Trying to find a use for Shade of Zorn

I managed to get him the week he was released but because everyone said he sucked I didn’t bother to do much with him. Now that he’s been out for a while has anyone found a decent team for him? I figure he definitely needs Gar’Nok but has anyone figured out who would be good for the other two slots? Thanks for any help.

Hmmm so he’s that bad, huh?

Ok, so this was a stealth bump just in case anyone missed the original post.

Saw the original post. Only here to clarify that you’re right, he’s pretty worthless.

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I tried when a “use 3 orcs” daily task rolled around. I hate his design and even prefer Gargantaur (who knows what he is trying to do, there just really isn’t any content that supports it), and both the mythics in this kingdom make for a less coherent strategy than any of a number of the lower rarity orcs.

Ended up trying out Sol’Zara/Doomed Club/Gar’Nok/Shade for the orc theme. It works when Gar’Nok’s casts land (not appreciably better than the aforementioned other orc teams using lower rarity troops), but doesn’t have enough brute force power to net an early win condition, nor does it have very good comeback factor - at best you are in for a long war of attrition throwing orc summons at your opponent and then taking a bunch of damage, at worst Gar’Nok just gets targeted and you lose because nothing is in lethal range of a Shade cast, even if it happens to get full mana.

You could try him with heavy skull gen, but it doesn’t really make sense for me to use him in a skull spam team when he can’t assist with skull spam. Hes a really really poor first slot, and hes not going to get mana except from chip damage otherwise, which generally accompanies lethal damage within the same turn whether you are playing PvP or higher leveled content.

You could try him with things that damage allies or apply continuous damage status effects to allies, but… uh… they don’t really exist. You can use Gar’Nok, which almost requires a full orc team, or Dark Priestess, which kills him in three shots (and no, having barrier doesn’t protect you from being damaged by the spell, and being otherwise hit while in barrier doesn’t trigger the trait anyways, so…). The best way to trigger the trait is to have him up front versus an team using explodes that you have otherwise completely nullified the attack and spell damage (web/entangle) of… which then makes him not very good as a summoner. And he blocks three colors. And he doesn’t even deal particularly good damage. And if you have already set this up, you have much easier ways to win. Yeah, you also have stuff like kraken/thief, but you really don’t want to let your opponents get too many 4/5 matches regardless of their setup.

My take is that there are far, far too few things that support his unique trait or offer synergy, and nearly no relevant opportunities to use him for counterplay (too squishy/slow for skull spam, chip damagers usually kill you within the same turn regardless), and even if there were, he’d be pretty mediocre - thing simply do too much damage too quickly for him to make a reasonable contribution on any front that he attepts to cover. Right now, hes bad and uninteresting.

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Thanks for the replies, guys. I figured it was a long shot but I had to ask. I’m not even worried about the resources I spent on this guy- I’m just baffled as to why they would design his abilities the way they did.

Grosh-nak just doesn’t get love :pensive:

It’s anti-orc bias—orc racism! :rofl:

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Try him with Qilin. I’ve had some pretty good results running the two of them together.

Oh, but I do love Grosh’Nak, especially now that there is a pet for it. +27 attack for 4 red orcs from Grosh’Nak ain’t no joke.

What is still a joke - or, more specifically, a punchline - is Shade of Zorn.

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I should clarify—l mean the devs seem not to love Grosh, because l also love running orc teams, and it made me sad to see a second subpar mythic.

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Yeah, Orcs can be brutal. The orc revamp, even though it has been a while now, managed to give them their own unique feel. They just aren’t very consistent.

And yeah, a big part of the issue is that most orc setups benefit far more from using the rarity orcs than either of the mythics, and neither orc mythic is tremendously useful inside or outside of these setups.

For example, the most fun I’ve had with Gargantaur was during orc invasion week, versus the tower that did 1 damage on 4/5 gem matches, spamming Gar’Nok where I’d benefit a bit even if the cast missed and I probably wouldn’t take lethal damage on early stages. But even letting him get hit a ton was still generally weaker (and slower, and more risky) than a siegebreaker setup.

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@Queenofevrythng

I didn’t put them together yet but who do you have in the other two slots?

I use my hero card and Gar Nok. Can get good damage out of Shade of Zorn that way, I’ve managed around 90 damage with this setup… but I still don’t use it regularly. There are definitely better mythics. Lots.

Try him in a ‘let’s see how much magic we can get’ suicide team. Put a suicide troop like festival cow in p4 and use sacrifice to keep killing any mini zorns that daddy zorn summons. A hero summoner like thief will keep the sacrifice/summon magic loop spinning. Not saying you will win much, it all depends which damage troop you use to take advantage of all that magic.

A bit off-topic, but I don’t see this troop listed on the GoWDB @Lyya

Wow is that bad? Lmao!

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