Also, I, too, liked them better as Mutants. There was no need to make a specific race for them, IMO. Also, I don't think their "main champs" are any worse than they used to be, relatively speaking (keeping in mind DOG revamp nerfed everything). I think in many cases they are actually better as several of them have gotten buffs since the revamp. As for "requirement to have Lords around" is kind of a weird complaint, given that you initially said you liked the "kill requirement" in the "old" style - but perhaps I am misunderstanding.
So let's look at some history: Creep (original?) When this unit is deployed from the runedock at a Shrine, your Shrine Deployment Zone expands by 1 squares. When this unit is destroyed, your Shrine Deployment Zone you control is reduced by 1 square. This effect does not increase the size of the Shrine bonus and cannot decrease the Shrine Deployment Zone below 3. I am pretty sure originally it was something like this. I designed it originally, and it really didn't work. Later, Creep Master was added because Creep players found that they were unable to advance the DMZ - which was the entire point of the theme: Creep Master When this champion destroys an opposing champion with a basic attack, your shrine deployment zone increases by 1. This effect does not increase the size of the Shrine bonus. Pre-Revamp Version: Creep When this unit is deployed from the runedock at a Shrine or when this unit destroys an opposing champion with a basic attack, your Shrine Deployment Zone expands by 1 squares. When a unit without this ability is deployed or this unit is destroyed, your Shrine Deployment Zone you control is reduced by 1 square. This effect does not increase the size of the Shrine bonus and cannot decrease the Shrine Deployment Zone below 3. The pre-revamp version according to Poxbase Archive ALSO had the kill clause, which I believe is what LoganMkv was referencing. EDIT: It seems I was wrong here, the on kill was added to the Creep ability first, then doubled up via Creep Master. After the DOG revamp, this got changed to key off Race: Arthropod and Worm instead and Creep Master was also changed: Worm Lord Name Change: Worm Lord(was Creep Master) Description: All friendly Worms and Arthropods that move within your deployment zone have Siege and +2 def. Units deployed in this zone gain the benefit at the end of the turn. Necrosis Name Change: Necrosis(was Creep) Description: When this unit is deployed from the runedock at a Shrine or when this unit destroys an opposing champion with a basic attack, your shrine's Deployment Zone expands by 1. When this unit is destroyed, or a unit without race Arthropod or Worm is deployed, your shrine's Deployment Zone is reduced by 1. This effect does not increase the size of the Shrine bonus and cannot decrease the shrine's Deployment Zone below 3. This brought Worms to what was considered to be a pretty weird state, as the Worm Lord ability and the racial seemed to trying to do very different things. That said, it does have what LoganMkv was referring to in regards to the kill aspect that he liked. ~ The current Worm Lord and Necrosis are: Worm Lord: This champion has <ability value=2526>Necrosis</ability>. When a real enemy champion is destroyed by a champion with Race: Worm or Necrosis within 5 spaces, your shrine's <mechanic value=deployment_zone>Deployment Zone</mechanic> expands by 1. Necrosis: When this champion is deployed, your shrine's <mechanic value=deployment_zone>Deployment Zone</mechanic> expands by 1. When this champion is destroyed outside of your <mechanic value=deployment_zone>Deployment Zone</mechanic>, your shrine's <mechanic value=deployment_zone>Deployment Zone</mechanic> decreases by 1. The current iteration finally brought Worms to a state where they could actually maintain the SDZ growth and utilize it as for forward deploys rather than for a few AP now and then. The change to Worm Lord from a "kill with this champion" ability to a proximity trigger meant that it was much less annoying to play since you weren't forced to last hit with one of 2 champions in most situations. This iteration also simplified the racial, but did open the door to non-Worms to be mixed into theme, keeping in mind that most themes do not outright block the usage of non-theme runes. However, as noted, it did mean that stuff like Bile Zombie, in combination with the expanded SDZ, is largely what people think of when they see the theme.
Regular necrosis provided +1 from any champ/summon/relic kill, creepmaster provided +2 - so it wasn't necessary, while it was possible sometimes to get significant increase from a single necrohex without other creeps at all. Votaev/RA/arctic gift from midfont, necrohexing boosters/sermoners, soulbleeder/snogvie with improved range, creep-heavy bleed, etc - all that were interesting and distinctive playstyles for me, while current one is just another single-trick ff attrition.
