Is Echowright basically worthless?

[Jakkson K]

In my experience, the exiled champion is generally better than the normal champion (or at least more fun), but Echowright is neither.
It is hard to use Echowright for 3 main reasons:
- His paths have very little impact. If you don't get consume cards early on, he is just a stat line. His most useful path is Repeater, which has a throw away level 2 making it hard to stick by.
- If your strategy does revolve around consuming cards, you just run out of steam. I had a deck that was doing well, but I slowly lost Echowright and therefore my recursion and I had 0 cards left in deck because I was consuming all my cards for max value.
- His stats are bad. He is impossible to keep alive sometimes and he is in a faction without good base healing or shielding, no way to bring back him back, and defensive wall-type units are hard to come by.

I have some of the same issue with Tethys Titanbane, but apply spell weakness and/or frostbite is really good and having access to sweep can make him a valuable asset even if you didn't get any good damage spells. Echowright is just some 30/10 or something. I don't see any reason to realistically pick him over Spine Chief if you are trying to win at high covenant as Echowright is just inconsistent in comparison.

I would say that Echowright is the only champion I don't think works.

[ShinryuEXE]

Originally posted by Jakkson K:

In my experience, the exiled champion is generally better than the normal champion (or at least more fun), but Echowright is neither.
It is hard to use Echowright for 3 main reasons:
- His paths have very little impact. If you don't get consume cards early on, he is just a stat line. His most useful path is Repeater, which has a throw away level 2 making it hard to stick by.
- If your strategy does revolve around consuming cards, you just run out of steam. I had a deck that was doing well, but I slowly lost Echowright and therefore my recursion and I had 0 cards left in deck because I was consuming all my cards for max value.
- His stats are bad. He is impossible to keep alive sometimes and he is in a faction without good base healing or shielding, no way to bring back him back, and defensive wall-type units are hard to come by.

I have some of the same issue with Tethys Titanbane, but apply spell weakness and/or frostbite is really good and having access to sweep can make him a valuable asset even if you didn't get any good damage spells. Echowright is just some 30/10 or something. I don't see any reason to realistically pick him over Spine Chief if you are trying to win at high covenant as Echowright is just inconsistent in comparison.

I would say that Echowright is the only champion I don't think works.

You are grossly underestimating Echowright. Echowright is one of the strongest, most consistent champions in the game. That said, yes, Spine Chief is still stronger, but only because Spine Chief is probably the 2nd best champion in the game.

As for Echowright itself, some notes:
You say Echowright's paths have very little impact. I'd strongly disagree. All three paths are strong, though Shellsmith is the weakest of the three.
- Marshlord is generally the strongest and most consistent. It gives you a free, pretty solid unit that's guaranteed to come out turn one. And as you go to Marshlord 2 and in particular Marshlord 3 that unit just gets better and better, with the Bogwurm having huge base stats, innate scaling of both offense and defense, and Trample. But beyond the free unit, you can also use Marshlord to quick hatch egg units. Egg units are already incredible on their own, their only major downside being the risk in hatching them quick enough, so being able to reliably hatch even a Bogdeep Cocoon turn 1 is fabulous.

- Repeater has strong offense (25 attack level 1, 75 at level 2, 100 at level 3) and its ability to bring back a consume card or two every turn is at worst free extra draws and at best lets you repeat a hugely impactful spell or two every turn. Plus, given Wurmkin's focus on consuming cards/etch Repeater helps fuel those synergies.
Mind you, Repeater is generally best used by only having one (or later two) Consume cards so you reliably get back the exact same card every turn. Like, a Doublestack'd zero cost Shelter. Or a Double Stack or Spellchain Furnace Tap. Or Wingmaker with Pierce and Consume. Etc. etc. etc.

- Shellsmith is a bit more reliant on consume cards than the other two (though that's still not very hard to manage), but in return it completely handles your defensive needs. At level 3 it's +14 Armor to every unit on the floor per consume card, which by the end of battle leads to every unit rocking 300+ excess armor.

