Can wardancers (spears) survive into the late game?

[Xeonzs]

I really want to like wardancers, but by default treekin are better both offensively and defensively, with more health, more armor and more melee defense, same physical resistance and base missile resistance.
Offensively they might have a bit lower melee attack, but have magical attacks in return which helps against many late game units that get physical resist from late game buffs.

Through lord buffs they can get a lot of additional melee attack and melee defense, with a bit of extra physical resistance, but I don't know, I can't say I've pulled a game with them into the late game and I usually play Durthu just cause he's badass.

So late game you have treekin with 20% ward save, 30% phys resist, 30 Missile resist, 102 armor, 59MD and 35MA, with magical attacks and 74 weapon strength of which 30 is AP.
I rarely have a treekin model die and they almost do as many kills as the archer line behind them.

While ward dancers (looking at spears for a fairer comparison against treekin) would late game have 35% phys resist, no missile resist (except for the skill, more micro), 27 armor, 62MD, 38MA, with 32 weapon strength and 20 of which being AP and having almost 25% less heath per unit.

They are basically tree kin without ward save, without magical attacks, without native missile resist and without almost any armor.

And ANY tree lord can give the ward save and armor piercing damage.
While Orion and Elven lords only give a speed bonus and reload bonus to elven troops.
Even for faction and lord effects, Orion only focuses on wild riders.
While Durthu only buffs tree spirits.

I think the only reason people would use wardancers is if they're playing Orion and don't want to make use of his wild rider buffs and would prefer to have a infantry + archer army instead of a cav + archer army, then you'd pick warddancers, because treekin cost amber then and eternal guard are meh, their redline only gives them extra melee attack and strength, so maybe you'd just bring two to put at the front and suck up the missile damage before the enemy runs into your wardancer line?

Literally nobody cares about wardancers?
The only thing I could find for wardancers, is if you're playing Orion, then there's an office in the Elven Council that gives 10% dmg to that lord's army for wardancers.

[Professor H. Farnsworth]

If you're playing Durthu, it's Treemen.
If you're playing Orion, it's Waywatchers.

Literally no other unit is worth it in the Wood Elf roster - mostly 'cos of they ridiculous upkeep cost in that Honey/Sap resource.... You're either full on Treemen or full on Waywatchers. There is no middle ground, no amount of buffs to any of the other units will out do the efficiency of Treemen and Waywatchers.
If you want diversity - sure get Wardancers, sisters and what not, but you will without a doubt regret said decision when you could have had a full army of unkillable trees or moving whilst shooting artillery ('cos that is what Waywatchers end up feeling like once you have 216+ range).

[Xeonzs]

So it's not just me then.
When I compare it to an army like high elves, dwarfes or empire, where things like lothern sea guard, thunderers and halbadiers have a place into the late game even, hell I guess you could even say darkshards for the dark elfs, tier 1 unit that because of silver shields and AP ammo just never get redundant.

I haven't gone full waywatcher army yet as I haven't played Orion games that much, usually just quit and changed back to Durthu, but I could see why you would go full waywatcher with the inherent speed and reload buffs of the elven lords.
It would work exactly the same as Alith Anar's shadow walker armies.

However I don't think I agree with the all-treemen army, the same red line buffs that affect them also affect treekin, while treekin also get 20% ward save and 10+ armor piercing.
Treekin by default have almost the same health as a treemen, while the treemen is a lot easier to focus down with fire due to it's gigantic size, I'd argue a mix of the 2 would be better, especially if you take the 2nd argument into account:

If you're going to be using monsterous single entity units, then you should really be taking at least some archers into your army to easily wipe out any enemies that blob up around your treemen.
Just like you would take doomwheels or abominations in your skaven army to have easy pickings for your ranged units.
Especially considering the fact that WE have access to poison archers at tier 1, reducing the enemy vigour and damage, thereby keeping your treekin and treemen alive longer while doing a ton of damage in the process.

[Professor H. Farnsworth]

Originally posted by ❦Xeonzsღ💕:

So it's not just me then.
When I compare it to an army like high elves, dwarfes or empire, where things like lothern sea guard, thunderers and halbadiers have a place into the late game even, hell I guess you could even say darkshards for the dark elfs, tier 1 unit that because of silver shields and AP ammo just never get redundant.

