Trust me on this. It is much harder to deal with than it looks on paper. The rune is excessively cost efficient. As Burn, and I have stated before. 1 of 2 things needs to happen. 1 A massive cost hike. 2 A change in the deployment. Either the removal of ghost, or by the addition of a detrimental, or limiting effect to the champ itself.
Lesson number one, Im generally right. Lesson number two, I like to put my messages in a funny way to make them more memorable. Also for my own amusement. This means you have to turn on your brain and think when I post silly stuff. Class dismissed.
I was gonna post some other stupid and/or inane meme but I saw this and found it to be quite amusing. So...
What exactly needs dealing with? It's a ghost with Depression, Latch On, and Sonic Aura 3. None of those abilities are particularly problematic, even if you can't get rid of them. Just ignore the damn thing and move on with your game, it's that simple. Funny enough, this spell was barely even talked about before the revamp, but all of a sudden it's a huge priority. SL has always had a problem dealing with Incorporeal, and FW in general, this isn't new. You say "trust me" but all I see is a bunch of nerf herders with no valid data to back up their complaints.
I think rune manager might be broken. Whenever I try to create a FW ff or split BG I can only choose 28 runes, 2 are auto taken by haunting grope. Jazz, the spell is overefficient. I am a FW player most of the times and it is quite clear. A semi-invulnerable champ that can get globes, deal damage, cc. They can't contest but they can roadblock, on the right BG they are able to form a ghost stealthed minefield. Yes, they are vulnerable to magic, but most times my magic units will get shanked, focus fired, domichasm etc. so the ghost lands may prevail. After that, all that remains is to see the opponent slowly wearing me down with sonic damage AoE.
All I can give you is my experience in fighting it. As can everyone else. On paper it looks fine, and theoretically you can ignore. However it turns out to cause a bigger disturbance than it looks. Leogtratz kinda summed it up.
Depression is a double-edged sword and works vs. both players. Latch On is poor CC, and actually helps the opponent more than hinders them, as they can simply drag the ghost away from their main forces and leave it stranded with 3 speed. All it takes is one turn's worth of AP to do so, while you must spend 2 or 3 rounds moving it back into position. This is a bit map-dependent, but it usually works. And their roadblocking ability is quite minimal, since Incorporeal units do not engage, so you can simply move around them. And as before, regarding the Sonic Aura point, why single out Haunting Grip? As I recall, there is a spell in IS called Burning Crusade which gives Fire Aura 3 and Brand, while costing only 30 nora (down to 20 nora if you target a Paladin). But do people complain about that spell, even though it works on champions of a much larger threat than Haunting Spirit? If they do, I've yet to see where. You've also got Grant: Aura, which does exactly the same thing but again, can be used on champions possessing a much higher threat value than Haunting Spirit. If you guys really want to nerf the spell, I couldn't care less. I haven't run it since the revamp, and before that I'd only 1x it in full Spirit decks for flavor purposes. It's always been a rather bottom-of-the-barrel rune to me, but these random nerf calls with no empirical support to back them up are why the greens have such a hard time with balance. The spell is fine; what really needs to change is the availability of magic damage (which never seemed to be a problem pre-revamp, where few if any complaints were heard about Haunting Grip). Splash some magic damage around to all the factions and the problem will be solved.
Oh goodie, a single sample game where one opponent (me) vastly outskill's the other (you). Hardly worth the time, and it would prove nothing.
Talk is cheap. I am completely serious. Lets have a match. Feel free to "out skill" me, but I must remind you that dropping 2 haunting spirits and watching your champs wither away requires little to no skill at all.
