|
Marketing New Brain posted:They’re all good but the worst/biggest drawback are either Philosophers stone, especially after act 1 where you immediately fight buffed birds, or ectoplasm although I think that’s not too bad. I prefer cursed key over mark of pain Yeah, it was a hard lesson on one of my first plays when I took Philosophers Stone for the Act 1 boss and the very next fight was the three birds, swinging for 54 on turn 1. Ayn Randi posted:high ascension awakened one has destroyed my run the last 4 times ive had him as final boss, unless you have a ridiculous combo deck i'm getting viciously hosed because he just puts out too much damage when you've also got to focus down the cultists first. it's a real poo poo when the decks are tapdancing through act 3 up to that point as well Have you tried holding Powers until his Phase 2? He loses the buff that gives him +2 Str for every Power (though not any Str he's already gained), which is what tends to make his damage really unmanageable. Of course, if you can't afford to do that, then you probably are hosed without some ridiculous combo.
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2018 01:24
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:28 |
|
|
Marketing New Brain posted:Neither are good, wraith form is decent in an energy/flechette style deck. I’m used to A15 so I’m a bit out of touch with the base game but i never used it, and I think defensive decks would always rather have shield slam. Upgraded Thousand Cuts (2 damage to all enemies/card played) puts out A LOT of damage if you're spamming cantrips and shivs. I like it better than Wraith Form, but neither of them are priorities. Juggernaut is pretty soundly eclipsed by the fact that Body Slam is a much better incentive for stacking armor. Crescent Wrench posted:Good catch. Yes, I think I did. I don't remember what they had, but I remember just hating the options and not wanting to gently caress up the build. I'm curious what those could be. There's only a few that stand out as being able to really gently caress you over: Philosopher's Stone Runic Dome (until you know the enemy patterns) Choker (if you're really spamming cards) Ectoplasm (Act 1) Calling Bell (sometimes) Most of the rest are either lackluster but harmless (Tiny House, White Monster Statue), or have downsides that are usually well worth it (Sozu, Cursed Key, Mark of Pain, Runic Pyramid).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2018 03:13
|
|
|
Crescent Wrench posted:Don't neglect to slice me with Occam's razor--I may just have terrible judgment. Oh no, that's the main reason I said it- you might be judging downside Relics like Sozu overly harshly, when the benefit makes that one (and a few others) actually virtual no-brainers. Personally, I misread Runic Pyramid as drawing a reducing number of cards every turn: i.e. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and thought it was terrible. It's actually just: 4, 4, 4, 4, and is usually extremely good. I'm not sure I've ever skipped a boss Relic, and I've definitely never done it twice in the same game.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2018 03:31
|
|
|
ThisIsNoZaku posted:It's almost certain death against the Snecko. AnacondaHL posted:Yea, the runic pyramid can be dangerous and should only be taken in a deck that can use it or with filtering. Cowards! Embrace the Pyramid! (yeah the Snecko fight is not ideal, and you definitely should prioritize draw/discard with RP even higher than you normally would) Crescent Wrench posted:I think I actually did skip Sozu, which I usually take. It must have been at floor 2. I was actually using potions very regularly to fill in gaps and had no regular energy deficit. If I saw Runic Pyramid I must have misread it as well, because it would have been helpful. Potions are useful, +1 energy is more useful. Sozu even lets you use Potions you already have, you just can't gain new ones. I think the only time I'd hesitate to take Sozu is if I had Alchemize or White Beast Statue, and if you're on 3 energy I think the +1 is probably still worth blanking those. Unless you're playing every card in your hand (that doesn't hurt you) every turn, you have an energy deficit. quote:And I definitely am way too cautious on boss relics--I would not say I regularly skip them, but hearing you say you never have is shocking. I'll have to play more loosely and see how it goes. I'm not dismissing the possibility. I can definitely see getting offered 3 that would gently caress you over, where skipping would be the right call. I just think that's probably very rare. Avasculous fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Mar 6, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2018 04:38
|
|
|
