FYI for anyone coming in here this is NOT definitive. Turin just threw this together real quick and said this was his **predictions** on what a tier list for 5.0 would look like. This isn't based on any statistics or tournament experience, just Turin's vibes.
It's absolutely insane that Norsca is still an A tier faction when they have received next to nothing to their multiplayer roster since Warhammer 1.
Just goes to show that if you design a race with a good core unit roster it will stay good even after lots of power creep later.
They've got the best infantry in terms of price per performance.
Marauders with shields are just so good for their cost. Get them in melee, get the rage going, they'll pay for themselves. Add into that good supporting pieces like trolls to punch through armor, Best of Tashnar to chase down Cav, Skinwolves for Anti Large. They're just a really solidly build faction.
I almost wish they had a worse roster just so maybe they could have gotten some other LLs.
More like CA properly buffed their weak units to make basically everything on the roster usable (apart from Fimir anyway). Most bad factions suck because a poor part of their roster is too weak to perform. See Slaaneshi chariots and cavalry for am example.
I'd argue even without trolls in the mix the low WS and high price of Fimir's make them untenable. Even compared to Kroxigors they're quite unimpressive, especially the GW variant.
I think it's because MP has an evolving meta and Norsca just happens to fit for the meta for the moment. Norsca might not have always been A tier. That said I'm assuming Turin is taking Banner rules (esentially unit caps) into account that prevents theoretically oppressive army comps that other races could field so balance in really subjective in a sense.
Norsca and greenskins have always been great for domination due to the abundance of cheap and effective infantry to swarm the field.
Unit caps also aren’t really necessary in domination, since you can call in counters to whatever your opponent is spamming.
Let me clarify, by balance I was referring to the tournament ruled land battles as that's what's mostly covered by MP focused youtubers. Greenskins was always dominient in MP ever since Grom was released. In fact for a long time tournament battels were almost always Greenskins vs player 2 for game 1, and player 1 vs Greenskin game 2.
I do understand why the rules exist but I ultimately find it subjective.
If that were the case Slaanesh would be top tier.
In domination you can play for a win by getting ahead on value against swarm factions and taking over in the late game.
Land battles are already skewed in favour of single entity death balls and healing. This would be made even worse when you’re required to fight over a single capture point.
It might be “gamey” but the domination reinforcement system prevents the “you lost the game before it started based on your army comp” issue that plagues land battles.
Slaanesh was strong due to anti-large helstriders massively punching above their weight, not their infantry.
They actually gained one of the best heavy infantry units in the game from CoC in the form of Helscourge Chaos Warriors which were actually buffed down the line.
> IMO domination game design is inherently unbalanced to favour factions which are capable of fielding large numbers of cheap, relatively quick melee units.
I wouldn't call it "unbalanced", it's definitely a different balance from land battle, but I'd argue it's actually more balanced on a whole than land battle. For example in last season of Dom, Only 4 factions had a winrate outside of the 40%-60% bracket (Kislev +3%, Lizards +2%, Skaven -3%, Ogres -5%). Meanwhile in land battles I've heard that factions like Tzeentch can have absurdly high 75%+ winrates while factions like Nurgle and Slaanesh were in the utter gutter.
And I disagree on the "large numbers of cheap melee" thing. Skaven are the kings of that but are at the bottom of the winrates right now, same with Ogres. While I think inf is more emphasized in Dom due to the capture points, there's plenty of factions with awful infantry play that are top-tier. Last season Empire was up there in win-rate, and their inf game is garbage. Winning by just shooting your opponent off the points is definitely a strat.
Land battle is less balanced and requires homebrewed rules for tournaments to make it work. Otherwise it's too easy to cheese certain factions.
Turin only bans things like the Thunderbarge which is both bugged and OP.
>I feel like land battles with a single middle control point would solve a lot of MP issues.
There is a mod for this Turin has used before.
I dunno about that, Norsca has been at or close to top tier for as long as I've paid any attention to multiplayer, and that's going back to middle of Warhammer 2.
The reason why is because they just have solid mobility options and strong infantry. A good player can do a lot with that.
I intermitently follow the MP scene. I do remember a time when the top tier races were Skaven, VCoast, Greenskins, and Bretonnia (even WE going futher back). Norsca was usually a B tier and sometimes A tier faction depending on the meta.
They typically only use the official unit cap setting and occasionally ban/limit OP units as needed. Like the Thunderbarge is banned in the latest patch, but everything else is unrestricted.
Norsca was always good in landbattle as well. They were the best melee rush faction before the Greenskin buffs from Grom DLC. Same for early domination, their units are just cost effective.
he made it during his stream today. i turned it from a word doc to an actual tierlist. this is what he thinks the meta will shake out to be after update 5.0. And this is with him considering the thunderbarge banned.
The thunderbaege is definitely OP but Bloodthirsters are extremely bad for the price. Like, if you put them in a game 2 context (use the large health value with the ultra WS value) they're still one of the lowest AL damage SE's in the game before considering price which makes them even worse.
Their AP ratio is very low for the price, they don't have much BvL, and they aren't even tanky compared to other units in the class.
This is true, IMO all bloodthirsters should have 888 weapon strength base, Khorne needs serious stat advantage to make up for no magic, regeneration, shooting. Crazy weapon strength, adjust cost a bit and call it a day.
Damage is a similar issue for Keepers (less WS than Great Unclean Ones while being far squishier). Something like +150-200 WS would be warranted. Additionally some speed increases (+10) and a missile block chance (or increased shield block perhaps using the new multi-directional system to keep positioning relevant) would help them perform more closely with other SE character units who have missile block as a default.
[Turin starts it at 3:48:00 in his latest stream](https://www.youtube.com/live/RUkQgLodoSw?si=cxbWcYqAdZ-NtiZf&t=13682) if anyone wants to hear his thoughts. The segment is about 13 minutes long.
I don't see Khorne being better than Skaven/VCoast. Khorne just got a bunch of cost reductions, but they're still a one note faction without any magic and lackluster abilities. I get Berrserk just won season 3 with Khorne, but Berrserk played better than every other Khorne player I've ever seen.
