while i know its not necessarily something you do often, do you have any ideas to make sky lanterns actually not suck? my thoughts are either make it have meaningful ground buffs for infantry, or, maybe even range/accuracy for missile units in range like a spotter, or add more entities maybe?
I believe cathay cannon shots have much larger hitboxes than Empire/Dwarf/Vampirate ones have. Hence why they are the only ones that consistently get value in multiplayer whereas the other ones feel like a gamble.
I feel that they are super accurate as well, late game I like having 3 in my army and if im against a big fucker like a Shaggoth or a dragon I sick them on to it and I just know its going to die.
The other thing is they can't be counterfired their is something wrong with them where they wont take missoe damage (bugged hitbox). CA is unfuriating with how many of these issues exist on their newer units.
What's missing from the construct/elemental units is anything that synergises with that status across the roster. If Cathay got some kind of Necrotect-type hero that could heal constructs that would immediately make them a lot more useful. Right now though yeah there's really not a lot of point to the lions, the jade one in particular dies super easily for very little return.
@@nanonano2595 they're probably still better than the other equivalent massive units so not fully RIP, you can still make use of them. That said it really does feel like they weren't paying attention when they added the negative with no supporting positive. Its possible they just figured that sentinels, as the strongest massive unit, needed a negative. Giving another hero a buff or heal for constructs would mean you need to take 2 units to make the most of one of them which is still an effort cost over the pre-construct variant.
I thought Saytang was supposed to be the "Necrotect" of Cathay? But still even if he was, the Constructs attribute being more of a nerf than anything really sucks. Here's hoping they get some sort of support in the future.
Jade Lancers can get quite insane. Every Gatemaster in the army gives them +6MD and -10% upkeep. The tech tree gives them: +10% Charge, -10% upkeep, +3 recruitment rank, +20% speed, +4 MA, +4 MA when attacking and +4MD when defending, +5% Replenishment, gives them Devastating Flanker, +15 Charge, +20 armor, +20% weapon strength and +10 leadership when fighting against chaos. The Celestial General gives either +10 armor, +10% weapon strength or +25% charge bonus. The red line of the skill tree gives them +8% weapon strength +18% charge bonus, 10% speed, +5MA, +10% physical resistance . Then give the Celestial General the Gryphon Legion Lance you get from the caravan system once one reaches Erengrad for further +20 and +15% charge bonus. That is a lot.
I feel like legend just doesnt like cav tbh, he seems to much prefer heavy missiles/magic and rely on good positioning and unit zoning. I think its also why he doesn't enjoy multiplayer as much; its much harder to cheese a human :D
@@GCOSBenbowyeah legend prefer missile and magic more. But these calvary mostly is just really bad, they underperform for their cost most of the time and require more attention to it. Legend doesnt dislike calvary, just dislike bad calvary like these, no AP, no anti large cav is just trash even if you can boost them in the campaign, even if they are free its still better to field jade warrior, maybe just a couple of them in the army is enough so A tier is reasonable, 26 MA without armor piercing and anti large is so trash, they would take forever to kill even a tier 1 2 unit with some armor
What I really like to use Wu Xing War compasses for, are defenses. Like minor or major siege battles. I love having like 2 of them in those battles and not having to rely on my winds of magic. They saved me quite a lot of times(when the enemy slowly form a blob in a street) when I had to quickly recruit something and I was in a region with shit mana. Being able to cast 4 comets and 4 lightning bolts can easily turn the tides of any battle.
very informative list; thank you Legend. Just to add a few things I've noticed during my campaign: - artillery has quite a low firing arc; it's very easy to hit your own troops, sky junk mitigates that problem a little bit. You basically trade flexibility in firing arc and positioning for raw firepower - sky junks don't count as siege attacker for some wired reason - crane gunners can actually man walls. when sieging you can establish a perimeter at a gate or kill all enemy stuff that can climb walls, put your crane gunners on their walls and snipe them from there - the jet lion or the crowmen can be used to activate the ying/yan bonuses of your cavalry; if it's really worth it, is up to you. - the only thing I would slightly disagree with is that I would put the compass one tier down and the crowmen one tier up; they are pretty solid early game artillery hunters, but I play without stat modifiers so that might not work if the a.i. gets its buffs.
This is a good point, I find on Empire the Hellstorm rockets often would delete my range units in front of them when they try to hit something around 120-150 range.
The curious thing about the Construct ability is, that it is appearently exactly the same as the Tomb King ones which means that they count as Undead for the purposes of healing magic like Invocation of Nehek or the Lore of Nehekara passive "Restless Dead". So if you steal those heroes, you could theoretically heal them pretty efficiently or repair them with Necrotects.
@@indrickboreale7381 lmao no it doesn't , it's not the same technology, the same culture or the same magic. Terracotta Sentinels were created by the Dragon Emperor using his innate draconnic magic, while Nehekharan magic was purely mortal
Recently finished a Yuan-Bo campaign (VH), and it was probably one of the most fun I've ever had in a TW3-campaign. Not just Yuan-Bo himself + his mechanics, but Cathay post-update is just so much more fun than it used to be with updated lords, heroes and the (much) improved Ying/Yang-system. Probably my favorite human-faction as of now.
For cathay constructs, perhaps when leadership is broken, they "crumble" into the terracotta/jade they are made of, with their current health. When leadership is restored, they "reanimate" to their normal form and continue to fight. Have the crumble and reanimate animations take like 10 seconds or something, and add a temporary leadership buff that decays over time after reanimating to avoid rapid cycling between crumbling and reanimating. Also, only lords and heroes leadership aura can reanimate them, and they have to stay for the full 10 seconds until reanimated.
the mere fact you can get jade warriors at rank 9 relatively easily alone makes them very powerful That rank one they compete with longbeards is pretty fucked
I once came across the AIs war compass doomstack and it was IMPOSSIBLE to beat with my ~60% infantry army. They were able to simultaneously spam the spells from every war compass all over the map in a way a player never could without pausing. Truly terrifying
Honestly Cathay has quickly became one of my favorite factions to play as. I think they’re really well balanced in magic, units, settlements, and location.
