Original leaders feel weak now

[Sneaking viper]

After the newest DLC, the 2 original leader types appears very weak. While I know there are some artifacts that can deal with some of their counters, it is artifacts that are needed to be found first. Why would anyone play a non Eldritch leader? Sure they cannot use boots or melee weapons, but does that really matter, when you as a base does twice the damage in melee as most lvl 1 weapons plus you can mind control enemies.
Is it just me or are the original leader types more useless than ever?

[Kasmir]

Haven't noticed this. Anyway, I don't play the game to min/max -- why bother. I love the combo of the new random realm type plus a random ruler...

[Aurumworks]

What you are gaining with personal strength from the new leader types, you are losing in economy.

[Cindeerella]

Well yes, nerf to Arcing weapon enchantments hit very hard general rulers, that’s said, they still can come and one-shot Eldritch leader in one turn if they would decide to. And no, even tier 4 weapon of eldritch ruler is just pathetic 45 base damage with all possible buffs from magic skill tree and artifacts, heavy magelock would have at least 70 base damage and onle 1 AP attack! For what can melee weapons achieve with legendary plate and helm of warrior isn’t even comparable. Eldritch ruler has a bit more utility and range than Dragon ruler (and also 20% magic buff from torso slot), but still Dragon with its huge AoE damage has more burst potential than Eldritch. Eldritch is much more reliable on mind control early game and it’s not able to clear stack solo early game like dragon can. In late game it’s only winning AoE niche against normal rulers, and even there they’re worse than dragons with full potential, but they have much more range and utility, so that it. Still the only underdog is Champion. Who became even worse now because t4-5. units are much harder to obtain through draft.

[Balekai]

There's still a few reasons to not play Eldritch Sovereign (ES):


Thematic Reasons.
- Firstly as mentioned for thematic reasons ike Kasmir said. Among the AoW4 community as a whole min/max isn't a thing save for on online communities like this where WK was king, but like 70% of the playerbase actually always plays Champion lol. Hero Fantasy! :p :P

Also Dragon lord is a fine leader type but has already been proven not as a best ior better than the others, mostly coming down to when you want to shine early, mid or late game. ES toons do very on all, but are much squishier than other heroes. Where ES shines is post ascension and is REALLY strong early game due to the added Signature special abilities and forgotten tome spell-like abilities on turn 1 no mana needed.


No access to Transformations.
- For many specific builds around support leaders, you're going to want specific Transformations/Hero skills even for the Ruler in order for them to work correctly. For these builds In major battles, you really want 3 heroes including your ruler pumping out all the Hero abilities non stop and benefiting from it themselves.

The only build types that ES truly benefits from as a unit or has proper access to as a unit, are Magical Origin based builds, and Non-Transformation based type builds (like Order's Faithful builds, which ES can easily gain that type from Beacon Tome's Champion of the Faithful" hero skill).


Action Point conflicts and Opportunity Cost with Hero skills.
- In relation to the last point, extra combat abilities of the Sovereign don't really gel with anything other than building around ES hero skills. There's just too much good stuff there on the Mass CC and dmg front that you do really want to take advantage of ES abilities only. That means your ES has super terrible action economy with everything costing Full Actions other than Phase and maybe their default attack?

That's means there's no room for doing anything else in a battle. I found my own personal build was about as much as you could do making them have multi functionality in battle. Which is: ES hero skills + Support/Battle line hero passive skills + Any hero skill abilities or equipment abilities that have no Action Cost (free action heals for example) + Any hero skills that allow you to start combat with a pet (Astral Wisp or Golem servant) + Any in combat summon like ones from equipment and ascension traits.

That way you can ES Phase (mandatory for ES so it can move around and properly function in combat), pop off a few free action point heals or abilities, then cast their full action ES forgotten tome spells and Eldritch abilities. All while they have their "trash" (depends these can become like T3-4ish units with the right builds now early) pet(s) do their own thing. Not quite the same thing as being able to freely move around the battlefield and chain use abilities all over the place as per a Champ, WK and even Dragon Lord.

