Wood Elves Unit Roster Tier Ranking

[@sev1120]

A note: Drycha's faction (wargrove of woe) is able to give all their treeman units murder of spites, making an entire army of mortis engines that are good in melee. Additionally, she gets her treemen at tier 3 instead of tier 5, which is an amazing boon. Also, her treemen have frenzy

[@Debilinside]

That sounds very OP :D Kinda like Allariel recruiting Sisters of Avelorn at T3 in 1 turn... That kindof makes the early and mid campaign trivial.

[@johnhastings1192]

But the effects don't stack if I remember correctly. So if your treemen are packed together (as they probably should), one murder of spites is basically as good as 19.

[@alexdobma4694]

I wonder how Tree genetics work in terms of gender lol

[@Dmitrisnikioff]

@@alexdobma4694 Forget about stamens and pistils; they're men because they all got wood

[@jianhaogao7608]

I have problem with Drycha fighting Wood elves waywatchers, wood units too slow and other units too week

[@PowerPuffSoldier]

These always make me want to play the showcased faction and change my playstyle according to Legend's conclusion... just for curiosity's sake.

[@planomathandscience]

I play WE most often, but I'm starting another this weekend!!

[@rinserofwinds]

Add a few k hours played and you will change your play style opposed to legends conclusions 😂 Not because they are not very effective, but anyone can rule the world with skelly spam, but how cool is it to rule the world with bats!

[@creativedegree]

yup thats how i learned how to skaven :D

[@jonathaneastman2952]

I was playing Grom when he did the greenskins... He was right about the nasty skulkers

[@Muck006]

@@planomathandscience Yes, but which one of them? The different factions play really differently ... and I do think Drycha's summoned wolves and spiders are really great too for her army due to the buffs she provides. This is one of the weaknesses of these lists ... because certain lords and certain technologies radically change units and the Wood Elves are probably the best example with the amber research.

[@stevenhenderson352]

Forgot the best part; Drycha gets treemen at Tier 3, and can apply an aspect to them. War grove of woe is def my fav wood elf faction

[@sev1120]

The Wargrove of Woe is rhe faction you play as if you wanna piss off mannfred by stealing his mortis engines and shoving them into your treemen

[@AshenVictor]

And they have Frenzy, and with 300 base AP they really gained a lot from the recent Frenzy change. You can also get a hero trait to add more MA/WS to your units and one to reduce MA/WS for enemies. And you can give them Poison attacks in the tech tree which is effectively another 10% resistance because it reduces enemy attack damage more.

[@AshenVictor]

@@sev1120 Ironically, despite being allegedly the faction that's supposed to hate anyone that proximity to and easy matchup against Mannfred, someone they hate even more, means Drycha is the one that plays most like the Wood Elves were intended to where you can just make easy alliances and have your armies operating all over the world with nobody threatening your home.

[@goransekulic3671]

Drycha's disgustingly overpowered. Woe's the faction you play when you want to WIN without putting in any effort. T3 Treemen + Heal + Mortis Engine...+other stuff. Even if Ark of Sotek was another form of Mortis, it wouldn't be anywhere near these. It's disgusting. I'd make her lose ALL ranged Elves. That'd balance her and give her a nice, fresh playstyle.

[@sipofsunscorchedsarsaparil6052]

@@goransekulic3671 I would not mind losing some of the Elven units but having a tech tree more about buffing forest spirits.

[@ungabunga345]

Hey, Legend, thank you for the content! Could you do a cross faction hero tier list? I'm not always sure which I should ignore and which to prioritize.

[@michaelpetrovich5353]

He said in the last tier list that its coming😁

[@p.p.wienersson]

Yeah I hope that he ends up doing that

[@seimo79]

That would be really great!

[@Harbyz]

Yes I agree, I hope he does one for in battle and one for just in campaign (prefer the battle)

[@lordmaur180]

Cross faction is basic: Magic first ,support seccond meele last

[@Nackamasten]

Would be fun to see a "How to Doomstack for *insert faction*" series where you explain all the necessary support characters and traits etc, especially now that you have shown a lot of doomstack units in the tier lists. Loving the content, keep it up! :)

[@Waitingnomad]

I like this idea

[@willpiggot2314]

I've been playing a wood elf campaign for the last couple days, been praying for this to come, cheers legend

[@chrisb5005]

Gotta love those sexy hoods and bows. Green's always been my favourite colour, and rangers have always been my favourite D&D class.

[@hellhound3969]

Rangers may be the weakest class in D&D ( If u only use the PH at least) but still are amazing to play

[@indrickboreale7381]

@@hellhound3969 However Fighter with bow build is an better archer

[@poolsofbloodinyourstomach]

This isn't DnD obviously, try again

[@hellhound3969]

@@indrickboreale7381 Yeah fighter with bow build is stronger but I like the ranger for RP, but I am always stuck as the DM either way

[@chrisb5005]

@@hellhound3969 Yeah, fighter is mechanically better, but I just prefer the ranger aesthetic and RP.

[@lilythebard]

Another point in favor of dryads that I'm surprised Legend didn't mention is that you can actually recruit them from one of the outpost buildings at tier 1. So they're really convenient even if you don't have the building chain in your main settlement

[@Sarellion]

I was waiting for "can recruit them at an outpost," too and surprised it wasn't mentioned.