Yeah, Cathay is basically a cheat code compare to empire lol. Got good unit in any stage of the game, infantry are armored exept those peasant one, have better artillery and really good AP crossbow unit compare to empire's handgunner that is less useful if your terrain is bad and way more vulnerable without armor and melee stat. The only edge empire have over cathay is access to life magic which i think Cathay will get at later dlc
@ajitae1460 as a cathay player, I'd argue that the empire has better cav overall. I mean cathay has zero missile cav while all the other human factions do like wtf.
Peasant horsemen just got completely invalidated by crowmen. You get crows from t2 baracks that you want to build anyways, they hit waaaay harder and are tankier, they fly making them great at diving ranged and artillery and they even have very good ap values so they can help you deal with some early armored stuff that cathay can struggle a bit in the early game. Jade/Jet lions get some extra value by unlocking Saytang who is extremly powerful but once you got Saytang you don't really need them anymore
I will add that the sky junk can keep shooting it's little guns even after running out of rockets if you reenable fire at will (unless this has been patched since I used them last)
Their guns are most definitely on a different ammo counter than their rockets are. My sky junk rifles always continue shooting even when the ammo bar shows empty because that bar is for rockets only.
As someone who just started WH3 and have watched your 2 year old guides for advice you have no idea how happy I am to see this new list. I haven't been able to get past turn 20 yet in about 6 campaigns, the battling is hard but this helped a lot thank you again!
I really enjoy how quickly you get into the sponsorship. Since most of the time, I put on these videos while I'm working on my minis. And since I already have a manscaped kit (since I'm a hairy guy lol) I can skip forward and enjoy the content with no breaks. Thanks Legend, and you truly live up to that name. Rock on !
Have you ever thought about doing a Sword of Khaine tier list? As in: listing factions that should never pick it up, or when it's situationally useful, or when it's viable, or when it can really boost the campaign?
It's almost always bad, so I don't see how I can be a tierlist) If you want to do it it's OK, but you get so much global penalties that any single lord strength cannot overcome it There is 2 exeptions: beastmen and Changeling. Both of them don't care about any downsides of SoC Other then that it's too bad and just a meme weapon
@@Costin_Gaming "A lot of handmaidens" is a late game thing Also you just nullify only publi order issue. Not higher upkeep, nor relations negatives. Yeah you could use your influence to but good relations with other fractions, but you should have much better use for (like hiring good heroes) Well I agree with statement that Allarielle COULD pick it up with not that much negatives, but it's still fat from optimal especially on higher difficulty On normal and easy it's not that big of a deal
The War Compass is really at its best as a Hero Mount, and is really just a replacement for a wizard if you can't actually get one (since the wizard is just better in pretty much every way)
25:30 Been a hot minute since I played Cathay, but I vaguely remember the cannonballs bouncing so you can hit a lot of units in a formation as well as the unit behind it. I know that the Little Groms do this.
Onyx Crowmen make the peasant horsemen completely pointless and they are on the infantry barracks, the onyx crowmen are perfect for chasing off missile infantry and routing units and can even be used to snipe units that are wavering and on the edge of routing their only downside atm is that they can get stuck in other melee units due to their low mass despite being flying units because CA has never fixed that issue 2 years post launch of WH3
I can see a monk-like hero that'd fix the construct change and give replenishment rate for armies it's embedded to. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long
I wanted to mention that if the army was under mommy Miao, then the constructs and crows would actually have healing so probably bumps them up situationally there but I agree a recruitable life astromancer mounted on a moonbird would be game changing.
@@animewarrior3that would be a super niche buff, it would be better if it had something like the dragon breath attacks, since its already pretty much a sentry type unit so standing still wouldnt hurt it, the biggest issue this has it doesnt pull its weight and dies to quick
Just in time, I started my Jade Court campaign yesterday and played nearly whole day, they're really powerful. Managed to confederate all Cathayan LL's by turn 60 something and we're rolling now.
I really enjoy these little tier lists as it makes getting into the game more accessible. Would you ever consider doing composition videos on what you ideally would aim for or you very much in the, "just use what I can when I can" camp?
I actually kinda like sky laterns. Their range is crazy, and combined with fire whilst moving, they can kite and annoy large entities pretty well. Shieldbreaker too
Just playing my first Cathay campaign now, and I very much agree with this list. "Jade checkers" can handle everything I've been up against, with some arty/mage to initialize combat.
8:45 also good thing to consider is how Celestial Dragon Crosbowmen have insane scaling since technology that incerase flat dmg (in this case +3 armor piercing damage) is technically better for this unit since they have 2 shots per volley so we end up with additional +6 damage. Edit: 25:40 As for Grand Cannon whenever I use other couterparts I feel like they are missing too many shots vs Horse/Monster Inf. size enemies while Cathayan version seems to have better accuracy/larger hitboxes with cannon balls. Norscans, Orcs, Greenskins and even Chaos Dwarfs are getting slaughtered by those artillery pieces while if I was about to use Imperial Cannon... well maybe it will hit 1/3 of it's shots? Honestly Grand Cannon is like combination of damage from Empire Cannons and (almost) accuracy from HE Eagle Bolt Throwers and it makes them very practical to use whenever it is field battle or siedge.
There is one item that bootst logma riders. I made one logna stack with a balloon general. (And a wizard for the ground unit) Worked pretty well on normal difficulty
a use for ironhail gunners is as very effective anti flying, the straight flying and quick bullets just decimate all types of flying infantry and even monsters if you use a couple of units on it, whenever i go to fight chaos i bring a few ironhails and they never let me down in these roles
Hey Legend! I'd love to see you take another pass over of the Warhammer 1/2 factions rosters in Warhammer 3, given all of the changes introduced over time.
shadows of change made cathay so much more fun, and I already liked them before. Their crossbows and artillery are insane, but I've been using dragon guard frontline... The jade units are boosted super hard but I didn't even consider that they can outperform the dragon guard due to being able to stack gate masters. The jade halberdiers don't have shields but honestly idek how important that is. My endgame crisis is wood elves, but their archer units are actually helpless against the combination of fire rain rockets and crossbowmen. Point being, archers can't shoot your frontline without getting turned to dust by artillery. The most interesting thing in this video is definitely the jade lancers though... I have like 30-40 armies and I don't think I have a single jade lancer in any of them. It didn't even register that the gate master boosts them too, plus the cav building is super low priority, I basically only starting building them at T5 when I didn't have anything else to stick in my capitals.