Furious Lobster posted:Can someone list the combinations needed for regular Infinite combos for the Ironclad? I've made it to A3 on both characters and while I can usually win with the Silent by picking good value cards, I find it a lot harder to win with the Ironclad if I'm not running a block deck. Vulnerability/Dropkick is the only 'true' infinite combo for the Ironclad as far as I know. I think it's pretty hard to get off the ground in Ascension though. The Ironclad strategies that I've had the most (only) success with at higher Ascensions are: 1. Hulk out with Limit Break. Strength source + upgraded Limit Break + Heavy Blade = scale out of control really fast and 1-shot elites/bosses before they flatten you. 2. Hulk out with Rampage. Spam Rampage (with small deck and Double Tap) to achieve the same as 1. 3. Dead Branch + Corruption(/Fiend Fire). Even on Ascension 15, this is easy mode, but you can't really do this unless you luck into Dead Branch (Rare relic) early on. As you're noticing, it's not enough to just have a pile of the class's good cards. With both characters, you really need either a ridiculous combo (3) or something that scales fast enough to outrace Hexaghost, Stabby Book, Champion, etc. (1, 2).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2018 09:52
|
|
|
Marketing New Brain posted:Ehhh, you can win with just a pile of good cards and energy relics. Demon Form and a lot of block will win you every fight, and with Reaper you can stay fully healed. Entrench is busted with enough shrug it offs and energy or barricade. It's funny because I think Demon Form is kind of mediocre overall, but it's also like the best singlehandedly-carry-anything card Ironclad has. Rampage is definitely an inferior option. I get it a lot in Act 1 because it and Headbutt are both common (?), it's kind of a self-contained damage ramp, and it buys time to find stuff like Limit Break. Searing Blow is crap. The most abusable Relic for Ironclad has got to be Dead Branch + Corruption, which lets you just vomit out a comical number of free cards every turn, but unlike Snecko Skull (and Kunai?), it's Rare. [quote="Nehru the Damaja" post=""481907019"] Just cleared Ascension 4 with Silent. It was just a struggling, limping "goodstuff" deck until the third floor when I got Snecko Skull and two of the upgraded poison power. Before that I had a comical amount of defense (like enough that Calipers actually came into play on Silent of all things) but not much killing power. [/quote] I think Calipers is actually really, really good on Silent. After Image and Footwork make it easy to stack defense, and being able to spam Backflips/Cloak and Dagger/cantrip that gives +defense on off turns and have it carry over (without needing a deck slot + energy for Blur) is huge when you're trying to poison/shiv/caltrops bosses to death. Hackan Slash posted:I hope they put in mechanics to make assembling deck others other than "good cards" more consistent. I like to grab an early catalyst or accuracy but it's a dead draw until I get some more pieces. I really like that idea. It's agonizing getting offered something like Catalyst or Entrench in the first few rewards and having to decide if essentially putting a curse in your deck is worth maybe getting the support to make those awesome later.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2018 20:03
|
|
|
Super Jay Mann posted:*Have multiple absurd dead draws on the worst turns and lose horribly* What do you mean exactly by dead draws? You can get hosed by drawing all attacks when the boss is about to maul you, or all defends when he's debuffing you, but as AnacondaHL said, the Silent in particular has access to enough extra drawing power to mitigate that a lot. I think it's likely that your deck is either way too big (and therefore more prone to variance) or just not as powerful as you thought.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2018 00:05
|
|
|
Mr. Peepers posted:First form Awakened One is kind of a chump, really. Once the 2 birds are dead there's no real time pressure to push to the second phase, so you can hold off on powers and chip him down without boosting his strength. Last time I killed him on Silent, A6 or A7, I had a shiv deck with a ton of powers but the only one I played early was Accuracy (to help burst down the bird guys). Killing the cultists fast while blocking him is definitely the hard part of the fight, but Phase I still attacks every turn and hits like a truck even without +Str. It might just be a sign of how good powers are, but with the exception of decks that get hard-countered by Time Eater, I think he's easily the hardest end boss at the moment. Speaking of which, when did they buff the hell out of Champion? He was a total pushover a month ago, and I've had two games now where I thought I was keeping up until he whipped out 24 Armor and a 24 x 3 Attack, while I was Frail and Weakened.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2018 21:16
|
|
|
No, it's Unceasing Top, because I hit End Turn 0.1 seconds before it puts a playable card in my hand at least twice/battle.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2018 20:40
|
|
|
