I've been meaning to post this before, but I'm not usually the guy who wants to spend time on formulating walls of text, I'd honestly rather play the game. With that being said, I've thought a lot about the skeezick theme, and why it feels so underwhelming in a majority of situations right now. When the theme works, it works really well. I've been able to climb to mid-exo using mostly variations of skeezick bgs. The theme is somewhat well developed, and the buff to the racial abillity was a welcome change. Powerturns are strong, and against some bgs you can pepper them with strong ranged option, before going in for the kill. Nice and dandy. After getting to mid-exo I encountered increasing amount of problems, and realised that while these issues persist, skeezicks will not be able to compete at the higher ranks. There are some internal problems (champions within the theme) as well as external (units and abillities which skeezicks have no answer to). I remember the good old times, when the skeezick race was one of the only races with a racial abillity, and was competitively viable at the top level, but I feel that during SoE reign it was the powercreep pushing them out, and now that we've come to the age of DoG, the revamp didn't favor them as much as some claim. Note that the recent buff is mostly irrelevant to the content of this topic.
First, the most glaring issues are the issues outside of the theme, and there aren't that many of them at the moment, but those which are hurt badly. Collosal and incorporeal are as close to an instaloss as you can get. Without even mentioning the currently strong themes which soft counter skeezick naturally, and have to be played around/at a disadvantage (death benefit, paladin phalanx, trees, summon spam and kf in general, NKD) these two abillities will often win the game by themselves. I feel that skeezick is not the only theme which is suffering from this problem, and the only thing to do is to wait, and keep remainding the balance theme that these abillities are difficult to deal with. Someone mentioned before that skeezicks have totem of the fallen as well as sauropod to deal with these collosal, and a guildmate who's name I won't mention has given me advice to run 2x skeezick wylder against incorporeal units. These are not good answers to the issues. Totem of the fallen with lumbering and no base attack is mostly useful for bypassing resistances and immunities, and as a defensive support vs melee heavy bgs. It is worthless against collosal units. Sauropod is shoebox, which I'll explain later. Disregarding the issue of AA being extremely strong, skeezick wylder is a very risky rune to play, and is often too costly to deploy before incorporeal comes into play. The more universal problematic themes NoKanDo hurts skeezicks quite a bit, since the majority of the theme focuses on basic attacks (skeezick warcry, our ranged options, many grunts within the theme). The only way to counter summonspam is to splash a ravenspeaker, which is a very costly and squishy unit, and even then the opponent can often place summons in places which you will not be able to raven tongue safely, and then just overwhelm you with the amount of units on the field. UD is a quite bad matchup as well for a variety of reasons, including arrow eater, units with more hp and damage (stat efficiency), strong stealth units, ember wasp and generally more tricks within the faction. When these are not encountered, skeezicks play out well.
The issues within the theme are the ones I would like to point out, and have a discussion about. After playing pretty much only against exotic and limited players I noticed that there are many situations which I could only have dealt by either splashing other units within the theme, or playing something else. The main skeezick problems are: Inabillity to contest fonts This problem shows its ugly face mostly on maps with 1 font in the middle to fight over. If you don't draw resillient skeezick, there is barely any unit which can withstand the harrasment or raw damage of many other unit. The best way to contest the middle font is to relic contest it, but that lasts mostly one turn. Skeezicks barely have any durable units, which make them very draw reliant on certain maps. The lack of tough/relevant resistances (apart from fire on alchemist) and hp pool is not insubstantial. General lack of mobillity The theme is full of 6 speed grunts, but unlike minotaurs there are no dimension doors. There is one (early on inefficient) unit with charge, and no leap. No teleport. No swap. No relocate ally. The units with 7 speed have big drawbacks, which make them barely runnable. No unit with 8 speed, not even berserker or careless. Two problems that arise from this are that skeezicks often can't play the annoying contester game, where you send a fast unit to contest the opponents font and distract him, and it can be difficult to close the range against range-heavy compositions. The second one can be mitigated by spending 40 nora on march of the skeezicks, but this is costly and means you will have to stock up on nora, and pretty much powerturn to avoid retaliation. Lack of detection I found that I have to splash either two skithmaw hunters or one hunter and a ravenspeaker, to not get destroyed or simply shut down by certain stealth units (ember wasp, FW soul collection leg, whatever else gets thrown in) Unit cost For a theme which was support to have more units on the field then the enemy, and have one of their bigger strengh being numbers, a surprising amount of skeezicks sits at mid 70's. The biggest issue is probably that many of the cheaper skeezicks are inefficient against other similarly costed units in other factions. KF is the biggest issue here with mid 50 nora falconer, strong support units sitting between 50s and 60 nora, as well as cheap collosal unit to pretty much secure the mid font, but you can also look at other cheap options in paladin IS, beast ST, UD deep elves/demons. SL/Skeezick support units cost around 10-15 nora more, and don't offer as much support. If they had a decent stats to outset the lackluster support abillity set, that would be good, but usually they don't. Many skeezick beaters have problems comparing to the enemy units (especially tankier units) for the price. Take a look at a Warogg, a Pit Dragon, a falconer or many units, and you will see that skeezicks have cost to stat issues. Think about this for a little, and maybe compare some of the runes. I'll take a break, before I'll talk about specific units and spells, and come with some suggestions.
