All LORES OF MAGIC Tier List for Warhammer 3 

Lore of Yin & Yang 3:00 Lore of Ice & Tempest 4:30 Lore of Slannesh 7:20 Lore of Nurgle 8:55 Lore of Tzeentch 10:20 Lore of the Great Maw 12:00 Deliverance of Itza 14:10 Lore of Little Waagh & Big Waagh 16:10 Lore of Nekekhara 19:05 Lore of Deeps 20:40 Lore of Vampires 22:15 Skaven Spells 24:35 Skaven Spells of Stealth 25:35 Skaven Spells of Plague 26:30 Skaven Spells of Ruin 28:40 Runic Magic 29:30 Lore of Shadows 31:40 Lore of the Wild 33:10 Lore of Beasts 34:30 Lore of Metal 35:50 Lore of Life 37:00 Lore of Light 39:05 Lore of Fire 41:15 Lore of Heavens 42:30 Lore of Death 43:30 Lore of High Magic 46:48 Lore of Dark Magic 48:55

I think one small thing that was overlooked in the lore of Nehekara is its passive. It lasts longer than life bloom and heals more than curse of undeath while still being able to resurrect entities. On top of that, Nehekara has a base 3 WoM spell to activate it reliably. This really helps Settra's tomb guard spam between that passive, his resurrect skill, and the realm of souls army ability.

High magic is also available to the lizardmen, via the slann mage priests. You'll probably still take life, fire or even light over high magic, but it's a detail to take into account

You should make these longer, don't worry about the time. We all love the indepth analysis, and the tierlists in general.

YAY! Tierlists are back!!!

Yeah I'm totally on board with a warhammer 3 trier list for any factions/lords/mechanics etc that have changed. It's really helpful to quickly get your thoughts on the value of things

Seeing Ichy nuisance being rated highly is nice to see, I remember my first Grom campaign in WH2 I captured Helmgart and posted a goblin stack in there (I didn't want to invade the empire yet) and held out against three separate armies of increasing strength from Karl Franz, watching empire greatswords being beaten by basic goblins because they were exhausted and had -24 melee attack was hilarious

The lore of Nehekhara passive is what really sells it for me since that is the only way tomb kings can recover entities.

I know you hate tier lists legend though I think this is just a great format to gain more information on the game, thank you always for your videos 💖

Solid list as always, I don't think fire does enough these days to truly be S tier anymore but definitely a solid A still. That's my only quibble. Most competing lores do similar levels of damage potentially with more reliability since you can no longer pseudo-aim vortexes, and typically have some additional utility. Though props for calling out piercing bolts of burning IMO that's the sleeper in lore of fire that gets overlooked by a lot of people.

Nice tier list make more I always enjoy them

Tier lists are good because they can be used to cram a lot of structured information into a short video. Please do make faction and legendary lord lists as well!

S Tier Lore of Vampires 22:15 Skaven Spells of Plague 26:30 Lore of Life 37:00 Lore of Fire 41:15 A Tier Lore of Nurgle 8:55 Lore of Tzeentch 10:20 Lore of Nekekhara 19:05 Lore of Deeps 20:40 Skaven Spells of Ruin 28:40 Lore of Shadows 31:40 Lore of Beasts 34:30 Lore of Metal 35:50 Lore of Light 39:05 Lore of Heavens 42:30 B Tier Lore of Yin & Yang 3:00 Lore of Little Waagh & Big Waagh 16:10 Runic Magic 29:30 Lore of the Wild 33:10 Lore of Death 43:30 Lore of Dark Magic 48:55 C Tier Lore of Ice & Tempest 4:30 Lore of the Great Maw 12:00 Lore of Nekekhara 19:05 Lore of High Magic 46:48 D Tier Lore of Slannesh 7:20 Skaven Spells of Stealth 25:35

Shout out to Conductor Lore of Heaven HE wizards/archmages, they reduce the cost of Uranon's Thunderbolt twice (once from trait, once from leveling skill) and are readily available. Just a really great trait with a good lore of magic

I will note that the vampire coast, or specifically the dreadfleet do have access to some of the lore of shadows now, as Count noctilus gets melkoth's and pit of shades in warhammer 3, which he didn't in 2.

