Rate the clans!

[Nathaniel Prime]

Where do you think the clans rank, from strongest to weakest? Here's my personal list...

Umbra - Superfood Primordium is an absolute beast, especially with Stalwart Snack. Damage shield is probably the best defensive ability in the game, and the Crucible Warden can generate this passively as long as he gets snacks. Speaking of, it is nice that Morselmakers will passively give your front unit +6/+6 every turn. The way they can increase both their ember and capacity is icing on the cake, and they have a spell that does both at once! The only downside I see is that they have no sweepers. That bolt spell is really nasty too. Sadly, Penumbra doesn't scale as well as one would hope, though putting a Monstrous Penumbra at the bottom will buy you a lot of time.

Awoken - Possibly not as outright powerful as the Remnant, but very easy to use. Sentient is good even after her cultivate nerf, and Strangler and/or Predator Wyldenten is one of the best champs in the game. They have I think one of the only two units multistrike 2, and you can infuse an Animus of Will with another and lose only a whopping three attack, whereas Alloyed Construct and the Hellhorned guy (Warrior?) with multistrike have big drawbacks. They also have two sweepers, and probably the best spike unit, and an incredibly powerful healing spell in Unleash the Wildwood. Vine Grasp is very useful, and they have amazing buff spells.

Melting Remnant - Harder to use, but perhaps more powerful than the Awoken. Draffs are heavy hitters albeit with a very painful drawback. Being able to revive units at will is awesome, especially since they get stronger each time. Unfortunately, it doesn't work so well with other clans. Their champions, if you count champions in pairs, are probably the best pair in the entire game (maybe rivaled by Hellhorned). Both champions have a whole lot of flexibility. Stealth is a very good defensive ability, rivaling damage shield and only limited by the fact that it is harder to apply big stacks of it easily. Their run-of-the-mill units seem pretty meh without having any special abilities that strike me as great, except for the tombs and the truly bizarre wax legion thingy.

Stygian Guard - Still very good. They have probably the best offensive spell list in the game. Their tanks are good are very good at tanking (either just absorbing damage or dealing huge counter damage in the form of frostbite) and they have good sweeper options. Siren of the Sea is very powerful, including the fact that it is just as easy to have three of them as it is to have one. The special double-buff relic (that gives 2x incant bonuses) increases their ramp-up dramatically. Frostbite is good, though it has been nerfed into uselessness if you want to fight the Divinity, and you're going to hit a solid brick wall if you have a frostbite deck. Sadly, their champions are not great, especially Tethys who is pointless now. Solgard is fine but doesn't do what he does as well as, say, Flicker or Penumbra (and again, frostbite is hard countered by the Divinity).

Hellhorned - Can be very good with the right buffs. Really powerful offensive units! Their unit which gets +5 damage on strike is very powerful when combined with multistrike or especially sweep. They also have a unit which has multistrike naturally, though fusing him has the huge drawback of making the unit get instakilled if they take damage. Their heroes are both powerful in different ways. Imps are good damage pseudo-spells that also don't clog up your deck since they are only summoned once. They also have the incredibly powerful 100 piercing damage spell.

Wurmkin - Not very good? They have an interesting mechanic, but their heroes blow except the Repeater. Their spells are strong if you are able to get and use infused cards, but their units seem just like janky versions of Stygian units which require specific kinds of cards to power up (or even activate!) instead of just any spell at all. I very well might be missing something but they don't seem to have any units which can pull them through tough fights and seem to rely on boosting the creatures of other clans with their spells.

Thoughts? What are your own lists?

[Jagore]

That's pretty much how I would rank them. Umbra and Awoken can pair with pretty much anyone and find success. Remnant are a little more specific but just as powerful. Stygian is fine, Hell Horned is ok, and wurmkin are sadly the worst.

If you don't get crystals than extract cards can brick your deck, if you lose crystals to extract or shell then your stacking creatures (who are generally weaker than say Gorge or extingish units) lose a bunch of damage. Its just a lot of effort for very little payoff. I think they need a buff honestly.

