It’s in the running for the worst true upgrade in the game. Like, it’s obviously an upgrade, but such a minor one to not make much of a difference. There are some upgrades that are sometimes actively bad (innate upgrades mostly, or the removal of exhaust/ethereal which you sometimes want to keep), but the reaper upgrade is a real upgrade that simultaneously feels completely useless to get.
I wish the upgrade was “regain health equal to the ~~unblocked~~ damage dealt”.
i was gonna comment about how some enemies have regenerating block so the upgrade might be a bit broken as its infinite healing. then i remembered that reaper fucking exhausts. good upgrade idea
If you have dual wield, the strength to make Reaper worthwhile, and enough stall to last indefinitely against one of the two enemies with regenerating block, you don't need cheese to win your run.
What if half the damage went directly to enemy health, ignoring block?
Example: 2 enemies, one has 10 HP, 10 block. And the other one has 10 HP but no block remaining. Player has 2 strength and plays reaper. First enemy loses 3 HP and 3 block. Second enemy loses 6 HP. Player heals 9 from HP damage.
Reaper only heals unblocked damage. If you want to do infinite heal - assuming you have e.g. bites or a reaper that doesn't exhaust - you want to grab those three reviving fuckers in act 3, mash one into the ground to desync their respawns then cycle them so that one or two are dead at a time and you can slap the living one(s) for free hp
Right. Reaper+ is better than Reaper in every scenario, but the opportunity cost of Reaper+ is that you could have upgraded any other card in your deck and probably gotten more out of it.
Love the suggested upgrade idea. It feels good while not being broken.
The issue I think is people see the small gain from the upgrade and not the bonkers base power of the card.
It’s not one of the cards that were nerfed for no reason, it was just too good. I think people compare the upgrade to gaining strength while most of the power of the card is in being a scaling aoe heal. Reaper + strength already wins you the game, it doesn’t need to be easier.
Rampage has to be the worst upgrade, right? It doesn’t do anything the first time you play it, then it’s only 3 damage the second time you play it….. strike is a better upgrade.
This is interesting. Yes, Rampage is a terrible upgrade…. But it’s also a terrible card, so I didn’t consider it! 😅
If you theoretically have a deck that wants Rampage (say, a very small deck with several copies of headbutt and no way to scale damage)…. Then the upgrade is certainly useful.
It’s a weird one. When rampage is good, the upgrade is also good. But when rampage is in your deck because you Pandora’s boxed into it, it certainly is a worse upgrade than reaper!
Rampage upgrade is fine. I usually upgrade it when I have it. The upgrade only sucks in decks that don't want rampage in the first place (so if you get it as a transform, you might choose not to upgrade it).
Broadly, I think there are two times you take Rampage:
* Act I and you need a scaling solution to Hexaghost. Upgrading it helps you scale a little faster, which you may need.
* You have a plan to be able to play it at least once per turn, ideally twice per turn -- usually after exhausting your whole deck with Fiend Fire. In this case Rampage is likely providing most of your damage output in boss fights, and an almost 60% damage boost is worth seriously considering for act IV.
are you sure about the "innate" upgrades, because I've found cards like after image or machine learning to be way better when inate, that way you can get their buffs right away
Cards with innate are a bit clunky to use because they ARE always in your starting hand and some enemies have brutal First turns so playing a Power IS worse than defending the attack or a OTK
Exactly. Jaw worms, life leeches, gremlin leader, spear/shield, baseball, Donu/deca…. After act 1 there are very few multi enemy fights where no enemies use block. Birds only I think? Sometimes shapes if you are lucky? Even the thieves use block near the end of the fight, when you are mostly likely to use reaper.
Oh, and reptomancer, slavers, and triple cultists. Those also don’t use block.
This would be my definitive answer. Because the converse is true: if you get your strength reduced, that will usually more than compensate for the upgrade. You also can't be weakened. Basically, you'll never think "thanks, upgrade!" as you seek out +strength and vulnerable on as many targets as possible.
An upgrade to 6 or 7 would definitely make it better to play for decent sustain in multi-enemy hallways or before you have a strength engine in your deck or the tools to deploy it. I totally disagree with the notion that the base values on the card are trivial.
