Anything without a gun that doesn't explode - Trash Guns - Good Cannons - Better Necrofex - ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY My real issue with some of the evil factions though is that their expendable units block line of sight, IMO if a unit has the expendable trait your ranged units should just ignore them and shoot anyway.
Every time I start a run with these guys I intend to make a well diversified army and always end up with a massive necro doomstack... 10/10 would recruit again
if you're interested in a few other comps, I've messed around with a ton, and these are my two favourites. Firstly air superiority stack. Use leviathans as tanks, to make blobs around. Then terrorgheists to smash the enemy ranged, along with a few deckdropper bombers, while a few deckdropper handguns snipe the enemy lord. Spellcasters with stalk nuke the blobs around the leviathans with vangheists revenge/wind of death/krakens pull. Once the ranged is done with, the terrorgheists can breath attack lords/heroes, while the bombers help destroy the blobs. The other one that's fun is a rotting promethean gunnery mob stack. They can fire while moving, so you just stay mobile. Whenever one of your units gets caught you charge in with the other prometheans while unleashing your magic on the area, but otherwise you just keep on the move and take out the fast units first, then the ranged. Otherwise there's the classic early game stack of 10 handguns, 4 mortars, 2 carronades, 1 mornghul haunter, 1 gunnery wight and a spell caster. The mortars clear the chaff from ranged, while the carronades take out the cav, then large monsters. The handgunners shoot at anything in range, but particularly prioritise lords/heroes. The gunnery wight buffs the artillery and snipes the lord, while the mornghul hunter either stalks and takes out enemy artillery, or tanks. The spellcaster lord/hero use summons to distract the enemy when they get close, then nuke the area around them with wind of death/vangheists revenge.
I’m surprised the armor piercing zombie gunners aren’t A tier because usually that’s where effective early game missile unit belongs. Perhaps it’s because legend is always able to get necroflex so early that non of those units matter.
I dont think that they are "effective". Because of their low range, huge unit size and loose formation its really hard to get all of them to fire if you spam them. Legend plays on ultra so its even worse. Another huge problem for gunners is that you dont actually have a unit that can tank for them apart from heroes because everything else blocks your line of sight too much.
@@Berethgor I wouldn’t consider 140 low range for a gun unit and their large unit size means more fire power if positioned well (that’s 30 more guns!). Yes it shares all the problems a gunner unit has but for their low price point and the armor piercing it provides I really can’t complain. I will not use them in mid to late game but I can’t find a better early game go-to unit in the roster. Usually legend puts good early game unit in A tier so people know what to use at the start of the game but none of the A tier units in this list is available from the get go (except bloated corpse but that more like a warp bomb ability than a unit).
@@plumbusc1379 I totally agree that its the best early game unit that VC has, but the VC early game is over really fast so thats probably why legend didnt give them A tier.
Never heard of comparing Deck Gunners to Ratling guns. They definitely should be compared to Jezzails - similar range, similar firepower, similar role on a battlefield.
Yeah, Deck Gunners are conceptually similar to Jezzails but don't quite work out as well because you don't have the ways to support them with upgrades that Skaven do. One of the things that really make Skaven weapons team armies sing is the combination of tech tree and engineer support upgrades (plus the workshop for Skryre) whereas Vampire Coast's tech tree just doesn't have the same benefits in for Deck Gunners, which get left out of the range upgrade tech. That's sort of a problem with the Vampire Coast in general. Their tech tree really just doesn't give most of their units a lot of juice. Like who needs a tech that gives +3 Bonus vs Infantry? +3? It's a fucking insult.
When they first came out, the rate of fire for the Deck Gunners was definitely comparable to Ratling guns. The Vampire coast has received significant nerfs to ranged units and entity unit numbers since then (because PvP crowd)
Idea for once these have all been done, do a rating of the Doomstack rated units showing the top tier doomstack down to the worst doomstack? I think you've done a video like this, but it'd be cool to see a tier list of.
Really incredible just how hard these guys have been hit by the MP gang nerf bat. Back closer to launch the Coast felt pretty diverse, nowadays you simply CANNOT get away with using 3/4 of their roster in anything higher than hard difficulty.
The only thing in Legends bottom tier that actually correlates with the stat nerfs is the Deck Droppers with rifles. Animated hulks have been crap since release, prometheans have been slightly less crap as they exist to be character mounts and do nothing but have high armour on their own, and everything else in his bottom tier gets regularly used in MP. Depth Guard are melee infantry and therefore generally bad in campaign anyway, they get used a little bit in MP but they're expensive and match up dependant. Realistically it's nothing to do with the base stat nerfs, when they're one of the worst balanced campaign factions in the game. Seriously, you can recruit complete doomstacks of a tier 5 unit by what turn? Coast have so many powerful techs, great lores of magic, strong heroes, powerful economy tools in pirate coves.
@@khankhomrad8855 Depth Guard have had a few stat changes, not all nerfs if I remember correctly. But also notice that despite the changes, Legend doesn't put them in the bottom tier despite how much they cost and their recruitment tier, and initially states they are good fighters, remembering that higher difficulties makes high tier melee infantry noticeably less effective as well. They also only really see niche use in MP because they don't fit general Coast strategy as well as other options. Syreens are tankier due to their ethereal nature and still perform quite well as damage dealers due to their high AP, and deckhand mobs are cheap and better at holding people off your guns.