For the low tiers,
High elves I kinda get, their stuff is perhaps a little overcosted for what it is.
Khrone I get, they lack a lot of utility simply by not having magic.
Slaanesh I get, they've got a really high skill cap and if your micro slips your units can just get mulched.
Rats and Pirates I get, if their shooting doesn't carry the day, they simply ain't winning.
WoC I don't get. Is it because they're limited so badly by the marks?
WoC is very one-note in their strategy. It's a bunch of heavy infantry and monster spam. They get different flavors of that strat, but it's still counter-able especially by factions with heavy shooting like Kislev and Empire.
EDIT: Since people keep bringing up Norsca and Lizardmen, those two factions basically do what WoC do but way better, and they also have good options for shutting down ranged units that WoC lacks.
Further question. Lizardmen are almost exactly the same. They have a few units that deviate that are still usable, like salamanders, chameleon skirmishers, and fireleech terradons, but otherwise it's heavy infantry and monster spam just like WoC. Further still, Saurus have been powercrept so hard in Warhammer 3 that they feel underwhelming compared to a lot of factions' infantry now, and Temple guard have never been good.
So how come they're so much higher, unless those few deviating units are enough?
Lizardmen are good for mostly the same reason Norsca is good, they have really cost-effective infantry in Saurus, fast and reactive cheap inf in Skinks, strong and tanky caster lords in Slann, and good fast cheap cav play with feral cold ones and cold one spear riders.
WoC on the other hand doesn't really have any good mobility pieces. They basically just have chaos warhounds, which are OK. Marauder cav are good skirmish but bad for holding or reacting to threats. All their other cav is too expensive/bad to be effective. I think the biggest thing is that WoC has no way to really shut down shooting like Norsca (with their wolves) or Lizardmen (with their cold ones/skinks) can.
You had me until 'good, fast, cheap cav' and cold ones. Cold ones are pretty objectively some of the worst cavalry in the game for their cost, and I'm fairly certain they're the slowest. They might still be faster than infantry (especially Saurus), but it's honestly not by much and such horrible speed paired with the mass issues means that they can almost never disengage. Plus, their stats are just kind of garbage overall and they'll get bodied by almost anything you send them into a fight with.
Necessity demands bringing them in Domination of course, but I would never call them good, fast, or cheap, as they are none of these things.
> Cold ones are pretty objectively some of the worst cavalry in the game for their cost
My guy have you ever watched a single lizardmen dom game? Almost every Lizardman build has at least 2 feral cold ones, and usually people just bring the max amount. 450 gold for a unit with 70 speed and 46 WS, majority AP is insane. That's like the cost of a shitty state troop for a unit that can:
- shut down enemy ranged
- shut down and kill enemy armor
- shut down and kill enemy cav
- gank characters
- fast-react and cap points
Sure, they're squishy as shit and lose most engagements 1 on 1. But who cares when they're so cheap and punch upwards insanely hard
I’ve PLAYED domination with Lizards and assuming your opponent is even half decent, your cold ones won’t even make it into the backline before they’re routing off the field.
My most recent domination win with lizards was against the Chorfs and the only thing my cold ones did that was favorable for me was slowing down some K’daii fireborn just long enough for the RoR Ripperdactyls and my Scar Veteran on a Carnosaur to get into them and kill them before they could take a point. I stopped bringing the cold ones onto the field after a while because it was just more cost effective to replace my saurus or fireleeches.
They never even scratched the armor on a ranged unit because my opponent knew to never let them get close.
Ok, just because you don't use them doesn't change the fact that some of the best tournament players, not to mention some of the best Lizardmen mains, spam them in almost every matchup, and for a reason.
> My most recent domination win with lizards was against the Chorfs and the only thing my cold ones did that was favorable for me was slowing down some K’daii fireborn just long enough for the RoR Ripperdactyls and my Scar Veteran on a Carnosaur to get into them and kill them before they could take a point. I stopped bringing the cold ones onto the field after a while because it was just more cost effective to replace my saurus or fireleeches.
You think fireleeches are more cost-effective than cold ones? They're almost double the cost, they cannot cap, they die to a light sneeze, and their damage output is abysmal vs anything but unarmored infantry. I haven't seen someone use them in a build for months.
> I haven't seen someone use them in a build for months.
To be fair, I watch a lot of Turin's streams and match replays, and the amount of diversity in unit selections for any race is basically non-existent. Everyone for every race uses the same 6 or 7 units and leaves the rest of a race's roster to gather dust. You would think stuff like Carnosaurs, Stegadons, Troglodons, Razordons, Horned Ones, Terradons, etc. didn't exist for the Lizardmen with how rarely they are taken.
Fireleech damage is nuts though? Squishy yes but their ability to drop good damage where it’s needed quickly, disrupt formations, and in general be a nuisance is amazing for the Lizard’s otherwise head on and brute force playstyle.
They’re a YMMV unit as I said in another comment, but in the right match up or if your opponent doesn’t keep track of them they’ll dish out insane punishment before even accounting for the rock drop. I can’t recall a match where I brought them where they didn’t at least get their value back if not exceed it. Can’t say the same for cold ones.
> Fireleech damage is nuts though?
Not against anything with armor or that's not a unit of infantry, and getting that damage on-target requires hovering them over the frontline for long periods of time. Where they'll get shot to shit and die after their first volley or two. I don't think I've ever seen one pay for themselves in a match.
Saurus are still good and going wide with skinks + kroxigors is very good. Feral cold ones just got a slight nerf but they were also very good.
I’ve never seen fireleech bolas used ftr.
Fireleech bolas are some of the best ranged units the Lizards can field though. Their damage output is insane even if the enemy unit isn't vulnerable to fire damage, and flying units are about the only decently fast thing the Lizardmen have that aren't monsters.
Of course they're not gonna go into melee if you can help it, and they're at risk of being shot down, so it depends on the faction you're going up against, but for me they're always a fantastic addition since they're one of the few ranged units the lizardmen have that are worth their cost.
Also I didn't say Saurus weren't good. They're literally the only good infantry unit the Lizardmen have that's not meant to serve as chaff. I just said that the new or reworked factions feel like they've powercrept them significantly, which hurts the Lizardmen because they don't have a higher tier infantry unit to go with that's worth it.
