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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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 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-
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Hey Legend, it is very refreshing to have analytic for the game, not just funny as hell streams. I was attracted to your channel when I look for just that - thoughts and calculations. Also, please have a good rest - I suspected you overstraining yourself with all of this. I live in your time zone and always watched your great streams the morning after. Yeah, prime time for most of your watchers isn't in our normal time, but health is better. Please take care of yourself. Cheers from Vladivostok! 😎
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.
Fun thing about when you start as a high elf faction, if you piss off Noctilus early in the game he'll send massive armies that are 90% Bomber mobs around early and midgame, which you can wipe out with an army of basic high elf archers no problem. Very easy fights, though depending on which High Elf faction you're playing you might want your resources elsewhere (Like having more armies in the Badlands with Yvresse)
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.
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
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%.
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.
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
Hey Legend, thanks for another great vid. Hope you are enjoying your break from streaming, its giving me time to get through your backlog of campaigns I missed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for doing this. I had a feeling you were going to dump on their roster a lot, but was still hopeful there was a unit that I was misusing or something. I really with CA would update the VC roster, nerf some stats, and add a Vamp Coast LL for us to sail the seas over near the Dragon Isles.
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.
Hey Legend loving these videos. If you have the time I would love to see you make a video about how to get the strongest garrison possible for each race based on the level of the settlement. I always struggle with trying to make my settlements valuable but also highly defensive.
I played Vampire Coast for my Legendary campaign ("Battle Realism" stresses me out, so I've only done one). The balanced armies I built were fairly weak, but the campaign still went smoothly because the AI kept attacking the gate garrisons, which at the time contained bloated corpses. Meanwhile Cylostra+Queen Bess+Gunnery Wight pretty much handled sieges with little help from the rest of the army. I eventually had the sense to recruit a few Necrofex, but Bloated corpse and Queen Bess were the true MVP's of that campaign.
Bloated corpses have one other benefit in campaign. The banner that gives stalk. Theres essentially no counterplay, just a chunk of the enemy gone. It uses an army slot and requires replacement at the end of each turn, but god its fun, and can sometimes be genuinely very effective
Always surprised that rotting promethians do poorly for Legend, until I remember they aren't very cheesy. I love their charge defense high mass and armor keeping my gun lines safe from cav. They are also surprisingly easy to shoot past. I don't play dialed up to gorgonzola though, I keep my armies somewhere around an emmental, getting funky but still accessible. Probably explains the different results.
Awesome video, I hope we will get more for Vampire Coast in WH3. Such a cool theme for a faction. Even after all this time I'm still hoping for the Kraken maybe as a giant undead octopus.
Possibly speaking at a lower difficulty. I look at ZPGM (Bombers) as similar to Warpfire Throwers. Very high damage, very high DPS, low range, and requires set up / micro. 1-2 in an army can perform very well. More then that and they struggle to make their value. The only unit with a similar style attack that can be massed is Ironbreakers due to beef (maybe miners /w bc too). In some early game VP armies, I've done 4 deckhands as a "I don't care if it dies there's always more deckhands in raise dead pool" wall, with 4 bombers standing directly behind them lobbing over their heads, and gunner allotment in diagonal shooting positions. It works ok but attritions pretty hard. I also swap bombers out as I gain more handgunners/better units. Ending up with 1-2 Bombers and no deckhands.
@@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.
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.)
@Plumbus C137 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.
im running 12 mortar armies all throughout the campaign. Just have a few heroes or whatever melee unit you want in the front to soak up damage. 12 Mortars melt whole armies in seconds. They can singlehandedly win you any siege. They are reasonably cheap, easy to recruit and all you need as support is some fodder you raise or summon from your ship. Best early to mid game army in my opinion. Also your CoOp partners are gonna love you if you bring these in as support.
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 think the Handgunners and Mortars were underrated. Accounting for cost effectiveness, I'd put both around A tier. Range tech for the Handgunners (plus a follower for one army that can boost it further) and you've got 160-180 range armor piercing gun lines, backed up by 3-4 mortars for infantry killing, and the general and 1-2 fleet captains summoning disposable zombies to tank and you've got a dirt cheap skaven-like army that has carried me even to turn 110+ on legendary. Considering that army is like 1/3 the cost of a Necrofex doomstack, I'd say it's worth an A tier rating.
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?
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.
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 found that mixing depth guard units into a few polearm zombo units has made them way more effective for me, but still would not use them more than rotting prometheans or just spawning deck hands to stall an advance.
Which just uses 2 slots to make one unit more viable. The MP scene can get away with that and it makes some of the units useable (just have them standing in some Zombie Mob to have a meatshield) But in SP its seldom about cost but number of units.
