I'm done 18/18 titan runs for Pyreborn. My faction overview

[Cindeerella]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3490192184
I'm author of "Pyreborn Bad" and now I think I have enough experience to justify my opinion on them as main clan. Lots of text ahead. You can check run summary in my screenshots if you are interested.

In short I can describe Pyreborn as solid secondary clan with lots of tools that can benefit any build. They have solid tools which benefits other clans, but unfrotunately I'm still thinking that most of their tools pretty useless-mediocre for Pyreborn themselves. They have lots of whelps who should use abilites, but huge cooldowns doesn't allow you to use it more than few times per battle. You can damage your own units to reduce cooldowns with specific artifact, but lots of spells that do it are very expensive earlty on. Whole whelp gameplay reminds of Imp gamepolay, but it's just much more clunkier and also much weaker.

Now regarding units - overall their units are on a weaker side, the best units Goldtooth and Zealot are both super great and super rare and I met them few times in over 40 runs, which makes them very unreliable in my opinion. Greed Dragon is solid unit that can be over 100-100 base stats with you keepign the hoard, but that's a thing - keeping the hoard, and it also needs you to generate hoard (which you cna jsut notr draw tools for it). Hot Head is kinda worse sweeper, it requires -cooldown to be able to sweep all the time, it needs external damage scalling (savage pyre for example) and completely screwed by magic shields and silence. Gildmonger, Magma Mauler, Miser aren't doing much on their own, but they can be fine early game, but later in the game they barely do anything. Magma Cultist sounds interesing in theory, but I've never done anythign meaningful with him, it's also very expensive unit, unit for 2 energy must do something more than applying 1 pyregel on spell cast, on top of terrible stats.

On top of that, Pyreborn has worst champions among all MT 2 clans, imo, they are huge 3 space bodies (Gilda can be up to 5) and unlike only other 3 space size MT2 champion Bolete - they are very mediocre at best, some of their paths are plain terrible and worthless, Lord Fenix only able to do solid damage with combination of Savage Pyre heart. Lady Gilda can generate lots of gold but without Goldtooth all that gold is pretty much worthless, unless you have a good tools in secondary clan that can buff Gilda herself, as she can be a huge 800+ attack body.

Most of their spells are expensive and mefiocre, but there are some very good options, like Faning the Flame can scale to 200+ damage if you start using it early on.

Pyreborn has double the ammount of artifacts any other clan has, but most of those artifacts are very weak, like just plain terrible and not even comparable to artifacts of other clans.

But clan has lots of good combos with stronger clans. With Remnants you can cycle Greed dragons to get them over 1000+ stats, pyregel works great with all the damage over tiem effects, their cooldown interactions can be very good for other units that have abilities, they can build solid economy. Clan isn't bad but one of my previous statetments stay same - Pyreborn are barely benefit from their own mechanics and that's the problem.

There is no point stacking gold if you have no Goldtooth, stacking lots of pyregel doesn't help a lot as their only sweeper is super rare and hot head can be very unreliable if you were unlucky with cdr, they have flicker to exploit the Pyregel stacks but even basic Firestarter is bad spell, it deals damage first and than stacks pyregel, which makes it worse than torch as it can't kill 2-3 hp units anymore. Avarice 3 is the worst clan specific enchantment imo, it much worse than conduit 5, 3 damage shield, reanimate 1 , valor 8, regen 10 and etc. You can't put this on your good units, as it just basically -enchantment later on. Soulsmelter is very expensive equipment for what it does and almost unplayable if you don't have an artifact that draws item for you on deployment phase, or it can be useful with Herzal's horde only.

In conclusion I can say that Pyreborn are nice clan, but it's requires buff of its champions (they are terrible) and slightly buff to artifacts. I also would like to see more units\items\spells benefiting from gold stacking.

Edit. Damn I did lots of mistyping, sorry for that.

[Tricking Trapster]

Would like to note that most of those 'bad' artifacts from Pyreborne are listed as 'minor' artifacts, so I guess that's why they don't do as much. If you stack dragon hoard you can get like. Most of them since you can loot a lot of them.