[@NhatAnhPhamDr]

You can literally global recruit any unit with normal price/time as woodelf. Just build the building that look like a gate

[@thoughtentity]

@@NhatAnhPhamDr thank you for this! I tested it out and some of my units were actually cheaper to recruit globally with the same number of turns! (Worldroot Pathway)

[@VergiliosSpatulas]

You have no father figure

[@gaynorvaderable]

Really good tier list. Wood elves definitely have some of the craziest boosts for specific units

[@knightshade3d51]

They are really fun and powerful in field battles. I just wish their campaign could match. Right now I just can rarely bring myself to play them even though I enjoy using them in fights.

[@BloodyArchangelus]

@@knightshade3d51 You can play against any race and dont care about outdated warhammer stuff. Just plunge and kill. lol kek.

[@erdiulusoy1150]

@@knightshade3d51 Sisters campaign is among my favorites in wh2. It is focused in a good way since you have a clear goal from the start, you care about the forest and nothing else.

[@LilyZayli]

I've been loving these tier lists legend, can't wait for the Bretonnia video!

[@Guderidin]

I really like how you take the campaign map into consideration instead of simple sorting the units by their stats

[@doktarr]

This is the first time I've had a hard disagree with a trash rating by Legend on one of these lists. Not as in "I think that deserves a C" but rather "I think that deserves an A". I've actually had a lot of success in late campaign on Very Hard battle difficulty using Glade Guard with Starfire Shafts with a Treekin front line. Glade Guard Starfire Shafts are a LOT cheaper than Waywatchers and Deepwood Scouts. Treekin hold the line super well (especially when you give them the huge ward save bonus with an Ancient Treeman lord) and it's easy to arrange things so that they hold units in place and the Starfire Shafts just shred them. A Starfire Shaft + Treekin army is much cheaper on upkeep than a Treeman army, such that even with supply line penalties factored in you can maintain a lot more armies. I'm not saying it's clearly better than straight Treemen spam - it's not - but it's FAR from a trash approach. It's a perfectly good army construction, easy to make, easy to play, and very consistently successful on high difficulties.

[@mazdrpan4099]

I agree, this was my go to Durthu stack back before the rework too. You also used to be able to stack talon of kurnous trait for extra range. Definitely not trash.

[@doktarr]

Also, a slight correction - the Hagbane Tips Glade Guard doesn't just have magic damage - it also does poison. This can be pretty nice, to the point that I'll drop 1 or 2 Hagbane tips in those Glade Guard/Treekin armies so that I can throw around poison effects.

[@diregorlock628]

Totally agree, Legend contradicts himself when he says you shouldn't have the barracks building at tier one, but the Starfire shafts are technically tier 2, which he said it's perfectly fine to have the barracks and the Asrai forge on a tier 2 settlement.

[@alexeyalexandrov7583]

How do you play the actual battles? Whenever I try to use Tree Kin as fronline they get wrecked by friendly fire, also they obstruct my archers

[@TheNightkunai]

@@doktarr Not just that, Hagbane Tips also have 3 aditional armor piercing & get recruited in one turn. They are vastly better than the base version and even starfire shaft ones. When an outpost is threatened, recruiting a stack of these in one turn is much more affordable than other options such as waywatchers.

[@gavinburns6994]

Not mentioned about waywatchers is how much damage can be boosted. With right faction upgrades, right lords and choices, can get 100+missile strength on waywatchers when they reach lvl 9. I went from playing Sisters of Twilight with my waywatcher spam stack(1 lord on dragon, 2 wizards on eagles(life+shadow), 2 hawk riders, 15 waywatchers doing 90-100 missile strength) to my half completed Teclis campaign with a Sisters of Avalorn army and it felt like shooting paper arrows. Sisters of Avalorn with Alarielle and all buffs couldnt get past mid 50s missile strength. Difference was super noticeable. Waywatchers are WAY better units than sisters of avalorn(next best archer unit). Being able to stalk and choose the time and place of attack is huge; sisters are defensive units and need to sit in formation and wait to be attacked. The initiative is a massive advantage.

[@cheesus7672]

I think it really comes down to the playstyle. I play on very hard with balanced armies and for me it works. The unit roster is very versatile and you don't HAVE to go for treeman spam because it's your only choice. Cav, Infantry and Treekin have their worth depending on the playstyle

[@KazeKoichi]

Wood elves are exponentially easier the easier campaign difficulty is. It's completely understandable to not want to play on Legendary for Wood Elves, Norsca, Nakai, Marcus Wolfheart, and you can also add Warriors of Chaos to this list.

[@kirevkizrepnav572]

That's what he always says: Thrash doesn't mean don't recruit them. It just means they are very suboptimal on highest difficulty if you play right (=cheese). Ofc if you go balanced/multiplayer builds a lot of values change.

[@Debilinside]

@@KazeKoichi One of my first mod was to reduce supply lines... Many consider this cheating, but SL simply makes a lot of cool units not worth it. I think there should traits, technologies or building to reduce it, its a stupid mechanic way too punishing for factions with weak economy.

[@Loj84]

@@Debilinside I like that idea. Specifically, I think landmark buildings for certain races that reduce supply lines would be a great mechanic. Could put them in each of the races' faction capitals, to signify that you've gotten a new regional capital. This regional capital would be able to supply armies directly, without coordination from your main capital. It makes sense that that would lower supply lines. Could also add them to historic capitals/important cities of the races that are no longer under their control at the start of the campaign.

[@doshmastercash1977]

@@Debilinside I don't think you should feel bad about this, cause supply lines is probably the worst mechanic in the game currently. That and CA loves to make absolutely menial changes like +1 MA -1 MD for multiplayer, yet abhors making changes to upkeep costs in campaign which a ton of units desperately need currently.

