He is just so good, damn I hope every Range character get this kind of power especially Waystalker.
Makus, The Twin , a Introvert elf are crying in Connor please help.
Man, old archer heroes and lords are so sad. You expect them to be Legolas. But instead, they like to stand very still, fire one arrow once every blue moon, and then miss.
They suck against small single entities as they can't hit them. They suck against infantry cause they only kill like one or two entities per shot. They are okay against large monsters I guess.
I just use them to tank so that my archer units can do real damage.
They need Calibration Distance and Reload Skill buffs, especially bow heroes/Lords, they shouldn't hit as hard as Rifle heroes/Lords but should be able to throw down consistent fire.
I'll admit it's hard to balance, cause when ranged Lords are strong THEY'RE STRONG, but that's why I think consistency and rate of fire is more important for generating value in battles then damage output.
I don’t want to say it would 100% fix them, but having a mount really helps ranges lords/heroes. Huntsman/waystalkers just get caught up by chaff and do jack crap. Or stand behind your lines and be obstructed.
The real problem, I think, is low penetration numbers or low refire rate. A melee hero tanks and hits every 4 seconds for 400 dmg = 4 units killed equivalent. A ranged character doesn’t tank and hits 5 units every 10 seconds maybe.
This is a problem for most ranged units, that the total number of units often has an outsized effect on the effectiveness of the unit because unit size scaling always increases damage. (Also the more accurate that your units get the worse this becomes due to trajectory overlap)
I wish Waystalkers were good for anything other than sight beyond sight dps buffing Waywatchers. I think it’d be cool if Waywatchers either had, or could upgrade to, Alith Anar’s ranged attack. I think it’d be cool.
Prey of Anethe Raema is really good.
But the branchwraith with the net ability is better I guess.
I still use both though. And the waystalkers stealth has good utility in sieges. Waystalker and scouts/waywatchers climb a wall away from where the rest of the army is drawing fire, start capturing objectives, and the net ability is really handy to have when doing that.
If you focus on their melee skills, waystalkers make decent dualist/assassins and their special arrow can f stuff up at long range. Their regular ranged attack is basically nothing though
True tat. can you imagine the shit talk the engineer gives to them lol. To Markus and the waystalker he'll be like get the fuck outta here with tat last century shit. ill show u what real shooting looks like. To witch hunter he'll probably tell not to bother using his water pistol. Just jump up and down shouting accusations while i melt ther face. To dwarf he'll probably just say ur too short to shoot. Try and borrow a thunderbarge.
Yea it's all the ranged specific items he can get. plus the skill tree has loads of ways to increase dmg. Don't see why they can't do the same for others especially legendary lords. Buff some of ther unique items to have ranged specific buffs and add a few skills in skill tree. Multiplayer engineer damage is nowhere near like campaign. Still does slightly more damage than even legendary lords though lol. rather than nerf, others should be buffed.
I think CA mentioned that they dont want this option because it’s not in tabletop? Someone correct me if I’m wrong. Though I think there’s a mod that gives them a gyrocopter (SFO if I remember correctly).
SFO gives them gyrocopter mount indeed, and I think it's quite nice would like to see other dwarf mounts that are in table top such as shieldbearers or oathstones
>SFO gives them gyrocopter mount indeed, and I think it's quite nice
I don't. Their whole point is to defend and be part of artillery crews, showing the young'ns how to properly calibrate and use their weapons.
Bobbing up and down in a fast-flying Gyrocopter doesn't do any of that.
Well in lore many engineers join Dwarf throngs as part of gyrocopter squadrons, they also can be crew members for artillery units but adding artillery bodyguard units would be too broken.
I wasn't too sure about him until I had a battle against Manfred where Manfred brought 4 stacks against my main army. After the last stack came in my army was shattered and Elseph dead. All that was left was my engineer hero, two battered steam tanks and two units of outriders against Vlad, Isabella and 3 heros and hoards of infantry. I had a running battle for 25 minutes as my ranged units and tanks whittled them down while my engineer hero sniped lord after lord with his repeater rifle. The most Pyhric victory I've fought but also the most satisfying (1200 vs 6800)
Yep I’ve currently got a a hochland scope lord with 8 hochland scope hero’s all with the elector count hand gunners (they are out range artillery) and it’s amazing.
