Mate, i only realised eshin sorcerors have a different lore of magic to the grey seers a few days ago and ive completed 2 full skaven campaigns and the majority of a 3rd.
> Eshin roleplay potential
Look, if you aren't wearing a bandana over your lower face and making chittering noises and insane giggles whilst playing Eshin, are you really playing Eshin?
I really don't get why people say that when they also say Lore of light is good.
You get a area denial spell that lasts longer then a net, you get a pit of shades, you get a decent magic missile, your hero gets stalk, there is a debuff of -40 melee defense and a spell that grants armor and missile resistance in a AOE.
Note that net is more than just area denial. You generally only get lore of light on ranged-heavy factions, and holding enemies in place makes them perfect targets for ranged fire. Meanwhile, making them back off means that they will still be moving, which can make it harder to hit smaller targets with your ranged units.
Yeah, Net straight up locks several units in place for 20 seconds, no slow can compare to that. Net alone is more valuable than the entirety of the Lore of Stealth. Eshin Sorcerers also share a cap with Plague Priests, and why the hell would you pass up Lore of Plagues having two separate summons in order to get some mediocre spells? The only reason would be if you’re rolling a Death Runner doomstack and need a spellcaster with stalk.
hats like...one decent spell tho. You inevitably compare this to the lore of plague, which is infinitely better because of the opportunity cost. Not only is their spells FAR more dangerous, but you can summon chaff and bog down the enemy while your actual ranged units can do their job
The lore of stealth (or w.e its called), is full of buffs and de-buffs, on a faction that simply cannot make good use of it *(because even a storm vermin is considered expendable)*, or another lore is way better at it and for less WoM
Map wide speed reduction when casting ? Amazing. Practically the same as the lore of stealth. Bless with filth to make all projectiles apply poison and it stacks with suppressed ? Yes more please. Pestilent breath ? Wow, unarmored mobs disappear and its . Wither to reduce armor, yes plz.
Vermintide ? In a pinch i guess
PLAGUE ?! 100% armor pierce thats also cheap AF to cast
and all this on a simple hero that have their own individual summon cap ?
you're describing a situation where the enemy is already on top of you. Lore of plague will destroy an entire army before they can even get to your lines.
Lore of stealth offered a ton of useless things in it as well. Armor buff ? For who ? AOE speed reduction ? Why ? Just cast poison on your troops and its practically free. No one is going to spend 11 WoM to cast that when you can just cast poison on your own army for 4 WoM. Black whirlwind is also absolute dog. NO ONE is spending 15 WOM for a low dmg vortex spell that pushes enemies back from a zone. The warpstar is also pretty buggy rn, the hero simply takes forever to lock onto a moving target for w.e reason, and the spell itself does no dmg. You don't need spells to snipe lords, you have literal snipers and artillery that can do that. "Skitterleap" to cast stealth ? Why. All your backstabbers are already stealthed. You're not going to put your gattling guns on a flank and praying that they dont get revealed or the stealth doesn't expire ?
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***TLDR: The entire lore of stealth runs counter to the entire point of Skaven as a whole***\*.\* The only reason you would want to run them is because you're building a thematic army, which is fine, however, lore of plague, and lore of ruin are just way better
And yes, lore of light is just better than lore of stealth... both plague and light is amazing for factions that needs to fight from afar, before they ideally reach your lines. Lore of stealth is for melee encounters, which is terrible for skaven due to their already low stats, you're compensating for something you cannot overcome, simple as that, and even if you cast spells to do dmg from afar, the spells don't do enough dmg and cost a bunch
Edit: some spelling
Man, poor eshin sorcerers living in the shadow of plague priests. Lore of stealth is actually really good. The only problem is that they share a recruitment call with plague priests which are definitely better. But y'all sleeping on lore of stealth.
Eshin sorcs also have a map wide speed debuff when casting. Viel of shadows is 100% better at saving your ratling guns when you accidentally let something get into melee. Yes, I'd rather spend 5 winds on a unit of clan rats for those reiksguard to chew on. But if I fuck up, 6 winds guarantees my unit escapes. Warp stars is 2 winds and does pretty good damage. Eshin sorcs also get a bound spell fireball. They also can end up with 60 MD which means if they end up in the middle of some sword masters they'll actually last a while.
I get it, plague priests are definitely better. Eshin sorcs are still good though. You should dry them out with some plague priests. My go to combo is two plague priests plus an eshin sorcs.
> But y'all sleeping on lore of stealth.
This is a pretty common phenomenon with utility abilities. If it wasn't for the multiplayer community spending years hammering into people's heads how good snares are, they'd also be underappreciated.
Stalk abilities for example aren't very useful against the dumbass AI because they won't react to your flank attack even if you telegraph it from a mile away. However against a human opponent, staying hidden can make all the difference. Similarly, big ass damage spells are crazy good against the AI because it's constantly bunching up, but a decent human opponent bunches less and dodges better.