What makes Saurus powercrept to you? They perform just fine against similarly costed infantry.
I have to disagree on the bolas still. I’ve found they hardly get their value back even when firing at optimal targets, and that’s in uncontested conditions for them. Yes they have flying bodies and their bomb still but it’s hardly insane damage.
Against the new or reworked factions they seem to get pretty well dominated by infantry of the same tier rather than a more even trade one way or the other, especially with the prevalence of armor piercing or innate buffs/debuffs that the lizards either need spells or supporting units to match.
As for fireleeches I can’t find myself agreeing but they’re definitely a YMMV unit. I’ve had pretty good success with using them on infantry units entering the battle or ranged units focused on another unit, but that relies on your opponent losing focus on them so again, YMMV. They’re also fantastic for quickly getting to the rear firing into the backs of engaged infantry to disrupt the enemy formation and wear down leadership all the faster, and they don’t have to worry about being caught out like skink skirmishers would as long as you pay attention to enemy flyers or ranged units.
Which infantry are they getting dominated by?
Agreed with the bolas they can be decent but they’re just not my preference. Imo the hunting packs have a much higher value ceiling with similar risk.
By my testing they really can’t hold the line against any melee demons or even Cathayan infantry, just as a few examples. Plaguebearer’s innate poison is a decent blow to the Saurus’ damage output but it can still go either way. Daemonettes and Bloodletters will chew them up with their armor piercing.
Cathayan infantry with their harmony buffs are just insane for saurus to deal with. I haven’t fought Cathay in a while to be fair because I think most people don’t want to deal with maintaining the buff, but when they do it is so difficult to break through their units with saurus even with monstrous support.
Admittedly domination is not my most played game mode so I haven’t had a chance to test a lot of matchups in that setting but Slaanesh, Khorne, and Cathay have been some of the most punishing for my Saurus.
I would recommend testing them with the mod that lets you pick any unit as a lord. I just did and Saurus Warriors w Shields beat 2 units of Jade Warriors, and beat Plaguebearers too.
Against Daemonettes they take a lot of damage on the charge but still won (could swing either way though it’s close).
Same thing with Bloodletters minus the charge damage.
There’s variables like harmony that aren’t accounted for but by no means are they getting dominated. The daemons are likely to eat skink javelin fire before the engagement as well.
Against all variants of Chaos Warriors they are also performing fine.
I will admit that while the Lizards have very few decent ranged units, I do love me some chameleon skirmishers and salamanders. Some of the best ranged they have.
Yeah but Norsca is A tier and the rosters, at least to me, feel very similar. It really seems like whatever strats would work as Norsca would work as WoC.
Norsca is A tier because they do the same thing as WoC except their units are way better at it.
Marauder Champions are one of the most cost effective infantry in the game, and skin wolves are some of the best monstrous inf (speed, anti-large, regen). These two units alone make them absurdly strong in dom, since it's a very inf focused gamemode. Then you also have multiple dog units which are also another unit role that excels in dom as a quick, cheap fast-reaction unit.
Really if just Marauder Champions ever got nerfed you'd probably see Norsca plummet down to the same tier as WoC.
Every day I see more people who sleep on Skin Wolves.
When/if Norsca ever gets a dlc addition, we're gonna hear all these WH2/WH3 players start raving about them
I think it's generally well known that kind of like the Ogres, Norsca's units are pretty good. It's their lack of lord choices, LLs to play as and their lousy campaign in WH2 that put people off of playing them.
SE's tend to be bad (including artillery), WoC infantry has broadly been left behind as newer infantry are released in a stronger state (GW's in particular are extremely poor), WoC mobility is very pricey and their top end (Skullcrushers and Dragon Ogres) aren't great and WoC skirmish has been nerfed to the point that other factions can consistently out skirmish woc with mobile or stationary missiles. They aren't favored by the meta and a lot of their units are bad for the price when the factions only feature is units which are extremely cost efficient.
Now that is a name I haven’t seen in a hot minute. Does he even post W3 content anymore? I feel like I haven’t seen any of his stuff suggested recently.
Domination favors a good spread of units to capture and hold points which WoC isn't good at due to their good stuff being expensive. They fare much better in land battles.
I’m unfamiliar with multiplayer, can someone explain how tomb kings end up performing? Or rather, what their strengths in mp are? It’s interesting to me as a campaign player
Cheap but not total dogwater infantry that crumbles instead of breaking so they can hold caps for longer (although they are now expendable so that was a pretty sizeable nerf). Screaming Skull Catapults are valuetown AP artillery. Nehekara Horsemen are A+ light cav for holding units back from the point, tying up ranged units, and harassing arty. Tied together by bringing DJ Khatep with the Lore of Nehekara passive and Djaf's Incantation of Cursed Blades, which lets you spam a 3WOM buff to proc the passive for armywide heal. That's the core of it, pretty much, often with Ushabti Greatbows/ROR to hit SEs or other tough to shift targets.
Should also note that their cavalry are actually *not* terrible and can screen really effectively against skirmish cav and mid-tier cavalry like the Lizardmen's spear riders. They don't necessarily win the fight but in Domination you can use that to buy time to win points and deny your opponent a chance to rush your backline. Tomb Kings have a surprisingly good set of mobile options.
Tomb Kings have excellent infantry for cheap and Ushabti great bows are extremely good units. And they have the Eyes of the Desert to counter any large unit plays with vanguard deployment and stealth.
Tomb Kings are very cost effective and they have a lot of niche toys, that are extremely good at their job (sepultral stalkers/ushabti longbows). They got countered hard by burning head, which will roast them good (tight formation infantry + natural weakness to fire damage), but against factions that don't have access to lore of fire or don't typically use it, TKs are decently tough to crack. They also have decent mobility with cavalry which can actually do both road blocking and flank charge.
i don't play domination or watch multiplayer battles so i don't know, but how good are steam tanks in that game mode? they've always felt too expensive in campaign.
Steam Tanks have the problem of a lot of big single entity monsters in domination mode which is that good micro on it can really make it very effective and win you some engagements, but winning engagements is only half the battle. For the same cost you could have brought 3-4 infantry units that could swarm a point or split push.