There was a period where the ability was something like this: "When you deploy this champ, +1 SDZ. When this champ dies, -1 SDZ. When this champ kills something, +1 SDZ." No Worm Lord existed. What this meant was that, as a theme, worms were trash, but you could just splash Dusk Creeper into decks and it effectively had "Swarm: +1 SDZ." No thematic cohesion, quite broken outside of worms.
Yea, looking at the history that does appear to be the case that at one time the clause was wrapped into Necrosis. I thought it was the case that Worm Lord came first, but perhaps it's the other way around. Now that you mention the splashing though, that does ring a bell as a problem. Having the clause wrapped into Necrosis meant you could technically use any Worm in any deck without consequence and have a Swarm: SDZ champ as you said - which is probably why it got split off into Worm Lord.
We'd all like to pretend the Gedden era never happened. I'm seeing 4 versions in the archive: Aug 18 2014 Necrosis Name Change: Necrosis(was Creep) Description: When this unit is deployed from the runedock at a Shrine or when this unit destroys an opposing champion with a basic attack, your shrine's Deployment Zone expands by 1. When this unit is destroyed, or a unit without race Arthropod or Worm is deployed, your shrine's Deployment Zone is reduced by 1. This effect does not increase the size of the Shrine bonus and cannot decrease the shrine's Deployment Zone below 3. Original (pre-DOG), bad version: evaluating the clauses individually there is a net-neutral (on-deploy +1/on-death -1) clause and a negative clause (non-worm -1). A terrible package. e: this one has the on-kill clause as well, so is sort of neutral Nov 13 2014 Necrosis Description: When this unit is deployed from the runedock or when this unit destroys an opposing unity with a basic attack, your shrine's Deployment Zone expands by 1. When unit without race Arthropod or Worm is deployed, your shrine's Deployment Zone is reduced by 1. This effect does not increase the size of the Shrine bonus and cannot decrease the shrine's Deployment Zone below 3. Evaluating the clauses individually there is a positive (on-deploy +1) clause, a positive clause (on-kill +1) and a negative clause (non-worm -1). Looks like a strong package to me, it would be interesting to see what the reaction was to this. May 11 2015 Necrosis Description: When this unit is deployed from the runedock or when this unit destroys an opposing unit with a basic attack, your shrine's Deployment Zone expands by 1. When this unit is destroyed, your shrine's Deployment Zone is reduced by 1. This effect does not increase the size of the Shrine bonus and cannot decrease the shrine's Deployment Zone below 3. Net-neutral clause, positive clause, non-worm clause has been removed. The strongest version of the racial. Aug 19, 2015 Necrosis Description: When this champion is deployed, your shrine's Deployment Zone expands by 1. When this champion is destroyed outside of your Deployment Zone, your shrine's Deployment Zone decreases by 1 May 11 version has been rolled back slightly. Net-positive clause (guaranteed on-deploy, not-guaranteed on-death). Secondary positive clause has been moved into worm lord/creeping harvest abilities, champ-dependent but procs on non-basic attacks now.
It was a terrible time to play a worms deck -- there was literally no reason to run it as a racial theme. That said, it was a blast along with a bunch of other FW stuff, but I'm not sure that is/was really a design direction that anyone at DOG (or even the players, whatever they're worth) wanted.
@LoganMkv seems to disagree and had fun with it, but it does sound like he was playing it in very "mixed" decks and not as a theme? A lot of what he said also keyed of them being Mutants, rather than having to do with Necrosis itself. For example, using Dusk Creeper to give +RNG to Mutants, for example, which really doesn't have much to do with Necrosis (if they had Mutant back they'd literally work that way again). Perhaps he can clarify/counter.
I made some edits which hopefully better reflects the timeline. In either case, there were certainly problems with many iterations of this ability. Right now, the ability is the cleanest and most straight forward - and of all the variants it actually ensures the player gets a benefit. I can certainly see what @LoganMkv is talking about in regards to though if he's referencing the specific window of when Necrosis had the on-kill clause built in AND Worm Lord wasn't around or didn't have the current clause. And the "needing Lords" around makes more sense now as well (though I think need is a strong word there, as Necrosis itself is a net positive now). But as kalasle noted, that variant also had the problem of basically being Swarm: DMZ and actually made Worms play better in mixed than in theme - as you get the benefits of expanding SDZ without the drawback of Worms decreasing it on death - which is around the time when I came back I think, and when I "fixed" Ferren and Worms.