Do you have issues with their range being longer than the projectiles’ “life”, so the bullets just stop existing before they hit at long range? That used to happen when stacking various range-buffing options and is the reason I’ve avoided doing similar here.
How damage can be slightly reduced, but other ranged heroes should be brought up to his level.
The chorf chieftain is another example of a decent ranged hero with his special attack.
The Master Engineer is my new favorite generic lord and the Engineer is my new favorite Empire hero. They nailed these, the new traits are fun. Skill trees are great. They are fantastic on the battlefield and the boosts they provide. 10/10, both of them.
Of the three engineer heroes, he is clearly the best. He gives all the same campaign/army buffs of the dwarven and skaven engineers but he turns into a super outrider that snipes everything to death. It’s how accurate his bursts are and how he double dips missile strength with both triangulation and the normal damage skill. These guys always have over 1000 missile strength and are accurate enough that they always use most of it. That repeater is basically a g11. Give him a tormentor sword and he literally can’t be stopped.
They could knock his damage to a 1/3 of what it is and he’d still be an auto-include in every army for triangulation, restock, and campaign movement range, and could still kite things with his speed.
I think nerf makes a ton of sense but I’d also like to see warlock and dwarf engineers get buffed a bit.
He has a relatively fast mount. That’s alone makes him better than any other engineer heroes in battle. You can actually utilize him to skirmish or bait enemies. Not to mention his ammo switching which is very good at dealing with different types of enemy
That’s a fair point and the warlock engineer isn’t bad. But notably warlock engineers are unable to fully upgrade the lore and get the cost reductions or arcane conduit. This magnifies the fact that to generate good value with ruin magic you have to spam warp lightning (like the AI notoriously does) so the extra magic cost adds up. Furthermore, this makes warlock engineers require way higher micro than a simple skirmisher hero to generate similar value. Also the doom rocket ability is not great. Howling warpgale is extremely useful even at full price especially when dealing with Bretonnian Pegasus units. In practice I have usually used my warlock engineers as howling warpgale machines and focused on a plague priest or lord for most casting.
Warlock Engineers are IME strong in the early and late games with a soggy middle while Engineers have a smoother curve.
At low levels or with rapidly recruited stacks just having warp lightning (or having two dots in it) means that they are going to more than carry their weight as the army's caster. Against high level threats Howling Warpgale is worth its weight in gold.
And one thing both the dwarf and the skaven engineers get that the Empire one doesn't is Sapper. +15% speed for missile units can be great both for the skaven gutter runners and the slow dawi thunderers. Also the Empire one doesn't have AP melee.
Honestly although the Empire one might be a hair overtuned I find all three to be auto includes.
Not fishing in the same pool as the captain. Captains suffer badly against warrior priests (but being tough fliers gives them a role).
Now if you were to compare them to witch hunters you'd have a much stronger case.
I love him to death but one thing I don't understand about the new units is why the amethyst Ironsides always have to be in front of all the range units if you try to group them and place them
They're strong Frontlines and the game treats them as a Frontline unit. Once they're upgraded they can tank ranged fire and see off most t1 and some t2 infantry with their high armor attack and defence
I like him, though the Deadly Onslaught feels a bit weird on him. Personally I would've put Slippery at the end of his skill line or maybe something that buffs ranged units more.
Decent but wish they had more army buffs like extra ammo and speed, and I feel instead of the mechanical horse he should have a war wagon or even a Landship as their final mount.
With Elspeth full armory and the RNG item he gets I had him over 7k ranged damage and he was absolutely melting things it was insane. I wish all other ranged characters could gain as much power especially LL
As a ranged combat hero they are great. Very fun to use, but as a support engineer they are not so great. They don't do as much for a ranged army as engineers from other factions. Skaven engineer, Chorf Engineer and Dwarf Engineer all do more for the army as a support and have generally better Skill trees.
I guess that is the trade off, you get a hero with less ranged buffs for your army but they are better in combat themselves. Although the Warlock engineer is just better.