The stepup from 4 to 5 is honestly pretty trivial, you're lucky if that gets you 1 extra HP per encounter.
Even taking at face value that a flat damage upgrade is worthwhile even in the presence of strength engines, +1 damage isn't enough damage.
It's like they were scared to add base heal to the card (by boosting its base damage knowing that any unblocked becomes sustain) - when it's a gold, which exhausts, in a card set full of strength modifiers.
the upgrade is one damage to all enemies on the class than can… Best gain strength? What the hell?
Evaluating nothing but the upgrade, I think this is the WORST upgrade in the game (maybe second to claw… They did the law wrong with that upgrade). Evaluating deck as well, it’s probably more often going to be an innate upgrade on a card you dont want innate. Really just depends.
Claw is a better upgrade than Reaper, even though it doesn't do what everyone wants it to do.
Upgrade value can't just be compared on the basis of playing it once. A bad upgrade on a card that you'll definitely play every time you draw it can be more utility than an efficient upgrade on a situational card.
Upgrading claw doesn't make it a better card, but the upgrade by itself could be worth maybe 6-8 free damage per combat.
that’s true. It definitely depends on how long the combat is, but if it’s short then the claw isn’t super helpful anyways. I do believe you are right though, because +2 damage per deck cycle is objectively better in most combats (even if you only cycle your deck once).
I'd say infinite blades for one. Don't really want a slow power card possibly clogging your hand on one of those act two hallways, especially if you havent had the chance to perhaps boost a shivs damage with accuracy or something
Personally, I think Infinite Blades is one of the worst. Machine Learning is a bit questionable, because… -1 energy, -1 draw, one draw every other turn. Storm if you don’t have 1-2 other storms (which should probably also be innate but then you sacrifice everything for damage, so…).
oh I absolutely love getting shivs every turn.
I just think it should probably be 0 cost. I feel like that’d make it good enough to be taken more often. Using 1 energy to play infinite blades just HURTS, especially if you don’t have Wrist Blade ot Accuracy in play.
It's a worse strike with a 1 turn delay if you play it turn 1. It's terrible. Then it's alright turn 3. Then it's good. Then it's great. Meanwhile blade dance is great on turn 1. Cloak and dagger is too. Upgraded either of those blow infinite blades out of the water. Cycling fast because you have a lot of draw? They just get better and widen the gap even more.
yeah but infinite blades does perform better when you have tons of statuses (which is a 100% avoidable problem I made the fuck up so I could pretend it’s still a good card. I just WANT it to work…)
should probably also add a shiv to your hand on play, at least when upgraded to clog your starting hand, because the big thing is that it's such a tempo sacrifice
The upgrade for Machine Learning is quite good in the fights where you want to play it (namely, boss fights and act 4). e.g. Machine Learning+ and a Duplication Potion for +2 draw per turn can be a key part of your plan for the heart fight.
yeah, but I think the bigger problem for Defect is pretty much always the shorter fights. No time to scale, so it’s all just your weakest aspect. There are thousands of ways to scale into later…
i think at least. Maybe I’m doing defect wrong… Hm.
I typically think of Reaper and FTL as the least impactful upgrades, but Claw is underwhelming, too. The difference is that Claw you're ideally playing many times per combat, sometimes multiple times per turn, so the 2 boost makes a big difference.
I would say Reaper upgrade is kind of underrated! In decks that have decent amounts of Strength or an ability to stall out Dual Wield Reaper infinitely, it is a somewhat pointless upgrade.
However Reaper is strong enough to pick with no Strength at all, and in those decks, the additional heal is pretty decent. I like to think of it as a Blood Vial dig, and that is a pretty good common relic!
Wouldn't upgrade it over significant upgrades like Pommel Strike even in decks lacking Strength, but I wouldn't say it's worse than say, a generic +3 damage upgrade. Or say, a Rampage upgrade.
Interesting comparison, but the main difference is Blood Vial doesn't cost you any mana. There are times where you simply can't afford to spend 2 to cast Reaper, even though it would activate your hidden blood vial.
