had an epic game last night, me playing zombies, them skeletons. lasted 1hr 14mins. there was some back and forth, skeletons spammed, me turning them into zombies until i had tons of them. he had bone circle archmages and bone circle staff and was regularily destroying them. i got upper hand by killing the 2x archmages and tomb lord in one turn, they were sat on dmz. he transfigured shrine and still had a font, it was slowly downhill from there for me despite me having tons more champions (mostly summoned zombies) and trying everything i could. want to know what fkd me... 2x bonewing with dread. combined with the avatars own damage debuff. my ton of zombies were useless sitting at 0-2 dmg with no other way of damaging the enemy. #FixZombies
could surge make them better .... not changing the swarm or anything else .. but instead give one surge
Surge isn't their style, wearing your opponent down with dots, auras and nibbling is how zombies like to do it. They definitely don't need any major changes to the theme, honestly I think all the theme needs is a couple of tweaks here and there to make up for some ill advised decisions. Fleshweaver is a mess and some core runes got hit with minor nerfs but for the most part the theme is pretty much as strong as it always was.
no offence but thats a mostly dumb post. you cant wear down the opponent when the non summoned zombies dont have many dots or auras... auras / dots on a limited number of (deployed) champions wont win you the game or get a kill, i think one champion in my deck has an aura, oh the other is corragh and he is expensive. may have a couple dots, but i never notice them so. honestly there are better champions and upgrades sometimes than dots or auras, or the zombies i use just dont have them. im not going to field just dot and aura champs as the few i have out paid for in nora will not win me the game with dots and auras. nibbling at low dmg sucks, anything can stop you including def. zombies are not a good melee faction, they get over run by most other decks... all they are is useless meat now, slow and can be avoided. im not going to win in a melee fight with an even number of nora spent by me and opponent often. they are not good at ranged obviously even with rotwrapper, they are not currently a range style theme. i often get destroyed by ranged decks. not sure what zombie games you have watched but their playstyle is to get the summons out and yes they used to have auras, latch on, corpse pile zombie had damage shield etc. maybe that is where you get the idea of wearing the opponent down and yes they used to, it just doesnt happen anymore. not with the useless summons, nor with the non summoned champs which dont all have dots or auras like you allude and their damage is well below avg. i would be suprised if you play zombies like you allude to, no idea why your trying to sabotage them if you do, they are not in a good state, tweaks willl not save them. how can you say they arre as strong as they always were? baffles me when they have lost so much. do you even make use of zombie apocalypse? have you ever swarmed a unit and turned it into a zombie? sorry im lost for words. rotwrapper's signature ability got nerfed into the ground, i hardly see a shambling zombie anymore. the opness was takken right out why didnt tthey stop there. i have actually posted in the last year or so in forum stating fleshweaver witch's upgrades are Bane Shift and that she was nerfed too hard so not everything you said is nonsense. if you do play zombies id love to watch you play them, i will keep an eye out for you in the client.
and yours was entirely dumb. I've been playing zombies for years, probably 95% or more of my ranked games are with zombies and if you look through the old fw posts you'll see how much i care about the theme. If you want to discuss it objectively then try and start your argument without being a massive ****.
from the looks of your old pox acc it looks like you could win with anything, i guess you have an alt now.. id ask for it but i cant watch games in the client now. sorry but you lost me at "for the most part the theme is pretty much as strong as it always was" i will never understand this.
I don't understand how you think the theme is so dead, the nerfs hit a few champs hard but the majority of the theme was untouched or buffed in a few cases. I'll address your points you made one by one as I think you are wrong on a lot of them. Of the 9 different champions i run only 2 don't have a dot or aura and one of those two could take Rabid if i wanted it to. Dots and Auras ignore def. No the general playstyle is to deploy as much meat as you can in order to proc ZA and begin wearing the enemy down so you can swarm for summons. Corpse Pile spam might be effective but it's basically cheese and that nerf has been a long time coming. 65 nora for 2 Infected Corpses was and still is very cost efficient. Festering Corpses never had any aura, at least not for a very long time. You might think they suck now but you obviously don't remember when they only had 4 spd so took two entire turns to move one space and attack, you can thank me for that buff to 5 spd btw. Yes and no, certain melee specialists like UD will indeed stomp all over your cheaper units but at the same time I've made short work of Vothsair with nothing but a few cheap mooks. Like most FW factions zombies rarely want to fight one on one, delaying the opponent and weathering the storm until you eventually gain the upper hand through efficieny is often the best choice. Even though Wandering Zombie took a hit in the nora cost from losing its fire vulnerability it's now the perfect counter to stuff like UD and SL because of it. They never were, at one point Dead Fairy was literally all we had, unless you count Fleshweaver and Moragen when she had 4 range. So yes you might get stomped going head to head with melee specialists but squishy ranged units are the perfect prey for zombies and make for easy swarm fodder. They might poke early but when you get a strong engage it's very hard for a range heavy bg to stop the momentum of a full horde. Yes it was nice while it lasted but that ability was pretty dumb and in all honestly I can't remember a single game where a load of 20hp chumps were the deciding factor. The theme managed fine without Rotwrapper so we can do fine with slightly nerfed one, he is still a great support unit. Zombies have come a long way from the mess they were a couple of years ago, they've lost some strengths in places but have also become a much more versatile theme in the process. FW as a whole is very rarely able to win in a straight fight and zombies are no different, maybe the meta has shifted against them but looking at them strength wise i see no reason to panic.