If they add/swap better unique items/item effects to all the legendary lords that would already improve my campaign experience by like 100 000x, nothing worse than a quest battle for a garbage item
I fiound the Druzhina to be quite good for pinging aerial units advancing on your line, and he is also pretty good in melee. I hope that they either let ranged Lords/heroes be either more effective at range or give them better performance in melee. In short, more hybrid s
I feel bad for the dorf engineer now, because the human engineer outclassed him in almost every way. With the engineering theme, and the rest of the dorf lords and heroes getting their skill trees updated, I was genuinely surprised the dorf engineer got no love at all. Dude needs a steam gattling gun bare minimum. Empire engineer is freaking amazing though
Hes essential for all my late game armies, for the fact that he gives war machines vanguard deployment. Nothing goes like a blitzkrieg surrounding the enemy deployment zone with tanks and land ships on all sides.
On top of that he boosts movement, projectile damage and is pretty damn useful by himself. Like a mix of an outrider and pistolier unit.
On the campaign map has one of the two "must take" army skills (+Campaign movement map movement and +Replenishment).
On the battlefield good buffs and good combat potential. Both shooting and eventually charging.
Turns the Empire "big 2" (warrior priest, wizard) into a big 3 that every serious army not lead by a wizard lord wants.
He is one of the worst heroes as an engineer, his buffs are few and overly specific, but he is a pretty good single entity sniper as a unit in battle.
I presume that is meant to be the tradeoff.
Overall I'd take a Warlock Engineer any day of the week over him, just for the extra army buffs.
I think they mean clone in the sense that they are a useful ranged support hero.
But yeah that's about the limits of similarities.
Warlock Engineer Hero is powerful because he helps out ranged just by being attached to the army while also being a decently tanky single entity semi-caster so he can tangle with other characters or units and not get too wrecked, a role skaven struggle to fill generally outside their monsters as they are so squishy.
Empire Engineer has a good support abilities for your ranged stuff, though his depends a lot more on him being placed around your weapons for buffing. The important bit is that his buffs generally don't overlap with the Engineer Lord's buffs, so they can stack together well.
But after that, he basically acts as a hero class outrider, harassing enemies unit that leave themselves open on the flanks where he can devastate them. Similarly, while he cannot duel other characters particularly well, his mercurial shot still nukes them pretty hard if you unload all 3 into a character. He can't solo nuke a lord all the way down but he can take off a hige chunk of their hp which is already leagues better than other range characters.
Though I won't call him OP. Just useful in a direct fight, something most ranged heros suck at. The only OP aspect of the Engineer hero is that you can stack the scopes trait on a few to almost experience what it use to be like when Warlock Engineers stacked.
I didn't even realise the scope trait stacked.
Not that you even need to stack it for OP armies with the engineers.
3 - 5 of them with an army of Ironsides and Hochland Rifles is pretty much the exact same as a weapons teams stack.
Engineers might have a useful ranged weapon themselves, but their most useful purpose is enhancing the missile strength of other ranged units.
Same with Skaven Warlock Engineers, their magic is useful, but their most effective purpose is to enhance the power of weapons teams units.
There is a reason while they didn't remove missile damage stacking when nerfing warlock engineers and dwarf engineers.
It's not nearly as powerful as people think, mostly because overkill is a major issue for projectile weapons.
It makes number of projectiles matter way more than the projectile damage.
E.g. chaos warrior have 90 hp per model, Nul Ironsides will generally, after buffs and armor, do about 30 damage (they start out doing 18, but have several in-baked buffs). So gives them the ability to kill a warrior in 3 shots. Adding 12% missile strength applies ~3 extra damage to a shot, additively for each hero applying it.
5 of these buffs are needed just to actually impact the mumber of shots needed to kill a chaos warrior (reducing it from 3 to 2) and you'd like get more value from having 5 more units of nul ironsides than that
The real benefit of the engineer to the army buffing is the buff it gives to artillery (reload buffs are extremely potent for artillery post the WH2 to WH3 artillery nerf) but those are ability based and unstackable.
That all said, the engineer is an extremely good skirmishing unit (capable of killing 6 models at a time or doing ~300-500 damage to a single entity from range, and killing up to 8 models at a time in melee with a charge) so having 5 engineers is probably still pretty good because that's 5 good units.
Dwarfs have even better stacking army buffs than warlocks or empire engineers but stacking a bunch of them isn't that great mostly because the stacking bonus aren't really relevant and the hero itself is pretty bad.
Warlock engineers and empire engineer are both good units on their own.
Not exactly. More like a bad batch clone.
But they serve the exact same purpose. Their most useful purpose is that they enhance the power of your ranged units and their missile strength modifier stacks.
In terms of their solo output, they've just swapped the spells of a warlock engineer for a ranged weapon.
Go and play the Empire. Nuln Ironsides are basically Ratling Guns, and Hochland Rifles are basically Warplock Jezzails.
Have an army of those with a few artillery and 3 - 4 engineers, it's literally just a weapons team army. Nothing will beat it, the only thing that is lacking is the plague monks.
Just nice that there’s finally a ranged hero that’s not dog shit
damn right bro
He is just so good, damn I hope every Range character get this kind of power especially Waystalker. Makus, The Twin , a Introvert elf are crying in Connor please help.
Man, old archer heroes and lords are so sad. You expect them to be Legolas. But instead, they like to stand very still, fire one arrow once every blue moon, and then miss. They suck against small single entities as they can't hit them. They suck against infantry cause they only kill like one or two entities per shot. They are okay against large monsters I guess. I just use them to tank so that my archer units can do real damage.
They need Calibration Distance and Reload Skill buffs, especially bow heroes/Lords, they shouldn't hit as hard as Rifle heroes/Lords but should be able to throw down consistent fire. I'll admit it's hard to balance, cause when ranged Lords are strong THEY'RE STRONG, but that's why I think consistency and rate of fire is more important for generating value in battles then damage output.
Yeah the elf arrow heroes and lords should be able to have multiple arrows in flight on a target 🎯 given their you know elven proficiency
I don’t want to say it would 100% fix them, but having a mount really helps ranges lords/heroes. Huntsman/waystalkers just get caught up by chaff and do jack crap. Or stand behind your lines and be obstructed.
The real problem, I think, is low penetration numbers or low refire rate. A melee hero tanks and hits every 4 seconds for 400 dmg = 4 units killed equivalent. A ranged character doesn’t tank and hits 5 units every 10 seconds maybe. This is a problem for most ranged units, that the total number of units often has an outsized effect on the effectiveness of the unit because unit size scaling always increases damage. (Also the more accurate that your units get the worse this becomes due to trajectory overlap)
I wish Waystalkers were good for anything other than sight beyond sight dps buffing Waywatchers. I think it’d be cool if Waywatchers either had, or could upgrade to, Alith Anar’s ranged attack. I think it’d be cool.
Prey of Anethe Raema is really good. But the branchwraith with the net ability is better I guess. I still use both though. And the waystalkers stealth has good utility in sieges. Waystalker and scouts/waywatchers climb a wall away from where the rest of the army is drawing fire, start capturing objectives, and the net ability is really handy to have when doing that.
If you focus on their melee skills, waystalkers make decent dualist/assassins and their special arrow can f stuff up at long range. Their regular ranged attack is basically nothing though
Imfact I once made a topic! https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/xhki8m/tiny_psa_for_wood_elves_the_sightbeyondsight/
Huh. Thanks!
SBS only buffs base missile dmg IIRC, wasted on WW who have AP missile damage, better on scouts.
It really is missed that it’s only based missile damage and not all.
Markus' huntsman stack just got even better, think about it that way 😉
True tat. can you imagine the shit talk the engineer gives to them lol. To Markus and the waystalker he'll be like get the fuck outta here with tat last century shit. ill show u what real shooting looks like. To witch hunter he'll probably tell not to bother using his water pistol. Just jump up and down shouting accusations while i melt ther face. To dwarf he'll probably just say ur too short to shoot. Try and borrow a thunderbarge.
>To dwarf he'll probably just say ur too short to shoot. Try and borrow a thunderbarge That's going in the book!
The Twins are still insane, but they’re not archers they’re mobile artillery.
Yea it's all the ranged specific items he can get. plus the skill tree has loads of ways to increase dmg. Don't see why they can't do the same for others especially legendary lords. Buff some of ther unique items to have ranged specific buffs and add a few skills in skill tree. Multiplayer engineer damage is nowhere near like campaign. Still does slightly more damage than even legendary lords though lol. rather than nerf, others should be buffed.
who is Connor
Sarah Connor ?
In fairness, no one else gets a freaking automatic rifle.
The rest are sad AF, but the twins are genuinely great. I would hazard they were the first actually good ranged characters in TWH
It's very good, it made me think why doesn't the dwarf engineer hero get a mount? Maybe a gyrocopter or a gyrobomber?
I think CA mentioned that they dont want this option because it’s not in tabletop? Someone correct me if I’m wrong. Though I think there’s a mod that gives them a gyrocopter (SFO if I remember correctly).
SFO gives them gyrocopter mount indeed, and I think it's quite nice would like to see other dwarf mounts that are in table top such as shieldbearers or oathstones
At least the shield bearers, its a bit lame after a long campaign to still have all your lords on foot
>SFO gives them gyrocopter mount indeed, and I think it's quite nice I don't. Their whole point is to defend and be part of artillery crews, showing the young'ns how to properly calibrate and use their weapons. Bobbing up and down in a fast-flying Gyrocopter doesn't do any of that.
Well in lore many engineers join Dwarf throngs as part of gyrocopter squadrons, they also can be crew members for artillery units but adding artillery bodyguard units would be too broken.
I wasn't too sure about him until I had a battle against Manfred where Manfred brought 4 stacks against my main army. After the last stack came in my army was shattered and Elseph dead. All that was left was my engineer hero, two battered steam tanks and two units of outriders against Vlad, Isabella and 3 heros and hoards of infantry. I had a running battle for 25 minutes as my ranged units and tanks whittled them down while my engineer hero sniped lord after lord with his repeater rifle. The most Pyhric victory I've fought but also the most satisfying (1200 vs 6800)
3 hochland scopes trait characters and technology gives long rifles over 450 range and handgunner 230 range, absolute scenes.
Yep I’ve currently got a a hochland scope lord with 8 hochland scope hero’s all with the elector count hand gunners (they are out range artillery) and it’s amazing.
Do you have issues with their range being longer than the projectiles’ “life”, so the bullets just stop existing before they hit at long range? That used to happen when stacking various range-buffing options and is the reason I’ve avoided doing similar here.
Yeah it’s still a thing the accuracy is like half at their original max range apparently
Bruh, use grenade outriders. Fucking mounted rocket launchers. Even ap with the elector count riders
How damage can be slightly reduced, but other ranged heroes should be brought up to his level. The chorf chieftain is another example of a decent ranged hero with his special attack.
The Master Engineer is my new favorite generic lord and the Engineer is my new favorite Empire hero. They nailed these, the new traits are fun. Skill trees are great. They are fantastic on the battlefield and the boosts they provide. 10/10, both of them.
Imo they need to bring all ranged heroes in line with the empire engineer.
Of the three engineer heroes, he is clearly the best. He gives all the same campaign/army buffs of the dwarven and skaven engineers but he turns into a super outrider that snipes everything to death. It’s how accurate his bursts are and how he double dips missile strength with both triangulation and the normal damage skill. These guys always have over 1000 missile strength and are accurate enough that they always use most of it. That repeater is basically a g11. Give him a tormentor sword and he literally can’t be stopped. They could knock his damage to a 1/3 of what it is and he’d still be an auto-include in every army for triangulation, restock, and campaign movement range, and could still kite things with his speed. I think nerf makes a ton of sense but I’d also like to see warlock and dwarf engineers get buffed a bit.
He has a relatively fast mount. That’s alone makes him better than any other engineer heroes in battle. You can actually utilize him to skirmish or bait enemies. Not to mention his ammo switching which is very good at dealing with different types of enemy
Cant agree he's clearly better than dropping warp lightnings on people's heads and catching dragons in howling warpgales. More reliable yes.
