@@solareclipse9379 there's a few factions where lightning strike isn't necessary, such as vampire counts/tomb kings. But yeah, on the most part, it's great.
I liked the video overall but personally missed a few important points (pun intended): - Always take route marcher as the first point, no better first point to spend - Its optimal to spend minimum points on the first section of the red line. Its better to focus your army on 2 categories then waste skillpoints on a big mix (especially higher difficulty). - In general I would say its better to buff the army then to buff the lord (unless its a caster). Army buffs improve 19 units while lord buffs only improve 1. (especially higher difficulty) - Rush arcane conduit on any caster hero, the faster you get it the better because you can simply use more spells in battle. - Lightning strike is very powerfull against factions that like to turtle their settlements (dwarves), i would advise to get it if you are going to face them.
First section of the red line is more useful if you're going to be using quick-dying units, like Grom's chunky goblins. Since second-line skills don't work until you hit a gold chevron, units that are unlikely to get there or will die once they do are less useful.
@@UnreasonableOpinions Or, if they don't die, they may become obsolte when that point is reached due to the predominance of higher tier, more durable, units
@@nicovelardita8619 the only time I see the chaff buffs coming in handy would be for a strictly supporting chaff stack. Like the classic skaven slave stack or a gobbo stack. With those, you’re not worrying about the late game, you’re just recruiting an expendable army with an expendable lord. If they die, mission accomplished, so I don’t need to worry that I haven’t saved point slots for good units, if I plan to have him die before he even hits level 20
they REALLY should add a way to reallocate skill points...even one per turn would be great as u would add some flexibility to your characters and not get stuck forever with a mistake or an early choice to buff early gameplay...
This tutorial would have been absolutely game changing when I began playing Warhammer 2. I struggled greatly in the beggining to the point of regreting buying the game, although being an "experienced" TW player. Great video, as always.
While I agree with the general idea - don't waste skill points but for a beginner it is as useful as "get good". So here's some of the stuff I had to figure out and had issues when I started out: 1. For mages always rush towards arcane conduit ASAP. Invest only points to unlock arcane conduit so that you can get it at level 12. Arcane conduit is one of the strongest abilities and benefits all other mages in your army. 1.1. Always invest fully into the spells that you will be using to reduce winds of magic cost. Also consider if you really need 'Earthing' (decreased miscast chance) as the majority of spells are not worth overcasting with their increased winds of magic cost and cool down. There are of course exceptions like 'Wind of Death' or 'Net of Amyntok' which should almost always be used with over cast. 2. Training skill I think is useless, it offers so little additional exp to your units that only a few battles will offset 40 turns of training skill. It's almost certain you would have found more use of other skills before it ever pays off. 3. Personal combat skills are some of the least priority skills you should invest in, especially for Lords. Army, campaign and magic skills usually outweighs a Lord's or Heroe's individual fighting capability. 3.1. Never found much use in personal leadership bonuses. If you are scared of your Lord's/Heroe's combat capabilities and the possibility of them routing don't engage them in dangerous combat or instead buff their direct combat capabilities instead of Leadership buffs. 4. When going down the Red line try to only invest in two skills to unlock the next part of the red line. Choose units to buff that have the most impact and compose the bulk of your army. Some units do not rely that heavily on red line compared to others. 4.1. You can delay getting the second part of the red line until you actually get those units to rank 7 and above (1 gold chevron), so the skill point is not wasted before you get there. 5. Using a hero as the goblin example for reducing corruption / increasing public order is not worth the trouble. Get settlement buildings for that and plan ahead when a revolt will trigger. Campaign heroes are much better put to use offensively where they can hit enemy heroes/settlements and/or scout incoming enemy armies.. If you plan to passively use a hero to boost public order or reduce corruption it will not engage in active actions where the hero will ever get enough exp to level up and be efficient at it. 5.1. Some of the best candidates for campaign heroes are ones with Block Army (nothing more frustrating than hunting weak force marching armies Benny Hill style), wound/assassinate enemy heroes (very helpful for screening your armies and allowing you to enter ambush stance without detection), damage walls when you don't have a siege attacker in your army. 5.2. Some hero actions like steal technology and secure influence and some others stack their duration. So when you first see some of those skills they seem useless. But you can have them repeatedly perform those actions and have a very long term buff and also help leveling up your heroes relatively quickly and investing 3 points in specialist and 3 points in steal technology and the other points can be put into spells after that and the hero can then be attached to an army with like 50+ turn buff to research speed. Not efficient when you need a spell caster now but if you plan ahead you can have a nicely leveled hero by the time you recruit a new army.
@@mrwhosaskin179 I actually added another point to the list before you replied, so it's number 5 after the edit. But you are spot on, however, it more of an exception of the general rule. Vamprie Counts can get loads of necromancers as the necromancer capacity building is the growth building and can be built in minor settlements. But again you can spread corruption in adjacent provinces and it will through osmosis increase the corruption in your own settlements and I still think they are better served in armies with the proper traits. For High Elves you are thinking of mages with the Entrepreneur trait. So not really reliant on skills but the the trait mostly. And Dark Elves again you're spot on but only effective when you can recruit them at rank 7 I believe to get the slave decay reduction skill.
@@SylvanWWFC the game actually does explain it if you hover your mouse over most spells it gives a detail description. Overcasting a spell means clicking the spell icon (or hotkey) twice which will cast a more 'powerful' version of the spell, sometimes it is necessary to first upgrade the spell to make overcasting available. When overcasting the spell it costs more winds of magic and also increases the spell cooldown and also adds a chance of miscasting. When miscasting the spell, it will still cast but you will also damage your casting character. However, as I mentioned in my comment it is in most cases not worth it due to the negative effects and the added bonuses sometimes do not make the spell any stronger in any practical sense. For example most vortex spells like Fire storm, overcasting provides extra duration to the spell but if you have any experience with those skills is useless as the vortex usually randomly travels away from the units you casted and just travels around without doing any damage. Next time you play just hover your mouse over most spells to see the tool tip and it explains the overcast effect and you can mostly decide if it is worth it or if you are not convinced do some minor experimentation. Some spells must be overcast while most should never be and some are situational.