before the latest patch - if i had 5 zombies out and only 3 had the zombie apocalypse ability and i killed an enemy champion with my champion with zombie apocalypse i would stilll proc / get the new swarmed zombie (festering corpse). the zombie apocalypse ability just states you must have 5 zombies, it does not state you must have 5 zombies with zombie apocalypse ability. so this would all be correct and it was what i was seeing happen in my games. after the latest patch - it seems i need 5 zombies with zombie apocalypse ability on the board in order to swarm an enemy on kill. either that or zombie apocalypse is not working correctly, intermittently. was this a stealth nerf to zombies by the devs?
reply to @potatonuts long post to me above... http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/zombies.27760/#post-387437 ok more of my champs than i realized do have dots and auras as upgrades, but the ones i looked at mostly are on the same upgrade as zombie apocalypse which i usually always take. this is NOT a bad thing, i like that but means im not getting dots and auras because my playstyle is to swarm as many zombies as i can. i fully understand how dots (rabid) and disease auras nibble away at the enemy and ignore def, i just dont run them since (see above) and its not my play or deck style, i find there are better upgrades to be had. when i said def can stop zombies i meant their low base damage, which is a problem if all you have is that and no dots or auras. do the swarmed festering corpse has rabid now? idk and i should, i thought they did, my memory sucks. i know they are very difficult to position and move for an attack due lumbering and slow speed etc, they (swarmed festering corpses) make little impact on my games other than being meat that is occasionally aimed at, they also block the enemy off well. oh they do help me to kill relics. i do the same when i can in procing zombie apocalypse, it can be tough to get 5 out, really depends on the game. corpse pile zombies did get nerfed with no upgrades, they are not that good now apart from plauging. when i first started using zombies and corpse pile i used 2x with 2x masons towers and deployed to a far away font, but the prevailance of anti relics including large aoe anti relics made this strategy useless and often too expensive and too big a loss of momentum deploying decent champs to the front lines. my enemy in just about every game destroyed my masons towers and corpse piles easily.. so i had to quit that method, i dropped the masons towers and ran only 2x corpse pile and they are expensive. my new method was to use them as a way to get a kill via the infected zombies upgrade disease aura + the corpse piles disease aura, it was around 10 damage and could help get a kill when placed at the right time and place, hoping the zombie deployed to the right square. now i only run 1x corpse pile, because the infected zombies lost their aura, its harder to kill a champ on deploy now, its expensive for what you get. AND most of all using this later method because i had to stop using masons spire/tower? i only ever get one infected zombie deployed out of the corpse pile, its a waste. the enemy always destroys the corpse pile affter i deploy it and before a 2nd infected zombie spawns, i cant recall the last time i got 2x infected zombies out of one corpse pile it was soo long ago. i suppose i could deploy to my shrine area to get 2 out but the disease aura on corpse pile is then useless, it would take time to get to the front and negates the huge advantage of instant meat and attacking unit on the front lines, i used to use it to bolster a weak situation on the front lines often to stop losing a font as the relic contested. so your argument of 65 nora for 2 infected zombies is moot, you usuallly only get one. ive been playing maybe 2 years and in that time when i started using zombies and for a long while the swarmed festering corpses used to have both upgrades on creation. upgrades 1 and 2.. disease aura 2 and latch on, surely u must remember them having latch on at least????? the reason they had latch on and why it was so effective was because they also had disease aura 2. in fact you can still see disease aura 2 and latch on in the two upgrade paths, i am not imagining this! thank you for giving zombies 5 speed and yes i would have complained if they still had 4, i cant recall that time.. doesnt mean you should rail against zombies now though in this discussion. i used the latch on and disease aura extensively on the swarmed festering corpses and they were very effective in numbers, it was a valid method of damaging the enemy and it just worked. if you can ever acknowledge the upgrades were taken away from the swarmed festering corpses, then you should acknowledge that zombies have lost a LOT, incl the infected corpses from corpse pile upgrades, regardless how the buffs and nerfs effected the other zombie champions which i have no knowledge of. most factions / themes have better melee units than fw zombies, even kf has some suprisingly strong melee. i see better mellee vs me higher damage better attack abilities, better defence etc, zombies and fw are not a great mellee faction imo, its far from just ud that stomps all over us, most do. 1v1 zombies suck im glad you admit that, i