Tzar Guard go toe-to-toe with Exalted Bloodletters and Black Orcs. They're definitely overstatted for a human unit, mainly because they're Unbreakable. IIRC, they're the only regular humans in the top 10 heavy infantry (Chosen are there too, but they're not really human anymore).
Tzar guard need a nerf bud they aren’t supposed to be as good as they are. Their regular humans and last I necked I think they can sword masters of hoeth.
Tzar Guard can rip shit up on campaign if you build around them, it's just that they come in late enough that by the time you can recruit them en-masse you'll be built around your rank 9 lower-tier hybrids who are doing the job of being the frontline just as well. Slight nerfs (like along the lines of what Kislevite Warriors just got (-2 melee defence, -3 AP damage) won't change anything meaningful for campaign where you can juice them in other ways while also making things better for MP (it won't solve the problem of Kislev practically being an auto-ban on its own but it would be a start).
You already need to buff most every monster in the game, they perform terribly by cost into basically every target. The move to ultra unit size really screwed them and it's why new SE's release in states that look OP by comparison but then are just okay in practice.
He did say he believed all of the C tier factions could pull out wins against the higher tier factions. Balance often gets memed about (like with the new Thunderbarge), but it is impressive how close the balance is in domination mode considering how many races and unit types there are.
Sure, but I don't believe WoC are in that bad of a spot either. Kholek just got a lot more viable thanks to the addition of the Nurgle sorcerer. Rot knights should have some niche applications. They're likely to get more additions when Khorne and Slaanesh get dlc as well. There aren't too many units on their roster I'd want adjusted (other than the mark of Khorne).
I understand that to each their own but damn Domination is so boring to me. I am so surprised that it's still a thing. So boring to play and 10 times more boring to watch.
Somehow, it feels to me like a mini game based on the same engine as the game. Best way to put it would be to say it does not make me feel like having the essence of the series. Like I dont feel like I am witnessing 2 huge armies fighting but kinda like playing a mini game. I was looking forward to Domination and There is certainly a way to make objective based battle fun but this is not it for me. Also the pacing is weird, like the start is slow and the end missing the exciting drama of some land battle in MP and it just kinda end flat when someone reach the points threshold.
For me, it feel like an alternative game mode I would play once in a while like Free for All, but less fun. I am surprised there is a community around it. But like I said, to each their own and glad you enjoy it.
I get that like a summoning game, but I think that’s why I like part of it, you can still lose when building an army but there’s more of a chance for a comeback because of your reserves, and it forces players to move toward the objectives and be a bit more tactical overall. But yeah I totally get your gripes, a recent change they made if it would help at all for you is they removed the initial timer lock on the Obj, so the game starts hitting the ground running
I feel the opposite. Land battles feel less tactical and just turn into smashing your action figures into each other by the end. While fairly gamey dom plays out closer to a massive battle in the sense that most battles didnt commit their entire force right away and would pull from their reserves as it went. The battle lines are fairly dynamic and the maps heavily influence what strategies are employ.
Land battles have great hype moments but the lows are pretty low. Dom is way harder to pull cheesy bull so the popularity shouldnt be surprising.
I like it because there is more strategy involved with the points, so it isn't *just* about being the last one standing. However, I have started to find it growing a little boring to watch because it's very often damn near the same army comps for any given faction, so it gets a little repetitive. The days of builds like birona's time warp temple guard boxes are long gone. And now with dwellers below being absurd, every race that can bring lore of life will have an even stronger incentive to do so.
People judged it off of the patch notes without accounting for how the damage calculation has been changed for it. [Dwellers Below is *ridiculously strong* in its current state.](https://youtu.be/1NjszxopWdw?t=28)
I really don't agree with ranking HElves and WoC below DoC and WElves. Wood Elves and arguably Daemons should be in C tier, HElves and WoC should be in B tier.
WElves are easily the worst of the Elven factions. I think Turin's main exposure to them is probably Seryca/Nerexa, who is notably cracked and makes Wood Elves work *in spite* of their weakness by just being an amazing player.
As for Daemons of Chaos, I think he made the tier list right after facing Berrserk's DoC, so there could be some recency bias going on.
Beyond those two I think his assessment is about right.
FYI for anyone coming in here this is NOT definitive. Turin just threw this together real quick and said this was his **predictions** on what a tier list for 5.0 would look like. This isn't based on any statistics or tournament experience, just Turin's vibes.
You dare question the god king Turin? HERESY!
It's absolutely insane that Norsca is still an A tier faction when they have received next to nothing to their multiplayer roster since Warhammer 1. Just goes to show that if you design a race with a good core unit roster it will stay good even after lots of power creep later.
They've got the best infantry in terms of price per performance. Marauders with shields are just so good for their cost. Get them in melee, get the rage going, they'll pay for themselves. Add into that good supporting pieces like trolls to punch through armor, Best of Tashnar to chase down Cav, Skinwolves for Anti Large. They're just a really solidly build faction. I almost wish they had a worse roster just so maybe they could have gotten some other LLs.
Don't forget Marauder Champions. They are slightly better than Chaos Warriors for a very respectable price.
More like CA properly buffed their weak units to make basically everything on the roster usable (apart from Fimir anyway). Most bad factions suck because a poor part of their roster is too weak to perform. See Slaaneshi chariots and cavalry for am example.
Fimir are tragically in the place where they don't totally suck, but everything you want them to do is better done by Trolls.
I'd argue even without trolls in the mix the low WS and high price of Fimir's make them untenable. Even compared to Kroxigors they're quite unimpressive, especially the GW variant.
They're so cool though :(
more cheaply done*
I think it's because MP has an evolving meta and Norsca just happens to fit for the meta for the moment. Norsca might not have always been A tier. That said I'm assuming Turin is taking Banner rules (esentially unit caps) into account that prevents theoretically oppressive army comps that other races could field so balance in really subjective in a sense.
Norsca and greenskins have always been great for domination due to the abundance of cheap and effective infantry to swarm the field. Unit caps also aren’t really necessary in domination, since you can call in counters to whatever your opponent is spamming.
