Orks in Competetive - Worst Faction and Broken? (tl;dr, no.)

[SpaffMiester]

Not a rant. I'm genuinely interested in contributing to this game being balanced.

Okay, so I'm trying to make Orks work in competitive and I just can't. I would like to hear if anyone has had any success, how? They don't seem as flexible as other races, such as the Guard who I can do several different builds for to cater to the map and my opponent.

Race-wide negatives which I've seen:
Next-to-no Overwatch means you have to attack in order to be the first to strike...
...Melee reliance, meaning when you attack, you are guaranteed to be overwatched and put out of position, on the back foot.
Rely on momentum for economy and fighting strenght. This is difficult to play.
Majority of units have average health and low armour.

Now, the latter two wouldn't be so bad, but I don't think there is much to make up for these difficulties. Yes, they deal a lot of damage, but they die SO quickly. What exactly is the race-wide advantage and selling point of Orks?

Necrons, for instance, get passive healing, active healing, teleportation, speeding up buildings, strong durable units, bonus Tesla damage, strong heros that can 1-shot ork heros at level 4, best early-game tank (Anihilation Barrage).

Orks. Orks get Waaggh, IF you are doing well. Mine has never gona above +5

AND you get de-buffs when your units die as orks... but your units are BUILT TO DIE. Their staying power sucks!
I like this feature and wouldn't like to see it go, as it's thematic. But christ, as a faction, what DO orks have? They seem to me to be the same or worse as all other factions in almost everything.

[Total Oh No]

Ho boy, you're probably gonna get a lot of replies because most people think that Orks are still the strongest faction in the game

Orks have probably the best hero units in the game. Warbosses do EXTREME amounts of damage, Painboyz are great healers who can give permanent buffs to your units, Wyrdboyz boost your research, give great buffs to your melee units AND can teleport an army from one side of the map all the way to the enemy capital city in the mid game.
Yes, most Ork units die quickly, exceeept Meganobz who are one of the best armoured units in the game with up to 11 armour value. Your goal is to get to Meganobz as fast as possible and mainly focus on your hero units until then.
Check out Nitroglycerine's Ork MP gameplay videos:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Kalisari/videos

Originally posted by SpaffMiester:

Orks get Waaggh, IF you are doing well. Mine has never gona above +5

+5 is the max. That's a 25% damage boost to all your attacks.

[Alex]

The problem we've had is getting them out of the early game without falling behind.
Psyker and Necron Lord do huge damage to the warboss with their abilities, so while he does a lot of damage, he's easy to kill.
I agree the Painboy is incredibly powerful. He's a great hero.
Weirdboy seems like a good hero, but not one that effects the early game very much. The research is great, but the initial turns to get to weirdboy slow down other important research significantly. We've found postponing him till later works best.
Boyz do well if they can get into melee and use grenades, but the fact that other factions get significantly more powerful overwatch seems to negate the boyz powerful attacks.
As soon as the neutral monsters are cleared and we start finding each other on the map and contesting resource tiles, the orks start to struggle. Their lack of strong overwatch and need to get in melee, makes them need to sacrafice a lot to start a fight. The HP loss when losing moral is devastating.
Be interesting to hear your ideas on getting around this.

[SpaffMiester]

One issue I see with your defence is that to get to that level of strength you have to be at least mid-game, probably around turn 80 on Standard Pace.

Most competitive games I have had, I meet my opponent by about turn 40. By turn 60/70, unless I put up a good defence, they are often in my base. Orks cannot hold the line as they have no overwatch - they must strike first, and likely early.
They're producing Hydras, Anihilation Barrages, Hero-sniping devestators. etc.

The best I can find myself doing is having more infantry than they do, but that gets quickly countered when they get double the attacks (since they have 2 range on most units, and I have 1 on almost all my units). Any prolonged engagment goes against my favour.

Painboy is good, but his buffs only make up for some of the inherent negatives imo (must get into melee range and suffer overwatch).

Warboss can 1-hit something, then get 1-hit himself. Not that good really...

I will check out that video though, thanks.

[Nitroglycerine]

I main orks in MP.
When playing orks, I think I've lost 1 match, and won the rest.
For 1v1s and 2v2s, I think they are by far the best faction.

I really wish I had properly saved the 1v1 where my Orks fought Necrons (Divine Heretic).
It was a great match where the tricks of both factions really came into play:

Granted, I had a +1mv artifact while he didn't, which let me ambush his troops earlier on and gave up a huge advantage. Both despite, that there was a lot of interesting tactics which came into play:

- he teleported a lot of units back to his cities to save them
- My boyz were able to crush a lot of his heavy destroyers early on, which left him without enough of them when he needed them later for damage.
- my MegaNobz ended up clashing with his Praetorians at his capital, and then I ended up victorious because I did a weirdboyz teleport to his 2nd city to demolished it.


