The Best Baron Rivendare Decks in Warcraft Rumble

In this guide, we’ll be covering the best Baron Rivendare decks for Heroic PvE and PvP in Warcraft Rumble.

In general, Baron Rivendare is widely regarded as one best leaders in Warcraft Rumble due to his strength in both PvE and PvP and can be used to clear the entirety of the Normal and Heroic Campaign.

As an S-tier choice in both game modes, he offers great value and rewards investing time to level him up.

Below, we’ll be covering our best deck recommendations with recommendations for mini swaps if you’re still building your collection.

Builder images are credited to ArclightBase.

Overview

Rating

PVE: S Tier
PVP: S Tier

Traits

• Melee
• One-Target
• Tank
• Fast
• Elemental
• Armored

Ability: Army of the Dead

Baron Rivendare’s ability periodically summons Skeletons at buildings you control. This includes meeting stones that you capture. Buildings that are still converting to your side will still be considered under your control and skeletons can spawn on those towers and meeting stones, helping you to secure them

In general, Baron is one of the best leaders to use for players of all skill levels as he generates so many skeletons passively without ever needing to be played. These skeletons will always spawn in different lanes and will go on to capture map objectives without needing the player to commit any resources to them.

Very often, these skeletons will march down the lane which the player is not focusing on and capture meeting stones, chests, and defend gold mines, providing a lot of free value for the player. The key strength of Baron lies in the fact that Army of the Dead is a passive skill that activates even when Baron himself is not on the field, most other leaders whose hero’s ability only works when they are on the field.

As a tank, he has higher health compared to minis without the trait. He should be used as your main tank to soak all the damage that would have otherwise been done to your other damage dealers. His unique in that he is the only tank that also possesses the fast trait, which allows him to keep up with some popular fast minions like Huntress and Harpies and continue being able to soak damage for them.

His weakness is his relatively high cost as a tank that does not do anything too special when played. He does not boast very high HP or damage, and this means that he will seldom be able to survive for long on the frontline or on bosses without support.

If better tanking options, such as Abomination or Earth Elemental are brought into your deck, you may find that there is no need to play him. Nevertheless, this only attests to his strength as he remains one of the best leaders due to his passive hero power despite never needing to be played on the field.

Talents

Chill of the Grave (Best Choice)

Chill of the Grave is Baron’s best ability as it converts his Skeletons into Skeletal Mages, which are ranged and apply frost on hit. This is invaluable as Skeletons are frail melee units that can only hit ground units and will die to any attacks from units or towers, especially considering the time they take to walk up to the enemy.

Skeletal Mage, however, are ranged and will usually get a hit off enemies before they die, applying frost to both land and air enemies, which slows down their attack speed, making them deal less damage.

Even bosses and towers are affected by frost. Enemies are thus consistently slowed across the map, making it far easier to capture objectives, trade with enemy minis, and siege the boss.

All these are done without needing to spend a single gold as Baron constantly summon mages even when not played. Skeletal Mages also has the added interaction with an enemy’s Abomination, who will waste his hooks on the mages as he prioritizes ranged units first, allowing you to play your other ranged units behind Skeletal Mages safely.

Skeletal Frenzy

Skeletal Frenzy is an average talent that fufills a very niche playstyle of Baron, which is a skeleton unbound focused build. With him leading the charge and being a tank, you can summon bloodlusted Skeletons to deal damage.

Skeletal Mages are also bloodlusted. However, in practice this rarely works well as both AI and PvP players will be sure to bring some form of AoE splash damage, which will handily wipe all skeletons you summon, at times even before they can get a shot off. You can use unbound tanks to help shield your skeletons, but at that point, you’d just be better off running any other normal ranged unit with a standard deck with Chill of the Grave.

Death Pact

Death Pact is Baron’s worst talent. Not only are you taking away potential Skeletons that can help deal damage, Baron is also by nature not a very strong hero when played and often runs ahead and is the first to die.

Healing a little barely helps with his survivability, and even if he does survive longer, his single-target melee attack is underwhelming compared to using any other proper damaging units.

PVE Deck Considerations

Every Baron PvE deck ought to feature a balanced combination of durable melee units and ranged units capable of dealing significant AoE or single-target damage. Typically, it is advisable to include 2-3 tanks, which includes your leader, and allocate the remaining slots to units that inflict damage or offer utility.