[Cindeerella]

Originally posted by Tricking Trapster:

Would like to note that most of those 'bad' artifacts from Pyreborne are listed as 'minor' artifacts, so I guess that's why they don't do as much. If you stack dragon hoard you can get like. Most of them since you can loot a lot of them.

Well I mean even non-minor ones are pretty mediocre, nothing like "energy saved between turns" or "demons have multistrike 1" from Hellhorned, those are solid artifacts that can carry/define the game for you. Pyreborn has nothing like this.

[HouseOfTheRat]

Awesome to see someone talking about how bad/hard the game is, then doing something to overcome that (quite spectacularly, too) - as opposed to doing something to overcome the voices of other people telling them it isn't that bad. This is what we need more of.

[Fentblaster2000]

Bro i'm doing the exact same thing with Stygian lol

[Cindeerella]

Originally posted by HouseOfTheRat:

Awesome to see someone talking about how bad/hard the game is, then doing something to overcome that (quite spectacularly, too) - as opposed to doing something to overcome the voices of other people telling them it isn't that bad. This is what we need more of.

Yeah originally I thought of them as very bad because I didn’t take all the synergies with other clans into account. They offer great synergies and combo, but I still would be happy for them to be more self sufficient. Goldtooth and Zealot are awesome units, but they are so rare, and other units on their own aren’t very excited, they need very specific setups to shine. I just want their units to have purpose on their own, similar to Lazarus hook guy, just with dualism enchantment he turns off flying bosses/savage for 2 turns, that’s damn massive thing to have that unit in any composition, Pyreborn rare units aren’t offering anything like this. I overall love Lazarus units design, they are my favorite, they all so great and have so many viable options, all of them have some purpose. I would want Pyreborn units to be something like that. And especially I want buffs to their Champions.

That said, playing other clans with Pyreborn secondary would be so much better, because I will have better champions

Originally posted by Fentblaster2000:

Bro i'm doing the exact same thing with Stygian lol

Good luck with that.

[Purpleknight888]

I've had generally the same experience. The champions are fun on lower covenant levels, but any time I've tried ten with Gilda or Fenix I've barely scraped by. Emphasis on barely. Still haven't actually even seen goldtooth yet.

[Banzai]

One of the largest issues with them in my opinion is that all the stuff that generates hoard and gold becomes essentially worthless as soon as you get to the last fight/titans and then endless (with a couple of exceptions that make use of those resources). Obviously before that point you will tend to have really good economy and will be able to afford upgrades for all your units, all the equipment you could ever need and so on, but you will still reach a point where you have dead cards in your deck which doesnt really happen with the other clans.

Maybe this is by design since it feels like the clan that is most suited to having a pretty large deck so the dead cards are more diluted by other stuff.

Anyway, good overview of the faction @OP.

[Izunyami]

Generating eggs is stupid easy. Literally get the 3 cost consume that generates 2 eggs, remove consume, drop cost, spam. Or endless up the on-death egg dragon and make him a wave by wave tank. You can even sac him on the first floor and use all floor hit spells that are stupid strong by themselves. Now you benefit from your own units being hitting.

I agree with your conclusions in general, but I'd say all of that applies to Lazarus tenfold and Orechi needs buffs way more.

[Uncle Al]

Originally posted by Banzai:

One of the largest issues with them in my opinion is that all the stuff that generates hoard and gold becomes essentially worthless as soon as you get to the last fight/titans and then endless (with a couple of exceptions that make use of those resources). Obviously before that point you will tend to have really good economy and will be able to afford upgrades for all your units, all the equipment you could ever need and so on, but you will still reach a point where you have dead cards in your deck which doesnt really happen with the other clans.

Maybe this is by design since it feels like the clan that is most suited to having a pretty large deck so the dead cards are more diluted by other stuff.

Anyway, good overview of the faction @OP.

I tend to find I have easily enough gold to remove all the economy stuff before Seraph, and sometimes I'll do it before the 7th ring fight.

You take a bunch of gold and egg stuff to afford all your upgrades and get a pile of artefacts early. Then you strip them out, by paying gold which you have tons of, before the final tough 2-3 fights.

