for flashing a gen should be fine.

[Old Painless]

Currently all races suffer from decay. Unless its an immensely long game it really isnt an issue, if it is a really long game every race suffers the same so its still not much of an issue. The decay rates and delays are the same iirc.

Don't NW get any range increases anymore, i could have sworn they did ?!?

'Flashing' gens is never, ever, ever going to happen. So we might as well forget about it. ;)

[KotCR]

They get a range increase but it isn't much. Up from 18 to 21 I think, and only with the second Disruption Field research.

The standard range for a T1 shooty unit is 25.

It should probably go up from 18 to 21 after the first Disruption Field research rather than the second, and then from 21 to 25 after the second one.

[chelovek_veliki]

I think we should give them a range of 80, with Area Effect and disruption, like Basilisks -- but no friendly fire, since that would be unfair to the Flayed Ones. Plus a teleport, but since we don't want them to be imbalanced, we should give it a cool down of 60 seconds or so. Also, each Necron Warrior should have full access to all the gadgets at the Forbidden Archive. I'm sure the C'Tan can mass-produce this stuff. Maybe we could give them Fleet of Foot too, but I'm iffy about this, as I don't want to overdo things. OOH OOH! make them detectors too.

[PandaMine]

Actually I agree with mlai here, that the power ceiling for crons economy is currently too low (its hard capped at +200, and getting there takes like 20 minutes, and you won't get much higher at that point because gens start decaying). They just need to tweak the gen build time so that it only takes 10 minutes to build you're 20th gen and not your 10th

Yes we all know that if your on AAH that there are only like 3 or 4 lp's that you can take in which case crons will have the advantage, but on a map like the Rheans crons are going to have plenty of fun :err:

Im not against gen building time being multiplicative, however if they do need to change it to become exponential instead of linear they also need to lower the increase in gen building time so we don't get crazy 10 minute building times way up until late into the game (which is how it should be).

People are also forgetting that the cron economy is the easiest to kill past T2, its all centralized in a base and whats even worse is compared to other races, it takes crons a hell of a lot longer and a hell of a lot more power to rebuild their economy (like I said before, capping is free and LP1's repay their cost in 60 seconds).

And for the last god damn time, decay does (and it can be mathematically proved) hit the crons the worst, because they can do nothing about it at that point in time (in the sense they cannot practically rebuild their gens OR in the case of req, build more gens which at the time would take +10 minutes and like 300-400 power to do so. Even if you do take into account req decay, other races would STILL have a better economy then the crons in T3/T4

Remember people, that DoW isn't just balanced for 1v1 AAH

@KotR
I just looked at the lua's, Warriors only get a range increase for the second DF (4) which increases the range from 17 to 21

[Pseudonymn]

@chelovek_veliki:
Serious discussions only, please. If you're trying to be funny, you've come to the wrong shop.

@Topic:
NW Range increase @ T2=21, T3=25 ---> Yes please!! These, at the very least...

Just to clarify my POV - I mentioned earlier, regarding T3/T4 Necronomy and gen decay, rebuilding decayed gens might not be so impractical if the build time for additional generators was capped at some upper limit, enough to punish gen spam, but not so bad that they are hobbled on larger maps where longer games (and decay) are more likely.

I don't want to see a Necron powerhouse + Walk of Doom make a comeback in early-game skirmishes. But for team games, and large FFAs especially, the 'cron faction needs some additional tuning.

[Melonplant]

Um, lp1's take 75 seconds to pay themselves off. Cron obelisks return half their cost as well so they pay themselves off in 12 seconds, assuming you have a monolith ;-).

Cron generators will return themselves faster at first, and then slow down their return rate as you build more. The 6th generator takes 110 seconds to fully refund it's price. This makes sense, since the generators require no map control (although build time will be punished!), whereas that listening post is all by itself in the corner of the map, begging for a wraith or necron lord to jump in and blow it up.