@Edwin von Carstein yea Lightning Strike is good to get ASAP in most cases. It's much more important on Legendary or Very Hard difficulties where the AI churns out armies at a stupid rate and you really need to play aggressively to counteract that. However, so many races have a near useless first portion of the blue line that it is sometimes hard to justify putting so much points just towards progression to Lightning strike while disregarding many useful things. So for those 10% that don't need Lightning Strike the most obvious being- Vampire Counts, as Wind of Death is more important and if you go for the skelly spam you will be able to field so many armies that you will not benefit from Lightning Strike. Also the Skaven (and Alith Anar) who can stalk and ambush while attacking, however, with the recent patch adding massive ambush defense chances I might need to reconsider how I play my Skaven.
That is what I do. Going right for renowned and feared for that reduced upkeep. And then I usually go for red if there is nothing better. I don't care all that much for buffing the Lord Atleast always go for lightning strike
I'm glad that you started doing more campaign-related content, not just multiplayer. I learned how to play most factions thanks to your faction guides but I missed some tips on how to play them in campaign. Hope it helps you grow subs to your channel, as most people don't play MP. Keep it up, mate!
Zerkovich, I'd would like to say that Flexibility is an important attribute in determining a skill's potential value. Kroq-Gar is an example of a character that has situational (inflexible) skills. He has a whole line of Skills that give +10% Weapon Strength, +8 Leadership, and +10 Melee Attack to every unit in his army. But the problem is that each skill will only activate when fighting a specific race on the battlefield. So if Kroq-Gar is going to be fighting for a long time against let's say the Skaven, then "Destroy all Skaven" will provide a good return on the invested skill point. But as soon as there are no more Skaven to fight, for a while or even forever, then the skill becomes useless.
Really should've mentioned that the campaign skill line for lords is easily overlooked but critically important, because the earlier you put points into it, the higher your return on investment is over the course of the campaign.
LIghtning strike, reduced upkeep, replenishment and sometimes infantry melee defense. The latter so they can actually live while holding the line, works great for especially Dawi warriors. Ambush effectiveness defensive/offensive for those who can take it. I don´t usually bother much with the lords effectiveness in combat, some melee defense and that´s it. I usually go for army utilities depending on the army the Lord is leading.
After I finish Blue, I often take a brief tour of 3-6 points into Red in order to buff the core units of my army then spend the rest in Yellow (unless caster lord).
Wait what? A kitchen sink army with throgg? Why would you use anything else then trolls in his army, his unique skills for them make them one of the most fun to use doomstackss ever
I like themes, but I'm not a huge fan of one unit doom stacks if only because of the wasted 3 skill points getting to the second redline buff. I haven't played Norsca, but wouldn't having a secondary unit to make up for the trolls weaknesses be good. Maybe mounted marauders with throwing weapons to flank and disrupt the enemies. Maybe not, i just try to always have 2 units in my army
@@BouncingTribbles Well, throg can skill a few different boni to trolls outside of the red skill tree, so no other unit is as strong in his army as the trolls. plus, they are a really good all rounder, fast enough to flank/catch archers, regenerating, ...
I use the blue lines most often these days. Always want cheaper upkeep and more income, lightning strike and maybe a bit of ambush ability somewhere along the way.
Get Route Marcher immediately Get Lightning Strike early Immortal at lv20 If you have Arcane Conduit try to get that ASAP while still fulfilling the above Replenishment is usually a good idea Try to hold out for your preferred mount instead of buying multiple Get whatever unique lord skills you fancy See if the lord provides buffs to any good units, take red line buffs for those units, build army around them Red line buffs that provide ammo or range to your preferred ranged units is good and necessary Red line buffs can be taken 3/3 or 2/2/2; the 2nd rank is most important, 3rd rank is just a minor increase Remember that Ranged, Magic and Monsters pretty much dominate Total Warhammer campaign, and this becomes more true the higher the Battle Difficulty
I started to relax a bit about skill points in Warhammer 2 when I realised (non-caster) Lords have (just) enough to get to the end of all three trees. So you can "have it all" if you are disciplined and only put enough points into a tree segment to get to the next segment of the tree. Whether it's worth doing depends partly on how good the capstone skill is for each tree (I have some doubts about the usual one for the personal combat yellow tree). The main decisions for me are normally which tree to go down first (lightning strike or troops) and which units to buff on the red tree. Yellow is normally something I only fill up in the endgame, perhaps because, as Zerkovich described, I have more skill points than I really need. Still, it can be fun to have a tough Lord who can have a big personal influence on the battlefield. Agents I tend to get campaign skills first as active skill use is a good way to level them. They are probably more useful later in battle when they have ranked up a bit.
I always always always rush for lightning strike for my lords. Doesn’t matter the circumstance, I will always put points into blue until I have it, and then generally don’t touch it for the rest of their points
Blue line first for lightning strike and upkeep reducton (if the faction has upkeep). Then any special skills the lord has, spells they have, their best mounts when they get it, then buffing units and the lord's stats.
You didn't mention a very important thing about character skills. There are some character skills which buff an army where the hero is embedded. For instance, Triangulation gives +12% damage to all missile units(which is a truly OP skill). Those skills have a remark (Hero's army).
This is why the one button respec mod is so great. It gives a one time skill reset per lord/hero. That way, you can buff your early game stuff and respec when you transition to a more elite/focused army.
This was a great video. Could you do more with special themed lords and units? Like an all cavalry Brettonia build or a Malekith melee infantry focus build or a Skavan ranged units build?
personally i always take lightning strike first. after that i mostly take the yellow line, but in some special occasions the red line. but i think lightning strike is so important, i always want that as early as possible. also the campaign buffs you get on the way are nice to have
Good video. It’s good guidance for those characters who have far more than 30 places for points. Always a bit frustrating, or maybe just “huh?” when a character has more points that slots. And, I’m going to keep asking you to please make a video explaining the different mounts and their effects? This, to me, remains one of the biggest mysteries. And yes, I do get it that taking the last most powerful mount is usually obvious, but there are some characters (say the Wood Elves Glade Lord) where various mounts seem to have equal potential. What I am most curious about, and think newer players in particular would benefit from knowing about, is how the mount seems to have a negative effect on your character when you mouse over in selection. What does each mount really do for the character, and should someone take it? I’ve heard some people say that a horse mount is a terrible choice; ok, but why (other than what you said here about not putting too many mounts into mounts, not wasting a point)?
