Necrons are stronger than most people give them credit, however, they are pigeon-holed into specific fleet compositions and skill choices to not get totally wrecked by many fleet comps.

Necron strengths:

• Hyper mobility with Mass recall (level 9 perk).

• Mass recall allows the Necron fleet to focus down enemy vessels before resetting the fight and letting their hulls regenerate. This requires the Necron flagship to be far away, which means the best flagship is actually a stealth LC.

• Pyramidal Reconstruction allows repairing all light and heavy crits on the entire Necron fleet. Only Necrons can repair heavy crits.

• Starpulse makes the Necron fleet nearly immune to ordnance. Starpulse doubles as a way to quickly nuke down smaller enemy ships.

• Strong DPS at exactly 9k range due to Dispersed Lightning Arc.

• AOE Damage and Mass Recall Synergy. Starpulse and Dispersed Lightning Arc allow Necrons to do decent damage to clustered ships. This discourages players from clustering their ships, which can setup a strong mass recall play versus isolated targets.

Necron Weaknesses

• Pyramidal Reconstruction and Mass Recall feel mandatory.
  Reasoning: Necrons get crit all the time, so Pyramidal Reconstruction is the only way to combat this.
  Necrons can't fight lance heavy navies, close range Orks, Nids, Space Marines, or Kroot Warspheres. That's a lot of things they can't fight, so Mass Recall gives the ability to dodge/kite these fleets and not instantly lose on loading screen.

• The Cairn feels bad. Due to Mass Recall being most effective with an LC flagship, there is no way to take a Cairn and multiple Scythe ships in a fleet. This will result in basically less of everything than taking 3x Scythes.

• Low DPS. The Necron fleet has pretty low DPS and only 13.5k and 9k weapon ranges which means they are out-gunned by a lot of fleets and can't quickly kill anything they need to kite resulting in the need to constantly abuse Mass Recall to be competitive.

Suggestions

• Make Pyramidal Reconstruction a default flagship skill.
  Alternatively, a large nerf to crits in general and specifically versus Necrons might make this ability less than mandatory.
  Another option, make it so permanent crits can't occur while other systems are still green.
  This lets players choose from the other really cool Necron abilities for some diversity and fun.

• Buff the Cairn's DPS and Ancestral Terror. It needs more damage considering its speed, and the implied cost that you need an LC with mass recall and therefore are forced into only 2 large capital ships instead of 3 when taking a Cairn. Also, Ancestral Terror feels very weak. 100 moral damage is not nearly enough and does little to nothing for enemy ships that want to deboard and destroy the moral of the Cairn.

• Slight increase to DPS across the board for Necron ships or increase the range on Lightning Arc weapons to 13.5k. Necrons have much less DPS than basically all other fleets that focus on weapons which means they rely on cap points and mass recall to win.

• Depending on the degree of buffs/other changes to Necrons, consider nerfing mass recall. Change it from global to a limited range from the flagship, or prevent an LC from being the flagship. This would result in other perk options being stronger in comparison so Necrons will be encouraged to pick some of the other cool perks they have available.

@cowgomoo another issue is that outside of that mass recall, they are the slowest least agile faction in the game, which can and is kited by everything. Which is, as you stated, why it’s mandatory. They are also tosquishy for their pointscost because no shields. Due to shields giving health and regenerating quickly, all other ships have more health and regenerate faster, and are also crit less. Hell they can even have better armor due to brace! There are many other issues as well, but these are the core ones and all others have been listed elsewhere.

I disagree that they are not tanky due to missing shields. Necrons feel tanky unless fighting a full lance fleet, which should not be a viable fleet since it gets hard countered by all the Eldar. Shields really don't stop a ton of damage unless your able to shield cycle several times, but thats the equivalent of Necrons retreating for a minute and gaining several 100 HP back from regenerative hull.

Kiting is why you have to play for control points. If a fleet can kite you, and this would apply to all factions, then you need to secure points and force them to split their forces or fight for a control point.

Crits are also a global issue. There are too many crits in the game in general. Ever gotten within 13.5k range of a Kroot Warsphere? 5 seconds later half your systems will be down.