So we have the generally slower to develop yet harder to harass economy of the necrons, or the less dependable requisition economy that has a higher risk and (sometimes) higher return.

Sounds... equal? Equivalent? God what's the word...

Oh! Balanced! Snap!

As for useless necron warriors, they could do for a range buff in t3 or 4!

[PandaMine]

Actually its easier to harass the economy of the necrons, especially past T2 because their whole economy is smack bang in one spot, and it takes a hell of a lot longer for them to restore it back to the way it was

Requisition economy ALWAYS has better returns par the first 2/3 gens that crons make. Maths proves it, you can't argue against maths.


6th generator takes 110 seconds

Thats not correct, if you refer to simanos post earlier, you would realise that the build time for gens is exponential now and not linear (as it was in DC). Im going to post graphs illustrating this later on

Also LP1's take 60-70 seconds, depending what race you are

[Xanthian]

Remember people, that DoW isn't just balanced for 1v1 AAH

So what is it balanced for, then?

2v2? Kasyr??

The concerns about balance are in 1v1, period. Everything else gets pretty much ignored. Not secondary, IGNORED.

Since the 1v1 automatch rotation involves maps of varying sizes, the necron model just can't work with it. This point has been obvious and pointed out since relic even hinted at the necron economic model. Surprise surprise.

If you're saying that necrons can't be balanced in all 1v1 maps because of their economy, then either you're an advocate of disallowing them from all rated matches and making them as overpowered as they were in DC to make everybody happy, or you're advocating that they just stop beating around the bush, get rid of the necronomy, and make them function like a real race. This'd also help in team games, with resource sharing turned on. A real design flaw if ever I saw one.

Only if you're in one of these categories can you possibly argue that they should function in situations that aren't 1v1 automatch. Or else you're arguing that there should be one race to rule them all, or be ruled by all, in automatch.

[PandaMine]

No I said that DoW isn't balanced for small maps like AAH (which is consequently 1v1)

Also, how the hell do you know that DoW is only balanced for 1v1? Did relic ever official state that

"We only balance DoW for 1v1 games in tiny map sizes"

What I am saying is that you cannot say that just because economy has a slight advantage in really small maps like AAH (emphasis on the slight, its very different then DC which I pointed out why numerous times) that this is an argument for crons economy being perfectly balanced, which it isn't

[Melonplant]

Thats not correct, if you refer to simanos post earlier, you would realise that the build time for gens is exponential now and not linear (as it was in DC). Im going to post graphs illustrating this later on

Also LP1's take 60-70 seconds, depending what race you are

/me rubs his eyes with his thumb and finger

An lp generates +6 more req. From the second the lp is built, it takes 70 seconds for the +6 to regenerate the final 50 req (for most races anyways). If you're factoring in build time, then why not factor in walking distance to the strat point? You can make the fanciest graph in the entire world, but if it's going to be accurate, it better be 9 dimensional analysis because there are a shit ton of factors you are blatantly ignoring.

And you keep saying it's easier to harass crons because their entire economy is in one place. Are you serious? If you could have all your listening posts in one place, would that be a liability? I dare you to answer this rhetorical question ;-)

All in one place means you can defend one place. If your gens are getting blown up, chances are your summoning core, obelisks, monolith, and army are getting blown up, too. GG, not the super easy harrassable econs fault. Maybe your crons not shooting at a range of 25's fault, but quit trying to create problems where there are none.

[MoschBoy]

Also, how the hell do you know that DoW is only balanced for 1v1?
what else? balancing a game with 9 races is already hard enough, doing it for team games is...well, you know they guy rolling a stone up the hill? that kind of work.

also, looking at vanialla DoW patches from 1.0 - 1.51 (btw, 1.51 is quite the same as 1.4 or didnt i notice a change???), WA patches and DC patches, it seems quite clear that the primary focus on balance lies within 1vs1 competive play, with an occasional change that is more important for team games (though very few come to my mind to be honest).

