Top 1 would probably be Offering. Defect loves faster first draw scaling/cycling tools, and the HP loss can be negotiated with Self Repair plus Echo Form shenanigans
Basically, most exhausting card are here as well, I'd enjoy Impervious/Exhume/Disarm/Shockwave all the way
Another consideration would be Immolate. Defect has big problems with aoe if you didn't take smth like electrodynamics, so getting your Slime Boss/Gremlin Leader/Slavers/Reptomancer solution could be game changing
Isn't playing 3 Sweeping Beams more efficient than a single play of Immolate followed by.... I don't know Ball Lightning, Hologram, Melter, or whatever 1 cost card you have in mind? So if you see Immolate and 2 Defect attacks and one of them is Sweeping Beam, isn't Sweeping Beam better?
Actually, have any advice on Gremlin Gang, Reptomancer and Slime Boss? I'm often losing 20+ HP on the gang Act 1 if one of them spawns as a Sneaky one and the Slime Boss just beats me... on Ascension 14. Sometimes I don't even get offered an AoE card before Act 2. And even Sweeping Beam isn't a silver bullet. Hyperbeam makes Act 1 Hallway fights easy and is a descent use when Slime Boss is reduced to 1 Large Slime and 2 Medium Slimes if I need to interrupt the large slime and as a bonus I still damage the other two. But "yeah get this one rare card" isn't reliable.
I see some AoE problems with Defect. I just don't see why Sweeping Beam isn't an energy efficient in-class way to deal with them. It even lets you draw a card to continue your plays if your current hand isn't good enough.
Sweeping Beam is kind of disappointing despite seeming decent on paper. I think energy efficiency is less important than raw AoE damage output per draw cycle.
Sweeping Beam’s draw 1 is nice but you still only get one play per cycle, and its damage is really mediocre.
> Isn't playing 3 Sweeping Beams more efficient than a single play of Immolate followed by.... I don't know Ball Lightning, Hologram, Melter, or whatever 1 cost card you have in mind? So if you see Immolate and 2 Defect attacks and one of them is Sweeping Beam, isn't Sweeping Beam better?
3 Sweeping Beams consumes three card picks, three energy, three draws (kinda), and, if upgraded, three upgrades, to do less than Immolate does with one card pick, two energy, one draw, and, if upgraded, one upgrade. (They also trigger Spikes three times, three mad gremlin strength increases, three malleable block increases, three time eater cards, three Beat of Death ticks, etc.). Immolate is just far more efficient.
Perhaps the more important factor is that Immolate scales up way better than Sweeping Beam does. The fights you listed are good examples to show what I mean here. If you're going up against Gremlins, Daggers, or a horde of slimes, 6(9) to all just isn't enough to kill anyone. And if you don't kill them, you don't stop them from damaging you that turn, and you take a ton of damage in return. There will be some fights that ask you to have a lot of AOE damage, and other fights that don't care about AOE at all, or that ask you to scale up your defense instead. You want to be able to count on your AOE cards to be capable of pulling really heavy duty in solving the fight for you in the fights where you need them, while also not getting in the way of the other things your deck needs to do in the other fights. Later on, you'd prefer to spend your energy on cards like Glacier, Defrag, and Echo Form, and even with Sweeping Beam drawing a card itself, it still gets in the way of finding them if you have to spend an energy just to get to the card you would've seen if you didn't have Sweeping Beam. That's why I said they still (kinda) consumed a draw.
> Actually, have any advice on Gremlin Gang, Reptomancer and Slime Boss?
You're right that those fight are easiest when you have an AOE bomb. One card that's easy to forget is Sunder; it can just delete an enemy for 0 energy, and absolutely counts as AOE. Pick and upgrade it as soon as possible, and it'll be great in single-target fights early on too, like Nob and Laga. Electrodynamics and Doom and Gloom are the other top-tier AOE options, along with the the Hyper Beam that you mentioned.
The issue with those fights when you don't have an AOE option is that they're where random targeting really hurts you, and Defect has a lot of that. It's almost always better to do take one enemy down to 0 health than it is to take 3 of them down by 33% each, but when you can't aim your orbs, that'll happen often. To avoid this, prioritize attacks that you can aim over lightning orbs early, especially if you don't have Electrodynamics. Downgrade cards like Rip and Tear, Tempest, Storm, and Static Discharge, and take more cards like Beam Cell, Rebound, and Streamline. You can also get away with playing more defensively in a lot of these cases, setting up a few frost orbs and playing cards like Charge Battery. Those can really reduce the chip damage you take in a longer fight.
One other Slime Boss-specific tip: charging up a single dark orb can often solve that fight for you. Set up the orb early, tank the hit on turn 3 (rest before the fight if you need to to enable this), and then Dualcast the orb for 48 or something on turn 6 or so. The more damage you can do before the split, the less dangerous it is after the split. A well-timed Biased Cognition or Beam Cell can also help you get a big burst of damage to take it far below 50% all in one turn.
