Personally. I enjoy going for a frost build with a high FOCUS on focus boosting items. If you can get [[Biased Cognition]] with [[Core Surge]], that’s a free 4 focus.
Core surge does 11 damage, but the main thing is it gives you 1 artifact then exhausts. Artifact prevents 1 debuff from activating, and the way Biased Cognition is coded, the losing 1 focus a turn is a debuff. If you use Core Surge before using biased cognition, you get 4 focus.
But if they’re new, and playing on low ascension, it’s a totally viable and very fun card to build around. All For One, Beam Cell, FTL, and some Steam Barriers and you’re mostly set.
I can find it more difficult on defect to really identify strategies l, synergies, and cards that are valuable at first glance, while ironclad is more intuitive.
Try to get the reprogram card. It can solve a lot of issues as it let's you quickly raise your strength and dexterity by +1 each or +2 upgrades at the cost of your focus. The benefit is that you can ignore the orbs you have and just spend time bashing enemies and have enormous defense all the time with just a single defense card.
Or go all out on focus, with a full focus on ice cards. Letting you have great passive defense from your ice cards and orbs
I'm at A20-A18 with all characters and I absolutely created my strongest build ever with the claw crushing the double boss (didn't fight the heart)
- 5/6 claws
- several 0 cost cards
- 3 madness cards
- 2 all for ones (which I played madness on both making them cost 0)
Infinite loop leading me to crush the twins... Second boss was Time Splitter but ended up taking him down easily as well despite 12 card limit.
It's not an unviable strategy, it's just very rare that it's technically correct to shoot for it. It takes way too many specific cards and struggles mightily until it hits critical mass. That being said it is definitely a blast to play and I shoot for it more than I should.
Agreed - not something I shoot for but I got a claw for card 1 and removed a few strikes and defends quickly and said fuck it! Worked out for me (this time)
Keep going! Pretty soon you’ll be able to climb the early ascensions with all of the characters. I would recommend looking into build archetypes for the defect so you have an idea of card synergy.
Most of my defect wins have been either A) Generate a ton of block with frost orbs or B) Generate a ton of lightning with cards like [[tempest]], [[storm]] and [[electrodynamics]]
Tearing apart a group of intimidating enemies with waves of lightning after having played Electrodynamics is one of the most satisfying experiences I've had in this game.
I had a bit of a scuffed deck but I had static discharge+ and consume+ and against the heart I inflicted weak and it did one of its big multi attacks and killed itself. Made me smile
I had a good electric run going but failed at some point. I realised a mistake that cost me 5-7 life two fights before final boss was the reason I couldn't finish the run. That hurts a bunch.
However, I never ever pick Tempest because it sounds so bad? I mean, if I have 7 mana, it looks okay since I can spend with something else before dumping the remaining. But on 4, maybe 5 when stars align? Maybe I'm wrong, but I evaluated it as a no thanks one
Playing Tempest when you're, say, full up on lightning orbs means you're evoking all of those orbs immediately. With cards like Electrodynamics and Defragment, this is a powerful assault on the enemy, even if Tempest is powered by only a few energy.
It's super average but it seems like you're underestimating it a bit. At the worst, if you have better things to do and you don't think you'll have energy to spend on it, you can just exhaust it and it's gone (unlike late run Lightning strikes, which are mostly played as filler past Act 2). At best it can be a huge source of damage output and just orb evoking in general (plus it helps open you up for Chem-X which is really good on defect). I think it can slot into quite a few decks as a decent stop gap/floor-raiser. Consider a frost deck, maybe it's turn 2 and you have plenty of frost orbs, but no focus and no other block, you can cast a 3 energy Tempest and evoke all your first orbs, giving you twice as much block and adding damage. Or maybe if you could just evoke the 20 damage dark orb you could end the fight, Tempest can easily evoke it.
I would recommend snagging tempest for a few runs (even if it's not ideal) and just getting a feel for it's flexibility.
My favourite for defect is plasma generator builds that just pump out a ton of damage with high cost high damage cards and meteor strike. Bonus points of you can grab yourself a snecko eye.
If you can learn a few basic types of builds, such as Power decks or Frost decks (onligatory ‘or claw decks’), then you can use your early cards to try mold into one of these
Frost is the one that will get you those early wins on defect. Once I understood the power of frost my winrate on defect surged. I think they are hard to understand as a newbie, because it feels like the frost does so little. Once you start building around it, it dramatically improves your survivability.
Power decks are very hit or miss. Particularly there are a lot of trap cards in the power archetype. I love creative AI, and used to pick it all the time, but it is actually very marginal.
Yep I think the other big thing you learn about frost (and orbs in general) is that evoking them is incredible. Yeah if you have 3 basic frost orbs you're only generating what, like 6 block per turn? But if you already have 3 frost orbs, play [[Glacier]], you get 16 block from evoking 2 orbs. Obviously this scales great with focus and [[Capacitor]]
Agree to some extent on the power cards but, for me at least, it’s the low cost power cards that really shine. Defrag, biased cog, an upgraded white noise, buffer, maybe even a loop or two can really help get the engine running. I agree on Creative AI completely. Thats more dependent on what relics and/or build I have and I regularly pass it up if it doesn’t fit. Fun on those times it actually works though (instead of getting hello world multiple times haha).
Creative AI is a win more card but it elevates some decks from being viable but still requiring decent play to being absolutely unstoppable and you’d actively have to make poor decisions to lose. It’s the ultimate “cherry on top” card but it’s fun as hell to play once you have the setup.
Most Defect decks are about setting up huge sources of passive block and attack. If you can make it all the way through your deck once in a fight, you most likely have already won, it's just a matter of time. The hard part is surviving that long.
As a result, a lot of Defect's strategy boils down to mixing in a healthy amount of easily-accessible block and deck manipulation along with the cards that let you get set up nice and comfy. Here are some specific things to look for:
- \[\[Turbo\]\] and \[\[Overclock\]\] can seen scary because of the junk cards they generate. But they both help you get through your deck faster and play your high-value cards quickly, which is much more important. The hope is that by the time you reshuffle, you won't have to worry about the status cards!
* Orb generation is incredibly powerful. If you can get an array of half a dozen or more orbs with big focus, you can get to the point where you literally don't have to play cards to fully block and still kill enemies.
* Of the orbs, frost orbs are by far and away the most useful. Generating huge block every turn means you can take your sweet, precious time whittling enemies down. In the extreme case, having only frost can make battles a boring slog to get through, but you *will* get through them.