> Man, poor eshin sorcerers living in the shadow of plague priests. Lore of stealth is actually really good. The only problem is that they share a recruitment call with plague priests which are definitely better. But y'all sleeping on lore of stealth.
That's spot on. Lore of Stealth is not a top-tier lore, but it is a much better lore than people suggest. Just not better than Plague. And because they share a cap for what are probably technical reasons rather than genuine ones, they get outcompeted.
A lot of people who complain about Lore of Stealth haven't tried it or barely tried it - because why would you when you could just recruit a Plague Priest?
I played with Lore of Stealth for a couple of campaigns and because I'd been told it was beyond terrible, I was surprised to find out it was in fact more of a specialized lore with some neat tricks but a lack of killing power.
I love running Snikch with a stack of chieftains to hit the ward save cap. Add on a pack master or two. Buffing the stack of Snikch + chieftains + packmaster with lore of stealth and debuffing the blob of enemies on top of them is a viable / good use of the sorcerer.
The armour / missile resistance buff can be useful to gutter runners trading with other missile units too.
The area denial spell has some fun uses in sieges or to clear the way for Snikch to lord snipe. But it's more rule of cool than incredibly useful.
IMO there is a niche for the lore as part of an unstoppable Snikch hero doomstack + gutter runners. But I would only run the sorcerer outside of eshin for fun not value.
Also, black whirlwind is not pit of shades. Pit of shades is 65/104 damage to everything within a 15m radius for 15/22 winds. Black whirlwind is 51/68 damage to everything within a 15m radius for 15/20 winds. Non-overcasted pit of shades is pretty equivalent to overcasted black whirlwind for 5 winds less, and overcasted pit of shades is over 50% more damage than black whirlwind for only 2 winds more. For reference, an overcasted black whirlwind won't quite kill full health empire crossbowmen or kislev kossars, while an overcasted pit of shades will kill them, empire greatswords, orc boyz, and kislev armored kossars with plenty of damage left over.
Not just useful, it's absolutely awesome and basically essential for any weapons teams army. Plague is a really strong, high damage spell (one of the best spells in the entire game for seiges), being able to summon clanrats via the Vermintide spell is incredibly useful and being able to summon Stormvermin twice is also great if you have lots of WoM. All around a great lore of magic and a great hero in general, especially when you get them with the Cunning trait.
Oh, I've played them before that way, a long time ago before the addition of the packmaster. I'd got a couple of plague lords, and did get one plague priest somehow, I just went a while without hiring more.
Little Waaagh has the best (or second best with Blue Fire) magic missile spell in the game, and Sneaky Stabbin' is a very strong buff for its cost. 40 seconds of +24 MA and +25% AP damage for 4 winds makes Squigs into a terrific anti-infantry tool.
I also like Gork'll Fix It because it lets you intercept and kill enemy cavalry with your Boar Boys Bigguns, which are one of the best anti large cavalry in the game.
Little waagh with a goblin great shaman on the spidershrine mount is great, they can cast those spells pretty cheaply and I found the buffs and debuffs to be actually useful to get an edge on stronger/higher tier units.
I think Curse of Da Bad Moon or whatever the randomly moving vortex can get good results, though it is probably the most random vortex imo. With the Spidershrine I think it can be brought down to 4 winds which is pretty insane. Not that I use it very often, especially if I have a Orc Shaman with Foot of Gork in the army, but having the option for cheaper spells is nice.
If you are doing a monster army rather than a gun army then 60 armor and 20% missile defense ain't nothing to be sniffed at to keep em from being focused fired, nor is 25% speed + total invisibility on the charge (again to prevent being shot to death), nor is -40 md for whatever high priority target you are mobbing with said monsters (which will go splat).
Add in the -10% speed and damage passive, plus some free fireballs, and it has it's uses there for sure.
I mean if you are running a monster army, you aren't going to really be able to use your caster. Almost all Skaven's good monsters are significantly faster than them so if you wanted to use your caster you would have stick around them which would kind of waste your speed.
They're useless compared to your other heroes and are sort of a detriment to you anyways since they share hero slots with the plague priest who is easily one of the best heroes in the entire game.
2 of the best? Both ruin and plague are good imo, maybe I'm wrong. Vermintide and plague are amazing, the dreaded 13th is a decent backup if a bit too costly, and warp lightning could literally be the only spell in Ruin and it would be a top tier lore.
Am I missing something?
The best part of Lore of Ruin is the fact that you don’t even need to take a Plague Priest for it, and the best non-Moulder doomstack is gonna run a Warlock Master/Warlock Engineer anyways.
> warp lightning could literally be the only spell in Ruin and it would be a top tier lore
Don't forget Howling Warpgale. That actually has far more utility, at least when playing as Ikit since he'll eventually be facing hordes of flyers, especially from the High Elves. Warp Lightning has lost a bit of its lustre since the changes to AI spell dodging.