[@Horusa1]

Honestly i think that you are not being that kind to treekin, since they are one of the best holding unit in the game. Put 2/3 units on edge of the forest, have with them life magic healer + general, and they will never die, letting your archers do all the work, and you get them at tier 3. They are the ultimate roadblock

[@mitko1955]

Tree kin are super convenient to recruit (cuz u get the building anyway for the hero), hold the line like Ironbreakers, can be healed by a ton without losing models, can be buffed like crazy even before you get to T5. And yes, they do deal damage in the woods Definitely doesn't deserve trash-tier Sometimes I get super mad at Legend, because he's biased and goes like "oh, i don't recruit this unit so it's trash" I've done an early game Tree Kin doomstack with all the heroes and buffs you would usually use for a treeman doomstack, and it easily beat 4 armies of whatever by just sitting in the woods with murder of spites and life magic. With like next to no casualties.(L/VH) And I wasn't even playing Drucha nor Durthu. I'd put it under B at the very least Love the wood elves because every unit on their roster is viable on VH. Provided you play well, micro, and do the buffs, offices, researches etc.

[@bisonbob9092]

I agree but more, you can doom stack treekin! exactly the same as legend does with treemen, pile them all on the same spot in a forest segment. They basically perform the same but cheaper, all the buffs from lord and branch wraiths and glade caps applies to Treekin. Ive used them late game and they do the "same job as treemen" an excellent unit. Treemen are very expensive for wood elves don't forget that.

[@mitko1955]

​@@bisonbob9092 I just said the exact same thing, but just didn't stress on the "doomstack" :) I actually never phased out TK for TM during that campaign, they were doing excellent even versus tier 5 units. So yea, I am strongly against that F-tier Tree Kin, LEGEND!

[@FuelDropforthewin]

Note with Swiftshiver shards: I've found that mixing in one or two units to take out priority targets quickly (due to their massive damage output) works quite well.

[@KodiakBaby]

Legend you the absolute best brother. You attention to detail is incredible. It seems that you have a much better tone in your voice. You seem happy brother. Glad your doing well!

[@poolsofbloodinyourstomach]

*your

[@grub833]

fortunate son starts playing

[@kevblr15]

**WELCOME TO ATHEL LOREN GENTLEMEN. I WILL NOT LIE, YOUR CHANCES OF SURVIVAL ARE SLIM.**

[@Carlolimus]

When you think of a giant eagle in any fantasy lore, you picture them doing a swooping attack and flying off with their enemy in their talons, so i think this once, swooping in WH2 can be considered a cheese free tactic as in my mind, thats exactly what a giant eagle would do anyway.

[@frankschwarzbier7168]

Speaking of meta infantry, it´d be nice I think to have a Norsca tier list.

[@ytshotmaker]

Out of all the tierlists so far I will have to rate this one as doomstack Not my favourite race, but the insights in this video especially delivered so far above their value, combined with the tier list format's convenience of obtaining knowledge in general, it's hard to rate this one anywhere else, probably the most insightful one so far

[@jeffreypol6225]

You said you'd like to see comments, so here it is... I think you've done a great job on this tier list, especially by factoring in the unit convenience. I've been playing Wood Elves tabletop since 1995, and also want to commend the game devellopers for staying true to the fighting nature as intended by the Wood Elf lore. Speed over strength, loose "skirmish" formations, lightly armored archer based armies complemented by harrassing flyer units taking down the very few units able to outrange the archers (heavy artillery), fast chasing cavalry to keep leadership broken units from ever returning to the fight, and indestructible Treemen to pin down any regiments too vast to pick off from afar. The first small thing I found off about the tier list was the campaign buildings in tier 1-2-3 Wood Elf capitals you mentioned. I completely agree that you should build all economic buildings as soon as possible, but as you've also mentioned yourself they all require kindreds to build them. So a tier 1 settlement can't build 2 economic buidlings at the same time at game start. This for me means I build 1 economic building at tier 1, 1 at tier 2 and 1 at tier 3. This allows me to build the archery building at tier 1 as well, making the hagbane tips archers almost as convenient as the regular glade archers. It's not so much the magic damage that does it for me, but the poison debuff they provide. In every battle I've used them, they appear to route enemies much faster then the regular archers. Slowing down the enemy frontline allows the units behind them to catch up to the frontline and then getting hit at the same time (also a nice way to blob units up for magic spells) This build order allows me to recruit 2 waystalker heroes around turn 10-12, wich I prefer over glade captains greatly (for archer based armies) because of their early buffs to archers, greater accuracy and armour piercing missile damage over their glade captain counterparts. The second thing is you don't need a Life Lore wizard in your Treemen doomstack; as a Treemen lord is allready a life wizard. 2-3 Branchwraiths, a Spellsinger Beastlore and Ariel as heroes, and the doomstack is all done in my opinion. I realise that this does not actually comment on the tier list itself, but as said before: great job on the tier list and love your video's!

[@vuko8767]

I'll usually put one unit of Tree Kin in my low level / early(ish) game armies just for siege attacker while building up to Treeman doomstacks. At T3 they're kind of the only game in town for that, unless you have a Treeman lord of course. Very useful trait, relatively cheap and not completely useless in combat. I'm not sure I agree with putting them in Trash. If Dryads had siege attacker I would agree, there'd be no need for them.