NW range is fubar, thats true. rang in between 20-25 after first upgrade should be a long way to boosting them. and eco? for 1vs1 games it is, in my opinion mostly ok, florihing on small maps, fubar on bigger maps.... .

only 1 last thing: why are new players always such number crunchers?? :bricks:

[PandaMine]

No it doesn't seem clear at all, because 3 races, Tau/Eldar and DE rape the other races so bad in 1v1's it isnt funny

What you might think is a balance for 1v1 may not neseccerily be a 1v1 issue

[ImmortalChaos]

Then, clearly the innumerable amount of broken strats and combos in team games means something too.

The game is balanced pretty much solely with 1v1 in mind, end of discussion.

[Latias418]

I would venture that new players are number crunchers because it's the best way to get decent fast. Knowing your stuff and experience are two things that really help get good, and one you can have from the getgo if you try.

[need2improve]

Listening posts fight back, have more health, i think they have a different armor type?, and they can be replaced MUCH quicker.

Having all your gens in a pile( which the first batch will be until you can get more space to build and spread out) is a liability, which i believe is the entire reason for the necrons tele back to base ability.

Those gens are lightly armored, low hp batteries that control your entire economy, they die and your stuck with NW for the next 10 mins, 3 necron warriors per squad to boot, while your opponent is pushing his army forward.

The thing is your oponent knows how vital those gens are too you, and will take advantage of it by forcing your troops home at every opportunity, giving them map control and an unhindered eco, since you have to march around the map to challenge each and every individual point.

I love playing crons, they are my main race, i am not a skilled player, and i agree decay doesn't affect small 1v1 games ( often), however necrons do have a unique economy and i just dont believe it has been properly balanced for late game play.

[fuggles]

Just because it's not balanced, does not mean that the balance focus has not been on 1 v 1.

Also having all your eco in one place is clearly a benefit as you are always guarding it and don't get run ragged by multi point attacks. You are essentially unharrasable as your turrets are all concentrated and your troops build near by. Gotta love that necronomy!

Ah for the days where you could build just necron warriors and win from a dual mono build...

[need2improve]

your first line has me confused fuggles, is that a double negative?

One place to defend means One place to attack. And necrons need to defend their LP's just as much as the next race due to it controlling their pop cap( and research and build speed unless that was dropped). teleporting around means energy spent and that can get costly late game if you have to use as soon as it recharges with every single squad you have available.

Listening post/generator comparison aside, the point i was trying to make is that the necron economy is not the standard economy of the other races and as such cant properly be compared to them for balance.

To properly discuss necron economy balance you have to compare their potential late game with the economy potential of the other races. AS well as the weaknesses of those economies.

I would rather have my gens around the world so if you do gain control of a region, or send a strong army in one direction, my entire economy doesn't FAIL.

It just seems to me that with a centralized economy, and fairly expensive costs involved considering, and the time involved in replenishing your eco, that necrons are lacking late game potential.

Maybe im just a Necron sympathizer though. :-\

[Rotlung]

Is it just me or do Necrons almost always get the highest resource score? At least in my bugfix games with the AI, they do...

[PandaMine]

@Riotlung
I don't think that actually means anything substantial

@fuggless

The thing is, having a centralised economy IS a bad thing in T3/T4. In T1/T2 its actually a benefit, specially since crons have powerful turrets and they don't need to cap as many points as the other races so they are a lot closer to home. That isn't to say that crons are strong in T1/T2, because currently they are one of the weakest in T1/T2 (might be slightly better then SM, doubt it though)

But in the late game (T3/T4) having a centralised economy is the WORST thing you can have, any base raid will utterly kill your economy where as if you're economy is spread over the map, even if you're base does get raided at least you're eco isn't destroyed. Its not like generators are tanky either, and whats worse is that unlike other races you have gens ALL OVER THE PLACE. You're whole god damn base, from top to bottom is filled with generators, you don't even have to get into the middle of the base to destroy their eco because their base essentially is their eco.

