Lichelord

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Description
The Lichelord is a warrior wizard with great combat capabilities against selective races and/or at night. Necromancy and Poison Magic are the two spell spheres the Lichelord posesses, and both are available from the start.

Stats and Skills
The attribute changes you get by choosing this class:

The abilities you get by choosing this class:

Overall
Just like a few of the other classes, the Lichelord bears the extremely situational slayer skill disease. Unlike the others though, the Lichelord has come off far worse due to the waste of a level 25 skill slot and the fact that it has two slayer skills rather than one. This highly limits the effectiveness of the class, but what does so even more is the Shadow Strength nerf (went from being +5 combat to +3 combat) and the fact that Necromancy and Poison Magic don't really help each other very much at all. All of this tallies up to make the Lichelord amongst the very poorest end of the hero classes.

Races
As said previously, Manslayer and Elfslayer are extremely situational, and Shadow Strength has been weakened to the extent where it simply can't be used anymore (Ferocity is strictly superior since Ferocity gives the same amount of combat whether it's day or night). So, this leaves the Lichelord with Poison Magic and Necromancy as the main skill focuses. If the player is thinking about an Undead Lichelord, stop there, because the Deathknight does a tough Undead Necromancer much better. As said before, Poison Magic and Necromancy don't go together very well. They both rely on different circumstances and tactics, although there are a couple of things that may be pulled off. Using a horde of Spiders is a possibility, then the Lichelord can turn the corpses of the Spiders into skeletons and finish off the remaining poisoned enemies. There are however a couple of serious problems that must be taken into account. Poisoned enemies which are turned into Skeletons via the Strip Flesh spell counteracts the usefulness of the poison. Also, Undead are immune to poison and disease, so any summoned units via Necromancy don't get anything from the Antidote spell. All in all, there are few benefits to taking both Necromancy and Poison Magic.

The Lichelord class goes badly with most races, so there are very few race options available. The Swarm Lichelord may look okay but these spell spheres barely expand the arsenal of the Swarm and does almost nothing to address any of the race's issues. Pretty much the only thing gained by this combo over the Defiler is access to Summon Champion, in particular, Shadows and Doom Knights. These two units can help to counter the Dragon vulnerability in the Swarm race, but that's pretty much it. The Swarm already have access to fast producing builders (Giant Ants) and piercing resistant units (Husks and Scorpions) so Zombies, Skeletons and Wights aren't very useful and as said before Strip Flesh is more likely to hinder the Swarm rather than help it due to it countering poison.

Unfortunately, this combo may be amongst the best of what the Lichelord can do, because around 90% of the time the player is simply better off going for a Deathknight, a Necromancer or a Defiler.

Counters

 * A Lichelord that isn't focused entirely on toughness/spellcasting can mean that they are not very effective at spellcasting/fighting respectively.
 * Any units which aren't aligned towards the slayer abilities will be more effective against a Lichelord with investment in those.
 * If a Lichelord is using Shadow Strength, this can only be countered by using daylight invoking spells on buildings or in spellbooks.