I haven't gone full waywatcher army yet as I haven't played Orion games that much, usually just quit and changed back to Durthu, but I could see why you would go full waywatcher with the inherent speed and reload buffs of the elven lords.
It would work exactly the same as Alith Anar's shadow walker armies.

However I don't think I agree with the all-treemen army, the same red line buffs that affect them also affect treekin, while treekin also get 20% ward save and 10+ armor piercing.
Treekin by default have almost the same health as a treemen, while the treemen is a lot easier to focus down with fire due to it's gigantic size, I'd argue a mix of the 2 would be better, especially if you take the 2nd argument into account:

If you're going to be using monsterous single entity units, then you should really be taking at least some archers into your army to easily wipe out any enemies that blob up around your treemen.
Just like you would take doomwheels or abominations in your skaven army to have easy pickings for your ranged units.
Especially considering the fact that WE have access to poison archers at tier 1, reducing the enemy vigour and damage, thereby keeping your treekin and treemen alive longer while doing a ton of damage in the process.

Truth be told, most units do not have a place in late game armies when you got these doom stacks around. A lot herb sea guard is pointless when you have sisters of avelorn that are that much better in both offensive and defensive capabilities. Like halberdiers are replaced with Empire’s Halberd griffons :).

Life magic makes all the difference. That Ward save is meaningless. You will still lose entities and thus army strength.
It is for the same reason Lizardmen go full Stegadons. Doesnt matter that their killing power is comparatively low to say a diverse army. What matters is that you can keep them at max health and come out of battles with full health and can take on 3 to 1 armies easily.

That is all that matters in the grand scheme of this game. You need to inflict more losses than you take.

[Sn3z]

I simply say that wardancers don't scale are replaced by wildwood rangers(it best if you want to cut amber costs down to spread out the amber cost between your army's) you can give up around 2-3 slots up of dyrads for wardancers its a great way to improve your frontline, wardancers(standard unit) are excellent in that they are a glass cannon unit but have the ability to tank at the cost of melee attack(you can put tree kin on top of them aswell) this means you can slow down the melee fight when you need to, the more I think about wardancers, they are a just crucial unit for WE whilst your progressing to the mid/late game.

The asrai spear do scale but I 'am not sure using on frontline is best and with durthuu you should be really be using SoT to support cavalry aswell(we could argue that until you get SoT they have a support role) I suppose they can be a backline unit too.

In the end durthu armys comps are in the business of commiting to being completely rushed based(Orion is as well) but the difference is the compositional strengths they bring in the late game to make this stronger(tanky line versus slippery backline) amber deters both from having access to a fully complete roster(technically), so the amber mechanic itself acts as a way to balance WE army's but we need a rework here because it just completely makes players avoid paying amber and thereby missing out on some nuance with the roster.

[Andrewbh2003]

uhm no offence but why are you comparing treekin to wardancers there literally exact opposites to eachother

treekin suffer from ironbreaker sindrome where they are too tanky for there own good they last a long time yes but they never kill anything either

wardancers are your chaff clearing buzzsaws and one of the most cost-effective ones too they carve there way through light armour better than pretty much any unit in the game in that category except for depth guard "who are a much more elite version of them to the point where they even share some animations" and berzerkers "who are overtuned af" there 2 completely different units that serve 2 completely different roles

[Xeonzs]

Originally posted by Andrewbh2003:

uhm no offence but why are you comparing treekin to wardancers there literally exact opposites to eachother

treekin suffer from ironbreaker sindrome where they are too tanky for there own good they last a long time yes but they never kill anything either

wardancers are your chaff clearing buzzsaws and one of the most cost-effective ones too they carve there way through light armour better than pretty much any unit in the game in that category except for depth guard "who are a much more elite version of them to the point where they even share some animations" and berzerkers "who are overtuned af" there 2 completely different units that serve 2 completely different roles

Because it's the only fair comparison when you're comparing the 2 wood elf options
Either amber-free elite forest spirits or amber-free elite elven units.

I think you might've missed the point where I specified I'm talking about wardancer spears, because there's no point taking normal warddancers if you can take wildwood rangers.