I played a Miao Ying campaign since the SoC additions, but having not purchased SoC, and the Logma Riders were amazing end game archer killers. They had something like 122 charge bonus. Units would be shattered within 5 seconds of the charge. Maybe not since SoC and maybe not cost efficient but certainly powerful and more deserving of A tier. I kept 2-4 in each army. Fire Rain Rockets and Crane Gunners ended most armies before they could reach my celestial dragon crossbowmen and the Logma Riders would finish off and ranged in the back.
The sky lantern should really buff the units around it more. Maybe it could improve the reload speed, melee defense, and crane-gunner fire of nearby lanterns or something. That way, you can have a proper flying “fleet” just like they mention in Cathay’s lore.
I always assumed it's not the trait that it was talking about but the fact that it's a charge cavalry that makes it "anti- infantry" I think there were some other units like that but it's been a min.
Dragon crossbow men are the best standard missile unit in the game by a long way, they can get up to about 100 mainly ap missile damage when fully buffed in campaign. Compared with around 50 for sisters for instance, absolutely insane
Crane Gunners are a really good one-of for every army with ranged units due to their shieldbreaker effect. You could get a lantern to do the same job, but the dps output of lanterns is usually pretty pathetic by comparison. As for peasant horsemen, they do have their uses in the early game as essentially a hound unit to chew up routing enemies to prevent them from coming back. But that said I would never invest heavily in them. They're nice to get if a settlement you take happens to have a cavalry building though.
my endgame stacks had 5 crane gunners and 4 fire rain rockets, plus a front line of jade warrior and heroes and the Lord, camp in the back corner of the map and basically everything got obliterated before it could even reach my front line
Jade lions are there to let you fully stack elemental winds to 200% with an actual combat unit instead of alchemists or the war compass. Jet lions are there to give them a harmony buff. Basically if you want to do a magic focused army stack, these are your standard units. Is it the best army comp? prob not but its good to have variety and options for the sake of fun. Also you criminally underrate crowmen, they are a fantastic way for early game cathay to harass enemy archers and artillery. Easy include until you have time to replace them with lions or moonbirds. Being a small unit they can also distract enemy spears for your cav or monsters.
I think the horsemen and crowmen are best used in tandem to complement each other as your cheap long range squadron. Cathays greatest weakness is a lack of mobility but the crowmen are yin melee units. Used in combination they can keep their bonus while fighting away from the main host.
Iron hails are interesting as they only need a T2 building one may want to recruit anyway, but yeah, they can be a bit tricky to manage between their short range and poor armor.
Cathay units certainly need a little more love still even after the DLC. Maybe once they add two more lords we might have a unit roster which isn't as so buttered toast level flavor.
Your analysis of the jet/ jade lions, longma riders and war compass screamed C tier units to me, but otherwise love to see the return of the tier lists!
Only use for peasant horseman is hunting routed units and cheesing an unwinnable large settlement siege by kiting and holding the victory point. But for the latter reason I always have them on vh/vh
13:20 I feel like they initially were T5 cause they were the only melee flying unit before the DLC, which means it was the only option as a unit to intercept enemy flying cav/monsters to protect your sky junks if you were to recruit some of them. But since we now have the crowmen at T2 and they are quite good for a T2 unit, and also the 2 flying monster units, longma riders lost their purpose imo
I quite like the Wardrum and Jet Lions and that all comes down to buffing that Jade Warrior frontline. At base level, the Wardrum's +8 melee attack boost gives Jades a 30% boost and the Jet Lion is a source of Yin Harmony that can fight on the frontline, meaning they'll always be in Harmony range for further Jade Warrior buffing. I've also found quite an important early game niche for Crowmen which is that they are very good at dealing with Clan Eshin. Due to Eshin's reliance on stealth and ranged damage, the Crowmen's mobility, good dps and enhanced spotting means that they pretty much hard counter most of Eshin's strengths and makes them alot easier to deal with.
For some reason the Cathay Cannons are much more effective than other Cannon types. They are very accurate and seem to have a bigger splash vs infantry, so they are great vs single elite units or mass infantry.
I LOVE THE SKY LANTERNS. The Chaos Enemy Faction who constantly attacks you has almost zero way to kill them. Ranged cavalry and that's like it. They're really good at sniping lords too. Don't get me wrong the damage is ass. But if you rock 19 + a stalk/hidden unit you can hide and kill everything no problem. Its honestly so good at the Chaos guys man.
In my opinion the sky junk is s tier because it's flying hellstorm rocket battery Cathay armies usually have tons of ranged units so it's not that hard to deal with enemy fliers and it being a flier gives you the advantage of better line of sight plus enemy cav and other ground flankers don't threaten it And the few free crane gunners on the junk are a nice bonus
What's to continue? You tried this campaign yourself? You are done after 30-40 turns and early there are not that many big hurdles beside Snikch. If you level up Yuan Bo properly - Morathi gets quick pounding. It's just stomping after that. From economy, armies, Yuan Bo just crushing every possible character with few attacks and 2 executions or slaying every character on the battle map with 1 execution and medium duel - anything problematic or sudden is solved with tokens. Reaching over 200-300% bonus to research. You get global bonuses from those military(gates are insane) and economic districts. Big nerfs with adding constructs and elementals, but for everyone owning DLC, those are balanced changes. It only hurts those who don't own it and Cathay feels even more lobotomized without it. (I didn't have it for a long time)
Man I wish cathay just had more units in general. It feels like they could use more infantry instead of literally 4 units. Their whole roster is actually tiny, but still pretty good overall.