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.
Heres the thing about bombers though, if you're just useing them as ranged support they're crap sure, but that's why you use them as a frontline instead, especially mixed in with a few monsters. You're trading in the garbage stats of your melee infantry for an extra bit of burst damage, which is super helpful for the VC as if you're doing it right most armies should be haggared and falling appart before they reach your lines, letting the burst damage break a lot of whats coming your way.
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...
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.
After you finish with the Unit Roster Tier series, will you be doing a 'Tips and Tricks for each faction' series? Either tips for each faction/species, or tips to avoid?
I really like the bombers for the same reason I like irondrakes. If you can bog the enemy down, the bombers can lob their grenades over the heads of your front line troops. Or into clumps around a Necrofex.
I really enjoy making Leviathan/Necrofex doomstacks, they are amazing at just rolling over everything. The greatest threat for the leviathans is the necrofexes themselves though...
who else takes notice of what the weather is down under every time a new tier list is posted? 24C is a bit much, usually it's below 20C. Summer is coming?
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.
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.
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 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
How about a tier list of all heroes? Considering their combat prowess and campaign influence? If that's too big for one video maybe split for WH1 and WH2 races?
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
Thats why i dont play them alot...so boring Always ending up the same at some point
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 always end up with a bloat doomstack
This is why I always play WH2 with a unit cap mod. Removes this problem.
@@gerudah man of culture eh
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.
that would be nice, but op i think.
I wish that was a thing. Especially for our favorite rat boiz
I wish that existed too. Maybe a huge moral penalty for certain races like dwarves and empire but skaven can fire into their lines with no regard.
Muahahaha. Another one!🎉
All factions are evil.
Missed opportunity for “Poopdeck” and “Doomdeck” to fit the pirate motif.
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.
I was thinking the same thing. What a shame.
They also like TK never received a DLC.
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.
@@guppyitsallgood Correct me if i'm wrong but didn't they repeatedly nerfed Depth Guards stats?
@@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.
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.
Yes, a much better comparison.
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.
@@AshenVictor I totally agree with you. My point was that comparing them to Ratling Guns is quite ridiculous at first place :)
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)
yeah, they're reskined and nerfed jezzails. Definitely worse in almost every way, but still a solid long range unit for those pre-necrophex armies.
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.
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.
@@toggle3927 Yeah, they used to be basically miners with blasting charges with a lot less armor, now they're just worthless
@@toggle3927 What was the change? Or at least, when did it happen?
@@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
Digging the super-high density of usable-information in this format. Subbed. Gonna be checking-in on this channel a LOT once WH3 drops.
Nice
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.
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
Plus you can have 3-4 mortars by turn 8. Really helps to start your steamroll early.
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
Yeah, plus the carronade sucks at sieges due to firing trajectory.
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
That's their biggest downside for me. I play on normal battle difficulty and even then 60 models aren't enough and they die quite quickly.
Agreed, 80 models would do the trick and I think both Depth Guard variants should be recruited at tier 4.
@@aesthetic6573 3rd tier for a dual weapon and 4th for anti large would be good enough, they are siren's competitor.
@@sydorovich2532 and maybe a t5 variant that has both guns and melee
yeah, i recruit them only if i wanted to scale a wall
Thank you for your roster tier ranking, you absolutely help me choosing units without wasting time to do it myself !
Waiting for beastman roaster :)
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.
Absolutely, Mortars >>>> Carronades.
agreed! in general the caronade has pretty annoying firing angles.
I have no idea why I love these so much. Keep em coming!
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.
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?
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.
@@Dr.AvenVon We are talking about the units called "Handgunners" that use muskets, not the unit that actually use handguns. Those are terrible.
100% ive literally had them in late game and crushed enemies they are deffo better than what Legend said
@@chuckwood3426 so am I
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 remember the launch state of handgun deck droppers... They used to melt a stegadon in 10 seconds flat before they were hit with the nerf bat
Now look at them now they are worse then pre buff hawk riders and that’s saying something because they are fucking useless
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.
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.
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?
Damn this tier lists are so enjoyable to watch
I'm surprised on your analysis of Prometheans. I always found them to be very good at holding the line without blocking LoS for my missile units
Totally aggree
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 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.
Its in relation to the faction, vampire coast really really needs a good melee unit to hold the line. And most of the alternatives are that bad
@@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-
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.
If you include their health regeneration, their health pool might be equal or greater idk.