The other problem with units that overperform in autoresolve is that the AI will try to send armies it considers at least as strong as them when fighting you, since bombers are autoresolve machines, it's a lot more likely to have the AI throw at you two or more stacks because it thinks it doesn't stand a chance with only one, then you get overwhelmed
Bombers were so good as a front line unit if you wanted to play around with the roster outside necrofex. Cheap, explosive damage to blow everything out of the water, unlike other frontlines you could use them in sieges particularly settlements with a corner and net hundreds of kills. But model changes happened, and I don't know where you can put them now. Multiplayers get so defensive when you blame them for factions sucking but Vampire Coast will languish in mediocrity forever in my opinion because of Multiplayer.
@@m.z.671 Zombie Pirate Gunnery Mob (Bombers) Number of men changed from 160 to 120 Melee Attack changed from 12 to 14 Additional hit points changed from 46 to 50 Reload Skill changed from 0 to 10 Reload Time changed from 9 to 10 Base Explosion Damage changed from 15 to 16 Armour-piercing Explosion Damage changed from 5 to 4 Cost changed from 400 to 450 Twisted and the twilight, my least favorite balance patch I think, lots of mediocre to bad changes for pve.
plus: since they are rated so highly you loose a lot of balance of power with every single piece of ammunition they use up. If you dont get great value out of them you are actively shooting yourself in the foot
I was surprised to see bombers so low. They certainly aren't doomstack material, but I like putting them behind my crappy pistol gunnery mobs to give my enemy a rude welcome once they close the distance to melee range. I don't need no stinkin' front line! If the enemy gets close, blow them up faster!
Yes, my thoughts exactly. They are the best pure meat shield. B-tier in my book as long as you use them as a meat shield and avoid the mentioned auto-resolve trap.
Depth guard are one of the coolest units but holy heck whey do they cost as much a black orks while having less entities and less hp per entity??? Seriously they're the only one infantry unit with the same entity number as cavalry.
They were ungodly when they were introduced in a few showcase battles pre-release. They had much more HP and maybe better stats. The only thing that put a stop to them was a Mammoth but there's no infantry unit in the game that can stand up to one (except Grimgor's Immortulz for obvious reasons). After that CA, in their usual manner, nerfed it into oblivion and didn't bother to look their way since.
@@zaizvp90 The polearms version is their best anti-large melee unit and perform quite well in that specific, very situational role. The great weapons version should be mixed with your other front line melee. Overall, both versions are best used defensively and as reserve/support/counter units. He got it right putting them in C-tier, but an argument can be made for the polearms version to be put in B-tier.
Because they are good at multiplayer, one changes and they become broken. Like many said, Vcoast gets nerfed so hard because they dominates multiplayer in early days of WH2
My biggest problem with deep guard is that they only have 60 models, so it's hard to cover the holes and make a firm frontline. Also if they get focused by AI, and they do, they get melted faster, they take more time to kill large enemies than other units, and that's it, they're good, but the price and 60 models make them a big eeeeeeh for me
Personally I'd swap the mortar and Caronade around. For sieges I much prefer using the motars to soften up everyone inside while The Necros can kill the towers. Caronades do kill towers better but after that they are useless in a siege. And since you're going to be raiding a lot of settlements with VC I prefer the mortar for that purpose.
I'd agree, Caronade is useless in sieges and in open battle you'll be lucky to get 4-5 shots away before the enemy is in melee range. Mortars will always do more for you.
Also, caronades are good for single target, which is what you have handgunners, deckgunners, and Necrofex for. Clearing chaff and winning the infantry/skirmish fight is more impactful than just some chip damage on their monsters.
So much truth in this thread. Sometimes I never recruit cannons at all. Sure the mortar is less accurate but the thing with mortars is that even if you miss you do a ton of damage as along as you aim it properly.
Anyone else feel like Vampire Coast needs a solid buff? Because of being nerfed every patch since launch because of multiplayer, up until recently, they are so mediocre in campaign. The biggest let down is the fact that aside from the handgunners, all their zombie based units are dreadfully bad.
true. I bought them because of the whole aesthetic, but playing them, even on normal, is just a pain and simply not fun. I have more fun with the chaos warriors or norsca than with them
@C U Next Tuesday I managed to win them in a giveaway and thank god that I didn't spend money on them Absolute trash faction apart from necros Boring to play 90% of the roster is useless and shit even on normal difficulty Vamp counts are so much more enjoyable compared to coast
I would have put mortars into A. Through they deal less damage, their performance in sieges is outstanding. What is more, they will keep shooting even if enemy engages your frontline
they are a supremely powerful early game stack too. 8 of them in an army, filled up with cheap cannon fodder melts down everything. And their accuracy actually becomes pretty good once the get a few levels
Handgunners are definitely S-tier actually. They have the same guns as empire handgunners and Dwarven Thunderers, but they have 120 models per unit instead of 90-80 units for the competition. They also have the More Powder ability that grants them +30% damage for the first 4-5 shots. This means that they do 195% the damage per salvo that a Thunderer squad does. They do reload like 10% slower though. And have a little bit worse accuracy. But the handgunners also only cost 86g after upgrades compared to 150-175 for the competition. And the can be raised anywhere as they will always exist in the raise dead pool even if there have been no battles there. Only main drawback is the large size of the unit combined with the slow speed making it slow at turning around and looking over hills.
