There are many ways to come out on top in an encounter without actually drawing blood.
Intimidation, superior manoeuvring and camouflage are all good options when it comes to taking on an enemy
you can't defeat in a physical battle.
Perhaps one of the most underrated methods is creeping your opponent out.
A good rush of fear can cause a target to freeze, to run away or to lash out with a predictable and punishable move.
A lot of builds have the reputation of being spooky or creepy.
Top contenders include bats, snakes, centipedes, cockroaches, scarabs, scorpions, rats,
owls, ravens, toads and many more
But today, I want to talk in-depth about the number 1 creepiest build in the game.
A build so diverse, successful and powerful that it's the most common phobia of all time:
The spider.
The spider's creepiness factor is integral to its game plan
because it helps mitigate the serious weaknesses that can come with playing the lowest weight class.
Any build with a significant size advantage can one-hit a spider
but not if they're irrationally frozen in fear.
This, combined with various excellent hunting techniques make the spider one of the best lightweight rogue classes available.
Since spiders employ such a wide variety of hunting strats, today, I want to go over the tier list of the spiders.
There's not all that much different between each spider, except for a few things:
their venom, their mobility and, most importantly, how they use their unique ability, spinnerets.
There's a lot of spiders i'd like to cover in this video, so it's going to be a bit of rapid fire.
So, in bottom tier, we've got two spiders that i'm betting most of you would've guessed would be close to the top.
First is the Brown Recluse,
A spider notorious for its ability to cause its victim's flesh to rot.
Only one thing - human support mains and data miners now believe that the necrosis is NOT caused by the spiders' bite,
but is actually the result of a MRSA infection caused by a particularly clan of Staphlococcus aureus.
This type of infection can be caused by any puncture wound, not just a spider bite,
but spider bites are the most common misdiagnosis.
Recluse spiders already have low stats, so take away this rumor that's been keeping them relevant
and suddenly you realise how bottom tier they are.
Second from the bottom is...
The Black Widow,
a build which relies far too heavily on its reputation.
And, just like the brown recluse, can't actually back it up.
The widows' bite is potent for sure, but not even close to the game-ending power rumour says it has.
Of the thousands of bites on humans each year, less than 1% result in the targets' demise,
and they usually only do because the target already had low health.
Both of these spiders also employ camping as their main method of getting kills on other lightweight players.
And while this is a legitimate strategy,
spiders have access to far more effective methods.
But if you're gonna camp, you might as well do it right.
The key to optimizing your camping game is to maximize the area you can control from safety.
In short, the bigger your web is, the easier it is to score free kills.
The Bark spider takes this to the extreme and creates a web spanning an entire river.
This allows it to capture targets that normally keep their distance from the typical trap locations
like the elusive dragonfly.
While this is all impressive, it takes a huge time and resource investment to set up.
And is easily erased by anyone who notices what you're up to.
Which locks this spider in D tier.
Along a similar vein, social spiders can also construct giant webs to control large sections of the map.
Compared to the Bark spider, social spiders expend less individual effort and construct a sturdier base.
But the division of loot arguably outweighs this factor and combined with the fact that they have to deal with thieves and freeloaders
I'd say that they're on the same level as the solo builders.
They don't function as a cohesive unit like eusocial insects
nor do they function as team players that play off of each others strengths like pack hunters do.
It's more of a mob strategy
Anyways,
While it may not be quite as impressive there are much safer and less tedious camping strategies in the next tier.
The Trapdoor spider maximizes safety by hiding completely out of sight,
and using an alarm system to indicate the opportune moment to strike.
The safety comes at a cost though, as these players are much more vulnerable to environmental hazards such as flooding, frost and whatever else the over world throws at them.
Another solid camping strategy was found by the Ogre spider players.
Instead of hoping targets walk into their trap, Ogre spider fashion their webs into nets
which they cast directly onto anything that gets too close.
They've got incredibly powerful vision at night,
But because arachnids haven't speced into the iris ability, they can't turn this ability off
and as a result they actually take solar damage every single day destroying part of their retina.
Luckily, they do have a passive regeneration ability that heals this in time to be ready again the next night
but still, pretty huge drawback to go blind every morning.
All this balances out to stick these two spiders in C tier.
As we move up the tier list, we move away from spiders that rely on camping and towards the more bold players.
And you'd be hard pressed to find a spider more bold than the Water spider