I'm returning to play after a ~2 year break. Since a lot of new runes came out and there have been all of the buffs/nerfs I've missed, my BG is a little outdated. Here it is: The gameplay revolves around knockbacking/dragging in poison clouds, and a lot of control and movement denial. I'd love to hear recommendations as to what in your opinion I should change in my BG.
Consider including Augur of the Deep and Privateer Captain due to Slam. Swamp Wisps were reworked recently, but it is still worth a include. You might also want to consider Revolting Fentek with poison charge, which is the best way to buff your poison knock back damage. Mindwarp is not worth running anymore because hallucinogenic got nerfed.
i wouldnt run poison/knockback. too expensive for some big drawbacks. i disagree with 4NIK8 but thts becuase i greatly dislike the reworked swamp wisp.
Well for the bg he's playing, it's not that bad. Btw I would also remove soak the earth and flood. Consider this like Monsoon, erode (relic removal), pygmy hippo stampede (spot removal) and hungry mire (great with knock back). Since your running minelayers, adding a Calm as Raging Tides could be interesting due to dragging attack to combo triggering traps and knocking into Poison Clouds.
So this is what I have now. After a few games it is working much better, mainly because the BG is now more knockback oriented rather than poison (great combo with Whirlpool). Which is good, since I've noticed the vulnerability from The Foulest Mushroom got nerfed and it's not longer AOE. Calm as Raging Tides could be a replacement for lily, I'll test it out. Also, the Poison Elementals feel weak now that I have Swamp Spirits, because the spirits offer an additional knockback whereas the deflect of the elementals is usually not that useful. I added Pond of Lilies for some font contesting situations. And I have noticed that flood is a bit redundant with all of the knockbacks I now have, and Hungry Mire seems like a good option. For the moment I'm keeping Soak the Earth for mirror FS matches. I don't really like the Tide Masters here because the poison amp isn't that helpful (unlike poison charge on Revolting Fentek which is amazing), but I'm keeping them for alt damage type. Are there any other good replacements?
Poison Elementals are great for their stats and for another source of poison clouds! I suggest you keep them in your bg but go for the cheapest 66 nora build. Also, checking your bg composition I noticed you could try and incorporate The Collective into it, addind more firepower and raw HP to your units since their races are already very diverse. Put snaptooth ancients in place of Tide Masters. Swap one foulest mush for a sacred temple/cleansing mist. Since your bg focuses more on knockback you might only need one of those and you have no source of cleanse. Cleansing mist has the benefit of allowing you to predict your opponent moves and take them off guard, worse case scenario it's a AoE 3 8hp heal. Or even adding a Collective Ambassador in her cheap build (Annex and Surge: Races), to go along with The Collective, even tho you already have mirefolk in there. I still dont get why you keep soak the earth. Erode is a AoE 3 anti-relic that works vs. every faction (even FS) for only 5 more nora, but you get instant results, which is a really big deal. Another change I would suggest is removing Tidemaster bandoleer equip, it doesn't add much to your bg. Instead consider things like Horn of Order (remove ponderous on torts and add AP gen to your bg) or, as I said before, Pygmy Hippo Stampede to help dealing with unstoppable units.
Current iteration of the BG. I've applied many of your suggestions and it seems to be working quite better. I've reached limited and I'm on my way to Battlemaster. A few notes about the champions: Calm as Raging Tides (aka Cart) is a very squishy champion, and dragging attack doesn't cause knockback damage with whirlpool. Poison Elementals have a 72 nora build with poison cloud 3 and poison charge. I've found that the extra range for poison cloud is very crucial for their usefulness. Privateer Captains are ran with summon land mine and weary/cripple. Revolting Fentek is situational champion, because in some scenarios the repulsion does more harm than good. Swamp Wisps are amazing. Poison cloud 3 + poisonburst is the main instagib method in this BG. Tortun Galesinger with wind aura is a game changer when you want to abuse your whirlpools. This is a very fun BG (now quite successful as well) and I really recommend on trying it out. The knockback/Mystic Whirlpool combo is a killer.
Mindwarp can still be ran, IMO, it's not just auto deploy as soon as you draw it. There are some decks that it's terrible against, but others, like Archers or Skeezick that rely more on basics, it's still stron against.
Not really, hallucinogenic nerf killed Mindwarp, he's too squishy to proc wandering from getting hit and you have several ways to kill him w/o ever proccing it. If anything, ignoring is also a valid strategy, since he pose no threat at all. On top of that, poison cone helps shoeboxing him.
Mystic whirlpool. You drop it next to a unit, and knock the unit away from it, and because of the effects of whirlpool it takes full knockback damage. This is often powerful when combined with flood and augur of the deep. Be careful because font aversion is a scary scary thing.
