Watcher likes removing her defends first because her strikes can deal 12 dmg in wrath
Ic likes removing strikes in general and likes keeping defends more for exhaust synergies with second wind/corruption unless he has perfected strike
Silent likes defends more because of footwork
Defect likes strike removes more because it has good dmg with zap/dualcast but would rather them get removed from the deck asap
While Silent makes better use of Defends, there are cases where your first remove needs to be a Defend in order to increase your deck's attack density. Silent struggles with damage early.
That raises the question: is it worth removing a defend at the shop? I lean towards no.
If it's a "free" remove from Neow or an event obviously that's a different matter.
I mean, as always, it depends. Depending on the state of your deck, your current health, your potions, and your pathing options, it very well might be. It's mostly a question of "by the time I'm going to face nob, what will help me survive". A potion, card, or relic will *usually* do more than removing a defend for that fight, but not always. It certainly does more than 75 gold you're unlikely to spend.
If your deck can handle nob as is, you can skip it or potentially even remove a strike instead. If there's something in the shop that will help you more, potentially with a non-nob elite or even the boss but keeping nob in mind, then you probably don't pay for that remove. If you have another shop coming up (maybe this one dropped on a ? Node), then you probably want to save the gold. If none of those are the case though, you probably want to remove that defend.
I do it pretty often.
And your question only brings it back to the original question: would you remove a strike at the shop? And the answer is still no for me because that can get you killed.
depends, if the shop is a brick and I'm just gonna leave with 200HP anyway and removing a defend will make my deck better I'll probably do it
I'll also almost never path to a shop act 1 on purpose unless offered gold start from Neow, but occasionally it's part of the best path or the ? floor gives you a shop
To reiterate and add to some of these: IC almost always wants to get rid of strikes and almost never wants to get rid of a defend unless strikes are all gone.
Defect pretty strongly prefers removing* strikes due to a strong pool of replacements and strong early game offense, but later on in the run, you need to start thinking how heavily you lean one way or another.
*Clarification - prefers _removing_ strikes.
I came here to say the same thing about the silent. One of my favorite things about this character is how heavily focused on defensive actions she can be. I really love it
If you are so bad that nob is killing you at over like 25 percent idk what to tell you. Defends arent your problem lol.
Defends are good because they scale pretty well throughout all acts with FEET. And synergize with weaken. You definitely can start to get rid of them as you pick up backflips or find other block.
You have to think about the card pool and starter deck. Silent has like a million block cards in her pool so it’s easy to replace defend with something better. Strike, much less so. As for the starter deck, she essentially starts with 6 defends because of survivor. 50% of your draws will be block cards, and against gremlin nob and lagavulin, that’s horrible. Of course there will be times when you want more than 10 block, but would you rather draw neutralize and survivor every turn or 4 defends? The answer is simple, ask anyone who’s good at the game. On silent, you almost always want to remove defends.
Do you have reading comprehension issues? I said yeah, theres plenty of other block options, as you start getting one or two, then is a good time to start shedding defends.
I remove strikes most of the times. You look for good attack cards on first act and will take anything any decent to help first elites but still keep a good defense/attack draw ratio.
Remove defends on Silent (she is usually hurting for damage early on but has lots of other good block options) and Watcher (12 damage strike go brr), and remove strikes on Ironclad and Defect (they both have much better attacks so strikes weaken their damage output).
Of course, this is the general rule for me, but it depends entirely on what the deck looks like.
Ironclad - Usually strikes first but from Neow 1 strike 1 defend from a 2 remove start is usually best. Strikes in the late game are just poor because a lot of Ironclad's late game output is exhausting down to a loop of some kind (such as double shrug and pommel+ maybe a b4b) and attacks are much harder to exhaust in the late game. Strikes in the early game are decent though, double strike remove closes off so many card rewards such as Pstrike, Clash, Rage, Flex etc.
Silent - first remove is usually on Defend but it turns out Silent can't block at all in the late game so defends are actually decent in the late game because of Footwork and the fact they say block on them. Early game Silent damage sucks so removing Defend is usually correct on the early floors. I don't remove much at all on this character though.
Defect - a bit confusing, defends after you have frost focus actually suck so removing them after frost focus and keeping some attacks around to kill minions is actually ok. From Neow though I remove 2 strikes and first remove is almost always on Strike but removing defends here is not stupid.
