So looking at a replay, Harald Hammer was being a punk blocking 100% of the shots in front of him.  (seriously 100%?!  Cmon CA... )     My hawk riders flew in from above and behind on the siege wall and punted him off to his death via the arrows of Kuornos which have a lot of knockback.   
The knockback is quite big as all the hawk riders fire.  Was funny also ragdolling a highly armored chaos lord around.

Really??  I thought "falling to death" only occurs when the model would have been killed by the shot anyways.  If a shot only wounds a model, he would be prevented from falling off via an invisible wall at the ledge.

It's definitely possible to knock units off walls to their deaths when the damage would not otherwise kill them (I've mostly done it in melee, and generally observed that heroes tend to survive, but the invisible wall can be crossed by living units).

The fact the only use for them you've found is playing the character that gives them a special ability, and then cheesing enemies off the wall isn't really a good showing that the unit isn't bad. CA needs to do something with the couple smaller entity missile fliers. The other day we were talking about the 3 worst units in the game we could think of (accounting for price vs performance) and that we came up with Deckdroppers (pistol and handgun), Hawkriders, and Terradon Riders doesn't seem like a coincidence.

Hawkriders do 936 damage in a ranged volley if every single shot hits. Glade Riders do 1200. I know you can't just simplify everything down to numbers, but CA seems to be extremely cautions with all these flying missile units, and they all seem to underperform or need absolutely perfect conditions to just be decent.

When someone is telling me "Yeah I've gotten deckdroppers to work. The enemy had no fliers and no ranged, and I was able to restock them and they did about 1000 value" I'm just like "That's the perfect scenario for them, and they only got 300 more than their value 0_-"

​

MODIDDLY1#9212 wrote:

The fact the only use for them you've found is playing the character that gives them a special ability, and then cheesing enemies off the wall isn't really a good showing that the unit isn't bad. CA needs to do something with the couple smaller entity missile fliers. The other day we were talking about the 3 worst units in the game we could think of (accounting for price vs performance) and that we came up with Deckdroppers (pistol and handgun), Hawkriders, and Terradon Riders doesn't seem like a coincidence.

Hawkriders do 936 damage in a ranged volley if every single shot hits. Glade Riders do 1200. I know you can't just simplify everything down to numbers, but CA seems to be extremely cautions with all these flying missile units, and they all seem to underperform or need absolutely perfect conditions to just be decent.

When someone is telling me "Yeah I've gotten deckdroppers to work. The enemy had no fliers and no ranged, and I was able to restock them and they did about 1000 value" I'm just like "That's the perfect scenario for them, and they only got 300 more than their value 0_-"

You're underrating hawk riders; they can actually do solid damage in melee.  I agree low-model-count ranged is generally problematically weak, but hawk riders are at the top of the pecking order when it comes to that unit type, and I'm very surprised you consider them bottom 3 overall.  There are plenty of melee units (and at least a few artillery pieces) with lower viability.

That having been said, being the best of a bad unit type still doesn't mean they're particularly good.  But they're still better value than the lower end of several other unit types, IMO.

Deck droppers are genuinely just bad, though (with the arguable exception of the bomber variant).  I don't play a lot of lizards or see enough of them to have a strong sense of terradon potential, so I'll reserve judgement there (though I can say for sure the rocks will elevate them above deck droppers).

​

Steelclaw#6359 wrote:
You're underrating hawk riders; they can actually do solid damage in melee

I'm really not. They have 4 splash attack so they suck at fighting infantry, 24 melee defense so they're almost always going to be getting hit, only 45 weapon strength so they don't do a ton of damage when they do hit (That is then divided among 4 splash targets), 180 health combined with 15 armor so they melt in combat. The only positive you can say about them is "well they can hit enemy flanks" but glade riders can also do that, and are significantly cheaper. You're paying a premium for a unit that can shoot and fight in melee, but because it can do both, it doesn't do either good enough to warrant that price. 

Steelclaw#6359 wrote:
There are plenty of melee units (and at least a few artillery pieces) with lower viability.

It's not just about viability. It's about the price as well. The one that always gets me are people who say Greatswords are bad because they lose to chosen. You are paying 850 for an armored, AP, BvI unit, and you get 850 performance. Saying something like "The worst melee unit in the game is goblin laborers" doesn't take account that they're dirt cheap, and when you pay that price, you're just looking for a tanky body to throw in front, and that's what they do.