Seconded. I'm surprised Legend put them at B tier. They're so so good during early game when their massed volleys decimate just about anything else and it's so fucking satisfying to watch. You can go far with Handgunner/Mortar combo spam, atleast early game. IMO deck gunners should be at B tier instead since they don't pack as big of a punch as handgunners, they're just really squishy snipers.
ok, I have really different experiences. whenever I use handgunners, most often in the middle of the first battle I just wished I used another mortar or carronade instead. they deal very little damage agains most targets, and protecting them is not worth the trouble.
@@FuelDropforthewin The largest group of vampires you'd ever see in one place in the lore would be blood knights, and there would be maybe 20 of them. And they'd annihilate an army. Vampires in WH are very few in number and insanely strong/fast.
Yes, especially the gunnery mob. What most players do not understand is how accuracy works. There is a specific range within the declared max range of the the unit card that marks the point of losing accuracy over-proportionally. For most units this range is about 60-80% of their max range, which means positioning your ranged units closer than max range increases their damage drastically, especially when the enemy lines are thinned out and accuracy becomes more important. I don't know the exact stats for the promethean gunnery mob, but I know that the vampire coast are overall very inaccurate which correlates in having a lower effective firing range, meaning the ceiling of the point that marks the accuracy diminution is low. For the gunnery mob it is even lower than with most other mobs of the roster, which makes it seem as if their range attack is useless when looking at it from medium range. But in reality they retain their ranged attack in melee, where it is the strongest and it becomes quite strong. The difference between normal and gunner prometheans is so big, that a normal unit gets its ass kicked by elite units like royal hippogryph knights that cost twice as much, while the gunnery version rips the hippogryphs apart even though they are nearly just half the price. So, I quess most people do not pay attention to that ranged mechanic, and in the heat of battle they do not realize that they lose their prometheans actually to friendly fire, which is a very real problem for vampire coast, as they do not just have many AP missles, but also low accuracy. The promethium are high in numbers for their size and absolutely eat half of the shots, when the angle is not perfect. So their biggest drawback in comparison to heros and even large single entities is that they do cover up even more space than those. So they are highly micro intensive, but not bad by all means.
I disagree with the Mournghuls...I tried to make them work in my campaigns early on...they just die so fast. The hero version is really good but capacity low. But the monstrous infantry is just not worth the slot in the army imho. Better than other units. But definitely not "A Tier" like Deck Gunners or Terrorgheists.
I think they're great, but only if you commit to them. One or two Mournghuls trying to do sneaky stuff will just get owned when they reveal themselves. But then you come in with like 8 of them including Haunters and they can outmuscle whatever gets used in response while munching on key targets. Nice in sieges too, since they can bash down a door on the other side of the map and wander in without the AI noticing at all.
Im going to disagree with this list. I feel like Legend hasnt really tried anything but Necrofex spam if he is saying Deck Gunners and Gunnery mobs arent good. I have a game atm where my Gunnery mob is at 198 range which puts them ahead of High Elf Archers. Also in combination with the sea shanty these babies can vapourise an enemy army before they even get near. In terms of use I have a Necrofex doomstack and a Gunnery mob/Deck gunner army and the Gunnery Mob/Deck gunner army not only costs less but kills faster. If you have a gunnery wight with his abilities and the sea shanty they fire so fast you can kill a full unit of Chosen in under 10 seconds. They are disgustingly powerful once you get the tech upgrades and the LL upgrades.
I refresh this vid, becouse I play VC campain now, and I dont agree only with one choice... Mourngouls... They are sooo fkng slooooow! They can't win CC with anything strong, so ok, lets hunt some artilery or misile by they.. so slow they can cach maybie dwarfs, but dwarfs could be hard for them... In my opiniom they are not "A" tier.
One thing I think worth glossing over is that on top of having necrofex, the vamp coast can do a combined arms support line just as effectively as the dwarves and skaven, with vampire captains summoning trash or depth guard being, not as obstinate but still pretty damn hardy like Ironbreakers, with long range handguns/deck gunners behind and a carronade line to top off with, it works, just like with Skaven and dwarves. But also Necrofex just does all of those roles at the same time by itself and is super accessible so why bother?
Her melee variant is decent I guess, maybe C tier at the start of the campaign, better than zombies for sure. But their biggest problem is how fast they get outdated on the roster. The ranged pistol unit is trash. Better options and just not worth getting.
@@steffent.6477 were you playing on very hard battle difficultly? I play that now, but last time I played Saltspine or w/e her name is, I played on normal/normal and recall that unit doing just fine at the start of the campaign, but I replaced them very quickly.
@@jonstalin5992 artificial meme difficulty doesnt increase the amount of damage they take so your point is completely moot. They're just as good at holding back a frontline for your guns to dish out the actual damage on VH as they are on easy
@@kvltofsobek90 HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHhHH ey lad Google real quick what higher BATTLE difficulties give to the ai army, and come back make that statement again I dare ya
@@MalacayHooves They also have 160 units and cost 300 gold to raise from anywhere. If you have a free slot in your ranged army then there is very little blocking they need to do to justify the low cost.
I have a kind of love-hate relationship with the Deckgunners. They are super good at killing dangerous targets quickly, and are the best on the roster at dealing with flying monsters, especially those cursed rainbow roosters. But my God, how thin they are! One volley of any archers - and they already crumble, two volleys - and they are gone. And the AI is VERY keen to kill them. They are so good, but at the same time, not good enough to build an entire army around their protection.