Allright, here's a post about units and problems I see with them. Skeezick theme is reliant on easily counterable units. Those units are resillient skeezick, canoneer, netter, drummer and half skeezick. Previously, the theme was also reliant on skeezick revolt and skeezick sniper to do well, both were situational as well as hit or miss, and both got nerfed. None of these help skeezicks against collosal/incorporeal issue, and none of these do well against themes which are strong against skeezick theme in general. Skeezick revolt This spell was deemed op, and it was quite strong when used at the right times. It also used to be one of the only way to proc skeezick alliance together with the sniper. The problem arises, when you realise how situational this spell is. Consider the following: Unlike other summoning spells, this spell does not let you choose the deployment zone of your units. Why this may seem insignificant, it is in fact the biggest drawback you could make. If the map is big, your units will not be able to get to the fighting zone in time to make a difference, on maps with a middle font just slightly far from the shrine this means you just spent 80 nora, and you can't contest the font against a competent player. This limits the use of this spell to: - Maps without a middle font - Maps where the opponent can't succesfully rush you - Turn 3-5 if you have the nora for it and are in a safe position (and able to capture the 2nd font on the maps with 2 safe fonts for each player) - Stalled games where neither opponent contests the fonts The biggest advantage of the spell is that it summons three units which are useful, save up a space in your bg, and which would not be drafted into the bg under any circumstances otherwise. Now that skeezick alliance got buffed, and the spell got nerfed (skeezicks are now summons) there is much less reason to run it in the bg. Also, note increasing amount of counters to summoned champions. Netter/Half skeezick Both of these units are fine, but unfortunately they don't help to allievate skeezick problems (difficult to contest fonts, abysmall hp). In particular, half skeezick has pretty bad base stats for such a costly unit, and punish is better than alliance as an upgrade on netter. Suggested change: possibly increase half skeez hp or give him a defensive abillity for a low cost. Otherwise better buff other stuff. Grunts: Vindictive, Wrecker, Warguard, Grunt, Ruffian, Dragonslayer These are all variations of the same unit archetype, and most of them are somewhat underwhelming in comparison to other cheap unit options. The biggest problem is that you cannot contest fonts with any of them. The closest you get to a font contester are warguard and wrecker with conqueror. They all get destroyed by anything with damage (apart from warguard which is currently bugged). Changes that could make these units more viable are: Defensive abillites. In particular, wrecker could use a defensive abillity so he wouldn't explode despite buffs from conqueror, which would also make other upgrade options more viable on him. At 42 hp base he has half hp to nora ratio, no ranged or melee defense and is generally a glass cannon mostly useful for sunder and sword breaker. Unfortunately it's too easy to position your units so they will either only be hit by him once, or so that he can't break enemy equipment. Suggested change: Remove siege from base. Replace impair vision with sword breaker in upgrades. Give reflexes:2 or tough:2 on base. He would still be vulnerable to ranged damage, but at least he would be slightly tankier/could engage enemy melee with damage reduction. Ruffian is simply a terrible unit. He has really bad stats, high nora cost, resilient and escape are almost useless on him (for some reason he was the first champion with that abillity iirc), and has poor upgrade choices. Suggested change: Remove escape and resillient. Give him clamp on base (look how his chocking this dwarf on his awesome art!), replace pulverize upgrade chain with tough upgrades. Either reduce his cost or give him +5 hp OR +1 def. These changes would also help the issues of not being able to contest, as well as bringing ruffian out of the shoebox. If ruffian gets buffed, waylay would have to get nerfed (nora cost). Dragonslayer is imo really close to being viable. He has decent hp for the price, bad damage, a sandbag hunter abillity and some aditional damage + fester for a low