Chorf sorcerer lord seems like a bad choice?

[Googley Eye'd Bastard]

Been enjoying the chaos dwarfs campaigns a lot but in learning them I kept restarting before I had a chance to really get into the generic lords, finally doing so I'm starting to question having a sorcerer prophet lord.

I say this because from my point of view there is no point in it, between the sorcerer and the overseer melee lord have 3 unique skill choices that effect but compared to the overseer their unique army skills are kinda crap to me at least. The sorcerer's are all buffs to himself mostly more magic charge/items/cooldown, perfect vigor and unbreakable (why though on a caster lord?), and the best one being 15% vigor reduction 5% replenish and centaur recruit rank, in my opinion that last one is the only skill worth taking as a stronger army as a whole is better then a slightly better wizard. In comparison the overseer casuality replenishment and spell resist for his entire army, reduced recruitment and upkeep -5% AND 20 armor for all chorf infantry and ammo, or movement range loot and and a 15% upkeep reduction for hobgoblins.

All these choices for the overseer provide massive benefits to the army and for the most part shape what his army will be in the long run, sure you miss out on spells which is important but you can always get a daemonsmith which is ALSO a better choice I think. The daemonsmith still gets all the spells a sorcerer will AND the same mounts, but they have the benefit of buffing and healing war machines and honestly this makes me feel like the sorcerer prophets are just a downgrade from the hero sadly and why would you want to have multiple casters in the same army taking up slots (other then abusing ash storm with a fire mage as well)

So yeah TLDR I'm wondering if anyone else feels like the chorf melee generic lord is way better then the caster lord because the caster hero is better.

[Reaver79]

Casters shoot that debuff fire res, CD's have a lot of fire dmg.

[cernodan]

Early game you won't have so much hero capacity and it's very useful to be able to make use of magic.
To me, it's not about choice, but rather efficiency. I mix melee lords with caster heroes and caster lords with melee heroes, so I can achieve balance in my armies and I am able to make use of all strategic options.
That being said, the overseers are indeed way better lords, but you won't always be able to pick the perfect combo, because you're limited by economy and unit limits.

[Googley Eye'd Bastard]

Originally posted by cernodan:

Early game you won't have so much hero capacity and it's very useful to be able to make use of magic.
To me, it's not about choice, but rather efficiency. I mix melee lords with caster heroes and caster lords with melee heroes, so I can achieve balance in my armies and I am able to make use of all strategic options.
That being said, the overseers are indeed way better lords, but you won't always be able to pick the perfect combo, because you're limited by economy and unit limits.

Thats the thing though, it doesn't take much to get your armaments flowing and even if your limited by the unit caps the overseer can buff hobgoblins really well with the upkeep and it shouldn't be too hard to have their buildings in towers going.

Originally posted by Reaver79:

Casters shoot that debuff fire res, CD's have a lot of fire dmg.

Yeah so do the hero casters which also buff artillery and heal them, and while the flare pistol they have is cool it takes 10 seconds to fire and only effects one unit at a time.

[Central]

Originally posted by Googley Eye'd Bastard:

Yeah so do the hero casters which also buff artillery and heal them, and while the flare pistol they have is cool it takes 10 seconds to fire and only effects one unit at a time.

i think they are even stronger than that, the ability " infernal engineer " is enabled when nearby friendly artillery or war machines have missile attack possibility, but it affects all allies in range. this would mean that if you place a row of gunners and than place the artillery behind them with a daemonsmith sorcerer in the middle it should boost them all.

[Googley Eye'd Bastard]

Originally posted by Slaanesh Cultist:

The generic sorcerer lords are complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ garbage and I'll tell you why. The generic sorcerer lords do NOT have this ability,[i.imgur.com] AND sorcerer lords have no personal combat line. Which means all sorcerer lords will have slower armies, make you less money and slaves and will never be good in melee. And what's the benefit? You don't have to recruit a hero mage? Well you'll make less money so you don't even save on upkeep. It's more expensive to have less.