GrandpaPants posted:It's 1 energy for a card that does 4 damage minimum every round and doesn't clog up your deck past the first shuffle. Barring shenanigans like Time Eater and whatnot that is more about Shiv decks in general, I don't see why it's so bad? It's not like Wraith Form or Juggernaut that take like 2-3 energy, which can set you up for getting hosed in a turn. *Every round after you play it, which is a small but meaningful distinction. 1 energy, 1 card = 10 damage seems to be about the baseline going rate if you think about unupgraded attack cards, modified lower or higher by on-card effects. So compare: A. 1. Vanilla attack, 10 damage B. 1. Play Infinite Blades 2. 4 damage 3. 8 damage 4. 12 damage 5. 16 damage 6. 20 damage 7. 24 damage C. 1. Play Noxious Fumes 2. 2 damage 3. 5 damage 4. 9 damage 5. 14 damage 6. 20 damage 7. 27 damage So basically 3 turns to give you a modest return on your investment, turn 6 it breaks even with NF, and turn 7 it falls behind, which puts it in an awkward spot of being slow for hallway fights and not as scaleable as other options for Elite/Boss fights. Strength and Shiv synergies can change that, but that applies to A and C as well. It's playable but very mediocre. I think what he meant by "trap" is that it looks like a must-have for Shiv decks, but even in those, there's other cards (like NF) that I'd much rather take.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2018 01:38
|
|
|
Ultima66 posted:Do this but for upgraded fumes, because that's one of the best upgrades for Silent meaning you should make it a priority to upgrade. Meanwhile upgrading blades just makes it innate and doesn't improve its cost to effect ratio directly. Oof, that makes it even worse. I'd misremembered Infinite Blades+ as giving 2 Shivs/turn. If you look at most of the damage/defense card upgrades, +50% is pretty consistent. So I kind of wonder with NF if the developers just offhandedly made it 2->3 on a spreadsheet and didn't stop to consider how the math on poison decay worked: 1. Play NF+ 2. 3 3. 8 4. 15 5. 24 6. 35 7. 48 Wouldn't surprise me if they changed the upgrade to make it cost 0 or something in the future.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2018 02:44
|
|
|
Tonetta posted:Not 100% on everything is the same, but rules, starting items, and the majority of shop items are seeded into it. What's today's run? I'm not gonna get a chance at it or likely tomorrows either It's even more than that, I think. I replayed yesterday's daily a couple of times, and I'm pretty sure I got the same order of card rewards and chest relics in the same order, even at different locations. Which would seem to fly in the face of what they're going for with a competitive leaderboard, since having that information in advance would be a pretty big advantage. BBJoey posted:At high levels of ascension, is there any particular strategy beyond hoping for good luck? Just had an A13 Ironman power run face the Awakened One who destroyed me effortlessly. It seems like you have to build your deck around gimmicks because a normal deck isn't strong enough, but it's good odds you'll face an enemy that will shut down that gimmick and then you're done. Awakened One is hard in general right now, but he doesn't really hard counter anything except spamming powers, and only if you do it in phase 1. You can see he's the boss when you enter Act 3, so you should spend the Act moving your deck away from Powers if you can. Here's a Reddit thread today from someone with an 8-game winstreak on A15 as Ironclad: https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/83g7q4/ascension_15_80_ironclad_winstreak_decks_and/ Check out his decks. There's definitely common themes (strength stacking), but they go in some pretty different directions. I think someone in this thread said there was a streamer with a 12-win A15 streak as Silent.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2018 07:18
|
|
|
Marketing New Brain posted:Not that this guy isn't good because 8 wins in a row on A15 is impressive, but looks like he got an energy relic after the first boss fight in 7/8 runs. That's the big win streak destroyer. Run 6 it looks like he went for a Pandora's Box hail mary at the end of A1 not having an energy relic and it worked out. Good catch, I missed that. He also got Demon Form and/or Limit Break in 6/8, and Necronomicon in 2/8. It would be interesting to see global W/L stats with different cards and relics. AnacondaHL posted:Huh. I didn't think the Exhaust strat was consistent enough for this, but I guess I was doing a bunch wrong. Yeah, that was surprising to me too. With the longer fights at A15, I thought Corruption/Feel No Pain were too risky without Dead Branch. You'd either play them, burn through all of your defense too early, and take hits, or hold them and essentially have Curses in your deck. But he has Corruption in 4/8 with no Dead Branch in sight. rchandra posted:The game isn't very crash resilient - I had a crash on the penultimate fight of a presumed 4-streak (I2 S2 I3 S3) and wouldn't let me resume. I almost never play Early Access games but couldn't hold out forever on this one. Really? That sucks. I have almost 100 hours in and I've never seen a crash.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2018 21:17