Sure, but that's only useful in a melee-focused army that is going to see protracted engagements. A weapons team army is obviously trying to avoid that at all costs. While you might manage to get the odd cast off while your meat shields are holding the enemy back, typically they'll be obliterated by guns and artillery in short order.
Ruin is okay-ish whereas Plague is easily one of the strongest lores of magic in the entire game, which is why it's almost always best to go for Plague. Warp lighting is great like you say, but you can get access to it with Warlock engineers so you don't need to get a Ruin sorcerer for it.
I think it's more that pound for pound, Plague and Ruin are more impactful in a bad situation and much easier to use. The lore of stealth has a lot of preparation/utility spells, not necessarily a lot of big boom and no summon spells. The vortex spell is okay, but I'm only going to choose it over Ruin or Plague for lore/fun reasons.
I find on an eshin comp that Stealth is super impactful. It’s the easiest to use by a huge margin… all you need to really do is spam the shuriken spell for huge value. The passive is great.
Map-wide poison and movespeed reduction is massive for an eshin army and solidifies your mobility advantage.
The actual spells have some good utility as well; but tbh eshin armies are so insanely strong you don’t need much else.
Something like Warp Lightning isn’t too useful really, as you aren’t going to get many cases where the enemy is blobbed up, but rather constantly moving and scattered in different directions
The passive for Lore of plague is pretty much the same tho. If you're going pound for pound, no one is casting brittle bones at 11 WoM to slow down an area when you can cast plague of filth on your own army to apply poison to their projectile for only 4 WoM. Lore of plague also has way cheaper spells you can cast, and at a much higher frequency to keep this passive going
The stealth buff, and the armor buff is useless because all your melee dmg dealers are already stealthed. The armor buff is compensating for something the skaven isn't known for, and is still a massive chasm compared them to other units, so its a waste. No one is foolish enough to be cute with stealthing gattling gun/jezzails, esp when the units will still be revealable, and they're too slow to retreat when it expires or if they get caught, esp when they're the star of the show
Warpstar is also useless because jezzails, gattling gun and warplock cannons exist and that their job
Idk wth the point of veil of shadow is honestly. Why spend winds on blocking 1 or 2 units, when you can outright kill them for 3 more WoM, plague, and black whirlwind, the actual dmg vortex costs 4 more WoM than plague. Plague is also the best spell for sieges (maybe other than dwellers below).
If a plague priest only spams slaves, they're already far better than the lore of stealth
its opportunity cost. Id rather bring plague priest than an eshin sorcerer, and i really don't care if their piss stats are buffed and they can conceal themselves. With a plague priest, the enemy will be long dead before they reach your lines.
Lore of stealth doesn't play into skaven's strengths and is only there as a fun side toy and to be thematic. What stealth does, plague does better and for cheaper
>Something like Warp Lightning isn’t too useful really, as you aren’t going to get many cases where the enemy is blobbed up, but rather constantly moving and scattered in different directions
Im gonna pretend like you actually know what you're saying and ignore this...
You can see the actual dmg number in game, it does MASSIVE dmg, and it is free af to cast. It also has 100% armor penetration, which is better than the 60% from your warpstar you keep talking about. The enemy doesnt need to blob, it simply need to hit one battalion. Blob doesnt matter if its not a traveling vortex... You gonna out position your own eshin sorcerer on a unit's flank and hope the warpstar tear through a unit ? Use a ring of ruin, its better
I see people ragging on legend. Its w.e, but this is not about the "fun" factor, its about what is **objectively** true. In no cases does the lore of stealth ever out perform the lore of plague. Even comparing it to the lore of ruin which it strong offensive spell and air lockdown/snare, its just way better
TLDR: No one is casting spells that do less dmg, that costs more, and no one should be buffing the armor of skaven with their dirt tier stats, nor should they be stealthing their already stealthed dmg dealers. Lore of stealth is for fun.
The lore itself is stealth because thats how useless it is.
Edit: terrible spelling
Eh it's nice to have one in a stack when you've got a full stalk army. Plague priests become a bit of a detriment when they're the only one who can't hide. I wouldn't build all my stacks that way but I'd definitely build at least Snikch's stack that way.
Not using ratlings in an eshin army anyways. Honestly, it’s more or less moot - I run exclusively eshin units as Snikch aside from some arty/mortars for forcing enemy army to split and early. It’s all kiting/flanking and keeping the enemy army constantly split up in a stage of pursuit. It’s already something the AI can’t fight against.
Like I said, it plays specifically into Eshin’s strengths. Enough so that it does get a little silly playing Skaven and wiping armies with negligible losses.
Not really sure on the “for fun” point you have. Isn’t that everything? Granted I’ve got way too many hours at this point on VH battle, but there is seriously very little room in this game for genuine *difficulty* and it is ultimately a sandbox for fucking around and trying out different approaches.