[@capttelush539]

33:33 actually fire is the only damage type that can get negative resistance. Physical and magical can not get extra damage for those damaged types

[@oenkrad9404]

An important note with Wood Elves is that their local recruitment is crap, but their global recruitment is nuts. You can 1 turn recruit most of their roster including Waystalkers. Out of all the doomstacks, Wood Elf archer units are the only ones that can be 1 turn recruited globally with any army. You can basically 1 turn recruit an entire army with all the global recruit slots you get. This ends up negating a lot of the negative things about Wood Elf recruitment mid-late game. I wouldn't consider Treekin to be trash because they're your earliest Siege Attacker unit that can also be recruited fast. If you're playing Sisters of Twilight, Orion, or Drycha(3 of the 4 WE LL's) then you won't have that perk until much later. Sisters of Twilight can get it by riding their dragon mount later. If you're really aggressive you can also get your settlement to T5 faster than anyone else in the game, except Skaven. Especially so if you utilize all your build cost/time reduction options. Military Recruitment buildings don't need kindred, so you can upgrade them very fast as well. I think the biggest problem with Wood Elf cavalry is their boosts are weak in comparison to the ones for units like Bladesingers/Treemen/Archers. Zoats would be better if they were cheaper. They're the second most expensive unit in the Wood Elf roster at 425. Forest Dragons are 450. Treemen 375. Waystalkers/Bladesingers are 300. So if all your best units are cheaper by a significant margin, why recruit Zoats? I think the last thing to note with Wood Elves is that they can ambush with exceptional ease and get good bonuses for doing so. They can blitz an enemy army and obliterate it in less than a minute. Units like Bladesingers/Waystalkers that can capitalize on that heavily are really useful. Glade Captain heroes can also get stalk for themselves as well as all Wardancer/Bladesingers units. So you can have an army that has a Spellcaster Lord, a Glade Captain, and Bladesingers/Waystalkers with everyone but the Lord stalking. This allows for someone like LoTW to cheese super hard with all his favorite strategies. I love the Wood Elves because they have so many great options for army compositions and this powerful & unique playstyle.

[@Rossogia]

Honestly this is one of the lists I agree with the most, with the exception of hagbane glade guard (love that poison, makes them better at chasing down and slowing the advance) who I'd keep in A tier with the normal ones.

[@receivedbeans8555]

After you have done all the tier lists, I think it would be nice to have a video recommending how CA should rebalance trash or OP units/factions to better represent them.

[@Mr3P1d3M1C]

Disagree with the Treekin. They may just hold the line, but I have won some amazing battles and they just block trash the entire time. Amazing list, this was the one I was waiting for!

[@christophermichael6027]

Maybe someone can help me out or the great Legend himself, but: Has Legend talked about/plan to do a video on the “ideal army composition” video for each faction? I know you can probably just rewatch livestreams and see, but would be cool to see exactly the ratio of doomstack units/heroes and how to use the armies effectively.

[@josharnold3450]

Good idea but it will depend on where you are in the campaign? Could make sense to cover ideal unit composition at different points in the campaign? E.g. first 30 turn army composition, turns 30-60, then 60-100, and finally the end game doom stack?

[@R3GARnator]

Check a part 2 or 3 of any of his livestreams of a faction, and you'll see what he thinks is an ideal army. It's as simple as that.

[@thomasmeyer6943]

It does change based on the legendary lord you choose to play as and sometimes based on generic lord if they have a good buff line other than the red skill line. For example, Vampire Counts can always run Lord + 18/19 Vampires and then another unit if you need siege attacker. You can increase Vampire capacity with just a level 4 lord (blue line skill). It's always a good stack, but it's dramatically better with Isabelle as the faction leader. Heralds of Ariel can doomstack Hawk Riders, but they're not nearly as good for other lords and Treemen are probably better since a Life Spellsinger can keep them at full HP.

[@ingold1470]

Also it would likely depend on what he's fighting. For example if the army is built to take settlements from any race that's light on armour as the Empire you'd want Mortars, but if you're fighting the Chaos invasion you'd want to go full Helstorm because Mortars lack armour piercing and Chaos doesn't use walls. And if your enemy happens to be Brettonnia with endless peasant bow crapstacks you might have to pull Reiksguard out of the trash tier.

[@nosuitsgiven]

I love these tier lists but I have really really been waiting for the Beastmen list.

[@humantwist-offcap9514]

Treekin at trash! That’s just cruel. They’ve been a must-have for every wood elves campaign I play

[@pietrynglib177]

yeah thats what ive been wondering, theyre fucking unkillable

[@bathroomlew]

Since in the Tomb Kings video you've included Vampire Arkhan The Black units, it would be appropriate to add Drycha's beasts as well in here. - Deepwood Scouts with Shards should be A as well - you're trading some range for A LOT of DPS, this makes them perfect vs hard-hitting meele factions that would otherwise have the time to decimate your frontline or jump on your backline because it would take too long to break/kill them. I cannot overstate how great they are vs Vampire Counts Monsters and Cav, Chaos and Norsca as well. Also they are AI Greenskins Blakc Orks spam melters. - Tree Kin should have a distinction with Drycha and Durthu because both give them a significant boost. Especially the Durthu can turn them into almost a doomstack while Drycha just supplements them with the killing power of things like Spiders (for poision debuff) or Wolves. Also it's worth pointing out you can give Spirits different armors, one of which boosts speed. Tree Kin are the best unit to hold the line in archer-heavy armies exactly because of low number of entities - it's harder for arrows to hit them instead of the enemy meele infantry they are engaging from all sided. Treeman has a much harder time holding the line as he doesn't block as much space, this makes it easy for infantry units to slip towards the archers. Tree kin should be B at least and Zoats A snce they are simply an upgrade in thata regard aside form being more prone to getting hit by your own arrows.

