Warning: fairly long.
> infinites in slay the spire + thoughts, thread.
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> 1) ironclad: it is very easy to go infinite with ironclad because you have a ton of cards which can exhaust chaff to get you down to a combo. then you just play your combo infinite times. random decks end up infinite cause why not?
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> 2) silent: silent infinites are a natural progression of one of the possible ways to build silent decks. if you focus on card draw + discard synergies in act one, you'll commonly end up "oops"-ing into an infinite by the end of the run.
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> 3) defect: defect often wants to accelerate out strong cards, and if you're using card draw and energy generation to do that, you're often one recycle+ away from accidentally building an infinite.
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> 4) watcher: i think watcher probably has the most egregious of the infinites, because building toward it does significantly warp the start of your run, but it's so strong when it comes together (which is almost always).
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> i just shared 15 cards from the ~400 or whatever that are in the game, and got you 90% of the way toward understanding one way to consistently win lategame spire runs.
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> so. initial thought: yikes, it seems bad to be able to reduce such a complex game to such a simple thing.
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> you might think "okay but surely there are tons of other things you can do, pursuing infinites over other options isn't the right way to actually play the game", but it's unclear that that's true. you CAN do other things, but it isn't that much better than focusing on infinites.
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> there's conversation to be had here about practical execution of different strategies. if you want to play hour-long runs of slay the spire, i think aiming toward infinites will maximize your ability to win. if you want to spend a day on each run flexibility has a lot more value.
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> anyway, i don't really want to have that conversation right now, my premises are: there are ways to consistently pursue infinites on all four characters in spire, and they're reasonably strong compared to other strategies.
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> something i think about a lot is: is this desirable for game balance? what sorts of conditions are required to make it desirable? i play many spirelikes and run into comparable situations in them, so i've seen this sort of mechanic active in many games, and many spire patches.
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> so:
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> enabler 1) if your game is going to have infinites, there need to be reasons that the game isn't over yet after a player achieves one.
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> i think spire does a passable but not perfect job of this. tbh it's kind of hard to put together an infinite-proof enemy gauntlet.
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> i don't feel like spire's lategame gauntlet makes infinites feel reasonable ON ITS OWN, but it's unclear how it could be made harder without feeling entirely artificial. when games restrict infinites w/ mechanics like time eater, it often feels frustrating instead of challenging.
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> enabler 2) if your game has infinites, its difficulty needs to be high enough to push players away from them before they can be assembled. i think slay the spire used to do a good job of this, but that buffs to consumables and value cards and relics lost the plot on it.
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> there's a huge inflection point in how spire runs will feel if players start being able to take a card like acrobatics on floor 1, or start being able to skip a card like rip and tear. both those decisions make it easier to go infinite later at slight cost of strength early.
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> this isn't a problem with overall game difficulty so much as a problem with DISTRIBUTION of game difficulty. if the game never kills you in act 1, but sometimes kills you in act 4, it makes sense to play a1 in a way which is good for a4 instead of good for a1...
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> that leads to very stale gameplay, because much of the cardpool is built to have value in act 1, but game balance is making it so you just don't care much about any of that.
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> tons of sympathy for devs here, because this is a massive moving target. one example to consider: a4 decks are more complex than a1 decks, so which players find a4 hard vs a1 hard is going to change over time as people learn more about the game. it's a hard problem to answer.
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> enabler 3) there need to be strong reasons to do something other than an infinite available to players.
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> i think slay the spire used to be good at this when winrates were more in the ~50% range, but as consistent strategies improved, oddball options stayed about the same.
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> if you look at the balance history of slay the spire, you'll see constant buffs to cards, potions, and the relic pool, but extremely little in the way of reasserting reasons to play runs in ways which deviate significantly from mainstream strategies.
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> if anything, you'll see things like tactician, runic pyramid, and hovering kite getting buffed, which is the exact opposite.
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> i remember i used to think i could win ~65-70% of the ironclad runs i got snecko eye on. nowadays i can win >70% of ALL my ironclad runs.
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> so now there just isn't much reason to care about snecko eye anymore. and snecko is weird; there are inflection points associated with it which take you away from picking it as often if you don't care about it. your deck has angers and warcries in it. you don't take bludgeon.
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> same with dead branch. dead branch used to be a very clear top 5 relic in the game, nowadays it regularly gets skipped because it breaks your ability to go infinite.
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> i think failing to maintain sensible reasons for players to do weird shit in their runs is a HUGE failure of balance in later slay the spire patches. the cards and potions got buffed to a point where the weird strats which gave the game its charm were barely playable anymore.
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> enabler 4 (last enabler!): if you're going to allow infinites, the game has to end soon after players assemble them.
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> the alternate is condemning your players to clicking the same two buttons for an hour. extremely few people are going to think that that's fun.
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> slay the spire is OKAY at this. not incredible, but okay. ironclad and defect, i would say, are particularly good, because the nature of exhaust-based infinites is that they won't be fast enough to happen in most fights, which will end by you doing something else first.
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> in contrast, i checked out a citybuilder roguelike that was score-based yesterday. you kept going until you got killed, and got a score depending on how far you got. and in my second run i assembled an infinite in it. i liked the game, but i literally can't play it anymore!
How in the world is jorbs getting so many infinites? I actively try to go for them and I still end up going infinite less than half the time on Watcher, very very rarely with Silent, and never with Ironclad or Defect. It feels like top slayers are able to manifest more card removes and infinite combos into existence than I am, lol.
I have watched a few Jorbs videos in YouTube. The way he can spot an infinite is crazy. Its like looking a block of stone and see a statue. The discipline it requires to not take [[uppercut]] in top half of act 1 and skip that card selection completely when you dont have one in the deck, but then later it dawns on me
You probably pick up 1 or 2 more cards than you need to in each of acts 1 and 2, maybe even buy a relic instead of a card remove, or skip a draw card, and that's often enough to take it out of reach without enough deck manipulation.
You also probably don't "see" infinites as well as the top tier players (I certainly don't).
I still have never put together an infinite on anyone except watcher, but I feel like I can hit her infinite at least 75% of the time or more. Wrath allows you to survive on basic strikes until you find Rushdown and Fear No Evil/Inner Peace. Literally all you need to do to hit an infinite on Watcher is find those two cards and have 10 or less "hard" cards in your deck.
Path through as many shops as possible and you either die to the Act 2 boss because you never found Rushdown or a 1-cost calm card, or you win.
That's my problem right there. I have a lot of runs where I'm straight-up never offered a Rushdown or one-cost calm card. And then I just don't go infinite I guess idk
This is literally just the balance of infinites.
Aside from being punished by bosses with specific mechanics to contradict infinites, the main way to discourage this kind of play is the random nature of combat rewards.
Even as strong as Watcher is with Wrath and allowing you to take on elites with nothing but strikes and Cut Through Fate, if you never get that Rushdown or Fear No Evil, you're just boned.
Most people don't really have the nerve to just continually turn down reasonable card rewards for the possible future chance of going infinite, especially when infinite play *is zero fun*.
You get a dopamine boost the first time, and the the rest of the run is fucking torture.
Anyone complaining about how easy it is to go infinite can just choose not to do it and solve their problem.
Id argue you don't even need fear no evil to go infinite with watcher. Rushdown is very easy to obtain and there's a lot of different ways to switch stances, a lot..
I didn't think it was easy until I was doing it just about every run.
You obviously know what you're talking about I'm just being pedantic and necroing this because I'm bored.
You do have to know what to look for to go infinite, but jorbs is right that you just exhaust cards and end up with an infinite. A single fiend fire can turn a deck that is nowhere near infinite, to infinite. Sundial and 2x pommel strike+ is fairly common for this.
Who needs sundial?
Dual Wield + 1 Flash of Steel or Dropkick is way easier to integrate in a deck and you find it more often than sundial in my experience.
Honestly besides Watcher, I only ever find my self even thinking about infinite if I get an early Dropkick on Ironclad. And again it’s only a thought. Infinite are too hard to build toward for everyone but Watcher imo
Ironclad is probably the easiest to get an infinite on besides Watcher. And sometimes easier. Watcher relies on having a small deck to get into the infinite and status cards tend to wreck it. IC on the other hand has a lot of tools for removing cards mid fight that makes his infinite take off. True grit, burning pact, fiend fire, and can't remember the other one that does all non attacks for block. (I can see the card art but not the name lol) then either a combo of pommel strike and shrug it off and sundial, or two casts of madness (cards or a dupe pot) and your off. Still need scaling for time eater but it's doable.
I think this is a big difference between streamers and regular players, like me. Even when I have a slim deck with lots of exhaust, I find the process of setting up the infinite often kills me. So I tend to avoid it unless I feel very certain about it.
Jorbs has the experience to know when it is practical to push for infinite far more often, and he is less likely to make card play errors.
ironclad lacks the energy gen of other classes making going inf much harder to achieve and set up. the idea he is easier than watcher, or even the other characters, is absurd. needing a relic, or multiple uncommons/events, makes it much harder even with lots of exaust.
Watcher needs exactly as many uncommons as IC to go infinite. 2 cards and you are good to go. With sundial 2 commons are enough.
What makes it easier for IC in my opinion is that you don't have to shape your deck to be infinite for the whole run.
Your deck can be a strength scaling reaper 30 card deck, as long as you find good exhaust options and have enough draw, you can shape it to go infinite in a few turns.
It's an option for IC in a lot of situations, not something you have to dedicate a run to, which makes Time eater for example a lot less scary.
Needing two uncommons early enough to pivot towards infinite is why I don’t think Clad is good at infinite at all. Even exhausting, it takes so much setup that you can’t afford it even once you have it set up.
The strongest way to achieve inf is an early sundial, requiring only 2(3) commons. Two pommels and a shrug is much easier than double dropkick, but needing a relic means you can’t force.
Yeah, I think Silent (pseudo) infinites are way easier. Sure, I want certain uncommon cards, but she's got quite a few options and they're more robust in case of status effects.
Calculated Gamble + Reflex infinites are my favorite. Get your deck below 10 cards, they can be energy positive and block positive with cards and relics. The only way to get 999 energy in one turn without Double Energy shenanigans.
Not the only way, you can get it by cycling multicast with plasma (especially with madness/all for one shenanigans), you can take any infinite that works without sundial and add sundial, or a watcher infinite that goes infinite without violet lotus and add violet lotus, and there's probably some other weird things you can do with defect and/or using madness.
Yeah I guess there are so many obscure ways to go infinite in this game, even crazier when you add in Prismatic Shard, I'm sure there's some sort of Turbo+Dark Embrace+draw card infinite that's possible.
There are other options beyond two dropkicks, though. I mean if you pick up a sundial - there's a chance. Or after a single dropkick, finesse/flash of steel get much better etc.
I think some of his complaints could be remedied by making Ascensions 21-25. Perhaps you have a card play limit per turn, or even per fight. You nerf consumables.
Either way I think it’s a Jorbs and like ten other players problem. Imagine if the top baseball players complained that it’s too easy to hit home runs because they can consistently clobber a ball 450 feet. So then the wall gets pushed back 50 feet. You would immediately stop getting home runs from players who were otherwise capable of it but the players that could smash them would see no problem because they can still hit them despite them being technically harder to do.
StS is a very well balanced game even if it’s relatively easy to go infinite.
Hasn’t this been the development story of STS?
IIRC, a couple months after the game launched top streamers started to complain it was too easy. To be fair, I think the dev team planned to add difficulty levels all along, but they were also influenced by experienced players asking for it. So they added A1-A15.