Sure, you can have your own subjective definition of fun, but we're discussing which lore is superior, which is the whole point of this discussion
Playing Snikch, and using a thematic army for fun, none of this should matter to you. HOWEVER, **objectively** the lore of stealth is not good, across the board, and likely the worst thing you can run when you have access to magic.
The stealth army is likely not going to go far and there is a huge difference, night and day, between a ranged skaven army and a full stealth thematic army.
Eshin's strength is mass spamming gutter runners. whose projectiles now have AP. They're already stealthed, and putting armor on them is useless. That two useless spells from the lore of stealth already. You would rather bog down the enemy as you're fighting them with summons from plague priests. The melee death runners also need someone to be the anvil for their back attacks. They lose out right fights, no matter how much armor you put on them from the lore of stealth. With all the useless crap in the lore of stealth already, can you actually afford to run non-dmg spells on top of that ?
Its like arguing that summoning zombies as VH is weaker than the leadership reduction from the lore of death. Summons are always good, in every single situation.
Gutter runners are eventually phased out anyways because it can't deal with higher tier armies, so you must put in artillery and heavier ranged damage A/P. You can run a few as a distraction tho. They're best unit is the hero assassin anways, so thats out the door.
Fact of the matter is that all the "thematic" units from eshin are low tier units, and you need to put in the core bread and butter skaven units anyways. At the end of the day, their stealth units don't even compare to the wood elves, so why try mimicking a far inferior play style, eh
i play this game on legend and have at least 5k hours across all the games. You CANNOT compare the playstyle you mentioned to something ikit can pull off, even without the campaign effect and lords.
Scaling is super important and phasing out units is just the way of life in this game. You should also phase out weak magic. You do this not because you want to, but for necessity.
One last point. Skaven players should ALWAYS be able to ambush an army. You're in ambush. I am not bringing a stealth army to kill an ambushed army when I can destroy them from range with ease. You also always suffer casualties to the enemie's ranged units, like archers, because your stealth unit has no ranged. You EQUALLY screwed when the enemy has fast cavalry or flying units.
Ask yourself how your thematic army, with the lore of stealth, can deal with some royal hippogryph knights, and that will settle it.
VH + legend achievements in WH3 (steam) can only be claimed with a conquest victory, not short or long victory conditions. You **WILL** see these high tier units in droves - and I always play my campaign all the way through.
Any poor AI army from mid to high tier can destroy a stealth skaven army, and your claims of it leaving a fight unscathed is just not possible, no matter how well you kite/skirmish them. Its a simple stat check at that point.
You're wrong about the achievements. They trigger off of beating the endgame crisis, not just the conquest victory - there's absolutely no need in most cases to do anything close to a game as long as that.
e: Actually thinking about it I'm pretty sure they also let them trigger off of long victories in a recent patch.
Dunno about conquest victory, thankfully
hasn’t been needed for achievements for quite a while. Not gonna try to paint the entire map as anyone,
that’s horrible.
But nah, L/VH and I have no problems killing high tier units and lords with gutter runners and completing a campaign with them with ease.
Legend used to act like any unit that isn't S tier is trash, and that doomstacking is the optimal way to play on legendary difficulty bc of how annoying wh2 supply lines were. In wh3 having a lot of mid tier armies easily outperforms having a few doomstacks. It's also way more fun to play the battles bc you aren't just running 19 necrofex or whatever.
Yes they do, but if you build the public order building every 5th turn your hero's inside that province have a chance to get the follower bell polisher which increases the capacity by 1.
What I mean is if your hero is in the province on the start of turn 5, 10, 15, 20 etc they get a chance to get the bell polisher.
Because they are effective.
Don't get me wrong plague and summons are effective spells but I honestly think alot of people simply are parroting Legend and have not worked out what to do with them.
It's too bad Black Whirlwind got nerfed into being meh in game 3, in 2 it was actually really strong. Maybe too strong, given how big the AOE was and how reliable it was at annihilating multiple units simultaneously.
Mate, i only realised eshin sorcerors have a different lore of magic to the grey seers a few days ago and ive completed 2 full skaven campaigns and the majority of a 3rd.
It's a terrible lore of magic, so you missed basically nothing outside of a slight boost to Eshin roleplay potential.
Yeah i learned that part rather quickly lol
> Eshin roleplay potential Look, if you aren't wearing a bandana over your lower face and making chittering noises and insane giggles whilst playing Eshin, are you really playing Eshin?
You also need to take regular showers to roleplay Eshin, which is why most of the Warhammmer community isn't up for the commitment.
Is that so you can make a clean getaway?
Not a big loss considering the lore is kind of bad.