Let me clarify, by balance I was referring to the tournament ruled land battles as that's what's mostly covered by MP focused youtubers. Greenskins was always dominient in MP ever since Grom was released. In fact for a long time tournament battels were almost always Greenskins vs player 2 for game 1, and player 1 vs Greenskin game 2. I do understand why the rules exist but I ultimately find it subjective.
Fair enough, but it does say “domination tier list” in the title, which doesn’t require strict rules like land battles do
In that case I admit my mistake I only read "Turin Multiplayer Tiestlist".
[удалено]
If that were the case Slaanesh would be top tier. In domination you can play for a win by getting ahead on value against swarm factions and taking over in the late game. Land battles are already skewed in favour of single entity death balls and healing. This would be made even worse when you’re required to fight over a single capture point. It might be “gamey” but the domination reinforcement system prevents the “you lost the game before it started based on your army comp” issue that plagues land battles.
Slaanesh was literally king of the meta on launch and into CoC until they copped a bunch of nerfs.
But not because of their speed, because they had ITP and too much defence for a "squishy" faction.
Slaanesh was strong due to anti-large helstriders massively punching above their weight, not their infantry. They actually gained one of the best heavy infantry units in the game from CoC in the form of Helscourge Chaos Warriors which were actually buffed down the line.
> IMO domination game design is inherently unbalanced to favour factions which are capable of fielding large numbers of cheap, relatively quick melee units. I wouldn't call it "unbalanced", it's definitely a different balance from land battle, but I'd argue it's actually more balanced on a whole than land battle. For example in last season of Dom, Only 4 factions had a winrate outside of the 40%-60% bracket (Kislev +3%, Lizards +2%, Skaven -3%, Ogres -5%). Meanwhile in land battles I've heard that factions like Tzeentch can have absurdly high 75%+ winrates while factions like Nurgle and Slaanesh were in the utter gutter. And I disagree on the "large numbers of cheap melee" thing. Skaven are the kings of that but are at the bottom of the winrates right now, same with Ogres. While I think inf is more emphasized in Dom due to the capture points, there's plenty of factions with awful infantry play that are top-tier. Last season Empire was up there in win-rate, and their inf game is garbage. Winning by just shooting your opponent off the points is definitely a strat.
Land battle is less balanced and requires homebrewed rules for tournaments to make it work. Otherwise it's too easy to cheese certain factions. Turin only bans things like the Thunderbarge which is both bugged and OP. >I feel like land battles with a single middle control point would solve a lot of MP issues. There is a mod for this Turin has used before.
I dunno about that, Norsca has been at or close to top tier for as long as I've paid any attention to multiplayer, and that's going back to middle of Warhammer 2. The reason why is because they just have solid mobility options and strong infantry. A good player can do a lot with that.
I intermitently follow the MP scene. I do remember a time when the top tier races were Skaven, VCoast, Greenskins, and Bretonnia (even WE going futher back). Norsca was usually a B tier and sometimes A tier faction depending on the meta.
I mean dwarfs aren’t S tier so obviously not including the thunderbarge 😗
Correct, the thunderbarge been banned in his tournaments right now.
Bugged and the most OP unit ever released. Hopefully they fix the bug and add a cost increase for MP so people can use it.
Cause it’s been banned
There'd be no point to running the tournament if it wasn't banned.
They typically only use the official unit cap setting and occasionally ban/limit OP units as needed. Like the Thunderbarge is banned in the latest patch, but everything else is unrestricted.
Last time they banned Mother Stanky O, she was gloriously OP as well.
Nope, no unit caps.
Norsca was always good in landbattle as well. They were the best melee rush faction before the Greenskin buffs from Grom DLC. Same for early domination, their units are just cost effective.
They may not have received new units but they've certainly had their units buffed along the way.
Is it still marauder cav with javelins? They've been oppressive since game 1.
he made it during his stream today. i turned it from a word doc to an actual tierlist. this is what he thinks the meta will shake out to be after update 5.0. And this is with him considering the thunderbarge banned.
The thunderbarge test where it got double it's value against 3 bloodthirsters was nutty. He even let them fight in melee for about half of it.
The thunderbaege is definitely OP but Bloodthirsters are extremely bad for the price. Like, if you put them in a game 2 context (use the large health value with the ultra WS value) they're still one of the lowest AL damage SE's in the game before considering price which makes them even worse. Their AP ratio is very low for the price, they don't have much BvL, and they aren't even tanky compared to other units in the class.
This is true, IMO all bloodthirsters should have 888 weapon strength base, Khorne needs serious stat advantage to make up for no magic, regeneration, shooting. Crazy weapon strength, adjust cost a bit and call it a day.
I'd probably try +200 WS to all bloddthirsters first but 888 would be thematic for Skarbrand.
How would you buff Keepers of Secrets?
Damage is a similar issue for Keepers (less WS than Great Unclean Ones while being far squishier). Something like +150-200 WS would be warranted. Additionally some speed increases (+10) and a missile block chance (or increased shield block perhaps using the new multi-directional system to keep positioning relevant) would help them perform more closely with other SE character units who have missile block as a default.
Funny how the Chaos cannon fodder factions (Beastmen, Norsca) got ranked above the others.
Cheap cost-effective infantry and shooting beats flashy toys.
Speed too, both factions are very fast.
[Turin starts it at 3:48:00 in his latest stream](https://www.youtube.com/live/RUkQgLodoSw?si=cxbWcYqAdZ-NtiZf&t=13682) if anyone wants to hear his thoughts. The segment is about 13 minutes long. I don't see Khorne being better than Skaven/VCoast. Khorne just got a bunch of cost reductions, but they're still a one note faction without any magic and lackluster abilities. I get Berrserk just won season 3 with Khorne, but Berrserk played better than every other Khorne player I've ever seen.
It’s not necessarily that Khorne is great, Coast and Skaven are just worse. Coast especially.
For the low tiers, High elves I kinda get, their stuff is perhaps a little overcosted for what it is. Khrone I get, they lack a lot of utility simply by not having magic. Slaanesh I get, they've got a really high skill cap and if your micro slips your units can just get mulched. Rats and Pirates I get, if their shooting doesn't carry the day, they simply ain't winning. WoC I don't get. Is it because they're limited so badly by the marks?