@@darthgroundhog8717 perhaps, but they will loose in melee to any elite and sometimes to mid tier units. very underwhelming performance
@@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
Just started a VC campaign, what great timing
These vids have been really brightening by day in a rough couple weeks! Thanks for the consistent and quality content.
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.
Please keep these tier lists coming. Very helpful to new players who want to try new factions but aren't sure which units to recruit
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.
I've had lots of success with deckdropper handguns. I think they can be pretty good en masse at safely sniping units. They've won battles for me.
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
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.
Hey Legend, it is very refreshing to have analytic for the game, not just funny as hell streams. I was attracted to your channel when I look for just that - thoughts and calculations.
Also, please have a good rest - I suspected you overstraining yourself with all of this. I live in your time zone and always watched your great streams the morning after. Yeah, prime time for most of your watchers isn't in our normal time, but health is better. Please take care of yourself. Cheers from Vladivostok! 😎
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.
Mfw I make the mistake of attacking Sartosa
So bullshit that they can place shots right before the walls
SPOILERS bats doomstack CONFIRMED
Fun thing about when you start as a high elf faction, if you piss off Noctilus early in the game he'll send massive armies that are 90% Bomber mobs around early and midgame, which you can wipe out with an army of basic high elf archers no problem. Very easy fights, though depending on which High Elf faction you're playing you might want your resources elsewhere (Like having more armies in the Badlands with Yvresse)
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.
And then there's DG polearms. I would rate them lower than zombie polearms
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"
@@tetsudo6934 yeah but increasing the model count wont really help the regeneration
@@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
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%.
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.
Watching these videos are so great. I am new to WH2 and These videos really help with understanding with what is "good" and "bad"
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
Hey Legend, thanks for another great vid. Hope you are enjoying your break from streaming, its giving me time to get through your backlog of campaigns I missed.
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.
You can fire then swoop and repeat. Though they are quite squishy.
Loving all the uploads keep em coming Legend!
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.
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.
Wish it was the Vampire COUNTS but this is gonna be fun as well
Vargeists Vargulfs tier A, Wind of Death - Doomstack, the rest is a trash. Here you go
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.
@@Geshmaal That sounds eerily accurate.
Thanks for doing this. I had a feeling you were going to dump on their roster a lot, but was still hopeful there was a unit that I was misusing or something. I really with CA would update the VC roster, nerf some stats, and add a Vamp Coast LL for us to sail the seas over near the Dragon Isles.
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.
Hey Legend loving these videos. If you have the time I would love to see you make a video about how to get the strongest garrison possible for each race based on the level of the settlement. I always struggle with trying to make my settlements valuable but also highly defensive.
What do you mean. You just build walls.
Build walls, there's nothing else to do
I played Vampire Coast for my Legendary campaign ("Battle Realism" stresses me out, so I've only done one). The balanced armies I built were fairly weak, but the campaign still went smoothly because the AI kept attacking the gate garrisons, which at the time contained bloated corpses. Meanwhile Cylostra+Queen Bess+Gunnery Wight pretty much handled sieges with little help from the rest of the army. I eventually had the sense to recruit a few Necrofex, but Bloated corpse and Queen Bess were the true MVP's of that campaign.
Have been waiting for this! Thanks for the great work as always!
Legend you should do hero’s tier list since you really spoke your mind about certain hero’s throughout SYDB and SYDC
Bloated corpses have one other benefit in campaign. The banner that gives stalk. Theres essentially no counterplay, just a chunk of the enemy gone. It uses an army slot and requires replacement at the end of each turn, but god its fun, and can sometimes be genuinely very effective
These videos are the best way to start my mornings at work, cheers legend
Always surprised that rotting promethians do poorly for Legend, until I remember they aren't very cheesy. I love their charge defense high mass and armor keeping my gun lines safe from cav. They are also surprisingly easy to shoot past.
I don't play dialed up to gorgonzola though, I keep my armies somewhere around an emmental, getting funky but still accessible. Probably explains the different results.
Going to buy the vampire coast DLC rn because of this. Thanks for the content!!! CA should thank you too for bringing the money in
These videos are why I finally subscribed, great work
16:45 I've never seen Legend express this much emotion. I wasn't prepared. But I love it.
Honestly, while i started collosies with the dread fleet, the drowned and their etheral units just feel so good to me now.
Awesome video, I hope we will get more for Vampire Coast in WH3. Such a cool theme for a faction. Even after all this time I'm still hoping for the Kraken maybe as a giant undead octopus.
Possibly speaking at a lower difficulty. I look at ZPGM (Bombers) as similar to Warpfire Throwers. Very high damage, very high DPS, low range, and requires set up / micro. 1-2 in an army can perform very well. More then that and they struggle to make their value. The only unit with a similar style attack that can be massed is Ironbreakers due to beef (maybe miners /w bc too).