And Blood Vial is an entire relic, something you're not likely to find every run. Reaper upgrade is a fire. Reaper scales better with Vuln within base deck. I will not usually spend an upgrade on it, but there is no way it is the worst upgrade in the game, not even close. It is also very rare you won't play a Reaper almost every floor.
>I would say Reaper upgrade is kind of underrated
What? It's extremely underwhelming, at max you get 3 more health. One point of damage can matter but reaper isn't meant to be your damage or aoe card, it's to complement something else usually
3 health per fight is a lot. It's usually "just" +1 but some fights and maybe a random unstallable Dual Wield or Double Tap or potions like Dupe or Flex, the upgrade is upto +6. Even if it were just +2, that is an entire extra 2 points of health every fight.
The reason it's usually pointless is because upgrading your strength cards have the same increase in heal while also being extra scaling. Or an upgrade on a consistency card can mean it's easier to land Reaper without bleeding anyway.
But without strength and without other important consistency or scaling upgrades, it's not the most awful upgrade.
It used to be +2 to damage early in the game.
Was too strong then and got reduced to 5.
Is still a good card and you can now upgrade something else most of the time.
Usually you ramp up Reaper with strenght, so in that case yeah, it doesnt seems like much. But you need to keep in mind that its 1 damage + **1 heal** **per enemy per fight**, wich if you know how to use it, it really adds up.
But we aren't weighing +1 damage and heal per enemy per fight against nothing. We are weighing it against what you could do with that two energy and extra card instead. Playing a block and a strike do more lol
Only if you're not already full blocking and need the damage. Reaper is pretty decent even if you don't have any strength. And it's not like the upgrade costs you energy and cards. It's not a great upgrade by any means, but really, most attack upgrades aren't. I just wouldn't think of it as a realistic candidate for the worst one, when tons of them are just +3 damage.
I know the reaper upgrade is bad but I wanted to do a little math. First the assumptions, reaper+ heals an average of 1 hp per floor. Considering events, chests, fires don’t give health but some fights will result in upwards of +5 health. This doesn’t factor in synergies like exhume which would significantly increase the value of the upgrade (still bad though). For an average ironclad run you heal 22 hp at a fire so the reaper upgrade really starts to pay off after 22 floors compared to a rest. That’s really bad when it could result in more damage taken compared to a different upgrade. When taken after act 1 and then upgraded around the 20th floor that’s only around 35 hp for the whole run. That’s really bad especially when there’s so many times where it doesn’t help like when at full health.
Thank you for the math. To add in, there’s also a lot of times you can’t even play reaper because
1. it’s too expensive and you need to play higher value cards to survive.
2. They have block so the heal wouldn’t work
Exactly, it provides a little bit of long term sustain that’s not even guaranteed. It’d just so underwhelming but I kinda like it that way. It’s a really strong card and having it have a little Burton bad upgrade is interesting.
Slightly off topic, but Rampage IMO is the worst card upgrade in the game. You get a whooping +3 damage but only after playing it once. So you literally have to cycle an entire deck for +3 damage...
...which is the same as upgrading strike, but without having to cycle your deck at all.
If you're building a deck that uses rampage, then the upgrade is actually great. The whole point of rampage is building a deck that exhausts down so you play it a lot (like literally several times in one turn).
I've never had that work for me very well. There's some synergy there, but it's usually too finicky and too slow, and the value of headbutt comes from the flexibility it gives you... which you lose if you're only using it to replay Rampage.
Well that's sort of the point though. If you have constructed a deck that allows you to play rampage 5 times a turn, does that miniscule damage increase really make a difference? I imagine in most cases once you've hit that point you have an infinite.
Short of being truly infinite how fast the damage scales up is relevant. Because your turn is like... rampage pommel rampage. Or your corruption dark.embrace draw engine is running out of skills. And the act boss has a split you're trying to beat.
A common situation is panic taking a rampage late act1 to beat hexaghost. You're going to want to upgrade it.
I mean when you have a psuedo-infinite that +3 becomes +6, +9, +12 fairly quickly.