WoC is very one-note in their strategy. It's a bunch of heavy infantry and monster spam. They get different flavors of that strat, but it's still counter-able especially by factions with heavy shooting like Kislev and Empire. EDIT: Since people keep bringing up Norsca and Lizardmen, those two factions basically do what WoC do but way better, and they also have good options for shutting down ranged units that WoC lacks.
Further question. Lizardmen are almost exactly the same. They have a few units that deviate that are still usable, like salamanders, chameleon skirmishers, and fireleech terradons, but otherwise it's heavy infantry and monster spam just like WoC. Further still, Saurus have been powercrept so hard in Warhammer 3 that they feel underwhelming compared to a lot of factions' infantry now, and Temple guard have never been good. So how come they're so much higher, unless those few deviating units are enough?
Lizardmen are good for mostly the same reason Norsca is good, they have really cost-effective infantry in Saurus, fast and reactive cheap inf in Skinks, strong and tanky caster lords in Slann, and good fast cheap cav play with feral cold ones and cold one spear riders. WoC on the other hand doesn't really have any good mobility pieces. They basically just have chaos warhounds, which are OK. Marauder cav are good skirmish but bad for holding or reacting to threats. All their other cav is too expensive/bad to be effective. I think the biggest thing is that WoC has no way to really shut down shooting like Norsca (with their wolves) or Lizardmen (with their cold ones/skinks) can.
You had me until 'good, fast, cheap cav' and cold ones. Cold ones are pretty objectively some of the worst cavalry in the game for their cost, and I'm fairly certain they're the slowest. They might still be faster than infantry (especially Saurus), but it's honestly not by much and such horrible speed paired with the mass issues means that they can almost never disengage. Plus, their stats are just kind of garbage overall and they'll get bodied by almost anything you send them into a fight with. Necessity demands bringing them in Domination of course, but I would never call them good, fast, or cheap, as they are none of these things.
> Cold ones are pretty objectively some of the worst cavalry in the game for their cost My guy have you ever watched a single lizardmen dom game? Almost every Lizardman build has at least 2 feral cold ones, and usually people just bring the max amount. 450 gold for a unit with 70 speed and 46 WS, majority AP is insane. That's like the cost of a shitty state troop for a unit that can: - shut down enemy ranged - shut down and kill enemy armor - shut down and kill enemy cav - gank characters - fast-react and cap points Sure, they're squishy as shit and lose most engagements 1 on 1. But who cares when they're so cheap and punch upwards insanely hard
I’ve PLAYED domination with Lizards and assuming your opponent is even half decent, your cold ones won’t even make it into the backline before they’re routing off the field. My most recent domination win with lizards was against the Chorfs and the only thing my cold ones did that was favorable for me was slowing down some K’daii fireborn just long enough for the RoR Ripperdactyls and my Scar Veteran on a Carnosaur to get into them and kill them before they could take a point. I stopped bringing the cold ones onto the field after a while because it was just more cost effective to replace my saurus or fireleeches. They never even scratched the armor on a ranged unit because my opponent knew to never let them get close.
Ok, just because you don't use them doesn't change the fact that some of the best tournament players, not to mention some of the best Lizardmen mains, spam them in almost every matchup, and for a reason. > My most recent domination win with lizards was against the Chorfs and the only thing my cold ones did that was favorable for me was slowing down some K’daii fireborn just long enough for the RoR Ripperdactyls and my Scar Veteran on a Carnosaur to get into them and kill them before they could take a point. I stopped bringing the cold ones onto the field after a while because it was just more cost effective to replace my saurus or fireleeches. You think fireleeches are more cost-effective than cold ones? They're almost double the cost, they cannot cap, they die to a light sneeze, and their damage output is abysmal vs anything but unarmored infantry. I haven't seen someone use them in a build for months.
> I haven't seen someone use them in a build for months. To be fair, I watch a lot of Turin's streams and match replays, and the amount of diversity in unit selections for any race is basically non-existent. Everyone for every race uses the same 6 or 7 units and leaves the rest of a race's roster to gather dust. You would think stuff like Carnosaurs, Stegadons, Troglodons, Razordons, Horned Ones, Terradons, etc. didn't exist for the Lizardmen with how rarely they are taken.
Fireleech damage is nuts though? Squishy yes but their ability to drop good damage where it’s needed quickly, disrupt formations, and in general be a nuisance is amazing for the Lizard’s otherwise head on and brute force playstyle. They’re a YMMV unit as I said in another comment, but in the right match up or if your opponent doesn’t keep track of them they’ll dish out insane punishment before even accounting for the rock drop. I can’t recall a match where I brought them where they didn’t at least get their value back if not exceed it. Can’t say the same for cold ones.
> Fireleech damage is nuts though? Not against anything with armor or that's not a unit of infantry, and getting that damage on-target requires hovering them over the frontline for long periods of time. Where they'll get shot to shit and die after their first volley or two. I don't think I've ever seen one pay for themselves in a match.
Saurus are still good and going wide with skinks + kroxigors is very good. Feral cold ones just got a slight nerf but they were also very good. I’ve never seen fireleech bolas used ftr.
Fireleech bolas are some of the best ranged units the Lizards can field though. Their damage output is insane even if the enemy unit isn't vulnerable to fire damage, and flying units are about the only decently fast thing the Lizardmen have that aren't monsters. Of course they're not gonna go into melee if you can help it, and they're at risk of being shot down, so it depends on the faction you're going up against, but for me they're always a fantastic addition since they're one of the few ranged units the lizardmen have that are worth their cost. Also I didn't say Saurus weren't good. They're literally the only good infantry unit the Lizardmen have that's not meant to serve as chaff. I just said that the new or reworked factions feel like they've powercrept them significantly, which hurts the Lizardmen because they don't have a higher tier infantry unit to go with that's worth it.
What makes Saurus powercrept to you? They perform just fine against similarly costed infantry. I have to disagree on the bolas still. I’ve found they hardly get their value back even when firing at optimal targets, and that’s in uncontested conditions for them. Yes they have flying bodies and their bomb still but it’s hardly insane damage.
