Their are so many spirits I'm kinda lost where to start, I thought about a dmz bf with a lot of relocate, then a damage reduction bg, then a surge bg, arroyo focused bg, soultap bg, their are so many spirits that I ended up making like 6 different spirit bgs and don't like any of them. Any direction would be wonderful. Zombies and skeletons and liches I can make something competitive but spirits just go in so many directions.
I think the Surge package is pretty good. Rush out an early Portal and then lean into its benefits -- jamming all the Surge champs onto the field and drop Whispers for tempo. Unfortunately it's weak to Dark Favor, Disbelief, and Bad Blood, all of which are somewhat common. Deck can do some incredible stuff though against your usual burly bug-bears like ST and SL.
Only 13 champs, do you always have enough deploys ? Also why the inkblight, just for cc or for her dmz ? Lich magistrate with 74 or 75 nora cost is rough with 7 base damage and 45 health, no defensive abilities.
I looked into that as well, as you stated in my thread about vamps, stealth is too easily hard countered.
I was joking Ethereal nerf kinda killed Stealth spirits. I think Arroyo/Surge is the only really viable spirit bg at the moment, Soultap stuff just doesn't feel like a win condition.
Yeah, definitely have enough deploys. Plenty of resources do/should go to Portal and Whispers, anyway. Inkblight was there for DMZ for Shadestrikers before I switched to Vuln. I think it's still a good include for Shroud, and other incidental synergies. I think Lich Magistrate is incredible. It has healing, creates value and tempo, and the low base damage is quickly mitigated by even a single Portal. RNG 5 surge, man.
- How do you tolerate the DMZ terrain wonkiness. Like growing under champs but not counting until turn resolves or champ moves. Obv its more gamebreaking for things like domain:dmz but its made so many of my decks unplayable.
Doesn't affect Surge spirits, so it's not a problem for me. I've never really encountered the problem, really -- I never run anything with Domain and don't generate a lot of DMZ besides.
- Yeah I can see that, I just find it hard to not try and bundle certain things together so if Im generating DMZ I try to maximize it. Domain, hidden, some spell mechanics don't function properly do to how dmz terrain resolves. I've lost game due to the dmz "growing" under a globe and not being collected or not triggering hidden/domain do to having to "move" on it to work
Now I gotta get two czars dammit. Why no lerpers by the way ? 67 nora for 11 damage a dot and shadow spawn + another 3 damage from visions and flying.
Then why were you arguing so long that spirits were the stealth theme , I really like soul tap if spirits had more champs with it.
Well they used to have a pretty viable setup with Ethereal champ spam and Utterdark Spectre, it's pretty weak these days but I like to think it could be revived in the future. I think they have enough champs with Soultap but it just doesn't feel strong enough to build a deck around. I'm thinking some kind of spell/relic support is what it needs.
Soultap has dis-synergy with itself. There are absolutely enough Soultap units to make a full deck of them, but that doesn't mean you want to.
I don't think they need spells to make it work a relic would be nice though or an equip, however giving out soul channeling on a couple more champs so they can last longer than a turn would be nice. Most champs with soul tap can be one rounded fairly easily.
I can't pinpoint why the theme itself doesn't work, it seems like it has most of the things it would need to succeed but it just doesn't.
I mean, Soultap is a theme you can run, but it really can't be functional without a lot of incidental abilities, and Hunter is totally insufficient. Soultap costs 7 nora, partly because you can expect it to pay for itself and then some -- if you don't have a bunch of champions overlapping their attacks on the same champion. A Soultap "theme" is built around a non-stacking, long-duration, expensive DoT, and that is inherently going to hurt itself. There are few ways to generate additional damage now that Hunter is only a +2 (and you have to go out-of-faction for Soulwrack). A Soultap theme doesn't make for a functional deck because it has fundamental mechanical problems and nothing grossly powerful enough to offset those problems. Basically, I think that the best way to use Soultap is on a smattering of ranged champions to get triggers that you can then let simmer. Also worth noting that Soultap Feedback is currently bugged and applying 10-turn duration Taps, but I'd be careful about abusing this. I feel a bit iffy playing Leviathan with the bug currently unfixed.
- Soultap only works imo, split with FS with the psychic synergy. Chillshard, psychic agony, psychic anguish, soulhunter, soulchanneling etc. Regular soutap doesn't work because it's just a facilitator ...it doesn't finish anyone off. It either helps with attrition but you need more attrition (tome/tomb/ping/dots) or its just nora gen wonky-ness.
Very good nora gen wonky-ness, I want to say. Took a second look at the related abilities after @Redderrick mentioned it, and was impressed with how much Soultap could do on some champions. Arroyo Eye, for instance, recoups a large percentage of its cost any time it lands a Soultap tag; Fadewhisp, likewise, doesn't cost near as much as its listed cost when you can expect 10+ nora back from its Soultap triggers. I am not so sold on Soul Channeling as an ability yet.
Maybe the problem lies in soul tap being so expensive ? A cost reduction to 3 or 4Nora cost for soultap would make most soultap runes more than playable. My biggest problem with most champs with the soul abilities is they are just so dang squishy. Didn't notice soultap feedback was applying 10 turn dots, might be because the old version was 10 turns. Leviathan I barely deploy anyways, he's too big and doesn't even work well as a meat shield.