Your commentary on those doesn't look quite right, davre: There is also a positive clause: "or when this unit destroys an opposing champion with a basic attack," so it came out to a wash, really. The problems here were that a) most worm champions were trash or didn't even have a basic attack and b) that worms had no reasonable way to leverage an expanded deployment zone outside of some niche circumstances. +SDZ was expensive and tricky enough that Bile (which I am not sure had even yet been discovered) came at serious cost. Also note the shrine-only deployment clause. The reaction was that worms had a bunch of non-interactive growth (they did), and people thought that it was a bad thing. It certainly went well with old BZ, which was in use at the time, and did something like 25-30 damage a pop for about 45 nora. BZ came with a price of SDZ, but considering that worms' bread and butter champs were cheap and acceptable, including Rotmaw, they could get fair growth and BZ was the only thing that would decrease it. The main thing that people disliked was how free all the SDZ growth was -- worms could play incredibly aggressively with Blood Fiend and kill spells and still get all their growth without worry. Also thematically non-interactive. The source of permanent growth was only champion kills, and because of how attack ordering can be done in this game, Necrosis (like Swarm is now) was fairly easy to trigger on any kill, so long as a ranged worm participated. Because Dusk Creeper still had its old stealth/globe deal going on, most every kill could involve a final tag from Dusk. Running additional worms did nothing.
Anyway, we've had this version for awhile, and while I am generally reluctant to change things over and over, this is kind of a pet theme of mine (I came up with this whole thing originally) so if there's a way to get it right, I'd like to do that, and I am open to discussing it. But as @kalasle alluded to, this theme is not one that is easily understood because of the interplay between things, and there are actually a lot of quirks about it which made the old variants not viable in one way or another as a theme. When this was discussed last time, there were numerous ideas about delayed growth, delayed decrease, over time increase, but in many cases, the actual impact was unclear and it actually largely just made the ability really complex without allowing players to really understand what was happening. Part of the impetus for the current iteration is that you can actually read the ability and understand what is going to happen and you also understand what the theme is trying to say "We slowly expand our area and try not to overextend out of it unless necessary."
Sdz was decreasing. If you got 3 kills then deployed 3 noncreep champs - you were back to zero. And now if you eat 3 globes with putrid without even killing anything - you have permanent +3. Creeps were splashable, but if you wanted to benefit from midfont deploy you had to run quite a lot of them. And now you either run fullcreeps, or have a minor permanent bonus, but nothing in between.
I was talking about the version where the Worm clause had been removed. See below commentary: ~ Based on what you are saying, the version you liked was actually the version I had in there before I left and before DOG Revamp (since post Revamp they all became Worms instead of Mutants, which removed much of the splashability probably): When this unit is deployed from the runedock at a Shrine or when this unit destroys an opposing champion with a basic attack, your Shrine Deployment Zone expands by 1 squares. When a unit without this ability is deployed or this unit is destroyed, your Shrine Deployment Zone you control is reduced by 1 square. This effect does not increase the size of the Shrine bonus and cannot decrease the Shrine Deployment Zone below 3. Is that correct? @kalasle, what would your assessment with that OLD version (it could also reference Race: Mutant in theory) in today's Worm's be?
You have got to be joking. Of all the Jeff threads to take seriously this one is the craziest. For bile zombie to be effective you have to let the enemy set up big time. That also generally means if they do play worms, they have a bunch of fairly weak champs running around. And most importantly, don't group all your units if you don't want them aoed
If you consider it purely as a cost to effect ratio, the bile zombie is a sub 40 nora nuke for 15 DMG and Blinded 2 and Scoured 2, which is extremely strong. Plus it can be used as a roadblock in certain situations rather than detonated immediately (the HP/Cost ratio is pretty good). The drawback is, of course, that the range is not spell range like spell AEs are, which is mitigated with the current Worms racial - thus the major issue, to my mind, is when it used in Worms, and not outside of it.
I know that Worms often play with several "out of theme" runes right now to fill certain gaps in their line up - so that'd be impacted. Though in theory some of those would be made viable if Necrosis referenced Mutants and Worms were Mutants again too.