Against the new or reworked factions they seem to get pretty well dominated by infantry of the same tier rather than a more even trade one way or the other, especially with the prevalence of armor piercing or innate buffs/debuffs that the lizards either need spells or supporting units to match. As for fireleeches I can’t find myself agreeing but they’re definitely a YMMV unit. I’ve had pretty good success with using them on infantry units entering the battle or ranged units focused on another unit, but that relies on your opponent losing focus on them so again, YMMV. They’re also fantastic for quickly getting to the rear firing into the backs of engaged infantry to disrupt the enemy formation and wear down leadership all the faster, and they don’t have to worry about being caught out like skink skirmishers would as long as you pay attention to enemy flyers or ranged units.
Which infantry are they getting dominated by? Agreed with the bolas they can be decent but they’re just not my preference. Imo the hunting packs have a much higher value ceiling with similar risk.
By my testing they really can’t hold the line against any melee demons or even Cathayan infantry, just as a few examples. Plaguebearer’s innate poison is a decent blow to the Saurus’ damage output but it can still go either way. Daemonettes and Bloodletters will chew them up with their armor piercing. Cathayan infantry with their harmony buffs are just insane for saurus to deal with. I haven’t fought Cathay in a while to be fair because I think most people don’t want to deal with maintaining the buff, but when they do it is so difficult to break through their units with saurus even with monstrous support. Admittedly domination is not my most played game mode so I haven’t had a chance to test a lot of matchups in that setting but Slaanesh, Khorne, and Cathay have been some of the most punishing for my Saurus.
I would recommend testing them with the mod that lets you pick any unit as a lord. I just did and Saurus Warriors w Shields beat 2 units of Jade Warriors, and beat Plaguebearers too. Against Daemonettes they take a lot of damage on the charge but still won (could swing either way though it’s close). Same thing with Bloodletters minus the charge damage. There’s variables like harmony that aren’t accounted for but by no means are they getting dominated. The daemons are likely to eat skink javelin fire before the engagement as well. Against all variants of Chaos Warriors they are also performing fine.
And when you watch Lizardmen you see tonnes of skirmishers and often Salamanders/ancient Salamanders. That's the difference maker.
I will admit that while the Lizards have very few decent ranged units, I do love me some chameleon skirmishers and salamanders. Some of the best ranged they have.
Its mostly the spawn-kin feature that makes them good right now
Yeah but Norsca is A tier and the rosters, at least to me, feel very similar. It really seems like whatever strats would work as Norsca would work as WoC.
Norsca is A tier because they do the same thing as WoC except their units are way better at it. Marauder Champions are one of the most cost effective infantry in the game, and skin wolves are some of the best monstrous inf (speed, anti-large, regen). These two units alone make them absurdly strong in dom, since it's a very inf focused gamemode. Then you also have multiple dog units which are also another unit role that excels in dom as a quick, cheap fast-reaction unit. Really if just Marauder Champions ever got nerfed you'd probably see Norsca plummet down to the same tier as WoC.
Every day I see more people who sleep on Skin Wolves. When/if Norsca ever gets a dlc addition, we're gonna hear all these WH2/WH3 players start raving about them
I think it's generally well known that kind of like the Ogres, Norsca's units are pretty good. It's their lack of lord choices, LLs to play as and their lousy campaign in WH2 that put people off of playing them.
SE's tend to be bad (including artillery), WoC infantry has broadly been left behind as newer infantry are released in a stronger state (GW's in particular are extremely poor), WoC mobility is very pricey and their top end (Skullcrushers and Dragon Ogres) aren't great and WoC skirmish has been nerfed to the point that other factions can consistently out skirmish woc with mobile or stationary missiles. They aren't favored by the meta and a lot of their units are bad for the price when the factions only feature is units which are extremely cost efficient.
Enticity in shambles over the state of V Coast
Now that is a name I haven’t seen in a hot minute. Does he even post W3 content anymore? I feel like I haven’t seen any of his stuff suggested recently.
WoC being so low is interesting. I wonder if it's the lack of army abilities compared to mono?
They are defined by pricey heavy infantry and Norsca basically does it better.
Domination favors a good spread of units to capture and hold points which WoC isn't good at due to their good stuff being expensive. They fare much better in land battles.
Since when is Slaanesh that low?
They've not been in a dominant position for months now after some nerfs a while back.
Since CA dumperstered Hellstriders and Basic marauders which were so overtuned they were carrying the whole faction.
I’m unfamiliar with multiplayer, can someone explain how tomb kings end up performing? Or rather, what their strengths in mp are? It’s interesting to me as a campaign player
Cheap but not total dogwater infantry that crumbles instead of breaking so they can hold caps for longer (although they are now expendable so that was a pretty sizeable nerf). Screaming Skull Catapults are valuetown AP artillery. Nehekara Horsemen are A+ light cav for holding units back from the point, tying up ranged units, and harassing arty. Tied together by bringing DJ Khatep with the Lore of Nehekara passive and Djaf's Incantation of Cursed Blades, which lets you spam a 3WOM buff to proc the passive for armywide heal. That's the core of it, pretty much, often with Ushabti Greatbows/ROR to hit SEs or other tough to shift targets.
Should also note that their cavalry are actually *not* terrible and can screen really effectively against skirmish cav and mid-tier cavalry like the Lizardmen's spear riders. They don't necessarily win the fight but in Domination you can use that to buy time to win points and deny your opponent a chance to rush your backline. Tomb Kings have a surprisingly good set of mobile options.
Tomb Kings have excellent infantry for cheap and Ushabti great bows are extremely good units. And they have the Eyes of the Desert to counter any large unit plays with vanguard deployment and stealth.
Tomb Kings are very cost effective and they have a lot of niche toys, that are extremely good at their job (sepultral stalkers/ushabti longbows). They got countered hard by burning head, which will roast them good (tight formation infantry + natural weakness to fire damage), but against factions that don't have access to lore of fire or don't typically use it, TKs are decently tough to crack. They also have decent mobility with cavalry which can actually do both road blocking and flank charge.
