Best specs to supplement Metamorphosis plan?

[cstick]

Alright, time for the red heroes:

Zane

Combat Proficiency: Excellent. Zane is a bit stronger than the average hero, and he also has haste! Haste gives you a lot more flexibility when setting up Metamorphosis, and often lets you attack a turn earlier than you would be able to otherwise.

Maxband Ability: Zane’s maxband isn’t the strongest, but it’s still useful. The typical counterplay to Metamorphosis is to build a tower and stick big blockers in SQL to try and wear down your heroes. Zane’s maxband lets you shove a big patroller out of the way so that you can attack something with less attack and try and preserve more health on your heroes.

Exhaust Abilities: N/A.

Ultimate Spell: Don’t use this with Metamorphosis.

Other Spells/Abilities: Surprise Attack can help clear your opponent’s patrol zone, or help you get in for additional damage.

Final Verdict: Zane is one of the best heroes with Metamorphosis.

Drakk

Combat Proficiency: Average. Drakk is a 3/4 at maxband with no combat abilities, which is the baseline for a hero.

Maxband Ability: Drakk’s maxband is powerful, but depending on what position you are using Metamorphosis from, you may not be able to use it well. Drakk really wants you to have good units in your deck, and if you went for an early Metamorphosis, you may not have had room to tech good units or time to tech up.

Exhaust Abilities: N/A.

Ultimate Spell: War Drums is a pretty good ultimate, but it wants you to have lots of units, which is hard to do when using Metamorphosis. You probably won’t be able to make this work.

Other Spells/Abilities: If your opponent is trying to stop your heroes with large patrollers in SQL, Kidnapping is good to move those patrollers out of the way and potentially clear most of your opponent’s board.

Final Verdict: Drakk is a powerful hero, but his focus on unit buffs is antisynergistic with the Metamorphosis plan, so he’s a mediocre Metamorphosis partner.

Jaina

Combat Proficiency: Average. Jaina has an extra point of attack compared to the average hero, but also has less health at maxband than any other hero. It’s worth noting that Jaina’s frailty is less of a downside with Metamorphosis than it is normally, because with 5 health she should be able to attack one thing and survive, as long as you can protect her from being attacked.

Maxband Ability: Excellent. Combined with readiness, Jaina’s maxband ability lets her deal significantly more damage than any other hero. Jaina also gets to split her damage between multiple targets, for example by attacking your opponent’s base and exhausting to destroy their tower in combination with another damage source.

Exhaust Abilities: See above.

Ultimate Spell: Jaina’s ultimate spell should win you the game. You can destroy their tower and get an additional base damage, then swing through with Vandy and Jaina for 15, then fetch Dark Pact for 2 more.

Other Spells/Abilities: The other Fire spells all help contribute to a base race.

Final Verdict: Jaina is one of the best heroes with Metamorphosis, because between her maxband and spells, you can destroy the opponent’s base very quickly. You just have to be careful and try and protect her from attacks.

[FrozenStorm]

In the interest of helping @cstick out so he doesn’t have to do every color’s heroes, I’d be happy to do White

Grave

Combat Proficiency: Excellent, Grave is 4/5 at max so 6/7 after Meta, nearly as good as it gets

Maxband Ability: Gives a tap ability to kill things, awesome for picking off big units or backline heroes

Exhaust Abilities: See above

Ultimate Spell: Okay in assisting a base race plan, but it’s such a trickshot you have to have planned for it pretty specifically by loading up on other 3-cost cards and Dark Pact / Martial Mastery

Other Spells/Abilities: Reversal is okay in aiding a Meta plan by removing a large SQL that might kill a Meta’d hero, but MM and Versatile don’t do much to help. Sparkshot and Readiness aren’t really helpful either.

Final Verdict: Grave is above-average, probably a top 40% partner for a Vandy Meta plan, as he’s got a great tap ability at maxband and is a strong body. That said, his spells aren’t great at aiding the plan overall

Setsuki

Combat Proficiency: Average, 3/4 maxband is 5/6 Meta

Maxband Ability: Pretty awesome, especially when combined with her ultimate spell

Exhaust Abilities: None

Ultimate Spell: Great for aiding in tower mitigation as well as base rushdown or patrol flooding, all very useful to a meta plan!

Other Spells/Abilities: Speed of the Fox could be great to get you a hasty meta Sets, but you’d need a lot of gold and a good draw to pull it off. Hidden Ninja might be good to use up tower as well, though it isn’t super relevant. Swift Strike when attacking means Sets is a great “first attacker” for meta as she may kill the SQL and only take the one damage from tower!

Final Verdict: Setsuki is also above-average as a partner due to her maxband ability and ultimates being good compliments for a Meta plan and Swift Strike being very strong, but doesn’t break into the top tier on account of her average body and other spells.

Rook

Combat Proficiency: Supreme, Rook is a whopping 6/8 with Meta!

Maxband Ability: Also insanely good, as he can be the “tower detected” attacker for days when he has a second life!

Exhaust Abilities: None

Ultimate Spell: Excellent for aiding a base race and tech lockdown

Other Spells/Abilities: Entangling vines is great for removing a squad leader, and thunderclap is great for moving weenies. His midband also means that like Midori, he may be able to use up the tower detection AND swing at a tech building / base!