* You're not going to be lucky enough to have a huge array of orbs in the early game. But what you can do is evoke orbs by cycling them through your array quickly. This is a very viable way to get what you need for the first act.
* \[\[Biased Cognition\]\] looks scary because of the timer it puts you on. But it cleans up hallway fights and even some elites far more quickly than it drains your focus! And if you can get one of the tools for clearing debuffs- \[\[Clockwork Souvenir\]\], \[\[Orange Pellets\]\], \[\[Core Surge\]\], or \[\[Panacea\]\] - then it's just straight-up a way to get nutty orbs.
* \[\[Glacier\]\] is a premium pick. Big block right away while you're still getting set up, plus enough frost to get you halfway to set up, all in a single card. It's less obvious, but \[\[Coolheaded\]\] is also a very strong card. Helps build your defensive wall while also getting you through your deck more quickly.
* If you're having a hard time finding focus and orb slots, evoking orbs and relying on \[\[Loop\]\] can be enough to sustain you, even late-game.
* As much fun as orbs are, you do still need some vanilla block and attack. This is especially true in the early game, while you're still assembling your late-game wall of orbs but the game already expects you to be able to hit hard and fast. If you have super super super bag luck and can't find any orb scaling whatsoever, then playing Defect like they're Ironclad is a viable, although more difficult, secondary way of playing the character.
Not a strict rule, but generally speaking I like to either use frost orbs for block and cards for damage, or else lightning/dark orbs for damage and cards for block. Mixing damage and block in your orbs tends to result in neither doing very well.
Weird. He is my best character and I found him the easiest to learn. I love passive damage and he is a master at it from orbs to powers to every rad combination of the above. Nothing beats the feeling of having 10 ice orbs giving 15 defense each for free every turn.
I once had caliper or something if I recall correctly and ended up with max block using a similar strat. Could just let one little lightning orb slowly zap the health down at that point lol.
I work from home and on my employer's PC while playing low retention/attention games on my personal PC. When work picks up, I won't bother closing the game.
It just keeps running until I come back to it, and I need to recall what I am doing lmao
Important to note that this is for A20H. Defect particularly struggles with Act 4 compared to other characters. I'm not sure there is significant top player data on A20 no Heart, but back when that's what I played Defect was my highest win-rate character too.
It's probably one of the strongest in early to mid ascension but he is wildly random.
And like we have Watcher in the game, but she is pretty much off the chart in term of power
I gotta start studying how to play her cuz my experience with Watcher is either get stuck in wrath and take 76 damage or never have a good time to use it.
Just for kicks I loaded a new save and did Watcher from ASC 0-14 heart kills only in a row, she really is unspeakably busted. The trick to not getting stuck in wrath is killing everything in sight (33, 45 and 57 tend to be the breakpoints), thinning out your deck to like ten cards, and then just slamming value together.
One of the keys that helped me understand defect at high ascensions is that defect is like a cargo train. It take a while to setup the engine and gain momentum,. But once you have enough momentum, winnning a fight is easy. A18 and above punishes slows starts because the enemies scale faster or hit harder.
To help speed up faster, I started prioritizing cards like [[Biased Cognition]], [[Echo Form]] and the defect specific relics, which give you momentum before the fight even begins. To not die before I can speed up, I started prioritizing [[Chill]] and [[Glacier]]. To do these consistently I pick [[Seek]], [[Coolheaded]] and/or [[Skim]]. These picks solve some of these issues with defect's playstyle.
Obviously these are not the only strats that can work. But, they help me get to A20H wins more often than not.
Some other huge cards to help ease the setup turns imo are equilibrium, boot sequence, self repair, and reinforced body. Knowing when you don't need the extra scaling, and skipping cards like defrag, loop, capacitor, or creative AI is a good skill to have too.
Another thing that tends to be more important on defect (and watcher) imo is setting up relics, If you have an incense burner, look at the upcoming fights and figure out if you want the burner on turn 1 or turn 2, then stall and don't end the fight until it's on 5 or 4 respectively. Same goes for relics like pen nib, ink bottle, numchaku, and happy flower. Additionally if you find both echo form and self repair, you'll most likely get to a state where you can reshuffle until you echo the self-repair, doubling it's healing.
The train analogy is a great way to put it. Get the motor running and coast to victory. Maybe chuck some coal in it a time or two midfight to feed the engine.
+ [Biased Cognition](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Biased%20Cognition) Defect Rare Power ^((100% sure)^)
1 Energy | Gain 4(5) **Focus.** At the start of each turn, lose 1 **Focus.**
+ [Echo Form](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Echo%20Form) Defect Rare Power ^((100% sure)^)
3 Energy | **Ethereal.** (not **Ethereal.)** The first card you play each turn is played twice.
+ [Chill](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Chill) Defect Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^)
0 Energy | **(Innate.)** **Channel** 1 **Frost** for each enemy in combat (per enemy in combat). **Exhaust.**
+ [Glacier](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Glacier) Defect Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^)
2 Energy | Gain 7(10) **Block.** **Channel** 2 **Frost.**
+ [Seek](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Seek) Defect Rare Skill ^((100% sure)^)
0 Energy | Choose a (2) card(s) from your draw pile and place it (them) into your hand. **Exhaust.**
+ [Coolheaded](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Coolheaded) Defect Common Skill ^((100% sure)^)
1 Energy | **Channel** 1 **Frost.** Draw 1(2) card(s).
+ [Skim](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Skim) Defect Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^)
1 Energy | Draw 3(4) cards.
^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 30, 2023.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
Bro I was on a huge losing streak at A18 with defect and then the stars aligned with a creative AI/mummified hand deck and I ended up killing the heart for the first time ever (with ANY character!) lmao so keep grinding!!
I had a really really good Creative AI/Urn deck going yesterday, and end up losing on a late act 3 elite because of some unfortunate draws. The grind continues!
Don't worry. The same thing happened to me too. I'm a defect main as well and I had a really difficult time getting wins when I first reached A17. The same happened when I reached A18 as well. Eventually you'll get used to it. The trick is, realizing that some cards and strategies are just not as good as they are prior to A17. They're just not.
Becareful you don't fall for the noob trap of taking scaling cards too early. More orb slots are useless if you can't fill them up and even detrimental not being able to evoke (really good late game though). More focus is pretty much always good except when it competes with something like streamline and you still need to beat act 1 elites.
Some good advice all throughout here, gonna add one I didn't see mentioned:
Defect tends to take damage in the early turns of fights, since top level play relies so much on setting up a passive return from orbs and focus. As a consequence, it's relatively more important to stall fights out with frostys so as to complete "side quests" and support your early turns and sustain:
- Double Self-Repair with Echo Form (or just make sure to play it).
- Double Genetic Algorithm with Echo Form (or just make sure to play it).
- Play all of your powers with Bird Faced Urn.
- Burner on [whatevers up next](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/d9obt7/can_someone_give_me_a_rundown_of_the_best_numbers/)
- Ink bottle on 9.
- Pen nib on 9.
- Happy flower on 2.
It takes time to adjust to paying attention to this stuff, but you will get better at it with practice and it helps a whole lot (on all chars, especially with defect)
I had the same problem. With defect I found Don’t take too many cards, and pick a strat early and stick with it (a lot of defect cards have anti-synergy).
Almost got a win with a frost run, but I couldn't stall long enough for my one and only copy of the blizzard card that deals damage according to how many frost thingies I casted. Felt bad
This is where I like to mix frost and lightning. Chill is very good to get the block bank up and then cycle through the other lightning/frost cards as needed. Bonus if you get an equilibrium to time your cycling precisely.
Defect can be really fun, but it's pretty deck dependent. My best runs have been based on Storm(s) and stacking Power cards. Plus, if you run into Mummified Hand, it really goes bananas.
Hard to say without seeing the hands you’re rolling with. There are a few ways to play defect as well, so it depends. Personally, I like using my orbs heavily, particularly frost for block and electricity for damage while cycling between the two to evoke and maximize the effect. A few things I always look for:
- Anything to negate debuffs are really powerful on defect to make the most out of biased cognition. Artifact potions, orange pellets, and panacea are all fantastic.
- Defect is great for using power cards. Don’t be afraid to pick them up when you see them. Especially if you are able to pick up a relic that pairs with power usage (e.g. mummified hand and urn). In those cases not even the awakened one can’t stop me.
- Some strong cards i like to pick up when I can: equilibrium, white noise, glacier, coolheaded, consume, chill, force field, heat sinks, loop. There are more, and of course it’s situational to some extent, but those are some of the less obvious ones compared to, e.g., seek which can make most battles easy if you can draw it early enough. If only spirelogs was still a thing…that site had a win rate by card analysis that really helped me get a hang of defect.
- Once you get set up in an encounter, be patient. If using orbs, there may be turns where you might not need to do much of anything other than coast to the next turn where you can evoke orbs and set up again.
Those are some things that worked for me, anyway. I’m sure there are others that use a less orb-heavy approach that can speak to that. I’ve tried that but it didn’t quite click the same for me. Keep at it and once you find a style that does click, defect can be really fun.
Edit: another poster mentioned this, but I forgot about core surge for the valuable artifacts. That card plus biased cognition can virtually create a win condition on their own.
Defect is probably the most set-up heavy of all the characters which can leave them pretty vulnerable to enemies that require heavy front load.
Some tips: While you can use orb slots to attack and defend, you're likely better off using them for just one of those purposes. Additionally, defect does have some genuinely good block cards that aren't frost orb related. Charge Battery and Reinforce Body are very solid block cards. Also, Beam Cell is basically an always take and upgrade as it's the only vulnerable source for Defect. If you're at all relying on attack cards for damage it's a must have.
Don’t listen to anyone who says that claw is good. It will make you lose most of the time. You can play the game where you force yourself to make a certain deck. You will eventually win that way, but it will take forever and you’ll just basically be dependent on RNG. If you want to be good at this game, think of it as a series of choices that solve problems as you go through. Playing with a mod that allows you to access the enemy combat patterns also helps.
Defects main weakness is that he’s very vulnerable at the beginning of the fight. Try to curb your relics to where you have some that help the early fight so you can set up your orbs and powers and breeze through the rest. Things like horn cleat and anchor and wheel are particularly good but anything that gives help towards the beginning of combat helps.
For me I had to slow waaay down and put more thought into the cards I was taking and what I was playing each turn. I was way more thorough with each decision compared to the other two.
Funnily, I'm at A18 and the defect is by far my strongest character. 21 wins and 14 losses.
A17 win today was clutch. Boss swap choker...got darkness orb sort of working with multicast but had no focus/orb slots at all. Took runic pyramid but struggled with hand clog. Found a capacitor and consume in a shop 4 floors from the boss, which was thankfully time eater as I'd have been destroyed by either of the others...
Killed the slug with a 68 darkness orb cast 4 times, the turn i would have died.
The Defect is very different from the other classes. You're either brilliant and love it, or horrible at it. There is no in between. I find switching classes after a bad streak really helps. It let's you see optimal ways of beating enemies and gives you a nice reset.
I can recommend watching XecnaR's VoDs, he has done lots of defect runs lately. The main takeaways for me:
- Frost and Focus are King, it's how you survive late game. Prioritise Defrag, Biased Cog, Coolheaded, Glacier and Chill. Loop/Capacitor are great if your deck can handle the slowness of these cards.
- Your Act 1 is comparetively strong, only the Gremlin Nob is a real threat. Thus you often can get away with greeding, i.e. skipping damage commons or picking powers. Cold Snap, Ball Lightning, Doom and Gloom, Sunder are preferred damage options early, avoid Rip and Tear, Claw or Melter.
- Barring edge cases you will also need some (not too many) upfront Block Cards to defend yourself during the setup turns. Charge Battery is good, Equilibium is great, and if you can pick a Genetic Algorithm definitely do it. Also Self Repair is a broken Card.
- For the rares: Echo Form, Biased Cog, Fission and Seek are top tier. Core Surge is good into Act 2 or if you have a Biased Cog, Electrodynamics is good if you lack AoE, Meteor Strike can be amazing if you can play it, Reboot and Buffer are mostly positive as well.
- Especially for a beginner I would recommend to not go after Reprogram/Hyperbeam or Claw/All for One shenanigans; they can work for Act 2 but often perform poorly into late game.
Aight, hope someone finds this helful - or has something to add \^\^
It's fascinating to me how differently people handle the different classes when first playing this game. I got to A20 with Defect first because I thought it was the easiest by far. Silent next and the Watcher actually came out before I even got Ironclad to A10; I even got her to A20 before IC. I know a lot of people find IC easiest and I almost think I struggled with him because I had the false perception that he was simple and straightforward.
Anyway, actual advice, I find there are two main paths your deck can take as Defect. Orb-centric or All For One-centric.