I almost always rush lighting strike and even the reduced upkeep skills on blue. Then do the red line because I know what army I want the lord to be by that point Then do yellow Obviously it gets supplemented if they have a 4th skill line or if they are a magic wielder I might change it up
You can switch back and forth to any mounts you have unlocked or even unmount again in the same way you equip weapons/artifacts and such once per turn.
I hope in warhammer 3 they change hero skill trees to allow there skill points to matter more, particularly with the dwarfs, as they are so slow to get heros that by it takes like 5 turns for you tk get from heros are now around, to you don't really need to worry about there equipment or skills because you are unbeatable
Usually the latter tree skills are better(not always) but I pick my end skills then map the quickest way there with the most useful skills along the way. I usually only drop more than necessary to move on when it comes to important spells or when I’ve already got the important stuff so I’m picking the most useful of what’s left
This also depends on difficulty. Lightning strike is absolute musthave on VeryHigh/Legendary, but can be avoided on lower difficulties. LS is SO important, that you need to rush on it even if 4 skills in first blue section are bad(dwarf lord for example). Second musthave on VH/Leg - skills of Legendary Lords that provide public order per faction. If your army is(or is going to be) almost of single entity units(dragons, stegadons, etc) and you have lore of Life - Earth Blood is your best friend. Also, you can heal your army when battle is over and enemy forces run away. Ah, and most important - for LLs, dont waste your skill points for MULTIPLE MOUNTS.
You absolutely can get enough winds of magic to use all spells in a battle, I mean if you are playing high elves and you don't have at least 300 winds for a battle you are doing something wrong. There are also skills you always need to get, lightning strike, replenishment skills. In any faction that has decent ranged potential you always need to boost that in red line.
I would add also for newbies to look to play to the inherent strengths of the Lords and Heroes. So for example Grimgor is set up to annihilate enemy lords and heroes in 1 on 1’s. O speccing him to sit behind the front line and buff you gobbo archers is missing a trick. Similarly, the common or garden Lords and Heroes have their own inherent strengths. Taking green skins again, black ork big bosses are excellent tanks. So spec for tankiness and use them in armies, whereas goblin big bosses make excellent campaign map assassins so spec accordingly. For Legendary Lords, look also at their traits, some (like Ratnik Spiderclaw) buff particular units (spiders in this case).
3 years late but better now than never haha. Hope it won't take this long for Warhammer III tips cause I'll need it xD Magic was always tough for me. "Is this good? It SOUNDS good...wait, what's overcasting? And what are those symbols in the description?"
I usually just pick the single necessary blue and red and top unique trees then leave the rest of the buffs to hero units, unless it’s a one man doomstack like Grimgore..
Zerko a appreciate, what you are doing, and this guide is fine if you arent playing legendary. But on legendary, you need to exploit the game, and MUST take some skills. Lightning strike being one of them. Also I think you should have mentioned that with mage lords you want to have te wind spells maxed out, and with vampire lords you need raise dead and invo ASAP.
@@Zerkovich i get that. But still about the wind spells, route marcher and lightning strike. All probably worth more than a mention. good vid none the less, just I think what you said is a tad bit obvious even for new players. Could've gon more in dept imo
@@danielgonzalezgasca2522 read my second comment. Also, what I said was not just criticism but also amendment. Perhaps it will help some. But so far it only triggered people 😅
Kinda feel blue line is the most useful, lighting strike one of the best skills u can get u can defeat 4 armies if u need with that skill, upkeep reduction very good, replenishment quite important when you play higher diff., ambush chance for skaven quite useful, only line i would prefer over blue is magic line maybe
I see people suggesting 2 or 3 SP per level, but that is too much IMO. something like the improved skill points progression mod, that gives Lords 56 total points ( instead of 39 ) and heroes 43 is better. It also gives those extra points early on, so noob lords and heroes will be more useful and harder to defeat, which helps both player and AI.
It is the Campaign AI who should learn this, so when i Confederate with Mannfred, he won't have skelly bois and corpse carts buffed and 4 mounts available with a random spirit leech upgrade thrown in there.
Honestly, beginners will start campaign on easy/normal difficulty, and these are usually so easy that wasting a few points here and there doesn't make a big difference. So to new people: these are good tips, however you don't have to worry too much about it because the common sense to spend them on things useful to you will come automaticly when you play the game for a while.
Honestly, this feels a bit to complicated for new players. Most new players won't know how to plan roles for lords or heroes because they don't know what roles will be useful in their campaign, know what units they'll be focusing on, or what spells they'll like.
they REALLY should add a way to reallocate skill points...even one per turn would be great as u would add some flexibility to your characters and not get stuck forever with a mistake or an early choice to buff early gameplay...
goddamn it, i'm recovering from surgery, i've just got off all my pain meds so it's safe for me to drink alcohol again, and i took that fucken "take a shot every time i say gobbo" as a challenge, got my bottle of whiskey i've been saving and restarted the video
After 500+ hours, this is what I do most of the time: - blue to lightning strike - Unique legendary traits (almost always extremely strong) - magic to Arcane conduit - Red to buff what lord uses primarily (this is usually late enough, to know this) - Yellow Generic This is the priority, and I rarely deviate. Very few have magic so strong I don't give them lightning strike first, or legendary traits so shit i go into red and leave them. I also highly approve Gruuts' Comment
I am a lightning strike addict. It might not be optimal, but TWW2 AI hurt me in the past. I'm slowly starting to get other things first (Route Marcher still best first)
I feel like you are describing the trees in the way that CA hoped they would work. Whilst there is truth and logic to what you are saying, ultimately 'Lightning Strike' and 'Upkeep Reduction' are the best and most important talents and if you manage to spend all of your points and not have them, you will pretty much want to scrap the lord when you reach the mid-late game, due to the fact that their army will cost so much relative to what they could (and this is a huge deal as you will need multiple armies to defend your now huge empire), and the fact that the way the AI plays the game is to spam armies that you can never hope to match in numbers due to upkeep increases for every lord you have, it makes 'Lightning Strike' very important unless you want long, grindy and difficult fights all the time.
Get the following mods : Nitz max level 60 Nnobbs never obsolete ai lords Skill point dump Sfo grimhammer 2 The first increase max level to 60 so that you can make really legendary lords and heroes. The last one is a great overhaul, that give you a lot of new skill trees with balanced and interesting skills. So much better than vanilla choices. Do it!
