Are Drukhari currently underpowered?

[Distortion]

IMO, drukhari is no longer competitive viable faction in 1v1. With the new possibility to pick fleet/admirals skills in deploy mode and the fact that ANY competitive fleet includes at least 1-2 escorts, Drukhari can no longer rely on their main source of protection - invisibility. And when it comes down to brawling, they can not trade damage with any factions. Drukhari's ships is heavily overpriced for what they are doing now.

[Koh]

They’re still pretty good. Most of there roster is filled with useless ships but 3 falling moon bs are still competitive. You can always use their stealth to get your ships into advantageous positions before attacking. If your opponent wants to clump then you can take the points around the map to force him to split before engaging from the flanks. If he sends his escorts away to cap points then it becomes easier to maintain invisibility when attacking his main fleet. A lot of success with the fleet revolves around patience and waiting for your opponent to commit first before you decide to engage, and then tailoring your attack exploit any kind of positional weak points that he made after he is commited.

[Emperor penguins]

They need to be strengthened a little. Return the dark matter cannon to a reduction in speed to 50%. And also to give the opportunity to restore the crew during boarding, and not as it is now necessary to completely clean the ship that return 1 crew!

[[EPIC]CowGoMoo]

They are much harder to play now, but still very strong. Their non-battleships need buffs, but they have a competitive fleet when taking mostly BBs.

[Subtle Butt ( >ω<)っ ♡]

I find them really limiting to play. Anything that isnt a battleship is terrible and not all their battleships are good. Needing to engage at 9000 range is really bad against some factions.

[AveFerrum]

They really have only two viable builds (3x Falling Moon or 3x Obsidian Rose), both of which rely on the tankiness of the battleships. The skill aspect is mostly taken away since with 9000 range there's hardly a reason to kite.

The Drukhari are in a bad spot. Not because they don't have viable builds, but because their viable builds are extremely bland and boring, and don't really fit them lorewise either.

[Nirgal]

Main problem is that they have been nerfed for the wrong reasons.
Most of those crying against DE didn't really want to learn how to counter them, now with the drastic reduction in range and some overall buffs to other factions (tyranids, orks, adeptus mechanicus, even space marines) drukharii are in a very bad spot. At 9k range everyone can fight effectively and the lack of any kind of protection makes DE ships incapable of standing at that range against other factions.

I understand what the devs tried to do with DE to differentiate them from Eldars but i think they approached the thing from the wrong angle creating a faction that was obviously going to attract hate for their gamestyle and they were not really prepared to accept such hate as part of their design choices.

DE in the TT and in the lore have the same protection of Eldars, the shadowfield is for all intent and purpose exactly the same as the holofield (the shadowfield fills an area around the ship with "darkness" while the holofield fills it with false contacts but the result is the same: macro cannons have a little bit less chances of scoring direct hits and lances have serious problems connecting with the target), the real difference between DE and Eldars is the mimic engine that even on the TT was completly useless (+10cm to the deployment zone...).

Another aspect that is strangely lacking is the fact that DE don't really bother with destroying enemy ships or controlling the field (unless trying to invade a planet), they want slaves! On the TT they got vicotry points for successfull assault actions if they chose to "slave taking", i see potential there to give DE a unique victory condition making even impalers usefull! Give vicotry points for assault actions, increase the range again of DE ships (maybe reduce some of their damage) and give them a true Shadowfield, give them a meaningfull mimic engine (in theory it lets you disguise as a friendly ship, something could be done with that concept).
DE shouldn't be like other factions trying to destroy the enemy fleet, they should try to cripple the enemy fleet to board at will and bring back slaves, a destroyed ship is a loss for the DE and they destroy ships only if they can't really do anything else (take slaves or escape).
All other factions fight wars, DE raid, they don't care to take planets, to destroy enemy assets, to control space and so on, this should give them a very different approach in this game.

[Katitoff]

Battleships: no

Anything below battleships: so much yes its not even funny

[TehKunai]

I think the main issue is that boarding as a mechanic was far too strong, and they were designed with that play style in mind. There's a ton of micro you can do to maneuver your ships just outside of a firing arc, or only expose yourself for a moment or two before boarding/making a firing run.

If anything I'd like DE to be able to use the about face more often then regular Eldar; let the good players be good sort of thing.

[Nirgal]

Originally posted by TehKunai:

I think the main issue is that boarding as a mechanic was far too strong, and they were designed with that play style in mind. There's a ton of micro you can do to maneuver your ships just outside of a firing arc, or only expose yourself for a moment or two before boarding/making a firing run.