Oh shit I'm early. Came here because me and my bud are running legendary co-op campaigns and wanted to give him some pointers on his roster. Thanks Legend and congrats to you and your wife as well!
Cathay rocket battery shoots way more rockets per volley, that’s why they do more dmg. In compensation they have less ammo instead. I think this is a good trade though.
I'm surprised to see zero mention of the Jet Lion's "Silence" contact ability. Surely completely shutting down any wizard by just touching it in melee has some value worth mentioning? Especially if you might want to blob up against an enemy that has some scary damage spells, for example.
I don't really get why logically a construct would crumble from morale. It's not a corpse propped up by dark magic, or a daemon attempting to remain manifested in a foreign realm, it's an animated hunk of stone or metal. If anything, they should all be unbreakable and have some kind of battle damage related debuff (like the wounds passive) that stacks over time.
I completed my playthrough of cathay for immortal empires with purely using jade units. other higher tier units while they are good but have a ridicoulus amount of recruitment turns with abysmal recruitment pool essentialy waiting 3 - 4 turns for ever 2 unit is absolutely the worst. therefore i completely agree with your assesment of jade units but other higher tier units i dont even think they deserve A tier. i was expecting D tier at most tbh with the exception of maybe flying cavalry they have extremely high dps they wipe out units so fast.
The construct debacle really highlight the need for Astromancer and Alchemists to get an update to their skill lines to support various units. At the moment, you have the golden (jaden?) boys getting a lot of love, and the rest of the roster is just eeeeeeeeeeh.
The only rating I disagree with is the Crowmen. I found they are amazing for taking out archers, flying over walls, etc. They're easy to recruit and strong when it comes to protecting your troops from bats, carrion etc. I would easily put them at A. I found that a single iron hail gunner is a great addition for specific situations like sieges or gunning down big units like giants.
The warcompass has less value than you would think. There are limited situations in a battle where the comet is useful, and so if you have a wizard and a warcompass, one of them is automatically getting less value, but if you only have a warcompass and no wizard, you aren't benefiting from elemental winds, also getting less value.
It's weird that the Jade Standard stacks. I was under the impression that Skills from the same type of hero don't normally stack. I wonder if this is intended
With a crenelation formation, the shotgun sisters will destroy any infantry that makes contact with yours The crane gunners though, I don't feel have enough volume of fire to be really relevant besides a few snipes All and all, Cathay is fun because it lets you play that "Napoleonian" style
Thanks to MANSCAPED for sponsoring today's video! Get 20% OFF + Free International Shipping with my link manscaped.com/legendoftotalwar
Can the Manscaped handle my hairy, knotted, disaster campaign?
Tool is just a tool, you also need Legend's expert hands.@@jofac22
Legend you must try stronger and fair AI with AI army composition mods if you want wh 2 challenge back
while i know its not necessarily something you do often, do you have any ideas to make sky lanterns actually not suck? my thoughts are either make it have meaningful ground buffs for infantry, or, maybe even range/accuracy for missile units in range like a spotter, or add more entities maybe?
Legend, do a cosplay of dwarf Long beard. 😝
I believe cathay cannon shots have much larger hitboxes than Empire/Dwarf/Vampirate ones have. Hence why they are the only ones that consistently get value in multiplayer whereas the other ones feel like a gamble.
I feel that they are super accurate as well, late game I like having 3 in my army and if im against a big fucker like a Shaggoth or a dragon I sick them on to it and I just know its going to die.
The other thing is they can't be counterfired their is something wrong with them where they wont take missoe damage (bugged hitbox). CA is unfuriating with how many of these issues exist on their newer units.
Cathey cannons are marginally better than coast cannons, significantly better than empire and dwalf cannons when I’ve tested
I hate that there are so many little things about the game that make or break a unit and aren't on the stats card
ha ha aha who cares about multiplayer ????
What's missing from the construct/elemental units is anything that synergises with that status across the roster. If Cathay got some kind of Necrotect-type hero that could heal constructs that would immediately make them a lot more useful. Right now though yeah there's really not a lot of point to the lions, the jade one in particular dies super easily for very little return.
I was just thinking stealing necrotects is suddenly really appealing for cathay now
RIP my chinese clay gundams
@@nanonano2595 they're probably still better than the other equivalent massive units so not fully RIP, you can still make use of them.
That said it really does feel like they weren't paying attention when they added the negative with no supporting positive. Its possible they just figured that sentinels, as the strongest massive unit, needed a negative.
Giving another hero a buff or heal for constructs would mean you need to take 2 units to make the most of one of them which is still an effort cost over the pre-construct variant.
I thought Saytang was supposed to be the "Necrotect" of Cathay? But still even if he was, the Constructs attribute being more of a nerf than anything really sucks. Here's hoping they get some sort of support in the future.
I stopped playing a few updates ago (when they got way too expensive for too little). You can “steal” heroes now?
Jade Lancers can get quite insane. Every Gatemaster in the army gives them +6MD and -10% upkeep. The tech tree gives them: +10% Charge, -10% upkeep, +3 recruitment rank, +20% speed, +4 MA, +4 MA when attacking and +4MD when defending, +5% Replenishment, gives them Devastating Flanker, +15 Charge, +20 armor, +20% weapon strength and +10 leadership when fighting against chaos. The Celestial General gives either +10 armor, +10% weapon strength or +25% charge bonus. The red line of the skill tree gives them +8% weapon strength +18% charge bonus, 10% speed, +5MA, +10% physical resistance . Then give the Celestial General the Gryphon Legion Lance you get from the caravan system once one reaches Erengrad for further +20 and +15% charge bonus. That is a lot.
and then add Yuan Bo faction mechanic bonuses: 3 MD, 70% spell res, 6 AP dmg, 20 armor, and some other minor bonuses
I feel like legend just doesnt like cav tbh, he seems to much prefer heavy missiles/magic and rely on good positioning and unit zoning.
