Yes, FW as a whole was hard for me to get into since I had been pretty entrenched in IS, KF, and UD. It was a bummer because I like the spirit, vampyre, and zombie themes. In general, FW runes are pretty weak, with most of the exceptions being in exo+ range. From an outsider's perspective, FW seemed to be hit the hardest by the mass nerfs.
Agreed 100%. If it weren't for my Witch/Pain Curse bg, My champs really wouldn't be able to stand up to the high dmg, high spd, high def IS, ST, KF, and FS champs. Even UD and SL would tear me apart. I've surprisingly done very very well with my Witch bg. I may post it in a thread.
Yeah I don't see EL being worth the 94+ nora at all. You'll rarely get the 2nd EL from phylactry unless you play some serious defense to turtle it in. I would go for Rip Witch or Whisper Ghast instead. Both hit like freight trains at 5-6 range. They are great champions and much much cheaper.
Which is a double-whammy because not only does it make our runes less efficient, it also extends their CDs (making our bonus less useful).
I keep thinking that making some way to get more phylacteries for all the liches would make a great theme...
Even just a relic that you could deploy, which as long as you had a phylactery bound champ, would cause them to be reborn.
Giving most/all Liches phylacteries could be interesting. I mean, at the moment, it's their only unique mechanic... but only 2 of them have it.
The way I see it is this: Zombies are (generally) weak, and therefore require a good amount of strategy and time spent thinking about what to do. The fact that they ALL had ZA meant that all you had to worry about was getting to your opponent and killing them, which was hard enough for Zombies. Now you also have to worry about positioning, which units you include, basically everything else tacked on for no good reason. Zombie Plague is good, but is better if only on a few units. Otherwise I can easily imagine them being VERY overpowered. Due to the fact that all you have to do is poke the enemy with a weak zombie, then finish them with an uber ranged unit (like Rip Witch for example). They would be very splashable, but would be op. I believe it would be best to just give them all the ZA they had before, and bring most of the non-theme undead champs into the theme for ease of use.
I'm happy you guys agree. I actually came up with a rune idea for it, maybe I'll post it in the near future.