[Wyvern]

wardancers are a glass cannon, treekin are a brick wall, comparing the two is quite frankly pointless. Wardancers also have 75 models instead of 12, so those damage numbers for treekin are massively inferior in practice, and it means that if you decide to invest in sacrificial grounds, you can easily have dancers hitting for 100+ damage per model, deleting entire units with ridiculous speed, whereas treekin with sacrificial grounds are a fairly meh units for a late game doomstacker.

Optimization speaking i dont really think either unit is the optimal go to, but if you want fun theres a good reason to run either.

[Xeonzs]

Originally posted by Wyvern:

wardancers are a glass cannon, treekin are a brick wall, comparing the two is quite frankly pointless. Wardancers also have 75 models instead of 12, so those damage numbers for treekin are massively inferior in practice, and it means that if you decide to invest in sacrificial grounds, you can easily have dancers hitting for 100+ damage per model, deleting entire units with ridiculous speed, whereas treekin with sacrificial grounds are a fairly meh units for a late game doomstacker.

Optimization speaking i dont really think either unit is the optimal go to, but if you want fun theres a good reason to run either.

I'm comparing it against the spear wardancers though as pointed out in the OP, which have a similar role of being defenders, further implied by their missile resistance skill.

Edit:
I've also adjusted the title to reflect it instead of only having it mentioned in the post.

Edit1:
I didn't think it was worth bringing up the standard wardancers, considering that you have wildwood rangers available which are a lot better anti-infantry later game due to their armor piercing imho.

[Xeonzs]

Originally posted by Professor H. Farnsworth:

Originally posted by ❦Xeonzsღ💕:

So it's not just me then.
When I compare it to an army like high elves, dwarfes or empire, where things like lothern sea guard, thunderers and halbadiers have a place into the late game even, hell I guess you could even say darkshards for the dark elfs, tier 1 unit that because of silver shields and AP ammo just never get redundant.

I haven't gone full waywatcher army yet as I haven't played Orion games that much, usually just quit and changed back to Durthu, but I could see why you would go full waywatcher with the inherent speed and reload buffs of the elven lords.
It would work exactly the same as Alith Anar's shadow walker armies.

However I don't think I agree with the all-treemen army, the same red line buffs that affect them also affect treekin, while treekin also get 20% ward save and 10+ armor piercing.
Treekin by default have almost the same health as a treemen, while the treemen is a lot easier to focus down with fire due to it's gigantic size, I'd argue a mix of the 2 would be better, especially if you take the 2nd argument into account:

If you're going to be using monsterous single entity units, then you should really be taking at least some archers into your army to easily wipe out any enemies that blob up around your treemen.
Just like you would take doomwheels or abominations in your skaven army to have easy pickings for your ranged units.
Especially considering the fact that WE have access to poison archers at tier 1, reducing the enemy vigour and damage, thereby keeping your treekin and treemen alive longer while doing a ton of damage in the process.

Truth be told, most units do not have a place in late game armies when you got these doom stacks around. A lot herb sea guard is pointless when you have sisters of avelorn that are that much better in both offensive and defensive capabilities. Like halberdiers are replaced with Empire’s Halberd griffons :).

Life magic makes all the difference. That Ward save is meaningless. You will still lose entities and thus army strength.
It is for the same reason Lizardmen go full Stegadons. Doesnt matter that their killing power is comparatively low to say a diverse army. What matters is that you can keep them at max health and come out of battles with full health and can take on 3 to 1 armies easily.

That is all that matters in the grand scheme of this game. You need to inflict more losses than you take.

I guess in the sense that you'll be facing multiple armies before having a chance to fully replenish it would indeed be beneficial to have mostly / only single entity units in your army so you could heal up before the end of the battle.

I usually tend to diversify my armies a bit more though due to the lended flexibility of having flankers, units with vanguard, 2-4 shielded frontline units to soak up most of the enemy ammo, etc.

I don't agree with the Sisters of Avelorn being better than Lothern Sea guard, they both complement each other very well, because Sisters will get utterly destroyed by cavalry, while Sea Guard will have a hard time with anti-infantry infantry.

To give you some insight into my (campaign obviously) builds:

My HE armies usually exist of, lord, 3 heroes (Life, Shadow, a handmaiden) 2 phoenix guard or silverin guard (1st line), 2 bolt throwers (instant siege), 4 lothern sea guard (2nd line), 6 sisters, 2 dragons for flanking / intercepting / blobbing up enemy infront of archers.

