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Still relatively new to the game, but slowly making my way up the Ascension ladder. Just had the most fun silent build I've seen yet entirely due to getting a pandora's box for my relic trade in. Got super lucky vs. the Heart and picked up Nightmare on my first draw, so I was able to get +5 block per card played by duplicating After Image. With Shuriken/Kunai/Fan I was able to get 50+ block and do 30+ damage per shiv every turn. For whatever reason, I always seems to have my easiest runs when I get pandora's box despite bad looking starting decks (e.g. I had one Survivor card and Reflex out the gate). Helps a lot to make me think outside the box though, and it's made me try cards I would never pick normally, like a 100% exhaust build on Ironclad. I definitely have a problem with grabbing every single direct damage card I can come across when I'm playing a more 'normal' run.
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Jan 29, 2021 01:38
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 09:01 |
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Yoshi Wins posted:Box is definitely one of the strongest boss swaps. Yeah, usually you have some kind of serious hole to patch in the deck at the start (usually you need more block), but strikes and defends suck, and you get to immediately have some kind of compelling direction for your deck most of the time. And Box swaps are particularly strong on Silent because she has the most total strikes + defends. 10 transformations! Appreciate the mod, I'll check it out. I'm still in the exploring phase right now, and I think forcing cards into my deck is the best way to see what works with what
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Jan 29, 2021 02:50
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On the watcher topic - is a Pressure Points focused gimmick deck viable at all? During an A1 or A2 run with her I ended up seeing grabbing like 3 of them across my first 3 fights and figured I'd run with it. Managed to get to the heart by getting Like Water and scrapping all my stance cards other than one vigilance. I had deva form for energy stacking. Seems way too gimmicky to get farther than early ascensions, and has a real bad time against artifacted enemies, but the damage ramped very quickly, and a guaranteed 13 armor per turn with orochalcum /like water let me breeze through most of the first 3 acts.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:52
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Following up on my Pressure Points post from earlier, the game must have known I was looking to try it again since I got a tailor made run to try it again. Got a Like Water / PP combo in the first store, another Like Water like a battle later and a second PP before the first boss. Ended up with 6 PP and 3 Like Water (one from a mirror) by the end which made me basically invulnerable to nearly anything, but the Heart.  That said, it's unfortunate they didn't bother expanding PP out more than the one card. It's a fun take on her deck where you don't have to do the "will Wrath form kill me" math every other turn, but I guess sitting in Calm forever defeats the purpose of playing her. Re: the Silent discussion, I just started playing shortly after the Shiv buff patch, so not sure how it used to be, but I will say poison builds feel so much weaker compared to Shivs. Blade Dance synergizes with so many play X cards this turn relics that I will gravitate to shiv generating cards out the gate since it's way more likely to be viable late game. Poison feels like it needs a lot of specific cards to get rolling, and if you're scaling it with something like envenom you're still going to want shivs to get the poison train rolling.
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Feb 1, 2021 23:07
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As a more general question - how do you typically prioritize card upgrades at bonfires? Specifically during "normal" runs (i.e. without Snecko Eye, Apotheosis, Tongs, etc that can materially change what cards/effects you want). Up to now I've been going: 1) Flat energy reductions (Eruption+, Zap+/Dualcast+) 2) Draw improvements, especially on cards with dual upgrades (Pommel Strike+, Coolheaded+) 3) Damage improvement on cards that I'm using frequently, or just the highest raw damage increase 4) Block improvements This has been working through ~A7 on all characters now, but I'm noticing more and more I'm often wasting energy on turns. Either because I used free Zap + Dualcast and don't need the 3 blocks I have, or the 1 cost Eruption is pointless since I can't afford to end in Wrath form. Conversely, I found a lot of fights go an extra round since I lack the damage output to end them quickly, or I take a ton of chip damage from missing block and then I'm crawling to the next bonfire with low hp. Curious if I'm better off upgrading more direct damage cards early to get out of fights faster, rather than trying to maximize the number of cards I can play by reducing the cost of cards I might not need anyway.