cant compare our playstyles im not sure how you play.. nor would i say there is only one way to play zombies. i hate long games, i go for a win in mid game and i would rather rush than get stuck in a long game or standoff situation. wandering zombie is an epic fw unit but most people dont stand there and hit it with physical damage and have plenty of alt damage to take it down, i still use him to get in the font hoping his respawned after death self will get stuck in the font and adds meat and contestion, but often he just wanders off. glad you admit zombie range is not that great and in few numbers, dead fairry is cool actually but expensive and very squishy, other zombie ranged only has 5 range and there are better in otheer factions incl bettter damage and attacking abillities, the good thing is zombie rotwrappers zombie apocalypse swarm from range that really helps. i strongly disagree witth you saying enemy range are the perfect squishy target for zombies, they arre tooo slow, lumbering etc and will not easily get past the front line enemy melee to get at the ranged, zombie ranged helps now but wont usually win in a ranged vs ranged situation. i get destroyed by range heavy bgs for already stated reasons, not being able to catch the enemy easily and the tactic of spacing your ranged apart so one or more can easiy hit wen the other is engaged. the momengtum of the zombie full hoarrd is slowness defined. im not complaining about the rotrapper nerf it was needed and yes zombies managed without her before. i moaned at the devs nerfing the zombie theme because of her, they didnt stop at just nerfing rotwrapper when people complained zombies were op - think the nerfs to the swarms, festerings and infecteds, if nothing else that was a major thing.. i do remember some other nerfs to standard zombie champs like to dead fairy, fleshweaver witch and others but i cant recall how much that effected my games.. i do know that i quit playing zombies and made other decks with the advent of one patch because my zombie deck / champions at the time got nerfed hard. no idea what patch that was or if that was reveresed in later patches. shambling zombies could move fast and those 20hp champions were the deciding factor in a lot of games because there was so many before rotrapper nerf. with the adition of champs to the zombie theme yes they have come a long way. honestly their abilities after the big consolidation of abilities by the devs are all very similar something i dont see as a good thing, id like more uniqueness and exceptional abillities over repetativeness despite understanding thats just some peopl,es playstyle. other themes get much more ability variation and greatness. i am glad you acknowledge zombies and fw in general usually dont win a straight fight, i would say that applies to almost all other factions / themes. you are a good player and could win with decks most people cant, just because you can doesnt mean the majority can. i read elsewhere somehwere on the forum that zombies were tier 1, i have to LOL they are so below tier 1, its tough out there for them. there are bettter themes in fw than zombies, including imo worms, skeletons, meta, spirits. mayybe not lich / vappyres. other themes and splits arre better in other factions too. i dont see anyone other than me in games playing zombies and it has been that way for a while (idk how long exactly), they are not popular = they are not good? they are not op or the latest cheese / trick deck imo so people dont play them. in mw24's time here over a year+ ago when he played zombies a lot they were good, this was before the nerfs. they were popular back then, people played them lots more than the zero ive seen since i and i guess others stopped playing them. i realize you are an exception to the rule potatonuts. note: i know the festering corpses created by the infected zombies do have upgrades, including death nova, which is an upgrade.. i have no idea about how previosuly disease aura and latch on were the two selected upgrades when swarming a festering corpse via zombie apocalypse but they were. i guess things change. i note festering corpses come with rabid on base (idk if that was always the way) and so yes they have some limited potential to nibble away at the enemy still if they can damage them. if you have 6 champs out with dots (rabid) there is no real benefit gained over having just one out with a dot (rabid), as you know only one dot albeit the highest applies to the same enemy champion. so selecting dots as upgrades en mass is not a great strategy, especially and more so because your swarms have it.
a draw back to zombies when your vs fw is the unholy tomb generating all that nora from your champions and summons. i lost a game where the enemy shrine was uprooted, mine wasnt and we both had 1 font. i had a massive lead in total champion numbers summoned and not... their darn unholy tomb kept them easily in the game, deploying champions and they went on to win.
would be nice if zombies automatically gained zombie apocalypse on their base, like it was their racial and similar to other races having something. then make zombie apocalypse not count towards the max number of abilities a zombie can have on the card, whatever that is - it would essentially be an extra ability they can have.
