Last attempt at saving UD

yes, having more web terrain access and making it give some buff would be swell along with boost to provide them a bit more survivability.

 

could you change web itself to have a second effect of giving+1 speed to arthropods, instead of making an ability that gives speed when occupying web

 

That's just the easiest way and the first thing that comes to mind. Of course, we could think of a more creative way to ensure that spiders have solid survivability.

 

Would have to defer to regular spider players on any other unit ability placement. I was also assuming adding 1-3 abilities would be alot more palatable than more radical ideas. Thanks for explaining the no on Boost, I was just thinking that maybe 5hp across the board would solve the entire efficiency observation, but I guess squishy spiders is sorta thematic.

Sounds potentially interesting, but I'd have to defer again. In thinking about Arachnablade it makes me think of Propogate on Klzik. Klzik hasn't come up in this thread yet, but I'd be curious how Propogate being changed to the Arachnoblade ability would work on her.

Only 4 spiders have Weave Web options. Worth noting is that another 9 arthropods (6 which I'd call spiders) in UD have Entangle though as options if I count right (technically 10, one of the weave web units also has entangle option). Interesting - the two abilities make for a (fitting) pseudo-theme option, which sorta makes sense, but I don't really recall seeing spider decks heavily focus on movement restriction with these two options (perhaps too limited, inefficient, or too easy to ignore for opponents?).

Neat idea using web mentioned by macca - I've always really enjoyed the dynamics of creep spread in starcraft, and always felt like Pox's terrain decks never really captured that dynamic (I think terrain gens & gen-on-deploy summarize how it's different). UD sorta has lava as a terrain theme, but I'm not sure I'd quite consider it the same as other terrain gen themes in other factions (water, ice/snow, ooze, sand), so with that being said, perhaps UD has room for spiders to go all webby.

If web could grant stats that would be interesting. Shame web isn't a normal terrain - I'm concerned that the Web terrain language says "Champions entering this space" - might preclude parking there and getting the benefit (ie you'd have to move to a web space again to get benefit), but still could be an interesting dynamic even then.

Radical change idea - Creep&Crawl - remove Multi & Mountaineer, and use it as a web terrain interaction instead of Arthropod. Web changes = +1 speed and/or ready (depends how sitting on a web works, net 1ap/turn seems good though), mountaineer (guess you could leave in C&C if you wanted), chasmwalker maybe - for 2 turns to units with Creep&Crawl. Spot web from a spell too seems important, luckily there is a candidate - perhaps the spell Mass Web deletes "and is Ensnared for 1 turn" and inserts Weave Web ability language. Weave Web ability itself should probably be easier to use & more common - to 1AP (-2) & (+grounded for 2 turns depending on Entangle staying or not on other spiders)? There's 11 potential candidates for more Weave Web then (4 UD spiders with no Entangle or Weave, 5 UD spiders+Tree Spider with Entangle only, and spiderling summons). Spiders would have less outright dmg (-multi), still be squishy, but become more of a dynamic terrain creep deck.

 

I just want to say that it wasn't long ago that we were talking about how OP the spider racial is.

 

Spiders are a perfectly good deck in a vacuum, but they are countered hard by things that people put in their deck to soft-counter other decks because they rely so much on spiderlings.

The last major patch had a massive buff to the frenzy spell and a few buffs to a bunch of spiders, but the deck was still pretty good before those buffs. The problem is/was that other, actual top decks also had a substantial mass garbage summons component (skeletons, voil, spirits in particular) and other competitive decks add techs to compete against them. Dreamcrusher was an amazing champ in general (so not really a tech choice) that also happened to wipe out all spiderlings/eggs on the map on deploy, and that champ's presence singlehandedly suppressed spiders' viability for a long time. Even without dreamcrusher, we currently see swarm/anti-summon as a common utility simply for dealing with skeletons/spirit of the mountain/strig warlock. Those measures are only partially effective against the big culprits (SoTM's summons regenerate infinitely, FW can nullify swarms with BCS/BCA, and swarm decks can continue to swarm other champs after the first few get ritualed) but devastating to spiders. When you remove spiderlings from spiders, it's a bunch of sub-70n melee champions with discounted multiattack and mobility (except on IS pass). They can still win against decks that don't tech in meta counters, but they're going to be hard pressed to do it against the real "top" decks until the meta swings in a different direction and people stop running swarm/summon counters.

 

sounds OP

 

isnt that pretty much carrionlings again?

 

I'm afraid that won't do. A theme shouldn't crutch on one situationally powerful combo -- it should have a healthy thematical interaction with all units (one way or another), it shouldn't be a hit-or-miss kind of thing, which it really is with the anti-summon abillities that have been introduced not so long ago that have indirectly hit spiders. And fyi, I never really seriously played PtN -- I always prefered playing 'normal' spiders, but that was back when they were on the same level of strength as a PtN deck. Now though, since the strong spiders (Void, Phase, Soulcrawler) are kinda outdated or have been directly or indirectly nerfed, it's impossible to play a solid bg without relying on a hit-or-miss combo that is lame anyway.
So to sum it up -- Spiders aren't just about spiderlings. Oh and Creep and Crawl is probably broken.
Btw, I just got a eureka in my head: should summons even benefit from Boost? Like, isn't that the whole problem with them?

 

My point wasn't actually that spiders need buffs, it was that spiders' actual performance tends to be obscured by the meta context more than other decks.