Not to mention as well that the Hero is straight up better because they have all the same abilities, mounts, AND the ability to buff and heal your machines.

[Googley Eye'd Bastard]

Originally posted by Slaanesh Cultist:

Originally posted by Googley Eye'd Bastard:

Not to mention as well that the Hero is straight up better because they have all the same abilities, mounts, AND the ability to buff and heal your machines.

Yup! And if you go the lord + hero route you now have two flying monsters and one of them actually has a red line. A lord and hero means you can get magic levels and army buff levels simultaneously. You get two traits to choose from... The sorcerer lords are really bad.

Oh and even in non-combat roles the regular lords are better because they are the only ones with the "Considered" trait which gives you +5 relations with all factions and it stacks and it gives +1 to global hero recruit rank and you can disband them and keep the buff.

Man I thought for a minute the choice between the two lords would work like cathay and its dragon bloods and magistrates, the magistrates while having no magic and are actually weaker then the dragon bloods have a flying mount AND buff peasant units so their good cheap home defense armies, it would make sense with the overseer buffing hobs and laborers to make a really cheap army but no he's straight up better.

[Central]

you know that you can also pick a caster lord and hero? getting access to two schools of magic.
Magic is already very versatile, bringing 2 schools of magic only increases the versatility. besides between the tower and the tech bonuses their magic is quite powerful.
enemy lords and monsters die to your guns, if one gets through than there are always a spell or 2 that can do something about that. there is no reason to fight enemy lords or monsters in 1v1.

Originally posted by Googley Eye'd Bastard:

Man I thought for a minute the choice between the two lords would work like cathay and its dragon bloods and magistrates, the magistrates while having no magic and are actually weaker then the dragon bloods have a flying mount AND buff peasant units so their good cheap home defense armies, it would make sense with the overseer buffing hobs and laborers to make a really cheap army but no he's straight up better.

overseers have insane buffs btw, grand tactician gives all nearby ranged units a 10% reload reduction and +9 melee def.
in its sky lantern it also has shieldbreaker shots which make your ranged units more effective and it has eye of the dragon which gives your units across the map +4 leadership.
max out inspired defense for a temporary +60 accuracy and +40 reload skill, use this on any artillery you feel most needs it, combine this with their grand tactician skill and it gives it +50 reload reduction, not counting harmony bonuses. with harmony bonuses this comes to a +68 reload reduction.
if you ever wanted a fire rain rocket or grand canon that shoots as fast as ratling guns than this is the leader for you, and with +60 accuracy that grand cannon will be even more accurate than a team of snipers.

for extra dmg output you can use an alchemist to cast your chosen enchanted metalurgy on said artillery, it provides it extra dmg output for a set number of seconds, the faster you can shoot the more use you get out of this skill so it really combines well with the magistrate.

[SpeaksTooFast]

They are great for early game before you get your hero cap up, settlement defense when you only have 1 turn to recruit, and pairing both the lore of hashut and the lore of fire in a single army can be effective for easily stacking/defbufing fire damage.

The Overseers have some good skills but I think they are close enough to be situational rather than one being strictly better.

[Lamp]

I mean the sorcerer lords are beefy af, heavily armoured flying wizards (and they get their flying mount very quick). I've been utilising them almost exclusively since my first chorf game and they've been performing extremely well.

Sometimes when I need to 'emergency reinforce' a town that already has a lord recruiting in it I'll just straight up hire another chorf sorcerer lord to stand there and turn the tables, has worked out every time.

Edit: And the lore of Hashut is just amazingly destructive.

Edit again: And as for the economic bonuses the non caster lord provides, gotta say, of all the factions the chorf economy is the most easily manipulated into a powerhouse. Tend to hit tier V within the 40-50 turn area, but already steamrolling economically by like turns 20-30. Wouldn't count those bonuses as too useful past early midgame.

[Kangaroo Salesman]

For a hybrid lord they are quite good, considering they get a bale taurus also. Tanky, fast on a mount, range weapon for fire proc and magic make a good lord no?