Lohkir Felheart with 20% increased Sacking & another 20% from the Red Blades, Blessed Dread with 20% increased sack, Black Ark Slave Pens with 20% increased Sack. Add an assasin with scavenging... MONEY!
okay a few more tips... Unless you are going for something very specific or are using the last few skill points, try not to spend more points than neccecary in a line. For example - in the redline take the six points you think you are going to need, and then progress the red bar or stop there. hell if you are doomstacking sometimes it might be usefull to just use 3 points in the red line. point being dont put 5 points into the melee line in your early game because chances are you are not going to get a lot more out of it, and those are points you might want elsewhere to make sure you get those other buffs, mounts or lightningstrikes. Always go for route marcher first, the ai gets more movement range than you do by default. For your hero wizzards(in armies), almost always b-line for that arcane conduit, that extra winds of magic i great, and the earlier the better. Lightningstrike is great and almost all factions can benifit from it, but not all factions should go for that first For your campaign map heroes, if they have a special skillset you want them to be good at, like assasinating, put points in there, but remeber the specialist skill. it reduces the hero action costs and increases base succeschance, which can be more important than increasing amount of holes made in a settlement wall.
I really don't like the way they do mounts. I think they should keep the level prerequisites, but give mount unlocks a gold cost rather than a skill point cost. As it stands, most people just have them run around on foot until they unlock the best mount because skill points are too valuable to waste on stuff that will eventually be obsolete. If we could spend money on mounts (which makes sense seeing as that's what we do for units with the same mounts/monsters) there is more incentive to collect and use them earlier in the campaign.
this is the very first video by Zerkovich that I felt like actually disliking. I clicked on it because I like exceptions, lol: all others I've watched so far (and they are many!) were absolutely awesome. I too feel like the emphasis on Lightning Strike was insufficient, and stuff. Comments are actually more informative here. Oh well. Still counts for the algorithm :P
I wish the base game gave you two points instead of one. Granted, there is a mod for it, but like many modders he's abandoned it so its impossible to play on the modern version of the game.
Training is useless. Like 2~3 battles are worth around 40+ turns of full training skill, almost always better use of 3 skill points or an army slot. Scouting on the other hand is nice. It usually comes on spell casters which often have a single spell line and the blue campaign skills. So I usually get the crucial spells and arcane conduit and the desired mount and then get scouting as they usually dont have too many otherwise worthwhile skills.
It's a game design problem for a few reasons. Too top heavy; if you lose a battle it's a reload because you have too much time invested in the various characters. There is the immortal perk, but it's like what if you lose your character at level 39. It doesn't feel right. I find the incoherence about wizards LLs bugs me - Any LL that has a caster line you automatically don't seem to have enough points. On melee heroes I almost always ignore the melee line in favor of the army (red) and campaign (blue) lines which are objectively better. But then it's... why is this even there if I never pick it? However for casters if you don't take the skills points then you just don't have the spells. Not weaker versions of the spells; you just don't have them at all. Which is different than the melee line where you character is pretty much good enough even if you just ignore that whole thing. The second point leads into the 3rd which is that - The red (army) line is bullshit; it gives bonuses that drastically allows your units to behave in ways the units weren't intended. For that matter even the Melee line can dramatically change your character in a way that doesn't make sense. Maybe all the bonuses are too much.
Character: *Levels up to Level 2*
Me: "10% Campaign Movement point goes brrrrr"
@@alexneufeld8918 true.
@@alexneufeld8918 you need it later anyways, for Lightning Strike
@@solareclipse9379 there's a few factions where lightning strike isn't necessary, such as vampire counts/tomb kings. But yeah, on the most part, it's great.
@@sympunny8636 whats lightning strike? *laughs in skaven*
always a safe first pick.
I liked the video overall but personally missed a few important points (pun intended):
- Always take route marcher as the first point, no better first point to spend
- Its optimal to spend minimum points on the first section of the red line. Its better to focus your army on 2 categories then waste skillpoints on a big mix (especially higher difficulty).
- In general I would say its better to buff the army then to buff the lord (unless its a caster). Army buffs improve 19 units while lord buffs only improve 1. (especially higher difficulty)
- Rush arcane conduit on any caster hero, the faster you get it the better because you can simply use more spells in battle.
- Lightning strike is very powerfull against factions that like to turtle their settlements (dwarves), i would advise to get it if you are going to face them.
This guide sounded really wrong to me without that basic points, thanks
Yup very basic
First section of the red line is more useful if you're going to be using quick-dying units, like Grom's chunky goblins. Since second-line skills don't work until you hit a gold chevron, units that are unlikely to get there or will die once they do are less useful.
@@UnreasonableOpinions Or, if they don't die, they may become obsolte when that point is reached due to the predominance of higher tier, more durable, units
@@nicovelardita8619 the only time I see the chaff buffs coming in handy would be for a strictly supporting chaff stack. Like the classic skaven slave stack or a gobbo stack. With those, you’re not worrying about the late game, you’re just recruiting an expendable army with an expendable lord. If they die, mission accomplished, so I don’t need to worry that I haven’t saved point slots for good units, if I plan to have him die before he even hits level 20
"You'll want to think long term with these points"
Me, with a now level 2 lord: "Dis one make ma boys hit 'arda! I pick dat one!"
But if you are playing greenskins as Skarsnik or Grom gobbos are the late game unit
BIG FINKIN!
thanks dad
You're welcome son.
👨
👨👦
This was always the most confusing when I was new. This and no spell preview in the skill tree
Right click any spell from the skill tree and it should bring up the spell library.
beat me to it, all spells can be viewed with a right click, damage spells show a video of the spell in effect too so you can sort of see how its used
@@Nightmare_52 sweet, cheers!
@@Nightmare_52 I guess there’s always more to learn 😅
there is also a symbol top left that will bring up all lores of magic, this might help compare.
"Perhaps you have too many skillpoints and you have some leftover." - Laughs in Teclis. He never has enough skill points. Never.
the sad part about playing Morathi too. i want to unlock everything:(
@@DeityBladeGaming it's true for most of the mage LLs.
And thats when the mods come in
true for most Vampire lords too. that's why I play with Razac's mod
@@willfeen where is it?