I was surprised that the depth guard wasn't trash. They are not only REALLY expensive, but they are also tier 4 and 5. For their tier and cost they underperform something fierce since they almost loose or win but get beat up against considerably cheaper units of the same class. You will get better value out of Greatswords since they are both lower tier and cheaper.
They are trash Tier D or Pooptrash, I made a comment about it, they are worse than Greatswords and possible worse than other similar elite tier 3 melee infantry. You get more holding value and price/performance value with just Zombies with polearms.
Nah, Greatswords are 1000x times worse, true Depth Guard is higher tier and expensive but at least they have decent stats and are capable to somewhat hold the line and have killing power, Greatswords are literally useless and will kill some skeletons at best
@@ikitclaw4852 Nope price/performance/tier other Tier 3 not just greatswords but other tier3 elite infantry perform better than Depth Guard, they have no real holding power even with The Hunger, this has been tested not just by myself but by other youtubers both in single player and multiplayer, you are better off getting Zombie polearms for the holding power and way cheaper armies.
@@theyux1 I made another solo comment about this, when it comes to price/performance you can use Zombie Polearms or Zombie Pistols, you don't need more than that and summons to hold the line. On another point Depth Guard are also disliked in the multiplayer community for also not being cost effective and not doing their job efficiently-
Poor Vampire Counts. Coast got a ranking before they did. Legend forgot about them when doing the WH1 launch factions like CA did when updating factions in WH2.
With this one Legend had to check unit stats a lot to remember how good units are. Maybe with Counts he doesn’t even remember the roster beyond skeletons and vampires so he needs to do some research on the rest.
Depth guard propably would need more models to be at least viable in some way. Regenration is fine, but if you have such little models, every dead is really hurting the unit alot.
It's actually kinda the opposite Lower model counts means more hp per which means more time for the models to regenerate Units with high model counts lose models very fast which means they lose max hp really fast
@@lucasbeck1391 that's actually false, the game is coded with HP per entity so higher tier higher number units will always have more health. What the first comment said was "keep the same health per model and increase the count to 80 or 90 to match other very high tier infantry"
@@lucasbeck1391 it won't hinder it neither :/ and having a unit that is dependant on the fact that there is a wizard to heal them is, for a unit of that tier, an indication of under-performance
@@lucasbeck1391 You are correct, what I meant is more models with the same HP as they have now. Since it still feels like they die so quickly for an elite unit. Or what should count as an elite unit. If they'd be like tier 3 that would be okayish I think, but considering they are tier 4 and 5? The unit loses models WAY to fast to actually use them in a meaningful way. Thats beside the fact that the VC are a ranged faction, so they'd need blockers more than damage dealers. Anti large variant to defend against cav and monsters is fine, but anti infantery? Not really something you'd need. Dwarfs while also having some dmg dealing infantery mainly have blockers, and their best melee unit is propably the best blocker the game has to offer overall, their stats just make em perfect for that job. They perform their role so much better than the Depth guard in comparison it's not even funny tbh - I mean they block cav better than the depth guard while not having any anti large
Depthguard are worst than Greatsword, worse value over all, In Legendary/Very Hard difficulty I've killed Depthguard with High Elf Rangers 1v1 without buffing the rangers with skills or magic(varely at most with the sligth buff in the forest). That's a tier 1 unit beating tier4 and 5 units in 1v1 combat in Very Hard battle difficulty, Greatswords and other similar tier 3 elite infantry are objectively better than Depth Guard, they are also critized for sucking in multiplayer (not very relevant for campaign but they do have a point). Them having The Hunger is irrelevant to their overall performance. Depth Guard should b Tier D on Pooptrash in this list, I've tested them a lot and they are worst than other Elite Infantry units that were put on D tier. Edit: Zombie pistols are way better than depth guard by a massive margin and they shouldn't be on the same tier and even Zombie with polearms are better value/price/tier holding power than Depth Guard. Also you shouldn't count Frenzy as an "ability" as when you talk about stalk, regeneration, perfect vigor or an active ability that is very useful, as Frenzy is just a small stat boosts that could be as base value incorporated incorporated and it wouldn't be taken into account. Edit2: Zombie Handgunners(rifles) perform better than Mornghouls, bloat zombies and even tend to perform better than Deck Gunners, weird that you didn't put them on A tier.
I completely agreed with your rankings of Mortars (A) and Great Cannons (B) in the Empire army, so it's interesting to see you basically reverse those rankings here with the Vampire Coast. I'm especially surprised by the Mortars, given they have nearly identical stats and are even available an entire tier earlier for Vampire Coast! I could maybe see the idea that you value anti-large artillery more for some reason, but between Deck Gunners and Gunnery Mob with handguns, you arguably handle large entities even better than the Empire does. And if you're at the point where you're just using Necrofex-based armies instead, you probably aren't using Mortars or Carronades at all, right?