[@JohnDoe-zh6cp]

They require the asrai forge though and build slots are at a premium with wood elves

[@sulphuric_glue4468]

I agree that Tree Kin are too low. They do barely any damage but they simply refuse to die

[@bathroomlew]

@@JohnDoe-zh6cp i'd say that if you're going archer-heavy army then you'll get it either way if only to give your frontline shields and have at least 2 Archers with Poison for slowing down units that are chrging, trying to flank or running away OR to lower DPS of a particular heavy-hitting unit. After the update I found myself skipping garrison since with the units of renown and ogre mercs it's easy to create a defensive army on the spot or just use the travel option between glades.

[@Adjusting1]

Yeah he also didn’t include Sartosan units in Vampire Coast I think

[@seimo79]

Oh right the Wargrove units are missing! There are quite many.

[@Gentleben23]

Glade Guard (Starfire Shafts) are actually by far the best Glade Guard Variant because they do AP damage, 16 AP damage and 2 normal damage per arrow. This is 4 x the AP damage of the Base Glade Guard who does 18 normal damage and 4 AP damage. I would rank them A tier.

[@Nazdreg1]

Yeah, I would also slightly disagree with treekin being trash. They don't do damage at all but they are pretty tanky and I like two or three of them as blocking objects to protect the waywatchers while they slaughter the enemy and maybe as a magnet for big moshpits to cast aoe spells on.

[@pplr1]

Done similar.

[@adernain]

Great guides, please keep doing them, even with 1700 hours in the game I watch all of them. One thing though, since you added Mistwalkers and Arkham's units to the lists, why don't you add units like Drycha's forest spirits?

[@TheDarthMarko]

Those are rookie numbers, you need to pump em up

[@adernain]

@@TheDarthMarko Cries with 400 days played on WOW

[@medievalgaming8754]

@@adernain you wasted over a year of your life on WOW imagine 😂

[@MiniaAr]

Thanks for the Tier List. I'm a bit sad that there was no mention of Drycha Malevolent spirits and forest units when HE Mistwalkers units and LM Blessed Spawnings got mentionned in their respective tier list. Would you say Drycha tree spirits are one tier higher than the regular unit (like for LM blessed units) because of Frenzy and Drycha's special technological buffs (mortis engine Treemen for example)?

[@MetaBraz]

Yeah, I would have liked to have seen ratings for the spiders, hawks, manticores etc.

[@matthew2h2o40]

I think you’re right they would be better

[@OmarAli-we9yy]

your knowledge on every race and lord is so fricking amazing. i enjoy every video you post. i hope Warhammer 3 will be just as good and you'll do the same thing with them

[@gdrad]

I think this list is pretty accurate for priorities even at lower tiers. The early game pinch on the coinpurse and lack of buildings limits how effective a sideways build is anyway. Some notes though -IMO WE do very well mixing archers. A stack doesn't need to be homogenous especially mid game for them. -A x19 Glade Guard stack with 1-2 Starfire Shafts and 4 Hagbane tips has some advantages over mono glade guard. 4 Poison dealers is plenty to splash it all over. Hagbane have a better AP ration (15/7 instead of 18/4) and can focus phys resist units. Starfire Shafts can always focus a lord/hero worst case. Yet 13 units are still basic Glade Guard. -Swiftsilver Shard's main advantage is 2 projectiles per volley. They actually do decently well on a 1-2 limit but are more chaff chewers. Leave em on autofire, micro your other higher tier archers, and just make sure Swiftsilver are clearing the largest blobs they can. -Wild Riders actually pair very well with a WE approach that fails utterly at legend/vh/ultra scale battle. 85 speed, woodsmen, and fear all help make them amazing ambush cav. If you attack an AI army from multiple directions you can potentially pull them into smaller chunks and then hit each chunk individually. Or just go for their squishy backline while drawing away their front line. While Wild Riders are super squishy, the real reason this strategy fails is AI morale bonuses at legend/vh and ultra unit size being unfavorable for cav. -The systemic adjustments to cav may help WE Cav a lot. Though it's unlikely to be enough at higher difficulties.

[@hypnotoad9441]

Dude hell yes. Literally get so happy when I see a new vid from you man! Love the content you are a beast 🙏

[@Altrantis]

I feel like as wood elves you want to control all their special woods and surrounding areas and have everything you don't benefit from, all the cities and non-forest-neighboring areas controlled by an allied high elf.

[@boyanpenev9822]

I think being able to take Tree kin earlier than treemen and the larger number of entities is a good feature for a defensive unit. Yes, once you can field a huge number of treemen, they are better but I think treekin have a role, especially in a drycha or durthu army.

[@sginrummy88]

treekin hold the line while your wizards drop bombs/archers rain death. its an extremely strong combo.

[@ironsilk535]

This tier list sums up the Wood Elf faction perfectly. Their best unit is just a big tree!

[@luggy9256]

With archers very close behind and (for me at least) more fun to play with.

[@ionutgeanta8741]

wish the tree would carry those archers, like some other races that have monsters with some smaller ranged units on top of it. i think greenskins and vimpire pirates have such units

[@Scarloc17]

A big ass angry murder tree*

[@luggy9256]

Wood elves need the empire treatment so their spearman with shields don’t require an additional building anymore… make the basic ones come from the settlement and let the shielded ones just be tier 1. It would make balanced armies make so much more sense in the early game if you could drop in a barracks at tier 1 just for a few turns to get some spears with shields as a frontline. Especially against bretonia.