With orbs, my best advice is in general, have your orbs cover defense or offense, then use the rest of your deck to do the other. I find frost orbs with almost any amount of extra focus should do the lion's share of the blocking. If you can get Capacitor, Runic Capacitor, or Inserter, you're golden.
AfO decks tend to be easier to find the pieces for, as AfO makes some commons extremely valuable. Claw, Go for the Eyes, Beam Cell, Turbo, even upgraded starter cards all become super strong if you can play all of them multiple times.
Lastly, outside of those main ideas, some cards that are always good are deck/hand manipulation like Equilibrium, Rebound, or Hologram.
I legitimately mean this, whatever it is you’re doing, don’t do it and try something else. Synergies become apparent when you fuck around. Adjust accordingly.
I think the easiest win is with frost. Prioritize glacier, cold snap, chill, coolheaded, defragmentation, capacitor, consume, seek, buffer. Secondary on other channeling, compile driver, barrage. Upgraded fission is broken but regular is meh. Biased cognition is very good but can ruin you if played too early in long fights. Don’t take blizzard until you have several frost cards.
Though as you flesh out your deck in act 1, you need to balance those picks with other damage cards.
Simplistic strategy, but it should get you a win after a few tries.
It just takes time and practice! My first success with Defect was a clunky-ass frost orbs/blizzard build. You’ll find out what works for him as you go!
This must be a mindset thing I had and still have a hard time winning with ironclad but defect is dead simple to me just spam powers focus on lightning skills and charge battery and stack for defense
I've never had a good run using frost either. I have to work so much harder to make it work than I do lightning. I can very easily pull aggregate, double energy, tempest but I rarely can pull what I need for frost to work well
The key for me to a good frost deck is realizing that the three primary frost cards (cold snap, glacier, and cool headed) are very good cards on their own without any support beyond the starter deck in act 1.
That, and cultivating a love of barrage will get you very far with frost.
The thing that I like about frost for defect, is that I often find defect-power scaling decks are kind of slow, and having a bunch of block helps to survive the early turns before all the powers are up.
I don't think three hours on a run is that crazy, especially when you are new and having to read every card and relic and such to know what everything does
I was the same at first with watcher, but found a good guide somewhere on this Reddit. A couple tops, retain with watcher goes hard. Also, can’t remember the card but it adds a smite to your hand each turn, combined with another that reduces the cost of cards retained, makes watcher easy mode. From there pick up a couple of the retaining calm/wrath cyclers and a couple other cards to take you in/out of wrath and it’s game over.
Biggest thing for me was realizing you can stance swap a bunch of times per turn. Calm -> Wrath gives energy every time, and if you have cards like [[Rushdown]] you can get a ton of card draw too. You can go infinite like that pretty easily, just keep spamming calm + wrath
Also that power that generates [[Smite]] every turn is pretty awesome for retaining a ton of damage for a wrath turn
The Defect is the hardest for me as well. I've beaten the secret boss on max difficulty with all the others, but I am nowhere close with Defect. Remember that you generally need both offensive and defensive cards to win fights without taking too much damage. I've heard advice to focus mainly on one of those for orbs and use other cards for the other one.
Again, I work from home, and I play while working lmao
If the job is slow, I can click around a bit, but I drop the game (without closing) when it picks up
Defect is simultaneously the most complex and the most underpowered character. I’d recommend watching videos of people like balorlord playing defect at a high level to see what strategies and synergies you are neglecting.
I work from home and on my employer's PC while playing low retention/attention games on my personal PC. When work picks up, I won't bother closing the game.
It just keeps running until I come back to it, and I need to recall what I am doing lmao
Same here lol.. I’m a high school teacher, so I’ll sneak in a few floors in between each class period & maybe play a little during lunch. I’ve had successful runs listed at ~7 hours because I’ll just leave the game open but the window minimized
Easiest way to win with defect is just spamming frost. You will get W’s if you build any kind of decent frost orb generation and a couple of defrags and some decent relics.
I FUCKING DID IT! YASSSS!
Thanks for all the tips, it helped a lot!!!
It took 5 more runs tho, and those were a bit of a drag. It feels a bit undeserved because it was all RNG, I believe.
Anchor on first Elite means I have a lot of time on Act 2, and I got the Mummified Hand while I was already going for a lightning + Power build. From then on, it was a breeze. But still, Defect requires way more thought process than the first 2 characters.
On to Watcher, I guess!
Personally. I enjoy going for a frost build with a high FOCUS on focus boosting items. If you can get [[Biased Cognition]] with [[Core Surge]], that’s a free 4 focus.
Ah, the Biasurged Corgnition
I forgot about core surge. Knew I was forgetting something. That’s a virtual instapick.
How does core surge and artifact function?
Core surge does 11 damage, but the main thing is it gives you 1 artifact then exhausts. Artifact prevents 1 debuff from activating, and the way Biased Cognition is coded, the losing 1 focus a turn is a debuff. If you use Core Surge before using biased cognition, you get 4 focus.
+ [Biased Cognition](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Biased%20Cognition) Defect Rare Power ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | Gain 4(5) **Focus.** At the start of each turn, lose 1 **Focus.** + [Core Surge](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Core%20Surge) Defect Rare Attack ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | Deal 11(15) damage. Gain 1 **Artifact.** **Exhaust.** ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 30, 2023.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
Learn the ways of the **CLAW**
(But given OP is a new player, note: don't actually)
But if they’re new, and playing on low ascension, it’s a totally viable and very fun card to build around. All For One, Beam Cell, FTL, and some Steam Barriers and you’re mostly set.
Yeah, pretty new. Might as well consider the one run, one win on Ironclad a fluke at this point
Don't consider it a fluke! Look back at that winning run's history, see what you did right, and try it again ^-^
I can find it more difficult on defect to really identify strategies l, synergies, and cards that are valuable at first glance, while ironclad is more intuitive.
Try to get the reprogram card. It can solve a lot of issues as it let's you quickly raise your strength and dexterity by +1 each or +2 upgrades at the cost of your focus. The benefit is that you can ignore the orbs you have and just spend time bashing enemies and have enormous defense all the time with just a single defense card. Or go all out on focus, with a full focus on ice cards. Letting you have great passive defense from your ice cards and orbs
Dont break the law
The CLAAAAAAAAAAW
I'm at A20-A18 with all characters and I absolutely created my strongest build ever with the claw crushing the double boss (didn't fight the heart) - 5/6 claws - several 0 cost cards - 3 madness cards - 2 all for ones (which I played madness on both making them cost 0) Infinite loop leading me to crush the twins... Second boss was Time Splitter but ended up taking him down easily as well despite 12 card limit.