And when your economy does get raped, you are going to have a fun time rebuilding it :p. Unlike other races you have to spend something like 3000 energy to get your late game economy back up and running along with 20 minutes of invested time, where as any other race can just plunk 4 gens which cost around 600-1100 req in like 90 seconds (I forgot what the average gen build time is for races).

[Chaingun]

The concerns about balance are in 1v1, period.

I agree game needs to be primarily balanced for 1v1 BUT whenever team game balance can be improved without influencing 1v1 balance negatively it should be a goal.

(Nerf Avatar cap bonus!)

[fuggles]

It wasn't a double negative, I'm saying that the game has to my knowledge always been balanced at a 1 vs 1 level - the fact that it is not balanced does not cause this to mean that it is no longer balanced at a 1 vs 1 level.

I also agree with Chaingun, but I think we've gone too far now. The kroot + DE combo for instance - who saw that coming?!

[Melonplant]

Send a wraith to tear down lps. I'm sorry you're having trouble fighting those zombie requisition based armies. Map control is so ez!

Having all your lps in one place would be overpowered as God. The fact that you believe otherwise indicates you're wasting my time.

Necron economy is extremely good. They didn't fix it in dark crusade, and saw fit to nerf the necron army rather than their blatantly overpowered rez boom. Buffing the economy is a hilarious proposition. I'll await your 9 dimensional graph because I'm highly suspicious if you're serious or not.

Who knows, maybe the research will enlighten you? Try out some of the top players build orders. They ensure a good power income if you have a bit of micro to control your generator creating. All I remember are the DC build orders but I bet a quick google will yield you some results.

Anyways...

Giving the cron warriors a range buff seems like a good idea. Wraith's, however, are nasty sob's and their upgrade is an absolute no-brainer at the moment. Knocking wraith flight up in cost would probably make a cron player need to think about it twice before clicking the icon if the cost was 150 or so. At 75 power, it's really just a decision between "Do I want a new wraith now, or do I want all my wraiths to be twice as good?"

Pretty easy decision.

[Pseudonymn]

Is it just me or do Necrons almost always get the highest resource score? At least in my bugfix games with the AI, they do...And IG/Orks dominate the tech roundup because they reinforce more and have larger army sizes than other factions do... But does that tell us anything useful about them when they lose? There are some useful data in those tables, but the point totals at the end of each game are about as meaningful as teats on a bull.


Try out some of the top players build orderslolwut? Top players play using the Cronz? Where? :wtf:

Oh, and I know you people balk at the stats on community ladder board, but here are SS's "Top Races" stats:

Race W L (not sure what that last number is)
ORKS 179114 131740 58
TAU EMPIRE 312992 229626 58
CHAOS SPACE MARINES 282917 220216 56
ELDAR 229866 180269 56
SPACE MARINES 518049 414629 56
IMPERIAL GUARD 244585 196202 55
NECRONS 194791 159376 55

There's the Necrons, at the bottom of the heap. If they were as good as people seem to think, you'd expect a little better performance than that, despite all the comp-stomp-inflated games that are played throughout.

Regardless of what the stats may mean, I can't think of anyone that plays the Necron competetively.

[bman3k]

only 1 last thing: why are new players always such number crunchers??
"Hey guys, I read something on the internet, it had numbers. I'm going to post, without giving a single thought, about it now. What? I'm wrong? UNPOSSIBLE!"


Also a game with 9 races is hard enough to balance in 1v1 let alone in team games, we should just concentrate on 1v1 for now.

[Pseudonymn]

^ T4 balance is no less important than T1 balance, which is what this thread is all about. Balancing either affects 1v1 just as much as it does team games (granted most 1v1 is played in earlier tiers, but regardless), so I'm not exactly sure what it is you are trying to suggest.

[killer-ra]

Increase Necron Warrior move speed to 12, compensate by reducing FOTM accuracy to 50%.

This is seriously all I want or need.

