In my eyes, the main perks are:

- defensive spin with claw attacks when using spear. Retain ability to vault at all times. But also should be best at toe to toe damage when duking it out. Personally I'd skip polearm, but that's me.
- resistance to light handy versus marans, moreso if you cover fire vuln, which isn't hard
- nice felar gear
- good melee should tie up well with Empire powers (get them at centurions).
- People not defending great against claw attacks.
- bonus high damage attacks.

I think they will have a different playstyle to the other races. I did play one drow with sword + shield who basically focussed on pouring out damage with spells, and that worked decently well. I'd probably play it in similar fashion but using a spear.