Final Verdict: Rook is very often paired with Vandy for a Meta plan, as he is one of the best heroes to get the demon buff!

[VaeVictus]

Very nice! Thanks for stepping in.

Let’s complete the list shall we? And then we can gather it all up in one post and add it to the collected codex resources thread. I think info should be accessible for the future generations

[ARMed_PIrate]

Vandy

Combat Proficiency: Excellent, Vandy is 4/5 at max so 6/7 after Meta, nearly as good as it gets

Midband Ability: Excellent: Resist 1 makes Vandy harder to target if your opponent has a Tower or detector, and the fetch ability is exceptional. Meta’s readiness lets her do this after attacking through the line. However, Vandy has to already have this ability to play Meta, so there’s a bit less synergy than with many mid and maxbands.

Maxband Ability: Boosts one of your units and one of your opponent’s units. Since you have to sacrifice your units to play Meta, this only helps your opponent. But if your opponent has a smoker or an illusion, targeting kills them and this actually becomes a benefit! Hopefully you will get enough value that the doomed boosted unit won’t matter. The good news is that in most normal versions of the game, where duplicate specs aren’t allowed, you will have already had to get to maxband (hopefully getting good use out of the ability) before casting Meta in the first place.

Exhaust Abilities: See above

Ultimate Spell: One of the best ultimate spells in the game. Metamorphosis is game warping. Loses much of its value after you’ve already played Metamorphosis, though. Still, it can let you Demon-ize a team hero who showed up late to the party.

Other Spells/Abilities: Dark Pact lets her dig through the deck with key cards, and Shadow Blade lets her take out a patroller and weaken the opponent’s hand size. Soul Stone buffs your own units, so has no real place immediately after Meta.

Final Verdict: Vandy is literally a must-have for a Meta plan. However, you probably have better options than Vandy x3 when constructing a Meta-team, and in most formats this is illegal. (The only real upside would be that every character could play Meta.)

Orpal

Combat Proficiency: Slightly above average, 2/5 maxband is 4/7 Meta. This would be below average, but the high HP and doing 4 damage as -1/-1 runes makes him an exceptional patroller or assassin against key units/heroes. (He can effectively disable an elephant, even if he doesn’t kill it.) It does make him a bit less helpful for a full-on Meta base-race, though.

Midband Ability: Weak. Meta kills your units, so you don’t have any to sacrifice to use this the turn Meta happens.

Maxband Ability: Fairly weak. It normally gets triggered by Orpal’s midband, which is unit-dependent. However, with the robust attack Meta grants him, he can trigger it by attacking. However, killing small units should not be a priority once Meta hits the board.

Exhaust Abilities: None

Ultimate Spell: Death and Decay is a fantastic game ender, but is too expensive to play on the same turn as Meta. Likely not a good choice.

Other Spells/Abilities: Sickness and Spreading Plague have the same problems as Orpal’s maxband. Carrion Curse, however, can be an excellent way of preventing the opponent from finding answers, particularly out of Truth (Eyes of the Chancellor, Free Speech).

Final Verdict: Orpal is an average partner for Meta, due primarily to his sticky rune damage and high HP, Carrion Curse, and his shared color with Vandy.

Garth

Combat Proficiency: Average or Below Average: Garth is 3/4 at max, making him a standard 5/6 with Meta.

Firstband/Midband ability: Solid. Meta wipes your units, but the starting ability lets you get a 1/1 for 1, which could help. If you don’t need it, the midband can let you draw into important spells.

Maxband Ability: Ridiculously good. Meta wipes your units, but Garth immediately gets one that you’ve just teched (at your highest current tech level) for free.

Exhaust Abilities: None

Ultimate Spell: Poor. If you play this after Meta, you have no units and it does nothing. If you can max Garth before meta, and play his ultimate and Meta in the same turn, then sacrificing all your units to Meta could potentially board wipe. But this is somewhat expensive, and if you’ve teched in this many ultimate spells, you probably don’t have that much board presence to get use from this, and you’re wasting Meta’s primary benefits by maxxing Garth manually.

Other Spells/Abilities: Doom Grasp doesn’t work without units, but Garth can generate a skeleton cheaply after Meta; it can deal with most enemy heroes or large units, but probably isn’t a great choice. Nether Drain is not as good as normal, half of the point is to level your heroes, and Meta already did that. Still, it can be key for dealing with an opponent’s maxband Rook. Lich’s Bargain is insane after a Meta. Meta wipes your board, but Lich’s Bargain builds it back up to solid, with a chunky deathtouch creature to boot. Even with a detector, your opponent will have a hard time taking out your heroes.

Final Verdict: Garth is a very good partner for Meta because he excels at cancelling out Meta’s downside: Lich’s Bargain and his maxband are both fantastic for building board immediately. He also shares a color with Vandy, which is a big perk.

[ARMed_PIrate]

I realized this thread wasn’t in the Collected Resources thread, so I added it in.

Then I realized that it’s missing @cstick -style analyses for Neutral, Blue, and Purple. If anyone would like to jump in with one of them, please do!