ES is very Skill Point Starved.
- Additionally, ES is really skill point starved and has a hard time becoming feature complete until around level 12-16. I find myself wanting to deeply invest into all three lines, having to sacrifice Battle Magic really for ES and Support lines. This issue only gets better when again, you reach level 12-16 on your ES, or after Pantheon Ascension. Champs and WKs don't really care about their Signature skills all that much and can work well without them, and can easily "feel" feature complete around level 8ish even without Ascension.

Hell my Nature healer support Champ/WK rulers with Ascended Restorer, only need Restore hero skill, free AP Mending Touch, and free Fey Blessing, in order to become a Nymph-like but army wide regeneration master. That solves 90% of any battle issues early, mid or late game right there. An ES doesn't really want to focus on those small heals over ES abilities (especially with Forgotten Tome of Blessings signature) of ever in comparison.

Economy, in some ways.
- Economy as Aurumworks mentioned, but more or the Gold front rather than mana since Sovereign (ES) builds tent to have good mana income in nature regardless of its mana upkeep. The same way Draognlords tend to have good gold economies because of the way we build around the Dragon Lord.

//

All that said, the ES really does challenge the Champion and WK on some of their unique feature importance. Relations and Casting Points respectfully as ES has ways to middle ground this stuff mechanically.

This is due to how gimmicky/Mary Sue like the ES is around say Thrall mechanics and their unique hero skills. Especially when it comes to Champion since ES can use thralls on first encountering a Free City to serious improve relations for example. Or even better, use the same ability to just make a hostile free city become friendly on first meeting them. This "dominate" Free City functionality among other dominate effects makes Eldritch Vassal/Ally manipulation builds really interesting, and really threatens Champion, other than Champion's vassal economic buffs to Gold, Draft and Stability.

Edit: Organized the post better with headlines so it's easier to read and can get the general idea of points without having to read the whole thing.

[Midas]

ES mind controlling an enemy for a single turn isn't really a big deal. Also their damage output doesn't seem very high compared to a caster, shock, or archer hero. They really are more about utility than raw power.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by Midas:

ES mind controlling an enemy for a single turn isn't really a big deal. Also their damage output doesn't seem very high compared to a caster, shock, or archer hero. They really are more about utility than raw power.

Yeah that's what I'm finding in general. Expensive utility Action Point wise, but packs a punch in the crowd and battle field control department while not costing any mana like proper spells. The same way Dragon Lord gets more damaging close ranged "spells" (Breaths etc.), but less CC/control oriented (save maybe frost Draogn which I think has access to freeze?).

On that mind ability you mentioned you can basically achieve the same effective CC if not better by starting with Cryomancy Staff loadout as Champ/WK. At least more dependable. Then there's the new Direcaster or whatever its called pantheon staff, which is like a mixture of Cryo staff and that ES ability (it's the Direcaster Penguin ability and the staff is cold damage with a 30% base chance to freeze, slow on fail).

Again the ES really shines on Pantheon Ascension, because it gets it's much heavier lifting mind control abilities, summons etc. and Forgotten Tome Signature skills. At that point it's a casting beast on a new game.

[Elgareth]

But one shouldn't forget about the thrall mechanic on the world map, enabling either serious knowledge boosts, or free unit conversions, or diplomacy stuff etc.

[Astasia]

The main thing that makes eldritch rulers feel so much "better" to me is their specialization options. I never liked the random affinity based abilities the other rulers picked from, most of them it's just which one is going to screw me over the least in auto-resolve. From a gameplay perspective, the eldritch rulers are more enjoyable to level in that regard. Though the lack of transformations does hurt. RPwise I usually like playing champion and starting as a "normal" racial unit, and progressing with them, and I still think I will play that way most of the time even after this, just with the hopes some future update/DLC will overhaul/expand normal ruler leveling/specializations. Powerwise, I don't see much difference, if anything after playing into the later game with an eldritch leader, I think their main benefit is using thralls to dismiss various events that would otherwise cost you, and that's not a very strong benefit.