|
|
|
Chin Strap posted:Beta has a rework of Underhanded strike. Now reads "2 cost attack, Deal 8 (12) damage. If a card has been discarded this turn, gain 2 energy" Whoa, really? Un-upgraded, it's strictly better than the upgraded form of Tactician? That seems like a massive buff to Silent. Edit - I'm dumb, totally misread what it does.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2018 00:25
|
|
|
Chin Strap posted:Watching Celerity on twitch has really helped me break my game out. I was stuck at A7 for the longest time with both, and in one weekend I went to A10 with both without much difficulty. Definitely. It's also worth upgrading Bash or Judgement first thing- they make Lagavulin, the big Gremlin, and the A1 boss much easier. On higher Ascension, I'd go so far as to say avoid Elites entirely if you can, at least past Act 1. It's just not worth losing 60 health or getting your run ended by a Stabby Book for a shot at an Ancient Tea Set or something.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2018 17:44
|
|
|
Jedit posted:Slavers is the worst elite. Have Whirlwind+ and a Strength buff or take 20+ damage. I don't know, at least the Slavers can be picked off to reduce their DPS over the course of the fight. Stabby Book's invisible Strength gain and potential to flood your deck with 4+ Wounds in one low-defense turn makes it a pretty obnoxious race. For whatever reason, all of the Act 2 Elites have always been way more threatening than any of the Act 1 or 3 Elites. Slime posted:Anything that has helpers is a pain in the rear end to take out. If you didn't pick up AoE, it's often not worth taking them out since they'll just get resummoned soon and you'll get whittled down. I don't think this is true at all unless you can alpha strike the leader fast enough to make the helpers irrelevant (so in a turn or two). Otherwise the damage/armor/buffs/debuffs the helpers add will really quickly outpace any edge you gain in the race by ignoring them. The Gremlin Boss in particular can and should be continuously distracted by picking off his helpers, because whenever there are less than two, he spends two turns re summoning and buffing them instead of swinging at you for 40+ damage/turn (plus whatever they're doing). You don't need AOE if you have efficient enough 1-target attacks to kill the helpers and damage the leader in the same turn. It's not having either of those things that means you're in trouble (and probably hosed up).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2018 17:33
|
|
|
Sparticle posted:Also why y'all hating on orbs? The problem with orbs, in a nutshell, is the classic issue with combo decks that have more than two useless-on-their-own pieces. To make orbs work, you need cards that generate: 1. Orb slots 2. Focus 3. Orbs And to a lesser extent (if you have enough of 1-3): 4. Orb-scaling finisher (Blizzard/Thunderstrike/Multicast) This extends to both deckbuilding, where you have to weigh the criticality of picking up stuff like Capacitor and Defragment against the fact that they are near-Curses in usefulness for a while, and combat, where even a deck stacked and balanced with all 3 will get you smacked around for however many rounds it takes you to draw and play them. This doesn't make orbs terrible, but it does tend to make them noticeably less-consistent than other archetypes. I think the key to 'fixing' this, assuming the developer even wants to, is to do with 1 and 2 what they did with 3: make cards that generate Slots or Focus do something (anything) additional, poorly and/or optionally.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2018 20:50
|
|
|
A Moose posted:The problem with focus is that it has to be the hardest part to get because the game is boring as poo poo when you get 5 focus and any way to generate frost orbs. You can get by for all of act 1 and most of 2 just on spamming orbs to evoke them quickly. You only need lots of focus for the later part of the game. Orb slots are slightly easier to get, but are more curse-like early on because you want to be evoking more. Orb generation should be the easiest to get and its in a good place right now. Yeah I agree with the sentiment but I disagree with the way to make focus hardest to get. Right now it's purely 'hard' to get from a deckbuilding perspective, because Focus-generating cards do nothing else, and you either take them early and kneecap your deck for a while or gamble on seeing them late and kneecap your deck by not having them when they don't. That's the inconsistency I mean, and it feels more RNG-driven than strategic. I would rather see the cards that generate focus (and slots) do more flexible things so they aren't a near-dead pick early, but generate focus in a more costly way/tradeoff-ish than Defragment (like Consume for example) so they aren't no-brainer picks either. For the one or two of you who might be familiar with Magic: The Gathering or even have a M:TG avatar, it's like the difference between basic and nonbasic lands. Avasculous fucked around with this message at 22:54 on May 7, 2018 |