I can't remember, has legend done a tier list of all his tier list videos yet? I feel like that would be his masterpiece of tier list videos

I personally love the lash of slaanesh. I know it’s not particularly damaging, but it’s always so satisfying to see infantry dudes go flying through the air after getting thwacked by it.

In defence of lore of ice, I've won entire battles just based off of 1 or 2 casts of heart of winter. It does big damage in a big area and no friendly fire. It's an expensive spell, but if you play it right 1 cast will win a battle. The slow spell is also not bad, especially given how cheap it is, and its a good way to keep the passive triggered.

I love your tier lists I learn a lot from them. Thank you

I think lore of Ice is severly underated. Heart of Winter is one of the best dps spells in the game. Since AI tends to blob around heroes/lords in W3 and the heroes/caster lord of Kislev are really tanky, you can cheese the AI very easy - 1 ice lord + 3 patriarch (all on bears) can solo any army. Just blob them up - heart of winter, heal when necessary. In two overcast heart of winter you will get army losses.

Thanks Legend, good to see another tier list. Though I think High Magic belongs in B or even in A tier; Soul Quench can be devastating for its cost thanks to its explosion damage (much much better than spells like Fireball) and if I am not mistaken, Tempest is actually attached to the unit it was cast on so you don't have to worry about the location (I am not completely sure).

Yay tier lists!! 😄 2 minor thoughts: -Hand of Glory is actually amazing. Regular cast is good, but *overcast* it and it triples the DPS of an archer unit for very few winds. -Fate of Bjuna is expensive, but if you have an abundance of winds, it deletes infantry. Not worth it if you’re not at high winds, though. Great list though. Please more!

Really good tier list. I only miss passives and thats bit a shame, because some of lore of magic are build on it. For example flock of doom (4 magic) and magic regen. makes lore of beast so good. Or lore of nekkehara is OK lore, because of spamming defensive cheap spell and heal your army throuh passive.

Oi, regarding the Lore of death vortex. Vortexes have another stat, force. Meaning, how much they throw units around. Problem is, units with their back on the ground don't take damage. So Vortex spells with a lot of force tend to do a lot less dmg. That explains why some vortexes with lower force (Eye of Tzeentch, Dwellers Bellow, thou that one is strong for a multitude of other reasons as you mentioned) are way stronger then once with higher force, and the Lore of Death Magic Vortex happens to suck units up and around a lot. It may also explain the weirdly high WoM Costs, CA seems to value force as a good thing. Which it arguably is, it's just that the best disruption tends to be death.

Hey Legend just wondering why you didn't include the passives for the different lores in your tierlist, and also something I find very useful about Djaf's Incantation of Cursed Blades is that overcasting it gives a strong bonus vs large which I've seen some really good use with and allows you spam the Nehekhara passive as well, just adding my two cents.

Would love to see a tier list on the new Champions of Chaos DLC units.

8:30 Slaanesh units use Phantasmagoria to 'get it up'. S (for Slaanesh) tier right there.

Thinking about this. A tierlist on the best mages of each faction/game would be interesting.

Kraken´s Pull is great because you can cast it at the Gate during sieges (in TWWH2), which is great for clearing those nasty missile units the AI loves placing there. Also, it looks really spectacular XD

Good tier list, as always. I just want to add: in the tempest lore of magic, don't overlook Gust of True Flight. That spell transforms a bunch of blind kossars, into a mass of elite sniper squads. One of the best buffs of the game context-wise in my opinion.

I'd wish you'd go for passives too, since low cost spells with good passive can provide a value of it's own(like Nehekhara healing or armour and missile block chance for ice) and you kinda overlook Gust of True Flight as a buff ability, yes, area is not big, but accuracy bonus with range bonus stacks very nice with long range that Kislev already have in midgame. Kislev magic is quite limited, but some spells are really, really good for campaign, especially in context of their armies.