price. I feel like this rune needs just a slight change before it's very viable within the theme. Suggested change: remove rend from upgrades, move hunter:dragonkin (thematic), hunter:giant (good) and regen: 2 to abillity set 2. Replace power attack:1 with immunity: fire in the first abillity tree, and power attack:2 with charge:2. For some reason he lost fire immunity post revamp, and with the prevalence of fire damage across the game, this might give him a nice spot as anti-fire unit together with the alchemist, as well as giving skeezicks temporary fix to the collosal problem. Charge would give skeezicks a little extra mobillity. Warguard is currently bugged, so it's hard to judge his performance. He looks like he is outclassed by resillient skeezicks, but then again most other melee skeezicks are as well. He seems really slow for a unit with so little offenses, and his defenses are only good. I will not suggest any change until I have a chance to play without the bug where he just instantly explodes after taking damage. Grunt is one of my favourite units, he is all stats in exchange for a drawback, and a cheap cos. The problem is that the drawback makes it difficult to play in many situations, and as a 7 speed unit (can cap fonts, but will not gain any charges). Reducing sole purpose drawback might be enough to bring him into a great spot. Suggested change: Change race charged to give two charges per two skeezicks up to a maximum of 4 OR replace abuse charged with supercharged 1, possibly reduce sole purpose hp loss to 3 hp per charge lost. This would make him kill himself less when he attacks anything. Vindictive skeezick is glass cannony and has trouble getting into the fight without getting blown up. Furthermore, he lacks skeezick alliance and his first abillity tree is bad. Suggested change: replace pace and enrage with hostile and opportunistic. Either put skeez alliance on base, or replace rend:3 with it. He would still be a glass cannon, but he wouldnt need half skeez/ a dead skeezick to deal good damage.
Oddball units/support/specialists. Many units within the theme have semi-unique abillities and feel. I think that if some of them were more viable, some of the problems with skeezicks could be allevated, and it's always nice to have a bigger champion pool to choose from. Stealth: Scoundrel and Filcher These are both terrible units statwise. 6 damage on filcher is a joke, and he's been made only to introduce energy thief, which is a really bad abillity on him for a couple reasons. Scoundrel lacks any direction in his current design. He has both reflexes and dodge, but is a stealth unit and has 40 hp for mid 70 nora, so he gets blown up anyway. Why a stealth unit would need reflexes, dodge and counterattack melee is anyone's guess. Suggested changes: Remove counterattack: melee, and both of his upgrade trees. Give him knockout on base. Abillity tree#1: Shadowspawn, mark, poison 2 Abillity tree#2: Escape, Shadowstrike, cripple. This would give him an offensive direction, without assasinate, and while possibly giving him supportive abillities. Other than that he will steal be a 40 hp 10 dmg unit, just with strong abillities. Filcher was an attempt to bring energy thief to the table, and it failed. I have not seen this unit in several years, because it's so terrible. Suggested changes: Make pilfer base. Remove energy thief. +3 damage, range either to 1-2 or 2-4. Upgrade path #2: Provision, Dead Eater, Dodge 2 for cheap. Possibly a price reduction of 3-4 That would make him into a unit with a purpose. Magic damage options Negation mage is actually very good right now, as it offers a debuff as well as good range and eradicate. Wylder and Warmage, however, are inefficient. Wylder is just too expensive for a unit with so little hp. He can't contest the fonts and gets outranged by strong ranged units. The stun being easy to predict, and counterable by many protectorate factions doesn't help at all. I feel that -5 to 7 nora would make him a good option in both skeezick and sand bgs (or splash magic dmg into other themes). Skeezick warmage is a mess. The price of blast is 20 nora, and he has 9 base damage. The abillity has 4 rounds cd and he has 9 base damage, and no skeezick alliance on base. Suggested changes: Remove blast from base. Give him magic bomb:1 at base, and skeezick alliance. Remove regen abillity tree#1. Abillity tree#1: Teleport 1, teleport 2, Adaptive: SL Abillity