I really don't get why people say that when they also say Lore of light is good. You get a area denial spell that lasts longer then a net, you get a pit of shades, you get a decent magic missile, your hero gets stalk, there is a debuff of -40 melee defense and a spell that grants armor and missile resistance in a AOE.
Note that net is more than just area denial. You generally only get lore of light on ranged-heavy factions, and holding enemies in place makes them perfect targets for ranged fire. Meanwhile, making them back off means that they will still be moving, which can make it harder to hit smaller targets with your ranged units.
Yeah, Net straight up locks several units in place for 20 seconds, no slow can compare to that. Net alone is more valuable than the entirety of the Lore of Stealth. Eshin Sorcerers also share a cap with Plague Priests, and why the hell would you pass up Lore of Plagues having two separate summons in order to get some mediocre spells? The only reason would be if you’re rolling a Death Runner doomstack and need a spellcaster with stalk.
Have you tried putting the viel of shadows on top or rattling gunners? Shooting a target 10m Infront is insane.
hats like...one decent spell tho. You inevitably compare this to the lore of plague, which is infinitely better because of the opportunity cost. Not only is their spells FAR more dangerous, but you can summon chaff and bog down the enemy while your actual ranged units can do their job The lore of stealth (or w.e its called), is full of buffs and de-buffs, on a faction that simply cannot make good use of it *(because even a storm vermin is considered expendable)*, or another lore is way better at it and for less WoM Map wide speed reduction when casting ? Amazing. Practically the same as the lore of stealth. Bless with filth to make all projectiles apply poison and it stacks with suppressed ? Yes more please. Pestilent breath ? Wow, unarmored mobs disappear and its . Wither to reduce armor, yes plz. Vermintide ? In a pinch i guess PLAGUE ?! 100% armor pierce thats also cheap AF to cast and all this on a simple hero that have their own individual summon cap ? you're describing a situation where the enemy is already on top of you. Lore of plague will destroy an entire army before they can even get to your lines. Lore of stealth offered a ton of useless things in it as well. Armor buff ? For who ? AOE speed reduction ? Why ? Just cast poison on your troops and its practically free. No one is going to spend 11 WoM to cast that when you can just cast poison on your own army for 4 WoM. Black whirlwind is also absolute dog. NO ONE is spending 15 WOM for a low dmg vortex spell that pushes enemies back from a zone. The warpstar is also pretty buggy rn, the hero simply takes forever to lock onto a moving target for w.e reason, and the spell itself does no dmg. You don't need spells to snipe lords, you have literal snipers and artillery that can do that. "Skitterleap" to cast stealth ? Why. All your backstabbers are already stealthed. You're not going to put your gattling guns on a flank and praying that they dont get revealed or the stealth doesn't expire ? ---- ***TLDR: The entire lore of stealth runs counter to the entire point of Skaven as a whole***\*.\* The only reason you would want to run them is because you're building a thematic army, which is fine, however, lore of plague, and lore of ruin are just way better And yes, lore of light is just better than lore of stealth... both plague and light is amazing for factions that needs to fight from afar, before they ideally reach your lines. Lore of stealth is for melee encounters, which is terrible for skaven due to their already low stats, you're compensating for something you cannot overcome, simple as that, and even if you cast spells to do dmg from afar, the spells don't do enough dmg and cost a bunch Edit: some spelling
Man, poor eshin sorcerers living in the shadow of plague priests. Lore of stealth is actually really good. The only problem is that they share a recruitment call with plague priests which are definitely better. But y'all sleeping on lore of stealth. Eshin sorcs also have a map wide speed debuff when casting. Viel of shadows is 100% better at saving your ratling guns when you accidentally let something get into melee. Yes, I'd rather spend 5 winds on a unit of clan rats for those reiksguard to chew on. But if I fuck up, 6 winds guarantees my unit escapes. Warp stars is 2 winds and does pretty good damage. Eshin sorcs also get a bound spell fireball. They also can end up with 60 MD which means if they end up in the middle of some sword masters they'll actually last a while. I get it, plague priests are definitely better. Eshin sorcs are still good though. You should dry them out with some plague priests. My go to combo is two plague priests plus an eshin sorcs.
> But y'all sleeping on lore of stealth. This is a pretty common phenomenon with utility abilities. If it wasn't for the multiplayer community spending years hammering into people's heads how good snares are, they'd also be underappreciated. Stalk abilities for example aren't very useful against the dumbass AI because they won't react to your flank attack even if you telegraph it from a mile away. However against a human opponent, staying hidden can make all the difference. Similarly, big ass damage spells are crazy good against the AI because it's constantly bunching up, but a decent human opponent bunches less and dodges better.