|
#
¿
May 7, 2018 22:49
|
|
|
Hackan Slash posted:They already removed the card that gave you +1/+2 focus for a str and a dex. Focus is so good that if there's an easy way to generate a lot of it you'll just roll. Yeah, but that's obviously a stupid tradeoff since Focus makes Str and Dex irrelevant. I gave Consume as an example for a good tradeoff. I'm also not saying Focus should be easy/easier to generate in combat. It's easy now: Defragment has no tradeoff. I'm saying that the reason Orb decks/combos are inconsistent is because they depend on cards that are blank outside of the combo, and if the developers wanted to fix that, they would need to make cards like Defragment and Capacitor more flexible. Obviously just stapling bonus benefits/options to the existing cards would make them overpowered, so, just like nonbasic lands in Magic, they would need additional costs/tradeoffs to compensate. Avasculous fucked around with this message at 23:42 on May 7, 2018 |
|
#
¿
May 7, 2018 23:40
|
|
|
RyokoTK posted:
Besides Seek, I don't think those are really nerfs. I thought Prime was meh, Buffer and Impulse were definitely cards that appeared too often for how many I might want (1 maybe, 0), and Steam is probably useful in the All for One deck.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2018 05:21
|
|
|
A Moose posted:I think I would take and upgrade every single Buffer I got, the card is insane and I'm sad its rare now, even though it totally should be. Really? I think it's useful but have never wanted more than one. I feel like most of the really damaging fights (Hexaghost, Slavers, Stabby Book, Champion, Awakened One, etc.) have multiple attacks that kind of trivialize it. Maybe I'm just unfairly biased against it by the times I've played it the turn before a 3x14 attack intent where I have 13 block in hand.
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2018 01:27
|
|
|
rchandra posted:Take a card every time until you are able to beat the game. It's not optimal but it's better than skipping too much and it will help teach you how well cards work in different fights. I disagree with this. Aside from building for specific combos, you want to: 1. Maximize the proportion of upgraded (or just powerful) cards in your deck 2. Maintain a decent balance of offense/defense* Taking a string of random, suboptimal attacks/powers when your deck is short on block (or vis. a vis.) is an express train to the score screen. As a general rule, you want to rarely skip in the early floors (unless the choices are truly awful) and get progressively pickier. *Alternatively, go so far to either extreme that you don't actually give a gently caress what the enemy is doing.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2018 03:03
|
|
|
Ciaphas posted:I guess the question now is "what makes a good card" but I have that question for every deck builder in existence and the answer never seems to crystallize in my mind. It wouldn't be a very good deck builder if that question had a direct answer. A generalizable rule of thumb is that early on, you want to pick up cards that are as useful as possible as often as possible- i.e. attacks, blocks, and things that add to them > utility/combo cards. Footwork is a really great card and great early pickup in almost any deck because it adds value to every block in your deck for the rest of combat. Catalyst is a really powerful card that makes for a terrible early pickup because it requires (a lot of) poison from other cards, which you don't have yet and may never get. That's a stupidly obvious example, but you get the picture.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2018 04:16
|
|
|
Ciaphas posted:I feel like going back to the first guy and just cutting nearly everything might be easier for my tiny lizard-brain Generally bad, but there are several relics and some powers that incentivize spamming as many attacks as possible. You'll still only want them if you're consistently drawing tons of cards. Also, one of the three end bosses punishes spamming cards hard. He's beatable even with decks that do it, but it's something to keep in mind.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2018 04:50
|
|
|
SynthesisAlpha posted:Silent has tons of draw and discard, meaning slice is generally good. If you backflip into 2 slices, that means backflip actually reads "gain 5 block, deal 10 damage". This is all true, but there's also the nonzero risk of drawing Slice instead of backflip in that hand, in which case you might empty your hand and have leftover energy that you can't spend. That's why I think you really need a lot of draw already to want Slice.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2018 05:15
|
|
|
Ranpire posted:tips Great post. Only thing I'd add to build-arounds is Limit Break. It requires more support than Demon Form, but if you've got that, it does something similar, safer since you don't have to play a 3-cost power.