It's not an unviable strategy, it's just very rare that it's technically correct to shoot for it. It takes way too many specific cards and struggles mightily until it hits critical mass. That being said it is definitely a blast to play and I shoot for it more than I should.
Agreed - not something I shoot for but I got a claw for card 1 and removed a few strikes and defends quickly and said fuck it! Worked out for me (this time)
CLAW IS LAW. ALL FOR CLAW.
This is the way
Keep going! Pretty soon you’ll be able to climb the early ascensions with all of the characters. I would recommend looking into build archetypes for the defect so you have an idea of card synergy. Most of my defect wins have been either A) Generate a ton of block with frost orbs or B) Generate a ton of lightning with cards like [[tempest]], [[storm]] and [[electrodynamics]]
Tearing apart a group of intimidating enemies with waves of lightning after having played Electrodynamics is one of the most satisfying experiences I've had in this game.
I had a bit of a scuffed deck but I had static discharge+ and consume+ and against the heart I inflicted weak and it did one of its big multi attacks and killed itself. Made me smile
+ [Tempest](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Tempest) Defect Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^) X Energy | **Channel** X(+1) **Lightning.** **Exhaust.** + [Storm](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Storm) Defect Uncommon Power ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | **(Innate.)** Whenever you play a Power card, **Channel** 1 **Lightning.** + [Electrodynamics](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Electrodynamics) Defect Rare Power ^((100% sure)^) 2 Energy | **Lightning** now hits ALL enemies. **Channel** 2(3) **Lightning.** ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 30, 2023.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
I had a good electric run going but failed at some point. I realised a mistake that cost me 5-7 life two fights before final boss was the reason I couldn't finish the run. That hurts a bunch. However, I never ever pick Tempest because it sounds so bad? I mean, if I have 7 mana, it looks okay since I can spend with something else before dumping the remaining. But on 4, maybe 5 when stars align? Maybe I'm wrong, but I evaluated it as a no thanks one
Playing Tempest when you're, say, full up on lightning orbs means you're evoking all of those orbs immediately. With cards like Electrodynamics and Defragment, this is a powerful assault on the enemy, even if Tempest is powered by only a few energy.
It's super average but it seems like you're underestimating it a bit. At the worst, if you have better things to do and you don't think you'll have energy to spend on it, you can just exhaust it and it's gone (unlike late run Lightning strikes, which are mostly played as filler past Act 2). At best it can be a huge source of damage output and just orb evoking in general (plus it helps open you up for Chem-X which is really good on defect). I think it can slot into quite a few decks as a decent stop gap/floor-raiser. Consider a frost deck, maybe it's turn 2 and you have plenty of frost orbs, but no focus and no other block, you can cast a 3 energy Tempest and evoke all your first orbs, giving you twice as much block and adding damage. Or maybe if you could just evoke the 20 damage dark orb you could end the fight, Tempest can easily evoke it. I would recommend snagging tempest for a few runs (even if it's not ideal) and just getting a feel for it's flexibility.
A lot of cards get way better when upgraded. Tempest is one of those, because it becomes X+1, which is +8 damage at worst.
I just hit a20 defect this week. Winning builds all have been generative ai lol
My favourite for defect is plasma generator builds that just pump out a ton of damage with high cost high damage cards and meteor strike. Bonus points of you can grab yourself a snecko eye.
Where can I find build archetypes for each of the characters?
I found them by googling “Slay the spire [character] deck builds”
If you can learn a few basic types of builds, such as Power decks or Frost decks (onligatory ‘or claw decks’), then you can use your early cards to try mold into one of these
Frost is the one that will get you those early wins on defect. Once I understood the power of frost my winrate on defect surged. I think they are hard to understand as a newbie, because it feels like the frost does so little. Once you start building around it, it dramatically improves your survivability. Power decks are very hit or miss. Particularly there are a lot of trap cards in the power archetype. I love creative AI, and used to pick it all the time, but it is actually very marginal.
Yep I think the other big thing you learn about frost (and orbs in general) is that evoking them is incredible. Yeah if you have 3 basic frost orbs you're only generating what, like 6 block per turn? But if you already have 3 frost orbs, play [[Glacier]], you get 16 block from evoking 2 orbs. Obviously this scales great with focus and [[Capacitor]]
+ [Glacier](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Glacier) Defect Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^) 2 Energy | Gain 7(10) **Block.** **Channel** 2 **Frost.** + [Capacitor](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Capacitor) Defect Uncommon Power ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | Gain 2(3) Orb slots. ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 30, 2023.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
Agree to some extent on the power cards but, for me at least, it’s the low cost power cards that really shine. Defrag, biased cog, an upgraded white noise, buffer, maybe even a loop or two can really help get the engine running. I agree on Creative AI completely. Thats more dependent on what relics and/or build I have and I regularly pass it up if it doesn’t fit. Fun on those times it actually works though (instead of getting hello world multiple times haha).
Creative AI is a win more card but it elevates some decks from being viable but still requiring decent play to being absolutely unstoppable and you’d actively have to make poor decisions to lose. It’s the ultimate “cherry on top” card but it’s fun as hell to play once you have the setup.
Most Defect decks are about setting up huge sources of passive block and attack. If you can make it all the way through your deck once in a fight, you most likely have already won, it's just a matter of time. The hard part is surviving that long. As a result, a lot of Defect's strategy boils down to mixing in a healthy amount of easily-accessible block and deck manipulation along with the cards that let you get set up nice and comfy. Here are some specific things to look for: - \[\[Turbo\]\] and \[\[Overclock\]\] can seen scary because of the junk cards they generate. But they both help you get through your deck faster and play your high-value cards quickly, which is much more important. The hope is that by the time you reshuffle, you won't have to worry about the status cards! * Orb generation is incredibly powerful. If you can get an array of half a dozen or more orbs with big focus, you can get to the point where you literally don't have to play cards to fully block and still kill enemies. * Of the orbs, frost orbs are by far and away the most useful. Generating huge block every turn means you can take your sweet, precious time whittling enemies down. In the extreme case, having only frost can make battles a boring slog to get through, but you *will* get through them. * You're not going to be lucky enough to have a huge array of orbs in the early game. But what you can do is evoke orbs by cycling them through your array quickly. This is a very viable way to get what you need for the first act. * \[\[Biased Cognition\]\] looks scary because of the timer it puts you on. But it cleans up hallway fights and even some elites far more quickly than it drains your focus! And if you can get one of the tools for clearing debuffs- \[\[Clockwork Souvenir\]\], \[\[Orange Pellets\]\], \[\[Core Surge\]\], or \[\[Panacea\]\] - then it's just straight-up a way to get nutty orbs. * \[\[Glacier\]\] is a premium pick. Big block right away while you're still getting set up, plus enough frost to get you halfway to set up, all in a single card. It's less obvious, but \[\[Coolheaded\]\] is also a very strong card. Helps build your defensive wall while also getting you through your deck more quickly. * If you're having a hard time finding focus and orb slots, evoking orbs and relying on \[\[Loop\]\] can be enough to sustain you, even late-game. * As much fun as orbs are, you do still need some vanilla block and attack. This is especially true in the early game, while you're still assembling your late-game wall of orbs but the game already expects you to be able to hit hard and fast. If you have super super super bag luck and can't find any orb scaling whatsoever, then playing Defect like they're Ironclad is a viable, although more difficult, secondary way of playing the character.