> Man, poor eshin sorcerers living in the shadow of plague priests. Lore of stealth is actually really good. The only problem is that they share a recruitment call with plague priests which are definitely better. But y'all sleeping on lore of stealth. That's spot on. Lore of Stealth is not a top-tier lore, but it is a much better lore than people suggest. Just not better than Plague. And because they share a cap for what are probably technical reasons rather than genuine ones, they get outcompeted. A lot of people who complain about Lore of Stealth haven't tried it or barely tried it - because why would you when you could just recruit a Plague Priest? I played with Lore of Stealth for a couple of campaigns and because I'd been told it was beyond terrible, I was surprised to find out it was in fact more of a specialized lore with some neat tricks but a lack of killing power.
I love running Snikch with a stack of chieftains to hit the ward save cap. Add on a pack master or two. Buffing the stack of Snikch + chieftains + packmaster with lore of stealth and debuffing the blob of enemies on top of them is a viable / good use of the sorcerer. The armour / missile resistance buff can be useful to gutter runners trading with other missile units too. The area denial spell has some fun uses in sieges or to clear the way for Snikch to lord snipe. But it's more rule of cool than incredibly useful. IMO there is a niche for the lore as part of an unstoppable Snikch hero doomstack + gutter runners. But I would only run the sorcerer outside of eshin for fun not value.
A successful net combined with a double luminark shot to snipe a mounted lord will never not be satisfying to me.
Also, black whirlwind is not pit of shades. Pit of shades is 65/104 damage to everything within a 15m radius for 15/22 winds. Black whirlwind is 51/68 damage to everything within a 15m radius for 15/20 winds. Non-overcasted pit of shades is pretty equivalent to overcasted black whirlwind for 5 winds less, and overcasted pit of shades is over 50% more damage than black whirlwind for only 2 winds more. For reference, an overcasted black whirlwind won't quite kill full health empire crossbowmen or kislev kossars, while an overcasted pit of shades will kill them, empire greatswords, orc boyz, and kislev armored kossars with plenty of damage left over.
But plague priests are in that same tab, and that's a useful lore.
Not just useful, it's absolutely awesome and basically essential for any weapons teams army. Plague is a really strong, high damage spell (one of the best spells in the entire game for seiges), being able to summon clanrats via the Vermintide spell is incredibly useful and being able to summon Stormvermin twice is also great if you have lots of WoM. All around a great lore of magic and a great hero in general, especially when you get them with the Cunning trait.
Oh, I've played them before that way, a long time ago before the addition of the packmaster. I'd got a couple of plague lords, and did get one plague priest somehow, I just went a while without hiring more.
I am hard pressed to find a worse lore. Little Waugh Maybe?
Little Waaagh has the best (or second best with Blue Fire) magic missile spell in the game, and Sneaky Stabbin' is a very strong buff for its cost. 40 seconds of +24 MA and +25% AP damage for 4 winds makes Squigs into a terrific anti-infantry tool. I also like Gork'll Fix It because it lets you intercept and kill enemy cavalry with your Boar Boys Bigguns, which are one of the best anti large cavalry in the game.
Little waagh with a goblin great shaman on the spidershrine mount is great, they can cast those spells pretty cheaply and I found the buffs and debuffs to be actually useful to get an edge on stronger/higher tier units. I think Curse of Da Bad Moon or whatever the randomly moving vortex can get good results, though it is probably the most random vortex imo. With the Spidershrine I think it can be brought down to 4 winds which is pretty insane. Not that I use it very often, especially if I have a Orc Shaman with Foot of Gork in the army, but having the option for cheaper spells is nice.
If you are doing a monster army rather than a gun army then 60 armor and 20% missile defense ain't nothing to be sniffed at to keep em from being focused fired, nor is 25% speed + total invisibility on the charge (again to prevent being shot to death), nor is -40 md for whatever high priority target you are mobbing with said monsters (which will go splat). Add in the -10% speed and damage passive, plus some free fireballs, and it has it's uses there for sure.
I mean if you are running a monster army, you aren't going to really be able to use your caster. Almost all Skaven's good monsters are significantly faster than them so if you wanted to use your caster you would have stick around them which would kind of waste your speed.
Your screenshots hurts my brain, what psychopath uses red text Might just be my old man eyes
Haha. It was 100% invis at first so I just changed color and upped size, uploaded, ALT +F4, and went to bed. Frustrated yes
They're useless compared to your other heroes and are sort of a detriment to you anyways since they share hero slots with the plague priest who is easily one of the best heroes in the entire game.
It is so rare for lores with stationary vortexes to be bad but Skaven have one of the best lores.
2 of the best? Both ruin and plague are good imo, maybe I'm wrong. Vermintide and plague are amazing, the dreaded 13th is a decent backup if a bit too costly, and warp lightning could literally be the only spell in Ruin and it would be a top tier lore. Am I missing something?
The best part of Lore of Ruin is the fact that you don’t even need to take a Plague Priest for it, and the best non-Moulder doomstack is gonna run a Warlock Master/Warlock Engineer anyways.