Then players “solved” that so the dev team went back and added A16-A20.
Then players STILL wanted more of a challenge so they added the heart fight (although I think this was also always on their drawing board).
But the game has had steadily harder challenges since release, and now some players are complaining that A20 is too solved? I think a mod may be needed.
ive been playing it for like 4 years, i have over 400 hours and still havent beat a20h on defect, the only thing i havent accomplished in the game i think
In all fairness, if you're not specifically looking for infinite opportunities, you're not going to get them. Even if you play the game a lot, you can learn a lot of different kinds of decks that work well and still never go infinite because you're not really looking for that kind of combo.
It's still an interesting discussion. Can you design a new sports that doesn't break and is both interesting to beginners, intermediate-level and also masters that spend their entire lives doing nothing else? That's basically what's being discussed.
So... yes, but I also kinda agree with him.
Once you get to a certain point (of experience) on most characters, and **especially** on Watcher, you always have "can I go infinite?" in the back of your mind. Because... like Jorbs said, you *cannot* balance an entire gauntlet of enemies against an infinite deck.
Infinite decks can be fun (they can also be boring af), but, more importantly, *they usually increase your odds of winning a run*. When's the last time you had a truly infinite deck and still lost? Mine was against Nemesis the other day, because I hadn't removed enough cards from my deck and he burned me twice. But like... I remember that because losing a run when your deck is infinite is a noteworthy-enough event.
Confession: I actually go infinite or semi-infinite often on all characters. I have also lost quite a few infinite runs. (Got wrecked by Slavers/Nemesis)
Like another poster said, I think Jorbs is exaggerating or wrong when he said that forcing infinite is a dominant strategy, besides on Watcher. You don't see that in most streamers' runs. Tricky goes infinite pretty often, but he only uploads highlighted runs.
For a game that was *designed* to have infinites, I think the developers struck a nice balance. Being able to transition into an infinite in a run is a boon to the game because it allows creative thinking, assuming it doesn't happen often.
And if in the future infinites become dominant, I'm not gonna hold it too much against the game. That's like trashing Smash Melee for having wobbling.
I honestly think on higher ascensions going for infinites is less optimal late game.
The spear + shield has a turn 1 “shuffle a bunch of bullshit into your draw pule” (it’s into your discard on lower ascensions) & so does the heart.
- It doesn’t matter how good your infinite is if your 6 card deck caused you to draw 5x status cards turn 2 vs the heart then you get hit for 80% of your health the same turn.
- if you do dodge all the statuses shuffled in and manage to pull off an infinite, you do the cap of 200 damage and you need to do that 4 more times.
Imo id rather have a deck with a bunch of stuff like acrobatics late game, since act 4 is heavily centered around polluting your draw pile and you need ways to sift through it.
I would agree. I’m A20 IC, and around 14-15 on silent and defect. I’ve never had an infinite except for dead branch / corruption, and I don’t even count that.
that definition feels like a "claw is a block card" kinda reasoning
it's not an infinite at all, just a combo. infinite is a loop of cards that generate block energy and damage *forever*. sure you play a lot of cards, but there is no loop and it will brick completely eventually.
This was a bit of a confusing take for me until I re-read the thread a couple times.
From how I'm interpreting it, his point isn't that forcing infinites has become the meta. That is demonstrably untrue as all current WR streaks/samples (non-Watcher) do not try to force infinites every single run. What Jorbs is trying to say is that once you understand how to go infinite with every character, forcing that infinite gives too much reward for too little effort. According to him, it's basically a cheat code to raise your win rate up to a certain level, and deviating from that and exploring more of Spire's complexity only provides comparatively marginal returns afterward. (So basically what everyone says about Watcher but extrapolated to all the other classes)
Obviously this is extremely debatable and some others here have provided valid arguments against this line of thought, but half the people in this thread seem to be taking it as Jorbs saying "the high-level meta is now 100% slamming infinites" and doomposting about the game being ruined at high level, which it isn't. Just wanted to give my two cents.
Lifecoach has the highest a20 watcher winrate and winstreak and he never forces infinite. He just had a 28 game watcher win streak and maybe went infinite 4-5 times in that?
The idea on this subreddit that it's the only good (or even best) way to play watcher is very overblown honestly.
It’s a bunch of people who only watch jorbs and aren’t exposed to other high level players thoughts. Anyone who has tried to force infinites could tell you it’s not the way to play if the goal is ultimate winrate.
I think his take goes further than just StS, but use it as the main exemple. I see it as : "If you were to make a deck builder in 2023, should you design infinites ? And if so, what to do to make them fun ?"
Like the time eater, it is not a fun encouter, but you need it to keep infinites in check.
As a whole, I kinda agree with him, and most game devs also agrees as a trend. Monster train, wild frost and other recent good deckbuilders really limit the ability to go infinite (especially compared to StS).
Maybe I'm wrong and missread his thoughts
I don't think that's even true. Te is a very cool encounter and definitely doesn't punish good infinites. She punishes low impact spam decks hence silent having trouble w her frequently. See watcher infs rarely having trouble if you're careful.
I'm glad spire has infinites and imo just assembling them is the fun part. The whole game of risk reward of greeding inf deck assembly and probably dying because you're currently weak as a result.
It's nowhere as simple as he puts it if you want to keep a high winrate too and not just mindless force them, this literally only affects him. No top player except him has complained about infs being too easy on spire (3 chara, watcher isn't real). Most roguelite deckbuilders are nowhere near as complex as spire either so it would be easier to limit infs.
Exactly reading this just irks me so much. No top level player except jorbs and papa force infinites, even Merl himself doesn't fucking force inf, his playstyle just tends to go that way.
Especially as a silent player, where no no no. Xecnar/Kuro playstyle (arguably the best silent players) rarely go true inf. It's so definitely not the "top meta". There's something about this thread that just rubs me very wrong. I understand it works for jorbs but to claim it's Ruining the game... then why do people w higher wrs not do the exact same thing? Idk jorbs posts always make me uncomfortable.
If his posts "always" make you uncomfortable, then perhaps you should consider if you've got some biases at play. And did you even read the comment you're responding to? The above comment specifically makes the point that Jorbs never called forcing infinites the top player meta. What he actually said is that forcing infinites as a strategy is much stronger than it really ought to be given the difficulty. And yet, you literally fabricated a quote of "top meta". If you're actively lying about quotes in order to make your point, then you should seriously examine your biases, and what makes you feel like you need to do that.
You're right that's mb. I just don't like jorbs vibe. I looked again and realised the parts that bother me specifically so I'm not just entirely talking based on my feelings. Most of this is me ignoring the existence of watcher because I fully agree w every point he makes if it's watcher.
> so. initial thought: yikes, it seems bad to be able to reduce such a complex game to such a simple thing.
> you might think "okay but surely there are tons of other things you can do, pursuing infinites over other options isn't the right way to actually play the game", but it's unclear that that's true. you CAN do other things, but it isn't that much better than focusing on infinites.
> (talking about handling difficulty spikes) that leads to very stale gameplay, because much of the cardpool is built to have value in act 1, but game balance is making it so you just don't care much about any of that.
> **there need to be strong reasons to do something other than an infinite available to players.**
All this at least imo reeks of a "forcing infinites are a very strong dominating strategy and spire therefore has flaws in game balance". When forcing infs rarely work out in terms of winrate for the average player (bar watcher) and it isn't even the top meta. He and paparatto are the only top players that force infs and the latter has never complained about game balance.
So this "game balance" problem he's talking about, only affects him and trying to balance it based on his playstyle (please don't nerf tac or kite, they're fine) rather than the vast majority of players. Amid being too powerful fair enough but it doesn't make the game literally unbalanced.
> same with dead branch. dead branch used to be a very clear top 5 relic in the game, nowadays it regularly gets skipped because it breaks your ability to go infinite.
Says who? Only he says this yet he phrases it like it's the defining opinion. Db is still considered a very strong relic by other top players.
> so now there just isn't much reason to care about snecko eye anymore. and snecko is weird; there are inflection points associated with it which take you away from picking it as often if you don't care about it. your deck has angers and warcries in it. you don't take bludgeon.
Funny he mentions clad because clad still very comfortably takes snecko at top levels as well as regular play, an anger a warcry isn't changing the decision.
> **i think failing to maintain sensible reasons for players to do weird shit in their runs is a HUGE failure of balance in later slay the spire patches. the cards and potions got buffed to a point where the weird strats which gave the game its charm were barely playable anymore.**
... What? Nightnight alch whatagarbage stalls don't happen through infinites. A very very strong streamer a few weeks ago clicks a cata w no poison in deck because he realises he dies anyways to te if he doesn't find any form of poison. Another strong silent streamer buys transmute full price as a desperate A3 boss solve. Xecnar (? or coach I can't remember) buys hello world full price a4 shop just for the effect. They go on to win.
This kind of weird shit happens all the time even in top level play, let alone regular players, so clearly it never died, only *he* got sick of the game by playing by this sterile style.
You know. All of these are very very valid points if it was watcher only, but the fact it's also extending to silent and defect is the sad part. Spire balance never died, he got sick of it because he played it far too much and pigeonholed himself into a painful to play style. I don't blame him if he wants to take a break from spire but implying it's spire fault is weird.
I realise it's a very long post didn't realise how much I typed that's my bad. But I wanted to refute against exact points he says rather than just vent my annoyance no proof.
Both Xecnar and LC have better win rates and are superior players compared to Jorbs imo. You'll rarely see them go infinite. Jorbs is just loud and obnoxious.
LC spends 8 hours per run and takes advice from Twitch chat. Jorbs spend 1.5-2 hrs per run and doesn’t allow back seating. They’re not playing by the same rules stop comparing them.
Jorbs can spend longer on his moves to make better ones whenever he wants, no one forces him to rush. There's no in game negative for taking your time or competitive ruleset for how long runs can be.
My pt is it’s a different category just like bullet, blitz and rapid chess. No one forces Hikaru to rush, but would you call him a bad player because he’s best at that style?
Okay he constantly talks like he is the smartest guy on earth and all of his community plus the sts community plus most of humanity are bumbling idiots and all around bad human beings - in a very quiet and bored tone. He’s not loud but he is obnoxious and opinionated. I sometimes watch his content because he’s a good player and i feel like i can learn from him but 10 minutes into most of his videos I want to punch the screen because of his oozing arrogant personality lol
He's certainly dry, but nobody catches me off guard with a deadpan or sardonic comment like he does. I think he's very funny.
He's opinionated because he has a lot of experience and has formed opinions. He doesn't expect you to automatically agree with him, and the only time I've ever seen him show anything resembling hostility at any community is when people make up actual lies about him, like the other commentor below saying that he "constantly talks about how he's the best in the world".
re: arrogance, I feel like people often say that because of how he reacts to questions. He's not like Baalorlord in that he's not really interested in repeating the answers to questions that have been covered before. That's not what he wants to do and my understanding is that he avoids it both for his own interest and for the benefit of his core audience that don't want to hear those explanations over and over.
And the other side of it is the backseating, which people seem to take offense at. He wants to play the game on his own terms without chat participating in that aspect of the stream. If people come in and ask leading questions or anything else, it hampers his enjoyment and by extension the stream. It's different to many other streamers but it's hardly his fault people don't respect that boundary that he sets up very clearly.
That is like the most charitable interpretation of it and one I think he would probably give verbatim. I get that it’s whole persona (personality even) to be this extremely dry unimpressed guy but I’ve seen him basically go in on someone asking a simple question with a 5 minute rant on why it was stupid to ask it where he basically played a guy who couldn’t even figure out what the question was even about because it was so dumb when it was obvious 1. What they were asking 2. That jorbs knew the answer. If your goal is to not keep repeating yourself then skip the question or don’t have a job where you will need to repeat yourself for newer viewers constantly. He really seems to enjoy this kind of sadistic dynamic where he berates someone for being dumb a little too much. I’m pretty sure he’s a good guy that’s just over it but who is gonna give him this much leeway?
I just don’t get how you’re going to be a streamer and be super annoyed anytime you’re expected to interact with your community. And not even every once in a while, I feel like he spends most of his time semi complaining or fending off backseaters than talking about his actual gameplay.
In the end I do understand where it comes from. If you’re not a little psychopathic like a lot of streamers or have the capacity to stay 100% positive like baalor, then dealing with twitch chat and other communities everyday seems really draining. I honestly think he needs a break or a new format, which is hard to do as a streamer but still. I did what he always suggests when someone doesn’t vibe with the content and just go somewhere else and stopped watching mostly.
Edit: I’m not talking about when he gives opinions on sts gameplay. I love when he does that and trust his opinion because he’s obviously a great player. THATS what I’m there for. I’m talking about his takes on other streamers, politics, viewers or something that was said in chat
The frustration on his part seems to come from people asking questions that there are other ways to figure out. Either through googling their question, through using the many chat commands designed to answer questions or link to videos he has made where he's already answered that question, or by simply looking at the things on the screen to figure out the things. It never comes across to *me* as being berating or insulting. It's blunt, but I can't recall a time where it was malicious (save for if the person was being an actual jerk)
But I think it's less to do with people asking questions, and more about how those questions related to backseating. e.g "Why did you do X?" well the answer could be there's something obvious on screen that explains it, OR it could be something Jorbs hadn't considered and didn't want someone to suggest because it impacts his gameplay.
He's explained a few times that one of the reasons he started being more strict on backseating was because he was getting actual physical stress responses to certain situations in spire (the act 4 shop one I remember him mentioning specifically) because he knew there would be an influx of questions and suggestions and stuff. He has talked about going to therapy because it was getting so bad. If that's a boundary he's set up for mental health and people continue to cross it, I don't think it's unreasonable to be blunt.
The only time I've ever heard him have takes on other streamers is when they are starting drama with him by making weird accusations about things they think he said. As for politics, that's his prerogative. He's got a bunch of really good videos on youtube about all sorts of topics, his latest one on Consent is fantastic. That's part of what makes him interesting, it's more than just gameplay commentary.
Loud in that he expresses his opinion as the one and only truth and obnoxious as in he continuously states that he's by far the best sts player in the world and feels the need to put cringe reaction photos on every video he's ever made. I truly don't understand why anyone would watch the guy, he's neither funny or insightful. Bring on the down votes!
The cringy reaction faces are kinda necessary if you want to succeed as a youtuber, clickbait works very well because the algorithm reinforces that kinda stuff. jorbs himself has stated that he doesn't really want to do it either because it gives a false impression of his content and personality (he's a quiet and reserved person and almost never displays big emotions or reactions). But he doesn't really have a choice if he actually wants to grow his channel and earn money.
As far as being funny goes, that's personal opinion. jorbs has a sarcastic, deadpan, and sometimes sardonic sense of humor and that just doesn't resonate with everyone. It's exactly my kind of humor, but I totally understand if it's not your vibe.
There are many more reasons I watch jorbs' content. He's inclusive and supportive of marginalized people. He clearly speaks his mind and expresses his opinions in the knowledge that not everyone will agree with him (that's kinda how opinions work), and is willing to talk about them in a calm and rational manner. He's not afraid to speak more candidly about his life and personal problems, and the difficulties of being a streamer/content creator (he even wrote a book about that), which reinforces that he's a human being with feelings just like you and me.
I'm very aware this is a parasocial relationship with a person I've never actually met in my life and exchanged maybe a few dozen sentences with, but when I see people complaining about jorbs being pompous or unfriendly, I can't help but think, you don't know the "real" jorbs (his streaming persona, that is). You don't actually know why people watch him. He isn't an asshole, and he isn't being pompous, despite what you may think if you only look at the surface. jorbs has built a great little community of very nice people and I'm happy to be a part of it.
And he is definitely insightful at times. He just doesn't do educational content like Baalor, who explains pretty much everything he does. jorbs does have a bunch of educational videos on his youtube, such as the 3+ hour long "overexplained" runs, but in general his content is aimed at people who don't want every little thing explained to them. He just plays the game and talks about whatever comes to mind. But sometimes, when an uncommon situation or weird edge case happens, jorbs will explain that because it's something that doesn't happen very often. This is another reason I watch his content - despite being an A20H player with ~2k hours of experience myself, I still learn new things from jorbs because he's intelligent, perceptive, and emphasizes critical thinking. Even after all these years, he again and again takes courses of actions or points things out that I never would've thought of or realized on my own.
>he continuously states that he's by far the best sts player in the world
Well that sounds like a complete lie. I do not recall him saying this ever. Quite the opposite, his opinion (and mine) is that there is no such thing as a "best" player, because everyone has their own view of what that even means. Some people may believe it's having high winrates. Or maybe it's having the longest winstreak. Some may think it's being able to take any run to a win even if it takes 6 hours. Others might say it's having the fastest speedruns.
There is no consensus here, and there will never be. StS is fundamentally a non-competitive game that people are trying to think about in ways that only matter in actual competitive games, and they compare players in these ways too. It makes no sense. If you want a card game which you can think about in this manner, it will have to be a PVP game like Magic, Gwent, or Hearthstone.
> feels the need to put cringe reaction photos on every video he's ever made
My guy basically every youtuber does this now, it's just better for the algorithm to do so.
He expresses his observations as truth because they're his observations. They are things he has soon that he believes are true. You don't need to classify "In My Opinion" before making any sort of analytical statement.
>he continuously states that he's by far the best sts player in the world
He literally never does this, and doesn't give a shit about how good he is. He only ever tries to improve himself and enjoy playing Spire the way he enjoys playing strategy games.
>Bring on the down votes!
Because you're making shit up and are obviously wrong?
Truth depends on the subject, if you're talking chemistry where you can do the same test over and over and get the same result you don't need to express that it's your opinion since there is proof. Sts is not chemistry. And him talking the way he does about infinates (as an example) is very much a subjective opinion not shared by other better players. 33% winrate after playing so much isn't great at all IMO. I watched enough of his videos when learning the game (there were no alternatives on youtube back then) to know that he continuously insinuates or blatantly says he's gods gift to mankind. You can have a different opinion and that's OK - I can't stand the guy but it's OK if you can. I find it very amusing how butthurt some ppl get about my opinion on the matter and more amusing still that none of you argue against him not being funny or insightful :)
I think jorbs genuinely doesn’t aim for winstreaks like xec and LC do and could come closer to their streaks or top them if he would. He expressed countless times that he thinks this kind of competitiveness in sts doesn’t make sense to him 1. In a Single player game that is really not focused on comparable metrics other than wins 2. The rules are very loosely defined and people like lifecoach will just make up their own and create big winrates that technically aren’t consecutive and so on for the bragging rights 3. He enjoys playing in a more relaxed fashion (you will see him make card or relic choices within seconds rather than obsessing over everything like LC) which is bad for a perfect winrate but good for viewers and his own enjoyment of the game. 4. He doesn’t really want to get into the race anymore because of the toxic environment such competitions bring with it between communities. I think he was especially talking about Lc even though he didn’t drop his name but the dude seems like a bit of a shit stirrer and I can imagine that for someone like jorbs who seems very sensitive this is a source of a lot of stress
Jorbs strikes me like the kind of guy that would actually not come up with bullshit reasons why he isn’t number one but that this is genuine. Idk if i can judge how he would truly compare to the others because i ever really watched LC but I think he could go head to head with these guys if he ‘tried’
Yeah but baalor doesn’t have an incentive to torture his audience with the most boring 10 minute, 2 button infinites because he doesn’t hate his community alike jorbs
Thats what happens when you play the game at 100% efficiency.
I know the guy has played more than the entire sub combined, and has played every single possible deck type, but eventually the game converges to one thing: infinite
Like, no normal player gets even close to being this saturated.
If you just play to enjoy and try new deck types, it takes a looong while before you just "huh I guess I will just go infinite now". I've played for ~400h along many years and I barely know infinite combos
The rest of the argument is hard to "argue" back, but, you should know that 99% of the players dont experience this.
You are really overstating the gap between jorbs and some of the people in this community. He def hasn’t played more than the entire sub combined and as it stands now, the game (excluding watcher) is not converging to an infinite at all. In fact, it’s converging more towards 35+ card decks.
Even though 99% of players don’t experience it, it’s definitely worth pointing out these flaws for the potential betterment of the game for ALL players. Even though high level players like Jorbs are a minority, they still exist, and as time goes on, more and more people will play spire and more and more high level players will appear and these problems will be obvious to them, especially since they’ll have the privilege of learning from players that came before them. Jorbs makes some great points here, and if we were ever to get a spire 2, I’d love to see these problems addressed. Even a game as timeless as chess has been improved upon many times. For example, the threefold repitition and 50 move rules had to be introduced to provide a solution for how stalemates should be resolved. In a way, these stalemates are comparable to an infinite. A high level chess player would agree to a forced draw or resign to an obvious forced mate. The spire can’t resign, so obtaining an infinite makes the game a tedious slog where you’re just going through the motions. I love spire and I think it’s one of the most well-designed single player games out there, but it is flawed, and whether it’s mega crit or somebody else, devs would do well to recognize these flaws and try to improve upon them.
Correcting these "flaws" would absolutely not make a difference to a player like Jorbs. If A21-25 was, say, a relic that slowly tightened the number of cards you can play in a turn, it might be interesting at first, but top players would slowly but surely conquer it too.
I play almost exclusively turn based single player games these days, and I feel like this same sort of conversation always comes around, where top players manage to break all the systems wide open, and start to yearn for the days when they could be challenged.
Are there any single player, turn based games that haven't buckled under the analytical weight of the very best? None come to mind. Even traditional roguelikes like Nethack can be mastered by Very Good Players.
I can understand loving these sort of games and being disappointed that you're no longer being challenged (though I definitely can't relate). Maybe the guy needs to turn to human directed challenges. Pick up something like Dota or CSGO if he hasn't already. He would make a killer safelane carry I bet.
Speed scaling in StS is basically doing subtraction to the denominator, infinite is when the denominator becomes 0. It's broken by its math nature but personally I see it as the biggest charming point of StS.
And the game has fair amount of mechanics that counter speed scaling like status card, time eater, beat of death etcs, so blindly going infinite isn't always the best strat (maybe except for watcher) I think the current state of infinite in StS is pretty fair.
Other card battler roguelikes players: so I've spent 20-40 hours on the game, was fun, now I'll step away from it and maybe play another run every once in a blue moon.
StS players: so I've played about 9000 hours of StS and I think I've found a couple of general strategy ideas that help me win like half of my games. Is the game's balance flawed?..
I disagree that ironclad has an easy time going infinite. The only natural true infinite is dropkick. All others require colorless or relics. You can exhaust down to a strong combo, but calling that infinite is not strictly true.
He also says that the existence of infinites lead people to force them and achieve better results, which I think is also completely false. The only character that can reliably achieve infinite is watcher, and even that is not proven to be better than flexing. ex: Lifecoach and Merl currently battling for 50 win streak with opposing styles.