tree#2: Instigate, tempo, resistance: magical 3. That would make him into a supportive magic damage with a medium range and poor stats, but magic bomb reducing defense and instigate giving enrage would make him worthwhile. Alternatively adaptive: SL + tempo might make him a decent ranged option over time. Teleport might increase skeezick mobillity. Trapper, baiter, sauropod, anthromancer and the rest. I felt like these units didn't fit into any other category, so I bunched them up here. Trapper needs detection on base instead of one of the traps. That and a small nora cost reduction might bring him into a viable spot (especially since skeezicks lack detection) Sauropod is silly. 55 hp + trapper might seem like a good deal, but it really isnt when you notice that it has 8 damage and easy target, which reduces his effective hp. Suggestions: Skeezick alliance on base, remove battlemaster (not thematical), remove skeezick rider and easy target. Move throw javelin to base, replace with detection. Collosal into abillity tree:1 ? Anthromancer. Useful abillities, but very slow and expensive. Rend makes no sense on him. Somehow replaced by machinist, which is very good. Suggestions: Either give him + 1 speed (boring) or give him +5 hp and a small cost decrease (1-2). Replace rend:1 with regen:1 in the upgrades. Skeezick baiter is too expensive. Considering ti has below 40 hp and melee, he can't do what he is supposed to do (meat shield with punish/distract). Mostly good in skezick revolt, which got nerfed. -4 - 5 cost. Replace antagonize with punish (antagonize to base, punish to upgrades. Skeezick Ripper is inefficient and has identity crisis. He has bad base stats, and is barely runnable even with quest abillity, as well as having no real role. Quest: Runner is ok, but it takes many rounds to trigger, and only brings his damage to okay levels. Running strike means that even with 7 speed he won't 2x attack. Suggestions: dodge:2 OR evasive:3 on base. Running strike to upgrades, instead of arrow throw. Scrap abillity tree #2 Abillity tree#2: Pounce:2, Leap:3, Assault. Alchemist: remove sandbag immunity:acid, Replace one of acid bomb ranks with a healing potion. He is simply too costly right now, hurting from two overcosted immunities, and overcosted acid bomb. Healing potion might bring just a little healing into the theme, at the price of acid bomb (which is piss poor on such a low dmg champ). General: So much worse then IS heroes that it's not even funny. Suggestions: nerf underpriced heroes, maybe -2 nora. Totem: Recost acid bomb so it isnt so terrible.
Skezz is fine... it has the a high probability of winning a game once you get the revolt safely up with back ups. The only bad thing about skezz is the reliance of high numbers which is why they are vulnerable to early game but makes up for it with high late game power. We got plenty of mobility and utility. As for nora cost-welcome to SL where we have 6 speed champs with mid to high nora costs but we can manage. There is no need to change the skezz as a whole by revamping them, what you are suggesting is a little much. many are fine the way they are.
Don't you dare touch energy thief on Filcher. He is the original energy thief. It also makes invisible, one round forbidden fruit possible. Just equip him, walk past, then he attacks killing the target.
I didn't suggest removing acid bomb, I suggested repricing it - every acid bomb/acid breath champion we have (with the exception of dragoleech) is really costly, and the abillity itself is safe but doesn't do much apart from applying -1 def for 1 round. I agree that a full-on revamp is too much, if only a couple of these suggestions went through I feel like skeezicks would have a more comfortable champion pool to pick from, instead of relying so much on vulnerable crutch runes. Some champions feel incredibly awkward, and could use with some changes - baiter being a bit like a worse darkmarsh instigator, or the mess that is skeezick warmage and scoundrel come to mind.
I would rather see Alchemist lose Immunity Fire than Acid, that way bombs can be centered on him for a pseudo nova.
Yes, but immunity:fire is way more useful then acid otherwise, because of UD wombo comboes, and general influx of fire champs.
I'll post my bg in work when I get home from work. I could beat rare and most exo players pretty consistantly, but lost most of matches vs limited - again pretty consistently with it.