In my opinion, now that winds of magic pools are effectively unlimited in WH3, the deliverance of itza spells should be increased in size. There's no debate how much stronger it is in lore, but we can now potentially have 60 WoM cost spells, I really think it should just flatten a large area of the map, but for a huge cost. Let me know what you guys think :) Edit for clarity: I think the first one should be cheap and cheerful, maybe 10 WoM for a small area. The second should be considerably larger and hit harder, an area approximately the size, or greater, of blight boil. That should cost 30 WoM. Then the final one, da big boi, imo should be a huge AoE for 60+ WoM

23:10 crazy thing about raise dead is on necromancers.. they have a skill that increase the casting range so great, you can: 1. snipe-summon enemy ranged units from BEHIND the infantry line, shutting the ranged units down. the enemy suddenly has no archer/gunner units (for a while) 2. create a safe box for your flanking units. Say, you want your vargheist/cavalry to strike enemy infantry line from their back, but you fear the chargers themselves are gonna be charged from behind, so use raise dead on the chargers' back note: strangely, when casting the spell from a far, the cursor shows red, supposedly saying the spell is out of range, but then it's being casted anyway

I literally looked yesterday to see if you had made this yet! Much love for putting this out!

So happy to get a tier list back. I love these. They are so helpful not just for how you rank them, but also for how you explain everything. I have realized that I could be using a spell or unit more efficiently because of these tier lists so many times.

Slanesh lore is essential for Nkari... Pinning down entire units AND a leadership debuff that trigger your amy ability and your unit ability and +8 MA... the lash is super effective at dealing with archers which is the counter of Slanesh... The bombardment is extremely potent but expensive (but who cares your keeper of secrets will launch them), the other 3 have their occasionnal uses.. Disabling a mage with rampage... Frenzy popped on an exalted demonette is bye bye to any enemy unit because the passive will trigger with it...

With all respect, I think slaanesh magic is pretty decent. Army wide buff and mirror spells are amazing. But thats my opinion.

The only disagreement I have is the Eshin magic. Particularly as Clan Eshin you spend at least half your campaign running gutter runners because of the price of weapons teams. Those are highly mobile armies and the Plague Priest will always fall behind, getting killed, routed or just bogged down. The Eshin sorcerer on the other hand can keep up, although I will concede they are super squishy.

tier lists are why i subscribe to this channel... legends tier listing is by far the most accurate one... hopefully we get a repeat of the faction tier ranking masterpiece he did in wh2

The lore of shadows passive is also good for Slaanesh because it provides extra speed mapwide to your army

I recommend running the Impactful Magic 3 mod. I really makes a lot of spells more balanced, a lot of single target spells become AoE when overcast. All buff spells duration is doubled

Glad to see these types of videos again. Great overview; very informative.

Amusingly, the Lore of Life has some *boss* spells in Warhammer 2nd ed RPG as well, while the Ice Maiden ice lore is boss too with easy-to-cast, high damage and ensnaring spells that f up single or mobs of enemies.

Think Little Waaagh is actually one of the most underrated lores just because it has so much synergy with itself & other goblin units. The speed debuff on Gork'll Fix It stacks really well with the speed debuff from Curse of Da Bad Moon & also poison arrows. You can make a whole army sitting ducks while the votrex, arrows, & fantatics murder their frontline charging in slow-motion.

Lizardmen have access to lore of High Magic too right? With their Slann.

The best part of harmonic convergence is it's low magic cost. I use it a lot to win isolated fights on flanks or keep my flanks from caving. Generally you're right that single unit buffs aren't great but this one just gives such a great bonus I love it. If I have say, my cav going up against enemy cav, this can be a great spell to stick on them to help them win that fight and then be able to do their thing behind enemy lines. Also I think you're underselling how good hand of glory is. That +40 reload skill translates to a 1.66 times increase in DPS. This spell is particularly good for high elves. Its obviously good for the SoA. But its also really good to put it on the LSG, Sentinels of Astaril, or the Spire Guard, if the cav decides to go after them because that added attack is nice. All for 4 magic its great.