[PandaMine]

Lets get some facts straight

1. Crons are not used by pro players, they are in fact at the bottom of the pool for viable races, and not just a bit but by a wide margin as Pseudonymn pointed out. No offense MelonPlant, but no good players plays necrons unless its random or they feel like a challenge
2. No one knows relic's official stance on balancing, therefore no one can make the assumption that the games are balanced for 1v1. Period.
3. For the same reason above, the game is not only balanced for 1v1 small maps like AAH, which seems the only types of maps where crons stand any chance. Period
4. Wraiths are shitty LP destroyers, they are good LP tankers. I do not know what version you are playing, but a single Wraith does 24 dps against an LP. That means it will take a Wraith around 50-90 seconds to kill an LP (thats almost a whole minute). Yes if you have 2/3 wraiths then it would be faster, but you just then blown a whole 6 pop on a unit that essentially can only kill weak ranged units in T1 with no CC ability or something that destroys LP's. You got problems against Wraiths? Just dedicate a fast moving squad with decent melee ability or HP and whenever you see a wraith just attack it with the melee. The only things that Wraiths can kill now (due to their horrible HP and the change to their sync kills) is FW's. If you're Tau, use a kroot carnivors (and if they are still causing problems then attach a shaper so they move faster), if you're Eldar, use howling banshees that already come with FoF (boners also have incredibly cheap repair rate and have TP, so they can easily repair LP's without problems). If you have IG, then I sympathise with you and you will have problems HOWEVER if you fill you're CS with psychers you can almost insta gib wraiths with strip soul (I believe that the wraith doesn't reduce damage from it). Hell you could probably just camp 2 commies outside you're LP's, Wraiths don't do any morale damage so they should take on a Wraith without many issues. If you are any other race you should not have ANY problems against Wraiths
5. The Necron economy is not incredibly good, it used to be in DC but not anymore. Since its multiplicative, the first few gens give more returns then if it was linear (which it was in DC) however once you start hitting around the 7th gen, you are basically screwed. However because of all the other disadvantages crons have in T1/T2 in SS, those first few gens being built slightly faster does not pay off.

[Melonplant]

I don't particularly care if top players don't use crons. They'll still have build orders for them. I did not mention that you should look to the cron pros out there as your heroes.

If you can't take the time to find a good build order, I certainly am not going to help you.

Whatever did happen to those old cron players? Duke, some guy with a K in his name. I miss their vagrant musings.

As for your part about wraiths, I remember that from Dark Crusade they used to tear down lps. An upgraded wraith could solo lp2s with half life left. I'm glad they managed to fix that. You can still throw down a FO, send in a necron lord, or late game send a heavy or even vanilla destroyer.

I've already said crons could use a little something for the late game. Eco is fine. Replays of you running out of resources in competitive games please! Or anyone for that matter. I'd also love to see this horrifying decay set in! It can be a 2v2 or even 3v3. Whatever.

[PandaMine]

Well the thing is, no one plays them competitively so I can't show you much

There are basically no replay's because no one plays them in SS (any version). There is only one build order for necrons, because if you get any others you are screwed (thats what you get for a race that spends 24/7 building gens).

Even on DoW sactuary, where a lot of the top players are, many agree that Crons needs buffs to their economy. I have gone through all the replays involving necrons on Dow Sanctuary (of which there are only 6) and only in 2 games did a cron player win (and these were 1v1 on a small map, bloodriver)

http://dowsanctuary.com/index.php?act=rec_game&cmd=04&race=necron_race

So unfortunatley, you are wrong. No one plays Necrons so I can't even show you many replays because they are currently quite bad, their economy is not good.

Even better players playing crons have lost against worst players with other races

[Mokino]

Crons are simply the least competitive race in the game, even worse than IG at higher levels (pre-SS at least.)