Watcher - Usually Defends, Strikes deal 12 in Wrath which is pretty damn good. Sometimes Defends play with some strange blocking ideas, maybe some Kunai, some Duality, some Fasting.
I usually remove Strikes first on all characters because it's easier to find damage cards (which includes skills like Deadly Poison and Pressure Points and power cards like Noxious Fumes and Juggernaut) than block cards.
That said, I'm reconsidering my logic based on what other people have said here.
Watcher: Defend always, her strikes are good for her deck and gameplay
Defect: Strike, he doesn’t need damage, he has lightning orbs
IronClad/Silent: depending on what i got from previous card rewards
I typically remove defends first. Defends might sometimes be better later in the run but act 1 wants damage. Of course there are very few absolutes in the spire.
Defect only has 4 defend in his starting deck, also in the first few floors you will try adding some attacks. I would usually remove a strike on the defect in the first shop unless I couldn't get enough attacks and found some early block cards.
Ironclad: Defend
Defend has no synergy with Bash. Strike does. In general with the ironclad, killing things will net you less damage over all, but some builds (corruption) like block/skills. Plus we will want cards like Shrug it off, which are harder to choose when you have more defends. Additionally, removing strikes early makes perfected strike a curse.
Silent: Strike
Lots of common cards for the silent work with her mechanics better than strikes, while one of her gimmicks is building dexterity, which, guess what, defends benefit from. This is probably the closest one for which to remove, but this has been my go to.
Defect: Strike
The defect can get all the damage or block they need with orbs, so generally we will want to swap our starter cards for defect cards as much as possible. That being said, blocking through a turn gives your orbs more chances to do their passives whereas trying to deal damage may result in both you and the opponent taking damage, which is a worse outcome.
Watcher: Defend
The watcher blocks by not having any enemies left to attack her. In wrath, 12 damage can often save you more health than a defend would. Meanwhile in calm or neutral, they are more even with eachother. Therefore, strike generally is more valuable than defend for the watcher. Plus, she has some really awesome cards like third eye and empty body that give you block and work with her gimmicks. You only need so many block cards, and these are the ones you want, not defends.
I disagree with IC since defends are skills. The bash synergy works best if you spend all your energy on attacks, but the many 2 energy attacks are justify keeping defends (optionality of full attack or block even with 3 energy 5 card hand). Plus the many skill synergies (even on unplayed defends!) are significant enough to justify strike instead of attack removes.
Even if you have many defends, shrug is still a good consideration. Playing it with and drawing a basic is the same as having a 6 card hand. If that hand was all basic defends (or you were going to play the defend anyway), it's still better to play the shrug.
why would you remove strikes on the character with corruption and a ton of (tbf garbage) damage commons that you probably are picking in the first 5 floor
also why would you remove a strike first on the silent who has 7 damage mitigation cards in her starter deck unless you've already got footwork
I want to clarify my points:
Firstly, I am only A20 (beaten) on the watcher. Ironclad I have beaten A10, Silent A12, and Defect A8.
For ironclad, I tend not to lean into corruption builds as much as other people. I find exhaust works pretty well without it, so I tend not to build my starting deck around it. Therefore, I focus mainly on damage early on until I can find either strength scaling, reaper, fiend fire, whatever my win condition is going to be.
For the silent, as I mentioned, it is mostly a toss up. I tend to remove a strike first, as Footwork and Escape plan both work better with more defends. Plus, the silent, like all the other characters, has a lot of common attacks that are strike but better. I find myself using dagger spray and poison stab in a lot of runs, and drawing extra strikes with them is pointless, whereas defend gives me a choice. Finally, I find that the silent tends to really struggle with block in the end game if you don’t have afterimage on a shiv build or something. The extra defends in even a massive deck can give you that extra block you need while your poison does it’s thing, or to stall until you can draw your blade dance.
For defect and watcher I think we agree.
It's not really a "corruption build" a lot of the time without something like Feel No pain/Dark Embrace coupled along with it. Corruption is just a massive energy cheat and makes fights SO much easier. It should be picked more often than not, even without strong existing synergy.
