Nargott
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Regarding the Druids: currently, the Druids have Druids/Guardians/Archons (units). Oracles were also present (although with different upgrades). It's inconvenient to use the words "mage" or "priest" due to overlaps with other factions. Basically, a priest is a Dwarf, a mage is a Mage, and an Elf is neither a Dwarf nor a Mage.
Regarding Necrodrakes, I don't know, I haven't paid attention, and what's so repulsive about them? In any case, until there's a decent new model for them, what I've seen just duplicates the Phoenix.
By the way, out of curiosity, I checked different settings for the original game's Random Map Generator (RMG):
1) Minimum guard + minimum difficulty = 6 alternate goblins at a wood mine (3-6% of a standard dragon, depending on how you calculate it, by Power or by gold).
2) Minimum guard + maximum difficulty = 16 alternate goblins at the same mine (8-16% of a standard dragon).
3) Maximum guard + maximum difficulty = 3-5 standard dragons (total, an entire army).
There's a huge range, and in the maximum mode, one of the players was completely blocked, with all exits blocked by 7 tigers, 50-100 each. Hello!
This kind of nonsense shouldn't exist in principle. Most guards should be breakable in the first week, and all of them in the second (except maybe utopias and their equivalents), and any passages should be unguarded or breakable by scouts with the starting army.
If you increase the second mode by a factor of 4 (or the first by a factor of 10), you'll get roughly the guards I mentioned above (50% of a standard dragon at mines).
However, there are also portals.
1) 5 upgraded lizards at a portal (55-65% of a standard dragon).
2) 13 upgraded lizards at a portal (140-160% of a standard dragon).
And even in the minimum mode, portals are well-guarded (and if you put normal guards on mines, the numbers go through the roof). This is the whole problem with Heroes 5: they lock everything down with guards on portals so they don't have to balance the game for early encounters. Only when both players are "mature" (I mean level, not age) are they allowed to... engage in direct contact. This is why I haven't played this game on a full-sized map for many years (but I can play Heroes 3), because there's simply nothing to do strategically – why should the map designers/GSC dictate how I should develop and when to attack? It's not a linear storyline (step left, step right, jump – attempt to fly away, shot down), but a strategy game.
In reality, they could have skipped years of development on the tactical part and moved straight to strategy, and in terms of specific release dates for a full-sized game, that would have been optimal, not worrying about minor details and drawing the overall picture right away. But the problem is that, strategically, the game is at the bottom, compared to Heroes 3, there are no improvements in the strategic part. It's easier to take a more advanced base. But in terms of tactics and progression, the game has great potential, and the Nival team did a good job here. That's why the development order for WGE is like this, starting with improving the strong points and only in the final stage addressing the weak strategic part (including with well-designed templates and maps).
Of course, what I said above is just my opinion, and I know that some players strongly believe in the strategic value of exploring the starting areas, replacing the entire strategic gameplay with tactical gameplay, or rather, technical gameplay – "how to break through this."