Bless your soul man. I have over 500h and I still self doubt my lord planning.
they REALLY should add a way to reallocate skill points...even one per turn would be great as u would add some flexibility to your characters and not get stuck forever with a mistake or an early choice to buff early gameplay...
This tutorial would have been absolutely game changing when I began playing Warhammer 2. I struggled greatly in the beggining to the point of regreting buying the game, although being an "experienced" TW player. Great video, as always.
While I agree with the general idea - don't waste skill points but for a beginner it is as useful as "get good".
So here's some of the stuff I had to figure out and had issues when I started out:
1. For mages always rush towards arcane conduit ASAP. Invest only points to unlock arcane conduit so that you can get it at level 12. Arcane conduit is one of the strongest abilities and benefits all other mages in your army.
1.1. Always invest fully into the spells that you will be using to reduce winds of magic cost. Also consider if you really need 'Earthing' (decreased miscast chance) as the majority of spells are not worth overcasting with their increased winds of magic cost and cool down. There are of course exceptions like 'Wind of Death' or 'Net of Amyntok' which should almost always be used with over cast.
2. Training skill I think is useless, it offers so little additional exp to your units that only a few battles will offset 40 turns of training skill. It's almost certain you would have found more use of other skills before it ever pays off.
3. Personal combat skills are some of the least priority skills you should invest in, especially for Lords. Army, campaign and magic skills usually outweighs a Lord's or Heroe's individual fighting capability.
3.1. Never found much use in personal leadership bonuses. If you are scared of your Lord's/Heroe's combat capabilities and the possibility of them routing don't engage them in dangerous combat or instead buff their direct combat capabilities instead of Leadership buffs.
4. When going down the Red line try to only invest in two skills to unlock the next part of the red line. Choose units to buff that have the most impact and compose the bulk of your army. Some units do not rely that heavily on red line compared to others.
4.1. You can delay getting the second part of the red line until you actually get those units to rank 7 and above (1 gold chevron), so the skill point is not wasted before you get there.
5. Using a hero as the goblin example for reducing corruption / increasing public order is not worth the trouble. Get settlement buildings for that and plan ahead when a revolt will trigger. Campaign heroes are much better put to use offensively where they can hit enemy heroes/settlements and/or scout incoming enemy armies.. If you plan to passively use a hero to boost public order or reduce corruption it will not engage in active actions where the hero will ever get enough exp to level up and be efficient at it.
5.1. Some of the best candidates for campaign heroes are ones with Block Army (nothing more frustrating than hunting weak force marching armies Benny Hill style), wound/assassinate enemy heroes (very helpful for screening your armies and allowing you to enter ambush stance without detection), damage walls when you don't have a siege attacker in your army.
5.2. Some hero actions like steal technology and secure influence and some others stack their duration. So when you first see some of those skills they seem useless. But you can have them repeatedly perform those actions and have a very long term buff and also help leveling up your heroes relatively quickly and investing 3 points in specialist and 3 points in steal technology and the other points can be put into spells after that and the hero can then be attached to an army with like 50+ turn buff to research speed. Not efficient when you need a spell caster now but if you plan ahead you can have a nicely leveled hero by the time you recruit a new army.
@@mrwhosaskin179 I actually added another point to the list before you replied, so it's number 5 after the edit. But you are spot on, however, it more of an exception of the general rule.
Vamprie Counts can get loads of necromancers as the necromancer capacity building is the growth building and can be built in minor settlements. But again you can spread corruption in adjacent provinces and it will through osmosis increase the corruption in your own settlements and I still think they are better served in armies with the proper traits.
For High Elves you are thinking of mages with the Entrepreneur trait. So not really reliant on skills but the the trait mostly. And Dark Elves again you're spot on but only effective when you can recruit them at rank 7 I believe to get the slave decay reduction skill.
What is overcasting? I keep seeing people mention it but I have no idea what it is. The game doesn't seem to explain either
@@SylvanWWFC the game actually does explain it if you hover your mouse over most spells it gives a detail description. Overcasting a spell means clicking the spell icon (or hotkey) twice which will cast a more 'powerful' version of the spell, sometimes it is necessary to first upgrade the spell to make overcasting available. When overcasting the spell it costs more winds of magic and also increases the spell cooldown and also adds a chance of miscasting. When miscasting the spell, it will still cast but you will also damage your casting character. However, as I mentioned in my comment it is in most cases not worth it due to the negative effects and the added bonuses sometimes do not make the spell any stronger in any practical sense. For example most vortex spells like Fire storm, overcasting provides extra duration to the spell but if you have any experience with those skills is useless as the vortex usually randomly travels away from the units you casted and just travels around without doing any damage.
Next time you play just hover your mouse over most spells to see the tool tip and it explains the overcast effect and you can mostly decide if it is worth it or if you are not convinced do some minor experimentation. Some spells must be overcast while most should never be and some are situational.
This is so much better than original video
@Edwin von Carstein yea Lightning Strike is good to get ASAP in most cases. It's much more important on Legendary or Very Hard difficulties where the AI churns out armies at a stupid rate and you really need to play aggressively to counteract that. However, so many races have a near useless first portion of the blue line that it is sometimes hard to justify putting so much points just towards progression to Lightning strike while disregarding many useful things.
So for those 10% that don't need Lightning Strike the most obvious being- Vampire Counts, as Wind of Death is more important and if you go for the skelly spam you will be able to field so many armies that you will not benefit from Lightning Strike. Also the Skaven (and Alith Anar) who can stalk and ambush while attacking, however, with the recent patch adding massive ambush defense chances I might need to reconsider how I play my Skaven.
Thank you Zerkovich! I love these guides!
me, investing 100% of my points into the blue and red lines
Lol it worked in the past
Blue, For the greater good.
@@waltthesalt6432 The Greater Good.
@@shorewall THE GREATER GOOD.
That is what I do. Going right for renowned and feared for that reduced upkeep. And then I usually go for red if there is nothing better. I don't care all that much for buffing the Lord
Atleast always go for lightning strike
I'm glad that you started doing more campaign-related content, not just multiplayer. I learned how to play most factions thanks to your faction guides but I missed some tips on how to play them in campaign.
Hope it helps you grow subs to your channel, as most people don't play MP. Keep it up, mate!
Well we all know cardio beats Chaos, right?
Thanks for the reminder, Toddy.