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2018 01:28
|
|
|
Honestly, without Demon Hand, Bird Faced Urn, or the mountain of patience to abuse Magnetism/Self Repair, I really don't think Creative AI is that great (much less OP) after the cost nerf. It's a 3-cost power that does nothing the turn you play it and then drip-feeds you fully-costed, non-upgraded powers which may or may not actually be of any use to you (i.e. Sadistic Nature with no debuffs). Yeah, after 8 or 9 more turns, you're bound to just roll over anything with your 2x Echo Forms, 2x Panaches, 3x Storm, etc, but I feel like just about any other 1-card win con is faster and less painful (including just Echo Form). It's like a Demon Form you have to keep paying for every turn.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2018 22:41
|
|
|
betamax hipster posted:Creative AI can't generate Self Repair. You're right, apparently they patched that out a few weeks ago, along with Magnetism -> Bandage Up.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2018 23:03
|
|
|
A Moose posted:Act 2 elites kick my rear end so much harder than act 3. I feel like the goblin leader or whatever hits for 9x3 way too often for me. Especially because he always seems to roll the minions that do damage instead of the useless shield guy or the wizard that does nothing for 2 turns. Most of the time you need to AoE his minions down in 1 turn, maybe 2 while getting good damage on him. Book of Stabbing can be really rough if you need a few turns to get blocking up to speed (Defect), because he can fill your deck with Wounds FAST if you're not consistently stopping all of his damage. Gremlin Leader's attack probability is directly determined by how many Minions he has out, so killing them off should usually be your top priority (even the shield and wizard ones): "Never uses the same move twice in a row. Otherwise, with 0 allies, uses "Rally!" 75% of the time and Attack 25% of the time. With 1 ally, uses "Rally!" 50% of the time, Defend Buff 30% of the time, and Attack 20% of the time. With >1 ally, uses Defend Buff 66% of the time and Attack 34% of the time." The worst part of Act 2 though is just the normal enemy Hallway fights. Facing 2 or 3 brutal ones in a row (Cultist + Chosen, Snake Plant, Parasite + Slaver) and THEN an Elite or vis. a vis. probably ends more Defect runs than anything else for me.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2018 00:59
|
|
|
Don't know if this has been posted in the thread, but I thought it was pretty interesting: http://spirelogs.com/stats/ironclad/deadliest-encounters.php Some standouts: -Gremlin Leader is the deadliest Elite, and beats out several bosses on most of the lists. -it's striking (if unsurprising) how much of the top of each list is dominated by Act 2. Even Act 2 hallway fights (Chosen + X, Slaver + Parasite) cause more losses than some of the bosses on several lists. -Ironclad loses WAY more often than Silent to bosses on Ascension 15. -Defect Ascension 15 has hilariously scarce data, even compared to other Defect lists. -Defect appears to have a much easier time with Champ than the other 2.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2018 21:52
|
|
|
Cynic Jester posted:My experience has been that it's much harder for Defect to get to the Act 2 boss with a subpar deck, whereas the other two can often rely on either the starting relic or half finished combos to get there and then die. Bad Defect decks are so much worse than bad decks for the other two. That would be plausible, except that in Asc 1-14 he also has lower lose rates to the Act 1 bosses and equal/lower lose rates to the Act 1 elites than the other classes. Lose rates to Act 1 hallway fights are negligible for all 3 classes. It could be selective reporting, or people rage quitting 5 floors in. Not sure how this counts those. Edit - nm, forgot there are encounters in between Act 1 boss and Act 2 boss. Defect's loss rates are noticeably higher for Act 2 normal and Elite enemies. Zaodai posted:Plus the Defect is going to get stronger with ramp up time, and the Champ's big dumb rear end gives you plenty of that. Yeah, this is possible. Champ has the highest lose-rate of any encounter for Silent at all difficulties. I bet the fact that his half-health buff cures Poison is singlehandedly a huge part of that. Avasculous fucked around with this message at 23:25 on May 22, 2018 |
|
#
¿
May 22, 2018 23:22
|
|
|