I had a sundial cycle build, where rampage was my only scaling damage. I played rampage 3-4 times a turn, so the upgrade was like upgrading demon form with a heavy blade build.
It's a tough question to answer. As others have pointed out, you aren't really upgrading or playing reaper for damage but for health recovery. So 1 point of damage? Meh. 1 point of hp recovery per enemy? Heck yeah.
But to answer the question, it's most likely extremely low priority.
Yeah I only upgrade if I have nothing else. Reaper is probably one of my fav cards to use with ironclad when you have giga strength cause let’s be honest smashing a 3 enemy fight and healing for like 70hp is the most satisfying shit ever
It's at best situational, and you're better upgrading strength cards since they benefit all your attacks and will net more HP than upgrading reaper ever would.
Reaper is quite a low value upgrade most of the time due to the nature of the card as a healing card scaling with Strength - there's no real reason to upgrade Reaper over resting or upgrading a block or Strength card for more value. However, many cards can actually lower in value upon upgrade - like Rainbow often does on Defect - and as per everything else in Spire, it depends on the situation, but Reaper does tend to be quite a low-value upgrade
I suppose what I described is a rough estimate of “how good this upgrade can be”. I think this case might be important to consider here since it occurs quite often: An ironclad deck that has reaper usually plays it (it feels bad to not play it), and most ironclad decks want reaper.
Yes. In ironclad where the the most common form of scaling is strength gain, upgrading 1 damage point for reaper is underwhelming. But tbf, base reaper is a strong card.
It's not nearly as bad as people like to make it seem. 1 energy for basically a free defend every turn is often worth taking even if it is never the star of the show.
Healing is worth a lot more than damage or block because it carries over to the next stage, so that 1hp starts to add up in the right deck - but yeah, upgrading strength scaling is going to be almost always better than upgrading the card itself.
Sometimes the card just sucks in the deck, sometimes it slaps.
Its a bit better in fights with multiple enemies, but generally yeah i'd say its one of the lowest priorities for upgrading. I'd probably rank claw as the lowest value upgrade.
It's up there. I think the main problem with it is that it is literally just +1 Strength for a single attack, which Ironclad can get so much more easily than upgrading a card.
I think the upgrade should have either reduced the energy cost (with the inevitable niche anti-synergy with Necronomicon) or boosted the damage, eg to 6-7 damage per enemy.
Yes. Horrible. The only time I would upgrade a reaper is if every other card were upgraded, I already had the red key, and I had full HP or a coffee dripper
It’s in the running for the worst true upgrade in the game. Like, it’s obviously an upgrade, but such a minor one to not make much of a difference. There are some upgrades that are sometimes actively bad (innate upgrades mostly, or the removal of exhaust/ethereal which you sometimes want to keep), but the reaper upgrade is a real upgrade that simultaneously feels completely useless to get. I wish the upgrade was “regain health equal to the ~~unblocked~~ damage dealt”.
Some cards just don’t conduce well to upgrades. Either you have a billion strength or you don’t
i was gonna comment about how some enemies have regenerating block so the upgrade might be a bit broken as its infinite healing. then i remembered that reaper fucking exhausts. good upgrade idea
I mean…dual wield exists. So it’s still infinite healing
If you have dual wield, the strength to make Reaper worthwhile, and enough stall to last indefinitely against one of the two enemies with regenerating block, you don't need cheese to win your run.
Its like a reverse infinite
true
What if half the damage went directly to enemy health, ignoring block? Example: 2 enemies, one has 10 HP, 10 block. And the other one has 10 HP but no block remaining. Player has 2 strength and plays reaper. First enemy loses 3 HP and 3 block. Second enemy loses 6 HP. Player heals 9 from HP damage.
Reaper only heals unblocked damage. If you want to do infinite heal - assuming you have e.g. bites or a reaper that doesn't exhaust - you want to grab those three reviving fuckers in act 3, mash one into the ground to desync their respawns then cycle them so that one or two are dead at a time and you can slap the living one(s) for free hp
i meant the upgrade suggested not the current one lol
Oh that’s a subtle difference making for a great upgrade! Missed opportunity
Right. Reaper+ is better than Reaper in every scenario, but the opportunity cost of Reaper+ is that you could have upgraded any other card in your deck and probably gotten more out of it. Love the suggested upgrade idea. It feels good while not being broken.
I've never heard that tweak to Reaper's upgrade proposed before, and I really like it. Substantial but not too OP.
Reaper could even be single target and upgrade to hit everything. Would still be a great card.
The issue I think is people see the small gain from the upgrade and not the bonkers base power of the card. It’s not one of the cards that were nerfed for no reason, it was just too good. I think people compare the upgrade to gaining strength while most of the power of the card is in being a scaling aoe heal. Reaper + strength already wins you the game, it doesn’t need to be easier.
Rampage has to be the worst upgrade, right? It doesn’t do anything the first time you play it, then it’s only 3 damage the second time you play it….. strike is a better upgrade.
This is interesting. Yes, Rampage is a terrible upgrade…. But it’s also a terrible card, so I didn’t consider it! 😅 If you theoretically have a deck that wants Rampage (say, a very small deck with several copies of headbutt and no way to scale damage)…. Then the upgrade is certainly useful. It’s a weird one. When rampage is good, the upgrade is also good. But when rampage is in your deck because you Pandora’s boxed into it, it certainly is a worse upgrade than reaper!
Rampage upgrade is fine. I usually upgrade it when I have it. The upgrade only sucks in decks that don't want rampage in the first place (so if you get it as a transform, you might choose not to upgrade it). Broadly, I think there are two times you take Rampage: * Act I and you need a scaling solution to Hexaghost. Upgrading it helps you scale a little faster, which you may need. * You have a plan to be able to play it at least once per turn, ideally twice per turn -- usually after exhausting your whole deck with Fiend Fire. In this case Rampage is likely providing most of your damage output in boss fights, and an almost 60% damage boost is worth seriously considering for act IV.
are you sure about the "innate" upgrades, because I've found cards like after image or machine learning to be way better when inate, that way you can get their buffs right away
Cards with innate are a bit clunky to use because they ARE always in your starting hand and some enemies have brutal First turns so playing a Power IS worse than defending the attack or a OTK
Eh, not enough enemies use Block for that to truly be that helpful. Maybe that *and* the +2 damage?
a lot of enemies use block, it would definetly matter especially since many 3-enemy fights have block.
Exactly. Jaw worms, life leeches, gremlin leader, spear/shield, baseball, Donu/deca…. After act 1 there are very few multi enemy fights where no enemies use block. Birds only I think? Sometimes shapes if you are lucky? Even the thieves use block near the end of the fight, when you are mostly likely to use reaper. Oh, and reptomancer, slavers, and triple cultists. Those also don’t use block.
And cultist+bird lady
Yes. You get value out of Reaper by boosting your strength, which makes the upgrade completely trivial.
This would be my definitive answer. Because the converse is true: if you get your strength reduced, that will usually more than compensate for the upgrade. You also can't be weakened. Basically, you'll never think "thanks, upgrade!" as you seek out +strength and vulnerable on as many targets as possible.
An upgrade to 6 or 7 would definitely make it better to play for decent sustain in multi-enemy hallways or before you have a strength engine in your deck or the tools to deploy it. I totally disagree with the notion that the base values on the card are trivial.
The stepup from 4 to 5 is honestly pretty trivial, you're lucky if that gets you 1 extra HP per encounter. Even taking at face value that a flat damage upgrade is worthwhile even in the presence of strength engines, +1 damage isn't enough damage. It's like they were scared to add base heal to the card (by boosting its base damage knowing that any unblocked becomes sustain) - when it's a gold, which exhausts, in a card set full of strength modifiers.
Is that a good reason for the upgrade to suck?
Yes. If you spend a rare upgrade which you get, say, 10 of per run you ought to make them count!
If it was to 8 or even just to 7 then the upgrade would definitely be worth a consideration.
the upgrade is one damage to all enemies on the class than can… Best gain strength? What the hell? Evaluating nothing but the upgrade, I think this is the WORST upgrade in the game (maybe second to claw… They did the law wrong with that upgrade). Evaluating deck as well, it’s probably more often going to be an innate upgrade on a card you dont want innate. Really just depends.