[@bificommander7472]

Extra bonus for dryads, you can get them from outposts, so you don't need a build slot

[@juliantakazato5994]

I'd really like seeing a building tier list too. A lot of the tiers for the units seem to be heavily influenced by whether their building is worth the slot

[@ecargfosreya]

Treeman doomstack's biggest weakness is arcane phoenix stack, and the AI will almost never build them.

[@user-wl9pz7go8h]

Parravon landmark lets durthu/Orion grab eagles and hawk riders as t1. They are exceptional vs peasants, skavenslaves, and all forms of early goblin.

[@beiju-]

I disagree with the Swiftshiver Shard Deepwood Scouts. I think, they are an early Doomstack. A level 2 Doomstack with a Lord, which increases the range and the amber tech which increases the ammunition, this is a beast in the early campaign. And even in the late campaign with all the experience on the units and the Lords, Waystalkers and Gladecaptains.

[@warsmithgalvinc4151]

Thank you legend for breaking down what to construct in wood elf settlements and why I will be giving thw wood elves another go now

[@UndeadMongoose301]

Honestly I think you were too lenient with wildwood rangers. I play on normal or hard battle difficulty and these guys still way underperform even when they're in pretty favourable situations.

[@brianngo8172]

Yeah honestly I’ve never had wildwood rangers ever recoup their worth. Not a big fan of them.

[@Yammau]

BEST Tier List out there. We Neeed MOAR!!!

[@Marmamartha]

What a game can do to you, Wild Riders used to be one of the best cav for cost in the game. And now they are nearing trash

[@iraqiwalker1436]

They are still great in terms of cost. It's just the inconvenience of recruiting them. In my Talsyn campaign I never bothered to build the cav or hawk buildings until I was at around tier 4. At that point I had Zoats and Waywatchers. Only reason I ended up having the building was confederating someone that had built it. Good unit, inconvenient building.

[@edfoman]

Awesome, thank you for doing wood elves. Keep doing more tier lists :D

[@Bane13579]

I think the hagbane tips adding the poison debuff is SUPER relevant. Not sure why legend didn’t mention that.

[@yahoody1978]

I am loving these roster tiers and them being uploaded around 7AM my time is just perfect to my schedule.

[@ihavenoideawhatimdoing5088]

Seems like you underrate the Hawk Riders, slightly; while they don't necessarily do anything particularly well, you can almost always use them to deal the full extent of their damage every engagement - far better than shock cavalry, excellent for siege battles, just by sheer virtue of being fast flyers with a ranged attack. They absolutely destroy skaven weapon teams, empire back ranks, they let you focus down single unit threats. Yes they are totally broken with Sisters of Twilight, but even in a drycha campaign, a squad of 4 of these things is worth the slots in an army. The saving grace of Wood Elves trash garrisons is that you can have a couple of these things to run the enemy ragged while you pick off valuable targets.

[@gregsmw]

wardancers with spears are INSANE as a defensive unit, i disagree heavily that they are a squishy unit they have incredibly high MD, and their alternate stance trades off some MD for 44% missile resistance, meaning against the most common types of missile your up against (dark elf darkshards, dwarf thunderers, HE archers etc) they have INCREDIBLY good resistance against missiles (both the missile resistance and base physical resistance) that ignores both armour piercing AND "ignores shields" war dancers will survive artillary better then ANY other infantry unit, to the point it barely scratches them because they are also a loose formation, which would normally be bad for being charged but they have charge defence so no then they also have a very high anti large bonus, high armour piercing, and good MD (and a LOT of good buffs for them in the tech tree and redline) imo wardancers with spears are the single best melee infantry in the game and i include bladesingers in that, bladesingers will outperform wardancers (with spears) as a damage dealer unit, but they die faster in melee (lower MD) they dont have that absurd missile resistance so they die faster to both archers AND artillary, they dont have charge defence so they can actually be punished by cavalry quite hard and are MUCH worse as a defensive unit (which as WE you play on the "defence" side a lot cos of your rediculous archers) the only thing blade singers outperform speardancers at, is killing.....which you have archers for

[@Godfather1746]

My favorite faction overall, and I agree with a lot of it. I will say I love great stag Knights even though you get them as late as you do. I usually use the regiment of renown ones in just a general elf stack

[@TheSharingan32]

Thanks for all this tierlist, this is so amazing

[@yes-yes8632]

No way! The tier list was going so well, then you put tree kin under trash. If you spam them and focus on buffing them, they can perform well enough in the late game to count as a doomstack, and they're tier 3. Not to mention they're very convenient to get. They do NOT deserve to be in the same tier as the most extrermely inefficient units. Even if you think they're inferior to tree men, you said it yourself that they're convenient and tier 3.

[@jacobburch7555]

I know it’s two years later lol but I agree. They’re a great early game monsterous unit and can get some good resistances

[@knightacedia]

Ive had durthu's treekin get so insanely tanky that even if their damage is low they survive so long that they perform just as well as some treemen.

[@jaredcullum117]

I imagine if I wanted to use Zoats, I would pair them with Dryads, that way you don't have to take up any other building slots to protect them, then bring a couple treemen for more damage. You could even use the zoats to heal your treemen while branchwraiths lower enemy magic resist. I imagine this might be a fairly solid team with Drycha especially.

[@joshchristensen3171]

Hey Legend I was wondering could you do a non legendary lord tier list and how they compliment certain stacks/units. I always get to the point in the campaign where I run out of legendary lord stacks and would love your input on which lords pair best with which armies, and the traits too!