[PsYcHo_O]

The ranking depends a lot on how you would define strong and weak. The most broken and almost stupid combos I ever had was always imps with Shardtail Queen (with and without dlc). I just killed divinity on cov25 with 6 turns remaining with an imp deck. But imp decks tend to be a bit unreliable. There are a lot of pieces that need to come together to make a truly strong imp deck. The spikes and burnout paths for Little Fade can also be stupid strong and are quite reliable. Primordium with an ember drain build is also super strong, but also needs a little luck with ember generation.

These three champs are my favorites when it comes to super strong decks, but they are not my most consistent when it comes to winning (except for maybe Little Fade). I think you need to differentiate between reliability and power level when you talk about a clans strength.

In theory imps should be the most powerful, since they have the only exponential scaling option with Transcendimp and double summons and they also have an imp answer for backline, damage, and defense.

[!?!]

1: Melting exiled.
Getting reform right out of the gate is a game changer and little fade is quite possibly the strongest champion in the game though very volatile, failing you in key moments.
With dripfall, they also have access to the best mobility spell in the game as well as the best unit in the game, bounty stalker and a whole bunch of other crazy stuff.
You either win hard or you get completely destroyed. Nothing inbetween.

2: Awoken.
Never really a bad secondary pick, you get heals, buffs, sweep, multistrike, quick and thorns.
Something for every build.
As a primary clan you may pick between an average hero with average spells and the best hero with the best spells.

3: Umbra.
An okay secondary clan that is not as flexible as awoken.
You can kinda do a primordium reform thing but if you play any morsels and they die, they'll dirty up the dead units pool.
Has quite possibly one of the worst starter spells in plink and primordium is a "fun to try and make work" hero that fails more often than it succeeds.
Penumbra is the more consistent option, hero and spells but also more boring and less "I could potentially get completely broken in theory"-ish one.

3.5: Melting.
Regular melting remnant isn't nearly as good as the exiled version.
While you can still potentially get some of the most broken cards in the game, dregs just are not nearly as universally useful and game defining as reforms and there actually might be consequences to rector flicker dying.

4: Wurmkin
Bunch of fun units to play with, some puzzling design decisions like that whole extract mechanic. You can get an egg that sucks all your echoes away and then hatches into 2 bogflies whose damage then scales with echoes so they do 0 damage.
You can get a unit that extracts 5 and then revenge applies reap which then does nothing because you just extracted all your echoes to play the unit.
Etch and inspire are kinda wonky incant wannabes, eggs are a way to overstack a floor I guess but they completely negate any extract cards and there's just tons of potential to get conflicting cards in this clan.

5: Hellhorned.
Meh.
It's fine.
Technically better than wurmkin I guess.
But meh.
If you feel like returning to the hornbreaker prince after seeing everything else you could be picking, he'll do the job I guess. Why would you tho?

6: Stygian guard.
Behold the "spell casting" faction with terrible starter spells. The "incant" clan with the worst possible incant starter cards.
You like some of that spell weakness and spell power in your starter deck together with foregone power doing absolutely nothing? It's not as unlikely as you may think.
It's all a diceroll from there because half of what you start with is trash so you better get lucky or hard carried by your secondary clan.
Primary clan wise, you may pick between the worst hero with horrible spells or a slightly decent one with the worst spells.
Pick for challenge runs.

[Rat Bastard]

Stygian > Melting Remnant > Awoken > Umbra > Hellhorned.
I havent decided where to put Wurmkin yet but im leaning towards puting them inbetween Awoken and Umbra.

[Calculus]

I really feel like you need 2 separate tierlists because some covenants are amazing while being the main one, just for the hero, who can boost the crap out of special powers.
For example i love basic remnant as main but for supporting they are not as good as others.
Another good example is basic hellhorned, which has terrible hero that needs heavy support to make him work (but if you do he becomes a killing machine), but as support can be extemally amazing with their rage or sometimes armour.