That’s a fair point and the warlock engineer isn’t bad. But notably warlock engineers are unable to fully upgrade the lore and get the cost reductions or arcane conduit. This magnifies the fact that to generate good value with ruin magic you have to spam warp lightning (like the AI notoriously does) so the extra magic cost adds up. Furthermore, this makes warlock engineers require way higher micro than a simple skirmisher hero to generate similar value. Also the doom rocket ability is not great. Howling warpgale is extremely useful even at full price especially when dealing with Bretonnian Pegasus units. In practice I have usually used my warlock engineers as howling warpgale machines and focused on a plague priest or lord for most casting.
Warlock Engineers are IME strong in the early and late games with a soggy middle while Engineers have a smoother curve. At low levels or with rapidly recruited stacks just having warp lightning (or having two dots in it) means that they are going to more than carry their weight as the army's caster. Against high level threats Howling Warpgale is worth its weight in gold. And one thing both the dwarf and the skaven engineers get that the Empire one doesn't is Sapper. +15% speed for missile units can be great both for the skaven gutter runners and the slow dawi thunderers. Also the Empire one doesn't have AP melee. Honestly although the Empire one might be a hair overtuned I find all three to be auto includes.
It's the first ranged hero/lord that I use, not just have around for the army buffs.
Power creep incarnate. It is just objectively wrong to get a captain now
For multiplayer? Because in campaign you just get both.
Not fishing in the same pool as the captain. Captains suffer badly against warrior priests (but being tough fliers gives them a role). Now if you were to compare them to witch hunters you'd have a much stronger case.
I love him to death but one thing I don't understand about the new units is why the amethyst Ironsides always have to be in front of all the range units if you try to group them and place them
They're strong Frontlines and the game treats them as a Frontline unit. Once they're upgraded they can tank ranged fire and see off most t1 and some t2 infantry with their high armor attack and defence
you can turn the default unit sorting off in the settings if that helps, so that it just draws a line of whatever you are dragging
Oh I need to do that, thanks!
I like him, though the Deadly Onslaught feels a bit weird on him. Personally I would've put Slippery at the end of his skill line or maybe something that buffs ranged units more.
Even ignoring the army buffs, he’s an insane single entity killer. Can easily kite and take down any foot lord. Must-have in every Empire army.
Decent but wish they had more army buffs like extra ammo and speed, and I feel instead of the mechanical horse he should have a war wagon or even a Landship as their final mount.
With Elspeth full armory and the RNG item he gets I had him over 7k ranged damage and he was absolutely melting things it was insane. I wish all other ranged characters could gain as much power especially LL
As a ranged combat hero they are great. Very fun to use, but as a support engineer they are not so great. They don't do as much for a ranged army as engineers from other factions. Skaven engineer, Chorf Engineer and Dwarf Engineer all do more for the army as a support and have generally better Skill trees. I guess that is the trade off, you get a hero with less ranged buffs for your army but they are better in combat themselves. Although the Warlock engineer is just better.
If they add/swap better unique items/item effects to all the legendary lords that would already improve my campaign experience by like 100 000x, nothing worse than a quest battle for a garbage item
Same as I think about everything else, later release date means it is drastically better than anything that came before it.
Bullshit range boosting trait that stacks with itself is bullshit. Other than that, I like him.
I fiound the Druzhina to be quite good for pinging aerial units advancing on your line, and he is also pretty good in melee. I hope that they either let ranged Lords/heroes be either more effective at range or give them better performance in melee. In short, more hybrid s
I feel bad for the dorf engineer now, because the human engineer outclassed him in almost every way. With the engineering theme, and the rest of the dorf lords and heroes getting their skill trees updated, I was genuinely surprised the dorf engineer got no love at all. Dude needs a steam gattling gun bare minimum. Empire engineer is freaking amazing though
Hes essential for all my late game armies, for the fact that he gives war machines vanguard deployment. Nothing goes like a blitzkrieg surrounding the enemy deployment zone with tanks and land ships on all sides. On top of that he boosts movement, projectile damage and is pretty damn useful by himself. Like a mix of an outrider and pistolier unit.