Zerkovich, I'd would like to say that Flexibility is an important attribute in determining a skill's potential value.
Kroq-Gar is an example of a character that has situational (inflexible) skills.
He has a whole line of Skills that give +10% Weapon Strength, +8 Leadership, and +10 Melee Attack to every unit in his army.
But the problem is that each skill will only activate when fighting a specific race on the battlefield.
So if Kroq-Gar is going to be fighting for a long time against let's say the Skaven, then "Destroy all Skaven" will provide a good return on the invested skill point.
But as soon as there are no more Skaven to fight, for a while or even forever, then the skill becomes useless.
Really should've mentioned that the campaign skill line for lords is easily overlooked but critically important, because the earlier you put points into it, the higher your return on investment is over the course of the campaign.
LIghtning strike, reduced upkeep, replenishment and sometimes infantry melee defense. The latter so they can actually live while holding the line, works great for especially Dawi warriors.
Ambush effectiveness defensive/offensive for those who can take it.
I don´t usually bother much with the lords effectiveness in combat, some melee defense and that´s it. I usually go for army utilities depending on the army the Lord is leading.
I like how skink priests go from squishy lizard when on foot to super tank when on an engine of the gods.
Route Marcher and Lightning Strike are both insanely useful, the latter especially on higher difficulties.
Only invest in blue ones at the start in order to reduce the upkeep so you can get a 2nd army or better units as fast as possible
After I finish Blue, I often take a brief tour of 3-6 points into Red in order to buff the core units of my army then spend the rest in Yellow (unless caster lord).
Just watched how to shutdown videos, why u no do more? Those were amazing, actually helped me get into MP after 800 hours of only campaign
Wait what? A kitchen sink army with throgg? Why would you use anything else then trolls in his army, his unique skills for them make them one of the most fun to use doomstackss ever
I like themes, but I'm not a huge fan of one unit doom stacks if only because of the wasted 3 skill points getting to the second redline buff. I haven't played Norsca, but wouldn't having a secondary unit to make up for the trolls weaknesses be good. Maybe mounted marauders with throwing weapons to flank and disrupt the enemies.
Maybe not, i just try to always have 2 units in my army
@@BouncingTribbles Well, throg can skill a few different boni to trolls outside of the red skill tree, so no other unit is as strong in his army as the trolls. plus, they are a really good all rounder, fast enough to flank/catch archers, regenerating, ...
I use the blue lines most often these days. Always want cheaper upkeep and more income, lightning strike and maybe a bit of ambush ability somewhere along the way.
Get Route Marcher immediately
Get Lightning Strike early
Immortal at lv20
If you have Arcane Conduit try to get that ASAP while still fulfilling the above
Replenishment is usually a good idea
Try to hold out for your preferred mount instead of buying multiple
Get whatever unique lord skills you fancy
See if the lord provides buffs to any good units, take red line buffs for those units, build army around them
Red line buffs that provide ammo or range to your preferred ranged units is good and necessary
Red line buffs can be taken 3/3 or 2/2/2; the 2nd rank is most important, 3rd rank is just a minor increase
Remember that Ranged, Magic and Monsters pretty much dominate Total Warhammer campaign, and this becomes more true the higher the Battle Difficulty
I started to relax a bit about skill points in Warhammer 2 when I realised (non-caster) Lords have (just) enough to get to the end of all three trees. So you can "have it all" if you are disciplined and only put enough points into a tree segment to get to the next segment of the tree. Whether it's worth doing depends partly on how good the capstone skill is for each tree (I have some doubts about the usual one for the personal combat yellow tree). The main decisions for me are normally which tree to go down first (lightning strike or troops) and which units to buff on the red tree. Yellow is normally something I only fill up in the endgame, perhaps because, as Zerkovich described, I have more skill points than I really need. Still, it can be fun to have a tough Lord who can have a big personal influence on the battlefield.
Agents I tend to get campaign skills first as active skill use is a good way to level them. They are probably more useful later in battle when they have ranked up a bit.
You don't know how long I've been waiting for a video like this.
I always always always rush for lightning strike for my lords. Doesn’t matter the circumstance, I will always put points into blue until I have it, and then generally don’t touch it for the rest of their points
It's a shame because it makes all builds samey.
Blue line first for lightning strike and upkeep reducton (if the faction has upkeep). Then any special skills the lord has, spells they have, their best mounts when they get it, then buffing units and the lord's stats.
You didn't mention a very important thing about character skills. There are some character skills which buff an army where the hero is embedded. For instance, Triangulation gives +12% damage to all missile units(which is a truly OP skill). Those skills have a remark (Hero's army).
Damn just started playing again and was wondering about this, thanks!
My first priority is almost always Lightning Strike. Then army buffs. Then personal power.
This is why the one button respec mod is so great. It gives a one time skill reset per lord/hero. That way, you can buff your early game stuff and respec when you transition to a more elite/focused army.
Even though I've been playing this since #1, I still really like these tutorial videos. Thanks
I always go for thematic armies. Trogg? troll army. Tehenauin? must be skinks. Random lord number 1? light infantry, or maybe artillery. etc
This was a great video. Could you do more with special themed lords and units? Like an all cavalry Brettonia build or a Malekith melee infantry focus build or a Skavan ranged units build?
personally i always take lightning strike first. after that i mostly take the yellow line, but in some special occasions the red line. but i think lightning strike is so important, i always want that as early as possible. also the campaign buffs you get on the way are nice to have
Good video. It’s good guidance for those characters who have far more than 30 places for points. Always a bit frustrating, or maybe just “huh?” when a character has more points that slots. And, I’m going to keep asking you to please make a video explaining the different mounts and their effects? This, to me, remains one of the biggest mysteries. And yes, I do get it that taking the last most powerful mount is usually obvious, but there are some characters (say the Wood Elves Glade Lord) where various mounts seem to have equal potential. What I am most curious about, and think newer players in particular would benefit from knowing about, is how the mount seems to have a negative effect on your character when you mouse over in selection. What does each mount really do for the character, and should someone take it? I’ve heard some people say that a horse mount is a terrible choice; ok, but why (other than what you said here about not putting too many mounts into mounts, not wasting a point)?
I almost always rush lighting strike and even the reduced upkeep skills on blue.