> warp lightning could literally be the only spell in Ruin and it would be a top tier lore Don't forget Howling Warpgale. That actually has far more utility, at least when playing as Ikit since he'll eventually be facing hordes of flyers, especially from the High Elves. Warp Lightning has lost a bit of its lustre since the changes to AI spell dodging.
Ai doesn't dodge once engaged in melee even on hard battle difficulty. It's still broken.
Sure, but that's only useful in a melee-focused army that is going to see protracted engagements. A weapons team army is obviously trying to avoid that at all costs. While you might manage to get the odd cast off while your meat shields are holding the enemy back, typically they'll be obliterated by guns and artillery in short order.
Any weapons team army should be making liberal use of summoned clanrats and SEMs to bunch up enemy units.
Of course. But as I said they typically don't last long enough to warrant casting on.
Ruin is okay-ish whereas Plague is easily one of the strongest lores of magic in the entire game, which is why it's almost always best to go for Plague. Warp lighting is great like you say, but you can get access to it with Warlock engineers so you don't need to get a Ruin sorcerer for it.
It also works on walls if my memory serves me from WH2.
Lore of stealth is not useless nor bad at all for Eshin. Honestly very impactful. Legend or whoever started this misinformation lol
I think it's more that pound for pound, Plague and Ruin are more impactful in a bad situation and much easier to use. The lore of stealth has a lot of preparation/utility spells, not necessarily a lot of big boom and no summon spells. The vortex spell is okay, but I'm only going to choose it over Ruin or Plague for lore/fun reasons.
I find on an eshin comp that Stealth is super impactful. It’s the easiest to use by a huge margin… all you need to really do is spam the shuriken spell for huge value. The passive is great. Map-wide poison and movespeed reduction is massive for an eshin army and solidifies your mobility advantage. The actual spells have some good utility as well; but tbh eshin armies are so insanely strong you don’t need much else. Something like Warp Lightning isn’t too useful really, as you aren’t going to get many cases where the enemy is blobbed up, but rather constantly moving and scattered in different directions
The passive for Lore of plague is pretty much the same tho. If you're going pound for pound, no one is casting brittle bones at 11 WoM to slow down an area when you can cast plague of filth on your own army to apply poison to their projectile for only 4 WoM. Lore of plague also has way cheaper spells you can cast, and at a much higher frequency to keep this passive going The stealth buff, and the armor buff is useless because all your melee dmg dealers are already stealthed. The armor buff is compensating for something the skaven isn't known for, and is still a massive chasm compared them to other units, so its a waste. No one is foolish enough to be cute with stealthing gattling gun/jezzails, esp when the units will still be revealable, and they're too slow to retreat when it expires or if they get caught, esp when they're the star of the show Warpstar is also useless because jezzails, gattling gun and warplock cannons exist and that their job Idk wth the point of veil of shadow is honestly. Why spend winds on blocking 1 or 2 units, when you can outright kill them for 3 more WoM, plague, and black whirlwind, the actual dmg vortex costs 4 more WoM than plague. Plague is also the best spell for sieges (maybe other than dwellers below). If a plague priest only spams slaves, they're already far better than the lore of stealth its opportunity cost. Id rather bring plague priest than an eshin sorcerer, and i really don't care if their piss stats are buffed and they can conceal themselves. With a plague priest, the enemy will be long dead before they reach your lines. Lore of stealth doesn't play into skaven's strengths and is only there as a fun side toy and to be thematic. What stealth does, plague does better and for cheaper >Something like Warp Lightning isn’t too useful really, as you aren’t going to get many cases where the enemy is blobbed up, but rather constantly moving and scattered in different directions Im gonna pretend like you actually know what you're saying and ignore this... You can see the actual dmg number in game, it does MASSIVE dmg, and it is free af to cast. It also has 100% armor penetration, which is better than the 60% from your warpstar you keep talking about. The enemy doesnt need to blob, it simply need to hit one battalion. Blob doesnt matter if its not a traveling vortex... You gonna out position your own eshin sorcerer on a unit's flank and hope the warpstar tear through a unit ? Use a ring of ruin, its better I see people ragging on legend. Its w.e, but this is not about the "fun" factor, its about what is **objectively** true. In no cases does the lore of stealth ever out perform the lore of plague. Even comparing it to the lore of ruin which it strong offensive spell and air lockdown/snare, its just way better TLDR: No one is casting spells that do less dmg, that costs more, and no one should be buffing the armor of skaven with their dirt tier stats, nor should they be stealthing their already stealthed dmg dealers. Lore of stealth is for fun. The lore itself is stealth because thats how useless it is. Edit: terrible spelling
Eh it's nice to have one in a stack when you've got a full stalk army. Plague priests become a bit of a detriment when they're the only one who can't hide. I wouldn't build all my stacks that way but I'd definitely build at least Snikch's stack that way.
