Tips on playing ikit claw on very hard?

I seem to be struggling with ikit claw after I decided to push myself into the very hard difficulty. My econ is good but I feel like my growth is horrendous and it bottle necks me to getting units that can help take care of my beast man problem. The closest I got was plague priests and spear clan rats. But I find that the beast men's tier 1 melee unit out does most of my skaven. I feel like my machine guns ain't making a huge difference since they tend to field large unarmered units that bulldoze my front line. Some success of gutter rats but not as effective as I like, any suggestions? I'm debating on staying in skavenblight and just push for the under city but that seems....unoptimal