Melee or range Skavens?

[Pumis]

I remember that gun units were very strong in early access version. So now I'm having dilema that should I make my skaven warband into ranged or melee. The biggest problem with range is probably that I can't give pistols to everyone. However the fact that skavens are good at climbing gives them benefit for having higher ground and being safe from melee. Any thoughts about which build is superior?

[FieserMoep]

Pistols do work nice though I dont expect them to be killers such as hero promoted marksmen.

[Ciecieji]

Pros of melee:
Output better damage
effective at close range
can provoke all alone checks
only uses offensive points

Pros of ranged:
Can attack at range/without being engaged
not vunerable to counter attacking
bypass parry, dodge, melee defense
Allows more attacks on same target than melee

Overall I prefer melee for four reasons;
It's virtually impossible to force an engagement at range whereas it's easy to rush ranged troops and force a melee engagment (or take cover from ranged troops if their holed up in a completely inaccessable area)

A ranged user will use some or all of his strategy points on reloading/attacking, melee troops can save all of their strategy points for movement and defense and active skills.

Melee units can never be denied their attacks by rushing/cornering, if your opponent manages to chase you into a corner (either sneaking up, breaking your morale or engaging you on both sides) you're done, unless, of course, someone can come to the rescue or the battle ends before you get your beatdown.

Those are the game mechanic reasons I prefer melee, the final one is that ranged attacks are tricky to use effectively as the player. There's a mechanic which determines hit percentage, probably as line of site exposure to the enemy, but because the way camera/ui is implemented it's very difficult to find the ideal position to take a shot from, so you end up running in circles to see if you can get a better shot, this combined with having to watch a reload animation after every attack significantly slows down combat. I found that running a ranged crew takes almost twice as long to complete missions as running melee team and this alone is enough to make me favor melee.

Because of low reload and shooting costs as well as the passive, I prefer bows (the regular ones) to firearms but since you will be taking more shots it does exacerbate the slowness issue.

[Wendek]

As Skavens, ranged units do have the advantage of being able to very easily apply Warp Poison on several targets though. This is the main reason why one of my Night Runners is ranged (and will get Poison Expert at some point most likely, especially since he'll be buffed by the Sorceror at times)

Although the melee crit/dodge Night Runner definitely outputs a ton more damage most of the time.

[JumpyJump]

I do both for my warband.

Adept/Night Runner/Sorcerer - Both built for melee damage but with a ranged weapon as backup and a few points invested in BS.

Black Skaven/Black Skaven - Halberd melee damage dealers.

Warpguard/Warpguard/Warpguard - Heavy armored defensive fighters.

Verminkin/Verminkin - Dedicated ranged units.

Melees screen for the ranged fighters who basically get to add on damage where you can't engage another fighter in melee. Most of my heroes have ranged back up so they can still deal damage with their superior OPs if they can't reach melee.

Ranged is pretty terrible starting out, generally speaking. At first it's very difficult to hit targets in melee combat, armor wrecks your damage and henchmen only get 1 shot even with a weapon like a shuriken, which isn't tiring. But when you fully invest in BS to 8 or so, their averages are a lot better, they can shoot at least twice and their damage starts to become competitive. All the Armor Pen and Resistence Pen is just icing on the cake.

Melee survivability can be rough, even for Warpguard. Your heroes tend to kill ♥♥♥♥ faster so their HPs go farther. But heavy armored defensive Warpguard can't kill to save their lives once you're in Rank 3 Warband territory. But if you give them all Swarm and keep building their defensive stats, especially melee resistance, they can become a formidable part of your strategy. You use them to engage the AI first, your heroes and damage dealers move in, swarm kicks off, your ranged guys add on additional damage and the odd lucky crit.....

Not sure how viable it would be against players, but against the AI I like having rats that can actually take hits. It just takes a while to get there.

As for climing, I rarely bother with it for my Verminkin. Shurikens have a shorter-ish range it feels like, and where I'm fighting usually doesn't cleanly lend itself to posting them up high. Sometimes it seems like it's just an invitation for the AI to climb up there too and start kicking the ♥♥♥♥ out of them, blocking your atttempts to reach them or for them to escape. For my heroes, their melee damage outstrips their ranged damage by a good margin, so, rathert than having them faff around climbing to a higher position, I just have them used range from close up until an opening for melee presents itself.

[toranaga1985]

melee is generally better, for skaven there is a slightly different. poison. "bless with filth, warp/numbing poison" that makes ranged quite nice, main problem is the lack of range.
i actually prefer pistols. but is a matter of taste. at final build you can make 3 shot with pistols and 4 with shuriken. for poison propouse is better shuriken. "extreme build 5 shot with shuriken 2 shot with pistol and one offensive skill (vital/clipping etc)"

for use during skaven growth i think shuriken is again better. easier to maxout the use of hero op.

in general i will say to stay balanced on the melee/ranged approach. too many ranged can make the life against ai quite a hell sometime.
i'm personally using 2 nightrunner ranged focus "all other melee"and atm i'm planning to change them to 1 ranged "pistol focus and one melee" as soon both of the one i'm using atm reach rank 10.

[Pumis]

Hmm for shuriken does the quick reload work on it?

[s†. Chris†opher]

Originally posted by Pumis:

Hmm for shuriken does the quick reload work on it?

yes, its free for the first 2 reloads on master.

Personally i've found suriken to be more superior, as on a skilled night runner, more attacks means more attempts at crits, headshots, poison etc etc.

[Pumis]

Originally posted by Kris:

Originally posted by Pumis:

Hmm for shuriken does the quick reload work on it?

yes, its free for the first 2 reloads on master.