I think its also why he doesn't enjoy multiplayer as much; its much harder to cheese a human :D
@@GCOSBenbow one of his favorite races is Bretonia
@@GCOSBenbowyeah legend prefer missile and magic more. But these calvary mostly is just really bad, they underperform for their cost most of the time and require more attention to it. Legend doesnt dislike calvary, just dislike bad calvary like these, no AP, no anti large cav is just trash even if you can boost them in the campaign, even if they are free its still better to field jade warrior, maybe just a couple of them in the army is enough so A tier is reasonable, 26 MA without armor piercing and anti large is so trash, they would take forever to kill even a tier 1 2 unit with some armor
Don’t forget to train a Jet Lion to follow the lancers to put them in harmony
What I really like to use Wu Xing War compasses for, are defenses. Like minor or major siege battles. I love having like 2 of them in those battles and not having to rely on my winds of magic. They saved me quite a lot of times(when the enemy slowly form a blob in a street) when I had to quickly recruit something and I was in a region with shit mana.
Being able to cast 4 comets and 4 lightning bolts can easily turn the tides of any battle.
Thats a very smart use for the unit
very informative list; thank you Legend.
Just to add a few things I've noticed during my campaign:
- artillery has quite a low firing arc; it's very easy to hit your own troops, sky junk mitigates that problem a little bit. You basically trade flexibility in firing arc and positioning for raw firepower
- sky junks don't count as siege attacker for some wired reason
- crane gunners can actually man walls. when sieging you can establish a perimeter at a gate or kill all enemy stuff that can climb walls, put your crane gunners on their walls and snipe them from there
- the jet lion or the crowmen can be used to activate the ying/yan bonuses of your cavalry; if it's really worth it, is up to you.
- the only thing I would slightly disagree with is that I would put the compass one tier down and the crowmen one tier up; they are pretty solid early game artillery hunters, but I play without stat modifiers so that might not work if the a.i. gets its buffs.
This is a good point, I find on Empire the Hellstorm rockets often would delete my range units in front of them when they try to hit something around 120-150 range.
The curious thing about the Construct ability is, that it is appearently exactly the same as the Tomb King ones which means that they count as Undead for the purposes of healing magic like Invocation of Nehek or the Lore of Nehekara passive "Restless Dead". So if you steal those heroes, you could theoretically heal them pretty efficiently or repair them with Necrotects.
Weren't Teracota Sentinels created at the same time as Kingdoms of Nehekara in lore? If yes, it makes sense
Nehekara is older than cathay I guess@@indrickboreale7381
Thats what i was wondering. If it's the case it would be cool to see a doomstack rating with a necrotect or two to keep the sentinels up
Whats missing from Cathay roster are Teracota Warriors which would be monstrous infantry constructs (like Ushabti) and architect heroes.
@@indrickboreale7381 lmao no it doesn't , it's not the same technology, the same culture or the same magic. Terracotta Sentinels were created by the Dragon Emperor using his innate draconnic magic, while Nehekharan magic was purely mortal
Yes pretty spot on with crane gunners they are a specialist unit 1-2 per armies for me and use them to snipe high priority targets
Recently finished a Yuan-Bo campaign (VH), and it was probably one of the most fun I've ever had in a TW3-campaign.
Not just Yuan-Bo himself + his mechanics, but Cathay post-update is just so much more fun than it used to be with updated lords, heroes and the (much) improved Ying/Yang-system.
Probably my favorite human-faction as of now.
For cathay constructs, perhaps when leadership is broken, they "crumble" into the terracotta/jade they are made of, with their current health. When leadership is restored, they "reanimate" to their normal form and continue to fight. Have the crumble and reanimate animations take like 10 seconds or something, and add a temporary leadership buff that decays over time after reanimating to avoid rapid cycling between crumbling and reanimating. Also, only lords and heroes leadership aura can reanimate them, and they have to stay for the full 10 seconds until reanimated.
the mere fact you can get jade warriors at rank 9 relatively easily alone makes them very powerful
That rank one they compete with longbeards is pretty fucked
Wondering what kinds of rebalancing we can expect to see with the Dwarf update for both infantry and artillery.
Longbeards have always been overcosted and do basically nothing that much better than basic dwarf warriors.
@@lberghaus true
I once came across the AIs war compass doomstack and it was IMPOSSIBLE to beat with my ~60% infantry army. They were able to simultaneously spam the spells from every war compass all over the map in a way a player never could without pausing. Truly terrifying
Honestly Cathay has quickly became one of my favorite factions to play as. I think they’re really well balanced in magic, units, settlements, and location.
Same. Don't forget their monster selection too!
Frankly, compared to game 1 races they are completely overpowered due to their options alone.
Yeah, Cathay is basically a cheat code compare to empire lol. Got good unit in any stage of the game, infantry are armored exept those peasant one, have better artillery and really good AP crossbow unit compare to empire's handgunner that is less useful if your terrain is bad and way more vulnerable without armor and melee stat. The only edge empire have over cathay is access to life magic which i think Cathay will get at later dlc
@@alpharius2omegaboogaloo384 only over powered because the empire is slackin.
@ajitae1460 as a cathay player, I'd argue that the empire has better cav overall. I mean cathay has zero missile cav while all the other human factions do like wtf.
Peasant horsemen just got completely invalidated by crowmen. You get crows from t2 baracks that you want to build anyways, they hit waaaay harder and are tankier, they fly making them great at diving ranged and artillery and they even have very good ap values so they can help you deal with some early armored stuff that cathay can struggle a bit in the early game.
Jade/Jet lions get some extra value by unlocking Saytang who is extremly powerful but once you got Saytang you don't really need them anymore
They were already invalid!
I will add that the sky junk can keep shooting it's little guns even after running out of rockets if you reenable fire at will (unless this has been patched since I used them last)
I think they are intended to keep shooting, it's their secondary ammo.
Their guns are most definitely on a different ammo counter than their rockets are. My sky junk rifles always continue shooting even when the ammo bar shows empty because that bar is for rockets only.