There's also Du-Vu Doll, Blue Candle, and Rupture + the Curse that damages you every time you play a card (which from experience is not at all worth the trouble). The thing about trying a sick Curse combo is that as soon as you pick any of this stuff, you discover that there really aren't as many opportunities in the game to get Curses as you thought, especially if you're already past Act 1. edit: mostly beaten
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2018 04:05
|
|
|
Ultima66 posted:There was one run that really pissed me off where he had an incredible starting Pandora's Box that gave 3 Scrapes, and then died late on floor 3 because he just absolutely refused to take any Leap/Auto Shields/Reinforced Body/Glacier/etc because they didn't cost 0 or synergize with a 0 cost deck. And he skipped like 3 Steam Barriers as well because "I only play thin decks and Steam Barrier is absolute crap in a thin deck," which isn't even true. That's pretty asinine, especially since it's been my experience with A15 Defect that you get the All for One combo up to 150 damage in a turn or whatever, and you end up taking 25 damage in every other Act 3 fight anyways because that's still not enough to end it quickly and you can't block 40+ damage with Defends and Leaps. If anything, the AFO deck needs stuff like Reinforced Body a lot more than any other Defect deck, because you can't count on Frost Orbs to keep you going. The only time where I got AFO near-infinite enough to get away with basically ignoring block was when I stumbled into having two upgraded Breath of Airs (0-cost, reshuffle your deck, draw 2) and Sun Dial (+2 Energy every 3rd time you reshuffle).
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2018 22:51
|
|
|
800peepee51doodoo posted:Yeah, I've been following this kind of advice for a while and it really helped me wrap my head around the basic game. I can win pretty consistently there, its just when it starts to ramp up in Ascension that my normal strategies and plays seem to fall apart. Ascension has two consequences for everyone: 1. The game becomes less and less tolerant of mistakes. At normal difficulty, you can make a lot of minor errors here and there and still cruise to the finish. On high ascension, even little errors snowball into game losses an Act later, because you had to rest instead of upgrade which made you take more damage in a later fight and have to rest instead of upgrade etc. 2. Viable archetypes for each class become narrower and narrower. With any class, you can win at normal difficulty with a random pile of good cards. Someone on Reddit has even won playing all 3 classes with the starter cards only. At Asc 15, there's really only 2-4 ways to build your deck in each class that have a good chance of winning. Playing anything else, even perfectly, is likely to fail simply because the cards/combos aren't good enough to cope. A Bag of Milk posted:From a few pages back, but this ended up being very good advice for me. I had been greatly undervaluing elites and overvaluing campfires for upgrades. Working out pathing at the beginning of each act is pretty vital on high ascension. I mostly just automatically took the path with the most fires every time, but actively considering how good your deck is against each elite, and giving yourself options in the back half of the act to take some optional elites or play it safe if necessary is really important for optimal play. I just beat silent a10 with 10 elite kills, and the relics far outweighed the damage I took. It becomes really striking just how much work Relics do if you try to get the 1-relic achievement. I still don't have that or Minimalist. Avasculous fucked around with this message at 01:07 on May 25, 2018 |
|
#
¿
May 25, 2018 01:04
|
|
|
SynthesisAlpha posted:It's hilarious how polarized the snecko eye opinions are. It's a terrible Meow swap because your first fights your entire deck is 1 cost. It is really interesting. I went looking for breakdowns of the math on Snecko's Eye and there's practically a monthly, sprawling thread on Reddit of heated bickering over it. It reminds me of the Monty Hall problem, except that that had an objective answer. If your entire deck is 1-cost cards and you look purely at the average # of cards Snecko's Eye lets you play in a turn, it's very close to an Energy relic that also makes you draw +2 cards every turn. The contentious part is weighing that against the much-harder-to-quantify probability of one bad hand totally loving your over because you can't play any Block cards against Hyperbeam or whatever. My anecdotal experience has been that it's very good unless you're already loaded with 0-cost cards. According to spirelogs, it has the highest winrate boost of any Act 1 boss relic pick by far: http://spirelogs.com/stats/boss-relics.php