Mortars only B tier? They are the best vamp coast artillery IMO. You can rush them super quickly and easily win any battle for quite a long time. They trivialize sieges and can arc over units extremely well which eliminates all line of sight issues. I usually build 2 necrofex and 6 mortars in every army I have.
if you're interested in a few other comps, I've messed around with a ton, and these are my two favourites. Firstly air superiority stack. Use leviathans as tanks, to make blobs around. Then terrorgheists to smash the enemy ranged, along with a few deckdropper bombers, while a few deckdropper handguns snipe the enemy lord. Spellcasters with stalk nuke the blobs around the leviathans with vangheists revenge/wind of death/krakens pull. Once the ranged is done with, the terrorgheists can breath attack lords/heroes, while the bombers help destroy the blobs. The other one that's fun is a rotting promethean gunnery mob stack. They can fire while moving, so you just stay mobile. Whenever one of your units gets caught you charge in with the other prometheans while unleashing your magic on the area, but otherwise you just keep on the move and take out the fast units first, then the ranged. Otherwise there's the classic early game stack of 10 handguns, 4 mortars, 2 carronades, 1 mornghul haunter, 1 gunnery wight and a spell caster. The mortars clear the chaff from ranged, while the carronades take out the cav, then large monsters. The handgunners shoot at anything in range, but particularly prioritise lords/heroes. The gunnery wight buffs the artillery and snipes the lord, while the mornghul hunter either stalks and takes out enemy artillery, or tanks. The spellcaster lord/hero use summons to distract the enemy when they get close, then nuke the area around them with wind of death/vangheists revenge.
I actually like the rotting Prometheans since what I resolved to in my campaign was arty heavy and whatever holds the line. Most things are destined to die imo in their roster.
If I was rating this on normal difficulty, I'd probably give depth guards a C tier. Above that they are garbage. They just can't hold versus anything worth holding against. 60 leadership means they'll start disintegrating real fast, 60 models means they get badly outnumbered versus anything, and mediocre MD means they'll take damage in most fights versus practically anything above zombies. No resistance versus arrows, nowhere near the speed or the raw mass of bodies required to really counter cavalry, and obviously the usual infantry weakness to magic and artillery. They don't even have regen, they just have the hunger, meaning they'll slowly regen health while rapidly getting murdered in melee. They are a chaff blender that loses versus anything else despite having elite tier upkeep.
When I played the Vampirates on Hard bd, I recruited them alongside Syreens. They soak up all the ammo the enemy throws at them, they die quicker than the Syreens, but they never really started disintegrating except in losing battles, and held their own respectably against mid-tier infantry. I agree with what you said, but not to the extremes you mentioned.
Also, rotten prometheans goes from poop/C to A/S tiers in normal Depth guards is meant to cut through chaff infantry, and they'll do that very well. Depth guards with halberd will ABSOLUTELY MURDER anything that has large entity size. I had two units of them just murder Eltharion within 30s, and I'm not exaggerating.
In your future tier lists of a faction, please include heroes and their mounted variants. And Ogres too. Their usefulness only matters within each individual roster, and so these videos are the best place to discuss them. A mounted hero can turn a meh mount into something epic, or not much of a difference at all, so it does matter. The lores of magic of a hero are also important mainly within a faction's list, because some units will benefit more from buffs/debuffs, or be able to position and hold enemies better for damage spells.
11:10 Deck Droppers are actually another unit where the absolutely horrible very hard battle difficulty cheats destroy the balancing completely. On Normal and in MP you can get a lot of value out of them. 19:45 There's another aspect to Mortars: They are not affected by terrain because they shoot in an arc. Carronades shoot in a strait line and are therefore obstructed often. Also, Mortars are way better at killing infantry while carronades are way better at killing single entities and enemy artillery. Comparing these two is a bit strange considering the fact that they have completely different roles on the battlefield.
It is also strange that he gave the opposite ranking for artillery in the Empire roster. (mortars A rank, cannons B rank.) This despite the fact that VC artillery are almost identical. (Difference is that empire have better accuracy and cost more. They are also tier 3&4 compared to 2&3 so it takes empire longer to get cannons.)
@@plumbusc1379 No, but the leadership cheats are awfull for deck droppers - they are dumped down to 36 leadership which means they almost immediately start to crumble, and the +8 to enemy units means that the deck droppers cannot break them as they usually would. And to make matters even worse depending on the campaign difficulty enemy units also get XP a lot faster which means that your newly recruited deck droppers will run into gold chevron units all the time. In short - the whole currect Very Hard battle difficulty system is bloody awfull.
@@HH-hd7nd Agreed. They should make the AI smarter instead of giving them so many cheats but I guess that’s difficult. Hopefully with the data gathered in WH2 they can improve the AI in WH3.
In the multiplayer community it's a well-known fact that Animated Hulks are objectively one of the worst units in the game, certainly the worst monstrous infantry. A skilled player bringing them is memeing hard.
So did some test in immortal empires currently just counts vs coast. Currently the only unit on count that beats colossus 1v1 with no spell or etc is a terrorgheist. However, depth guard can beat EVERYTHING on the count roster including the terrorgheist 😳 when doing coast vs coast, only a leviathan can beat a depth guard so doom stack those 2 if money ain't a concern. I've also did depth polearm vs regular and still the regular outshines. By the way, the only thing I can think of is charge from cav or flying the units. I simply have them clash and left them, if they bombard them to lower leadership then I think the outcome would've differ but in terms of straight up brawl those are my results.