As someone who just started WH3 and have watched your 2 year old guides for advice you have no idea how happy I am to see this new list. I haven't been able to get past turn 20 yet in about 6 campaigns, the battling is hard but this helped a lot thank you again!
I really enjoy how quickly you get into the sponsorship. Since most of the time, I put on these videos while I'm working on my minis. And since I already have a manscaped kit (since I'm a hairy guy lol) I can skip forward and enjoy the content with no breaks. Thanks Legend, and you truly live up to that name. Rock on !
Have you ever thought about doing a Sword of Khaine tier list? As in: listing factions that should never pick it up, or when it's situationally useful, or when it's viable, or when it can really boost the campaign?
It's almost always bad, so I don't see how I can be a tierlist)
If you want to do it it's OK, but you get so much global penalties that any single lord strength cannot overcome it
There is 2 exeptions: beastmen and Changeling. Both of them don't care about any downsides of SoC
Other then that it's too bad and just a meme weapon
@@l_ArAxus_l Wouldn't other horde factions be good for the SoK? Say, vampire coast going for a raid the coasts campaign.
@@TheOneBearded what are "other" horde fractions?)
@@l_ArAxus_l Alarielle's faction does very well with it because she gets so many handmaidens that you nullify the negative effects.
@@Costin_Gaming "A lot of handmaidens" is a late game thing
Also you just nullify only publi order issue. Not higher upkeep, nor relations negatives. Yeah you could use your influence to but good relations with other fractions, but you should have much better use for (like hiring good heroes)
Well I agree with statement that Allarielle COULD pick it up with not that much negatives, but it's still fat from optimal especially on higher difficulty
On normal and easy it's not that big of a deal
I'm pretty sure you hate doing these vids over and over Legend, but I love hearing the rationale for why a Unit may or may not be good.
The War Compass is really at its best as a Hero Mount, and is really just a replacement for a wizard if you can't actually get one (since the wizard is just better in pretty much every way)
25:30 Been a hot minute since I played Cathay, but I vaguely remember the cannonballs bouncing so you can hit a lot of units in a formation as well as the unit behind it. I know that the Little Groms do this.
Onyx Crowmen make the peasant horsemen completely pointless and they are on the infantry barracks, the onyx crowmen are perfect for chasing off missile infantry and routing units and can even be used to snipe units that are wavering and on the edge of routing their only downside atm is that they can get stuck in other melee units due to their low mass despite being flying units because CA has never fixed that issue 2 years post launch of WH3
I can see a monk-like hero that'd fix the construct change and give replenishment rate for armies it's embedded to. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long
Probably coming with Li Dao / Monkey King. Gonna be a while, though.
@@HiddenEvilStudios Slaanesh or Khorne DLC
Love these tier list. I’m always unsure of what units are the best to have on my team, love this type of content!
Perfect timing as I decided to get this on sale a couple weekends ago. Just entering into the midgame on my Cathay campaign.
I wanted to mention that if the army was under mommy Miao, then the constructs and crows would actually have healing so probably bumps them up situationally there but I agree a recruitable life astromancer mounted on a moonbird would be game changing.
Only if you're not flying her around in dragon form and obliterating fools, lol
This tier list was great with the stats included from the game. It really drove home your reasons for the picks. Great shit Legend.
Love these tier lists! Please do all the ones that are super old. Your options are awesome!
Sky lanterns should provide spotting against stalk units. Like triple spotting distance on any stalking units.
sure but wouldnt make them anymore usable in Campaign
@@Bexty11 it'd certainly make having one helpful against some factions. Like beastmen.
@@animewarrior3that would be a super niche buff, it would be better if it had something like the dragon breath attacks, since its already pretty much a sentry type unit so standing still wouldnt hurt it, the biggest issue this has it doesnt pull its weight and dies to quick
They have eye of the dragon, which kinda spots
@@cweeperz7760 only for forest hidden units.
Just in time, I started my Jade Court campaign yesterday and played nearly whole day, they're really powerful. Managed to confederate all Cathayan LL's by turn 60 something and we're rolling now.
I really hope they do something with the sky lantern making it a higher number unit so its got more shots coming out might work but idk
The war drums are just fun. I like hearing the drum beat during the battle. The buffs are ok but having a sick beat to the battle is key.
Thank you for the Tier lists, they're always entertaining :)
I really enjoy these little tier lists as it makes getting into the game more accessible. Would you ever consider doing composition videos on what you ideally would aim for or you very much in the, "just use what I can when I can" camp?
I actually kinda like sky laterns. Their range is crazy, and combined with fire whilst moving, they can kite and annoy large entities pretty well. Shieldbreaker too
Dopamine spike when legend releases tier list⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️
I love it when you have 3 tiers of anything. You have the trash tier masses, the standard issue professional army units and the elite top tier units
Just playing my first Cathay campaign now, and I very much agree with this list.
"Jade checkers" can handle everything I've been up against, with some arty/mage to initialize combat.
Another WH3 tier list, today is a good day.
I really like the drums, gives more flexibility where you place your units for the yin/yang buffs.
The ROR wardrum is pretty fire . I wish the normal ones did the same thing
It makes sense that the Lions(statues) and the Sentinel would be constructs but it was nice of them to not make the one after their release.
8:45 also good thing to consider is how Celestial Dragon Crosbowmen have insane scaling since technology that incerase flat dmg (in this case +3 armor piercing damage) is technically better for this unit since they have 2 shots per volley so we end up with additional +6 damage.
Edit: 25:40 As for Grand Cannon whenever I use other couterparts I feel like they are missing too many shots vs Horse/Monster Inf. size enemies while Cathayan version seems to have better accuracy/larger hitboxes with cannon balls. Norscans, Orcs, Greenskins and even Chaos Dwarfs are getting slaughtered by those artillery pieces while if I was about to use Imperial Cannon... well maybe it will hit 1/3 of it's shots?
Honestly Grand Cannon is like combination of damage from Empire Cannons and (almost) accuracy from HE Eagle Bolt Throwers and it makes them very practical to use whenever it is field battle or siedge.