Yes. was hoping for this one Legend.

Love this video, but I think there's something to be said about kroak's ability to free up your lore choices. Since your magic is relatively cheap and very effective at eliminating infantry, that opens up the option for more specialized magic that might otherwise not be worth your time. For example, Since your infantry is freed up from fighting other infantry, you can focus on buffing them with magic- which will do wonders to push your newfound numbers advantage even against units that would normally be stronger.

Rancid visitations melts single entity targets I found it very useful but as legend said expensive

I subscribed fairly recently and immediately went to watch all of your tier lists, love em

never really got around enough to get a feel for all of the magic in the games, so it's cool seeing a breakdown of them all!

Slight correction; Lizardmen also get access to High Magic, but the same problem persists; they too get fire and life magic as an alternative.

Fun thing: the Dwellers Below is as powerful in TW as it is dreaded in the tabletop. It destroys blocks of miniatures, it's so feared. It can win you games single-handedly.

I played Warhammer III for the first time this year and started with Tzeentch and really did end up just spamming Blue Fire of Tzeentch, the magic missile spell the whole time with both my lord and hero. Against some armies your floating horror lords/heros can snipe off half their entire force from a safe distance.

I agree with most of this, though I do think the two Kislev lores are perfectly fine, B tier lores. They aren't the best, but both Ice and Tempest have a couple of pretty solid damage options.

The "Supreme shield of the old ones" should maybe be included/considered with Lore of Kroak or itza? its a really good area ward save. love the video as always.

Didn't realize aspect of Dread Knight gives magic attacks. Given the passive winds refund, that's actually a very efficient spell if you're up against demons

Lore of Slannesh, particularly Phantasmogoria is amazing with Azazel. He has another ability i cant quite remember the name of that also gives -16 leadership. And then Devastating Flanker drops another -8, using all 3 of these at once will insta-route literally any unit below 70 leadership

Agree with most, except Lore of High Magic. Lizardmen also has access to it. I've had Overcasted fiery convocation completely wipe out decent infantry units, like totally erasing them from existence, down to 0. Arcane Unforging is excellent against small single entities like skaven and empire heroes, 2 casts of unforging can oftentimes delete them, while also blocking them from casting spells. In most cases Lore of Life outshines, but depending on your army composition high can find usefulness, especially when used with non full stack armies.

Ah! It's great to see the tier lists make a return! Always been my favorite.

The biggest problem I have with Blossom Wind on Yin is that the strike zone is super narrow. IIRC it gets a bit bigger overcast but it's not efficient. The blind effect is short as well. In Warhammer 3 I find overall I get the best value out of stationary vortex and bombardment spells, used once the enemy is engaged in fighting so they don't dodge.

I'd argue Ice Magic is B Tier simply for its purpose in the Kislev strategy where you stack Kossars or Ice Guard, cast the AoE slow and then shoot them. Early game, the Kossar/Ice Witch stack is probably your most cost effective option. Since Kislev lacks any other lore, Ice Magic becomes integral to making the strat noticeably more effective. Also, can Dark Elves get Slaanesh? If so, I could see a lot of uses for an AoE root spell that debuffs leadership in front of a line of Darkshards. Probably the only situation where I'd take it, but could be quite good early game if you can bait the AI into blobbing around your cute Dark Elf sorceress booty...