In some early game VP armies, I've done 4 deckhands as a "I don't care if it dies there's always more deckhands in raise dead pool" wall, with 4 bombers standing directly behind them lobbing over their heads, and gunner allotment in diagonal shooting positions. It works ok but attritions pretty hard. I also swap bombers out as I gain more handgunners/better units. Ending up with 1-2 Bombers and no deckhands.
Depth guard should be like Aspiring Champions, low unit size but high stats. They're vampires, ffs. They're not supposed to be that numerous.
They're 60 man units, that's pretty tiny for infantry.
@@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.
I can't wait for wood elves tier list. Awesome video Legend, as always!
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.)
@Plumbus C137 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.
im running 12 mortar armies all throughout the campaign. Just have a few heroes or whatever melee unit you want in the front to soak up damage. 12 Mortars melt whole armies in seconds. They can singlehandedly win you any siege. They are reasonably cheap, easy to recruit and all you need as support is some fodder you raise or summon from your ship.
Best early to mid game army in my opinion. Also your CoOp partners are gonna love you if you bring these in as support.
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 think the Handgunners and Mortars were underrated. Accounting for cost effectiveness, I'd put both around A tier. Range tech for the Handgunners (plus a follower for one army that can boost it further) and you've got 160-180 range armor piercing gun lines, backed up by 3-4 mortars for infantry killing, and the general and 1-2 fleet captains summoning disposable zombies to tank and you've got a dirt cheap skaven-like army that has carried me even to turn 110+ on legendary. Considering that army is like 1/3 the cost of a Necrofex doomstack, I'd say it's worth an A tier rating.
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?
I would rather compare the Deck gunners to discount Jezzail. Then again, skaven tend to have the best gunpowder units...
Warpstone
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.
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 found that mixing depth guard units into a few polearm zombo units has made them way more effective for me, but still would not use them more than rotting prometheans or just spawning deck hands to stall an advance.
Which just uses 2 slots to make one unit more viable.
The MP scene can get away with that and it makes some of the units useable (just have them standing in some Zombie Mob to have a meatshield)
But in SP its seldom about cost but number of units.
Legend is pumping these out like a madman
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.
With Cylostra’s effects your whole frontline can be 2 or 3 of the Mournghoul heroes and a few units of syreens it is so fun
Heres the thing about bombers though, if you're just useing them as ranged support they're crap sure, but that's why you use them as a frontline instead, especially mixed in with a few monsters. You're trading in the garbage stats of your melee infantry for an extra bit of burst damage, which is super helpful for the VC as if you're doing it right most armies should be haggared and falling appart before they reach your lines, letting the burst damage break a lot of whats coming your way.
1. Crabs with gunners 2. bombers 3. Muskets/deckhands 4. artillery + Lords and heroes . my go to Vampire Coast army
Crabs with gunners are underrated because they are one of very few units that can continue to fire their guns while in melee combat.
@@chuckwood3426 most range units can actually do that, just need to not give them an order and the ones in the back will still fire
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...
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.
After you finish with the Unit Roster Tier series, will you be doing a 'Tips and Tricks for each faction' series? Either tips for each faction/species, or tips to avoid?
Great stuff as always Legend!
Hey Legend, absolutely love your videos thank you.
Just wanted to ask - could you potentially do a tier list for all heros (all factions)?
I really like the bombers for the same reason I like irondrakes. If you can bog the enemy down, the bombers can lob their grenades over the heads of your front line troops. Or into clumps around a Necrofex.
I really enjoy making Leviathan/Necrofex doomstacks, they are amazing at just rolling over everything. The greatest threat for the leviathans is the necrofexes themselves though...
looking forward to the norscan one if possible can even include a ll tier list for norsca in that one
14:47 Looks like we also got VC tier ranking too. Cool!
who else takes notice of what the weather is down under every time a new tier list is posted? 24C is a bit much, usually it's below 20C. Summer is coming?
Summer is indeed coming down here.
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.
Cant wait to see how the vampire counts tier list would be 😂. Love it, keep up the great work 👍
Never played this faction in the legendary difficult, so I don't know, commentary for helping !
Thanks for the video always enjoy the tier lists
You forgot Aranessas special units.
Probably trash too tbh
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.
@@flipneleanor7370 The melee unit got rekt by imperial swordsmen without her special buffs.
@@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.
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 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
How about a tier list of all heroes? Considering their combat prowess and campaign influence? If that's too big for one video maybe split for WH1 and WH2 races?