@cowgomoo shields recover many times faster than Necron hulls do, and have no cap. If a BBcycles it’s shields three times (and it’s will do so abd more) That’s the cairns entire hp bar. They also block crits while they are up, give a full third more hp to battleships vs cairns, and block lightning strikes. Necrons cannot cycle out either due to their speed, as ID reveals you so that ship just gets chased down. A minute of cairn Regen is 60hp. A minute and getting shields back on another BB is 800 hp. Armor doesn’t help at all either, as it takes 10-20 seconds for macro Druhkari to kills cairn. Craftworlders can half or more it per torp run, and a macro salvo from admech/IN will instakill it. On kiting, Necrons can’t split for points as their ships are to few and weak individuallyso get easily picked off. For crits, are above, no shields=most critable faction in the game.

Shields are not equivalent to hp... Shields take 100% macro damage. Heavy armor takes 17%. Against macros hull is 6x as effective. Lances are a different story.

If you think Necrons melt to macros this version you have not played them much. They melt to huge Lance fleets but not macros unless it's AP at 4.5k.

E. G. A very high 100 macro dps fleet has 17 dps versus heavy armor. That's assuming the unrealistic 100% accuracy. Typical accuracy is maybe 60%, so that 17 becomes 10. Necron hull regen makes it 9 dps, switch stances for an extra plus 2 and now you do 7 dps.

All the mobility issues are why mass recall is mandatory. It let's to you squash escorts and LCs and force the enemy to use capital ships to cap, which again let's you use mass recall to collapse and kill. Necron escorts are also damn near immortal since you can inertialess drive the instant they get revealed so you shouldn't be losing yours outside of misplays.

Necrons are not top tier, but I think with very strong mass recall use they are competitive against certain builds and not trash tier like Corsairs currently. I would like some changes so they are not so dependant on this style, similar to how Nids are a 1-trick carrier spam pony, Necrons are a 1-trick mass recall faction.

Crons are incredibly tanky with the regen order, to an almost absurd degree vs macros. The cron issue is a lack of damage and ability to contest caps.

@cowgomoo said in Necron Feedback, Pros and Cons:

Shields are not equivalent to hp... Shields take 100% macro damage. Heavy armor takes 17%. Against macros hull is 6x as effective. Lances are a different story.

If you think Necrons melt to macros this version you have not played them much. They melt to huge Lance fleets but not macros unless it's AP at 4.5k.

E. G. A very high 100 macro dps fleet has 17 dps versus heavy armor. That's assuming the unrealistic 100% accuracy. Typical accuracy is maybe 60%, so that 17 becomes 10. Necron hull regen makes it 9 dps, switch stances for an extra plus 2 and now you do 7 dps.

All the mobility issues are why mass recall is mandatory. It let's to you squash escorts and LCs and force the enemy to use capital ships to cap, which again let's you use mass recall to collapse and kill. Necron escorts are also damn near immortal since you can inertialess drive the instant they get revealed so you shouldn't be losing yours outside of misplays.

Necrons are not top tier, but I think with very strong mass recall use they are competitive against certain builds and not trash tier like Corsairs currently. I would like some changes so they are not so dependant on this style, similar to how Nids are a 1-trick carrier spam pony, Necrons are a 1-trick mass recall faction.

Well, if we take 6x as effective as the as true for shields v hull (its a bit lower but close enough) then the shield equivalent of those 60 hull points would be 360 shield points, which is less than half of the 800 that was just regenerated. And of course still ignores the crit issues and the cap issues, and that there can be 4BBs with this health compared to the two cairns. At max regen stance it is 7% dps v 100, which if I am mathing it right actually is pretty close, surpassing the regen slightly at 854 and some decimals per minute. Of course, it still isn't as good as there is a cap and thus more will be regenerated if the shield cycles 4 times on the enemy BB (and it should), and again doesn't account for the cairn costing about 2BBs and thus will be facing 2 BBs of hp/regen. It is also spending a stance to be about equal with ships that cost two hundred points less regeneration wise. Without the stance, it only regens 666+decimals per minute, and is back to slower again.

On macros, that is supposed to say druhkari macros. Szarekh Damn autocorrect. I'll fix that. On the matter of macros though, cairns will go down pretty quick to them, mostly because they cost half a fleet and thus will be outnumbered 2-1 by macro BBs if they go that route. Probably 4-1 becuase focusing BBs is common from what I've seen and no one brings 2 cairns.