The thing about lore of fire and lore of life, that their passives really compliment their lore, on top of their spells being so good. Lore of life regens 1% of hp every cast, and lore of fire imbues 22% fire weakness to the enemy. If you are using regrowth the 4 targets regenerate 7s*0.8%=5.6%*4 targets=22.4% healing, while the passive gives the whole army a potential 0.2%*5=1%*20 units=20% healing. That means that over the course of a battle, if all units are being evenly damaged, the lore of life passive alone can cause incredible amounts of healing. Casting with lore of life gives 1% per unit, while the lore of vampires only heals for 0.35%. That's almost a 3 times better passive. And for lore of fire; the lore itself causes healing and the passive just makes the hardhitting lore hit even harder. Imagine a situation where sisters of avelorn are shooting at irondrakes. Casting ANY spell will reduce the irondrakes' fire resist from 70% down to 48, taking close to 2 times the original damage. So many factions with acces to fire magic have fire damage units, and those all get buffed by the passive (besides giving a self-buff)

Glad I am not the only one that sees how good Dwellers Below for the Life school is nowadays, I was using this in my lizardman campaign, because my stegaddons just don't take damage from it (they do but its virtually non existent), but the blobbed enemies, oh god, I could take out 5 stacks of undead with 1 stack of stegadons, a life slann and an oracle.

Ice Sheet and ice maiden's kiss actually have really good synergy. Ice sheet slows with its effect and ice maiden's kiss does the frostbite effect, which also slows, so casting those two together you can drop someone's speed by like 80% which is really solid.

Gotta love the tier lists

Played as the fat ghost lady recently and I did enjoy the spells of the Deep category. Wind of Death has an advantage and that is that it can bounce off a wall. The cannons shot from the ghost ship can't. Still it feels good to nearly wipe out an unit in a single spell in a siege.

I doubt it changes anything but you can get the lore of death passive for Nurgle spells too which i dont believe you mentioned (i think the other chaos lores have a similar thing going on too)

Lore of slanesh has so much utility for pvp, i understand for campaign it can get overshadowed but slanesh lore is sleeper op imo The ability to pick apart an ennemyunit by rampaging it is AMZING in pvp, be it a lord or a costly demygryph unit or halberd unit (which you get to charge without receiving it's charge / having it braced). Then rooting everything around it (keeping it isolated) and routing it is so powerful to vounter the opponent's reaction. + the root from slanesh baseline army ability... For pve good use of phantasmagory can setup clean surrounds and chain routing... Yes some spells like burning head are very easy to use and effective, but slaanesh with some finesse is crazy gud The 14 melee attack on cast pushes your dmg capability nicely too btw

Lore of Slaanesh I would put way higher for when you play Nkari. It does have an issue where slicing shards is easy to dodge, but keep in mind phantasmagoria stops units in a wide circle from moving. This does mean you cast 2 spells to sometimes do what takes one spell for most factions ( which is a fair critique). However, when Nkari can start supplementing armies with KOS with bound spells you can suddenly cast multiple slicing shards during a single or double phantasmagoria. If you blob enemy units by flanking around them and freaking them out you are able to lock them in place and then carpet bomb them with slicing shards and shadow magic. It's kinda absurd how quickly the damage happens, as shards is a spell with 100% AP. This does rely on Nkari being your faction so you have the bound spells on KOS. Otherwise I agree it might be a better use of resources to grab other magic types for other factions

Lore of slaanesh should be c tier for phantasmagoria alone in my opinion. not only is the net effect so powerful, it’s especially nice because you love flanking so much. On top of that leadership debuffs stack really well with that flank-heavy playstyle that slaanesh loves.

High Magic in the lore: The eight winds working in perfect harmony. The ultimate magic, so far beyond human comprehension that only elves and Slann can wield it. High Magic in game: Pretty bad. Dark Magic in the lore: The most dangerous and destructive of all magic. Learning a small fragment of it allowed Nagash to obtain the secrets of undeath that Nehekhara had sought for centuries. Dark Magic in game: Really just useful as a battery for better spellcasters.

Funny how it always comes down to life and fire magic for high elves: but good to know lore of light is still up for grabs. I always grab a conductor whenever I see one of any of these types.

Good tier list I agree with them, tried every single lore in many situations. Shame that Kislev has such lame ones because they are cool, but yeah low impact, too expensive. I love Slicing Shards of Slaanesh but it's only good against blobs.

