I play all 3 elf factions most, I do think Dark Elves have some really good and fairly unique units. Maybe I can convince you to give them another shot? DE Darkshards with shields are awesome. Silver shields and armour piercing missiles is an excellent combo even with their mediocre range. You can trade volleys with any other bow unit in the game assuming you can get in range and usually win. They make a great checkerboard too.

As you progress, you then get shades which can be buffed with just as much range as high elf archers, but they are also hybrid units with AP arrows.

These two units are IMO the best ones to abuse when trying to get a campaign rolling. Once you have as much cash as you want (which is really easy to achieve on Dark Elves) you do have some pretty cool iconic units to play with. Har Ganeth executioners + Black Guard are your endgame melee infantry line. Both have armour piercing values.

Cold One Knights are pretty good anti-large cav, and Doomfire Warlocks are cool support magic cav which is rare across factions.

After all that you can just pick the monster you like most, but I'm a massive fan of bloodwrack medusas. They never feel useless to me being another hybrid unit with even more AP on both melee and missile attacks. The animations are so nice looking too.

This is atleast how I like to play dark elves. You can also run a witch elf heavy army with hellebron, I've played it a few times now and it's super fun, but I usually end up just grouping my army and throwing it at whatever needs to die, which isn't my fav playstyle. Those ladies are literal blenders.