[$alamander]

Every day that passes more and more people discover that the Chorfs are a terrible DLC. No real reason to take a sorcerer lord over an overseer. 1 is just clearly better and it aint the sorcerer.

[gachi is manly]

Originally posted by Lamp:

Sometimes when I need to 'emergency reinforce' a town that already has a lord recruiting in it I'll just straight up hire another chorf sorcerer lord to stand there and turn the tables, has worked out every time.

This is a good point. Usually I'm an advocate for combat lords being better than the wizard lords for most races, but when you've got a beefy wizard lord that doesn't fall over to a stiff breeze, the ability to reinforce a town with a magic user is really handy.

I'd still say outside of some niche cases, though, combat lords in general are better than wizard lords for one simple reason: combat lords are usually much stronger than combat heroes and usually get better mounts as well. Compare that to wizard lords vs their hero counterparts and there's not such a big gap in power. A hero wizard can generally do everything a lord wizard could do in combat with some exceptions for races that give the wizard lords really good mount. But even then, you may as well have a super beefy combat lord on that awesome monster mount with a hero wizard staying safer and casting away.

Wizard lords are also a fine choice for some races early game where it's hard to get more wizards early on. You've got some races where you just have more important buildings to get before the wizard one, or the wizard building is hard to get early game.

Originally posted by $alamander:

Every day that passes more and more people discover that the Chorfs are a terrible DLC. No real reason to take a sorcerer lord over an overseer. 1 is just clearly better and it aint the sorcerer.

That has very little to do with the Chorf DLC and more to do with wizard lords in general for reasons I stated above.

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

You have no supply lines so you can bring 4 Lords to every battle. Why not 3 melee lords and 1 sorc Lord?

Also a great point. It's one of the things I always liked doing with Bretonnia in WH2 with their no supply lines. A bunch of perfect vigor lords slapping the **** out of everything was fun.

[yuzhonglu]

You have no supply lines so you can bring 4 Lords to every battle. Why not 3 melee lords and 1 sorc Lord?

[Googley Eye'd Bastard]

Originally posted by SpeaksTooFast:

They are great for early game before you get your hero cap up, settlement defense when you only have 1 turn to recruit, and pairing both the lore of hashut and the lore of fire in a single army can be effective for easily stacking/defbufing fire damage.

Thats were I counter argue that early game your second army is going to be almost entirely comprised of hob goblins with gorduz for cost effectiveness, pair that with with 15% from the skill and in my case the hob goblin landmark and you have a super cheap but still very strong army.

Originally posted by Lamp:

I mean the sorcerer lords are beefy af, heavily armoured flying wizards (and they get their flying mount very quick). I've been utilising them almost exclusively since my first chorf game and they've been performing extremely well.

Sometimes when I need to 'emergency reinforce' a town that already has a lord recruiting in it I'll just straight up hire another chorf sorcerer lord to stand there and turn the tables, has worked out every time.

Edit: And the lore of Hashut is just amazingly destructive.

Edit again: And as for the economic bonuses the non caster lord provides, gotta say, of all the factions the chorf economy is the most easily manipulated into a powerhouse. Tend to hit tier V within the 40-50 turn area, but already steamrolling economically by like turns 20-30. Wouldn't count those bonuses as too useful past early midgame.

Okay sure I would agree that having one leveled as an emergency reinforce lord is good but at the same time you'd have to level one up to that in the first place, and yes with their mount their pretty powerful (overseer only gets lammasu not bad though) but you can basically get the same from a hero unit.

[gachi is manly]

Originally posted by Googley Eye'd Bastard:

Okay sure I would agree that having one leveled as an emergency reinforce lord is good but at the same time you'd have to level one up to that in the first place, and yes with their mount their pretty powerful (overseer only gets lammasu not bad though) but you can basically get the same from a hero unit.

I don't think he means a leveled up lord when he's talking about an emergency reinforcement lord. It's just a throwaway lord you hire to help save a vulnerable town then dump him. Chorf sorc lords do work pretty well in that regard, especially if you don't have any other wizard available to aid the town that turn.