On the mobility issue, the problem is it shouldn't have to be mandatory, that it an pyramidal are show the gaping holes in the faction. Abilities are supposed to be tactical, not necesary fixes. And even then any fleet with a manuever gauge can still escape, especially it you are trying to kill an admiral with mwj as they are just so much more agile with that gauge. Even with it you'll need to get lucky to pin an Aeldari faction and if the enemy balls it doesn't matter because you need to as well, which happens quite often to me.But then again I am stuck in low rank, so its probably different higher up. And escorts are shieldless and low HP, they explode if looked at. Maybe if its imperials or orks they are immortal but Chaos, Tau, or non corsair Aeldari factions? Its dead before it can jump.

I think the way you ended with against "certain" builds says it all really.

@BrohanBroski see above

crons aren't strong, they're the second worst faction. But tankiness isn't an issue. It's literally the one thing their good at.

@brohanbroski I mean its alot better than it was due to the armor buff, but consider that necrons regenerate slower than the average imperial ship even taking armor into account, and that their ships cost so damn much meaning many more ships with similar HP pools will be present. I have seen Tau, Druhkari, ork, demiurg, and nid vessels all solo a cairn, and all but the nid one did it with pure gunfire. Maybe if they cost the same as other races ships they would be tanky enough, but they don't have nearly proportional health. Last I checked, I Necron cruiser cost as much as an imperial battelship, and was no where near as tanky ( or good in any other regards obviously. I don't really think that this equates to being tanky enough.

@nemesor-xanxas said in Necron Feedback, Pros and Cons:

@cowgomoo said in Necron Feedback, Pros and Cons:

Shields are not equivalent to hp... Shields take 100% macro damage. Heavy armor takes 17%. Against macros hull is 6x as effective. Lances are a different story.

If you think Necrons melt to macros this version you have not played them much. They melt to huge Lance fleets but not macros unless it's AP at 4.5k.

E. G. A very high 100 macro dps fleet has 17 dps versus heavy armor. That's assuming the unrealistic 100% accuracy. Typical accuracy is maybe 60%, so that 17 becomes 10. Necron hull regen makes it 9 dps, switch stances for an extra plus 2 and now you do 7 dps.

All the mobility issues are why mass recall is mandatory. It let's to you squash escorts and LCs and force the enemy to use capital ships to cap, which again let's you use mass recall to collapse and kill. Necron escorts are also damn near immortal since you can inertialess drive the instant they get revealed so you shouldn't be losing yours outside of misplays.

Necrons are not top tier, but I think with very strong mass recall use they are competitive against certain builds and not trash tier like Corsairs currently. I would like some changes so they are not so dependant on this style, similar to how Nids are a 1-trick carrier spam pony, Necrons are a 1-trick mass recall faction.

Well, if we take 6x as effective as the as true for shields v hull (its a bit lower but close enough) then the shield equivalent of those 60 hull points would be 360 shield points, which is less than half of the 800 that was just regenerated. And of course still ignores the crit issues and the cap issues, and that there can be 4BBs with this health compared to the two cairns. At max regen stance it is 7% dps v 100, which if I am mathing it right actually is pretty close, surpassing the regen slightly at 854 and some decimals per minute. Of course, it still isn't as good as there is a cap and thus more will be regenerated if the shield cycles 4 times on the enemy BB (and it should), and again doesn't account for the cairn costing about 2BBs and thus will be facing 2 BBs of hp/regen. It is also spending a stance to be about equal with ships that cost two hundred points less regeneration wise. Without the stance, it only regens 666+decimals per minute, and is back to slower again.

On macros, that is supposed to say druhkari macros. Szarekh Damn autocorrect. I'll fix that. On the matter of macros though, cairns will go down pretty quick to them, mostly because they cost half a fleet and thus will be outnumbered 2-1 by macro BBs if they go that route. Probably 4-1 becuase focusing BBs is common from what I've seen and no one brings 2 cairns.