Unbound tanks and minis are particularly good, as they enable you to deploy them strategically anywhere on the map, serving as an immediate counter to opposing units and thwarting attempts to eliminate your units.

Heroic mode

Heroic mode becomes accessible when you reach 50 Sigils, offering a significantly greater challenge against bosses you have previously cleared.

Successfully completing each stage with a leader from every faction rewards you with an XP tome. Clearing all stages with leaders from each of the five factions grants you 5 XP tomes and 200 gold! (Or 300 gold with the Arclight Booster).

Hence, utilizing leaders and minis that can be in decks of other leaders of other factions is crucial.

The example provided illustrates the decks employed to successfully conquer all 75 Heroic stages. Employing the same mini whenever feasible allows you to concentrate your XP and gold on a central team of 8-12 minis.

Consistently utilizing these same miniatures across all decks ensures that no faction falls behind, facilitating smoother progress in your Heroic clears.

The Best PvE Baron Rivendare Deck

Below is the best Baron deck that has been used to clear all Heroic stages at 0-2 levels below the recommended deck level. Do note that the decklist below is the general deck used for most stages.

On certain stages with unique mechanics, certain minis should be swapped out to counter that stage’s mechanics. For example, in Heroic Devilsaur, ranged minis can hit the boss without retaliation but melee minis get instantly killed. Swapping out Harpies for Batrider will help you clear that stage even if he is under-leveled.

Decklist

• Necromancer
• Meat Wagon
• Earth Elemental
• Harpies
• Quilboar
• Huntress

Possible replacements

• Skeletons
• Whelp Eggs
• S.A.F.E. Pilot
• Batrider
• Gryphon Rider

This objective of this deck is to have Huntress, Necromancer, or Harpies defend against the initial enemy push under your tower, then use the surviving unit alongside Baron to rush down the lane to take their towers and objective.

By deploying your 3 tanks efficiently and accurately, you will eventually build up a mass of ranged units between Skeletal Mages, Necromancer, Huntress and Meat Wagon, which will cut down any minis and bosses at a safe distance.

Baron’s passive ability means that he does not need to ever be played on field in his deck. However, he is the only tank that has the fast trait and can thus keep up with Huntress and Harpies, giving you more freedom in using your Qullboar and Earth Elemental to distract more important threats.

For example, after defending a push with Huntress, you can play Baron in front of Huntress in order to charge forward and take an enemy tower. Baron will tank the tower well as he has armored and takes reduced damage from it. You can hold Quillboar and Earth Elemental in your hand and be ready to drop it on any defending physical or elemental minis summoned or hold it until your forces reach the boss.

Necromancer should be played in a very safe spot early on in the game to allow him to generate 2 skeletal mages. He will resummon these mages quite quickly if any one of them dies. For this reason, he can generate infinite value as long as the enemy do not ever reach the necromancer himself and kills his skeletal mages slow enough.

Some examples are Abomination, Molten Giant, and Stonehoof Tauren, who get distracted by the skeletal mages along with their slow attack speed being slowed even further by the frost applied by mages, leading them to kill the Skeletal Mages only for them to be resummoned again and again.

When up against bosses, the frost applied helps your tanks survive much longer against the bosses strong attacks and provides additional distraction in resummonable fodder for the bosses to waste their attacks on. Necromancer himself does a lot of elemental damage per shot, and can be good in melting tanks that have armored and bosses.

Earth Elemental and Quillboar are two unbound minis that serve as your main tanks. Whenever you see an enemy lineup that would be able to kill your Harpies/Huntress/Necromancer, drop either of them behind the enemy depending on whether the damage type is predominantly elemental or physical.

They draw any AoE fire away from your push, ideally getting a good trade without any of your minis dying. For example, if an enemy Huntress is going to engage your Harpies, place Earth Elemental behind Huntress, distracting her and allowing even squishy Harpies time to walk up to her to kill her before Earth Elemental dies.

Huntress is included to provide strong single-target damage to minis or towers or bosses with her talent that increases the damage her main glaive does. Her bouncing glaive also gives her one of the best AoE attacks in the game, at times bouncing to minis far in the back that have not even come into her usual attack range.

Protect her at all costs as she will clean up the map alone if you do. She is well suited to be played with Baron as she moves at the same speed as Baron. Instead of playing Baron,, you may instead keep your Earth Elemental and Quillboar ready to draw attention away from her and play Harpies alongside for more damage output.

