Direct Combat Champion are too weak.

In my experience, the best mid-game champ would be a warrior-mage hybrid with an axe, dmg gear and melee-range fire spells. This would give you pretty descent aoe damage, while the rest of your army can finish off anything that isn't one-shot.

I'm not sure if you're saying that any champ would be better off as a mage, or if you're saying that all champs are better off with some magic.
I would agree to the last statement.

i don't think warriors and defenders are too weak. assassins are rather weak, though. warriors/defenders are just great in the early game, but once you can build good troops, you don't really need those heroes any more. defenders keep a little niche that noone else occupies (tanking single strong monsters such as dragons that oneshot trained units with the "overpower" trait), but warriors just suck later in the game if they don't have very good items (and no, double burning axes aren't good enough to make them not suck)

commanders and mages are quite the opposite- they are rather weak early on and become more powerful in the later stages . there are exceptions, of course (mages specced for support instead of damage are very good throughout the whole game, for example)

I think warriors should have less attack from the Lethal traits, and instead get an overpower type trait later in the tree somewhere. Would make them worse in early game, better in late game.

Compared too who?

Since you are using damage to compare (and not including anything else):

Mages -> Yes, they are underpowered compared to mages, but technically if you wanted to you can make your warriors into mages too by getting spell books (either from faction trait or by buying from allies' shops)

Commander -> No, commanders are definitely the weakest (since you are basing this solely on the amount of "personal" damage they can do)

Regular Troops -> Well "mid-late game" troops is a very broad category.  Generally, at mid game my warriors are not obsolete.  The late game depends....  but then again I don't play the game with a tunnel vision on damage.

My primary stat (the one I value most, but NOT the only one that matters) is initiative.  That is why I play a custom Amarian race with the Decalon trait, and by mid game every one of my heroes is at least an air mage and a watermage.  With enough fire shards, and everyone being hasted, and the enemy being slowed I usually get two to three free attacks against the enemy before they can react.

So to answer your question... no I don't think warriors/Defenders/Archers are underpowered.  At least not the way I play the game.  The way you play is probably different, and I understand that; just giving you my perspective. 

Well, not in my experience, but I admit it is a bit harder to build a good assassin, but it is possible.  For example if you give them poison + maul (from weapon) and focus the skills on critical and accuracy.... I've had an assassin reduce a red dragons health by 1/3 in one attack before, and could kill most enemy heroes in one attack.  You don't always find a weapons with a maul attribute however, so like I said.... it is a bit harder to build a good assassin.      

I don't find warriors underpowered at all. I actually prefer warriors to mages in the game. Give your warrior a good sword, shield, and some armor then go down the Lethal tree till you have reap 3, then go down the counter attack tree until you get your +1 counter attack with any weapon and you're unstoppable. You can literally march out into the middle of the enemy forces and let them hit you while you kill them with counter attacks. By level 7 or so, I'm killing deadly monsters with my warrior by himself. I don't even give him an army because they just get in the way and slow him down. My level 8 warrior 1v1d a Slag earlier and cleared an entire Troll Shaman camp at level 9 by himself. So no, I don't find warriors underpowered at all.

The replies here makes me think that most of us are just using the various classes the wrong way...

There's also another thread somewhere, where people have been discussing which speccs are viable and not, and in which part of the game.
Most players seem to think mages are good overall, but there are very different opinions of the other classes. Those who are in favor of a class will certainly be so because they have good experience with it, and vice versa.

I think there should rather be threads about "How to make a good warrior champ", and likewise for the other classes

For a long time i was going experience boost > sweep > lethal tree with a warrior.  Walk up to a group, sweep, cleave the next biggest chunk, clean up.

Now I'm trying out the mage/summon/horde.   Its great, but a lot slower.   A good warrior was a 3-4 round combat.  Mage takes longer.

I don't like having my sov be defender/assassin/commander - seems too weak.  Although I like supporting heroes of those types.

Can someone link to the talent trees? Can't seem to find them.

Yes. I am talking about Champion who heavily based on gear.

Most obvious would be Warrior, the Warrior only work fine in early game if without epic gear.

Perhaps this is what the game design intend?

I will rephrase slightly, "Weak" mean the functionality in mid-late game.

Warrior/Assassin are the most useless.

They work well in few situations

- low mana

- equiping epic weapons from epic quest.

- early game

Commander greatly improve the army capabilities thus they are great in late game.

Mage can do anything except tanking and fighting high resistance enemy (Require mana resource).

I don't think warriors/defenders/assassins have weak skill trees, but they are definitely a lot more gear dependent than the commanders and mages. Get them some good gear and they hold up fine in the late game. Fail to get good gear and they become only good for back line support.

I haven't played on the higher difficulties yet, and I can see how a warrior would not be as powerful after early game at those levels of play, but I just finished a game playing as Umber on Hard and I made Kulan a warrior.

Originally, I used a 12 atk 2h axe that I was lucky enough to pick up early, but then got a tower shield and a 21/22 atk sword that rocks pretty hard. I got thunderstrike and went to blade rush (also picked up chain mail proficiency because I looted some chain with no negative initiative). It works great for armies in cities and some mob armies. Thunderstrike to back line archers/mages, next turn blade rush through them and they are done. It would work even better with a harder hitting 2h weapon like Ongr's sword. Then I have a mixture of sword/shield or mace/shield tanks and leather spears to take care of the enemy's front line troops. I think I also picked up some free archers from a quest, which are great early game but fall off because you can't upgrade them.

Having said that, I agree that mages are much more powerful through mid and late game. It's all in what your preferences are, honestly. Mages seem "better" because they continually grow in power, whereas warriors tend to start strong and gradually fall off if you don't pick up really good gear, but it's really just a matter of early game power vs. late game power.  Mages are pretty easy because all you need are good tanks (chain and shields plus a mace or a sword) and a spear unit or two to hold the enemy away from your caster as she/he blasts those mofos with fire (or ice or whatever your preferred element of destruction).

On higher difficulties, I imagine I will be using a lot of mages, defenders, and commanders though. I haven't found a good use for assassins yet, they are too squishy (either with melee weapons or ranged).

Assassins seem to be the only class who are noticeably underpowered in my experience. 

I usually regret choosing that path whenever I do -- would love to see them made more interesting and/or desirable.

I have the same impression as original poster. Maybe because this game is focused on building an army, what a Warrior can accomplish seems rather useless (except early in the game).  To be truly heroic, an end-game warrior (properly equipped) should be capable of dealing physical damage substantially better than any single late-game army stack.  I admit I didn't bother taking a warrior that far, because its usefulness was falling so far behind the "support" leadership roles, that boost what the rest of the army does...

Decimate is a weak overpower.

Lethal needs to be a +% damage bonus, maybe +40/+30/+30

As for assassins, they need +1 dodge/lvl, +1% crit chance per level, and a trait or bonus that every 20 pts of accuracy they succeed by they get +1 attack.  Also I'd add in a dagger and bow mastery line, or allow them to dual wield a dagger for more damage.

Yea decimate is a weak version of overpower. But imo it still good. Maybe put Decimate and the +50% splash damage to early level traits instead of late game traits.

I like the idea about lethal but i think lethal being a % dmg bonus is too much, especially if it is +40 + 30 + 30, a total of +100% damage is too much.

Maybe when you choose path of the warrior, instead of getting a +3 atk, change it to be +1% atk / level, just like Defender path gives +1hp/level.

Or give an active trait for early level that boost damage by +30% for 3 turns after 3 turns the warrior initiative will decrease by 30% for the rest of the battle, this gives the warrior skill that when activated boost his damage by 30% for 3 turns at the cost of initiative after it runs out. This ability will be useful even at late game, as the boost is in percentage based on the warrior's base atk power. Also it won't make the warrior overpowered because you need to make the most of that ability before your initiative get a penalty for the rest of the battle or until the warrior is dead.

My reason of not giving warrior that much attack is because there is a late game tech that give 10% atk, it can be researched infinite times, this means warrior will one shot everything if the warrior have many percentage atk booster. This tech also benefit warrior class the most, and give no benefit at all to mage class.

that's really a non issue. the game is over at this point unless you refuse to finish it. none of those repeatable techs should factor into balancing, since they are just there for the people who want to play "one more turn" and don't care much about "winning" the game.

also, the tech benefits trained units more than warrior champs, since their combined attack value will probably be higher than a warrior's, even if the single warrior has the best items in the game and is fully buffed (including spells such as growth and giantform)

It is not a one man fighting an army game, not it should be. Just apply common sense those hero in later game is just support units, like tank or using support spells(one of I always like is pull to the earth) to help your large units to fight. 

But, in the really later game if you enter into, you do have to build a powerful warrior and it is possible to do so. Well, depend on winning term, if you have to win by master quest, you will need them. 

Right that's why i'm against giving warrior too many attack modifier by percentage. Because warrior are never meant to be one man army, they are for 1 vs 1, like in the original FE, mage is for going against massed number of weaker unit than the 1 vs 1 unit.

Personally i don't find anything wrong with warrior. The only class i feel lacked is assassin, but i don't want to make judgement too early, i will wait another month after trying a couple assassin experiment.

Here is a suggestion for warrior for the dev and to please people that complaint about them being useless. I'll bold the suggestions. The inspiration of this suggestion is taken from Eador MotBW.

Make warrior the only class that can change weapon on battle. They seems to have traits that gives bonuses to most kinds of weapons. Especially spear, axe, and sword.

With the ability to change weapons on the battlefield, they can change to weapon which give them the best advantage for a certain condition on the battlefield.

For example, at the start of the battle, we should use swords because swords has counter and at the start of the battle we start in defence mode, so less one shot or one hit dying thingy for our warrior, and the warrior still give some damage to his/her attacker due to counter which only sword weapon has.

Then when the warrior's turn finally comes, he may want to change to spear or axe to use AoE attack, if you look at other classes, they doesn't have bonus to that weapons, so warrior will be much more efficient in using that weapon, this give the warrior the role of the AoE damager like mage, but warrior is for AoE Physical Damage, mage is for AoE Magical/Elemental Damage, and this gives warrior more play style that is unique only to them,  a warrior can play his way as a counter attacker or axe wielder or spear wielder, depending on which one gives them the best advantage for a certain condition on the battlefield.

True, still i don't want to see that "imaginary state of the game" to be ruined because of that overpowered warrior which has 200 or 300 atk, because, you know this game has many things that exist for that state, dragons for example, they are only available in that state. Actually, 30% if not 50% of all LH players loves to play in that state. Not all people care for winning the game as soon as possible and not all people are hardcore gamer, we better play RTS if we want to be competitive and being hardcore or playing a strategy for the purpose of winning only, all 4x always fail to address this issue, hence why 4x is just for fun, look at Master of magic (MoM) which give FE and LH inspiration, most people plays MoM for that "imaginary state of the game", but somehow such a state in MoM blend nicely with normal winnable state of the game, and even in MoM there are limits to overpoweredness.

This is the best idea I take from this thread so far.  I LOVE this idea.  To expand this further, give warriors one or two secondary weapon slots in their equipment options just for quick switching in battle.

Something still has to be done to help out assassins, but I think this is *exactly* what warriors need.  They'll be more rightfully powerful, useful, far more interesting, and just more fun to use.

Running around with a Warrior who has around 30 initiative and 40 attack with Reap 3 and you'll laugh at how easily that champion can solo entire armies of slow troops like Oppressors. 

For assassins, here's my idea, give them the ability to "sacrifice" a dagger and gain its stat bonuses.

You find plenty of daggers, but they rarely last to the endgame.

Maybe in return, limit shields to warriors/defenders/commanders.

Assassins should be able to use dual daggers (and like double axes, i mean two separate daggers like a Leech Dagger and something else). That would increase their attack power and make them a little better melee champions when they don't crit. I'm not sure about two 1h swords, that might be a little too much, but they would be sacrificing defense (no shield). 

After Reading this thread I decided to try an assassin with my sov.  I found a pretty nice sword early on 19 dmg and boosted crit percentage and damage. He more or less could solo any monster stack except dragons at about lvl 9. I completed a quest around lvl 10 that gave him a beserker sword and he went and killed the dragons on the map by himself( he had high fire resist through buff, shield and armor).. when I started to war he just cut down opposing armies.  I was playing on expert world and insane ai. and race was wraith.  So I don't really think they are underpowered.