where are you hoping to improve? each champion you mentioned has merit, but some will help more in specific areas than others.

Excellent question.  

Biggest needs are probably Spider and Doom Tower.  

dreng

i would suggest miscreated monster. he's a strong champion everywhere and will be excellent for both of those areas. his crowd control will be crucial for both and all the extra targets for his a2 against spider make his shields absolutely massive.

others i'd suggest for those areas are mordecai, mausoleum mage, and vrask. mordecai offers an aoe hp burn as well as decent tm control, both of which are key for higher-level spider. mausoleum mage and vrask, meanwhile, will both be extremely helpful in doom tower. mausoleum mage has both a cleanse and a block debuff ability, both of which are incredibly useful, and vrask is arguably the best pve healer in the game. he's an absolute god against most of the dt bosses.

I will expound on my dreng recommendation. I love all the champs carpe suggested but they are all niche or have become power creeped into vault/fw champs for the most part.

Dreng > mordecai as aoe burner hands down

Drengs heal is amazing, you will need to build approximately and/or use with another healer/shielder.  You likely don't have a good regen set, so I would load up immortal gear.

Miscreated Monster would be my first choice of the epics, vrask (DO NOT BOOK) if short on books. But even Monster will struggle to find a spot down the road.  Vrask I only use on one dt boss now.

if you are asking here, onbiously bellower (not your best, dreng is way better) but it will allow you to farm brutal 12/3 at 8 seconds so you can make food very fast and upgrade everyone at will.

couple points here i agree with and a couple i don't.

dreng is a better champion than mordecai. each one has a few pros and cons for spider specifically, but for overall value, he would be the one to pick.

mm remains my suggestion for your next 6*. he's certainly not the god-tier gamechanger he was when he first came out, but he's still an excellent champion who can be useful in just about every area of the game. he will most likely become obsolete in the long term, but not for a very long time from now, by which point you'll have more than gotten your money's worth.

vrask i should have been more specific; he's not one i think is an immediate priority, but one that should be on your radar. he is absolutely a niche champion, but within that niche there's no one who comes close to him. i found him instrumental in getting past both bommel and iragoth and those two are unquestionably the most difficult dt bosses.

they have fell hound already, doesn't make sense to invest anything in another campaign farmer. I count at least 4-5 champions I would want to build before doing that, and that's if we were running a subpar campaign farmer. Going from Fell Hound to bellower is a lateral move

And I like dreng + MM. 

Ok... pick a side ;)

To be fair, I'm finding it extremely difficult to offer proper advice to n00bs.  I'm so far removed from early game, but moreso the game is just too different now.   Way easier to beat everything, but so many options.... I considered Miscreated a lego back in the day, and he was better since easier to book... these aren't easy decisions like warmaiden > Aleksander 

I see you took my PM to heart 😂

I can definitely understand this a lot. Still, there's concepts you can apply, trying to figure to figure out what's going to fill the most roles in these situations. I somehow doubt your ability to evaluate champions has gone downhill :D

As for your question, I think I'd lean Miscreated here. I think there's a little more general use for him versus Dreng. We are heading towards a Spider 20+ team with both, Renegade, Coldheart and either Armiger for TM control or RG for nukes. I think MM is still quite good in 2023, I use him in Spider 25 and Scarab :)

I don't doubt my abilities at all :) trying to optimize in early game is just much more complicated after step 1... brutal 12 3 :)

The other reason to build dreng first that is so important... no accuracy requirement. This is huge for endgame builds, but probably even more helpful early game.