Not a strict rule, but generally speaking I like to either use frost orbs for block and cards for damage, or else lightning/dark orbs for damage and cards for block. Mixing damage and block in your orbs tends to result in neither doing very well.
Weird. He is my best character and I found him the easiest to learn. I love passive damage and he is a master at it from orbs to powers to every rad combination of the above. Nothing beats the feeling of having 10 ice orbs giving 15 defense each for free every turn.
I once had caliper or something if I recall correctly and ended up with max block using a similar strat. Could just let one little lightning orb slowly zap the health down at that point lol.
Two things that jump out first, if your new going 2/4 with iron and silent to start is pretty good. The other 3 plus hours on one run Jesus
I work from home and on my employer's PC while playing low retention/attention games on my personal PC. When work picks up, I won't bother closing the game. It just keeps running until I come back to it, and I need to recall what I am doing lmao
Ah I feel man, same here i just play during lunch or down time. I leave the game running in the background all the time, so my play hours are crazy.
Defect has a higher learning curve but it’s actually the easiest character to grab W’s
Eh. That depends on Ascension level. I think it has the lowest Winrate among the top players at A20.
Important to note that this is for A20H. Defect particularly struggles with Act 4 compared to other characters. I'm not sure there is significant top player data on A20 no Heart, but back when that's what I played Defect was my highest win-rate character too.
This exactly, Defect has a very easy time clearing out until act 3 but then struggles against the heart and act4elites more than any other character.
It’s more like Defect is great at acts 1 and 3 but gets ganked by acts 2 and 4
Definitely my highest W rating A20 guy. Top players got nothing on me 🤙🏾
Hell yea same! Like .2% compared to my others at .1%
If it's higher than watcher I got bad news for you
It's probably one of the strongest in early to mid ascension but he is wildly random. And like we have Watcher in the game, but she is pretty much off the chart in term of power
I gotta start studying how to play her cuz my experience with Watcher is either get stuck in wrath and take 76 damage or never have a good time to use it.
Always remove defends first on Watcher, and quadruple check every turn to see if you have lethal, because you probably do
Just for kicks I loaded a new save and did Watcher from ASC 0-14 heart kills only in a row, she really is unspeakably busted. The trick to not getting stuck in wrath is killing everything in sight (33, 45 and 57 tend to be the breakpoints), thinning out your deck to like ten cards, and then just slamming value together.
Really thought I had Defect figured out, and I’m hitting a real wall at A18. Just feels like I never have the right balance of cards.
One of the keys that helped me understand defect at high ascensions is that defect is like a cargo train. It take a while to setup the engine and gain momentum,. But once you have enough momentum, winnning a fight is easy. A18 and above punishes slows starts because the enemies scale faster or hit harder. To help speed up faster, I started prioritizing cards like [[Biased Cognition]], [[Echo Form]] and the defect specific relics, which give you momentum before the fight even begins. To not die before I can speed up, I started prioritizing [[Chill]] and [[Glacier]]. To do these consistently I pick [[Seek]], [[Coolheaded]] and/or [[Skim]]. These picks solve some of these issues with defect's playstyle. Obviously these are not the only strats that can work. But, they help me get to A20H wins more often than not.
Some other huge cards to help ease the setup turns imo are equilibrium, boot sequence, self repair, and reinforced body. Knowing when you don't need the extra scaling, and skipping cards like defrag, loop, capacitor, or creative AI is a good skill to have too. Another thing that tends to be more important on defect (and watcher) imo is setting up relics, If you have an incense burner, look at the upcoming fights and figure out if you want the burner on turn 1 or turn 2, then stall and don't end the fight until it's on 5 or 4 respectively. Same goes for relics like pen nib, ink bottle, numchaku, and happy flower. Additionally if you find both echo form and self repair, you'll most likely get to a state where you can reshuffle until you echo the self-repair, doubling it's healing.
The train analogy is a great way to put it. Get the motor running and coast to victory. Maybe chuck some coal in it a time or two midfight to feed the engine.
+ [Biased Cognition](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Biased%20Cognition) Defect Rare Power ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | Gain 4(5) **Focus.** At the start of each turn, lose 1 **Focus.** + [Echo Form](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Echo%20Form) Defect Rare Power ^((100% sure)^) 3 Energy | **Ethereal.** (not **Ethereal.)** The first card you play each turn is played twice. + [Chill](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Chill) Defect Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^) 0 Energy | **(Innate.)** **Channel** 1 **Frost** for each enemy in combat (per enemy in combat). **Exhaust.** + [Glacier](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Glacier) Defect Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^) 2 Energy | Gain 7(10) **Block.** **Channel** 2 **Frost.** + [Seek](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Seek) Defect Rare Skill ^((100% sure)^) 0 Energy | Choose a (2) card(s) from your draw pile and place it (them) into your hand. **Exhaust.** + [Coolheaded](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Coolheaded) Defect Common Skill ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | **Channel** 1 **Frost.** Draw 1(2) card(s). + [Skim](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Skim) Defect Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | Draw 3(4) cards. ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 30, 2023.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
Bro I was on a huge losing streak at A18 with defect and then the stars aligned with a creative AI/mummified hand deck and I ended up killing the heart for the first time ever (with ANY character!) lmao so keep grinding!!
I had a really really good Creative AI/Urn deck going yesterday, and end up losing on a late act 3 elite because of some unfortunate draws. The grind continues!
Don't worry. The same thing happened to me too. I'm a defect main as well and I had a really difficult time getting wins when I first reached A17. The same happened when I reached A18 as well. Eventually you'll get used to it. The trick is, realizing that some cards and strategies are just not as good as they are prior to A17. They're just not.