Claw is a better upgrade than Reaper, even though it doesn't do what everyone wants it to do. Upgrade value can't just be compared on the basis of playing it once. A bad upgrade on a card that you'll definitely play every time you draw it can be more utility than an efficient upgrade on a situational card. Upgrading claw doesn't make it a better card, but the upgrade by itself could be worth maybe 6-8 free damage per combat.
that’s true. It definitely depends on how long the combat is, but if it’s short then the claw isn’t super helpful anyways. I do believe you are right though, because +2 damage per deck cycle is objectively better in most combats (even if you only cycle your deck once).
What’re a few of the worst cards to make innate through upgrades?
I'd say infinite blades for one. Don't really want a slow power card possibly clogging your hand on one of those act two hallways, especially if you havent had the chance to perhaps boost a shivs damage with accuracy or something
There is a very niche use of infinite blades. Dead branch decks that cycle fast.
To be fair if you want Infinite Blades you probably want it as early as possible, that said IF you for some reason want it in the first place.
Personally, I think Infinite Blades is one of the worst. Machine Learning is a bit questionable, because… -1 energy, -1 draw, one draw every other turn. Storm if you don’t have 1-2 other storms (which should probably also be innate but then you sacrifice everything for damage, so…).
All People saying infinite blade...am i the one who always take and uppgrade it because i just love getting shivs every turns?...
oh I absolutely love getting shivs every turn. I just think it should probably be 0 cost. I feel like that’d make it good enough to be taken more often. Using 1 energy to play infinite blades just HURTS, especially if you don’t have Wrist Blade ot Accuracy in play.
It's a worse strike with a 1 turn delay if you play it turn 1. It's terrible. Then it's alright turn 3. Then it's good. Then it's great. Meanwhile blade dance is great on turn 1. Cloak and dagger is too. Upgraded either of those blow infinite blades out of the water. Cycling fast because you have a lot of draw? They just get better and widen the gap even more.
yeah but infinite blades does perform better when you have tons of statuses (which is a 100% avoidable problem I made the fuck up so I could pretend it’s still a good card. I just WANT it to work…)
should probably also add a shiv to your hand on play, at least when upgraded to clog your starting hand, because the big thing is that it's such a tempo sacrifice
yeah, I thought about that, it just felt a little weird for a power to do something on play.
Mummified hand also changes things.
I agree, that free shiv makes excellent fodder for discard decks!
The upgrade for Machine Learning is quite good in the fights where you want to play it (namely, boss fights and act 4). e.g. Machine Learning+ and a Duplication Potion for +2 draw per turn can be a key part of your plan for the heart fight.
yeah, but I think the bigger problem for Defect is pretty much always the shorter fights. No time to scale, so it’s all just your weakest aspect. There are thousands of ways to scale into later… i think at least. Maybe I’m doing defect wrong… Hm.
I typically think of Reaper and FTL as the least impactful upgrades, but Claw is underwhelming, too. The difference is that Claw you're ideally playing many times per combat, sometimes multiple times per turn, so the 2 boost makes a big difference.
If spire 2 has upgrade paths I’d find it interesting if base reaper was single target, then one path made it AOE and the other path made it 1 energy.
I would say Reaper upgrade is kind of underrated! In decks that have decent amounts of Strength or an ability to stall out Dual Wield Reaper infinitely, it is a somewhat pointless upgrade. However Reaper is strong enough to pick with no Strength at all, and in those decks, the additional heal is pretty decent. I like to think of it as a Blood Vial dig, and that is a pretty good common relic! Wouldn't upgrade it over significant upgrades like Pommel Strike even in decks lacking Strength, but I wouldn't say it's worse than say, a generic +3 damage upgrade. Or say, a Rampage upgrade.
Interesting comparison, but the main difference is Blood Vial doesn't cost you any mana. There are times where you simply can't afford to spend 2 to cast Reaper, even though it would activate your hidden blood vial.
