Quote from Nyarlathotep

Nobody plays elementals in tournament

Quote from Nyarlathotep

Elementals is definitely playable. However, it's playable in the same way candyland is, which is to say you either have won from the start or you haven't. Elementals tend to lose from the start against an order player that knows what they're doing. Thus,
They are forced to Eco rush more so than not which requires a bit of micro to execute the Eco rush stall against the opponent that pressures you. Our best start would by trip earth which is contested against even with SMM start as on med maps the sword can get to tower pretty quickly to prevent a capture if they walk to tower should the earth not be held via h key. A second sword should follow. 4-5 swords can't be dealt with and the order player can simply stream miners and force castle air by rushing in with these units. The ele user either is forced into castle air or risks it and goes with something crazy. The prior being the more popular choice. The ele player has one unit option and no real defense aside from that. The order player can abuse this via swords in the early game. After they force the issue, the order player can focus primarily on archers and researching cure and shinobi 1-2 as he goes along. Into his spear archer meric comp to support it. The ele player would then be forced to create more fires to compensate. Your primary goal is to rid you the ele user of the army they managed to stall into. Being one step ahead of ele is very important. If the elementals player knows what he's doing he will win 100% of the time against order and 0% of the time against chaos. There's very very little strategy involved in every elementals matchup. Yet ele players still lose from time to time against order. If the ele player knows what they are doing this gives them a greater chance of success of winning because they know their strengths. They know what they can do at a given situation, and therefore, can macro and micro their way into victory. As for the chaos MU. The main reason ele loses is due to its inability to protect itself from bombs and a cycloids issues when it comes to facing just wing spam alone with the speed being roughly the same, regen, kiting against a melee unit, relatively weak health wise, short protect duration, poor quality protect duration, marrows reaper ability pretty much ignoring the purpose of protect due to the cool down of reaper and time wasted from protect whilst being manipulated by the reaper status effect.It's entirely about mechanical execution and exact macro on both sides. How is there no strategy yet a macro comp is supposedly redundant whilst playing ele. Ele has to conform and has no real means of playing outright. Heavily reliant upon MU knowledge and macro timing and choices. Hell, OvO at least has differentiation in how you are allowed to macro. OvO is the most binary MU in the game. Spear archer meric is almost always the composition unless you are forced into a situation in which it requires you to turtle. One cannot play differently with any comp if the spear archer meric player macros correctly. The latter player simply put produces unless you manage to turtle somehow whilst applying the same amount of army; putting yourself at a deficit inbetween the time you stop following the meta and go into some odd path of your own choosing. Elementals force a different situation for each new thing they throw to conform to the order player. The more options they manage to successfully cover the less options you have. There is no full proof meta for ele. There is no goto. Conform to try to win. Can't play outright from the beginning. The first step to conforming the ever present order archer meta is to make a tree as the same rules of thumb come into play as would be similar to that of a spear against archers when behind in an OvO. Set up your tank to begin your defense. Trees cover this role in the most cost effective manner with the scorps counterpoding archers as being a very weak initially meat shield/damage dealing pseudo stall/positioning unit that respawns every cycle. This forces the opponent to kite and minimize casualties to their army or fall behind as any scorps lost in the long run, will be replaced in he end for the cost of some mana. The next thing that scorps don't cover directly would be heavy amount of melee units like swords and spears. The ele player must then respect this and find a solution that best fits the situation and as we all know, a unit with the kite ability always is the best option when it comes to melee units in general. This pushes the opponent into a situation in which they must decide what is the best thing to do now. Swords after a certain point begin to be generally ineffective at combatting the ele comp now and this will force the opponent to tech up into higher tier units. In order to tech up with order, you are going to need time. How does one generally build time with order? They have to turtle. The first thing you need to aim for as the order player attempting to turtle would be your shadowrath with shinobi (which you should've researched as applying pressure to the ele player. The ele player will attempt to anticipate this to the best of their ability and will attempt to make waters and V's in order to stop the situation from escalating beyond control. Breaking the turtle is best executed by closing the game with V units to manipulate the opponent out of their key units. The shadowrath becomes your bread and butter to prevent this. It becomes your best defense against close game options like waters/v/infernoes but you must have micro and macro that supersedes that of the ele user. Follow the first shadowrath with another to increase your ability to stall the ele player more. Your eventual goal is to get your magikills and press back into your opponents face. Miss time your macro or slip up micro wise leads to losses for all three empires. The most noticeable being EvO where a slip up can be capitalized upon by either player. Elementals has none of this. It's a shitty race that at the moment contributes nothing competitively. Nobody plays elementals in tournament because it's absolute ass to play against and if you play against a chaos in tournament (you will) you will lose. because of the shitty relationship between ele vs bombs and wings. It only serves the function of getting free ladder points in DM and Classic because most ladder players use order. Most ladder players main order because not everyone is a member but there are still chaos users that roam around the ranks. Ele players still lose because they lack the MU Knowledge and several people don't understand the weaknesses ele has to cover via conformity. This is what seperated the system. Not ele in itself but players lack of MU knowledge It's. Absolute. Broken. Unsalvageable. Unsalvageable is a matter of opinion and not factual in the slightest due to the creators being able to change it with good enough reason as to do so. Shit. All in all. The less you know, the less you will win. Lost all the time as order vs chaos. Now I hardly lose in OvC. And CvO. All it took was MU knowledge and a bit of practice.

Quote from PUMU

I kinda like the relationship between scorps and archers when playing as either. What I think would affect it a bit would be to have the order player with the ability to access rage with ease. The current meta relies hella heavy on em.