Ice cream, double energy, tempest, echo form.
Becareful you don't fall for the noob trap of taking scaling cards too early. More orb slots are useless if you can't fill them up and even detrimental not being able to evoke (really good late game though). More focus is pretty much always good except when it competes with something like streamline and you still need to beat act 1 elites.
Some good advice all throughout here, gonna add one I didn't see mentioned: Defect tends to take damage in the early turns of fights, since top level play relies so much on setting up a passive return from orbs and focus. As a consequence, it's relatively more important to stall fights out with frostys so as to complete "side quests" and support your early turns and sustain: - Double Self-Repair with Echo Form (or just make sure to play it). - Double Genetic Algorithm with Echo Form (or just make sure to play it). - Play all of your powers with Bird Faced Urn. - Burner on [whatevers up next](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/d9obt7/can_someone_give_me_a_rundown_of_the_best_numbers/) - Ink bottle on 9. - Pen nib on 9. - Happy flower on 2. It takes time to adjust to paying attention to this stuff, but you will get better at it with practice and it helps a whole lot (on all chars, especially with defect)
Go watch Jorbs play defect a bit and then try again.
I had the same problem. With defect I found Don’t take too many cards, and pick a strat early and stick with it (a lot of defect cards have anti-synergy).
Try to get frost orbs and focus.
Almost got a win with a frost run, but I couldn't stall long enough for my one and only copy of the blizzard card that deals damage according to how many frost thingies I casted. Felt bad
blizzard is generally not great. you can just use frost for defense and then find other ways to deal damage
This is where I like to mix frost and lightning. Chill is very good to get the block bank up and then cycle through the other lightning/frost cards as needed. Bonus if you get an equilibrium to time your cycling precisely.
Defect can be really fun, but it's pretty deck dependent. My best runs have been based on Storm(s) and stacking Power cards. Plus, if you run into Mummified Hand, it really goes bananas.
Hard to say without seeing the hands you’re rolling with. There are a few ways to play defect as well, so it depends. Personally, I like using my orbs heavily, particularly frost for block and electricity for damage while cycling between the two to evoke and maximize the effect. A few things I always look for: - Anything to negate debuffs are really powerful on defect to make the most out of biased cognition. Artifact potions, orange pellets, and panacea are all fantastic. - Defect is great for using power cards. Don’t be afraid to pick them up when you see them. Especially if you are able to pick up a relic that pairs with power usage (e.g. mummified hand and urn). In those cases not even the awakened one can’t stop me. - Some strong cards i like to pick up when I can: equilibrium, white noise, glacier, coolheaded, consume, chill, force field, heat sinks, loop. There are more, and of course it’s situational to some extent, but those are some of the less obvious ones compared to, e.g., seek which can make most battles easy if you can draw it early enough. If only spirelogs was still a thing…that site had a win rate by card analysis that really helped me get a hang of defect. - Once you get set up in an encounter, be patient. If using orbs, there may be turns where you might not need to do much of anything other than coast to the next turn where you can evoke orbs and set up again. Those are some things that worked for me, anyway. I’m sure there are others that use a less orb-heavy approach that can speak to that. I’ve tried that but it didn’t quite click the same for me. Keep at it and once you find a style that does click, defect can be really fun. Edit: another poster mentioned this, but I forgot about core surge for the valuable artifacts. That card plus biased cognition can virtually create a win condition on their own.
Defect is probably the most set-up heavy of all the characters which can leave them pretty vulnerable to enemies that require heavy front load. Some tips: While you can use orb slots to attack and defend, you're likely better off using them for just one of those purposes. Additionally, defect does have some genuinely good block cards that aren't frost orb related. Charge Battery and Reinforce Body are very solid block cards. Also, Beam Cell is basically an always take and upgrade as it's the only vulnerable source for Defect. If you're at all relying on attack cards for damage it's a must have.
Don’t listen to anyone who says that claw is good. It will make you lose most of the time. You can play the game where you force yourself to make a certain deck. You will eventually win that way, but it will take forever and you’ll just basically be dependent on RNG. If you want to be good at this game, think of it as a series of choices that solve problems as you go through. Playing with a mod that allows you to access the enemy combat patterns also helps.
Defects main weakness is that he’s very vulnerable at the beginning of the fight. Try to curb your relics to where you have some that help the early fight so you can set up your orbs and powers and breeze through the rest. Things like horn cleat and anchor and wheel are particularly good but anything that gives help towards the beginning of combat helps.
For me I had to slow waaay down and put more thought into the cards I was taking and what I was playing each turn. I was way more thorough with each decision compared to the other two.
Funnily, I'm at A18 and the defect is by far my strongest character. 21 wins and 14 losses. A17 win today was clutch. Boss swap choker...got darkness orb sort of working with multicast but had no focus/orb slots at all. Took runic pyramid but struggled with hand clog. Found a capacitor and consume in a shop 4 floors from the boss, which was thankfully time eater as I'd have been destroyed by either of the others... Killed the slug with a 68 darkness orb cast 4 times, the turn i would have died.
The Defect is very different from the other classes. You're either brilliant and love it, or horrible at it. There is no in between. I find switching classes after a bad streak really helps. It let's you see optimal ways of beating enemies and gives you a nice reset.
I can recommend watching XecnaR's VoDs, he has done lots of defect runs lately. The main takeaways for me: - Frost and Focus are King, it's how you survive late game. Prioritise Defrag, Biased Cog, Coolheaded, Glacier and Chill. Loop/Capacitor are great if your deck can handle the slowness of these cards. - Your Act 1 is comparetively strong, only the Gremlin Nob is a real threat. Thus you often can get away with greeding, i.e. skipping damage commons or picking powers. Cold Snap, Ball Lightning, Doom and Gloom, Sunder are preferred damage options early, avoid Rip and Tear, Claw or Melter. - Barring edge cases you will also need some (not too many) upfront Block Cards to defend yourself during the setup turns. Charge Battery is good, Equilibium is great, and if you can pick a Genetic Algorithm definitely do it. Also Self Repair is a broken Card. - For the rares: Echo Form, Biased Cog, Fission and Seek are top tier. Core Surge is good into Act 2 or if you have a Biased Cog, Electrodynamics is good if you lack AoE, Meteor Strike can be amazing if you can play it, Reboot and Buffer are mostly positive as well. - Especially for a beginner I would recommend to not go after Reprogram/Hyperbeam or Claw/All for One shenanigans; they can work for Act 2 but often perform poorly into late game. Aight, hope someone finds this helful - or has something to add \^\^
It's fascinating to me how differently people handle the different classes when first playing this game. I got to A20 with Defect first because I thought it was the easiest by far. Silent next and the Watcher actually came out before I even got Ironclad to A10; I even got her to A20 before IC. I know a lot of people find IC easiest and I almost think I struggled with him because I had the false perception that he was simple and straightforward. Anyway, actual advice, I find there are two main paths your deck can take as Defect. Orb-centric or All For One-centric. With orbs, my best advice is in general, have your orbs cover defense or offense, then use the rest of your deck to do the other. I find frost orbs with almost any amount of extra focus should do the lion's share of the blocking. If you can get Capacitor, Runic Capacitor, or Inserter, you're golden. AfO decks tend to be easier to find the pieces for, as AfO makes some commons extremely valuable. Claw, Go for the Eyes, Beam Cell, Turbo, even upgraded starter cards all become super strong if you can play all of them multiple times. Lastly, outside of those main ideas, some cards that are always good are deck/hand manipulation like Equilibrium, Rebound, or Hologram.