imo syreens are A tier, 99% of what Vcoast fights doesnt have magic damage, and by the time you are fighting magic damage regularly you will have phased out the tier 3 units and be on the monster armies, syreens outclass everythign on their tier imo as for mournghuls, i cannot disagree more, C tier at best, for such a cool unit i have tried to make them work so much and they just dont, too slow for cavelry, too squishy for front line, not high enough charge bonus to be a shock unit, they just do not perform well at all, 100% better off just getting a unit of syreens (from the same building at the same tier) hell imo even rotting prometheans outperform them, and all prometheans are is a meat shield
CA has no idea what to do with Coast: even people in multiplayer can't make half the roster work, and the half that was good got nerfed without any reciprocating buffs to the bad ones. The entire faction basically lives and dies on the Gunnery Wights, and Coast would be the weakest faction in the game without them. If so many can't even work in multiplayer, why would we ever use these in singleplayer?
well, they reason VC is so bad is because of multiplayer. they were busted when tehy releases, and they got nerfed into oblivion, but after they became one of the worst factions, they got no buffs whatsoever. VC is just trash
Bloated corpses are S tier units, when the enemy recruits them, because you can cause so much damage with heroes and lords, because they basically are not affected at all, but the bloatie bois explode and kill half of the enemy armie
Glad to see this. One of my favorite factions. Personally a big fan of handgunners, deck gunners, and mortars in the early and midgame. But I gotta admit, once you get necrofexes, they're hard to beat for their versatility.
I would have put mortars into A and carronades into C tier. Carronades don't really serve a purpose in VC armies since you have so much AP damage at fairly long range as is. Mortars though are excellent in sieges since the gun units cant target stuff on the walls easily and just waste ammo and can't shoot over the walls at all. Also the handgun gunnery mobs can get to 180ish range and are one of my favorite units and I close to doomstack with them. A tier easily. You can resurrect at least one in most zones and can get their damage into crazy high, being AP too and while they are squishy, they do have 120 models in a stack, so can serve as emergency tar pits for large units and last quite a while before being wiped out. Unlike archers and other such units, they do not rout so can hold the enemy until the last man.
Hey legend i know these videos are old and you play the battles and are on warhammer 3. But as a warhammer 2 player is there any chance you could do this series again but also considering auto resolve? Or do you know somebody who does?
Jezzail Range: 275 damage: 36 AP shieldbreaker Deck Gunners Range: 245 Damage: 51 shieldbreaker Ratling Guns Range: 145 Damage: 339 AP suppressor Not sure why you're comparing Deck Gunners to Ratling guns, they are more like Jezzails and the 50% extra damage makes them pretty much doomstack tier. Get at least 10 Deck Gunners and a few Vampire casters to spam zombies and you're golden just like Skaven are spamming clanrats in front of their gunline. You can also get a lot of value out of them just running around with dogs to distract the AI while you shoot.
VC looks so nice on paper, but they are soo awful to play.... It was a huge letdown for me. Zombie vampire pirates? Sing me up! Ehhh.. What is this shit... Their big problem that they dont have anyone to tank. Their meatwall zombies block your gunners. Your gunners are sooo freakin slow to reposition, so even binding down the enemy then flanking with gunners doesnt work. Your monsters are also really weak (Morghuls have good dmg, but they are not frontline tanks).. So you either hero spam or necrofex spam... You dont really have any other choice as even your strongest infantry will loose to other factions due the AI cheats AND the low entity numbers. Also for an artillery faction, they dont have a lot of artillery... I would expect some kind of gattling or monstrous artillery (beside necrofex). Like promethian mortar, or leviathan with the hand cannons on top. Something fancy and truly nasty to use because they are just like a weaker mashup of other factions.
The bombers are kind of hitting a similar point to a more-disruptive chameleon skink stalker as a low range, low-ammunition, ranged-attack unit except without all the good sides of the skinks as solo units. HOWEVER. Tuck them near another crappy thing you don't care about... a bit more effective.
I honestly think that the handgunners are more comparable to ratling guns than the deck gunners, to the point that I think it should be obvious. Deck Gunners are mini cannons, while handgun mobs are volume fire, just with more bodies instead of more barrels. Lacking the per unit power but pretty similar in role I find.
I really like the concept of the vampire coast, gives me that curse of the black pearl vibes but how the fuck are undead pirates garbage a killing stuff with their swords and holding a line.... Edit: can you also include hero's in the list, never know what type of winds of magic user i should get.
Mortars are so much fun against the AI in sieges. The AI puts infantry on or near the walls all clumped up and you can just rain shots on them until their army is fully wrecked.
would a vamp coast weapons team army be viable instaed of a necrofex spam? like take a skaven weapons team army and swap the units for a vamp coast version like deck gunners instead of jezzies, mortars/necros instead of plagueclaw/poison wind mortar, hand cannons instead of ratling, vampire lore captains (for summons and heals) instead of plague priests, gunnery wites instead of warlock engineers, I know with vanilla units that sounds not great but if you buff them all with tech you can increase the range of the missle units and artillery and if you get the character that boosts range and the event that also boosts range.
Mostly agree. Handgunner are A tier and the star of your early game (and are very decent in late game). The result of your early game battle will be decided by how well you manage to use these unit and sometimes the bloated corpse. Depth guard are an offensive infantry in a roster which specialized in artillery and range => they are a trap, and a trash tier unit in VH difficulty IMO. I would rather have the crabs in poop tier than these units to hold the line.