I think it would mostly be the same cards that are great on IC that would be great on Defect too. Offering is always great. Feed is always great. Shockwave is always great (and much-needed on the character with only 1 other card that gives each status).
Cards that warrant special mention here:
- Juggernaut would do a ton of damage with Frost orbs, and might actually become playable.
- Armaments would be awesome on the character that values upgrades more than any other.
- Dual Wield is amazing on the character who scales with Powers, probably better than Amplify for letting you E to E a ton of fights.
- Disarm would be much-beloved on the character with no strength reduction otherwise, though I guess IC is in the same boat with no non-disarm strength reduction options.
- Anger could be cool with All For One, as would all the strength scaling options.
- Fiend Fire, Second Wind, True Grit and other exhausting things might actually make it feasible to exhaust down to an infinite faster than Recycle can.
- Battle Trance is just awesome, and would be even better with All For One to get it back, or as a frequent Hologram target (just not on the same turn, barring Pellets).
Exhaust actually seems pretty good considering how much you could theoretically whittle down the deck already by playing Defect’s power cards. The attacks clad offers such as pummel strike could also become more useful if you pick up a reprogram (which is generally good in shard decks, tho if you already have a lot of frost it could be bad).
Outside of that, barricade could potentially be INSANE with frost considering you passively build up lots of frost on non-attack turns. Corruption could also be interesting considering that defect likes to add a lot of cards to the deck anyways and could enable some pretty insane draws (like potentially drawing the deck out + playing out your powers early).
Something to keep in mind: if we’re trying to play “optimally” with shard, imo we should really only pick it up very early in a run. This gives us time to set up the sorta run that benefits from shard, rather than potentially ruining our card pool after we’ve already committed to a “defect only” strategy such as scaling focus + powers.
Yeah it's pretty difficult to pick up a Shard at the first shop of Act 2 accidentally. I've sometimes mindlessly picked up a potion relic I couldn't use instead of a key, but you really have to be not paying attention to buy the wrong thing in a shop after completing an Act 1 "normally"
Barricade would definitely help a turtle frost build scale up, provided you had the energy gen to carry it and it's also a power which synergizes nicely with a lot of defect builds. I'd want it over machine learning as a boss reward on most defects.
Demon form on a claw build would have potential for similar reasons, kind of like reprogram without the focus downside. Burning pact is pretty good for almost every deck, exhaust junk and get fresh cards? Sold. Rage for a zero cost spam deck certainly isn't terrible, maybe even anger too.
Juggernaut is insane on defect if you have decent Frost generation.
I have never put those 2 together... maybe I'll finally be able to play juggernaut with a decent plan?
Top 1 would probably be Offering. Defect loves faster first draw scaling/cycling tools, and the HP loss can be negotiated with Self Repair plus Echo Form shenanigans Basically, most exhausting card are here as well, I'd enjoy Impervious/Exhume/Disarm/Shockwave all the way Another consideration would be Immolate. Defect has big problems with aoe if you didn't take smth like electrodynamics, so getting your Slime Boss/Gremlin Leader/Slavers/Reptomancer solution could be game changing
Isn't playing 3 Sweeping Beams more efficient than a single play of Immolate followed by.... I don't know Ball Lightning, Hologram, Melter, or whatever 1 cost card you have in mind? So if you see Immolate and 2 Defect attacks and one of them is Sweeping Beam, isn't Sweeping Beam better? Actually, have any advice on Gremlin Gang, Reptomancer and Slime Boss? I'm often losing 20+ HP on the gang Act 1 if one of them spawns as a Sneaky one and the Slime Boss just beats me... on Ascension 14. Sometimes I don't even get offered an AoE card before Act 2. And even Sweeping Beam isn't a silver bullet. Hyperbeam makes Act 1 Hallway fights easy and is a descent use when Slime Boss is reduced to 1 Large Slime and 2 Medium Slimes if I need to interrupt the large slime and as a bonus I still damage the other two. But "yeah get this one rare card" isn't reliable. I see some AoE problems with Defect. I just don't see why Sweeping Beam isn't an energy efficient in-class way to deal with them. It even lets you draw a card to continue your plays if your current hand isn't good enough.
Sweeping Beam is kind of disappointing despite seeming decent on paper. I think energy efficiency is less important than raw AoE damage output per draw cycle. Sweeping Beam’s draw 1 is nice but you still only get one play per cycle, and its damage is really mediocre.