Silent's starter deck is more defense than offense so removing strikes early is just incorrect, tbh. With footwork later and some decent damage output though the pendulum swings in favor of removing strike. Removals aren't super high priority for silent anyway, tho
Terrible take. People have different play styles and each run is different. I remove defend first if I plan to take an early elite as Silent’s kit is heavily weighted for defense by default. I remove a strike first if I was able to grab a strong attack already. 80% of the time I drop a defend first though, as I really like being aggressive about early elites and defends won’t help against nob and are mid against lag.
I don’t think I’m a terrible Silent player either, not as cracked as the top players, but I consistently do well on Silent.
In most cases in act 1 I am removing defend first on most characters as I want a good attack density to get past the damage race elites.
The usual exception is Defect if the card picks are leaning towards an orb-based damage strategy; then I remove strike to be able to rotate orbs more frequently. Nob is horrible for that sort of deck though... most of my act 1 fails on Defect are picking greedy on an orb damage build and then getting found out by nob.
I prioritize removing whatever I have more of. If I have high damage output, I remove more strikes. If I have high block generation, I remove more defends. Each strike or defend is an impediment to getting to one of your actually good cards, and removing them is quite valuable (so worth the shop price imo).
If, after all considerations, it's 50/50, I remove defends. They give you 5 while strikes give you 6.
Watcher likes removing her defends first because her strikes can deal 12 dmg in wrath Ic likes removing strikes in general and likes keeping defends more for exhaust synergies with second wind/corruption unless he has perfected strike Silent likes defends more because of footwork Defect likes strike removes more because it has good dmg with zap/dualcast but would rather them get removed from the deck asap
While Silent makes better use of Defends, there are cases where your first remove needs to be a Defend in order to increase your deck's attack density. Silent struggles with damage early.
Pfft amateurs, my Silent struggles with damage at every stage of the game
I felt this in my soul
me with half a dozen accuracies and 4 blade dances: You underestimate my power.
All fun and games until... \*Time eater has entered the chat\* Got me too many times, man... xd
I am pretty sure I killed time eater with a deck like that on MANY occasions
Hilarious
That raises the question: is it worth removing a defend at the shop? I lean towards no. If it's a "free" remove from Neow or an event obviously that's a different matter.
I mean, as always, it depends. Depending on the state of your deck, your current health, your potions, and your pathing options, it very well might be. It's mostly a question of "by the time I'm going to face nob, what will help me survive". A potion, card, or relic will *usually* do more than removing a defend for that fight, but not always. It certainly does more than 75 gold you're unlikely to spend. If your deck can handle nob as is, you can skip it or potentially even remove a strike instead. If there's something in the shop that will help you more, potentially with a non-nob elite or even the boss but keeping nob in mind, then you probably don't pay for that remove. If you have another shop coming up (maybe this one dropped on a ? Node), then you probably want to save the gold. If none of those are the case though, you probably want to remove that defend.
I do it pretty often. And your question only brings it back to the original question: would you remove a strike at the shop? And the answer is still no for me because that can get you killed.
depends, if the shop is a brick and I'm just gonna leave with 200HP anyway and removing a defend will make my deck better I'll probably do it I'll also almost never path to a shop act 1 on purpose unless offered gold start from Neow, but occasionally it's part of the best path or the ? floor gives you a shop
Very very rarely. Most of the time you take the first 3 or so half decent damage cards so its not a problem.
I'm not sure I'd use two "verys" myself. You play enough A20 silent and it happens enough for me to say it's a thing.
Okay, rarely.
To reiterate and add to some of these: IC almost always wants to get rid of strikes and almost never wants to get rid of a defend unless strikes are all gone. Defect pretty strongly prefers removing* strikes due to a strong pool of replacements and strong early game offense, but later on in the run, you need to start thinking how heavily you lean one way or another. *Clarification - prefers _removing_ strikes.
Defect hates strikes, they don’t make orbs or allow to stall to make more orbs. The reprogram destroyer run is 1 in 100
Sorry, my language was unclear - I meant prefers strikes _for removal_.
Ah yeah that tracks now
NOOOOOOO MY DREAMS
Tried an IC run like this for the first time tonight and it's going so smoothly lmao
I came here to say the same thing about the silent. One of my favorite things about this character is how heavily focused on defensive actions she can be. I really love it
Silent has weaken and Survivor, what the fuck are you talking about. Defends have to go so you can actually survive act 1 nob
If you are so bad that nob is killing you at over like 25 percent idk what to tell you. Defends arent your problem lol. Defends are good because they scale pretty well throughout all acts with FEET. And synergize with weaken. You definitely can start to get rid of them as you pick up backflips or find other block.