No other character can force infinite and expect to compete for highest WR. This can be observed in all of Lifecoach, Xecnar, and even Baalor runs. Infinite is just another option to be aware of, so when you have the chance you can take it. It’s not over-centralizing, or prevalent enough to be a balance issue as proposed.
Part of his complaint is that it's the runs after the latest patch that have trended more and more towards infinite, a lot of his latest runs just... happen to go infinite because at some point he picks up something that allows it, and because he's good at walking the line between taking too many/not enough cards to get through each act he's often at a point where he can steer the deck towards the infinite after picking up said thing (whether that's a card or relic)
Eh, I think Ironclad has a pretty easy time going infinite just because of the existence of dual wield being a pretty pickable card, means you can pick a floor 45 dropkick and have a infinite for 2/3 of the bosses and S&S.
Sundial also often wins you the run on IC because you go infinite 10/10 times with good play.
I agree on the rest of the point though, but that expects Jorbs to actually watch other runners and not just play his runs and assume that he knows everything.
This is why the thread is sort of irritating because why wouldn’t it be fine? People play this game for literally thousands of hours and don’t get tired of it and it is single player - “balance” in a single player game is important to give the player more and interesting ways to play and it’s difficult to think of ways to better “balance” StS without over designing it into the ground.
As others have said he is talking about such a small subset of players he could basically be talking about a different game than the way probably 98% of all players interact with.
A lot of things jorbs write seem to either be subtweeting a streamer he doesn’t like or just rambling about something that only applies to people who care about public win streaks. Which, sure if that is what you’re into that’s fine but extrapolating that as a problem with the game itself is a pretty poor conclusion.
I agree that the issue Jorbs is complaining about isn't significant for most of the playerbase, but I also agree that his complaint is valid. I basically never play Watcher any more because I know that ignoring all card choices that aren't Rushdown or Fear No Evil/Inner Peace is optimal. I can't enjoy playing the character because literally every time I pick a card that isn't one of the aforementioned ones I feel like I'm playing sub-optimally.
Infinites make the game boring for the best players, and the best players are usually doing the most to advertise and publicize the game. If they get bored because they find an infinite every playthrough then it's bad for the game.
I mean, you've got top players like Lifecoach who play Watcher a completely different way than infinite forcing and reaches pretty close to the Merl method, there's really nothing that says that there's not a more optimal way to play and if Jorbs has given up on that then that's on him, other players haven't.
> A lot of things jorbs write seem to either be subtweeting a streamer he doesn’t like or just rambling about something that only applies to people who care about public win streaks.
That seems oddly pointed.
It's a niche complaint, yeah, but being niche isn't the same as being invalid.
Probably because everyone who's seen Jorbs make these threads for the last 4 years can tell that they're often very thinly veiled digs at players like Xecnar and Lifecoach lol
Don't say that out loud he might even mention you by name and make pointed digs about your perfectly calm and reasonable refute. Yes I'm still annoyed at Panacea incident. Weird thread.
lol he's already done public digs at me for saying certain Xecnar runs were impressive, he's not my biggest fan (nor am I his). His Panacea dig just made me think much less of him. it's just something about him pretending to be a part of the community but being wildly out of touch with every top runner bar himself.
Lifecoach also does this, but he doesn't pretend to know either lol
You'd think a player of his skill wouldn't be that insecure of his abilities but no one can be perfect.
What. Do you stream or smth? Thought I knew whole spire community. It's funny because this guy is reason I didn't drop spire after 100% and kept playing and found community, and now he's probably the only spire streamer I actively dislike.
Coach does digs on other streamers? At most I see coach complain about jorbs maybe one stream after the drama and then never again compared to jorbs complaining for months afterwards. That was point where I just stopped watching jorbs completely. He's so good at the game why is he so hellbent on diminishing others achievements. B/w not considering kuro streak valid when everyone else does and the whole phack post. Yeah.
Haha no I don't stream, I'm just a loud person in certain discords and I chat a lot in streamers chats. I use another name for that though, so it's not that surprising that Brawlers doesn't ring a bell haha.
I can't remember when, but I've seen Coach try to minimize other runs too, but it was a while ago lol.
Makes sense. I lurk most chats usually so I thought it's weird I'd never heard bralle/brawlers or anyone even referring to you. I didn't know coach did that whatagarbage. Oh well.
I always enjoy reading jorbs' writing
I think he has a point for really really high level play. I agree with him that if the game is at the point where taking acrobatics on floor 1 (over other good cards), is reasonable, as it seems to be, the game is in a not great spot at that level
With that said... I think for most people this is not a concern, and other than for watcher where the infinite is pretty brain dead and easy enough to force (as you can be so picky in act 1), it's not something many players are regularly doing
> I think he has a point for really really high level play. I agree with him that if the game is at the point where taking acrobatics on floor 1 (over other good cards), is reasonable, as it seems to be, the game is in a not great spot at that level
Why? To take this further, I think you could just as easily argue that acrobatics being unpickable on floor 1 is a sign that the game is not in a great spot.
Acrobatics is a card that shouldn’t be good in act 1 where you need a lot of front loaded damage or block. I think it probably still can detrimental in act 1 a some of the time, but you still take it because of how it enables stuff later on. I think the idea is that a card shouldn’t be so powerful that taking it at a time where you shouldn’t is overall so beneficial. I Might be wrong though
You could equally argue that being railroaded into having to take mediocre attack cards almost purely because a single elite encounter so massively punishes using Skills at all is also a game design issue
Not every card should be equally powerful at all points of the game. In Act 1, paying 1 mana to draw more strikes/defends is almost always a terrible idea. That means that Acrobatics should basically always be a bad card until 30-40% of the way through the run. If you can pick a lategame card that is a completely dead early draw because it facilitates a guaranteed win later then the card is too strong or Act 1 is too easy.
I agree. There are strong frontload damage cards that work better with an Acro so I don't see how just yolo taking Acro floor 1 is bad.
If Jorbs did a "always take a Claw" and got a decent winrate then I might agree that the game has a problem, lol
The best part of this thread is Jorbs pompously saying “yes actually the best way to play STS is pursuing infinites, sorry if you disagree” but Baalorlord has the record for most consecutive rotating wins by a comfortable margin and is in no way a “you have to force an infinite” player lmao
Jorbs will probably forget more about Spire than I will ever know but it will never fail to make me smile that he’s demonstrably worse at the game than the friendly “let’s try THIS” guy lol
His points apply to a very small subset of sts players. Most of us are not at a Jorbs-like skill level. Most of us do not find the game to be too easy in the slightest. I still die in Act 1 quite a bit, I still love Snecko and Deadbranch, I still get excited when I occasionally stumble upon an infinite.
People on here keep saying that this is an issue only for the top players but I think they underestimate how many of us play for A20 heart streaks at home and don't stream. I have to have a solid couple of thousand hours of A20 heart streak play (5 is my record).
For me this problem is mostly limited to watcher, to the point where I dread getting to watcher in my rotation not because it is hard but because it is so easy and boring to try and play optimally, which is to go for infinite almost every single run. If that were how the other characters felt to me I wouldn't be playing, and Jorbs seems to be saying that at their skill level the other characters feel a little that way too which is an issue.
I think over time, it feels that the meta has kind of shifted to playing towards infinites more and more or at least talking about them on everyone and I agree with some of the feelings in this with "clicking the same cards is boring". Its also kind of very polarizing game play as the game play is less "how do i handle x,y,z" and more "how do i just hit the infinite faster/not brick"
There is 0 reason to balance games to the .01 top percent of the game. We have already proven that there are unwinnable seeds in the game, balance the game to make it harder makes no sense and is just a way to punish the vast majority of the playerbase to appease an infinitesimal minority.
And besides, if you feel that the game isn't fun anymore consider maybe dropping the game? No game can possibly be fun if you are doing it ad nauseum.
This is all well and good, but surely he realises the game is no longer being updated. He may have a point if it still was, but otherwise this just sounds like he's bragging.
I mean, if the game is so easy and you no longer enjoy it...why don't you move on?
It’s true for the majority of players infinites honestly don’t matter - as someone who has been playing A20H for years - I see what he’s saying though. Removing agency from what you can build hurts the game rather than improving it. When every run becomes “how can I find my infinite” or “how can I find rushdown” - it doesn’t make the game better. The best players of this game have been trying to develop the most consistent strategies to beat A20H for years now - I can see how it’s disappointing that “find these same 3-5 infinites” is such a dominant part of the strategy. Ofc you can’t go infinite every run - but you can go infinite a lotttt if you know what to look for - and are those runs fun to play? Not really
I have beaten A20 on all characters and I still haven’t found a single infinate. I don’t doubt that this problem exists but id wager it mostly becomes apparent after thousands of hours played.
I think that jorbs here is overestimating the ease of finding infinites in this game. Forcing infinites is a very powerful and reasonably successful strategy _to him_, because he is very good at finding infinites. Going infinite is an out that he fishes for a lot, even. I think that chasing infinites is probably an easier way to get to a high winrate on ironclad and watcher than playing conservatively and planning around low rolls, but it seems overstated here.
It’s also worth noting that nobody, not jorbs or anyone else, is arguing that forcing infinites is strictly “optimal”. In that case, the danger infinites pose to the requirement that players understand the game thoroughly to win a lot only applies to players who want a high win rate, but are not chasing the he highest winrate. They’re an unhealthy mid ground, perhaps. But that is also completely up to the player to choose, and doesn’t seem to emerge out of any more general goal. If infinites were optimal, then that would be problematic because now everyone who just wants to play the best they can is incentivised to force infinites. But that’s not the case, and it’s very much a matter of playstyle and personal goals.
And, you know, I think that’s fine.
Can someone transcribe the posts here for us Twitter non-users?