I would have recommended having columns for each faction, and rating them faction by faction to most easily and accurately capture the context for each lore. Dunno if Tier maker supports that easily but from a presentation design perspective that's the way I'd do it. Also makes the list a handy reference document for theory crafters and over-analyzers.

You said at the start you wanted to go quickly through them so the video wouldn't be an hour and a half long. I just wanted to let you know that even if the video was 3 hours long I would still watch it legend.

Am I the last one that just realized the potential of pairing a few dark magic and one life magic caster on the wood elves ? Almost infinite winds.

Didn’t go over Hoeth, but that’s just a conglomeration of others. But in my opinion is the best healing magic simply because it also has Life Leeching and Earthblood. Makes Earthblood cost essentially 1.5 WoM

In general I value magic first by pure damage output potential and then keeping my troops alive. Buff spells have some application but with the durations being pretty short they just don't have the impact. If I had +20 melee attack for two minutes vs the normal 20(ish) seconds I'd rank those spells (and their lores) much higher.

I personally find frost is is really good considering the army comps that Kislev usually fields so i would really put frost magic into A tear. It makes your armies extremly dangerous in any situation. It is especially good at putting cavalry into a terrible position.

I love Ice. It pairs so well with Dakka. Think of it as an army enabler/support magic.

Really useful guide. It is funny that you comment at one point that damage dealing spells are best and yet you have life magic and necromancy up top with the best healing spells! (obviously they have other good spells as well but just trolling really)

One thing about lore of the great maw is that ogres have access to Meat Reserves, which is like the old greater arcane conduit. But you can get it with both lores they have access to, so it’s whatever

Whaaaaat!? Love that you and the misses are into valheim! The mistlands update is so so good!

HELL YEAHH I WAITED SO LONG FOR THIS. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

As a new player, this was really helpful. Thanks.

Expand your mind Legend. Been playing with Lore of Slaanesh for a week and it's plenty good. The whip is a fantastic first spell, it casts in 1 second, does nice damage and disrupts units. Acquiescence and Phantasmagoria synergize with other N'kari abilities. Comet shards wrecks blobs. Don't know what you're on about

It's funny how Legend praises Searing Doom but calls Hailstorm alright even though they're almost the exact same spell (Only difference is Searing Doom has a bombardment radius of 10 compared to Hailstorm's 15). When overcast both spells double the projectiles from 40 to 80, but Searing Doom changes the bombardment radius to 20 while Hailstorm keeps the radius at 15. Goes to show how pieplate size really changes how well a spell performs.

My favourite lore is the Lore of Khorne: Just bash the enemy 😂😂

The only time I've gotten value out of High Magic's Tempest was in WH2, casting on flying units during sieges when they would just sit in the town square.

I think the real strength of Deliverance of Itza lies in the fact that you can much more easily build your army around defeating larger units seeing as anything with more then 30 models will just _Kroak_

I Love Tierlists from LoTw

Lore of Maw so underrated. Crushing fist does 80% of up to 3 units health consistently. The aoe armor missile resist buff offsets one of the ogres biggest weaknesses being ranged dmg. Helps a lot on the approach. At least imo Maw takes the piss over twh3 lore of fire, rip flaming skull.

For the Lore of High Magic, Tempest seems like it would work best with Light Magic…which, at that point, it might just be better to only have the Light Wizard and get an additional archer or artillery piece

I don't know if you are aware Legend because you never mention it, but pit of shades is the only vortex which can be used on walls, another good point for the lore of shadows.

Very informative. Personally I like using all the magics. After a certain point in any campaign you can do whatever you want.

I can’t wait for the tierlist tierlist.

45:30: Purple sun is more disruptive than other vortices and throws units around more.

hell yeah i love the tier lists! would love to have more of these for warhammer 3 if you ever feel like it

Very good post. I would say I have a different ranking due to Bias, but your list is probably more practical. Thank you for the content.