[@MultiMoste]

I feel like if you put a Glade Guard as A then you should put Dragons at A too. The reasoning here is that at the stage you get to use those units both are very viable as just have Lord + heroes and just fill rest of the army spots with that unit. Now i would never rly call Glade Guard army a "doomstack" even though it basically performs as if it was an early game doomstack. Same with dragons rly, the difference is only stage of the game you're at.

[@MarcAIlA]

these Tier Ranking vods are rly insane Great Idea!!!

[@soulkutu]

Video not even started and Legend is talking about tips and shafts lul

[@Duskworker]

keep in mind with glade guard that the poison (idk about starfire) has less armor piercing damage. for that reason i prefer regular glade guard even more. But for glade riders I much prefer the poison because it causes slowed movement speed for the enemy and makes harassing more advantageous, especially with vanguard Also you forgot to mention Deepwood scout has Vanguard deployment. And that Glade Guard is heavily more capable in melee combat.

[@undeadwill5912]

Man this is going to be a great day a new tier list and its friday!

[@BirchMonkey857]

On normal: holy shIT are Waywatchers good. I had a proto-doomstack with Ikit (not all relevant bonuses, heroes not levelled to full yet, etc.) attacked the Oak of Ages, and the only thing that gave me _any_ trouble was the _one_ unit of Waywatchers, they completely routed two Ratlings and a Brood Horror, I had to focus like half my army on them. And don't get me started on _player_ Waywatchers (at least in 1, I haven't done too much with them in 2): They're fairly cheap, pretty damn convenient, and turn everything into a blood-spewing pincushion if you use them even halfway competently. I think the cheats the NPCs get on higher difficulty nerfs them into something a bit less spammable, but Isha above, they're like tied with Ratlings as the most terrifyingly effective missile units.

[@Adahn5]

Thanks for your continued content Legend. Hope you're doing better and have been able to get some rest lately.

[@Croockers47]

Just to further show how bad the Wood Elf cavalry is, Drycha doesn't even have access to the cavalry building tree.

[@dac314]

How can Eternal Guard with shields be WORSE? I recognize the additional building is difficult, but considering that it is going to be built ANYWAY, it's hard to see letting your unshielded infantry get pincushion'd when you very easily could just give them shields. I NEVER bother with unshielded infantry, unless they're halberds. Just ain't right.

[@LinX1515]

As wood elves you should prioritise pincushioning the enemy (because you outrange everyone), instead of trying to block some damage

[@desen6486]

Starfire Shaft Glade Guard are doomstack/crapstack tier. Can easily dominate the whole game with full stacks of them and it's the only way to get enough armies to cover your whole territory.

[@darko-man8549]

The one thing wardancer has is the ability to give the vanguard, and I think stalk (though that might be from the shadow dancer mod) and you can buff them up where they actually deal a large amount of damage fast.

[@Grooviebones]

I know the games changed a lot since this video came out but the Starfire Glade Guard in Trash tier blows my mind, even for back then. Starfire Glade Guard are 80% of a Sisters of Avelorn, which as one of the best units of the game still made Starfire Glade Guard pretty good, they blasted early game chaff and scaled better into late game, which Standard Glade Guard did not

[@adinix2000]

Fun fact, Hawk riders count as cavalry for the Talsyn cost bonus and charge bonus. If you get enough of the pasture buildings you can recruit them at max rank. With a glade captain their charge can be further improved, and with death from above cause fear and terror. Take about 8 hawks a captain a life wizard and maybe your general if you want to put them in the air too and you can break most units leadership with a surround charge. Horn of the wild hunt is nice here too. Can be pretty squishy so you want to pick off isolated targets and not get bogged down in a slog. Wardancer spears can be made significantly less squishy when embedded in tree kin. A block of 4 each in the forest make for a really nice tar pit. The tree kin give the spears toughness and the spears give the tree kin nice anti large damage. I like to lure the enemy into the tarpit after eliminating key targets and softening with dwellers. Then once engaged in melee diving on missle units then rear charging the remaining melee units. Very budget army that punches way above its weight class if used right.

[@bjack1547]

Tree kin underrated. Early siege attacker, great defense and line holding.

[@booradley6832]

I think these tier lists would shift a bit if say, during a content drought he was to rate each unit for tier 25, 60 and 110- what I consider to be early, middle and late game respectively. Some units could be gold standard at 25 and tank at 110, and the opposite. Availability of build slots, faction economy, technology dependence, etc. shape all this. A lot of these "Inconvenient to recruit" units you have to consider that if you're going to get a single unit that requires the asrai forge, or equivalent "roadblock" building for other factions, you have access to the rest of them. Making their convenience factor a non issue especially when you have lowered global recruitment. TLDR- I agree but think for the sake of brevity he did the best he could.

[@gangr3l]

To be honest. I found the shield users to be quite effective. Low cost and high defense, keeps people off the archers for the archers to melt just about everything. I just use 2 units supported with some bladesingers though.

[@Agirmetal]

The big problem of the game is in higher difficulties it increases only the melee stats of enemy units which makes your melee units obsolete or very week while not effecting your ranged units so much. So most of your units are trash and most strategies are useless. What they should do is instead of increasing melee defence, melee attack, melee damage of units by 1.15, 1.15, 1.2 times respectively, they should increase them less and add some missile resistance

[@smorphous8928]

Tree Kin are really good, they have the best defence in the game, they can stop almost every charge in the game.