Steelclaw#6359 wrote:
Deck droppers are genuinely just bad, though (with the arguable exception of the bomber variant).  I don't play a lot of lizards or see enough of them to have a strong sense of terradon potential, so I'll reserve judgement there (though I can say for sure the rocks will elevate them above deck droppers).

The Fireleech Terradon and the Bomber Deck Droppers are both decent enough against dense crowds, though still incredibly vulnerable to ranged fire, so it just seems to mainly be the single projectile units. The missile damage is simply too low to account for the lower model count of the unit. I did a test of the Deckdroppers with handguns shooting at jade lancers vs a unit of gunnery mob handguns, and even though the foot units only got off 2 volleys, they still ended up doing more damage than the fliers did in 10 volleys from the fliers. Sure, if the enemy has literally no way to attack the fliers, and the battle goes very long, maybe they're better, but very few armies have 0 ways to damage flying units.

​

MODIDDLY1#9212 wrote:
I'm really not. They have 4 splash attack so they suck at fighting infantry, 24 melee defense so they're almost always going to be getting hit, only 45 weapon strength so they don't do a ton of damage when they do hit (That is then divided among 4 splash targets), 180 health combined with 15 armor so they melt in combat. The only positive you can say about them is "well they can hit enemy flanks" but glade riders can also do that, and are significantly cheaper. You're paying a premium for a unit that can shoot and fight in melee, but because it can do both, it doesn't do either good enough to warrant that price. 

Glade riders are not AP, are slower, and do not fly.  They might kill archers faster, but they're not better in every situation.  As I've said, I don't think Hawk Riders are good, but putting them bottom 3 is ignoring the existence of other units which are very weak for the point in the game they can reasonably be fielded at.  Even in the Wood Elves roster alone, I'd rate a bunch of their infantry lower than Hawk Riders for general usability.  Waystalkers are also laughably bad for very similar reasons to Hawk Riders, though I don't know whether you were accounting for lords/heroes in your list.

And Great Eagles are also horrible.  I'll preempt the argument I expect you to make by saying I'm aware Hawk Riders are 2.5x the cost.  But a unit is not worth a slot in an army if it cannot do its job, and a Great Eagle can't even beat 2 basic archer squads.  Chaff infantry, cheap as they often are, can do their job - acting as meat shields.  Great Eagles lack the ability to do any job effectively (unless you count abusive AI manipulation by flying over the heads of enemy archers).

Even if you want to dispute all of these, most rosters have at least one unit which one could reasonably argue is bottom-3.  Flesh hounds, plague toads, chaos spawn, sky lanterns, elemental bears, cairn wraiths, elf bolt throwers, taurus... I'm certain you won't agree with all of these - they're not all equally strong contenders - and they obviously can't all be bottom 3, but between single entity sniping and acting as melee damage-dealers, hawk riders are closer to being fine than a lot of them.  Still undertuned for their price.  But usable, which not all units are.

MODIDDLY1#9212 wrote:
It's not just about viability. It's about the price as well. The one that always gets me are people who say Greatswords are bad because they lose to chosen. You are paying 850 for an armored, AP, BvI unit, and you get 850 performance. Saying something like "The worst melee unit in the game is goblin laborers" doesn't take account that they're dirt cheap, and when you pay that price, you're just looking for a tanky body to throw in front, and that's what they do.

I am accounting for price.  I am also accounting for recruitment tier and time, since that can be just as much of a restricting factor as price on actually hiring a unit.

MODIDDLY1#9212 wrote:
The Fireleech Terradon and the Bomber Deck Droppers are both decent enough against dense crowds, though still incredibly vulnerable to ranged fire, so it just seems to mainly be the single projectile units. The missile damage is simply too low to account for the lower model count of the unit. I did a test of the Deckdroppers with handguns shooting at jade lancers vs a unit of gunnery mob handguns, and even though the foot units only got off 2 volleys, they still ended up doing more damage than the fliers did in 10 volleys from the fliers. Sure, if the enemy has literally no way to attack the fliers, and the battle goes very long, maybe they're better, but very few armies have 0 ways to damage flying units.