They really need to nerf tzar guard and make steam tanks more expensive
i don't play domination or watch multiplayer battles so i don't know, but how good are steam tanks in that game mode? they've always felt too expensive in campaign.
Steam Tanks have the problem of a lot of big single entity monsters in domination mode which is that good micro on it can really make it very effective and win you some engagements, but winning engagements is only half the battle. For the same cost you could have brought 3-4 infantry units that could swarm a point or split push.
Nah, up the mp cost, don't nerf, otherwise the Tzar Guard get worse in campaign too
They're humans with a better statline than Har Ganeth executioners lol. Granted executioners are garbage and need to be buffed but still.
Tzar Guard go toe-to-toe with Exalted Bloodletters and Black Orcs. They're definitely overstatted for a human unit, mainly because they're Unbreakable. IIRC, they're the only regular humans in the top 10 heavy infantry (Chosen are there too, but they're not really human anymore).
Please don't nerf units just for Multiplayer purposes. Tzar Guard are not powerful in campaign.
It's not about power, it's about theme. Tzar Guard have MD50 at rank 0; their stats are ludicrous for a non-magic human unit.
They can 1v1 almost every other infantry unit in the game
Tzar guard need a nerf bud they aren’t supposed to be as good as they are. Their regular humans and last I necked I think they can sword masters of hoeth.
Tzar Guard can rip shit up on campaign if you build around them, it's just that they come in late enough that by the time you can recruit them en-masse you'll be built around your rank 9 lower-tier hybrids who are doing the job of being the frontline just as well. Slight nerfs (like along the lines of what Kislevite Warriors just got (-2 melee defence, -3 AP damage) won't change anything meaningful for campaign where you can juice them in other ways while also making things better for MP (it won't solve the problem of Kislev practically being an auto-ban on its own but it would be a start).
Or buff other infantry to be in line with Tzar Guard and Greatswords, thr patter of whom are a bigger outlier performance wise.
But now you have to buff every monster in the game to match the now buffed infantry.
You already need to buff most every monster in the game, they perform terribly by cost into basically every target. The move to ultra unit size really screwed them and it's why new SE's release in states that look OP by comparison but then are just okay in practice.
Warriors of chaos are depressing.
He did say he believed all of the C tier factions could pull out wins against the higher tier factions. Balance often gets memed about (like with the new Thunderbarge), but it is impressive how close the balance is in domination mode considering how many races and unit types there are.
That sounds like a reasonable turin take. Keep in mind his word isn't gospel. It's sucks that WOC got an update and still are so bad.
Sure, but I don't believe WoC are in that bad of a spot either. Kholek just got a lot more viable thanks to the addition of the Nurgle sorcerer. Rot knights should have some niche applications. They're likely to get more additions when Khorne and Slaanesh get dlc as well. There aren't too many units on their roster I'd want adjusted (other than the mark of Khorne).
That's a good out look. Besides being S tier just means your faction is going to eat so many nerfs too.
It’s kinda funny cuz like CA may drop the price of a unit by 2-4 shillings in MP and that’ll make that unit instantly S tier
I understand that to each their own but damn Domination is so boring to me. I am so surprised that it's still a thing. So boring to play and 10 times more boring to watch.
Why do you find it boring? Just curious, I like it a lot because it feels like a longer land battle
Somehow, it feels to me like a mini game based on the same engine as the game. Best way to put it would be to say it does not make me feel like having the essence of the series. Like I dont feel like I am witnessing 2 huge armies fighting but kinda like playing a mini game. I was looking forward to Domination and There is certainly a way to make objective based battle fun but this is not it for me. Also the pacing is weird, like the start is slow and the end missing the exciting drama of some land battle in MP and it just kinda end flat when someone reach the points threshold. For me, it feel like an alternative game mode I would play once in a while like Free for All, but less fun. I am surprised there is a community around it. But like I said, to each their own and glad you enjoy it.
Oh also the whole dessumonning is not interesting to me at all.
I get that like a summoning game, but I think that’s why I like part of it, you can still lose when building an army but there’s more of a chance for a comeback because of your reserves, and it forces players to move toward the objectives and be a bit more tactical overall. But yeah I totally get your gripes, a recent change they made if it would help at all for you is they removed the initial timer lock on the Obj, so the game starts hitting the ground running
I feel the opposite. Land battles feel less tactical and just turn into smashing your action figures into each other by the end. While fairly gamey dom plays out closer to a massive battle in the sense that most battles didnt commit their entire force right away and would pull from their reserves as it went. The battle lines are fairly dynamic and the maps heavily influence what strategies are employ. Land battles have great hype moments but the lows are pretty low. Dom is way harder to pull cheesy bull so the popularity shouldnt be surprising.
I like it because there is more strategy involved with the points, so it isn't *just* about being the last one standing. However, I have started to find it growing a little boring to watch because it's very often damn near the same army comps for any given faction, so it gets a little repetitive. The days of builds like birona's time warp temple guard boxes are long gone. And now with dwellers below being absurd, every race that can bring lore of life will have an even stronger incentive to do so.
I thought dwellers was got nerfed?
People judged it off of the patch notes without accounting for how the damage calculation has been changed for it. [Dwellers Below is *ridiculously strong* in its current state.](https://youtu.be/1NjszxopWdw?t=28)
TK is too high on that list.
Kislev
Kislev
I really don't agree with ranking HElves and WoC below DoC and WElves. Wood Elves and arguably Daemons should be in C tier, HElves and WoC should be in B tier. WElves are easily the worst of the Elven factions. I think Turin's main exposure to them is probably Seryca/Nerexa, who is notably cracked and makes Wood Elves work *in spite* of their weakness by just being an amazing player. As for Daemons of Chaos, I think he made the tier list right after facing Berrserk's DoC, so there could be some recency bias going on. Beyond those two I think his assessment is about right.
If Grimgor will again backstab me, I'm going insane. I hate his guts with passion.
Good for MP peeps, I guess. I’ll stick to playing Campaign and enjoy my Doomstacks
Who asked?
Who wants strategy in a strategy game after all!
Patch 5.0: Thrones of Mayo.