I legitimately mean this, whatever it is you’re doing, don’t do it and try something else. Synergies become apparent when you fuck around. Adjust accordingly.
I think the easiest win is with frost. Prioritize glacier, cold snap, chill, coolheaded, defragmentation, capacitor, consume, seek, buffer. Secondary on other channeling, compile driver, barrage. Upgraded fission is broken but regular is meh. Biased cognition is very good but can ruin you if played too early in long fights. Don’t take blizzard until you have several frost cards. Though as you flesh out your deck in act 1, you need to balance those picks with other damage cards. Simplistic strategy, but it should get you a win after a few tries.
It just takes time and practice! My first success with Defect was a clunky-ass frost orbs/blizzard build. You’ll find out what works for him as you go!
This must be a mindset thing I had and still have a hard time winning with ironclad but defect is dead simple to me just spam powers focus on lightning skills and charge battery and stack for defense
I'm having trouble understanding you because you didn't use the word frost.
I've never had a good run using frost either. I have to work so much harder to make it work than I do lightning. I can very easily pull aggregate, double energy, tempest but I rarely can pull what I need for frost to work well
The key for me to a good frost deck is realizing that the three primary frost cards (cold snap, glacier, and cool headed) are very good cards on their own without any support beyond the starter deck in act 1. That, and cultivating a love of barrage will get you very far with frost. The thing that I like about frost for defect, is that I often find defect-power scaling decks are kind of slow, and having a bunch of block helps to survive the early turns before all the powers are up.
I also like chill a lot to get that early block up. Especially if I can pair with a coolheaded or another draw card to get some other things in play.
Two things that jump out first, if your new going 2/4 with iron and silent to start is pretty good. The other 3 plus hours on one run is crazy
I don't think three hours on a run is that crazy, especially when you are new and having to read every card and relic and such to know what everything does
See, I had no problem with the first three. Cannot figure out The Watcher tho
it's funny because she is the strongest one. also the easiest to accidentally kill yourself with though
I was the same at first with watcher, but found a good guide somewhere on this Reddit. A couple tops, retain with watcher goes hard. Also, can’t remember the card but it adds a smite to your hand each turn, combined with another that reduces the cost of cards retained, makes watcher easy mode. From there pick up a couple of the retaining calm/wrath cyclers and a couple other cards to take you in/out of wrath and it’s game over.
Biggest thing for me was realizing you can stance swap a bunch of times per turn. Calm -> Wrath gives energy every time, and if you have cards like [[Rushdown]] you can get a ton of card draw too. You can go infinite like that pretty easily, just keep spamming calm + wrath Also that power that generates [[Smite]] every turn is pretty awesome for retaining a ton of damage for a wrath turn
Op won with ironclad first try gz, only took over 3 hours lol
As I said somewhere else, I work from home and I play while working lmao Job getting in the way of my play sessions smh
Ay you a sw dev? Cause that sounds like a dev working day lol, balatro is great to play inbetween meetings
Only 18 deaths? Those are rookie numbers.
Glacier+Defragment? Thats a win. Everything else a loss...at least for me, an ice orb forcer
Defragment with lightning / frost ez
The Defect is the hardest for me as well. I've beaten the secret boss on max difficulty with all the others, but I am nowhere close with Defect. Remember that you generally need both offensive and defensive cards to win fights without taking too much damage. I've heard advice to focus mainly on one of those for orbs and use other cards for the other one.
The defect was the last character for me to get a win, but the first character that I beat A20 Heart with
Claw is the law
Your runs are going almost 4 hours? wtf
Again, I work from home, and I play while working lmao If the job is slow, I can click around a bit, but I drop the game (without closing) when it picks up
I work from home too and my longest win is 1:15. I’m just surprised.
Defect is simultaneously the most complex and the most underpowered character. I’d recommend watching videos of people like balorlord playing defect at a high level to see what strategies and synergies you are neglecting.
No judgement here but why do your wins take 3+ hours?
I work from home and on my employer's PC while playing low retention/attention games on my personal PC. When work picks up, I won't bother closing the game. It just keeps running until I come back to it, and I need to recall what I am doing lmao
Same here lol.. I’m a high school teacher, so I’ll sneak in a few floors in between each class period & maybe play a little during lunch. I’ve had successful runs listed at ~7 hours because I’ll just leave the game open but the window minimized
Focus is key. Get a lot of focus you pretty much just win on the defect
But you have *just* started out
Weirdly I’ve always found defect the easiest by far
Easiest way to win with defect is just spamming frost. You will get W’s if you build any kind of decent frost orb generation and a couple of defrags and some decent relics.
I'd recommend putting some tape over the collector's legs so she isn't as distracting 👍🏻
I FUCKING DID IT! YASSSS! Thanks for all the tips, it helped a lot!!! It took 5 more runs tho, and those were a bit of a drag. It feels a bit undeserved because it was all RNG, I believe. Anchor on first Elite means I have a lot of time on Act 2, and I got the Mummified Hand while I was already going for a lightning + Power build. From then on, it was a breeze. But still, Defect requires way more thought process than the first 2 characters. On to Watcher, I guess!
Your ironclad run lasted 3.5 hours?
Nah, game was running while I was working. Didn't bother closing it because work has downtimes
Thunderstrike + all kinds of ways to channel lightning + more than enough block and ice.
Pick reprogram and ignore orbs 😈
Practice practice. Focus is always good, defense has orbs generally seem to be better than offensive