My typical Durthu faction end-game army looks like: Tree lord, 3 heroes (Life, Shadow, Branchwraith), 6 Treekin, 2 Treemen, 1 forest dragon, 5 glade guard (poison), 2 glade guard (fireshaft), if positioning properly in forest terrain (on world map) you'll have treekin with 45% ward save ontop of their natural 20% physical resist, and 15% from the redline plus + 15missile resist, you have a frontline unit that's basically invulnerable (80% to basically all basic melee and ranged attacks) and that's even before armor / MD.
Treemen going down faster because of 3 things: 20% less wardsave, very large unit so will never be obstructred from ranged attack, very large unit so more ground units can attack it compared to smaller entities such as treekin.
The fireshaft are only there for armored enemies / lord focusing, the poison arrows are absolute army wipers, because poison reduce enemy fatigue, thereby reducing every single stat of the enemy ontop of the poison debuff, I usually win before even having wiped half their army because the balance of power is so much in my favor.
I've taken on 4 armies worth of orcs with a single army like that (albeit on normal, not hard or very hard).

[Andrewbh2003]

Originally posted by ❦Xeonzsღ💕:

Originally posted by Wyvern:

wardancers are a glass cannon, treekin are a brick wall, comparing the two is quite frankly pointless. Wardancers also have 75 models instead of 12, so those damage numbers for treekin are massively inferior in practice, and it means that if you decide to invest in sacrificial grounds, you can easily have dancers hitting for 100+ damage per model, deleting entire units with ridiculous speed, whereas treekin with sacrificial grounds are a fairly meh units for a late game doomstacker.

Optimization speaking i dont really think either unit is the optimal go to, but if you want fun theres a good reason to run either.

I'm comparing it against the spear wardancers though as pointed out in the OP, which have a similar role of being defenders, further implied by their missile resistance skill.

oh well that comparison is a BIT closer

whats interesting about speardancers is in terms of raw damage they are actually arguibly the highest damage anti-large unit in the game

but despite being a spear unit they cant take a charge at all how you use em is you use something to block up a cav charge "such as for example your beloved tree-kin" and then counter-charge with the speardancers

speardancers will absolutely destroy any large unit provided they dont take the charge head on as they are very much a glass cannon "I mean so is over half of the wood elf roster but you get the point" so in that case specifically you could run both

[Wyvern]

Originally posted by ❦Xeonzsღ💕:

Originally posted by Wyvern:

wardancers are a glass cannon, treekin are a brick wall, comparing the two is quite frankly pointless. Wardancers also have 75 models instead of 12, so those damage numbers for treekin are massively inferior in practice, and it means that if you decide to invest in sacrificial grounds, you can easily have dancers hitting for 100+ damage per model, deleting entire units with ridiculous speed, whereas treekin with sacrificial grounds are a fairly meh units for a late game doomstacker.

Optimization speaking i dont really think either unit is the optimal go to, but if you want fun theres a good reason to run either.

I'm comparing it against the spear wardancers though as pointed out in the OP, which have a similar role of being defenders, further implied by their missile resistance skill.

Edit:
I've also adjusted the title to reflect it instead of only having it mentioned in the post.

Edit1:
I didn't think it was worth bringing up the standard wardancers, considering that you have wildwood rangers available which are a lot better anti-infantry later game due to their armor piercing imho.

Speardancers are still a glass cannon, just a glass anti-large cannon.

[A.Pot]

I find them pretty good but easily outshined by other units. Ideally they should be used as flankers rather than going straight into the front of an enemy or absorbing a charge.

[What? Son?]

My normal stack on VeryHigh(legend) diff is: 4 wardancers, 4 wardancers with spear, 5 Waywatchers, 1 lord, 1 mage (or tree or tree-lord), otherwise of your choise. Wardancers are good, but with spear the mostly is trap for cavalry. Better hiding them instead of placing infront (u can use dendroids for that), Wardancers with spear best spear infantry for killing cav and big units, especially with their speed (could be like cavalry assassins), still tough with high defence stat, can do with melee infantry if you add 1 mage-little-tree with passive for bonus attack (it stack if you never know with lord passive, if name of passives different).
There is screenshot with their stats (but with +26 def and leadership) https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/797614816005621147/FD4054DB1A14F72F18D0334A1A0EE9BC6A95683F/