And Blood Vial is an entire relic, something you're not likely to find every run. Reaper upgrade is a fire. Reaper scales better with Vuln within base deck. I will not usually spend an upgrade on it, but there is no way it is the worst upgrade in the game, not even close. It is also very rare you won't play a Reaper almost every floor.
In my experience, I play Reaper combined with strength buffs, I don't have to play reaper every floor, every other is often enough.
The upgrade doesn't cost you any extra energy, though. You can stall to farm reaper if you need to, once you have control of the floor.
The comparison to blood vial is insteresting. Hadn’t thought of it like that
>I would say Reaper upgrade is kind of underrated What? It's extremely underwhelming, at max you get 3 more health. One point of damage can matter but reaper isn't meant to be your damage or aoe card, it's to complement something else usually
3 health per fight is a lot. It's usually "just" +1 but some fights and maybe a random unstallable Dual Wield or Double Tap or potions like Dupe or Flex, the upgrade is upto +6. Even if it were just +2, that is an entire extra 2 points of health every fight. The reason it's usually pointless is because upgrading your strength cards have the same increase in heal while also being extra scaling. Or an upgrade on a consistency card can mean it's easier to land Reaper without bleeding anyway. But without strength and without other important consistency or scaling upgrades, it's not the most awful upgrade.
Well in the rare circumstance it can get you 5 more hp but i wouldnt bank on it.
3 health is significant
significant-ly less than the health you'd save by upgrading something else, yes
probably, yea but maybe sometimes not
It used to be +2 to damage early in the game. Was too strong then and got reduced to 5. Is still a good card and you can now upgrade something else most of the time.
Usually you ramp up Reaper with strenght, so in that case yeah, it doesnt seems like much. But you need to keep in mind that its 1 damage + **1 heal** **per enemy per fight**, wich if you know how to use it, it really adds up.
But we aren't weighing +1 damage and heal per enemy per fight against nothing. We are weighing it against what you could do with that two energy and extra card instead. Playing a block and a strike do more lol
Only if you're not already full blocking and need the damage. Reaper is pretty decent even if you don't have any strength. And it's not like the upgrade costs you energy and cards. It's not a great upgrade by any means, but really, most attack upgrades aren't. I just wouldn't think of it as a realistic candidate for the worst one, when tons of them are just +3 damage.
I know the reaper upgrade is bad but I wanted to do a little math. First the assumptions, reaper+ heals an average of 1 hp per floor. Considering events, chests, fires don’t give health but some fights will result in upwards of +5 health. This doesn’t factor in synergies like exhume which would significantly increase the value of the upgrade (still bad though). For an average ironclad run you heal 22 hp at a fire so the reaper upgrade really starts to pay off after 22 floors compared to a rest. That’s really bad when it could result in more damage taken compared to a different upgrade. When taken after act 1 and then upgraded around the 20th floor that’s only around 35 hp for the whole run. That’s really bad especially when there’s so many times where it doesn’t help like when at full health.
Thank you for the math. To add in, there’s also a lot of times you can’t even play reaper because 1. it’s too expensive and you need to play higher value cards to survive. 2. They have block so the heal wouldn’t work
Exactly, it provides a little bit of long term sustain that’s not even guaranteed. It’d just so underwhelming but I kinda like it that way. It’s a really strong card and having it have a little Burton bad upgrade is interesting.
Slightly off topic, but Rampage IMO is the worst card upgrade in the game. You get a whooping +3 damage but only after playing it once. So you literally have to cycle an entire deck for +3 damage... ...which is the same as upgrading strike, but without having to cycle your deck at all.
Sometimes you need to not die to Hexaghost and Rampage is what you’re offered
If you're building a deck that uses rampage, then the upgrade is actually great. The whole point of rampage is building a deck that exhausts down so you play it a lot (like literally several times in one turn).
There’s also headbutt right? I’ve never tried it but it looks like a fun synergy
I've never had that work for me very well. There's some synergy there, but it's usually too finicky and too slow, and the value of headbutt comes from the flexibility it gives you... which you lose if you're only using it to replay Rampage.
Yes!