But back to Orks, my tips would be:
- the biggest thing to ork gameplay is learning how to keep your 3 boyz alive for the first 20 turns with no reinforcements while you're aiming to get your heroes out.
- you should really start with 2 warbosses, 1 weirdboyz, and 2 painboyz.
You generally would add another weirdboyz and a 3rd painboyz. Possibly a 3rd weirdboyz as well.
It's possible because orks get influence for fighting.
- focus on leveling up warbosses fighting creep, especially killing kastelan robots, the devil's nests, and enslavers.
- buy your warboss +4HP & some armour when they are going to transition to fighting the enemy player, rather than farming XP.
- your units should always be in forests or ruins. This keeps them hidden, and gives them a ranged damage reduction too. If you charge across open field to engage an enemy... yea you're screwed. Choosing where you're fighting with your units is critical to ork success.

From turn 30-50, orks easily hold the line by having leaders with a swarm of boyz, which are the best early-game unit available to any faction. They're cheap, move fast with 'ere we go, and have the nastiest attack in addition to being able to throw grenades.
With painboyz to provide healing and warbosses to kill targets, I haven't found any faction able to match them head on.

Generally speaking, the battle strategy is:
- boyz to bait out the enemy overwatch fire from 2 tiles away (he won't be able to attack, but his goal just to just draw overwatch fire).
- Now that overwatch is gone, use your warpath-ed warboss to kill any target you wish.
- move other boyz in front of warboss to hurt / kill the other enemies, and protect the warboss.

Done properly, you should have demolished enough enemy units so that if they stay and fight, they'll lose the rest of their units. If they run, you can easily chase them down and finish them anyways.
Now, boyz are terrible at city assaults, but you can at least lock the enemy down to a small portion of the map while you continue to farm XP with your leaders.

And once you get MegaNobz... it's generally game over right there, especially if you can set up a teleport ambush such as:

3 megaNobzs / warbosses
1 weirdboyz
3 painboyz

Drop them all beside the enemy city, and weirdboyz uses warpath on 1 of the meganobz/warbosses, and the city should fall that turn (or at latest, the next one).

Generally game over except for mop-up right there.


Alex:
I think you really should take a look at my videos. You should train your weirdboyz asap, and get him leveled up asap, because +6/12/18 research is no joke, +1/2/3 melee attacks makes warbosses wreck anything in 1 shot, and the weirdboyz teleport will win you matches.

He should never be delayed. Get him early, and he will pay for himself in the research he provides, and you will never need to build any research buildings. Weirdboyz single handedly makes Orks have the best research out of any faction in the game.

[SpaffMiester]

Still not convinced. I've learned and done a lot of what you said tactically speaking and in terms of builds, except havne't focused Wierd Boy. Unable to get into Tier 6.

How about a 1v1 or 2v2? Show us what you mean.

[Kabookie]

You need to see a player called Why's play orks.

ill try to upload some videos later in the week of me playing orks to see if that helps you.

i will say this with absolute certainty. Orks are top tier.

[Blastom]

Originally posted by SpaffMiester:

Still not convinced. I've learned and done a lot of what you said tactically speaking and in terms of builds, except havne't focused Wierd Boy. Unable to get into Tier 6.

How about a 1v1 or 2v2? Show us what you mean.

Some concept of Ork isn't the same as SM and Necro - Orks tend to sacrifice boyz in assault and inflict massive damage upon the opponent instead of to inflict damage, while keeping own units alive.
It's generally ok to let some of the opponent units farm boyz, as long as the warbosses OHK them.

[SpaffMiester]

Originally posted by Blastom:

Originally posted by SpaffMiester:

Still not convinced. I've learned and done a lot of what you said tactically speaking and in terms of builds, except havne't focused Wierd Boy. Unable to get into Tier 6.

How about a 1v1 or 2v2? Show us what you mean.

Some concept of Ork isn't the same as SM and Necro - Orks tend to sacrifice boyz in assault and inflict massive damage upon the opponent instead of to inflict damage, while keeping own units alive.
It's generally ok to let some of the opponent units farm boyz, as long as the warbosses OHK them.

I'm aware, I just never had enough boyz to screen against the counter attack.

But ultimately, I see that players have figured out ways to play Orks. I'm convinced these can be countered, but perhaps not easily. I've been swayed!

[Alex]

Just tried the hero spam build on Orks. Now I see why they are considered broken.