Harpies provide much-needed air support to get free kills off mini that cannot hit air. Poison harpies who boast the highest DPS in the game can shred enemies apart. You can kill any bosses in the game very quickly if you set them upon the boss and using Earth Elemental to face them in the opposite direction, giving your Harpies time to stack up their poison.

Meat Wagon is included to provide long-ranged support for your units and sieging towers and bosses. It boasts the longest attack range in the game with his talent that gives him +2 range, allowing him to safely attack towers outside of their range and most bosses as well.

With most of your party comprising of ranged couple with slows, it is not uncommon to have a mass of ranged units crowded around the boss and overwhelming him in a swarm. As an aside on Meat Wagon, although it really only fits in a Necromancer deck due to it taking up a highly desired ranged slot, Meat Wagon is a great long term investment as it is the only mini that can outrange Onyxia in her fight, and is used in practically all lv 25-26 underleveled clears of Onyxia.

Possible replacements include Skeleton or S.A.F.E Pilot when there are multiple map objectives you want to reach like stones or chests/ Batrider, when there are many enemy ground units spams like Footmen and Raptors. S.A.F.E Pilot and Whelp Eggs where there are multiple difficult-to-reach, ranged units like fliers and Necromancer, and can be paired with Harpies to kill ground enemy units easily by first sniping their ranged damage off.

The Best PvP Baron Rivendare Deck

Note: The best PvP deck for any leader is heavily influenced by the rotating season’s buff, which changes every few weeks. Not only will the map change, impacting chests, gold mines, and tower placements, but the towers themselves also change.

This can significantly impact the choice of minis to include in your deck. Despite these considerations, we will suggest foundational decks for each leader. However, it’s advisable to consult our seasonal PvP updates for information on the latest and most suitable minis to integrate into your decks.

Decklist:

• Ghoul
• Necromancer
• S.A.F.E. Pilot
• Whelp Eggs
• Gryphon Rider
• Quilboar

Possible replacements:

• Skeleton
• Chain Lightning
• Dark Iron Dwarf
• Huntress
• Gargoyle

Baron Rivendare is widely regarded as the strongest PvP leader by most top players. It is not difficult to understand why – in PvP where both players start a match with equal resources, a leader that does not need to be played but constantly generates free ranged Skeletal Mages who march into separate lanes to capture chests, meeting stones, and defend gold mines, upsets the resource balance between both players.

Baron players will find that they have an easier time capturing resources and points of interest on the map. Baron is especially stronger in weeks such as Alterac Valley, where all 3 lanes have valuable resource points. Baron summons ensure that there is constant pressure on 2 lanes at all times without having to lift a finger, allowing the player to focus their resources on a single lane.

A slight downside to playing Baron is that most undead minis aren’t very good for PvP, and he has 2 trait slots that require players to fill with undead minis if they want to get the bonus levels.

Ghoul is a cheap tank that can be played while your other ranged units attack from afar. Necromancer is often picked as he can snowball well with his summons constantly providing distractions against single-target enemies, but his 4 mana cost causes him to trade badly into SAFE Pilot and Whelp Eggs, so be prepared to use Quilboar to soak the damage for him or chain lightning for the eggs.

Some players forgo the trait bonus entirely and fill it with a mini that is less level-dependent such as Dark Iron Drawf or Bandits for some chest and gold mine pressure and is in some ways better than Skeletons.

S.A.F.E Pilot is an auto included in every PvP deck because of the extensive utility she provides, such as sniping chests, mines, and crucial enemy ranged units, including the opponent’s S.A.F.E Pilot.

Gryphon Rider is another essential addition to the majority of PvP decks, primarily due to her cost-effectiveness as a flying unit capable of targeting all units. Her ability to engage in long-range combat and her low cost often force the enemy to make unfavorable trades to bring her down.

The last slot can be filled by Whelp Eggs or Chain Lightning. Both options provide a cheap way to focus down enemy minis anywhere on the map. Whelp Eggs is generally the stronger choice as they can often kill enemies with their flame burst hatching alone, then continue to deal damage as a flyer.

They also serve as one of the only soft counter to SAFE Pilot by causing her to blow herself up upon landing. However, they are countered easily by Chain Lightning, so if you are encountering a lot of SAFE Pilots, run chain lightning instead.

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