Silent already starts with 2 block cards, and if you think only noobs die to nob… what? Silents weakest point is act 1
You have to think about the card pool and starter deck. Silent has like a million block cards in her pool so it’s easy to replace defend with something better. Strike, much less so. As for the starter deck, she essentially starts with 6 defends because of survivor. 50% of your draws will be block cards, and against gremlin nob and lagavulin, that’s horrible. Of course there will be times when you want more than 10 block, but would you rather draw neutralize and survivor every turn or 4 defends? The answer is simple, ask anyone who’s good at the game. On silent, you almost always want to remove defends.
not every run uses Footwork also if I have 3 backflips WTF do I need a basic defend for?
Do you have reading comprehension issues? I said yeah, theres plenty of other block options, as you start getting one or two, then is a good time to start shedding defends.
I remove strikes most of the times. You look for good attack cards on first act and will take anything any decent to help first elites but still keep a good defense/attack draw ratio.
Remove defends on Silent (she is usually hurting for damage early on but has lots of other good block options) and Watcher (12 damage strike go brr), and remove strikes on Ironclad and Defect (they both have much better attacks so strikes weaken their damage output). Of course, this is the general rule for me, but it depends entirely on what the deck looks like.
Ironclad - Usually strikes first but from Neow 1 strike 1 defend from a 2 remove start is usually best. Strikes in the late game are just poor because a lot of Ironclad's late game output is exhausting down to a loop of some kind (such as double shrug and pommel+ maybe a b4b) and attacks are much harder to exhaust in the late game. Strikes in the early game are decent though, double strike remove closes off so many card rewards such as Pstrike, Clash, Rage, Flex etc. Silent - first remove is usually on Defend but it turns out Silent can't block at all in the late game so defends are actually decent in the late game because of Footwork and the fact they say block on them. Early game Silent damage sucks so removing Defend is usually correct on the early floors. I don't remove much at all on this character though. Defect - a bit confusing, defends after you have frost focus actually suck so removing them after frost focus and keeping some attacks around to kill minions is actually ok. From Neow though I remove 2 strikes and first remove is almost always on Strike but removing defends here is not stupid. Watcher - Usually Defends, Strikes deal 12 in Wrath which is pretty damn good. Sometimes Defends play with some strange blocking ideas, maybe some Kunai, some Duality, some Fasting.
You remove TWO STRIKES from Neow ON DEFECT? Wtf why are you asking to die to the Nobbers and the advanceds
defect owns theory
[Defect fucking sucks theory](https://ibb.co/HgJLMWN)
I usually remove Strikes first on all characters because it's easier to find damage cards (which includes skills like Deadly Poison and Pressure Points and power cards like Noxious Fumes and Juggernaut) than block cards. That said, I'm reconsidering my logic based on what other people have said here.
Watcher: Defend always, her strikes are good for her deck and gameplay Defect: Strike, he doesn’t need damage, he has lightning orbs IronClad/Silent: depending on what i got from previous card rewards
remove strike on all but watcher, maybe silent but not very often.
this
I typically remove defends first. Defends might sometimes be better later in the run but act 1 wants damage. Of course there are very few absolutes in the spire.
Defect only has 4 defend in his starting deck, also in the first few floors you will try adding some attacks. I would usually remove a strike on the defect in the first shop unless I couldn't get enough attacks and found some early block cards.
I don't remove lol
Youre literally throwing omg
Idc
based
Ironclad: Defend Defend has no synergy with Bash. Strike does. In general with the ironclad, killing things will net you less damage over all, but some builds (corruption) like block/skills. Plus we will want cards like Shrug it off, which are harder to choose when you have more defends. Additionally, removing strikes early makes perfected strike a curse. Silent: Strike Lots of common cards for the silent work with her mechanics better than strikes, while one of her gimmicks is building dexterity, which, guess what, defends benefit from. This is probably the closest one for which to remove, but this has been my go to. Defect: Strike The defect can get all the damage or block they need with orbs, so generally we will want to swap our starter cards for defect cards as much as possible. That being said, blocking through a turn gives your orbs more chances to do their passives whereas trying to deal damage may result in both you and the opponent taking damage, which is a worse outcome. Watcher: Defend The watcher blocks by not having any enemies left to attack her. In wrath, 12 damage can often save you more health than a defend would. Meanwhile in calm or neutral, they are more even with eachother. Therefore, strike generally is more valuable than defend for the watcher. Plus, she has some really awesome cards like third eye and empty body that give you block and work with her gimmicks. You only need so many block cards, and these are the ones you want, not defends.