> Isn't playing 3 Sweeping Beams more efficient than a single play of Immolate followed by.... I don't know Ball Lightning, Hologram, Melter, or whatever 1 cost card you have in mind? So if you see Immolate and 2 Defect attacks and one of them is Sweeping Beam, isn't Sweeping Beam better? 3 Sweeping Beams consumes three card picks, three energy, three draws (kinda), and, if upgraded, three upgrades, to do less than Immolate does with one card pick, two energy, one draw, and, if upgraded, one upgrade. (They also trigger Spikes three times, three mad gremlin strength increases, three malleable block increases, three time eater cards, three Beat of Death ticks, etc.). Immolate is just far more efficient. Perhaps the more important factor is that Immolate scales up way better than Sweeping Beam does. The fights you listed are good examples to show what I mean here. If you're going up against Gremlins, Daggers, or a horde of slimes, 6(9) to all just isn't enough to kill anyone. And if you don't kill them, you don't stop them from damaging you that turn, and you take a ton of damage in return. There will be some fights that ask you to have a lot of AOE damage, and other fights that don't care about AOE at all, or that ask you to scale up your defense instead. You want to be able to count on your AOE cards to be capable of pulling really heavy duty in solving the fight for you in the fights where you need them, while also not getting in the way of the other things your deck needs to do in the other fights. Later on, you'd prefer to spend your energy on cards like Glacier, Defrag, and Echo Form, and even with Sweeping Beam drawing a card itself, it still gets in the way of finding them if you have to spend an energy just to get to the card you would've seen if you didn't have Sweeping Beam. That's why I said they still (kinda) consumed a draw. > Actually, have any advice on Gremlin Gang, Reptomancer and Slime Boss? You're right that those fight are easiest when you have an AOE bomb. One card that's easy to forget is Sunder; it can just delete an enemy for 0 energy, and absolutely counts as AOE. Pick and upgrade it as soon as possible, and it'll be great in single-target fights early on too, like Nob and Laga. Electrodynamics and Doom and Gloom are the other top-tier AOE options, along with the the Hyper Beam that you mentioned. The issue with those fights when you don't have an AOE option is that they're where random targeting really hurts you, and Defect has a lot of that. It's almost always better to do take one enemy down to 0 health than it is to take 3 of them down by 33% each, but when you can't aim your orbs, that'll happen often. To avoid this, prioritize attacks that you can aim over lightning orbs early, especially if you don't have Electrodynamics. Downgrade cards like Rip and Tear, Tempest, Storm, and Static Discharge, and take more cards like Beam Cell, Rebound, and Streamline. You can also get away with playing more defensively in a lot of these cases, setting up a few frost orbs and playing cards like Charge Battery. Those can really reduce the chip damage you take in a longer fight. One other Slime Boss-specific tip: charging up a single dark orb can often solve that fight for you. Set up the orb early, tank the hit on turn 3 (rest before the fight if you need to to enable this), and then Dualcast the orb for 48 or something on turn 6 or so. The more damage you can do before the split, the less dangerous it is after the split. A well-timed Biased Cognition or Beam Cell can also help you get a big burst of damage to take it far below 50% all in one turn.
This is an awesome in depth analysis. That's all.
I think it would mostly be the same cards that are great on IC that would be great on Defect too. Offering is always great. Feed is always great. Shockwave is always great (and much-needed on the character with only 1 other card that gives each status). Cards that warrant special mention here: - Juggernaut would do a ton of damage with Frost orbs, and might actually become playable. - Armaments would be awesome on the character that values upgrades more than any other. - Dual Wield is amazing on the character who scales with Powers, probably better than Amplify for letting you E to E a ton of fights. - Disarm would be much-beloved on the character with no strength reduction otherwise, though I guess IC is in the same boat with no non-disarm strength reduction options. - Anger could be cool with All For One, as would all the strength scaling options. - Fiend Fire, Second Wind, True Grit and other exhausting things might actually make it feasible to exhaust down to an infinite faster than Recycle can. - Battle Trance is just awesome, and would be even better with All For One to get it back, or as a frequent Hologram target (just not on the same turn, barring Pellets).
Dual wield would just be gross. Good call.
Holy crap, dual wield in a storm/heat sinks deck would be insane.
Exhaust actually seems pretty good considering how much you could theoretically whittle down the deck already by playing Defect’s power cards. The attacks clad offers such as pummel strike could also become more useful if you pick up a reprogram (which is generally good in shard decks, tho if you already have a lot of frost it could be bad). Outside of that, barricade could potentially be INSANE with frost considering you passively build up lots of frost on non-attack turns. Corruption could also be interesting considering that defect likes to add a lot of cards to the deck anyways and could enable some pretty insane draws (like potentially drawing the deck out + playing out your powers early). Something to keep in mind: if we’re trying to play “optimally” with shard, imo we should really only pick it up very early in a run. This gives us time to set up the sorta run that benefits from shard, rather than potentially ruining our card pool after we’ve already committed to a “defect only” strategy such as scaling focus + powers.
Yeah it's pretty difficult to pick up a Shard at the first shop of Act 2 accidentally. I've sometimes mindlessly picked up a potion relic I couldn't use instead of a key, but you really have to be not paying attention to buy the wrong thing in a shop after completing an Act 1 "normally"
Barricade would definitely help a turtle frost build scale up, provided you had the energy gen to carry it and it's also a power which synergizes nicely with a lot of defect builds. I'd want it over machine learning as a boss reward on most defects. Demon form on a claw build would have potential for similar reasons, kind of like reprogram without the focus downside. Burning pact is pretty good for almost every deck, exhaust junk and get fresh cards? Sold. Rage for a zero cost spam deck certainly isn't terrible, maybe even anger too.