And of course there is also a fun tier list, where without a doubt i will put Wurmkin thanks to their unique shard mechanic.

Other than that i still need some time to say how good are they, but for now i can easily say that if you get artifact that puts 4 units in middle floor they are insane, thanks to their very beefy units.
And that card draw is extremally useful on them, which makes awoken as support very helpful.

[Kaerius]

It's very difficult to accurately tier the clans, due to the many considerations.

Let's split it into champion tiers, and secondary tiers, as well as clan spells/units.

Champions:
1) Little Fade
2) Primordium
3) Shardtail Queen
4) Echowright
5) Sentient
6) Wyldenten
7) Spine Chief
8) Rector Flicker
9) Penumbra
10) Tethys
11) Solgard
12) Prince

Secondaries:
1) Rootseeds
2) Primitive Mold
3) Echo Break
4) Fracture
5) Queen's Impling
6) Plink
7) Restore
8) Shadesplitter
9) Forgone Power
10) Frozen Lance
11) Dregg
12) Torch

Spells/units:
1) Stygian
2) Awoken
3) Melting
4) Wurmkin
5) Hellhorned
6) Umbra

[Gabriot]

Subject to change, but this is my current thought specific to cov 25 Divinity only:

1.) Awoken - the two best sweepers in the game, plenty of flat offense scaling to slap on the sweepers, has access to quick tome and quick infusion, has animus of will if you don't hit on sweepers, has the best card draw in the game, tons of healing, even has aoe spell damage if you miss on all the above. To me, awoken is hands down the best clan in the game right now, by a margin greater than I ever saw a clan dominate the others in vanilla MT.

2.) Melting Remnant - The only weakness I can say is that they don't have a sweeper. But they probably have the best infusions in the game, and the best collection of banner units in general right now. All of the tomb infusion are insane, the draff infusion is great, reform and endless make for a ton of forgiveness/versatility, harvest mechanics on baron and sludge boss are super strong, the tombs infused w/ each other are just insane, hallowed halls is a free win, just very very strong. I still think Awoken has a distinct edge in that they have sweepers and a lot more card draw. I also think Little Fade is the de facto best champ in the game now, w/ all 3 paths being super strong, and rector dark calling path is quite strong in the DLC (though burn bright is pretty trash now, and I don't particularly think harvest variant is great beyond crushing relentless rounds)

3.) Wurmkin - Both champs are quite strong w/ all paths being quite viable, though definitely repeater and corrupter are the strongest. You do have to get a bit pigeon holed often into choosing the infused card offerings, so RNG may or may not be kind, that's the main knock against this clan I can give. I think the spells are incredibly powerful and have a wide range of what they can do - aoe, single target nuke, relentless scaling, offense/defense scaling, card draw, consume return, digging back through the deck. Banners are quite nice too, bog egg is probably my favorite, if you can slap a multistrike and/or quick on them at a merchant of steel, and buff them up before hatching, the amount of value you get out of that is just insane. If you have them all behind corrupter spine chief and can stack a bunch of echoes on the floor each turn, you will have a super easy run.

4.) Hellhorned - They received gigantic buffs in the DLC. Steelworker, Railbeater, and Horned Warrior are all great units now, w/ 2 of them having good infusions as well. Fledgling imp got a buff, and almost every imp has insane infusions similar to MR tomb infusions, maybe even better considering many of the imp infusions grant an even greater effect on summon than they already provide. Inferno was already a good card in vanilla but is now god tier in my opinion in the dlc, the ability to clear out those divinity waves is unparalleled as far as aoe spell nukes go. You have to spend several shards to even get to half of what this spell does w/ most other aoe spells, and it just does it normally. They have such a great mix of offense and defense scaling. A knock against them beyond not having sweepers, is that I don't find the champs are super great in the dlc, particularly hellhorned prince. Queen was very good in vanilla but I don't find her rally path is as useful anymore since single target damage has become much less relevant compared to multistriking/trample/sweeping damage. I generally find if I don't get offered imperialist at all in a run, she won't be providing huge value. And hellhorned prince reaper path has become almost entirely obsolete, wrathful took a big hit, at least brawler is still good though provided you can find ritual of battle or some good offensive scaling to slap on him.

5.) Stygian - this was my favorite clan in vanilla and had my vote for best clan in the game in vanilla. I still think they are quite powerful, I just don't see them "gaining" as much as all the other clans above gained during the dlc. Sure, they do have sweepers, but their scaling relies completely on the secondary clan as the siren infusions are pretty weak, a +1 dmg per incant or +1 rage per incant is not really good enough to make those sweepers match the power level of the awoken sweepers, and stygian has no inherent damage buffs it can just apply to them. This can make it quite rough if you have say, umbra as a secondary and you don't find a void bindings or perils of production, since their only other offensive scaling would be morsels and you probably aren't going to feed morsels to a backline sweeper unit. I also find a lot of the spells that were decent in vanilla suck in the dlc, ice tornado being a big example of that. It just doesn't keep up w/ the shard enhanced units, and especially is useless in the divinity fight since along w/ not being able to do much to those floors, often hits are lost to divinity always being present on the right side. Frostbite also is quite weak now, both in that it doesn't do enough damage to kill those shard enhanced tanks, and isn't going to do much of anything vs. divinity outside of some meme hoarfrost + stack your own units w/ damage shield shenanigans. I also find both stygian champs took a nosedive in the dlc. Tethys was hands down my winning-est champ in vanilla, but now only conduit seems effective at all. Sweeping tethys is a death wish w/ the pelthora of spikes and sweeping enemies, frostbite just doesn't do enough to keep up w/ the dlc, so really only conduit provides value. Similarly coldchannel solgard took a nosedive, doesn't have near enough hp to hold the line, and doesn't apply enough frostbite to really carry the game like before. Direchannel is just a single target hit so not that useful (not that it ever was), so really only titanchannel seems to provide value anymore, and definitely requires incant heavy build to unlock in a reasonable amount of turns.

6.) Umbra - I dont' think they are weak, but I just find them the least consistent of all the clans, w/ a lot of spells and units becoming pretty obsolete. If plink was bad before, it's even worse now w/ so many shard enhanced hps on enemies. Alloy got a buff I'd say, the alloy on alloy infusion is pretty solid, and also the morselmaker infusion is a super solid one, but I don't think crucible warden is very good anymore, just loses so much damage shield to the large waves, the spikes, and doesn't output any damage that really helps w/ much. Similarly Crucible collector doesn't do jack for the waves, but at least can still be a beast in relentless. Morsels got some slight buffs but it isn't enough IMO, and also good luck playing anything top floor that requires morsels against divinity. Umbra really has started to feel like you either find Alloy, you find morsel maker, or you bust and just have to rely on the secondary clan. Shadoweater isn't doing enough on its own to be relevant against divinity, I had a run recently where I had two of them on separate floors each getting 4-6 morsels every turn and it wasn't enough to take on divinity. Also a lot of spells took hits, excavated ember and blazing bolts run into the same issues ice tornado has w/ the bad stat line for buffed up units and randomness for divinity targettting. Mine collapse is no longer a reliable way out of emberdrain. Antumbra assault also needs to be shard enhanced to reliably produce morsels. Forever consumed doesn't do near enough damage unless you have a plethora of ember each turn. On the plus side, both champs still seem pretty strong to me, primordium provides a lot of value as always, and penumbra while I think monstrous is not statted high enough to keep up w/ the dlc, architect is still architect, and gluttonous I've found plenty of success with as long as I'm gorging plenty each turn, I can get him to 1k damage pretty easily, though still you'll rely on getting umbra stone and/or furnace tap to actually make any use of that statline.