So I've played a bit more on my dodgy wraiths. I think its powerful, and may need to recant my stance on overpowered. I've taken lately to just keeping my faction up enough to avoid a dogpile, and focus on mobility and exploration.
I've got about 8 cities, about mid way through the civ tech and 1/3 through warfare and 1/4 through magic - Masons, mounted/blacksmithing, tireless march.
1 dedicated fortress with 3 essence now starting to pump out dodgy troops - basic sindarin staffs, no other EQ really, + hit points and 2x +dodge traits. They're coming out at 30+ dodge - maybe even 40. Weak, but cheap and dodgy and with a counterattack.
Til this point I've been doing treaties and even paid off a couple larger factions to avoid war. I've been exploring/playing with bound elementals, a few champions and my sov.
My goal is to build 2 armies of "Dodgy Staffers" and "Glass Bows" (shortbow, nothing else, +initiative, +attack traits) and see how they do. Weak in general, but if the enemy is missing a lot of I can pepper them with arrows.
My Sov has been fun to play with - about 60ish dodge, only 20 or so attack, about 15 defense and 45 hp I think. He can solo most mobs that don't crit often, have nasty DoT's or spells. Picking and choosing my battles has let him get up to lvl 15 and he's a mini tough guy. He can still drop to the big crit, spells/elemental damage, or mass poison - but with his wraith +3 on kill, he does pretty well.
With that said, I'm not sure he's all that much more powerful than any other beefed up melee hero with high defense/moderate dodge. In most games that I build a super champion, I usually duo - one mage/ranged and one melee. I save a bit more mana than normal with this guy, but he definitely still gets hit.
Even the 40 dodge troops - to get that dodge I sacrifice other items (although honestly i still frequently take dodge traits). They still aren't super troops, they don't hit all that hard. I'm hoping that in 9v9 fights they stay alive long enough to win through attrition... at least until i get a bit further down the warfare tree.
Teh few I've used are great against low level critters, but REALLY slow against higher lvl and still die.
I think war is about to break out, since I'm going to instigate it. So I'll get a better feeling once that's done.