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Feb 6, 2021 20:08
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SKULL.GIF posted:I've played with a couple mods that add cards that synergize with PP and very quickly found out why there's only the one Pressure Point. That mechanic breaks very, very quickly with any synergy or any additional ways of applying it. Not sure if your mod had it, but I feel like a simple noxious fumes type card for PP would work wonders. Just add 2 pressure per turn to all without activating the damage
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Mar 20, 2021 16:34
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Countblanc posted:yeah even without the rest of the synergy bundle most exhaust cards are just Good - Feel No Pain makes all those fights that shove Dazes into your deck a lot breezier, True Grit and Burning Pact let you get rid of stuff like Burns/Wounds/starting cards while also giving some other immediate perk, and Fiend Fire is a huge damage card that works great with strength scaling and can just end or trivialize a lot of hard hallway or elite fights where you won't miss half your deck suddenly disappearing. I have to say fiend fire is the one exhaust card I find really hard to make efficient. Unless you draw a ton of curses and wounds with it, there's usually 1-2 cards I want to play first so I don't exhaust them, and at that point a 2 card fiend fire is like 10-14 bass damage. Granted part of this is because I strongly prefer strength scaling on IC, so usually my deck is mostly heavy blade/boomerang/pummel which all out class anything less than a 4-5 card FF.
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May 2, 2021 14:10
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Walla posted:The really funny thing about the Ironclad is he is the only character I have fully unlocked and I still don't have a clear grasp on how to build him in Act 1. In my experience you're really just looking for straight damage cards to get IC through act 1. There are cards like wild strike and carnage that do solid base damage but really aren't great at scaling, so you want to use a couple of those to brute force act 1 fights until you get your strength or exhaust scaling and a 4th energy. Also re: the best card upgrade conversation, I think limit break might be my all time go-to upgrade. As long as you have something to build a strength base with you can easily use limit break to get 50+ strength a fight. And it only gets better if you exhaust the cards around it.
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Jun 25, 2021 02:08
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YggiDee posted:So hey I picked this up on Android a few days ago and I think I'm having a blast but also fundamentally I have no idea what I'm doing. I keep forgetting to read what poo poo does so every turn is a surprise! Are you quitting out of the game before seeing the character death animation or going back to the main screen? You can actually pretty easily "savescum" by going back to the main menu mid-fight (or restarting the game). When you reload it will take you back to the start of whatever fight you were on, and the cards will come out in the same order. I found it super useful while learning the game since you can get bodied in a fight then reload and try something different. It's actually pretty interesting how dramatically different a fight can go if you play different cards, or remember to use potions, or even just switch up card order.
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Jul 19, 2021 00:49
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Back on the Colorless card conversation - what's the argument against Dramatic Entrance? I don't spend gold on it in shops, but I'll grab it often enough if it shows up during Colorless events (basically unless the S tier cards are there). When upgraded it's basically an upgraded Cleave you get to use out the gate every fight. Plus it Exhausts itself, so you get the damage out and then it's not clogging your deck up. Nothing crazy, but it pulls its weight against elites with minions or large groups of enemies and if you have synergistic turn one relics like the Jaxxed event thing or marbles it can make a number of hallway fights more reliable.
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Jul 28, 2021 02:23
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Chairchucker posted:Volatile gauge can be made workable by picking mostly previously expensive cards or x cost cards and inserting negative cost things in them. Also by picking up the excess ember things after those big bosses. Also there's a couple of ember related artifacts. I think I had a decent run with it on the Switch the other day. Even if it's workable, I think VGauge is always going to be somewhat underwhelming because the mechanics between the games are so different. While Snecko Eye is almost always an upgrade (if unfun) in StS, VGauge needs to have a deck around it to be made useful, otherwise it can be a straight nerf to your deck. I think a big part is in Monster Train energy management might not even be a top 3 problem in most decks since the relics and cards are so strong (-2 cost for ALL units, +3 energy for summoning 2 units, etc). Instead you more need to focus on card draw, scaling your units, and floor capacity. Not to mention, since the game is more about card manipulation, one of the better scaling strategies is to take a strong scaling card, reduce its cost as much as you can and throw holdover on it, so you can play it every turn. Now all of a sudden randomizing costs in your deck can be flat out harmful, since there's a chance your 1 cost Holdover card is now a 3 cost card and your scaling engine gets derailed. Of course, if they allowed zero cost cards to get spawned with VGauge it'd definitely be powerful again. As it is, it just seems to complicate decks without any tangible benefit
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Aug 24, 2021 15:31
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 09:01 |
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With IC I pretty quickly rocketed to ascension 20 by prioritizing strength and multistrike cards instead of looking for block generation (except for multibenefit cards like shrug it off) . The starting relic is great for offsetting little amounts of chip damage in act 1 and some of act 2, as long as you have the dps to close fights quick. Combined with a defensive relic like orichalcum or thread and needle you can keep health losses to a minimum while focusing on damage scaling. I honestly think I only had one block heavy deck ever work, and it was a perfect storm of barricade, body slam, multiple entrenches, and juggernaut. There's just too many cards you need to get block decks up and running on IC
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Sep 6, 2021 18:47
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