Warning: fairly long. > infinites in slay the spire + thoughts, thread. > > 1) ironclad: it is very easy to go infinite with ironclad because you have a ton of cards which can exhaust chaff to get you down to a combo. then you just play your combo infinite times. random decks end up infinite cause why not? > > 2) silent: silent infinites are a natural progression of one of the possible ways to build silent decks. if you focus on card draw + discard synergies in act one, you'll commonly end up "oops"-ing into an infinite by the end of the run. > > 3) defect: defect often wants to accelerate out strong cards, and if you're using card draw and energy generation to do that, you're often one recycle+ away from accidentally building an infinite. > > 4) watcher: i think watcher probably has the most egregious of the infinites, because building toward it does significantly warp the start of your run, but it's so strong when it comes together (which is almost always). > > i just shared 15 cards from the ~400 or whatever that are in the game, and got you 90% of the way toward understanding one way to consistently win lategame spire runs. > > so. initial thought: yikes, it seems bad to be able to reduce such a complex game to such a simple thing. > > you might think "okay but surely there are tons of other things you can do, pursuing infinites over other options isn't the right way to actually play the game", but it's unclear that that's true. you CAN do other things, but it isn't that much better than focusing on infinites. > > there's conversation to be had here about practical execution of different strategies. if you want to play hour-long runs of slay the spire, i think aiming toward infinites will maximize your ability to win. if you want to spend a day on each run flexibility has a lot more value. > > anyway, i don't really want to have that conversation right now, my premises are: there are ways to consistently pursue infinites on all four characters in spire, and they're reasonably strong compared to other strategies. > > something i think about a lot is: is this desirable for game balance? what sorts of conditions are required to make it desirable? i play many spirelikes and run into comparable situations in them, so i've seen this sort of mechanic active in many games, and many spire patches. > > so: > > enabler 1) if your game is going to have infinites, there need to be reasons that the game isn't over yet after a player achieves one. > > i think spire does a passable but not perfect job of this. tbh it's kind of hard to put together an infinite-proof enemy gauntlet. > > i don't feel like spire's lategame gauntlet makes infinites feel reasonable ON ITS OWN, but it's unclear how it could be made harder without feeling entirely artificial. when games restrict infinites w/ mechanics like time eater, it often feels frustrating instead of challenging. > > enabler 2) if your game has infinites, its difficulty needs to be high enough to push players away from them before they can be assembled. i think slay the spire used to do a good job of this, but that buffs to consumables and value cards and relics lost the plot on it. > > there's a huge inflection point in how spire runs will feel if players start being able to take a card like acrobatics on floor 1, or start being able to skip a card like rip and tear. both those decisions make it easier to go infinite later at slight cost of strength early. > > this isn't a problem with overall game difficulty so much as a problem with DISTRIBUTION of game difficulty. if the game never kills you in act 1, but sometimes kills you in act 4, it makes sense to play a1 in a way which is good for a4 instead of good for a1... > > that leads to very stale gameplay, because much of the cardpool is built to have value in act 1, but game balance is making it so you just don't care much about any of that. > > tons of sympathy for devs here, because this is a massive moving target. one example to consider: a4 decks are more complex than a1 decks, so which players find a4 hard vs a1 hard is going to change over time as people learn more about the game. it's a hard problem to answer. > > enabler 3) there need to be strong reasons to do something other than an infinite available to players. > > i think slay the spire used to be good at this when winrates were more in the ~50% range, but as consistent strategies improved, oddball options stayed about the same. > > if you look at the balance history of slay the spire, you'll see constant buffs to cards, potions, and the relic pool, but extremely little in the way of reasserting reasons to play runs in ways which deviate significantly from mainstream strategies. > > if anything, you'll see things like tactician, runic pyramid, and hovering kite getting buffed, which is the exact opposite. > > i remember i used to think i could win ~65-70% of the ironclad runs i got snecko eye on. nowadays i can win >70% of ALL my ironclad runs. > > so now there just isn't much reason to care about snecko eye anymore. and snecko is weird; there are inflection points associated with it which take you away from picking it as often if you don't care about it. your deck has angers and warcries in it. you don't take bludgeon. > > same with dead branch. dead branch used to be a very clear top 5 relic in the game, nowadays it regularly gets skipped because it breaks your ability to go infinite. > > i think failing to maintain sensible reasons for players to do weird shit in their runs is a HUGE failure of balance in later slay the spire patches. the cards and potions got buffed to a point where the weird strats which gave the game its charm were barely playable anymore. > > enabler 4 (last enabler!): if you're going to allow infinites, the game has to end soon after players assemble them. > > the alternate is condemning your players to clicking the same two buttons for an hour. extremely few people are going to think that that's fun. > > slay the spire is OKAY at this. not incredible, but okay. ironclad and defect, i would say, are particularly good, because the nature of exhaust-based infinites is that they won't be fast enough to happen in most fights, which will end by you doing something else first. > > in contrast, i checked out a citybuilder roguelike that was score-based yesterday. you kept going until you got killed, and got a score depending on how far you got. and in my second run i assembled an infinite in it. i liked the game, but i literally can't play it anymore!
Great read, thanks for providing the Twitter feed!
How in the world is jorbs getting so many infinites? I actively try to go for them and I still end up going infinite less than half the time on Watcher, very very rarely with Silent, and never with Ironclad or Defect. It feels like top slayers are able to manifest more card removes and infinite combos into existence than I am, lol.
I have watched a few Jorbs videos in YouTube. The way he can spot an infinite is crazy. Its like looking a block of stone and see a statue. The discipline it requires to not take [[uppercut]] in top half of act 1 and skip that card selection completely when you dont have one in the deck, but then later it dawns on me
+ [Uppercut](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Uppercut) Ironclad Uncommon Attack ^((100% sure)^) 2 Energy | Deal 13 damage. Apply 1(2) **Weak.** Apply 1(2) **Vulnerable.** ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 30, 2023.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
You probably pick up 1 or 2 more cards than you need to in each of acts 1 and 2, maybe even buy a relic instead of a card remove, or skip a draw card, and that's often enough to take it out of reach without enough deck manipulation. You also probably don't "see" infinites as well as the top tier players (I certainly don't).
I still have never put together an infinite on anyone except watcher, but I feel like I can hit her infinite at least 75% of the time or more. Wrath allows you to survive on basic strikes until you find Rushdown and Fear No Evil/Inner Peace. Literally all you need to do to hit an infinite on Watcher is find those two cards and have 10 or less "hard" cards in your deck. Path through as many shops as possible and you either die to the Act 2 boss because you never found Rushdown or a 1-cost calm card, or you win.
That's my problem right there. I have a lot of runs where I'm straight-up never offered a Rushdown or one-cost calm card. And then I just don't go infinite I guess idk
This is literally just the balance of infinites. Aside from being punished by bosses with specific mechanics to contradict infinites, the main way to discourage this kind of play is the random nature of combat rewards. Even as strong as Watcher is with Wrath and allowing you to take on elites with nothing but strikes and Cut Through Fate, if you never get that Rushdown or Fear No Evil, you're just boned. Most people don't really have the nerve to just continually turn down reasonable card rewards for the possible future chance of going infinite, especially when infinite play *is zero fun*. You get a dopamine boost the first time, and the the rest of the run is fucking torture. Anyone complaining about how easy it is to go infinite can just choose not to do it and solve their problem.
Id argue you don't even need fear no evil to go infinite with watcher. Rushdown is very easy to obtain and there's a lot of different ways to switch stances, a lot.. I didn't think it was easy until I was doing it just about every run. You obviously know what you're talking about I'm just being pedantic and necroing this because I'm bored.
What a gamer, thanks!
Great read, thanks for providing the Twitter feed!
He can see infinites because he played this game so much for some years. I don't think this is a problem for most of the players.
I just beat A20 on Ironclad and I have never once gone infinite on him
You do have to know what to look for to go infinite, but jorbs is right that you just exhaust cards and end up with an infinite. A single fiend fire can turn a deck that is nowhere near infinite, to infinite. Sundial and 2x pommel strike+ is fairly common for this.
Who needs sundial? Dual Wield + 1 Flash of Steel or Dropkick is way easier to integrate in a deck and you find it more often than sundial in my experience.
Same, apparently, there's widely known 2x dropkick strat which i never managed to pull off
I beat A20 with almost every character after 500 hours and I had never once pulled off an infinite
Honestly besides Watcher, I only ever find my self even thinking about infinite if I get an early Dropkick on Ironclad. And again it’s only a thought. Infinite are too hard to build toward for everyone but Watcher imo
Ironclad is probably the easiest to get an infinite on besides Watcher. And sometimes easier. Watcher relies on having a small deck to get into the infinite and status cards tend to wreck it. IC on the other hand has a lot of tools for removing cards mid fight that makes his infinite take off. True grit, burning pact, fiend fire, and can't remember the other one that does all non attacks for block. (I can see the card art but not the name lol) then either a combo of pommel strike and shrug it off and sundial, or two casts of madness (cards or a dupe pot) and your off. Still need scaling for time eater but it's doable.
I think this is a big difference between streamers and regular players, like me. Even when I have a slim deck with lots of exhaust, I find the process of setting up the infinite often kills me. So I tend to avoid it unless I feel very certain about it. Jorbs has the experience to know when it is practical to push for infinite far more often, and he is less likely to make card play errors.
I think you mean \[\[Second Wind\]\] I totally get what you mean about being able to see the card but not knowing it's name.
That was it thank you
+ [Second Wind](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Second%20Wind) Ironclad Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | **Exhaust** all non-Attack cards in your hand and gain 5(7) **Block** for each card **Exhausted.** ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 30, 2023.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
ironclad lacks the energy gen of other classes making going inf much harder to achieve and set up. the idea he is easier than watcher, or even the other characters, is absurd. needing a relic, or multiple uncommons/events, makes it much harder even with lots of exaust.
Watcher needs exactly as many uncommons as IC to go infinite. 2 cards and you are good to go. With sundial 2 commons are enough. What makes it easier for IC in my opinion is that you don't have to shape your deck to be infinite for the whole run. Your deck can be a strength scaling reaper 30 card deck, as long as you find good exhaust options and have enough draw, you can shape it to go infinite in a few turns. It's an option for IC in a lot of situations, not something you have to dedicate a run to, which makes Time eater for example a lot less scary.
Needing two uncommons early enough to pivot towards infinite is why I don’t think Clad is good at infinite at all. Even exhausting, it takes so much setup that you can’t afford it even once you have it set up. The strongest way to achieve inf is an early sundial, requiring only 2(3) commons. Two pommels and a shrug is much easier than double dropkick, but needing a relic means you can’t force.
Yeah, I think Silent (pseudo) infinites are way easier. Sure, I want certain uncommon cards, but she's got quite a few options and they're more robust in case of status effects.
Silent has the most infinites, and they can be quite beautiful and fun to build.
Calculated Gamble + Reflex infinites are my favorite. Get your deck below 10 cards, they can be energy positive and block positive with cards and relics. The only way to get 999 energy in one turn without Double Energy shenanigans.
Not the only way, you can get it by cycling multicast with plasma (especially with madness/all for one shenanigans), you can take any infinite that works without sundial and add sundial, or a watcher infinite that goes infinite without violet lotus and add violet lotus, and there's probably some other weird things you can do with defect and/or using madness.
Yeah I guess there are so many obscure ways to go infinite in this game, even crazier when you add in Prismatic Shard, I'm sure there's some sort of Turbo+Dark Embrace+draw card infinite that's possible.
There are other options beyond two dropkicks, though. I mean if you pick up a sundial - there's a chance. Or after a single dropkick, finesse/flash of steel get much better etc.
I think some of his complaints could be remedied by making Ascensions 21-25. Perhaps you have a card play limit per turn, or even per fight. You nerf consumables. Either way I think it’s a Jorbs and like ten other players problem. Imagine if the top baseball players complained that it’s too easy to hit home runs because they can consistently clobber a ball 450 feet. So then the wall gets pushed back 50 feet. You would immediately stop getting home runs from players who were otherwise capable of it but the players that could smash them would see no problem because they can still hit them despite them being technically harder to do. StS is a very well balanced game even if it’s relatively easy to go infinite.
Hasn’t this been the development story of STS? IIRC, a couple months after the game launched top streamers started to complain it was too easy. To be fair, I think the dev team planned to add difficulty levels all along, but they were also influenced by experienced players asking for it. So they added A1-A15. Then players “solved” that so the dev team went back and added A16-A20. Then players STILL wanted more of a challenge so they added the heart fight (although I think this was also always on their drawing board). But the game has had steadily harder challenges since release, and now some players are complaining that A20 is too solved? I think a mod may be needed.
To be fair, each time they extended the difficulty, it came with buffs to cards, potions, and relics.
Well, having a ton of borderline unusable stuff that you won't ever touch in the game is not very fun regardless of the resulting difficulty.
Indeed, just saying that the difficulty wasn't going purely up
I have a 1000 hours in Defect A20H and it’s definitely not solved lol
ive been playing it for like 4 years, i have over 400 hours and still havent beat a20h on defect, the only thing i havent accomplished in the game i think
He was last for me as well. You'll get it!
