Were Hellflayers Fixed? - Slaanesh vs Khorne // Total War: WARHAMMER 3 Domination Multiplayer

Thanks to Creative Assembly for making an awesome game, and to Sega and Games Workshop for allowing me to share it with you!

#totalwar #warhammer3 #multiplayer

[tyroneprime]

I don’t know why but hearing you explain collision while I watch scarband speed run death in the background is the funniest thing to me

[precipitousnix]

So, there's a few things working in tandem that make Slaaneshi chariots perform worse than they should (and also better than they should, but only in an extremely narrow margin of use cases).

One, Collision Attacks as a mechanic are a complete crapshoot. This is how chariots are actually supposed to deal most of their damage. If it was just down to impact damage, they might as well have 0 MA/WS/CB. Every time CA releases a unit that uses them, it's basically a coinflip between it being absolutely devastating and being a joke. For whatever reason, Slaaneshi chariots' Collision Attacks work terribly, which is why they did almost no damage before the patch, although War Sleds and the Stonehorn seemed to be able to deal damage just fine. Now consider that this means that their Devastating Flanker passive does basically nothing, because if they're not getting Collision Attacks, they're not actually using their crazy high boosted Charge Bonus unless they, uh, stop and fight in sustained melee. Some chariots also have mounted models that can attack independently (think Grom swinging from the back of his ride) but this does not seem to be the case for Slaanesh's.

Two, a complete reliance on impact damage means that their output is very swingy. By design, impact damage is not very deadly. It's meant to kick in while Collision Attacks are refreshing (the way it works is that Collision Attacks basically have a target limit, and then they go on a very short cooldown). However, it is also uncapped, so you are very directly doing more damage the more models you run over, as long as you can maintain your speed. The long and short of it is that against low mass units, you can run down the entire length of an infantry formation, hitting every single model, and since they're already taking high damage due to being low mass, the total output is pretty obscene. Against units with higher mass (Chaos Warriors are all 160, Bloodletters are 125 and 150), the combination of doing less damage per model and being able to pull through less easily makes it absolute MILES worse.

Three, knockdown behaviour is not up to WH2 standards. You might remember a patch a long while back that completely changed how often infantry (and especially infantry characters) roll the 'dice' to see whether they get knocked over. This had the effect of making characters like Ungrim extremely hard to knock down, but it also made it easier for infantry to block high mass entities, especially after they lost their speed. With chariots, you can basically think of this as a bit of a ceiling on how many infantry models a chariot can force path into and still keep finding space to accelerate. Right now, even if you have absolute hordes of low mass infantry, it can be almost impossible to fully pin down a chariot that keeps getting orders to push through.

The end result of all this is that Slaaneshi chariots can absolutely delete low mass infantry under ideal conditions, by playing the exact way you *wouldn't* want to play them back in WH2 (pulling directly down entire units, which poses a bigger risk of getting stuffed up), but they lose most of their punch the moment they have to go up against anything with good mass. By contrast, War Sleds' Collision Attacks work much better (on top of being almost as strong charging from the front as the Hellflayers' would be with Devastating Flanker procced, for some reason, idk what CA was going for there), AND their mass is astronomically high (especially the Heavy ones), so they demolish absolutely everything.

[jayfarrell]

For how squishy they are these chariots need to be able to absolutely mulch infantry w devastating flanker. Hope they can be buffed to that state soon

[icepowertw]

Seeker chariots are a solid disruption tool against ranged factions (tzeench Cathay primarily) that now also deals good damage. Hellflayers are a bit more niche since slaanesh generally has better ways to do pure dps and they're less efficient for pure disruption. Still both units could do with a damage or mass buff, but they're at least usable now.

[SuperThest]

I don’t know if this applies to seekers, but the gorebeast only does 44 damage regardless of the unit you charge which is way less than it’s supposed to, so that chariot is at least still a bit bugged.

[rjstram]

I really don't know what CA was thinking giving bear sleds double the weapon damage of other monstrous chariots. There's no reason why a bear should do double the damage of a gorebeast or the giant scythes of a hellflayer.

[mossykid]

the seeker chariots look like decent light infantry specific lawnmowers, but I am underimpressed with this elite version of the unit for how pricy and squishy it is. Certainly seems bad for the matchup, at least.

[KingOfMadCows]

They should give Slaanesh chariots higher melee attack/defense. Slaanesh units in general have higher melee attack/defense to compensate for their lower armor and hp.

[michalpiotrgorecki]

Warriors of chaos are, alongside tempe guard, heavy dwarfes and black orks, heaviest infantry in the game. That means they should stop enemies. And halberds have even more mass. They shouldn't move if braced and be somewhat ressiliant to being pushed in other situations. Slaaneshi chariots are in pretty good place, they can mulch throught light troops like theres no tommorow and they are stopped by bigger pockets of heavier ones. Thats what I wanna see. 8:30 they punched throught, with problems. And against a blob of heavy inf thats what should happen. 5:50 the pocket of balberds as smaller so they punched throught and broke them. Absolutely fair.

[coops]

it isn't the closest battle but the chariots were very disappointing to me here

[patrickleonard]

Demonettes and heart seekers are Slaanesh's whole ass roster. And give them armour. If a Norscan in a loincloth in a chariot can have good armour, so can a demonette on a huge hulking metal mass of wheels and spikes. You are SO right about the WS balancing. Again, who balanced and approved this? Did a different team do every race and none of them talked. Lol. This game right now.

[Sedurnas]

yeah they are pretty bad. I'd like them to remain squishy when unmicroed (leave that to the kislev chariots) but do a lot more damage on the charge. So maybe buff the charge bonus by quite a bit (I think +5/+10 is not enough). Maybe +20 even. For how squishy they are, they do way too little damage on the charge.

[sentinellevail]

yeah the chariots are a joke but buffing them could easily get another beastmen chariot situation. What they should do is give them like a massive bonus vs infantry like maybe +60 bonus vs infantry so they slaughter infantry but are easily countered with anything large but idk

[Son_of_Mandalore]

Coops bringing it! Great match and total domination by Coops.

[rubz]

With reference to a video on charges and collsion damage MercytheMad recently made, does cavalry do impact collision damage in Warhammer2 like in Warhammer3? Or was it something that worked but was later broken by one of the later patches?

[georgek]

You should check out Radious overhaul that just came out, makes battle really fun

[spellbound]

I genuinely wonder if collision attacks are just not working on the Slaanesh chariots. Their damage is just low. They need something since at their cost they have to notably outdamage seeker cav against infantry because they lack the flexibility seekers bring in target selection. And yeah it goes without saying that both light and heavy war sleds need nerfs probably to both melee and shooting. It's rough that chaos chariots are useless while Kislev chariots outshine their cavalry.

[dankevan]

I know Khorne gonna lose before game start because he didn’t pick any spawns against slannesh