On the mobility issue, the problem is it shouldn't have to be mandatory, that it an pyramidal are show the gaping holes in the faction. Abilities are supposed to be tactical, not necesary fixes. And even then any fleet with a manuever gauge can still escape, especially it you are trying to kill an admiral with mwj as they are just so much more agile with that gauge. Even with it you'll need to get lucky to pin an Aeldari faction and if the enemy balls it doesn't matter because you need to as well, which happens quite often to me.But then again I am stuck in low rank, so its probably different higher up. And escorts are shieldless and low HP, they explode if looked at. Maybe if its imperials or orks they are immortal but Chaos, Tau, or non corsair Aeldari factions? Its dead before it can jump.

I think the way you ended with against "certain" builds says it all really.

@BrohanBroski see above

100% this guy knows what he's on about.

Tankiness is not the problem, I don't think I've ever actually seen a Cairn die before it's had every weapon critted off or mutinied or hulked.

The problem is that for its cost its not putting out anywhere near enough damage and this is the common theme across the whole necron line.

For an extra 50 points orcs can bring !5! Drednots comparative to the 2 Cairns a necron can field.

I would have absolutely no problem with keeping them as the slow tanky faction that has to play around no bombers or assault craft, no all ahead full or emergency maneuvers, no shields, pigeonholed into taking the exact same abilities every time, smaller fleets and considerably less abilities in general if those smaller fleets had the dakka to compensate for all the flaws but they just don't.

@nemesor-xanxas said in Necron Feedback, Pros and Cons:

On the mobility issue, the problem is it shouldn't have to be mandatory, that it an pyramidal are show the gaping holes in the faction. Abilities are supposed to be tactical, not necesary fixes.

Right, which is why I made the suggestions I did.

@bould said in Necron Feedback, Pros and Cons:

@nemesor-xanxas said in Necron Feedback, Pros and Cons:

@cowgomoo said in Necron Feedback, Pros and Cons:

Shields are not equivalent to hp... Shields take 100% macro damage. Heavy armor takes 17%. Against macros hull is 6x as effective. Lances are a different story.

If you think Necrons melt to macros this version you have not played them much. They melt to huge Lance fleets but not macros unless it's AP at 4.5k.

E. G. A very high 100 macro dps fleet has 17 dps versus heavy armor. That's assuming the unrealistic 100% accuracy. Typical accuracy is maybe 60%, so that 17 becomes 10. Necron hull regen makes it 9 dps, switch stances for an extra plus 2 and now you do 7 dps.

All the mobility issues are why mass recall is mandatory. It let's to you squash escorts and LCs and force the enemy to use capital ships to cap, which again let's you use mass recall to collapse and kill. Necron escorts are also damn near immortal since you can inertialess drive the instant they get revealed so you shouldn't be losing yours outside of misplays.

Necrons are not top tier, but I think with very strong mass recall use they are competitive against certain builds and not trash tier like Corsairs currently. I would like some changes so they are not so dependant on this style, similar to how Nids are a 1-trick carrier spam pony, Necrons are a 1-trick mass recall faction.

Well, if we take 6x as effective as the as true for shields v hull (its a bit lower but close enough) then the shield equivalent of those 60 hull points would be 360 shield points, which is less than half of the 800 that was just regenerated. And of course still ignores the crit issues and the cap issues, and that there can be 4BBs with this health compared to the two cairns. At max regen stance it is 7% dps v 100, which if I am mathing it right actually is pretty close, surpassing the regen slightly at 854 and some decimals per minute. Of course, it still isn't as good as there is a cap and thus more will be regenerated if the shield cycles 4 times on the enemy BB (and it should), and again doesn't account for the cairn costing about 2BBs and thus will be facing 2 BBs of hp/regen. It is also spending a stance to be about equal with ships that cost two hundred points less regeneration wise. Without the stance, it only regens 666+decimals per minute, and is back to slower again.

On macros, that is supposed to say druhkari macros. Szarekh Damn autocorrect. I'll fix that. On the matter of macros though, cairns will go down pretty quick to them, mostly because they cost half a fleet and thus will be outnumbered 2-1 by macro BBs if they go that route. Probably 4-1 becuase focusing BBs is common from what I've seen and no one brings 2 cairns.