As far as your other assertions:
1. 'If you don't get consume cards early Echowright is useless': Sort of true, but largely missing the point. First off, you can make your own consume cards by upgrading your Echobreaks/Torches/Frozen Lances/etc. with +25/Consume (you don't always have to route to the Merchant of Steel at the beginning). Plus, most clans, including Wurmkin, have a number of common Consume cards (several of which are quite good, like Shelter) so it's pretty likely you'll be offered some.
Beyond that though, every champion has things they need to see to be useful. Like Prince badly needs damage scaling. Queen needs imps. Most champions need good defense. Etc.

2. 'If your strategy revolves around consuming cards, you just run out of steam': You're building your deck wrong if this is occurring. First off, since you mention losing Echowright mid battle, you're not building good enough defense as that shouldn't really happen. That aside, you don't *have to* consume every card in your deck to get good value from Etch/Consume synergies. Or, for 'Maximum Value' consider instead using cards that add more cards to your deck so you can continually consume more, like Ember Cache or Preserved Thorns. Or run a thicker deck than normal and remove fewer cards, since your value is mostly in consuming the cards, not the card effects themselves therefore it matters less how consistent your draw is. Or use Broken Memories (ideally with Spellchain) or Wurmkin Etchings or Repeater Echowright to just bring back your consume cards over and over and over again.

3. 'Echowright is in a faction without good base healing or shielding, no way to bring them back, and defensive wall-type units are hard to come by': Honestly, not even sure where to begin on this one as it just kinda completely misses the mark in a lot of ways.
As a clan, yes, Wurmkin doesn't have access to healing. BUT, it does at common have Echo Infusion which gives +10 max hp and effectively heals for 10 in doing so. And it's got Shelter, which can output good chunks of armor, especially if you're utilizing it with Repeater. Or there's Shellsmith, which can output ridiculous levels of armor. Marshlord even gets its free egg unit in front to help block for early damage. And you can/should be using your Echobreaks to kill off high damage units while they're on lower floors or before they attack on your floor.
As for 'defensive wall-type units': First off, at least in the DLC, you generally shouldn't be running an explicit tank type unit anyways. But that aside, essentially every Wurmkin unit has solid base stats and can tank a couple hits, with Keeper of Echoes and Shardsoul Carver even having built in scaling of both offense and defense (and yes, you have enough capacity to fit Echowright and one other unit on the same floor, even if you're running Marshlord, not to mention other options like Ascending/Descending to overstack a floor).
Beyond all that, you also always still have a full other clan to rely on too. Awoken's got healing. Hellhorned has more Armor. Remnant has Stealth and Reform. Umbra has damage Shields. Stygian can Daze whole floors. Etc.

There are always tons of defensive tools available to you, regardless of clan combo. And as stated, Echowright even gives you some defensive tools of its own.

[Jakkson K]

IDK, I went from win-streaking through covenants 11-13 with Spine Chief, to unlocking Echowright and losing to Talos twice. And more times to Seraph.
In fact, the run I won (first win on covenant 14), the first ever Consume card I was offered was Box of Imps after beating Talos and from there I kinda just played an infinite imps build by spamming Box of Imps with reapeter and shellsmith and killing seraph with two Holdover impolations. (Seraph was actually helping me by giving the first spell each turn consume lol.)
That run also ran Alpha Fiend as my main unit.

I barely even used Wurmkin cards.

Maybe echowright just has the steepest learning curve out of the champions?

[Anderson]

Echowright is quite solid.

As mentioned, Marshlord is super good and consistent.
Repeater is a bit dependent on getting a good consume, but once you have one, you can cruise. You could even infuse a card with the +20 spell power and consume, to get a free, repeating removal.
Shellsmith, I think is a bit more meh, but even this path does ok. 14 Armor per consume is pretty good.

[Hearts™]

Some good points here. I think another thing is that Echowright is one of those champions where her paths compliment each other well, so you can take Marshlord 2 and Repeater 1 and get a consistently reusable consume spell that also does Etch procs each turn to hatch the egg, or Marshlord 1 and Shellsmith 2 to get armor stacks added to your bog flies (effectively doubling their effectiveness since it's 2 units, plus whichever banner unit you put on the lane with them).

For me Repeater just has tons of potential in particular because of how you can pretty much be guaranteed access to the same card consume every turn for an entire battle (especially if you give it an Intrinsic upgrade), and because consume cards are generally so potent. You can make a lot of broken builds.