Then do the red line because I know what army I want the lord to be by that point
Then do yellow
Obviously it gets supplemented if they have a 4th skill line or if they are a magic wielder I might change it up
You can switch back and forth to any mounts you have unlocked or even unmount again in the same way you equip weapons/artifacts and such once per turn.
I hope in warhammer 3 they change hero skill trees to allow there skill points to matter more, particularly with the dwarfs, as they are so slow to get heros that by it takes like 5 turns for you tk get from heros are now around, to you don't really need to worry about there equipment or skills because you are unbeatable
Usually the latter tree skills are better(not always) but I pick my end skills then map the quickest way there with the most useful skills along the way. I usually only drop more than necessary to move on when it comes to important spells or when I’ve already got the important stuff so I’m picking the most useful of what’s left
This also depends on difficulty. Lightning strike is absolute musthave on VeryHigh/Legendary, but can be avoided on lower difficulties. LS is SO important, that you need to rush on it even if 4 skills in first blue section are bad(dwarf lord for example).
Second musthave on VH/Leg - skills of Legendary Lords that provide public order per faction.
If your army is(or is going to be) almost of single entity units(dragons, stegadons, etc) and you have lore of Life - Earth Blood is your best friend. Also, you can heal your army when battle is over and enemy forces run away.
Ah, and most important - for LLs, dont waste your skill points for MULTIPLE MOUNTS.
I always get lighting strike first thing and if they have any upkeep stuff on the blue line then its up to the red or yellow
You absolutely can get enough winds of magic to use all spells in a battle, I mean if you are playing high elves and you don't have at least 300 winds for a battle you are doing something wrong. There are also skills you always need to get, lightning strike, replenishment skills. In any faction that has decent ranged potential you always need to boost that in red line.
For some that video was long overdue.
You are the best zerk. 👍
Well, after my 4th Dark Elf vortex, and my first win in ME as Wulfric the Wanderer, I can say, Blue line > Yellow Line > Red line
love your vids, if you can explain replenishment rates in campaigns next that would be great!!
I would add also for newbies to look to play to the inherent strengths of the Lords and Heroes. So for example Grimgor is set up to annihilate enemy lords and heroes in 1 on 1’s. O speccing him to sit behind the front line and buff you gobbo archers is missing a trick. Similarly, the common or garden Lords and Heroes have their own inherent strengths. Taking green skins again, black ork big bosses are excellent tanks. So spec for tankiness and use them in armies, whereas goblin big bosses make excellent campaign map assassins so spec accordingly. For Legendary Lords, look also at their traits, some (like Ratnik Spiderclaw) buff particular units (spiders in this case).
Thanks for this video. I’ve been wondering this since I started playing
Fionally, I have been waiting for such a video on YT. thank you :)
This is a great and useful guide. Thanks Zerk!
3 years late but better now than never haha. Hope it won't take this long for Warhammer III tips cause I'll need it xD
Magic was always tough for me. "Is this good? It SOUNDS good...wait, what's overcasting? And what are those symbols in the description?"
I usually just pick the single necessary blue and red and top unique trees then leave the rest of the buffs to hero units, unless it’s a one man doomstack like Grimgore..
Zerko a appreciate, what you are doing, and this guide is fine if you arent playing legendary.
But on legendary, you need to exploit the game, and MUST take some skills. Lightning strike being one of them.
Also I think you should have mentioned that with mage lords you want to have te wind spells maxed out, and with vampire lords you need raise dead and invo ASAP.
Which is why I'm not interested in playing Legendary my man. It's not really the Total War experience.
@@Zerkovich i get that. But still about the wind spells, route marcher and lightning strike. All probably worth more than a mention. good vid none the less, just I think what you said is a tad bit obvious even for new players. Could've gon more in dept imo
The title is "beguiners guide", of course the guide is not with Legends in mind.
@@danielgonzalezgasca2522 read my second comment.
Also, what I said was not just criticism but also amendment. Perhaps it will help some. But so far it only triggered people 😅
You don't need that to play legendary.
Me watching this video even though I run 60 level cap with 2 SP per level:
*fascinating*
fwahahahahahahaa
Kinda feel blue line is the most useful, lighting strike one of the best skills u can get u can defeat 4 armies if u need with that skill, upkeep reduction very good, replenishment quite important when you play higher diff., ambush chance for skaven quite useful, only line i would prefer over blue is magic line maybe
Man I miss the old UI from the earlier installments. CA really did take two steps backwards with TW: WH3’s UI
I suggest the "2 skill points per Level for lords" most of the time it fits perfectly👌🏻
I nearly always rush the blue line. lightning strike is to awesome.
You can change mounts/weapons from the other hero screen
I see people suggesting 2 or 3 SP per level, but that is too much IMO. something like the improved skill points progression mod, that gives Lords 56 total points ( instead of 39 ) and heroes 43 is better. It also gives those extra points early on, so noob lords and heroes will be more useful and harder to defeat, which helps both player and AI.
It is the Campaign AI who should learn this, so when i Confederate with Mannfred, he won't have skelly bois and corpse carts buffed and 4 mounts available with a random spirit leech upgrade thrown in there.
Honestly, beginners will start campaign on easy/normal difficulty, and these are usually so easy that wasting a few points here and there doesn't make a big difference. So to new people: these are good tips, however you don't have to worry too much about it because the common sense to spend them on things useful to you will come automaticly when you play the game for a while.
Honestly, this feels a bit to complicated for new players. Most new players won't know how to plan roles for lords or heroes because they don't know what roles will be useful in their campaign, know what units they'll be focusing on, or what spells they'll like.
they REALLY should add a way to reallocate skill points...even one per turn would be great as u would add some flexibility to your characters and not get stuck forever with a mistake or an early choice to buff early gameplay...
Ro1: Always get lightning strike first
Unless you are a ambush faction.
@@mso2013 indeed
goddamn it, i'm recovering from surgery, i've just got off all my pain meds so it's safe for me to drink alcohol again, and i took that fucken "take a shot every time i say gobbo" as a challenge, got my bottle of whiskey i've been saving and restarted the video
There's a bunch of (elven) Legendary Lords that have so many good skills it's impossible to get them all.
Laughs in upkeep reduction
When I first started I didn’t even know you maxed out on skill points.
Most campaigns will never reach that far TBH
Good explaining!