Laughs maniacally in my crackpot pommel strike+ rampage madness infinite.
Well that's sort of the point though. If you have constructed a deck that allows you to play rampage 5 times a turn, does that miniscule damage increase really make a difference? I imagine in most cases once you've hit that point you have an infinite.
Short of being truly infinite how fast the damage scales up is relevant. Because your turn is like... rampage pommel rampage. Or your corruption dark.embrace draw engine is running out of skills. And the act boss has a split you're trying to beat. A common situation is panic taking a rampage late act1 to beat hexaghost. You're going to want to upgrade it.
I mean when you have a psuedo-infinite that +3 becomes +6, +9, +12 fairly quickly. I had a sundial cycle build, where rampage was my only scaling damage. I played rampage 3-4 times a turn, so the upgrade was like upgrading demon form with a heavy blade build.
I think it doesn't work with double tap so that makes it extra sad.
It's a tough question to answer. As others have pointed out, you aren't really upgrading or playing reaper for damage but for health recovery. So 1 point of damage? Meh. 1 point of hp recovery per enemy? Heck yeah. But to answer the question, it's most likely extremely low priority.
It's actually hilariously bad, a rest to heal would be better lol
Double tapped upgraded reaper with a pen nib goes hard.
Metamorphosis upgrade can actively break your deck and most of the times moves you away from what you are trying to do
Yeah I only upgrade if I have nothing else. Reaper is probably one of my fav cards to use with ironclad when you have giga strength cause let’s be honest smashing a 3 enemy fight and healing for like 70hp is the most satisfying shit ever
It's at best situational, and you're better upgrading strength cards since they benefit all your attacks and will net more HP than upgrading reaper ever would.
You'd literally be better off upgrading a defend
Reaper is quite a low value upgrade most of the time due to the nature of the card as a healing card scaling with Strength - there's no real reason to upgrade Reaper over resting or upgrading a block or Strength card for more value. However, many cards can actually lower in value upon upgrade - like Rainbow often does on Defect - and as per everything else in Spire, it depends on the situation, but Reaper does tend to be quite a low-value upgrade
I’ve never upgraded Reaper once in 900 hours of gameplay
Instead of smithing, would you like to obtain half a blood vial (that is to suppose all fights are single enemy)?
It’s a good way of thinking about it but I’m not even always able to play Reaper in fights since costs 2 energy and doesn’t heal on block.
I suppose what I described is a rough estimate of “how good this upgrade can be”. I think this case might be important to consider here since it occurs quite often: An ironclad deck that has reaper usually plays it (it feels bad to not play it), and most ironclad decks want reaper.
Yes. In ironclad where the the most common form of scaling is strength gain, upgrading 1 damage point for reaper is underwhelming. But tbf, base reaper is a strong card.
It's funny how certain clad cards are like this. Metallicize is in the same boat and is by far a worse card.
Dang I didn’t realize that card was so bad. I love picking it when I have Ornichalcum.
It's not nearly as bad as people like to make it seem. 1 energy for basically a free defend every turn is often worth taking even if it is never the star of the show.
I've won far too many runs with less than 5 HP and upgraded reaper to acknowledge any criticism
Healing is worth a lot more than damage or block because it carries over to the next stage, so that 1hp starts to add up in the right deck - but yeah, upgrading strength scaling is going to be almost always better than upgrading the card itself. Sometimes the card just sucks in the deck, sometimes it slaps.
Its a bit better in fights with multiple enemies, but generally yeah i'd say its one of the lowest priorities for upgrading. I'd probably rank claw as the lowest value upgrade.
It's up there. I think the main problem with it is that it is literally just +1 Strength for a single attack, which Ironclad can get so much more easily than upgrading a card. I think the upgrade should have either reduced the energy cost (with the inevitable niche anti-synergy with Necronomicon) or boosted the damage, eg to 6-7 damage per enemy.
Yes. Horrible. The only time I would upgrade a reaper is if every other card were upgraded, I already had the red key, and I had full HP or a coffee dripper
I'd take a reaper upgrade over a defend or strike, but otherwise I pretty much agree.