[Gannadene]

There are a few different kinds of build orders for Crons. At least in 1v1. I focus on either your typical early Lord, early tier 2 build or an attrition BO that uses a very early Disruption Field upgrade. (Which usually has a massive economy boom as a result, although it's both risky and it ties up your Monolith.) For me, the stupid 99% turret strategy is something that needs to go. It's practically a necessity for an early rush deterrent, and it shouldn't be.

[Pseudonymn]

^ Now you're talking about messing with NW build times... :spartaaa:

[PandaMine]

DF early isn't always the smartest idea, it only improves the HP of each Warrior by 50 (not a lot considering how slow they are) although the damage improvement is nice.

My typical build is Scarab + Warrior + Scarab + Warrior + Scarab + Scarab + NL

I have a single scarab for capping, one for turrets and the rest go for gens. When I have 3 gens running I usually get Core, tech up and do DF.

You are right that it is a 99% neccesity to get turrets if your crons, which is pretty stupid

[Gannadene]

The early DF is mainly as compensation for the loss of the Necron Lord. You can only pull it off if you use the 150e for a heavy focus on generators. It really only works if you can apply a lot of heavy pressure to a very early-teched enemy, with next to no upgrades. It's essentially a "Warrior Rush." You can imagine how easy it is to orchestrate if you have to defend yourself too early. If you pull it off, it's fairly hilarious.

[Xanthian]

You are right that it is a 99% neccesity to get turrets if your crons, which is pretty stupid

Please explain how this is any different to IG or orks, the latter of which don't have a real turret nor an option of whether or not to build them?

You'll probably find a larger amount of players whining that Tau and DE don't have turrets than necrons being forced to almost-build and delete one for protection.

[Pseudonymn]

*cough*Ork buildings guns*cough*

Rushing an Ork bases was never "easy" relative to other races.

[PandaMine]

Umm with Orks you don't have a choice, there buildings HAVE to come with turrets

IG can at least go GM + Nades in T1, although I agree with you here that turrets are somewhat essential for IG. One has to remember though, that IG is centered around defense turtling and that is the main reason why they have commander armor builders and the same reason why their bolters can be build anywhere

[Melonplant]

So unfortunatley, you are wrong. No one plays Necrons so I can't even show you many replays because they are currently quite bad, their economy is not good.

K. So let me get this straight.

Crons aren't competitive. Nobody plays them other than for kicks and the lawls or the oh shit random. I can half-heartedly agree with that.

From this, you determined that the reason for this "nobody plays them" phenomenon is because of their economy. Not because they were unpopular aside from the nooby population back in DC, or because they're an extremely simple race with no flexible options. So this necronomy, you know, the thing that was super overpowered back in dark crusade but remained relatively unchanged on the way to soulstorm, is the reason for their suckiness.

You have no evidence to back this up, naturally, because not a single person picks necrons when playing. You have offered a mathematical analysis which has not yet surfaced. I'm pretty understanding though. I at least know that such an analysis would be impossible to compare between any 2 races. Let alone 9.

You also site that 2/6 replays on DOW sanctuary where the cron wins is further evidence of this underpowered economy.

Not to mention that crons are famous for having a shit ton of power that they can't use late game because of their limiting economical factor: time.

Now, rather than buff the obvious problems (the necron units, the things that got nerfed en route to SS) you see fit to give them MOAR POWAH in the hopes that this will make them competitive again.

Just making sure you have your story all set.

[Flagg]

Another Strategy/Balance Issue thread that decends into "THE TOP PLAYERS DONT USE CRONS SO WOTEVA NOOB!"

This game is called DOW, not Dawn of Tau/DE.

Some people just like playing the other races and as such want to get the most out of each race.

And to be honest, who gives a fiddlers fuck what races the top players use?

[Melonplant]

And to be honest, who gives a fiddlers fuck what races the top players use?

Not to totally disagree with you, but people who enjoy winning.

IE everyone besides my 7 year old cousin. I just tell him he won anyways. Those darn SM and their tactical nukes blowing up my base via delete key!