[@Trapsarentgay133]

Every since the vampire counts vid I’ve been doing the skelly spears and wind of death combo thanks for that one

[@Dakkablight]

I can't wait for the Warriors of chaos and norsca ratings. That's gunna be one spicy list. Love these lists legend, keep the good work up.

[@andrewparker5678]

Hey legend this is gonna be a weird comment, but I just wanted to say straight up had a bad day felt good to come home and just sit down and watch one of your videos to just keep myself from going crazy. For real thank you man.

[@andreascj73]

A Treeman Lord is almost a doomstack onto itself, often even better than Durthu.

[@Empiro3]

Hagbane tips have the same total damage, but more of it is AP compared to normal Glade Guards, so it can perform a decent amount better than the basic Glade Guard. The poison is nice to slow down enemies from closing in. It's also not hard to get a settlement to tier 2, so while a little less convenient, the better combat performance makes them A-tier in my books.

[@flipneleanor7370]

If you want to try a really weird strategy for wood elves play as Mel Gibson. Get a staunch line of spears, line of archers in the back, and the rest cavalry. It's suprising viable. Mel gibson and his starting hero are excellent at lord sniping together, the spearmen hold the line, the archers do the damage, and your cavalry mop up ranged units. The cavalry is viable because mel gibson's faction buffs them.

[@PatSlovak]

First time on a wood elf campaign right now on VH/VH, about to make my first doomstack as this faction, made sure to watch this first lol.

[@JB-xl2jc]

"You can look at a tree and just say euuh what da FUK?!" Way you said that cracked me up

[@iraqiwalker1436]

His inner skaven is leaking

[@simontriggs3299]

Late to this party, but I have no idea why you would place regular Gladeguard above those with Hagbane. Or why shielded Eternal Guard are ranked below the unshielded variety or the totally ineffective Rangers. To be honest it feels like Legend is obsessed with building everything in every settlement, forgetting that in Athel Loren you have four recruitment centres right next to each other. So it doesn't matter if one can't build archers, or one can't build treemen or whatever because they also have a Forge. Besides Welf global recruitment is amazing.

[@botep5529]

First time i played durthu i fell in love with dryads. Absolutely shreds all other starting infantry. I was smashing my way across the empire with little to no reistance until i ran into grimgore and got vibe checked hard. Turns out black orcs dont give a fuck about angry trees, and grimgore chopped down Durthu like the giant tree he is lol

[@Dancan799]

Completely unrelated but just wanted to say thanks for the tactics you’ve taught me. Just stomped twice the number of forces against me by fighting a unwinnable fight withdrawing before they got to me and then blowing them to hell on the second fight 👍

[@sassyviking6003]

I definitely understand the rankings, but it is a bummer to see starfire shafts so low. They are my favorite wood elf archer. They are discount sisters of averlorn with ok melee for an archer, great missile damage output, and are more reasonably cost efficient to field, which matters a lot for the wood elf economy once you start expanding. I will also mention for eternal guard, they are inconvenient, but the shielded variant are a really good counter to the enemies you'll face early game. They will trade well with early game dwarfs to your east who rely pretty heavily on their armor to carry them. They have good shields which is nice since glade guard will win a lot of archer duels if it is a fair fight, but when outnumbers just melt to counter missile fire, and to your west, the biggest threat the pretonians bring in armored cavalry, which the ap and antilarge of eternal guard will absolutely destroy. They are hard to get, but not a bad option to build for once your settlement is tier 2, since the base glade guard are tier 0 so you don't need a building to get archers.

[@brianhurd3355]

Good list - only change I'd make is Tree Kin - not because they're 'good' but because they're the only way to skip the siege construction delay at Tier 3.

[@danfish300]

Really enjoying the tier lists Legend! I reckon if someone just bit the bullet and built the Asrai forge in a province then just about every WE unit would go up a rank :P

[@knightshade3d51]

My favorite series continues. Keep up the great work 👍

[@jakehunter52]

Love these videos Legend! The double soundtracks are a bit distracting though, might be worth turning off the music in the game while leaving the rest of the sounds in place.

[@MrSarcasticGaming]

Legend VS. The Asrai Forge

[@nealm6764]

Wow, nice content! I just finished my first campaign with sisters of twilight and my conclusions and choices pretty much are right in line with yours, although it took some trial and error to reach some of them. I had upgraded Blade guards to armor piercing ASAP by building the Armory, but still had regular blade guards and didn't notice much of a difference tbh. Also went with Rangers and Blade dancers, but phased them out when Blade singers came online. The hawks were gotten ASAP and I always chose every buff for them. They were incredible in battles. Once I got at least one treeman in every army I was practically unbeatable, but I was only playing on hard-hard. I am now going to try VH-VH. Anyway, thanks for the spot on video.

[@CptRusky69]

I also love the Treeman Office slot which buffs forest spirits even more!

[@Hansmaffai]

I really like to bolster bladesinger doomstacks with 2-4 Zoats. Elite infantry with high wardsafe usually starts losing models at ~75-80% health, so compared to single entity you want to heal them really early on to keep them at full strengh. One lifewizard however can't heal your whole frontline at once, so unless you got some extra heals from zoats on the flanks you'll start losing many models and therefore combatpower. Zoats also act as an awesome screening unit to block enemy charges of cav or other high mass entities. Once tied down by the zoats the bladesingers can comftably kill pretty much anything. Especially since the zoats also make enemyunits more vulnerable to magicdmg, which again boosts bladesingers dmg. Really awesome support unit with so much synergy.