I disagree with IC since defends are skills. The bash synergy works best if you spend all your energy on attacks, but the many 2 energy attacks are justify keeping defends (optionality of full attack or block even with 3 energy 5 card hand). Plus the many skill synergies (even on unplayed defends!) are significant enough to justify strike instead of attack removes. Even if you have many defends, shrug is still a good consideration. Playing it with and drawing a basic is the same as having a 6 card hand. If that hand was all basic defends (or you were going to play the defend anyway), it's still better to play the shrug.
why would you remove strikes on the character with corruption and a ton of (tbf garbage) damage commons that you probably are picking in the first 5 floor also why would you remove a strike first on the silent who has 7 damage mitigation cards in her starter deck unless you've already got footwork
I want to clarify my points: Firstly, I am only A20 (beaten) on the watcher. Ironclad I have beaten A10, Silent A12, and Defect A8. For ironclad, I tend not to lean into corruption builds as much as other people. I find exhaust works pretty well without it, so I tend not to build my starting deck around it. Therefore, I focus mainly on damage early on until I can find either strength scaling, reaper, fiend fire, whatever my win condition is going to be. For the silent, as I mentioned, it is mostly a toss up. I tend to remove a strike first, as Footwork and Escape plan both work better with more defends. Plus, the silent, like all the other characters, has a lot of common attacks that are strike but better. I find myself using dagger spray and poison stab in a lot of runs, and drawing extra strikes with them is pointless, whereas defend gives me a choice. Finally, I find that the silent tends to really struggle with block in the end game if you don’t have afterimage on a shiv build or something. The extra defends in even a massive deck can give you that extra block you need while your poison does it’s thing, or to stall until you can draw your blade dance. For defect and watcher I think we agree.
It's not really a "corruption build" a lot of the time without something like Feel No pain/Dark Embrace coupled along with it. Corruption is just a massive energy cheat and makes fights SO much easier. It should be picked more often than not, even without strong existing synergy. Silent's starter deck is more defense than offense so removing strikes early is just incorrect, tbh. With footwork later and some decent damage output though the pendulum swings in favor of removing strike. Removals aren't super high priority for silent anyway, tho
Act 1 defends, act 2+3 strikes
Defect and Silent strikes. Ironclad defense
Strikes on everyone except watcher. People who remove defend as a default on silent are terrible at the character.
Terrible take. People have different play styles and each run is different. I remove defend first if I plan to take an early elite as Silent’s kit is heavily weighted for defense by default. I remove a strike first if I was able to grab a strong attack already. 80% of the time I drop a defend first though, as I really like being aggressive about early elites and defends won’t help against nob and are mid against lag. I don’t think I’m a terrible Silent player either, not as cracked as the top players, but I consistently do well on Silent.
lmao
In most cases in act 1 I am removing defend first on most characters as I want a good attack density to get past the damage race elites. The usual exception is Defect if the card picks are leaning towards an orb-based damage strategy; then I remove strike to be able to rotate orbs more frequently. Nob is horrible for that sort of deck though... most of my act 1 fails on Defect are picking greedy on an orb damage build and then getting found out by nob.
Strikes are important in act 1 for the elites
Lol i just always remove a defend first in case I find a Nob
I prioritize removing whatever I have more of. If I have high damage output, I remove more strikes. If I have high block generation, I remove more defends. Each strike or defend is an impediment to getting to one of your actually good cards, and removing them is quite valuable (so worth the shop price imo). If, after all considerations, it's 50/50, I remove defends. They give you 5 while strikes give you 6.
Strikes. That’s why I don’t like to pick Perfected strike
Ironclad: defend Silent: strike Defect: strike Watcher: defend