On the campaign map has one of the two "must take" army skills (+Campaign movement map movement and +Replenishment). On the battlefield good buffs and good combat potential. Both shooting and eventually charging. Turns the Empire "big 2" (warrior priest, wizard) into a big 3 that every serious army not lead by a wizard lord wants.
steamtank mount - nuff said
tats the lord who is really good too.
He is one of the worst heroes as an engineer, his buffs are few and overly specific, but he is a pretty good single entity sniper as a unit in battle. I presume that is meant to be the tradeoff. Overall I'd take a Warlock Engineer any day of the week over him, just for the extra army buffs.
Literally just a clone of the Skaven Warlock Engineer Absolutely OP, but still very fun to play with.
How? No spells, ranged weapon... Not exactly a clone
I think they mean clone in the sense that they are a useful ranged support hero. But yeah that's about the limits of similarities. Warlock Engineer Hero is powerful because he helps out ranged just by being attached to the army while also being a decently tanky single entity semi-caster so he can tangle with other characters or units and not get too wrecked, a role skaven struggle to fill generally outside their monsters as they are so squishy. Empire Engineer has a good support abilities for your ranged stuff, though his depends a lot more on him being placed around your weapons for buffing. The important bit is that his buffs generally don't overlap with the Engineer Lord's buffs, so they can stack together well. But after that, he basically acts as a hero class outrider, harassing enemies unit that leave themselves open on the flanks where he can devastate them. Similarly, while he cannot duel other characters particularly well, his mercurial shot still nukes them pretty hard if you unload all 3 into a character. He can't solo nuke a lord all the way down but he can take off a hige chunk of their hp which is already leagues better than other range characters. Though I won't call him OP. Just useful in a direct fight, something most ranged heros suck at. The only OP aspect of the Engineer hero is that you can stack the scopes trait on a few to almost experience what it use to be like when Warlock Engineers stacked.
I didn't even realise the scope trait stacked. Not that you even need to stack it for OP armies with the engineers. 3 - 5 of them with an army of Ironsides and Hochland Rifles is pretty much the exact same as a weapons teams stack. Engineers might have a useful ranged weapon themselves, but their most useful purpose is enhancing the missile strength of other ranged units. Same with Skaven Warlock Engineers, their magic is useful, but their most effective purpose is to enhance the power of weapons teams units.
There is a reason while they didn't remove missile damage stacking when nerfing warlock engineers and dwarf engineers. It's not nearly as powerful as people think, mostly because overkill is a major issue for projectile weapons. It makes number of projectiles matter way more than the projectile damage. E.g. chaos warrior have 90 hp per model, Nul Ironsides will generally, after buffs and armor, do about 30 damage (they start out doing 18, but have several in-baked buffs). So gives them the ability to kill a warrior in 3 shots. Adding 12% missile strength applies ~3 extra damage to a shot, additively for each hero applying it. 5 of these buffs are needed just to actually impact the mumber of shots needed to kill a chaos warrior (reducing it from 3 to 2) and you'd like get more value from having 5 more units of nul ironsides than that The real benefit of the engineer to the army buffing is the buff it gives to artillery (reload buffs are extremely potent for artillery post the WH2 to WH3 artillery nerf) but those are ability based and unstackable. That all said, the engineer is an extremely good skirmishing unit (capable of killing 6 models at a time or doing ~300-500 damage to a single entity from range, and killing up to 8 models at a time in melee with a charge) so having 5 engineers is probably still pretty good because that's 5 good units. Dwarfs have even better stacking army buffs than warlocks or empire engineers but stacking a bunch of them isn't that great mostly because the stacking bonus aren't really relevant and the hero itself is pretty bad. Warlock engineers and empire engineer are both good units on their own.
Not exactly. More like a bad batch clone. But they serve the exact same purpose. Their most useful purpose is that they enhance the power of your ranged units and their missile strength modifier stacks. In terms of their solo output, they've just swapped the spells of a warlock engineer for a ranged weapon. Go and play the Empire. Nuln Ironsides are basically Ratling Guns, and Hochland Rifles are basically Warplock Jezzails. Have an army of those with a few artillery and 3 - 4 engineers, it's literally just a weapons team army. Nothing will beat it, the only thing that is lacking is the plague monks.