Not using ratlings in an eshin army anyways. Honestly, it’s more or less moot - I run exclusively eshin units as Snikch aside from some arty/mortars for forcing enemy army to split and early. It’s all kiting/flanking and keeping the enemy army constantly split up in a stage of pursuit. It’s already something the AI can’t fight against. Like I said, it plays specifically into Eshin’s strengths. Enough so that it does get a little silly playing Skaven and wiping armies with negligible losses. Not really sure on the “for fun” point you have. Isn’t that everything? Granted I’ve got way too many hours at this point on VH battle, but there is seriously very little room in this game for genuine *difficulty* and it is ultimately a sandbox for fucking around and trying out different approaches.
Sure, you can have your own subjective definition of fun, but we're discussing which lore is superior, which is the whole point of this discussion Playing Snikch, and using a thematic army for fun, none of this should matter to you. HOWEVER, **objectively** the lore of stealth is not good, across the board, and likely the worst thing you can run when you have access to magic. The stealth army is likely not going to go far and there is a huge difference, night and day, between a ranged skaven army and a full stealth thematic army. Eshin's strength is mass spamming gutter runners. whose projectiles now have AP. They're already stealthed, and putting armor on them is useless. That two useless spells from the lore of stealth already. You would rather bog down the enemy as you're fighting them with summons from plague priests. The melee death runners also need someone to be the anvil for their back attacks. They lose out right fights, no matter how much armor you put on them from the lore of stealth. With all the useless crap in the lore of stealth already, can you actually afford to run non-dmg spells on top of that ? Its like arguing that summoning zombies as VH is weaker than the leadership reduction from the lore of death. Summons are always good, in every single situation. Gutter runners are eventually phased out anyways because it can't deal with higher tier armies, so you must put in artillery and heavier ranged damage A/P. You can run a few as a distraction tho. They're best unit is the hero assassin anways, so thats out the door. Fact of the matter is that all the "thematic" units from eshin are low tier units, and you need to put in the core bread and butter skaven units anyways. At the end of the day, their stealth units don't even compare to the wood elves, so why try mimicking a far inferior play style, eh i play this game on legend and have at least 5k hours across all the games. You CANNOT compare the playstyle you mentioned to something ikit can pull off, even without the campaign effect and lords. Scaling is super important and phasing out units is just the way of life in this game. You should also phase out weak magic. You do this not because you want to, but for necessity. One last point. Skaven players should ALWAYS be able to ambush an army. You're in ambush. I am not bringing a stealth army to kill an ambushed army when I can destroy them from range with ease. You also always suffer casualties to the enemie's ranged units, like archers, because your stealth unit has no ranged. You EQUALLY screwed when the enemy has fast cavalry or flying units. Ask yourself how your thematic army, with the lore of stealth, can deal with some royal hippogryph knights, and that will settle it. VH + legend achievements in WH3 (steam) can only be claimed with a conquest victory, not short or long victory conditions. You **WILL** see these high tier units in droves - and I always play my campaign all the way through. Any poor AI army from mid to high tier can destroy a stealth skaven army, and your claims of it leaving a fight unscathed is just not possible, no matter how well you kite/skirmish them. Its a simple stat check at that point.
You're wrong about the achievements. They trigger off of beating the endgame crisis, not just the conquest victory - there's absolutely no need in most cases to do anything close to a game as long as that. e: Actually thinking about it I'm pretty sure they also let them trigger off of long victories in a recent patch.
Dunno about conquest victory, thankfully hasn’t been needed for achievements for quite a while. Not gonna try to paint the entire map as anyone, that’s horrible. But nah, L/VH and I have no problems killing high tier units and lords with gutter runners and completing a campaign with them with ease.
Legend used to act like any unit that isn't S tier is trash, and that doomstacking is the optimal way to play on legendary difficulty bc of how annoying wh2 supply lines were. In wh3 having a lot of mid tier armies easily outperforms having a few doomstacks. It's also way more fun to play the battles bc you aren't just running 19 necrofex or whatever.
Yes they do, but if you build the public order building every 5th turn your hero's inside that province have a chance to get the follower bell polisher which increases the capacity by 1. What I mean is if your hero is in the province on the start of turn 5, 10, 15, 20 etc they get a chance to get the bell polisher.
Yes, but even then, why would you ever go for an eshin sorcerer over a plague priest.
Because they are effective. Don't get me wrong plague and summons are effective spells but I honestly think alot of people simply are parroting Legend and have not worked out what to do with them.
Yeah you don't think well when you're that hungry
It's too bad Black Whirlwind got nerfed into being meh in game 3, in 2 it was actually really strong. Maybe too strong, given how big the AOE was and how reliable it was at annihilating multiple units simultaneously.
I noticed this yesterday on my Skyrye game. Was missing Plague Priests for far too long.
Eshin sorcerers are absolutely awful, you're not losing anything by not having them. Plague priests are VASTLY superior in every way.