Here's what I'm running at the moment: http://poxbase.com/deck/cj4C4NCw5c4UC41c4Vc35c2ochFc1dciJcauc4+cdXcqis7is5hsjs84s26s73S7urPr37e4e1O Core is half skeezicks, canonneers and resilient skeezick + drummer. Wylder and valdac for magic damage, skithmaw hunter and ravenspeaker for detection (and summons). Grunt/dragonslayer/wrecker are interchangeable, although grunt is the most stat efficient rune in the deck (and the only 7 speed). I'm trying out filcher, and it's hit or miss so far. He can be a great font contester/annoyance with knockout and energy thief, or he can be completely worthless. Terrible first turn draw in most cases. One of the best forbidden fruit targets. Ok for slowing the game pace down which is useful for skeezick. Especially bad on small maps. Better on maps where it can harass fonts 1v1. Can contests fonts forever vs certain champions. The biggest disadvantage is that its hard to play without half skeez + resillient + range. Alchemist is there for spot ap generation, and to soft counter UD fire (and other prevalent fire) shenanigans. He is the only champ which won't die to ember wasp comboes, and those are not easy to counter. Dragonslayer turns out to be extremely efficient, execute fits him perfectly with skeez warcry and global damage buffs, and fester can be a very useful abillity. Also strong vs mirror matches and other dragons. My favourite memory was slapping a rageband on him and killing thirion with quicken and 1 ranged attack. Wrecker looks better on paper than in play. Melee sunder is tasty, but hard to execute because he dies when anything sneezes at him. I tried him with conqueror, but ended up replacing with new skeez alliance. Sword breaker is not good vs good players, and siege is sandbag. Wylder is risky with 39 hp, but has a lot of damage. Needs to be sitting in the back most of the time, but when he comes in he deals damage. Considering replacing him with negation mage, but easy target scares me. Stun is great, but spot cleanse can mess everything up, so it's hard to rely on. Valdac is there for flying (mobillity on certain maps) and his supportive abillities. Again, he seems to be hit or miss, since he is surprisingly easy to one-round. I used to run netter at surge:1 + punish, but now I run him at skeez alliance with surge:2 . Surge 1 didnt translate into a lot of damage after skeez revolt nerf, and surge 2 is great on ranged champions. He gets to 20 damage with 3 other skeezicks out, or 2 + valdac buff. Ensnare is great, but again spot cleanse. Very risky because of small range, but situationally gamewinning. I only deploy totem against stupid stuff like peaks ifrit or melee rush (or when i desperately need stealth reveal), but when I need him he works.
You can easily replace some of these runes: You can replace valdac with vindrax for stronger early game and better chances vs collosal/better mobillity on certain maps. I recommend to add at least 1 flying unit to soft counter aerial supremacy and to have better chances on Bane Shift maps. Heroes work well because collosal is a big issue for this theme. Instead of totem you can include more runes with alt damage type: negation mage, wylder, skeezick torch (he is awesome). Since I run only 1 aoe i use firestorm for biggest effect. You could try having 2 aoes, at least one of them cheaper. You can add in another grunt instead of dragonslayer/wrecker. You can also try out vindictive skeezick, but I find his early game to be lacking too much. Don't use warguard, he is bugged and dies after any damage taken, and even when he won't 5 speed is a problem in skeezick deck with already low mobillity. You can replace netter with a bolter. He has less outright damage,but is much safer with hit and run. I occasionally replace one of the runes with skeezick ripper with dodge/quest: runner, but his stats are bad until several rounds later when he gets +16 hp and +4 damage. Skeezicks already have a weak early game, so this is a problem. You can add in cancel magic. instead of one of the champions. Spells are debatable apart from quicken. I like ferocity because it's hidden, and unlike draconic sacrifice it doesn't show itself when the first champion attacks. The spell works for me because I setup things for a powerturn when using it, even almost dead skeezicks can dish out damage. Best used if you can bait a spell with it for a nora advantage. If you think your font contesting is weak, try out skeezick machinist. With 2 relics and stealth he can be a great contester. The only issue I have with him is that warcry and other ap generation doesn't synergize with his kit. Runes that I rejected: Anthromancer because he is too slow. Quickening because it is too costly and good opponents won't let themselves be powerturned like this. Quicken fills its role nicely, without being costly and with warcry or drum anything that isnt collosal/phys resistant can die to a properly executed powerturn. Draconic benediction for the same reason. Skeezick general because he is too situational. The only time where I would use him is in a stalled game where each opponent keeps deploying more and more champions, but those games are rare. People know that skeezicks are most vulnerable early, and general will not help your early game. Sniper and skeezick revolt got nerfed and skeezick alliance doesnt need 5 units anymore. Sniper is too random and skeezick revolt is useless. Everything else because it's bad.
Seriously? Revolt is that bad? Hmm I was running something like this: http://www.poxbase.com/deck/C4NC4UC41c35C1dc4Xc6_c9iciJcaucdXc7Ls6Ls6wS26S7usYs24s5jS6vrPr2qe4 but I guess I'll give yours a try. About Filcher, I tried him but didn't really like him, maybe if he was cheaper like 40-50 nora I might consider him but right now he seems to do too little, and 60 nora for a non-combat energy-thief(which affects your own units too, I believe) champ is quite a tempo hit.