There is one item that bootst logma riders. I made one logna stack with a balloon general. (And a wizard for the ground unit) Worked pretty well on normal difficulty
Hey man! Just noticed you hit 500k! Congratulations!
a use for ironhail gunners is as very effective anti flying, the straight flying and quick bullets just decimate all types of flying infantry and even monsters if you use a couple of units on it, whenever i go to fight chaos i bring a few ironhails and they never let me down in these roles
Hey Legend! I'd love to see you take another pass over of the Warhammer 1/2 factions rosters in Warhammer 3, given all of the changes introduced over time.
shadows of change made cathay so much more fun, and I already liked them before. Their crossbows and artillery are insane, but I've been using dragon guard frontline... The jade units are boosted super hard but I didn't even consider that they can outperform the dragon guard due to being able to stack gate masters.
The jade halberdiers don't have shields but honestly idek how important that is. My endgame crisis is wood elves, but their archer units are actually helpless against the combination of fire rain rockets and crossbowmen. Point being, archers can't shoot your frontline without getting turned to dust by artillery.
The most interesting thing in this video is definitely the jade lancers though... I have like 30-40 armies and I don't think I have a single jade lancer in any of them. It didn't even register that the gate master boosts them too, plus the cav building is super low priority, I basically only starting building them at T5 when I didn't have anything else to stick in my capitals.
I played a Miao Ying campaign since the SoC additions, but having not purchased SoC, and the Logma Riders were amazing end game archer killers. They had something like 122 charge bonus. Units would be shattered within 5 seconds of the charge. Maybe not since SoC and maybe not cost efficient but certainly powerful and more deserving of A tier. I kept 2-4 in each army.
Fire Rain Rockets and Crane Gunners ended most armies before they could reach my celestial dragon crossbowmen and the Logma Riders would finish off and ranged in the back.
Every time I auto battle Longma Rider is fken slaughtering the enemy compare to all my other units.
Pretty much agree except I'd put the sentinels at S tier tbh They've never let me down.
Yeah, I think Legend is kind of comparing it to where they were and constructs being a nerf because Cathay has like zero healing outside of mommy Miao
i pretty much only ever used the war compass as the mount variant, but now that hero has access to the bird.
The sky lantern should really buff the units around it more. Maybe it could improve the reload speed, melee defense, and crane-gunner fire of nearby lanterns or something. That way, you can have a proper flying “fleet” just like they mention in Cathay’s lore.
With how long the game has been out, im shocked they havent fixed some of the old typos. Like Logma saying theyre anti-infantry when they aren't
I always assumed it's not the trait that it was talking about but the fact that it's a charge cavalry that makes it "anti- infantry" I think there were some other units like that but it's been a min.
Dragon crossbow men are the best standard missile unit in the game by a long way, they can get up to about 100 mainly ap missile damage when fully buffed in campaign. Compared with around 50 for sisters for instance, absolutely insane
Crane Gunners are a really good one-of for every army with ranged units due to their shieldbreaker effect. You could get a lantern to do the same job, but the dps output of lanterns is usually pretty pathetic by comparison.
As for peasant horsemen, they do have their uses in the early game as essentially a hound unit to chew up routing enemies to prevent them from coming back. But that said I would never invest heavily in them. They're nice to get if a settlement you take happens to have a cavalry building though.
Congratulations on 500k subs
my endgame stacks had 5 crane gunners and 4 fire rain rockets, plus a front line of jade warrior and heroes and the Lord, camp in the back corner of the map and basically everything got obliterated before it could even reach my front line
Jade lions are there to let you fully stack elemental winds to 200% with an actual combat unit instead of alchemists or the war compass. Jet lions are there to give them a harmony buff. Basically if you want to do a magic focused army stack, these are your standard units. Is it the best army comp? prob not but its good to have variety and options for the sake of fun.
Also you criminally underrate crowmen, they are a fantastic way for early game cathay to harass enemy archers and artillery. Easy include until you have time to replace them with lions or moonbirds. Being a small unit they can also distract enemy spears for your cav or monsters.
I think the horsemen and crowmen are best used in tandem to complement each other as your cheap long range squadron. Cathays greatest weakness is a lack of mobility but the crowmen are yin melee units. Used in combination they can keep their bonus while fighting away from the main host.
Iron hails are interesting as they only need a T2 building one may want to recruit anyway, but yeah, they can be a bit tricky to manage between their short range and poor armor.
Jade Lions also get obliterated in auto-resolve. I've had several decisive victories where my Jade Lion is killed somehow
Cathay units certainly need a little more love still even after the DLC. Maybe once they add two more lords we might have a unit roster which isn't as so buttered toast level flavor.
Your analysis of the jet/ jade lions, longma riders and war compass screamed C tier units to me, but otherwise love to see the return of the tier lists!
Only use for peasant horseman is hunting routed units and cheesing an unwinnable large settlement siege by kiting and holding the victory point. But for the latter reason I always have them on vh/vh
13:20 I feel like they initially were T5 cause they were the only melee flying unit before the DLC, which means it was the only option as a unit to intercept enemy flying cav/monsters to protect your sky junks if you were to recruit some of them. But since we now have the crowmen at T2 and they are quite good for a T2 unit, and also the 2 flying monster units, longma riders lost their purpose imo
I quite like the Wardrum and Jet Lions and that all comes down to buffing that Jade Warrior frontline. At base level, the Wardrum's +8 melee attack boost gives Jades a 30% boost and the Jet Lion is a source of Yin Harmony that can fight on the frontline, meaning they'll always be in Harmony range for further Jade Warrior buffing.
I've also found quite an important early game niche for Crowmen which is that they are very good at dealing with Clan Eshin. Due to Eshin's reliance on stealth and ranged damage, the Crowmen's mobility, good dps and enhanced spotting means that they pretty much hard counter most of Eshin's strengths and makes them alot easier to deal with.
Cathay's core of Jade Warriors is absolutely crazy strong now. It was good before but now it gets overtuned DLC hero support .