[Sifer2]

I'm pretty sure among pro players Wizard King is still considered the meta though it might finally change as people get more used to Eldritch leaders who knows. Champion is pretty meh at this point though. I personally would like Champion/Wizard King leaders to get their own special skill trees too.

[Aranea]

champion needs more stuff for sure, wizard king is fine imo for the most part but its too early to tell need a lot more games with elder sovereign to be sure, i've only done fleshweaver till now and i've already figured many ways to counter the minions they summon. They also don't seen insanely tanky, it feels like a lord that is very easy to win with when he is ahead, because you can't really focus him down, but if both sides are even in combat i'm not sure if they are really that strong. Also hard to tell as right now t1 units got a bit too strong with how easy it is to reach legend medal with them

[Balekai]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

I'm pretty sure among pro players Wizard King is still considered the meta though it might finally change as people get more used to Eldritch leaders who knows. Champion is pretty meh at this point though. I personally would like Champion/Wizard King leaders to get their own special skill trees too.

We will see it's only been around 72-96ish hours since release. It's a close call with me leaning towards ES to summarize my larger post above. WK is better though Non-Ascended from a pure caster point of view. Probably better in a PvP situation too where other players will always go for your sitting duck, action point starved ES first. Like trying to go after a vulnerable King on a chessboard (or Queen, not sure which one the ES would be. A mixture of both? haha).

Sovereign is better Ascended likely with the right Signature Combos, which as mentioned, mimic mid-late game spellcasting at turn 1. With the Weaver Battlemage Master skill we get to reset these and use them all again). Lastly they get 30 World and Combat Casting points + 10 Imperium gain per turn from Eldritch Influence I and II hero skills.

An Attunement Mystic or someone with the Shadow affinity tree trait that gives combat casting points on unit deaths, aren't going to care about those ES spell-like abilities though, because they cast all day and night long anyways. It would only be a means of adding even more spell-like potential to your battles.

And yes it would be great if Champion and Wizard King got a signature rework and/or even their own unique hero skill trees (latter may be easier and more sensible lore and mechanically wise). It never made sense why their Signature skill trees are partially random lol.

[Pantagruel]

Honestly, I find myself somewhat underwhelmed by ES; they have a lot of neat tricks against early game armies but they struggle to be relevant against control loss immune targets.

[Cindeerella]

Eldritch Sovereign is not supposed to keep his tomes in ascension, similar to a dragon, so they’ll be very weaker when it gets nerfed.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by Bratty Doe:

Eldritch Sovereign is not supposed to keep his tomes in ascension, similar to a dragon, so they’ll be very weaker when it gets nerfed.

Is that official? Because there's evidence that suggest otherwise. The fact that you can't change your ES Signature skills on Sovereign until you reach the correct level again for one (like you can only respec level 4 signature when you reach level 4 and says as much with a tooltip. Weird for a bug to have a tooltip for functionality).

I also thought they let Dragon Lords keep their signature skills after a patch due complaints/backlash that Dragon Lords were way too weak after Ascension compared to the other leaders.

I could easily be wrong because I never ascended a Dragon Lord, let alone any time recently. :p :P

i know the AoW4 wiki says Dragon Lords get to keep their Signature skills, but I don't know how up to date that is.

The problem with not allowing an Eldritch Sovereign (or Dragons) to keep the signature skills, is that they will have no upside to Ascension save for the Ascension skill (which can be questionably useful in some cases although OP in others), and extra Affinity points.

The Dragon may have a one up if that was the case too over ES, because I would assume they at least keep the Type they gamed from a playthrough to mimic Champion and WK transformation retention. ES gets none of that.

[Pantagruel]

Dragon Lord keeps the cosmetic effects of their signature skills, but they don't do anything until you hit the correct level.