How to Deal with Elves

[CarloNord]

No seriously, how? They pick off all my escorts, kill my flagship if I dare to not have it 100% surrounded all the time, and are permanently stealthed. I'm too slow to catch them and my gun range is irrelevant because they just sit stealthed.

EDIT: I should mention I'm talking about multiplayer. Campaign Elves are cancerous kiters, but nothing I can't handle. I play mainly Imp Navy, and sometimes SM, Chaos, and Tyranid.

[Error3000]

could you give more details? what fleet are you playing (faction, what kind of fleet is this)
It would help in giving you advice as to how counter eldar factions.

[Ashardalon]

play stealth LC only
this is the cancer meta eldar have created
run around with running silent, get to 5.5k and then open fire all at once
no fun games allowed
enjoy

[Holytrojan]

Yes because the fragile but nimble factions should just walk up to your gun line and sit there nicely for you.

May as well ask Orks or Tyrannids to kindly stay at extreme range so things are ‘fair’.

Aeldari fleets are consistent with the lore. Ambush predators that really don’t want to be involved in a war of attrition. If you like heavy brawling fleets then yes you will struggle to engage them on your terms.

[ArcticCheetah]

LC/escorts works. I cant give accurate advice without know fleet comp and faction, but for me, i like my IN durable brawler (slower) fleets with about 5-6 line ships at cruiser+ classes. the main way ive beaten elves is by pt victory, cap each pt, park a ship on each one and keep the elf player guessing/moving by faking aggro. any spare line ship not parked should be chasing.

it can get tricky depending on what the elf does next, if he splits up his fleet to trying and cat mouse and retake pts, then just keep a ship parked on each one; with less focused firepower he wont be able to kill and take any 1 pt fast enough.

if he keeps his fleet together and focuses 1 pt at a time then you can move a diff ship off a nearby cap pt to chase them off from killing 1 ship at a time. you may have to bounce back and forth between pts but in the end they wont be able to cap enough pts or kill all your ships before the pt limit is reached.

[Katitoff]

You need to spam roks, only roks, nothing else, even if you can take escorts, just take roks.

[Bazinga]

When nearly every faction has a MWJ... all it takes is one escort + bait their boost for a gg ez...

Eldar aren't op in the slightest, it's another "tyranids OP" scream like we saw in beta.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Im not experienced in multiplayer and thus can't give feasible advice for multiplayer.

In singleplayer i typically just use a ability that counters stealth (probes, scans, etc) and use the lockon stance and swap the focus to their engines (Make sure to maneuver your ships so that they can fire with most of their weapon mounts, just chasing the enemy while only using a tiny part of your armament wont work).

Stealthing your escorts and flanking the enemy with them at the same time as your pushing with your main force might also do some damage depending on how the enemy ships are positioned.

Once their engines are damaged or destroyed they are somewhat easy pickings (They will have to either abandon them to your main force or stand and fight with them, both options giving you the upper hand).

Alternatively you can try tanking them until you have chased them to the borders of the map and then pin them against it.

[Ingvar]

Just use strike craft. If you spam that ♥♥♥♥ not really much they can do about it. Unless they have more strike craft i guess.

[CarloNord]

Originally posted by Error3000:

could you give more details? what fleet are you playing (faction, what kind of fleet is this)
It would help in giving you advice as to how counter eldar factions.

I've been playing mostly Imp Navy, but dabbling in SM, Chaos, and Tyranid.

[Kyo Gnome]

you need a plan for taking care of eldar but this plan drastically changes depending on faction.

1. Most eldar don't take many escorts. if you can kill them, then you can sit safely in a cloud. use your healthy ships to cap at least 3 VP and simply wait them out.

2. it is extremely important to take enough escorts with your fleet and keep them BEHIND your line ships. only taking 4 escorts in your fleet often means that you will always lose to eldar.
Personally, I can easily kill eldar when I go mass escort builds (like 15 escorts), you just chase them down.

3. Take the shield disruption ability. this is extremely important vs eldar because you can drop their holofields for a time to lightning strike them.

4. always run with lock on stance and always focus holofields. if you can drop their holo fields, then they are usually just dead.

5. ultimately you got 2 main approaches, either out DPS them at range. OR chase them down. both surprisingly work when done properly

Faction specific Strategies
ORK
Shocking Zzap (slows enemy ships to 50% speed for 2 seconds) makes eldar stupidly easy to beat, especially combined with Sooper Zzap to by pass their holofield.

Imperial navy
Mass torpedo waves across very wide area is effective to push their ships into a bad position.

[CarloNord]

Originally posted by Kyo Gnome:

you need a plan for taking care of eldar but this plan drastically changes depending on faction.

1. Most eldar don't take many escorts. if you can kill them, then you can sit safely in a cloud. use your healthy ships to cap at least 3 VP and simply wait them out.

2. it is extremely important to take enough escorts with your fleet and keep them BEHIND your line ships. only taking 4 escorts in your fleet often means that you will always lose to eldar.
Personally, I can easily kill eldar when I go mass escort builds (like 15 escorts), you just chase them down.

3. Take the shield disruption ability. this is extremely important vs eldar because you can drop their holofields for a time to lightning strike them.

4. always run with lock on stance and always focus holofields. if you can drop their holo fields, then they are usually just dead.

5. ultimately you got 2 main approaches, either out DPS them at range. OR chase them down. both surprisingly work when done properly

Faction specific Strategies
ORK
Shocking Zzap (slows enemy ships to 50% speed for 2 seconds) makes eldar stupidly easy to beat, especially combined with Sooper Zzap to by pass their holofield.

Imperial navy
Mass torpedo waves across very wide area is effective to push their ships into a bad position.

1. Sitting in a cloud does not work, they were able to see me regardless and outrange me.

2. You can't bring 15 escorts and win, not a chance, they die too fast.

3. Very hard to land that, but otherwise ya.

4. That relies on me getting crits, which I haven't been too lucky with.

5. Like I said, they seem to outrange me and even so they're permastealth so I can't hit them anyway after they murder my escorts. Chasing them down is dependent on my faction, and I find chasing eldar ships down with LCs is a great way to get them killed.

I actually tried the torpedo bit, and all that happened was they ignored them, their defense turrets were enough to nullify my torpedo waves. If I had to estimate, I'd say I was launching about 18-24 torpedos, depending on my fleet.

Idk, I guess I need to play them a bit to find their weaknesses.

[Fosil]

if the eldar player knows what he does, he will win atm.

[BigEl_nobody]

Originally posted by Fosil:

if the eldar player knows what he does, he will win atm.

I dont know about that. When your opponents aims for your Engines all the time, you WILL get hit eventually. And you need to be in frontal/approaching angle to do anything other than using Squadrons, so you have windows of vulnerability.

Boarding to get Engine Crits is the most effective way to deal with eldar. Mass Squadrons are also incredible against them, because they are good scouts and you cant outrun them forever when you are spotted/marked or always visible like the asuryani.

Tyranids definitely have the hardest time against them. As you as you get spotted, you have to pray that the eldar does a fatal mistake. With the Nids its all about making the first attack count when you are still invincible.
Also, the map layout is very important against eldar too. When there are lots of Asteroid field and Gas Clouds, you can shrink the effective space for eldar and force them to act. Of course this is a random factor.

[Ashardalon]

no boarding to get engine crits is useless
as any ship with more then 1 sail will be hulked before its engines are down