For some reason the Cathay Cannons are much more effective than other Cannon types. They are very accurate and seem to have a bigger splash vs infantry, so they are great vs single elite units or mass infantry.
I LOVE THE SKY LANTERNS. The Chaos Enemy Faction who constantly attacks you has almost zero way to kill them. Ranged cavalry and that's like it. They're really good at sniping lords too.
Don't get me wrong the damage is ass. But if you rock 19 + a stalk/hidden unit you can hide and kill everything no problem. Its honestly so good at the Chaos guys man.
Might start a yuanbao campaign, those stat buff does sound juicy
Gratz on 500k buddy
In my opinion the sky junk is s tier because it's flying hellstorm rocket battery
Cathay armies usually have tons of ranged units so it's not that hard to deal with enemy fliers and it being a flier gives you the advantage of better line of sight plus enemy cav and other ground flankers don't threaten it
And the few free crane gunners on the junk are a nice bonus
@Legend are you gonna continue your yuan bo livestream?
Unlikely (sadly), as he said that he's been playing it in his spare time @ 4:28
What's to continue? You tried this campaign yourself? You are done after 30-40 turns and early there are not that many big hurdles beside Snikch. If you level up Yuan Bo properly - Morathi gets quick pounding. It's just stomping after that. From economy, armies, Yuan Bo just crushing every possible character with few attacks and 2 executions or slaying every character on the battle map with 1 execution and medium duel - anything problematic or sudden is solved with tokens. Reaching over 200-300% bonus to research. You get global bonuses from those military(gates are insane) and economic districts. Big nerfs with adding constructs and elementals, but for everyone owning DLC, those are balanced changes. It only hurts those who don't own it and Cathay feels even more lobotomized without it. (I didn't have it for a long time)
If the sky lanterns got more ammunition, higher damage, a little more range and maybe 2 of them per unit then they’d be a unit worth getting
Man I wish cathay just had more units in general. It feels like they could use more infantry instead of literally 4 units. Their whole roster is actually tiny, but still pretty good overall.
Oh shit I'm early. Came here because me and my bud are running legendary co-op campaigns and wanted to give him some pointers on his roster.
Thanks Legend and congrats to you and your wife as well!
Cathay rocket battery shoots way more rockets per volley, that’s why they do more dmg. In compensation they have less ammo instead. I think this is a good trade though.
My argument for the jet lion is they can buff my jade lancers by putting them in harmony and keeping in pace with them.
Love legends tierlist. I know what I have to build to cheese. In most cases build nothing and take the most casual troops
I'm surprised to see zero mention of the Jet Lion's "Silence" contact ability. Surely completely shutting down any wizard by just touching it in melee has some value worth mentioning?
Especially if you might want to blob up against an enemy that has some scary damage spells, for example.
Man that is a very OP looking tier list.
For the construct units here, I hope they introduce a master artificer hero that can heal them, a la the necrotect.
I don't really get why logically a construct would crumble from morale. It's not a corpse propped up by dark magic, or a daemon attempting to remain manifested in a foreign realm, it's an animated hunk of stone or metal. If anything, they should all be unbreakable and have some kind of battle damage related debuff (like the wounds passive) that stacks over time.
Sky lantern can attract fire from dreadquake pretty well though, lol.
Hey Legend! What about tier lists for caravan items (like Von Carstein blade) or Runefangs? Or maybe each rarity of item?
Or chorf units from their caravans
Cries in Empire infantry. Here's hoping they get some Ulric themed infantry.
One day, you will have to do a tierlist on all the historical battles in the various games ^.^
I completed my playthrough of cathay for immortal empires with purely using jade units. other higher tier units while they are good but have a ridicoulus amount of recruitment turns with abysmal recruitment pool essentialy waiting 3 - 4 turns for ever 2 unit is absolutely the worst. therefore i completely agree with your assesment of jade units but other higher tier units i dont even think they deserve A tier. i was expecting D tier at most tbh with the exception of maybe flying cavalry they have extremely high dps they wipe out units so fast.
The construct debacle really highlight the need for Astromancer and Alchemists to get an update to their skill lines to support various units. At the moment, you have the golden (jaden?) boys getting a lot of love, and the rest of the roster is just eeeeeeeeeeh.
looks much cleaner, i like the new look
The only rating I disagree with is the Crowmen. I found they are amazing for taking out archers, flying over walls, etc. They're easy to recruit and strong when it comes to protecting your troops from bats, carrion etc. I would easily put them at A. I found that a single iron hail gunner is a great addition for specific situations like sieges or gunning down big units like giants.
Its crazy how few units Cathay has compared to other factions
Dwarf army with monsters, cavalry and flyring units. Oh and shotgun guys.
Yeah the crowman need a more elite version maybe one with some sort of limited missiles like granates
The warcompass has less value than you would think. There are limited situations in a battle where the comet is useful, and so if you have a wizard and a warcompass, one of them is automatically getting less value, but if you only have a warcompass and no wizard, you aren't benefiting from elemental winds, also getting less value.
I feel like cathay should have healing in the way of alchemy items or skills.
Like a targetable healing potion
It's weird that the Jade Standard stacks. I was under the impression that Skills from the same type of hero don't normally stack. I wonder if this is intended
No, abilities tend to stack. It's usually just aura abilities in battle that don't stack.
@@Keeki95 ahh nice one! I been skilling up my dudes wrong. Cheers!
I feel like cathay is becoming like HE, a faction that can almost do anything. And cathay has very strong economy too.
With a crenelation formation, the shotgun sisters will destroy any infantry that makes contact with yours
The crane gunners though, I don't feel have enough volume of fire to be really relevant besides a few snipes
All and all, Cathay is fun because it lets you play that "Napoleonian" style
31:19 now now, let’s not go besmirching the Grail (which has higher comedic value AND can actually fight back…to a limited degree yes, but it can)
Sky lantern fights far better. I actually kinda like it for lord sniping and kiting. It's range it crazy
Doing my first Cathay campaign rn as yuan and was shocked how horrible the jade lion is