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2018 20:14
|
|
|
RyokoTK posted:Yeah for Ironclad and Defect it's practically a slam-pick because nearly every deck that you draft for them will have at least a few 2+ cards, and it turns out a zero-cost All For One deck ironically is still extremely good with Snecko because it just means you get draw synergies with different, arguably better cards. Plus since you draw so much faster you can cycle through to your win conditions that much more quickly, so you're slamming down Bludgeons or Meteor Strikes a couple times more per fight. Oh, I didn't even see the class breakdown. Yeah, the disparity between Silent and the other two over Snecko's Eye is pretty striking there. I also think it's funny how most of the boss relics for Neow's Gambit help Silent and Defect, but all but 4 of them hurt the Ironclad- because his starting relic really is that good.
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2018 21:15
|
|
|
SynthesisAlpha posted:Avoid dark orbs, they kinda suck and take too much babysitting to make them effective. That said if you snag a couple recursions they can be real scary but you have to play around them, which means maybe not using several cards to avoid evoking a dark orb without recursion. Multicast is the reason to take Dark orbs, and you can make a solid win condition out of it + some combination of Focus and Energy boosting. The nice thing about is that it requires comparatively fewer cards than the 0-cost deck or lightning orbs, so you can focus more of your card picks and plays on defense cards. It's definitely not as strong as the other archetypes however. Zurai posted:Yeah, the problem with Blizzard is that it both scales worse than the corresponding lightning orb card, and the frost orbs themselves are also not doing any damage. With the card that scales off lightning orbs, you're at least killing the enemies while you're building up the "payoff" card and may in fact just kill the enemies without it. With Blizzard, your orbs aren't contributing to the damage output at all, and frankly they don't contribute that much to defense unless you're evoking them constantly or have lots of them and decent focus. I agree that Blizzard is kind of lackluster, but I think that's necessary. With Frost orbs, once you get a decent amount of Focus and extra Orb slots in your deck, you start becoming untouchable a few turns into every fight. The actual win condition has to be a lot weaker than the Lightning parallels, or the choice would be a no-brainer. I usually don't even take Thunderstrike though. As you said, spamming Lightning Orbs is powerful enough to win fights without needing a finishing move on top. Avasculous fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jun 5, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2018 22:10
|
|
|
KataraniSword posted:So apparently somehow in grinding up the unlocks for Defect and Silent, I have completely forgotten how to play Ironclad and now cannot clear Ascension 2, which I had no problems getting to in the past. Those aren't really "niche" cards so much as bad cards, probably 3 of the worst in the game.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2018 23:29
|
|
|
Zaodai posted:
The math for using it gets complicated fast, but the results on Spirelogs pretty decisively support Snecko Eye being really good: across all classes, it gives one of the highest + win rate% of any boss Relic (beating out almost all of the Energy relics), even if taken in Act 2: https://spirelogs.com/stats/boss-relics.php I'm sure there's some bias in those results in people taking it in decks where it didn't shoot them in the foot, but all that means is that you should do the same.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2018 19:37
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:28 |
|
|
GrandpaPants posted:That seems strictly worse than the hourglass. I was going to sarcastically point out that that's false because it's 1 more damage than Hourglass exactly at the end of turn 13, but barring other (?) end-of-turn effects, there's nothing between the Calendar doing 40 damage and the Hourglass doing 42. What the hell?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2018 01:40
|
|