I strongly disagree with a lot of this list, mainly coming from the perspective of someone who mostly plays Harkon over the other LLs IMO, most of the roster is situationally useful, even on L/VH, and a lot of units Legend puts in trash should be in C solely for their viability as disposable Raise Dead units. Harkon gets super cheap raise dead and VC in general get a ton of cash from sacking, docks and pirate coves meaning you always have money for disposable raise dead units, especially on the defense when you can stack up raise dead sites in your provinces. Anything I don't mention, I agree with Legend Handgunners are, imo, at very least A tier. They carry you early to mid game and with red line skills and tech/followers can even be decent into late game. Several units of handgunners can delete most SEMs in seconds with focus fire, which is incredible if you're Luthor Harkon and going up against Lizardmen. Most importantly they're cheap meaning you can have several units of them for the price of a single later game unit Polearms with the Drekla follower that Harkon has can be semi-decent at holding the line in early to mid game. They have slightly better MD than regular deckhands and combined with Lore of Vamps summons can hold the enemy back while your other units shoot them. They're C tier to me, not poopstack Bombers are also good in early game, you get them quickly with raise dead and they'll delete low armored infantry. When your early game has lots of Skaven and Skinks, is is helpful. For that reason, the bombers are also C tier imo Deckhand Hand Cannons I think Legend may have overestimated. He didn't mention the fact that, as shotgun units with low accuracy, the high damage is misleading. A lot of their damage will miss except at very close range and imo they're significantly outperformed by Handguns. I'd drop them down to C, I'd put them in poopstack but Lizards have a lot of armored SEMs that Hand Cannons are at least theoretically designed to fight I disagree with Deck Dropper handguns being among the worst units in the faction. When you have the Terrorgheist mount for Harkon, having a single unit of handguns bodyguarding him can be nice just because High Elves and Lizardmen can get some decent flying units. Harkon is a terror in melee, but sometimes you need some trash unit to throw into melee in his place so he can run away or sometimes you need a bit of extra firepower to help him win a fight, in both places a unit of Deck Dropper handguns is nice to have until you can replace them with a Terrorgheist. While I would never suggest actually taking the Deck Dropper red line skills just for the Deck Droppers, I do think it should be mentioned that they do buff Deck Droppers fairly well. Also Legend seemed to think the Deck Dropper Handguns were literally just Handgunners but flying when actually they do have fairly significantly higher damage per shot meaning they can sometimes have use against low model high tier infantry, though Deck Gunners are better for that Animated Hulks are C tier if you can get them through raise dead, because while they are slow and they do have fairly crap stats, tech, followers and red line skills improve them significantly and most importantly they provide some actual mass on your front line, useful for holding SEMs in place. Crabs are better for holding the line but Animated Hulks come up much sooner in Raise Dead, and Harkon gets super cheap raise dead once he's taken his quest item. Entirely disposable front line mass I don't understand the placement of Crabs at all. High mass, high armor, actually fairly fast for Coast. These are easily B tier, they do everything the Hulks do but better and you can get them as summons. They're not at all trash units, I really, really don't understand Legend's placement of them. Legend also says that Mournguls are faster than Crabs, which isn't true, both are speed 45. I honestly wonder if Legend has actually used these units Gunner Crabs do everything that regular Crabs do but they have ranged attacks. These are your cavalry replacements as Coast. These are what defend your flanks and bully enemy skirmish troops. These keep your artillery and Deck Gunners alive until you can replace them with tier 5 . I take 4 of them in almost every army outside of Necrofex Doomstacks. If you really want to, you can make mobile skirmishing stacks with just them since they can move and fire at the same time. Legend is just wrong in this case. A tier
Depth Guard are such a waste. Absolutely gorgeous models, one of the best in the game. They need an easy +20 models with an according health increase. It feels like they were sacrificed on the altar of Multiplayer and it's heartbreaking. Completely disagree with Mortars, since getting 4 mortars at tier 2 is the way for a super smooth early game.
Handgunners are definitely A tier for me. Checkerboarded handgunners, once you extend their range a bit, are really good overall, if you can delay the approach of the AI, make them derp around, and support with some artillery. Single entities tend to have a very, very bad day against that checkerboard and mortars tend to sort out the infantry. Deck gunners, meanwhile, just never really do it for me. They have good stats but they don't deal the damage. Too few models with a modest fire rate, too inaccurate, not enough punch per shot for a serious alpha strike, not enough speed to reposition. For a tier 4 unit, that's just not good enough. And comparing deck gunners to rattling gunners??! What? The gunners destroy anything they catch full on. Deck gunners absolutely do not. 50 damage per model per 10 seconds times 16 models is 800 damage total over 10 seconds, assuming they all hit, which will not be the case. That's just not all that impressive. Rattling gunners have a base of 350 damage per 10 seconds per model, and with Skryre boosts they push over 1000. Per model. With infinite ammo.
Handgunners are definitely S-tier actually. They have the same guns as empire handgunners and Dwarven Thunderers, but they have 120 models per unit instead of 90-80 units for the competition. They also have the More Powder ability that grants them +30% damage for the first 4-5 shots. This means that they do 195% the damage per salvo that a Thunderer squad does. They do reload like 10% slower though. And have a little bit worse accuracy. But the handgunners also only cost 86g after upgrades compared to 150-175 for the competition. And the can be raised anywhere as they will always exist in the raise dead pool even if there have been no battles there. Only main drawback is the large size of the unit combined with the slow speed making it slow at turning around and looking over hills.