Personally i've found suriken to be more superior, as on a skilled night runner, more attacks means more attempts at crits, headshots, poison etc etc.

Headshots? Wait what? This game has those? Still bit new to the mechanics.

[miniaaar]

Headshot costs 4 OP though, so basically you only need to reload once for 2 tries with a hero. Headshots with Pistols cost 5, it's a bit much ;).

(You need Accuracy 9 for the unmastered skill).

[Pumis]

Originally posted by miniaaar:

Headshot costs 4 OP though, so basically you only need to reload once for 2 tries with a hero. Headshots with Pistols cost 5, it's a bit much ;).

(You need Accuracy 9 for the unmastered skill).

ah so it's a skill. I already thought it was something that can happen randomly out of nowhere. Shame... :D.

Well gotta try some mix of range and melee. Maybe try to stun with range and then send melee in for free crits.

[miniaaar]

That's the idea, a stunned ennemy is a really soft target. My two Verminkins have headshot and when an isolated ennemy is spotted, they can go near (preferably from higher grounds with overhead), stun him (low intelligence works well, for example Darksouls) and then the rest of the gang well, gangs this unit pretty fast. :p

I don't really have a dedicated range unit as Skaven (sometimes swarm tactics are the only thing saving your guys), but I've some good hybrids:
- My sorcerer leader has warlock pistols and high Ballistic skills as basic set. When there's no spell to cast or curse chances are too high, shooting deals a high enough amount of damage without exposing the leader.

- My Night Runner is usually with fighting claws for better climbing chances and it's better if intercepted. But he also has a decent ballistic skill and high accuracy, and with quick draw and hit and run, he can switch pretty fast from melee to range. I use him as range when setting up an ambush, or when a warpguard is around and better equipped to deal with the guy than my relatively squisky runner.

- My Verminkins have Shurikens as default set, as I use them as range units mostly. They have headshot which is a godsent when successful. But sometimes, I need to give another unit swarm, or protect a unit from All-alone checks. Thus with quick draw, my dodgekins can go into melee and survive long enough to put the unit OOA and switch back to range again. When an ennemy is already engaged, I don't use headshot but regular range attacks.

-> In short, skavens can do range in various ways. I never tested a fully ranged warband though, I don't think this could be effective, but it could be an interesting theme warband. :p

[Pumis]

Originally posted by miniaaar:

That's the idea, a stunned ennemy is a really soft target. My two Verminkins have headshot and when an isolated ennemy is spotted, they can go near (preferably from higher grounds with overhead), stun him (low intelligence works well, for example Darksouls) and then the rest of the gang well, gangs this unit pretty fast. :p

I don't really have a dedicated range unit as Skaven (sometimes swarm tactics are the only thing saving your guys), but I've some good hybrids:
- My sorcerer leader has warlock pistols and high Ballistic skills as basic set. When there's no spell to cast or curse chances are too high, shooting deals a high enough amount of damage without exposing the leader.

- My Night Runner is usually with fighting claws for better climbing chances and it's better if intercepted. But he also has a decent ballistic skill and high accuracy, and with quick draw and hit and run, he can switch pretty fast from melee to range. I use him as range when setting up an ambush, or when a warpguard is around and better equipped to deal with the guy than my relatively squisky runner.

- My Verminkins have Shurikens as default set, as I use them as range units mostly. They have headshot which is a godsent when successful. But sometimes, I need to give another unit swarm, or protect a unit from All-alone checks. Thus with quick draw, my dodgekins can go into melee and survive long enough to put the unit OOA and switch back to range again. When an ennemy is already engaged, I don't use headshot but regular range attacks.

-> In short, skavens can do range in various ways. I never tested a fully ranged warband though, I don't think this could be effective, but it could be an interesting theme warband. :p

Hmm maybe 2 units being at range, using that poison which removes strategic points from the target. Choose a spot which would create perfect bottleneck which allows you to swarm victim who happens to come through it. Basically you can create perfect trap for enemy, by forcing them to stay in unfavorable positition.

[Pestilence]

I have been ignoring ranged entirely. I find it much easier to position for melee and surround enemies with 5 of my Skaven. Ranged also seems to miss a lot and I have a hard time finding a clean open shot with a high hit percentage.

[crimsonsun]

Got to say I love my verminkin with pinning shot plus numbing poison and hamstring for melee, you can cripple enemies movement or prevent them taking any kind of stance. I use heroes for Warp poison because you really want it mastered for a real effect but mastered with mastered crippling shot is 6 OP that's HUGE.

Every unit in my Warband has skills for melee but around half of it is able to do ranged very effectively which I utilise to gain greater control of the battlefield. Skaven are already stupid quick but clever execution of numbing poison and pinning shot builds up that advantage even more I can also place the rat on overwatch after making that shot at higher levels, which is fantastic because that's where you get the damage output. All my Vermin get wall runner and add quick jump and rapid reload at higher levels this is because maximising SP and OP is critically important for henchman so if I can get into position expending 3 or less SP then I can use posions and snap out a specialised attack plus overwatch. However they all have skills for combat (swarm, hamstring at least) so I don't hesitate to throw them in to swing critical combats.

[miniaaar]

So Crimson you don't give headshot to your Verminkins anymore?

If I understand correctly, you use:
Active Skills:
Numbing Poison
Pinning Shot
Wall Runner
Swift Jump
Hamstring

Passive Skills:
Swarm
Quick Reload

You also liked Quick Draw if I remember correctly. You find your new build more efficient?