If anything I'd like DE to be able to use the about face more often then regular Eldar; let the good players be good sort of thing.

if they were designed with boarding in mind tindalos failed hard... impalers (the iconic weapon of DE) has always been crap.

[Magister]

Originally posted by Nirgal:

Originally posted by TehKunai:

I think the main issue is that boarding as a mechanic was far too strong, and they were designed with that play style in mind. There's a ton of micro you can do to maneuver your ships just outside of a firing arc, or only expose yourself for a moment or two before boarding/making a firing run.

If anything I'd like DE to be able to use the about face more often then regular Eldar; let the good players be good sort of thing.

if they were designed with boarding in mind tindalos failed hard... impalers (the iconic weapon of DE) has always been crap.

Honestly it’s because there are way too many counters for them to be worth it. Either give DE more charges on it. Or rework them or just ordnance in general.

[Androgos]

so its not just me sucking with DE i know im not great but im not even close to winning half the time, a issue im having is using the 180 turn on multiple ships it isnt working am i doing some thing wrong they are all in the same control group

[AirsickHydra]

I'd suggest that if two players are very familiar with the game, have all skills unlocked - DE are probably the weakest faction in the game. That isn't to say they can't still win and don't have strengths. But there are a long list of ways to simply run them over - DE wins imho are mostly reliant on the enemy not knowing how to counter them or the DE playing exceptionally well.

Doubtful we will see a buff as the general consensus I had when playing them for two days is that 4/5 players still hate playing against them. Hopefully we can help each other out with spreading the love regarding how simple they are to boop on the snoot.

[Androgos]

i think all their ships need a slight weapons range increase 9k for smallest to 12 for battleship or make their range skill apply to all ships not just the flagship. i also want the devs to look at the stealth shield they get it says while above 50% you are undetectable but i know for a fact ill be at 80% and get a detected notification. thats my 2 buff ideas

[Fosil]

Originally posted by AirsickHydra:

I'd suggest that if two players are very familiar with the game, have all skills unlocked - DE are probably the weakest faction in the game. That isn't to say they can't still win and don't have strengths. But there are a long list of ways to simply run them over - DE wins imho are mostly reliant on the enemy not knowing how to counter them or the DE playing exceptionally well.

Doubtful we will see a buff as the general consensus I had when playing them for two days is that 4/5 players still hate playing against them. Hopefully we can help each other out with spreading the love regarding how simple they are to boop on the snoot.

the weakest faction right now is AdMech by far. DE are fine, they lost an escort with 400hp / 10dps in the last patch and they cannot trade that well anymore at <4500 range, but reload/kin-crew + torpedo alpha strikes + wraithbone reinforcement are enough against most fleets to win the engagement. they struggle now with ramming navy builds due to the insane 1:6,6 hull point trade from ramming together with 37,5 seconds of AAF now. you can mitigate that with the wraithbone bug (it counts for ramming) and ramming spikes, but even then, you lose the damage trade pretty badly (~1:2).

non-BB ships are non-viable due to crits even if they would be cheaper.

[Haggis]

Its hard to say if DE are underpowered or not. They are the most difficult faction to play and I don't think anyone would disagree with that; the problem is that in the past they had ridiculous crutches allowing bad players to win a lot of games, and for good players to take others apart even when ridiculously outmatched points-wise.

In the past if the DE traded 2 of their 3 battleships for your 3-4 escorts, they could then defeat the rest of your fleet with the 1 battleship with very little that you can do about it due to their stealth making them take zero damage in return, and their speed and turning abilities meaning they can engage at will. The fact that they have/had the highest DPS by a stupid amount, as well as the cloud-of-slow-and-painful-death was just icing on the cake.

They could of course be beaten through good control of VPs, and I personally had a pretty good win-ratio against them; but the fact remains that it was pretty infuriating to play against a fleet that you could evade you all day long with relative ease, especially if they were being controlled by a good player. Having them sit just outside of identification range whilst pumping out serious damage was never fun. This frustration was generally a bad thing for the game, and seeing as the multiplayer scene is already shrinking; bringing back that frustration would definitely not be a good idea.

As such if any faction has to be underpowered, I would prefer it to be the stealth-abusing super-fast super-high damage faction. As already said though; its hard to say if they are actually underpowered because they are undoubtedly the most difficult to play, and I've not seen enough good players use them to know whether they are good or not.