After 500+ hours, this is what I do most of the time:
- blue to lightning strike
- Unique legendary traits (almost always extremely strong)
- magic to Arcane conduit
- Red to buff what lord uses primarily (this is usually late enough, to know this)
- Yellow Generic
This is the priority, and I rarely deviate. Very few have magic so strong I don't give them lightning strike first, or legendary traits so shit i go into red and leave them.
I also highly approve Gruuts' Comment
I am a lightning strike addict. It might not be optimal, but TWW2 AI hurt me in the past. I'm slowly starting to get other things first (Route Marcher still best first)
Yellow melee line at very end since it's so weak and meh
Amen
I feel like you are describing the trees in the way that CA hoped they would work. Whilst there is truth and logic to what you are saying, ultimately 'Lightning Strike' and 'Upkeep Reduction' are the best and most important talents and if you manage to spend all of your points and not have them, you will pretty much want to scrap the lord when you reach the mid-late game, due to the fact that their army will cost so much relative to what they could (and this is a huge deal as you will need multiple armies to defend your now huge empire), and the fact that the way the AI plays the game is to spam armies that you can never hope to match in numbers due to upkeep increases for every lord you have, it makes 'Lightning Strike' very important unless you want long, grindy and difficult fights all the time.
Get the following mods :
Nitz max level 60
Nnobbs never obsolete ai lords
Skill point dump
Sfo grimhammer 2
The first increase max level to 60 so that you can make really legendary lords and heroes.
The last one is a great overhaul, that give you a lot of new skill trees with balanced and interesting skills.
So much better than vanilla choices.
Do it!
This is the video I needed
Lohkir Felheart with 20% increased Sacking & another 20% from the Red Blades, Blessed Dread with 20% increased sack, Black Ark Slave Pens with 20% increased Sack. Add an assasin with scavenging... MONEY!
Red makes things go fasta!
okay a few more tips...
Unless you are going for something very specific or are using the last few skill points, try not to spend more points than neccecary in a line. For example - in the redline take the six points you think you are going to need, and then progress the red bar or stop there. hell if you are doomstacking sometimes it might be usefull to just use 3 points in the red line. point being dont put 5 points into the melee line in your early game because chances are you are not going to get a lot more out of it, and those are points you might want elsewhere to make sure you get those other buffs, mounts or lightningstrikes.
Always go for route marcher first, the ai gets more movement range than you do by default.
For your hero wizzards(in armies), almost always b-line for that arcane conduit, that extra winds of magic i great, and the earlier the better.
Lightningstrike is great and almost all factions can benifit from it, but not all factions should go for that first
For your campaign map heroes, if they have a special skillset you want them to be good at, like assasinating, put points in there, but remeber the specialist skill. it reduces the hero action costs and increases base succeschance, which can be more important than increasing amount of holes made in a settlement wall.
Hatech’Pee
Awesome pronunciation. Now i have a new Demon name for me blood-thirsters. Thx mate
I just noticed “hate” is in the name. That is so bad ass. Im a dipshit. 😂
This game is still very cool. How many hours you guys spend on it so far.. I play this in end of 2023 because just now I got time for it lol
*Winces at lack of Lightning Strike on any of the example lords*
I really don't like the way they do mounts. I think they should keep the level prerequisites, but give mount unlocks a gold cost rather than a skill point cost.
As it stands, most people just have them run around on foot until they unlock the best mount because skill points are too valuable to waste on stuff that will eventually be obsolete. If we could spend money on mounts (which makes sense seeing as that's what we do for units with the same mounts/monsters) there is more incentive to collect and use them earlier in the campaign.
+3 skill points per level, beneficial skill dump mod, infinit respect mod, everything is a lot more crunchy.
My main problem is that I want to buff the army... but herohammer is so much fun
Is there a way to put ability hotkeys (the ones on the left of the screen) on side-clicks?
I rush lightning strike on literally every lord. Being able to pick apart multiple armies is stupid strong vs ai
I could have used this video years ago!
I would like to see what skill points you would put onto: GROM THE PAUNCH
This kind of balance in an army is not something i am used to.
I have become the cheese, and i praise the cheese
I wish there was a respec option
Theres a mod for x2 skill points. Affects everyone so no advantage there. I'd recommend it.
this is the very first video by Zerkovich that I felt like actually disliking. I clicked on it because I like exceptions, lol: all others I've watched so far (and they are many!) were absolutely awesome.
I too feel like the emphasis on Lightning Strike was insufficient, and stuff. Comments are actually more informative here. Oh well. Still counts for the algorithm :P
Or just get a skillpoint mod. That works aswell.
Even then it is a good video for people not using mods.
Where is it? Can’t find it on Steam
You don't get scouting? I end up with so many magic items from that extra 15%
I wish the base game gave you two points instead of one. Granted, there is a mod for it, but like many modders he's abandoned it so its impossible to play on the modern version of the game.
Hot to spend skill points? Go to the skills tab and click on one of the available skills.
Which skills to pick is another matter....
Very good video! I'm curious: how good do you find the training and scouting skills? Do you find they make much of a difference?
Training is useless. Like 2~3 battles are worth around 40+ turns of full training skill, almost always better use of 3 skill points or an army slot. Scouting on the other hand is nice. It usually comes on spell casters which often have a single spell line and the blue campaign skills. So I usually get the crucial spells and arcane conduit and the desired mount and then get scouting as they usually dont have too many otherwise worthwhile skills.
hi, why is my lord’s skill tree for mounts forcing me to unlock all to reach the best mount
It's a game design problem for a few reasons. Too top heavy; if you lose a battle it's a reload because you have too much time invested in the various characters. There is the immortal perk, but it's like what if you lose your character at level 39. It doesn't feel right.
I find the incoherence about wizards LLs bugs me - Any LL that has a caster line you automatically don't seem to have enough points. On melee heroes I almost always ignore the melee line in favor of the army (red) and campaign (blue) lines which are objectively better. But then it's... why is this even there if I never pick it? However for casters if you don't take the skills points then you just don't have the spells. Not weaker versions of the spells; you just don't have them at all. Which is different than the melee line where you character is pretty much good enough even if you just ignore that whole thing.
The second point leads into the 3rd which is that - The red (army) line is bullshit; it gives bonuses that drastically allows your units to behave in ways the units weren't intended. For that matter even the Melee line can dramatically change your character in a way that doesn't make sense.
Maybe all the bonuses are too much.