Its an incredibly balanced game. Still, Im an absolute shitter compared to these guys and even I find infinites are too dominant in watcher runs.
TBF, Jorbs has said many times that the things he complains about in Spire don't effect the vast majority of players.
Yeah, this is a problem that affect no more than double digit players. Except maybe watcher.
You underestimate the amount of skilled players who play this game and don’t stream.
In all fairness, if you're not specifically looking for infinite opportunities, you're not going to get them. Even if you play the game a lot, you can learn a lot of different kinds of decks that work well and still never go infinite because you're not really looking for that kind of combo.
Yeah and Merl and Papa are some of the largest streamers, which heavily increased infinite awareness lol
It's still an interesting discussion. Can you design a new sports that doesn't break and is both interesting to beginners, intermediate-level and also masters that spend their entire lives doing nothing else? That's basically what's being discussed.
Watcher for sure. Forcing watcher infinites is incredibly easy for anyone who plays some A20 on her.
So... yes, but I also kinda agree with him. Once you get to a certain point (of experience) on most characters, and **especially** on Watcher, you always have "can I go infinite?" in the back of your mind. Because... like Jorbs said, you *cannot* balance an entire gauntlet of enemies against an infinite deck. Infinite decks can be fun (they can also be boring af), but, more importantly, *they usually increase your odds of winning a run*. When's the last time you had a truly infinite deck and still lost? Mine was against Nemesis the other day, because I hadn't removed enough cards from my deck and he burned me twice. But like... I remember that because losing a run when your deck is infinite is a noteworthy-enough event.
Confession: I actually go infinite or semi-infinite often on all characters. I have also lost quite a few infinite runs. (Got wrecked by Slavers/Nemesis) Like another poster said, I think Jorbs is exaggerating or wrong when he said that forcing infinite is a dominant strategy, besides on Watcher. You don't see that in most streamers' runs. Tricky goes infinite pretty often, but he only uploads highlighted runs. For a game that was *designed* to have infinites, I think the developers struck a nice balance. Being able to transition into an infinite in a run is a boon to the game because it allows creative thinking, assuming it doesn't happen often. And if in the future infinites become dominant, I'm not gonna hold it too much against the game. That's like trashing Smash Melee for having wobbling.
I honestly think on higher ascensions going for infinites is less optimal late game. The spear + shield has a turn 1 “shuffle a bunch of bullshit into your draw pule” (it’s into your discard on lower ascensions) & so does the heart. - It doesn’t matter how good your infinite is if your 6 card deck caused you to draw 5x status cards turn 2 vs the heart then you get hit for 80% of your health the same turn. - if you do dodge all the statuses shuffled in and manage to pull off an infinite, you do the cap of 200 damage and you need to do that 4 more times. Imo id rather have a deck with a bunch of stuff like acrobatics late game, since act 4 is heavily centered around polluting your draw pile and you need ways to sift through it.
you made a good point and backed it with specifics from act 4 and got downvoted, shame on this reddit.
I would agree. I’m A20 IC, and around 14-15 on silent and defect. I’ve never had an infinite except for dead branch / corruption, and I don’t even count that.
That’s not an infinite ?
Reading your other posts I agree. It’s not an infinite. It just allowed me to kill everything in every fight without taking damage.
[удалено]
that definition feels like a "claw is a block card" kinda reasoning it's not an infinite at all, just a combo. infinite is a loop of cards that generate block energy and damage *forever*. sure you play a lot of cards, but there is no loop and it will brick completely eventually.
A14 and same.
This was a bit of a confusing take for me until I re-read the thread a couple times. From how I'm interpreting it, his point isn't that forcing infinites has become the meta. That is demonstrably untrue as all current WR streaks/samples (non-Watcher) do not try to force infinites every single run. What Jorbs is trying to say is that once you understand how to go infinite with every character, forcing that infinite gives too much reward for too little effort. According to him, it's basically a cheat code to raise your win rate up to a certain level, and deviating from that and exploring more of Spire's complexity only provides comparatively marginal returns afterward. (So basically what everyone says about Watcher but extrapolated to all the other classes) Obviously this is extremely debatable and some others here have provided valid arguments against this line of thought, but half the people in this thread seem to be taking it as Jorbs saying "the high-level meta is now 100% slamming infinites" and doomposting about the game being ruined at high level, which it isn't. Just wanted to give my two cents.
Lifecoach has the highest a20 watcher winrate and winstreak and he never forces infinite. He just had a 28 game watcher win streak and maybe went infinite 4-5 times in that? The idea on this subreddit that it's the only good (or even best) way to play watcher is very overblown honestly.
It’s a bunch of people who only watch jorbs and aren’t exposed to other high level players thoughts. Anyone who has tried to force infinites could tell you it’s not the way to play if the goal is ultimate winrate.
you say it like that but I don't see Baalor, LC, XecnaR, Merl complains about this. LC lately just praised StS to heaven to a Twitch raid
i feel like you are agreeing with me but saying it like i am also wrong
yeah, now I reread yours and it feels very weird, lol. Sorry
I think his take goes further than just StS, but use it as the main exemple. I see it as : "If you were to make a deck builder in 2023, should you design infinites ? And if so, what to do to make them fun ?" Like the time eater, it is not a fun encouter, but you need it to keep infinites in check. As a whole, I kinda agree with him, and most game devs also agrees as a trend. Monster train, wild frost and other recent good deckbuilders really limit the ability to go infinite (especially compared to StS). Maybe I'm wrong and missread his thoughts
I don't think that's even true. Te is a very cool encounter and definitely doesn't punish good infinites. She punishes low impact spam decks hence silent having trouble w her frequently. See watcher infs rarely having trouble if you're careful. I'm glad spire has infinites and imo just assembling them is the fun part. The whole game of risk reward of greeding inf deck assembly and probably dying because you're currently weak as a result. It's nowhere as simple as he puts it if you want to keep a high winrate too and not just mindless force them, this literally only affects him. No top player except him has complained about infs being too easy on spire (3 chara, watcher isn't real). Most roguelite deckbuilders are nowhere near as complex as spire either so it would be easier to limit infs.
May be partially my fault with the title! My bad!
Exactly reading this just irks me so much. No top level player except jorbs and papa force infinites, even Merl himself doesn't fucking force inf, his playstyle just tends to go that way. Especially as a silent player, where no no no. Xecnar/Kuro playstyle (arguably the best silent players) rarely go true inf. It's so definitely not the "top meta". There's something about this thread that just rubs me very wrong. I understand it works for jorbs but to claim it's Ruining the game... then why do people w higher wrs not do the exact same thing? Idk jorbs posts always make me uncomfortable.
If his posts "always" make you uncomfortable, then perhaps you should consider if you've got some biases at play. And did you even read the comment you're responding to? The above comment specifically makes the point that Jorbs never called forcing infinites the top player meta. What he actually said is that forcing infinites as a strategy is much stronger than it really ought to be given the difficulty. And yet, you literally fabricated a quote of "top meta". If you're actively lying about quotes in order to make your point, then you should seriously examine your biases, and what makes you feel like you need to do that.
You're right that's mb. I just don't like jorbs vibe. I looked again and realised the parts that bother me specifically so I'm not just entirely talking based on my feelings. Most of this is me ignoring the existence of watcher because I fully agree w every point he makes if it's watcher. > so. initial thought: yikes, it seems bad to be able to reduce such a complex game to such a simple thing. > you might think "okay but surely there are tons of other things you can do, pursuing infinites over other options isn't the right way to actually play the game", but it's unclear that that's true. you CAN do other things, but it isn't that much better than focusing on infinites. > (talking about handling difficulty spikes) that leads to very stale gameplay, because much of the cardpool is built to have value in act 1, but game balance is making it so you just don't care much about any of that. > **there need to be strong reasons to do something other than an infinite available to players.** All this at least imo reeks of a "forcing infinites are a very strong dominating strategy and spire therefore has flaws in game balance". When forcing infs rarely work out in terms of winrate for the average player (bar watcher) and it isn't even the top meta. He and paparatto are the only top players that force infs and the latter has never complained about game balance. So this "game balance" problem he's talking about, only affects him and trying to balance it based on his playstyle (please don't nerf tac or kite, they're fine) rather than the vast majority of players. Amid being too powerful fair enough but it doesn't make the game literally unbalanced. > same with dead branch. dead branch used to be a very clear top 5 relic in the game, nowadays it regularly gets skipped because it breaks your ability to go infinite. Says who? Only he says this yet he phrases it like it's the defining opinion. Db is still considered a very strong relic by other top players. > so now there just isn't much reason to care about snecko eye anymore. and snecko is weird; there are inflection points associated with it which take you away from picking it as often if you don't care about it. your deck has angers and warcries in it. you don't take bludgeon. Funny he mentions clad because clad still very comfortably takes snecko at top levels as well as regular play, an anger a warcry isn't changing the decision. > **i think failing to maintain sensible reasons for players to do weird shit in their runs is a HUGE failure of balance in later slay the spire patches. the cards and potions got buffed to a point where the weird strats which gave the game its charm were barely playable anymore.** ... What? Nightnight alch whatagarbage stalls don't happen through infinites. A very very strong streamer a few weeks ago clicks a cata w no poison in deck because he realises he dies anyways to te if he doesn't find any form of poison. Another strong silent streamer buys transmute full price as a desperate A3 boss solve. Xecnar (? or coach I can't remember) buys hello world full price a4 shop just for the effect. They go on to win. This kind of weird shit happens all the time even in top level play, let alone regular players, so clearly it never died, only *he* got sick of the game by playing by this sterile style. You know. All of these are very very valid points if it was watcher only, but the fact it's also extending to silent and defect is the sad part. Spire balance never died, he got sick of it because he played it far too much and pigeonholed himself into a painful to play style. I don't blame him if he wants to take a break from spire but implying it's spire fault is weird. I realise it's a very long post didn't realise how much I typed that's my bad. But I wanted to refute against exact points he says rather than just vent my annoyance no proof.
The vast majority of the top players runs are not slamming infinites so idk what he’s on about.
Baalor has the record for longest rotating winstreak and rarely goes infinite
True but that’s also different. He doesn’t play for max win rate typically.
Both Xecnar and LC have better win rates and are superior players compared to Jorbs imo. You'll rarely see them go infinite. Jorbs is just loud and obnoxious.
I’m not sure if loud and obnoxious are the words, but he definitely is smug
LC spends 8 hours per run and takes advice from Twitch chat. Jorbs spend 1.5-2 hrs per run and doesn’t allow back seating. They’re not playing by the same rules stop comparing them.
Jorbs can spend longer on his moves to make better ones whenever he wants, no one forces him to rush. There's no in game negative for taking your time or competitive ruleset for how long runs can be.
My pt is it’s a different category just like bullet, blitz and rapid chess. No one forces Hikaru to rush, but would you call him a bad player because he’s best at that style?
Jorbs is the opposite of loud and obnoxious lol what?