It's important that a race be competitive. That won't necessarily mean that people play them simply because they are competitive.

Look at space marines, one of the weakest races in SS. They're also quite popular because they're the heroes. It's hard to be a fan of a robot race bent on destroying all life in the universe. It's also hard to be a fan of a race with so few tactical options. Walk this way and destroy stuff while moving! Sure it's fun the first few times, but lets be real here.

[Rotlung]

The reason why I never really liked playing Necrons (even in DC) was because the variety wasn't there. Probably the same tabletop problem of being too boring.

On the other hand, Space Marines never felt boring.

But that's a side issue, really.

[Flagg]

I agree with you 100% Melonplant.

Yes I also like winning, but again like you I like to use variety when I play this game. For example, DE are one of my stronger races, and I like to use the HoB build. Now the amount of times I have had "why, thats weak. Build bikes and then win"....well im sorry but my imagination is not that linear that I have to adopt a certain method every time I play this game.

How effective would an early turret rush with necrons be in 1 v 1 games on certain maps? Or are we just talking about how economy becomes the necrons enemy in later tiers as opposed to actual stratagies?

[Gannadene]

Rushing a Scarab or two into someone's base and building a turret? If the opponent has any sense, he'll just kill the Scarab(s). If you wait enough time for them to reinforce, or get a Warrior squad, that single turret will go down fairly quickly anyway. You won't be spamming them, either.

[Flagg]

Scarabs arent killed that quickly, plus you have to consider the Necron player wont just be sending scarabs to build a turret, that there will be a NL running riot in the base. The turret doesnt even have to be in the enemy base, but just closing off a certain point in the map.

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=203870

This is a guy that is quite fond of Necrons. Go to post 18 and watch the Emerald River match. I havent seen that many Necron players, but to be honest I thought he used Necrons in quite a original way. Just my opinion.

[Gannadene]

If you have a Necron Lord, that isn't a "rush." That's going to be several minutes into the match. By then it's just normal strategy. You could build a turret in someone's base with any race that has turrets available to them.

Even if you immediately build the N. Lord and use your single default Scarab (which would be pretty retarded to begin with), that's still well enough into the match for an opponent to have a small enough force to counter your meager "army" and decimate your nonexistent economy.

If you want to "rush" as a Necron, it's likely not going to involve your Lord in any shape or fashion, as the 150 drop in energy slows down your ability to boom your economy, and it locks up your production time. What you're considering would work best with no Lord, possible a BO like Scarab, Warrior, Scarab, Scarab, Warrior, Warrior. I'd have to test it, as it sounds crazed to begin with, and it would really only work on small maps, but it'd need two generators already up with an existing Scarab unit running point in front of your new Warrior squad, with the Scarab produced afterwards following behind. The three-man Scarab squad draws a little fire as the Warriors waltz in and begin building a turret. Second Scarab reinforces to 2/3, begins to help build. First Scarab rotates outside of the base to reinforce if necessary. New Scarab is built at Monolith and begins helping with new gens. Begin Warrior squad overwatch.

Even then, you'll likely have to luck out. One enemy Commander and the adorable plan will pitter out, and you'll be pretty far behind for the rest of the match.

[PandaMine]

Problem with getting Warriors early is the the time that you spend getting them, it will most likely kill your teching. You should probably not get more then 2/3 Warriors in T1, otherwise everyone will be far ahead of you in terms of teching

If you are also getting Warriors early, disruption field you might find helpful because of the nice 30% damage boost it gives and slight HP bonus

@Flag

Straight off the bat, reinforcing scarabs takes like 2 or 3 minutes, so by the time you reinforce them the "rushing" period is probably over

[fuggles]

The best scarab rush is just to bundle in and decap as they're relatively hardy buggers....or at least were in DC. I don't recall them getting a HP nerf.

[PandaMine]

No but to do a single reinforce it takes like 4 or 5 minutes

Thats a bit late for a rush :P