No only do most of the economy cards pay for their own eventual removal and then some, gold early is worth more than gold late. Not having to pass up choice upgrades, or especially shop rerolls, early is really impactful.

[Cindeerella]

Originally posted by Izunyami:

Generating eggs is stupid easy. Literally get the 3 cost consume that generates 2 eggs, remove consume, drop cost, spam. Or endless up the on-death egg dragon and make him a wave by wave tank. You can even sac him on the first floor and use all floor hit spells that are stupid strong by themselves. Now you benefit from your own units being hitting.

I agree with your conclusions in general, but I'd say all of that applies to Lazarus tenfold and Orechi needs buffs way more.

You saying like it’s something depending on me XD That’s the point of those roguelikes, you not guaranteed anything!

I agree, it’s easy if you get the tools, but those tools aren’t guaranteed. Besides you might have better options

[Cindeerella]

Hey, little update, I’ve seen Pyregel stacking in action, and I must that’s very impressive damage-thing.

However problem with space and tanking still persist early game. You can’t put Fenix/Incant guy/any 2 size units (including Pyreborn’s too) on one line to make a proper setup. You have to rely on body blocking with 1 sizd units which makes it… Annoying if you didn’t draw one, and makes Lazarus, Underlegion and Umbra the best suited secondary clans for Pyregel stacking there.

But I admit, Pyregel is indeed strong, unfortunately I couldn’t play it well during my games.

[chanakochan]

Hot Head is kinda worse sweeper, it requires -cooldown to be able to sweep all the time, it needs external damage scalling (savage pyre for example) and completely screwed by magic shields and silence.

In return, he Sweeps with Quick and Multistrike.

[Limdood]

Lady Gilda can generate lots of gold but without Goldtooth all that gold is pretty much worthless

There is no point stacking gold if you have no Goldtooth

Once more, just pointing out that unless you're using Dominion Pyre Heart, extreme money has a use on EVERY clan combo and every run. PURGING CARDS. If you're playing a clan with the capability to be swimming in gold, and you aren't nuking out 80% of your starter cards and all your stewards AT LEAST, then you're really REALLY failing to use the potential of that extreme gold.

[Cindeerella]

Originally posted by Limdood:

Lady Gilda can generate lots of gold but without Goldtooth all that gold is pretty much worthless

There is no point stacking gold if you have no Goldtooth

Once more, just pointing out that unless you're using Dominion Pyre Heart, extreme money has a use on EVERY clan combo and every run. PURGING CARDS. If you're playing a clan with the capability to be swimming in gold, and you aren't nuking out 80% of your starter cards and all your stewards AT LEAST, then you're really REALLY failing to use the potential of that extreme gold.

Sure purging cards is good, but somehow I don't have much issues with starting cards either. And lonely steward can be usefull against Seraph. It's like... Gold helps a lot sure, butr RNG better than just gold. I once had run where I hit 3 Merchants of Steel and didn't find single multishot enchantment, and I was swimming in gold, but well, again, Gold can't buy RNG. IF we could reroll card offers for gold - now that would be a solid option and reason to stack gold.

[Nordos/atord]

I personally think that Fenix' cooldown should be 2 instead of 3. This would make it vastly better with the equipment with the end of turn effect or the tome - since that would allow you by default to spam his ability every turn.
Meanwhile, with a 3 turn CD, I either need the equipment and a tome, or two tomes to get it to one. Which is kinda important to have, since there are some ways to reduce CD by 1 (be it the Railspike for every energy, which you can upgrade with -1 cost and remove consume, or the arti that reduces CD on whelp summoning or the self damage reduction one)

Fenix also has some ... underwhelming stats. I do think his slay path has potential with a 2 turn CD, allowing for some devastating turns - but the Golden Crown one has abysmal attack, so his ability barely does anything. I don't mind the low stats on the Pyregel path (which are, for some reason, better than Golden Crown), but a mere + stack to pyregel is ... unsactisfying. Again, a CD down to 2 already would help, allowing his innate pyregel to be applied more often, but it still feels like his stats could be worse if in return his passive got way better. Like +3/+5/+8 or something along the lines instead.