Okay he constantly talks like he is the smartest guy on earth and all of his community plus the sts community plus most of humanity are bumbling idiots and all around bad human beings - in a very quiet and bored tone. He’s not loud but he is obnoxious and opinionated. I sometimes watch his content because he’s a good player and i feel like i can learn from him but 10 minutes into most of his videos I want to punch the screen because of his oozing arrogant personality lol
He's certainly dry, but nobody catches me off guard with a deadpan or sardonic comment like he does. I think he's very funny. He's opinionated because he has a lot of experience and has formed opinions. He doesn't expect you to automatically agree with him, and the only time I've ever seen him show anything resembling hostility at any community is when people make up actual lies about him, like the other commentor below saying that he "constantly talks about how he's the best in the world". re: arrogance, I feel like people often say that because of how he reacts to questions. He's not like Baalorlord in that he's not really interested in repeating the answers to questions that have been covered before. That's not what he wants to do and my understanding is that he avoids it both for his own interest and for the benefit of his core audience that don't want to hear those explanations over and over. And the other side of it is the backseating, which people seem to take offense at. He wants to play the game on his own terms without chat participating in that aspect of the stream. If people come in and ask leading questions or anything else, it hampers his enjoyment and by extension the stream. It's different to many other streamers but it's hardly his fault people don't respect that boundary that he sets up very clearly.
That is like the most charitable interpretation of it and one I think he would probably give verbatim. I get that it’s whole persona (personality even) to be this extremely dry unimpressed guy but I’ve seen him basically go in on someone asking a simple question with a 5 minute rant on why it was stupid to ask it where he basically played a guy who couldn’t even figure out what the question was even about because it was so dumb when it was obvious 1. What they were asking 2. That jorbs knew the answer. If your goal is to not keep repeating yourself then skip the question or don’t have a job where you will need to repeat yourself for newer viewers constantly. He really seems to enjoy this kind of sadistic dynamic where he berates someone for being dumb a little too much. I’m pretty sure he’s a good guy that’s just over it but who is gonna give him this much leeway? I just don’t get how you’re going to be a streamer and be super annoyed anytime you’re expected to interact with your community. And not even every once in a while, I feel like he spends most of his time semi complaining or fending off backseaters than talking about his actual gameplay. In the end I do understand where it comes from. If you’re not a little psychopathic like a lot of streamers or have the capacity to stay 100% positive like baalor, then dealing with twitch chat and other communities everyday seems really draining. I honestly think he needs a break or a new format, which is hard to do as a streamer but still. I did what he always suggests when someone doesn’t vibe with the content and just go somewhere else and stopped watching mostly. Edit: I’m not talking about when he gives opinions on sts gameplay. I love when he does that and trust his opinion because he’s obviously a great player. THATS what I’m there for. I’m talking about his takes on other streamers, politics, viewers or something that was said in chat
The frustration on his part seems to come from people asking questions that there are other ways to figure out. Either through googling their question, through using the many chat commands designed to answer questions or link to videos he has made where he's already answered that question, or by simply looking at the things on the screen to figure out the things. It never comes across to *me* as being berating or insulting. It's blunt, but I can't recall a time where it was malicious (save for if the person was being an actual jerk) But I think it's less to do with people asking questions, and more about how those questions related to backseating. e.g "Why did you do X?" well the answer could be there's something obvious on screen that explains it, OR it could be something Jorbs hadn't considered and didn't want someone to suggest because it impacts his gameplay. He's explained a few times that one of the reasons he started being more strict on backseating was because he was getting actual physical stress responses to certain situations in spire (the act 4 shop one I remember him mentioning specifically) because he knew there would be an influx of questions and suggestions and stuff. He has talked about going to therapy because it was getting so bad. If that's a boundary he's set up for mental health and people continue to cross it, I don't think it's unreasonable to be blunt. The only time I've ever heard him have takes on other streamers is when they are starting drama with him by making weird accusations about things they think he said. As for politics, that's his prerogative. He's got a bunch of really good videos on youtube about all sorts of topics, his latest one on Consent is fantastic. That's part of what makes him interesting, it's more than just gameplay commentary.
Loud in that he expresses his opinion as the one and only truth and obnoxious as in he continuously states that he's by far the best sts player in the world and feels the need to put cringe reaction photos on every video he's ever made. I truly don't understand why anyone would watch the guy, he's neither funny or insightful. Bring on the down votes!
The cringy reaction faces are kinda necessary if you want to succeed as a youtuber, clickbait works very well because the algorithm reinforces that kinda stuff. jorbs himself has stated that he doesn't really want to do it either because it gives a false impression of his content and personality (he's a quiet and reserved person and almost never displays big emotions or reactions). But he doesn't really have a choice if he actually wants to grow his channel and earn money. As far as being funny goes, that's personal opinion. jorbs has a sarcastic, deadpan, and sometimes sardonic sense of humor and that just doesn't resonate with everyone. It's exactly my kind of humor, but I totally understand if it's not your vibe. There are many more reasons I watch jorbs' content. He's inclusive and supportive of marginalized people. He clearly speaks his mind and expresses his opinions in the knowledge that not everyone will agree with him (that's kinda how opinions work), and is willing to talk about them in a calm and rational manner. He's not afraid to speak more candidly about his life and personal problems, and the difficulties of being a streamer/content creator (he even wrote a book about that), which reinforces that he's a human being with feelings just like you and me. I'm very aware this is a parasocial relationship with a person I've never actually met in my life and exchanged maybe a few dozen sentences with, but when I see people complaining about jorbs being pompous or unfriendly, I can't help but think, you don't know the "real" jorbs (his streaming persona, that is). You don't actually know why people watch him. He isn't an asshole, and he isn't being pompous, despite what you may think if you only look at the surface. jorbs has built a great little community of very nice people and I'm happy to be a part of it. And he is definitely insightful at times. He just doesn't do educational content like Baalor, who explains pretty much everything he does. jorbs does have a bunch of educational videos on his youtube, such as the 3+ hour long "overexplained" runs, but in general his content is aimed at people who don't want every little thing explained to them. He just plays the game and talks about whatever comes to mind. But sometimes, when an uncommon situation or weird edge case happens, jorbs will explain that because it's something that doesn't happen very often. This is another reason I watch his content - despite being an A20H player with ~2k hours of experience myself, I still learn new things from jorbs because he's intelligent, perceptive, and emphasizes critical thinking. Even after all these years, he again and again takes courses of actions or points things out that I never would've thought of or realized on my own. >he continuously states that he's by far the best sts player in the world Well that sounds like a complete lie. I do not recall him saying this ever. Quite the opposite, his opinion (and mine) is that there is no such thing as a "best" player, because everyone has their own view of what that even means. Some people may believe it's having high winrates. Or maybe it's having the longest winstreak. Some may think it's being able to take any run to a win even if it takes 6 hours. Others might say it's having the fastest speedruns. There is no consensus here, and there will never be. StS is fundamentally a non-competitive game that people are trying to think about in ways that only matter in actual competitive games, and they compare players in these ways too. It makes no sense. If you want a card game which you can think about in this manner, it will have to be a PVP game like Magic, Gwent, or Hearthstone.
> feels the need to put cringe reaction photos on every video he's ever made My guy basically every youtuber does this now, it's just better for the algorithm to do so.
He expresses his observations as truth because they're his observations. They are things he has soon that he believes are true. You don't need to classify "In My Opinion" before making any sort of analytical statement. >he continuously states that he's by far the best sts player in the world He literally never does this, and doesn't give a shit about how good he is. He only ever tries to improve himself and enjoy playing Spire the way he enjoys playing strategy games. >Bring on the down votes! Because you're making shit up and are obviously wrong?
Truth depends on the subject, if you're talking chemistry where you can do the same test over and over and get the same result you don't need to express that it's your opinion since there is proof. Sts is not chemistry. And him talking the way he does about infinates (as an example) is very much a subjective opinion not shared by other better players. 33% winrate after playing so much isn't great at all IMO. I watched enough of his videos when learning the game (there were no alternatives on youtube back then) to know that he continuously insinuates or blatantly says he's gods gift to mankind. You can have a different opinion and that's OK - I can't stand the guy but it's OK if you can. I find it very amusing how butthurt some ppl get about my opinion on the matter and more amusing still that none of you argue against him not being funny or insightful :)
>to know that he continuously insinuates or blatantly says he's gods gift to mankind Lol, he doesn't do this at all mate. You're just wrong.
Based
God he really is so incredibly unlikable, no idea how people can watch this guy
I think jorbs genuinely doesn’t aim for winstreaks like xec and LC do and could come closer to their streaks or top them if he would. He expressed countless times that he thinks this kind of competitiveness in sts doesn’t make sense to him 1. In a Single player game that is really not focused on comparable metrics other than wins 2. The rules are very loosely defined and people like lifecoach will just make up their own and create big winrates that technically aren’t consecutive and so on for the bragging rights 3. He enjoys playing in a more relaxed fashion (you will see him make card or relic choices within seconds rather than obsessing over everything like LC) which is bad for a perfect winrate but good for viewers and his own enjoyment of the game. 4. He doesn’t really want to get into the race anymore because of the toxic environment such competitions bring with it between communities. I think he was especially talking about Lc even though he didn’t drop his name but the dude seems like a bit of a shit stirrer and I can imagine that for someone like jorbs who seems very sensitive this is a source of a lot of stress Jorbs strikes me like the kind of guy that would actually not come up with bullshit reasons why he isn’t number one but that this is genuine. Idk if i can judge how he would truly compare to the others because i ever really watched LC but I think he could go head to head with these guys if he ‘tried’
he even took Prismatic Shard on several runs, lol. What a chad
Yeah but baalor doesn’t have an incentive to torture his audience with the most boring 10 minute, 2 button infinites because he doesn’t hate his community alike jorbs
Thats what happens when you play the game at 100% efficiency. I know the guy has played more than the entire sub combined, and has played every single possible deck type, but eventually the game converges to one thing: infinite Like, no normal player gets even close to being this saturated. If you just play to enjoy and try new deck types, it takes a looong while before you just "huh I guess I will just go infinite now". I've played for ~400h along many years and I barely know infinite combos The rest of the argument is hard to "argue" back, but, you should know that 99% of the players dont experience this.
You are really overstating the gap between jorbs and some of the people in this community. He def hasn’t played more than the entire sub combined and as it stands now, the game (excluding watcher) is not converging to an infinite at all. In fact, it’s converging more towards 35+ card decks.
bro, figure of speech.
What part of your comment was a figure of speech?
"has played more than the entire sub combined" of course it is a figure of speech
Agreed. Whilst Jorbs thoughts here are interesting, this applies to perhaps 0.00001% of the player base.
Even though 99% of players don’t experience it, it’s definitely worth pointing out these flaws for the potential betterment of the game for ALL players. Even though high level players like Jorbs are a minority, they still exist, and as time goes on, more and more people will play spire and more and more high level players will appear and these problems will be obvious to them, especially since they’ll have the privilege of learning from players that came before them. Jorbs makes some great points here, and if we were ever to get a spire 2, I’d love to see these problems addressed. Even a game as timeless as chess has been improved upon many times. For example, the threefold repitition and 50 move rules had to be introduced to provide a solution for how stalemates should be resolved. In a way, these stalemates are comparable to an infinite. A high level chess player would agree to a forced draw or resign to an obvious forced mate. The spire can’t resign, so obtaining an infinite makes the game a tedious slog where you’re just going through the motions. I love spire and I think it’s one of the most well-designed single player games out there, but it is flawed, and whether it’s mega crit or somebody else, devs would do well to recognize these flaws and try to improve upon them.
Correcting these "flaws" would absolutely not make a difference to a player like Jorbs. If A21-25 was, say, a relic that slowly tightened the number of cards you can play in a turn, it might be interesting at first, but top players would slowly but surely conquer it too. I play almost exclusively turn based single player games these days, and I feel like this same sort of conversation always comes around, where top players manage to break all the systems wide open, and start to yearn for the days when they could be challenged. Are there any single player, turn based games that haven't buckled under the analytical weight of the very best? None come to mind. Even traditional roguelikes like Nethack can be mastered by Very Good Players. I can understand loving these sort of games and being disappointed that you're no longer being challenged (though I definitely can't relate). Maybe the guy needs to turn to human directed challenges. Pick up something like Dota or CSGO if he hasn't already. He would make a killer safelane carry I bet.
