Use your favourite features in-game with our Desktop AppPoison and Aquatic is one of Vanessa's main archetypes. There are many item options that can help you reach a strong endgame board.
As an archetype, the Poison Vanessa builds hinge on three main things:
Fortunately, Vanessa's Aquatic card pool is very deep, allowing for a variety of ways to get to 10 wins. While many endgame boards will look similar, getting there can change a lot depending on your game.
In general, there are two main ways to stack up Poison quickly, Catfish and/or Pufferfish.
In the 10 Win Boards, I find that focusing on one to leave more space for utility is generally preferred. But I will use both in the mid game if I have both and have space.
Pufferfish is an amazing source of Poison as it will activate whenever ANY item on your board is hasted. Pufferfish is also a "trigger" item, meaning you don't actually use it. Because of this, Pufferfish cannot be Frozen or Slowed.
One of the best ways to enable Pufferfish is with Jellyfish, another Poison Friend. We'll cover more about that synergy later down in the guide.
Pufferfish does have an internal cooldown based on its animation speed, so it is possible to Haste "too much."
However, from Day 1 - 10, Pufferfish is able to tick incredibly fast, which empowers skills that grant extra poison. Because of this, Pufferfish is extremely efficient. Leveling it up to Silver/Gold only increases your Poison by 1, while a Skill can buff it anywhere from 1 to 6. This lets you save your upgrades for other utility items.
In general, Pufferfish is more efficient in the early to mid game, but can fall off once the days start hitting 13+. That's where Catfish comes into play.
Catfish is the other core Poison item that you can build around. While Catfish doesn't trigger very quickly, it's natural ability allows it to gain more Poison throughout the fight, meaning at some point, Catfish will beat out Pufferfish.
Pufferfish + Poison skills apply very efficient Poison, and many builds get anywhere from 10-20 Poison per Pufferfish tick. However, if you reach the late game (Day 13+) Pufferfish will fall off against high health opponents.
Catfish's main synergy is with Shipwreck. By combining Catfish with an Aquatic Haste item, it's able to scale extremely fast, and I've seen it get up to 350 Poison per cast. While this will take 3 seconds (with haste), applying 100-300 Poison with Multicast 3 is very hard to beat with Pufferfish.
The main thing that separates Catfish from Pufferfish is that you need a more specific build to truly enable Catfish. I'll be covering this i my other Build "Catfish Cove" which you can check out.
Lastly, Final Dose is very close to core to Vanessa's Poison build. The main reason is that Final Dose + Pufferfish is an extremely potent combination through the early and mid game. You can still transition to a late game Catfish board without Final Dose (since Catfish doesn't need it), but most of the time having this skill is crucial to get through the early days without much hassle.
If you're looking to play this build, you can often start with a Silver Aquatic item and pick Final Dose. From there, pick up Aquatic items as you assemble more pieces.
If you don't get Final Dose, but find pieces for Poison, you can still transition to a Catfish based build. Catfish will scale Poison on it's own, meaning you don't get much value from Poison skills.
Jellyfish is one of the best synergy items to pair with Pufferfish. With these two, whenever you use another Aquatic item, Jellyfish will Haste, which then procs Pufferfish.
This combo can get up and running as early as Day 1 and is extremely lethal. These two make for the best early game Poison combination.
Once you get to the late game, you can look to transition to Catfish or drop Jellyfish if you have enough Haste without Jellyfish.
With Jellyfish/Pufferfish, your Poison core is already online. The best way to increase this duo's power isn't through upgrades, but rather Skills. Skills provide an efficient way to boost your Poison without using your upgrade level-up reward on your Poison items.
While Jellyfish + Pufferfish is great, you definitely will want more Haste to get your Pufferfish to spam constantly. There are a number of ways to do this, and each item has it's own advantage. I won't go into every possibility, but here's a few examples.
In general, it's also important to level up your Haste items to increase the Haste duration. At Diamond, these items should permanently Haste your board after some initial ramp up time, provided you're not getting Frozen/Slowed.
Astrolabe is a common pick because it hits every non-weapon item without needing much upgrades. Astrolabe also allows you to get 6 Gold and 2 XP from The Docks, making it easy to accelerate your levels.
Furthermore, whenever an non-weapon item is used, Astrolabe will Haste that item and itself, resulting in two procs for Pufferfish. If you're playing with a Diamond Shipwreck, a Silver Astrolabe will permanently haste most items (6s CD or less). Before then, upgrades do help to increase the Haste duration.
Extra Haste duration is also nice to combat things like Freeze and Slow.
The main downside of Astrolabe is that it's actual cooldown effect is not very useful. It's also not Aquatic, meaning some of your other Aquatic synergies won't be as strong. (Seaweed, Conch, Shipwreck, etc)
Beach Ball hits 4 items (at Diamond), and if you plan to use Shipwreck, Beach Ball is a perfectly fine substitution for Astrolabe. With 3x Multicast, Beach Ball will hit 12 items every 4 seconds, down to every 2 seconds when it Hastes itself.
Without Shipwreck, Beach Ball is still a solid option, but it likely won't permanently Haste your board if you have lots of small items.
"Haste your Small Items for 2 seconds. When you use an adjacent Aquatic item, Haste this 2 seconds. 10 sec"
Rowboat is a good option if you plan to use lots of Small items. It doesn't activate as fast as Beach Ball or Waterwheel, but it can hit your entire board assuming you have all Small items.
With enough ramp up time, Rowboat should be able to permanently Haste your board as well, just make sure to put your lowest cooldown Small items next to it.
However, Rowboat is generally not preferred due to it's long CD (10 seconds).
After you assemble your core of Poison and Haste, you can then look to use strong defensive Aquatic items like Seaweed, Conch, Life Preserver, etc.
You can also run utility items like Clamera or Illusoray. Shipwreck is another strong option, but it may get nerfed in the near future. Regardless, you can definitely run variants of this build without Shipwreck. So don't stress too much.
In general most setups will use some variety of these items:
