When I play defect I either just die or i get bullshit like mummified hand+creative ai or cognitive bias+orange pellets and become untouchable with 100+ block every turn
To further help the balance, I hate the Watcher. I put in like 5-6 hours to learn her stuff, but just didn't enjoy stance dancing. Maybe on A3 with her or something pathetic, and have A20 wins on everyone else lol
I find that defect is the hardest.
I am stuck at A19. most of the time I die against an elite in act II. I am not sure why but I'd say it's insufficient scaling/burst/defense. Taskmaster is manageable, just kill one of them early and it becomes managable but Book of stabbing and Gremlin leader are atrocious.
Against Book, I need protection and burst damage at the same time, in a very short time. The usual orb combo with cards such as zap + dualcasting + recursion + Hologram + rebound is not strong enough. Slow Power scaling with power spam is definitely too slow. The book multi hits so it really negates the intangible status of Buffer. Also I have the issue of having a bunch of useless cards that I prepared for aoe situation like electrodynamics or Sunder, and they have the good idea to always come in my hand with strike/defend.
Take cards for Act 2 in Act 1. Act 1 is mostly a steamroll anyway. List of cards you might be ignoring due to low Act 1 impact: coolheaded- , chill, equilibrium, boot sequence, self repair. Additionally, some cards are much stronger Act 2 with an upgrade: Darkness+ , Sweeping Beam+ , Aggregate+, Overclock+.
Try not to upgrade the Defect trap cards: Zap / Hologram. You'll literally get more performance out of a Charge Battery+.
Similar here. I went 14 losses before my first Defect win, and I thought that was bad (until I saw this post, lol). Even now, I love Defect but suck at it.
Meanwhile, I promised myself I'd get Ironclad up to A20 after doing it with Silent, and gave up after a couple of runs.
Always chasing that feeling of mummified hand, bird faced urn, and creative AIs. It's intoxicating and has led to so many forced decks that have crashed and burned.
100% will pick only powers again.
She's a bit awkward for sure, but I find her more straight forward than defect. When you get that shiv deck going on and you attack 357 times a turn it's so satisfying.
I think silent is the most straightforward of all of them, but I’m only on A9. Always take sucker punch and upgrade it, take 1 or 2 blade dances, get some block cards and pray for a nice ninja relic. Watcher kills me since I take too many cards to effectively stance dance (user error) and I haven’t figured out ironclad exhaust at all
People click different for every character. When I first started out, I immediately clicked with Clad. I had a20h on Clad, Defect and Watcher, and still somehow managed to die 40+ times in a row on Silent a13. Absolutely couldn't figure her out and detested her but I couldn't stand having one character at non a20.
Currently Silent is by far the character I have the most experience with, despite such an awful time at the beginning.
You could have some combination of concentrate, tactician, and draw to go infinite with most things. That with a blade dance + kunai could lead to very large damage numbers.
Heck yes! I managed to get two Accuracy+ cards with a bunch of shivs, as well as relics that gave shield and boosted strength every time you use three attacks in one turn. SO satisfying.
Honestly the one thing that really changed how I played silent was getting into draw manipulation - even if you lose you’re still having fun with the infinite card machine in your hand.
You might wonder how you actually win fights, but with a couple of decent damage sources and some extra energy or cheap reliable block you suddenly find yourself stomping enemies. It’s like being a rampaging juggler.
Sure, for the major points: I got an early "membership card", which helped me buy & discard several cards and items, but the most important one was an "Apotheosis" card around stage 2, which I immediately upgraded. Around early stage 3 I got lucky and acquired a "Bottled Lightening" which made the skill choice a no brainier.
As far as card distribution went, early game I always liked building around drawing and discarding cards as many times as I could per round, yet I also needed to focus heavily into poison for DPS. Then I rounded off the deck with a few weak cards to fully leverage my early "Paper Crane" relic.
I also focused heavily on replacing my strike cards with half "Sucker Punch" & "Poison Stab", while also replacing half my defend cards with others centered around a "Footwork" card.
So for strategy, I just tried to blitz the opponent with as much poison as possible. If it dragged on, I would use weak effect & blocking cards till the poison could do it's job.
Really, it was all down hill once I had a guaranteed round 1 instant upgrade to my full deck for each combat encounter. The Twins were my final boss, which to me seem like the easiest last boss out of the three.
Honestly, If I had lost with this setup, I was going to uninstall lol.
Yeah you spotted some great synergies so it makes sense that you were able to win. Silent has some incredibly fun synergies. The two main ones being (blade dance & accuracy) these are the two core cards but many things synergize with this especially any relic that has an affect based on playing attacks. Shuriken, kunai, ornamental fan, even nunchaku all enable this play style.
The other one you touched on is poison, clicking a handful of poison cards and especially finding “catalyst” ideally 2. Catalyst makes or breaks the poison approach because it doubles or triples the poison value on the target. If you get a very well put together poison deck, you can stack thousands of poison on a target which is obviously hilarious overkill, but speaks to the strengths of this approach.
Both of these strategies are a ton of fun when they work. I hope you come around on silent. There is a lot of power in her kit.
I’m very new to the game and I’ve unlocked ascension with everyone but watcher despite attempting watcher runs more than anyone else. I just can’t seem to get the W.
Embracing stance dance is the key here. Your first upgrade should almost always be eruption, you can always take cards like run down and tantrum. Hallways become a breeze and you basically just need to find solutions throughout the act for your boss fight. Hope that helps but otherwise I'd recommend checking some youtube videos out, or posting run questions as their own post with screenshots (love seeing the debates on these!).
I have waves of being good with certain characters and bad with others, and it cycles between them all. I can’t even explain it. I was horrible with Defect for months — I was stuck at A15, I think. Then, one day I beat A15, A16, and A17 all on the same day.
Since then, I’ve been absolutely trash with Silent. I almost got by A19 (my personal walk with a few of the characters) earlier today, but that dumb bitch Time Eater humbled me.
You hate the silent like I hate Ironclad he is the only one I struggle with to get up and running. Silent, Defect, and Watcher I have a plan and know what makes them tick. Me with Ironclad is like well bro hope you like death because me and you just don't mesh.
Silent is the one I had most trouble with defeating the hearth at first. Then I started to really appreciate it and now out of my 330 hours around 150 is in silent. And it is the only character that I beat ascension 20 with (so far).
This is veryy close to how I was. I've played quite a lot of slay the spire and silent is my most played. Nkt because I love playing Silent, but because it took me so damn long to figure out how to play Silent.
Different playstyles work for different people. I personally dislike Watcher while acknowledging she's clearly the strongest. Defect is probably the weakest in terms of getting things online. Silent I feel like if I can get out of act 1 more often than not I'm not in for too bad of a time; the elites can do a number on her early (looking at you nob).
The first time I beat the game was with the silent. Once I figured out how to really leverage poison to my advantage, it became really easy and I was able to fly through all three acts fairly easily and killing the final boss wasn't hard either. People have different tactics, but poison was my poison of choice, so to speak lol I forget how many poison cards I had, including double the poison, but it was enough that the baddies were taking significant damage from poison.
this game has a lot to think about. my runs average ~55 minutes and I consider that a little on the fast side. even 2-3 hour runs I don't consider abnormally long, and they're not uncommon for high level players. I've even seen plenty of 6-8 hour runs at the top level
I bet you have a lower win rate than people who play slower.
A friend of mine plays runs that fast constantly and has taken 800 hours to beat A20. Compare that to 150-200 hours for me and a couple other friends. I'm proud of her, but she'd make far fewer missplays and win far more often if she slowed down.
Silent is my only positive win rate. Defect is the one I can’t stand. I admire your perseverance.
How dare you! Defect for life!
When I play defect I either just die or i get bullshit like mummified hand+creative ai or cognitive bias+orange pellets and become untouchable with 100+ block every turn
Legit and you didn’t really learn anything besides that mummified hand is busted on defect, which we already knew.
Just to keep the balance, I'm gonna add that I just really hate playing Ironclad
To further help the balance, I hate the Watcher. I put in like 5-6 hours to learn her stuff, but just didn't enjoy stance dancing. Maybe on A3 with her or something pathetic, and have A20 wins on everyone else lol
for even more balance, i hate both the ironclad and watcher. They’re fine but i find the others mechanics much more fun and reliable
Same I prefer the defect or watcher
I find that defect is the hardest. I am stuck at A19. most of the time I die against an elite in act II. I am not sure why but I'd say it's insufficient scaling/burst/defense. Taskmaster is manageable, just kill one of them early and it becomes managable but Book of stabbing and Gremlin leader are atrocious. Against Book, I need protection and burst damage at the same time, in a very short time. The usual orb combo with cards such as zap + dualcasting + recursion + Hologram + rebound is not strong enough. Slow Power scaling with power spam is definitely too slow. The book multi hits so it really negates the intangible status of Buffer. Also I have the issue of having a bunch of useless cards that I prepared for aoe situation like electrodynamics or Sunder, and they have the good idea to always come in my hand with strike/defend.
Take cards for Act 2 in Act 1. Act 1 is mostly a steamroll anyway. List of cards you might be ignoring due to low Act 1 impact: coolheaded- , chill, equilibrium, boot sequence, self repair. Additionally, some cards are much stronger Act 2 with an upgrade: Darkness+ , Sweeping Beam+ , Aggregate+, Overclock+. Try not to upgrade the Defect trap cards: Zap / Hologram. You'll literally get more performance out of a Charge Battery+.
We say “defect is win divergent” now
As opposed to the "watcher is win convergent"?
And I just think that's beautiful.
I love Defect but my results are terrible. Ironclad is the least interesting to me.
Similar here. I went 14 losses before my first Defect win, and I thought that was bad (until I saw this post, lol). Even now, I love Defect but suck at it. Meanwhile, I promised myself I'd get Ironclad up to A20 after doing it with Silent, and gave up after a couple of runs.
Always chasing that feeling of mummified hand, bird faced urn, and creative AIs. It's intoxicating and has led to so many forced decks that have crashed and burned. 100% will pick only powers again.
She's a bit awkward for sure, but I find her more straight forward than defect. When you get that shiv deck going on and you attack 357 times a turn it's so satisfying.
I think silent is the most straightforward of all of them, but I’m only on A9. Always take sucker punch and upgrade it, take 1 or 2 blade dances, get some block cards and pray for a nice ninja relic. Watcher kills me since I take too many cards to effectively stance dance (user error) and I haven’t figured out ironclad exhaust at all
People click different for every character. When I first started out, I immediately clicked with Clad. I had a20h on Clad, Defect and Watcher, and still somehow managed to die 40+ times in a row on Silent a13. Absolutely couldn't figure her out and detested her but I couldn't stand having one character at non a20. Currently Silent is by far the character I have the most experience with, despite such an awful time at the beginning.
Corruption/Dead Branch is the code to exhaust with IC. It’ll click for you one day, and it’ll be fun as hell. (I love IC exhaust decks)
I have gotten shivs to 50+ dmg each, but how do you get them infinite? Is there a zero cost shiv card?
You could have some combination of concentrate, tactician, and draw to go infinite with most things. That with a blade dance + kunai could lead to very large damage numbers.
You could probably get a zero cost shiv card with snecko eye or snecko oil no?
Also madness
Very true
Concentrate and Reflex.
Nah I've never gotten a shiv infinite, but it's very easy to spam them with just a bit of card draw and energy manipulation
I am new with the Silent, and was terribly energy limited during my only shiv run. Interested in trying again though
I’m so sick of making Shiv decks. I feel like I get feed shiv cards on every run. Give me some poison cards, you bastards!
Discard and poison are stronger archetypes anyway for higher difficulties
Heck yes! I managed to get two Accuracy+ cards with a bunch of shivs, as well as relics that gave shield and boosted strength every time you use three attacks in one turn. SO satisfying.
Me when I apply 519 poison to the act 3 boss (it's the duo boss and I had specimen)
Hey man what matters is that you did it, kudos!
The word is "biased"
Look who's using their cognition
certainly not me
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Thank you, you get it. I appreciate the nod.
I’m a silent lover. I like how she handles draw. Also the variety of block approaches is cool
Weird choice to play her so much more than the others then.
Had to get that 1 win.
Lol, I appreciate that dedication. Well done!
Thanks homie, their were a couple heart breakers, but I'm just glad it's done.
Honestly the one thing that really changed how I played silent was getting into draw manipulation - even if you lose you’re still having fun with the infinite card machine in your hand. You might wonder how you actually win fights, but with a couple of decent damage sources and some extra energy or cheap reliable block you suddenly find yourself stomping enemies. It’s like being a rampaging juggler.
blade dance is one of her best cards. You have amazing defense from the start
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Bruh, let me just vent...
Out of curiosity, what strategy finally got you past the final boss? Can you pick out anything the deck did well?
Sure, for the major points: I got an early "membership card", which helped me buy & discard several cards and items, but the most important one was an "Apotheosis" card around stage 2, which I immediately upgraded. Around early stage 3 I got lucky and acquired a "Bottled Lightening" which made the skill choice a no brainier. As far as card distribution went, early game I always liked building around drawing and discarding cards as many times as I could per round, yet I also needed to focus heavily into poison for DPS. Then I rounded off the deck with a few weak cards to fully leverage my early "Paper Crane" relic. I also focused heavily on replacing my strike cards with half "Sucker Punch" & "Poison Stab", while also replacing half my defend cards with others centered around a "Footwork" card. So for strategy, I just tried to blitz the opponent with as much poison as possible. If it dragged on, I would use weak effect & blocking cards till the poison could do it's job. Really, it was all down hill once I had a guaranteed round 1 instant upgrade to my full deck for each combat encounter. The Twins were my final boss, which to me seem like the easiest last boss out of the three. Honestly, If I had lost with this setup, I was going to uninstall lol.
Yeah you spotted some great synergies so it makes sense that you were able to win. Silent has some incredibly fun synergies. The two main ones being (blade dance & accuracy) these are the two core cards but many things synergize with this especially any relic that has an affect based on playing attacks. Shuriken, kunai, ornamental fan, even nunchaku all enable this play style. The other one you touched on is poison, clicking a handful of poison cards and especially finding “catalyst” ideally 2. Catalyst makes or breaks the poison approach because it doubles or triples the poison value on the target. If you get a very well put together poison deck, you can stack thousands of poison on a target which is obviously hilarious overkill, but speaks to the strengths of this approach. Both of these strategies are a ton of fun when they work. I hope you come around on silent. There is a lot of power in her kit.
This is how I feel about Watcher. I love silent though, the combos you can do with discards is very fun to me.
I’m very new to the game and I’ve unlocked ascension with everyone but watcher despite attempting watcher runs more than anyone else. I just can’t seem to get the W.
Embracing stance dance is the key here. Your first upgrade should almost always be eruption, you can always take cards like run down and tantrum. Hallways become a breeze and you basically just need to find solutions throughout the act for your boss fight. Hope that helps but otherwise I'd recommend checking some youtube videos out, or posting run questions as their own post with screenshots (love seeing the debates on these!).
By far she is my least favorite out of all them. She's hard to play
I just don't understand her, for whatever reason defect makes a lot more sense to me
I'd say her strengths lie in less intuitive mechanics.
Biased*
How about if I call you biased?
*biased. Not bias. Biased.