I wouldn't expect flyers with abilities like the rock drop to do best in long battles.  Like gyrocopters, they actually frontload a great deal of their damage by having bombardment abilities, so they shine in battles where there is no time for moderate, consistent sustained damage; no time or safety for your archers to move around the sides of the melee to fire into unprotected enemy flanks.  If a lot of a unit's value comes from an active ability like that and it's not getting value in short fights where it just fires off the ability and the battle's over soon after, I doubt it will get value at all.

​

MODIDDLY1#9212 wrote:

The fact the only use for them you've found is playing the character that gives them a special ability, and then cheesing enemies off the wall isn't really a good showing that the unit isn't bad. CA needs to do something with the couple smaller entity missile fliers. The other day we were talking about the 3 worst units in the game we could think of (accounting for price vs performance) and that we came up with Deckdroppers (pistol and handgun), Hawkriders, and Terradon Riders doesn't seem like a coincidence.

Hawkriders do 936 damage in a ranged volley if every single shot hits. Glade Riders do 1200. I know you can't just simplify everything down to numbers, but CA seems to be extremely cautions with all these flying missile units, and they all seem to underperform or need absolutely perfect conditions to just be decent.

When someone is telling me "Yeah I've gotten deckdroppers to work. The enemy had no fliers and no ranged, and I was able to restock them and they did about 1000 value" I'm just like "That's the perfect scenario for them, and they only got 300 more than their value 0_-"

Exactly. I came here to see what the ORIGINAL use was for Hawk Riders. Anything beyond that would be a bonus. 

You know what Great Eagles and other big bird flying units need?

The ability to divebomb ground units without ever touching the ground.

The reason Great Eagles suck in TWWH is because the way they attack is:

1. Drop to the ground.

2. Walk around on the ground.

3. Peck and scratch at stuff.

If actual eagles did that, they'd all be extinct.

Yeah it is indeed funny

​

MiniaAr#5798 wrote:

Well in TWWH2 Great Eagles actually had a divebomb type of attack that could be very efficient but LegendofTotalwar abused it perhaps a bit too much and it got removed.... (I think he called it the "swoop" attack")

Not specific to Great Eagles, nor was it permanently removed.

​

Steelclaw#6359 wrote:

​

MiniaAr#5798 wrote:

Well in TWWH2 Great Eagles actually had a divebomb type of attack that could be very efficient but LegendofTotalwar abused it perhaps a bit too much and it got removed.... (I think he called it the "swoop" attack")

Not specific to Great Eagles, nor was it permanently removed.

My bad. It was too much micro for me to use and I think he doesn't use it anymore. Do you know if it was altered to make it less efficient?

I knew it wasn't specific to Great Eagles but they were the poster-child for this attack.

​

MiniaAr#5798 wrote:

My bad. It was too much micro for me to use and I think he doesn't use it anymore. Do you know if it was altered to make it less efficient?

I knew it wasn't specific to Great Eagles but they were the poster-child for this attack.

I believe it's quite a bit harder to use now due to tighter timing - perhaps he no longer uses it because he now lacks the mechanical skill to use it consistently, or perhaps he doesn't know it was re-enabled.

I only abused it very occasionally for giggles in WH2, and my triggers of it in WH3 have been accidental, so I don't have an exact map of when it was removed and re-added.  My speculation is that it was truly removed at one point in WH3, but re-added with some of the changes that were intended to fix bugs where flying units couldn't manage to land and attack.

To explain in slightly more detail, swoop attacks result from a unit's "landing attack" triggering slightly before it transitions from air to ground, so a perfectly-timed cancellation of orders (accounting for the game's weird input lag) allows the attack to trigger but aborts the landing.  The timing was designed this way since the knockback from the attack helps make space for the unit to land - if you remember it being awful to get Longma Riders (or other flyers, but Longmas were among the worst) to land in early WH3, I believe the removal of pre-landing attacks is why.

To be honest, I've never noticed Great Eagles even having a swoop attack - from my perspective as someone who doesn't watch LoTW, dragons are the poster child for it (I find it very obvious on them).  It's possible that in some bizarre reactionary decision by CA, it was never re-added to Eagles - or that I've just never spotted them doing it.