On the mobility issue, the problem is it shouldn't have to be mandatory, that it an pyramidal are show the gaping holes in the faction. Abilities are supposed to be tactical, not necesary fixes. And even then any fleet with a manuever gauge can still escape, especially it you are trying to kill an admiral with mwj as they are just so much more agile with that gauge. Even with it you'll need to get lucky to pin an Aeldari faction and if the enemy balls it doesn't matter because you need to as well, which happens quite often to me.But then again I am stuck in low rank, so its probably different higher up. And escorts are shieldless and low HP, they explode if looked at. Maybe if its imperials or orks they are immortal but Chaos, Tau, or non corsair Aeldari factions? Its dead before it can jump.

I think the way you ended with against "certain" builds says it all really.

@BrohanBroski see above

100% this guy knows what he's on about.

Tankiness is not the problem, I don't think I've ever actually seen a Cairn die before it's had every weapon critted off or mutinied or hulked.

The problem is that for its cost its not putting out anywhere near enough damage and this is the common theme across the whole necron line.

For an extra 50 points orcs can bring !5! Drednots comparative to the 2 Cairns a necron can field.

I would have absolutely no problem with keeping them as the slow tanky faction that has to play around no bombers or assault craft, no all ahead full or emergency maneuvers, no shields, pigeonholed into taking the exact same abilities every time, smaller fleets and considerably less abilities in general if those smaller fleets had the dakka to compensate for all the flaws but they just don't.

I agree completely. Maybe I should have added in a "for their cost" as if Cairns were like 300 pts they would be okay, but need a dps buff. I have seen more than a few cairns die, but only to chaos, druhkari, and nova spam. Usually. I seen one or two die in other ways, but rarely. Necrons need a lot of tweeks, due to all the issues you mentioned, but the DPS and pricing ones are the biggest. I had a massive post that outlined all the flaws in the current necron lineup, and the main points could be summarized as you don't get your bang for you buck. Ignoring the other issues, I have no idea what to do about the mentioned cairn murdering fleets, but to start I would give the necrons a universal DPS buff, increase regen by 1.5 and remove the cap (this makes it ~equal to the shield regen of the other ships) and then reconsider pricing. No idea how to fix the other stuff tho.

Just a straight reply as that quote is getting excessively long!

I've made a few posts myself so I'll reiterate what I personally feel needs directly addressing in bullet points

. Pyrmidal needs to be base on your flagship / reduced crit chance across the board.

. Some form of reanimation protocals reprisented by crew regenning passively / higher base crews / unlimited use of call to arms (rename it reanimation protocals for flavour?)

. Inertialess drive cooldown reduced.

. Higher dps / more guns across the board.

. Higher morale with an instant unrecoverable warp out (phasing) if you manage to break their morale, mutiny feels so so anti necron.

Things I would hate to see changed, flat reduction in ship cost, necron ships should feel superior to everyone elses as the cost should very well reflect.

Any of these changed would go SOME way to helping them out in the core areas they are failing currently.

@bould What i would like the most I suppose is some new ships with new weapons or unique subfaction upgrade, because one of the things the necrons lack the most is diversity at the moment. It would make them much more enjoyable to play.

Totally agree but at this point I highly doubt we'll be seeing any new ship models or weapons outside of a DLC.

Trying to make my suggestions as simple as possible using mechanics already in the game and simple-ish number tweeks.

Hate to say it but after reading the posts on the community feedback thread it's probably all going to get ignored anyway!

No do not remove the cap. Have you taken into consideration that each regened hull point is subject to armour itself and so the effective HP of the cron ships are massive. I had one cron cruiser on the regen sitting next to a MK1 barge and a shitload of Avengers and it lasted for such an absurdly long time it's not funny. removing the cap would encourage a very engaging playstyle, especially as most other factions can't regen hull.

@brohanbroski I did consider that. My calcs were all about considering that. Without considering armor and accuracy the regen rate compared to shields is over 10x less, with it its close but still far lower.

A conventional ship would be liable to get it's gen critted long before it out performs crons in effective tankiness due to shields.

@brohanbroski you fight in fleets and will cycle ships without shields behind ships with active shields.

@brohanbroski I wouldn’t count on it against a Necron fleet, especially with no crit stance, but even if it did the crit can be repaired instantly. If it’s a permanent crit, it can just switch out, as there will be another 2-3 ships on the enemy side due to points costs, and that ships shield will tank for it.