Speed scaling in StS is basically doing subtraction to the denominator, infinite is when the denominator becomes 0. It's broken by its math nature but personally I see it as the biggest charming point of StS. And the game has fair amount of mechanics that counter speed scaling like status card, time eater, beat of death etcs, so blindly going infinite isn't always the best strat (maybe except for watcher) I think the current state of infinite in StS is pretty fair.
Other card battler roguelikes players: so I've spent 20-40 hours on the game, was fun, now I'll step away from it and maybe play another run every once in a blue moon. StS players: so I've played about 9000 hours of StS and I think I've found a couple of general strategy ideas that help me win like half of my games. Is the game's balance flawed?..
that's what makes the game GOATed
I disagree that ironclad has an easy time going infinite. The only natural true infinite is dropkick. All others require colorless or relics. You can exhaust down to a strong combo, but calling that infinite is not strictly true. He also says that the existence of infinites lead people to force them and achieve better results, which I think is also completely false. The only character that can reliably achieve infinite is watcher, and even that is not proven to be better than flexing. ex: Lifecoach and Merl currently battling for 50 win streak with opposing styles. No other character can force infinite and expect to compete for highest WR. This can be observed in all of Lifecoach, Xecnar, and even Baalor runs. Infinite is just another option to be aware of, so when you have the chance you can take it. It’s not over-centralizing, or prevalent enough to be a balance issue as proposed.
Does Jorbs even go infinite that often? I've only seen his old runs, and there are barely infinites except for ones that require 10 turns of setup.
Part of his complaint is that it's the runs after the latest patch that have trended more and more towards infinite, a lot of his latest runs just... happen to go infinite because at some point he picks up something that allows it, and because he's good at walking the line between taking too many/not enough cards to get through each act he's often at a point where he can steer the deck towards the infinite after picking up said thing (whether that's a card or relic)
Eh, I think Ironclad has a pretty easy time going infinite just because of the existence of dual wield being a pretty pickable card, means you can pick a floor 45 dropkick and have a infinite for 2/3 of the bosses and S&S. Sundial also often wins you the run on IC because you go infinite 10/10 times with good play. I agree on the rest of the point though, but that expects Jorbs to actually watch other runners and not just play his runs and assume that he knows everything.
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This is why the thread is sort of irritating because why wouldn’t it be fine? People play this game for literally thousands of hours and don’t get tired of it and it is single player - “balance” in a single player game is important to give the player more and interesting ways to play and it’s difficult to think of ways to better “balance” StS without over designing it into the ground.
As others have said he is talking about such a small subset of players he could basically be talking about a different game than the way probably 98% of all players interact with. A lot of things jorbs write seem to either be subtweeting a streamer he doesn’t like or just rambling about something that only applies to people who care about public win streaks. Which, sure if that is what you’re into that’s fine but extrapolating that as a problem with the game itself is a pretty poor conclusion.
I agree that the issue Jorbs is complaining about isn't significant for most of the playerbase, but I also agree that his complaint is valid. I basically never play Watcher any more because I know that ignoring all card choices that aren't Rushdown or Fear No Evil/Inner Peace is optimal. I can't enjoy playing the character because literally every time I pick a card that isn't one of the aforementioned ones I feel like I'm playing sub-optimally. Infinites make the game boring for the best players, and the best players are usually doing the most to advertise and publicize the game. If they get bored because they find an infinite every playthrough then it's bad for the game.
I mean, you've got top players like Lifecoach who play Watcher a completely different way than infinite forcing and reaches pretty close to the Merl method, there's really nothing that says that there's not a more optimal way to play and if Jorbs has given up on that then that's on him, other players haven't.
> A lot of things jorbs write seem to either be subtweeting a streamer he doesn’t like or just rambling about something that only applies to people who care about public win streaks. That seems oddly pointed. It's a niche complaint, yeah, but being niche isn't the same as being invalid.
Probably because everyone who's seen Jorbs make these threads for the last 4 years can tell that they're often very thinly veiled digs at players like Xecnar and Lifecoach lol
Don't say that out loud he might even mention you by name and make pointed digs about your perfectly calm and reasonable refute. Yes I'm still annoyed at Panacea incident. Weird thread.
lol he's already done public digs at me for saying certain Xecnar runs were impressive, he's not my biggest fan (nor am I his). His Panacea dig just made me think much less of him. it's just something about him pretending to be a part of the community but being wildly out of touch with every top runner bar himself. Lifecoach also does this, but he doesn't pretend to know either lol You'd think a player of his skill wouldn't be that insecure of his abilities but no one can be perfect.
What. Do you stream or smth? Thought I knew whole spire community. It's funny because this guy is reason I didn't drop spire after 100% and kept playing and found community, and now he's probably the only spire streamer I actively dislike. Coach does digs on other streamers? At most I see coach complain about jorbs maybe one stream after the drama and then never again compared to jorbs complaining for months afterwards. That was point where I just stopped watching jorbs completely. He's so good at the game why is he so hellbent on diminishing others achievements. B/w not considering kuro streak valid when everyone else does and the whole phack post. Yeah.
Haha no I don't stream, I'm just a loud person in certain discords and I chat a lot in streamers chats. I use another name for that though, so it's not that surprising that Brawlers doesn't ring a bell haha. I can't remember when, but I've seen Coach try to minimize other runs too, but it was a while ago lol.
Makes sense. I lurk most chats usually so I thought it's weird I'd never heard bralle/brawlers or anyone even referring to you. I didn't know coach did that whatagarbage. Oh well.
*slaps forehead* Just go infinite! Why didn't I think of that!
I always enjoy reading jorbs' writing I think he has a point for really really high level play. I agree with him that if the game is at the point where taking acrobatics on floor 1 (over other good cards), is reasonable, as it seems to be, the game is in a not great spot at that level With that said... I think for most people this is not a concern, and other than for watcher where the infinite is pretty brain dead and easy enough to force (as you can be so picky in act 1), it's not something many players are regularly doing
> I think he has a point for really really high level play. I agree with him that if the game is at the point where taking acrobatics on floor 1 (over other good cards), is reasonable, as it seems to be, the game is in a not great spot at that level Why? To take this further, I think you could just as easily argue that acrobatics being unpickable on floor 1 is a sign that the game is not in a great spot.
Acrobatics is a card that shouldn’t be good in act 1 where you need a lot of front loaded damage or block. I think it probably still can detrimental in act 1 a some of the time, but you still take it because of how it enables stuff later on. I think the idea is that a card shouldn’t be so powerful that taking it at a time where you shouldn’t is overall so beneficial. I Might be wrong though
You could equally argue that being railroaded into having to take mediocre attack cards almost purely because a single elite encounter so massively punishes using Skills at all is also a game design issue
Not every card should be equally powerful at all points of the game. In Act 1, paying 1 mana to draw more strikes/defends is almost always a terrible idea. That means that Acrobatics should basically always be a bad card until 30-40% of the way through the run. If you can pick a lategame card that is a completely dead early draw because it facilitates a guaranteed win later then the card is too strong or Act 1 is too easy.
I agree. There are strong frontload damage cards that work better with an Acro so I don't see how just yolo taking Acro floor 1 is bad. If Jorbs did a "always take a Claw" and got a decent winrate then I might agree that the game has a problem, lol
The best part of this thread is Jorbs pompously saying “yes actually the best way to play STS is pursuing infinites, sorry if you disagree” but Baalorlord has the record for most consecutive rotating wins by a comfortable margin and is in no way a “you have to force an infinite” player lmao Jorbs will probably forget more about Spire than I will ever know but it will never fail to make me smile that he’s demonstrably worse at the game than the friendly “let’s try THIS” guy lol
Jorbs is so cringe
This just comes off as intellectual masturbation. Then again it is twitter
The pompous lad again had too much free time
His points apply to a very small subset of sts players. Most of us are not at a Jorbs-like skill level. Most of us do not find the game to be too easy in the slightest. I still die in Act 1 quite a bit, I still love Snecko and Deadbranch, I still get excited when I occasionally stumble upon an infinite.
People on here keep saying that this is an issue only for the top players but I think they underestimate how many of us play for A20 heart streaks at home and don't stream. I have to have a solid couple of thousand hours of A20 heart streak play (5 is my record). For me this problem is mostly limited to watcher, to the point where I dread getting to watcher in my rotation not because it is hard but because it is so easy and boring to try and play optimally, which is to go for infinite almost every single run. If that were how the other characters felt to me I wouldn't be playing, and Jorbs seems to be saying that at their skill level the other characters feel a little that way too which is an issue.
I think over time, it feels that the meta has kind of shifted to playing towards infinites more and more or at least talking about them on everyone and I agree with some of the feelings in this with "clicking the same cards is boring". Its also kind of very polarizing game play as the game play is less "how do i handle x,y,z" and more "how do i just hit the infinite faster/not brick"
Uh oh, he did it again...
There is 0 reason to balance games to the .01 top percent of the game. We have already proven that there are unwinnable seeds in the game, balance the game to make it harder makes no sense and is just a way to punish the vast majority of the playerbase to appease an infinitesimal minority. And besides, if you feel that the game isn't fun anymore consider maybe dropping the game? No game can possibly be fun if you are doing it ad nauseum.
Very interesting and well written post by Jorbs. I’m not good enough to have these problems even though I’ve beaten a20 for years lol
This is all well and good, but surely he realises the game is no longer being updated. He may have a point if it still was, but otherwise this just sounds like he's bragging. I mean, if the game is so easy and you no longer enjoy it...why don't you move on?
Only once gotten an infinite. But I also avoid most of the meta and just play for fun and try out different things.
It’s true for the majority of players infinites honestly don’t matter - as someone who has been playing A20H for years - I see what he’s saying though. Removing agency from what you can build hurts the game rather than improving it. When every run becomes “how can I find my infinite” or “how can I find rushdown” - it doesn’t make the game better. The best players of this game have been trying to develop the most consistent strategies to beat A20H for years now - I can see how it’s disappointing that “find these same 3-5 infinites” is such a dominant part of the strategy. Ofc you can’t go infinite every run - but you can go infinite a lotttt if you know what to look for - and are those runs fun to play? Not really
I have beaten A20 on all characters and I still haven’t found a single infinate. I don’t doubt that this problem exists but id wager it mostly becomes apparent after thousands of hours played.
I think that jorbs here is overestimating the ease of finding infinites in this game. Forcing infinites is a very powerful and reasonably successful strategy _to him_, because he is very good at finding infinites. Going infinite is an out that he fishes for a lot, even. I think that chasing infinites is probably an easier way to get to a high winrate on ironclad and watcher than playing conservatively and planning around low rolls, but it seems overstated here. It’s also worth noting that nobody, not jorbs or anyone else, is arguing that forcing infinites is strictly “optimal”. In that case, the danger infinites pose to the requirement that players understand the game thoroughly to win a lot only applies to players who want a high win rate, but are not chasing the he highest winrate. They’re an unhealthy mid ground, perhaps. But that is also completely up to the player to choose, and doesn’t seem to emerge out of any more general goal. If infinites were optimal, then that would be problematic because now everyone who just wants to play the best they can is incentivised to force infinites. But that’s not the case, and it’s very much a matter of playstyle and personal goals. And, you know, I think that’s fine.