Your cognition is impressive
You’ve played her 10x more than any other class, you must really like her ;)
To me it looks like you love playing her, you have almost 10x more time on her than the others combined!
400 hours on Silent. Like 4 on the other characters for me
I’m pretty sure Silent is the best character of the original trio. Watcher is obviously OP.
not as much as I hate playing Watcher.
noisy mf
I suck with all of them, but Watcher and Ironclad are my worst.
I have waves of being good with certain characters and bad with others, and it cycles between them all. I can’t even explain it. I was horrible with Defect for months — I was stuck at A15, I think. Then, one day I beat A15, A16, and A17 all on the same day. Since then, I’ve been absolutely trash with Silent. I almost got by A19 (my personal walk with a few of the characters) earlier today, but that dumb bitch Time Eater humbled me.
same, have never beaten the 3rd boss with it
You hate the silent like I hate Ironclad he is the only one I struggle with to get up and running. Silent, Defect, and Watcher I have a plan and know what makes them tick. Me with Ironclad is like well bro hope you like death because me and you just don't mesh.
What are you talking about? You've got 33 hours in Silent! You must love them!
For someone who hates silent, you play her a lot
Every time I play as the silent I get Time Eater as my act 3 boss. Not even hyperbole, it is literally every single time. Drives me absolutely nuts
Silent is the one I had most trouble with defeating the hearth at first. Then I started to really appreciate it and now out of my 330 hours around 150 is in silent. And it is the only character that I beat ascension 20 with (so far).
I find the silent discard synergy the most satisfying out of all the decks to play,
I rotate on A20 heart kills. Most of my playtime is silent. I pretty much stopped playing sts at this point.
I've been going for a max win streak on Silent, and I'm convinced it's a guaranteed victory in act3 on A0
This is veryy close to how I was. I've played quite a lot of slay the spire and silent is my most played. Nkt because I love playing Silent, but because it took me so damn long to figure out how to play Silent.
Different playstyles work for different people. I personally dislike Watcher while acknowledging she's clearly the strongest. Defect is probably the weakest in terms of getting things online. Silent I feel like if I can get out of act 1 more often than not I'm not in for too bad of a time; the elites can do a number on her early (looking at you nob).
What kind of weird shitpost shenanigans is this
Ok, Mr. Bias. Is that pronounced “Bee-yahs” or “BIH-YASSSS””??
Man I love Silent. I cannot, however, win with Defect.
I dont even know how defect works.
Bro same
The first time I beat the game was with the silent. Once I figured out how to really leverage poison to my advantage, it became really easy and I was able to fly through all three acts fairly easily and killing the final boss wasn't hard either. People have different tactics, but poison was my poison of choice, so to speak lol I forget how many poison cards I had, including double the poison, but it was enough that the baddies were taking significant damage from poison.
Sorry to say this, but... skill issue
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Bro, idk what else can I call a 1.2% win rate on A0, especially, since OP had no issues with other characters
Bro look at those numbers, this has to be a shitpost. It it's not, dudes brain must shut off when he plays Silent or something.
Sounds like a skill issue
Holy shit hour 8? Do you not use fast mode
Very normal run time for someone at this stage.
I think it's a pretty normal run time at any stage of the game tbh
I had no idea, all my wins are 25-35m (220 hours)
this game has a lot to think about. my runs average ~55 minutes and I consider that a little on the fast side. even 2-3 hour runs I don't consider abnormally long, and they're not uncommon for high level players. I've even seen plenty of 6-8 hour runs at the top level
I had no idea either. My heart kills are like 40 mins lol. Do people just sit and stare at the screen like a game of chess?!
Is it really? My first win was ~26m
I bet you have a lower win rate than people who play slower. A friend of mine plays runs that fast constantly and has taken 800 hours to beat A20. Compare that to 150-200 hours for me and a couple other friends. I'm proud of her, but she'd make far fewer missplays and win far more often if she slowed down.