And yea, Deck Gunner are alright, but they are more comparable to Jazzels than ratling gunns. (Slightly shorter range and acc, about 40% more damage.) They tend to do well if you put them on a hill behind your normal troops were they can fully utilize their long range. They do not do amazing damage and they are very squishy though. But they are good at taking out enemy elite troops and single unit monsters.
I like mortar way more than a cannon/carronade because with mortar they are able to shoot over a unit in front of them thus you don't need to micro those cannon to keep them shooting
I keep 1-3 carronades for cavalry/monstrous units as well as for manual aim when holding the line, and towers since you will be sieging lizardmen constantly the rest is howitzers and bess until i get necrofex colossus
I consider myself an expert with VC. They were the first faction with which I completed a Legendary campaign. I agree with everything except the ZPGM bombers and Rotting Leviathan. They should both be in B tier. ZPGM bombers are the best low-tier meat shield, but yeah, the auto-resolve trap is a thing with them. The Leviathans are OK but require a lot of babysitting and can die in a instant if you take your eyes off them for a few seconds. Also, I was surprised with your placement of Scurvy Dogs because of your justified bias against cavalry, but I agree 100%.
Awww. I love using the deck droppers in my armies. I obliterate enemy flanks with them, and harass in sieges. They require quite a bit of micro, and it requires you taking out enemy air. Though the latter is easy with some vampirate powder. They are also great at taking out most arty once you take out/occupy enemy flyers.
Very interesting and insightful tier list, just in time for my first Vampire Coast campaign. What people should keep in mind: Units being considered "trash" does not mean that you should never recruit them. You will need zombies - and sometimes hulks or prometians - in the early and mid game to hold the line because you can't win against most rush armies (especially lizardmen) with just zombie handgunners.
for my first campaign i used hangunners+ artillery format and it worked pretty much like weapons teams. less firepower yeah but SUPER replacable , cheap and convenient
Legend got a bit too swept up in the autoresolve argument with the artillery mob bombers. They should at least be at the same teir as normal artillery mob they have simmilar prices but the bombers can at least wipe out light infantry.
I just wanna add my experience with VC here...AP hand guns for me are atleast A tier, not to start with but you can upgrade their range to 184(208 with gun line i think), dmg to 25 per model for my settings of 120 units(plus 30%for first few volleys), meaning for low cheap tier 2 unit they can dish out dmg comparable to the best archery units in a game, they shit on high elf archers... My tactic is to not have melee inf at all, just line of handgunners and your heroes and lords(who i stack ward and rezz on them) in front to get enemy to swarm at them and then just watch as handgunners just melt already softened army from your arty and colossus... Also crabs with guns are one of best monster unit in a game...
I laughed at the deck droppers, man, VCoast is my fav faction and i can't agree more, i never ever create them, they just takes 3 slots in the roster for nothing ! However on your analyses i disagree on some points : Pirate zombies are imo B tier and not trashtier, why ? Because for bombers they have a lot of models, you can build them at first turn (if you don't sell right away the building) and they are the best frontliner units you can get until you unlock banshees / rothing prom / depth guards. I did so many battles with them, sometimes they will be the top damage dealers ! They crush infantry charges very effectivly. In my late game i always keeps 2 in my balanced armies, behind the lines of some banshees. Rothing prom with and without gunner there are details that makes a ton of difference between them. They do not share the same bonus in the lord red tree and the tech tree. The ones without gunners in burk black armies can get massive physical resistance bonus (40/ 50%) and will outshine banshee while not fearing magic since higher hp per models and fewer models. For the hand canons zombies, at least in the VCoast roster, i'll put them in A rather than B. Use them with wedge formations of banshees/rotting prom and their low range will not be an issue since they do not just pack a punch, they obliterate everything than come in sight. Theses guys are the "ratling guns" of the Vcoast without a doubt ! The moment when lizardmen causes me troubles and when i make bags of them is when i can finaly recruit handgunners and banshees. But great tier list and i can't agree more, Vcoast is the most unbalanced roster ever !
i'm a weirdo who prefer zombie pirate gunnery mob spam :P once you get their firing rate up, they just destroy everything. i tried the deck gunners.. but eh. zombie pirate gunnery mob. especially with the range boost, you have a range of 189...
This is a faction that I really recomend playing with a unit cap mod. I did with Harkon and it was very fun. Otherwise all your armies and battles will look the same.
Personally, the deckhand and deck dropper bombers should rise a tier; I would recruit them over units in the same tier and lower becasue they can clear out infantry formations, light and some heavy cavalry if given time and ammunition given those are engaged in melee.
Deckhand Mob with Handguns make an excellent early-game doomstack, as long as the enemy has less artillery. They are better than all melee options and work wonders as tar-pits due to their model count. Only unit I would rate higher in this list.
I feel like the gunnery mob (bombers) should be changed into a deckhand mob with basically the shitty stats of the normal deckhand mob but with some grenades as a precursor weapon. They would still be pretty crap but I still feel like they would be a bit more useful as a shitty melee unit with a ranged attack. Also would mean there are 3 deckhand mob and 3 gunnery mob units, isntead of 2 and 4.
Zombie pirate gunnery mob (bombers) really deserve a better place in the list. They are so useful at sieges by clearing the walls from enemy infantry if you can attach archers with lord or heroes. Also they make awesome duo with Rottimg prometheans and low entity monsters just keep bombers at the second line to do their thing.
