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I think that's the thing that i will give the game enough credit for, it seems like every combo has some way to synergize them to make it work, some just work way better than others.
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# ? May 26, 2020 16:53 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 10:35 |
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Jedit posted:I think, though, that you can usually tell if a run will win before you reach Daedalus and often as early as the first floor. You need to get that good start towards a broken combo. The last half of the run then becomes seeing how silly you can make it. I partially agree. On one hand, some artifacts and some unit combo's are so overpowered that if you get them early you know already what you have to do and can focus on that. On the other hand, some artifacts and event rewards are so overpowered that if you get them in the middle of the game it's still worth changing your build around for them. Since you don't always get lucky at first you often do need to keep an open mind. In addition, very often you have a build that's really good at killing end game chaff but really bad at killing end game bosses or the other way around. Usually these do fine early anyway but it's quite important to realise when this is the case and adjust as necessary. So you start with one strategy before daedalus, but afterwards you still have to look for another combo/strategy to adjust. I don't remember any games where I knew I was going to lose before I reached Daedalus. That said, I'm only on ascension 11 and I can image it's different on higher difficulty levels.
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# ? May 26, 2020 17:06 |
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deep dish peat moss posted:It seems like a lot of the artifacts are basically "Makes [x] build better while ruining the run of any other build" which is getting kind of boring since there's no choice to be made. Sorry, are you talking about with just the Sygian, or at high covenant? If you mean you've never actually finished a run it might be a bit early to be passing such strong judgements. For Sygians, either just spamming Frostbite or Spell weakness (or both!) can win pretty easily at least on the early levels. Remember you can be stacking effects on the boss before it fully joins the fight. The summon 4 units to the middle floor is a pretty great artefact because it ignores capacity, for example. Put several very large units in your deck and you'll often start with a very overstacked floor of death, and you can even ascend/descend more units into it to make things even crazier, then ascend/descend enemies into the murderzone. I got this on my second run and it lead to my first win. I haven't seen Heartless yet, but it could turn Imps or Morsel units into damage-soaks maybe? Or you could just not take it if it's really that bad. Which isn't great from a balance PoV of course, but it's not run-ending either.
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# ? May 26, 2020 21:15 |
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I've been playing a ton recently and as a bad mtg style timmy player, I'm here to say that stygian sucks rear end ok, you want me to hit with a baby 1/3? I DON'T THINK SO. Not in this house. In this house we hit with 350x3/5's and we like it. Keep playing until you get melting remnant and you're off to the races.
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# ? May 26, 2020 21:54 |
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(Deep Link) Unleash the Wildwood with Holdover feels borderline criminal. Quick Husk Hermits held the line from bullshit chaff while Sentient dropped bombs. Seraph didn't even get past the vanguard.
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# ? May 26, 2020 21:56 |
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Einwand posted:Am I missing something or are the wax demons kind of terrible? worry not, my son, for i have descended from the heavens to bestow upon you this gift
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# ? May 26, 2020 22:48 |
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Prokhor posted:I've been playing a ton recently and as a bad mtg style timmy player, I'm here to say that stygian sucks rear end ok, you want me to hit with a baby 1/3? I DON'T THINK SO. Not in this house. In this house we hit with 350x3/5's and we like it. Keep playing until you get melting remnant and you're off to the races. My very first Stygian run after unlocking them, I also got all the achievements for killing the bosses before the boss round actually started. Just piled up insane spell power bonuses and nuked them while they were still fluttering up and down the levels being annoying. Very satisfying.
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# ? May 26, 2020 22:59 |
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Meanwhile, holdover Hoarfrosts let me have Seraph sit at 999 frostbite stacks before she began the final wave. The frostbite build with them is quite nice, especially if you can enchant their Frostbite Sweeper minion with Multistrike.
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# ? May 26, 2020 23:04 |
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I like to use stygian as a secondary and use them to draw my entire deck every turn. Throw in some offerings that get played when you discard them for bonus funsies. Also the 4 man middle artifact with incant +1/+1 with awoken hollows mixed in is hillarious as you heal the hollows to make them beefy and all the +1/+1 ladies get beefy too. Think waxers are my favorite though, especially the assassin unit that gets permanently stronger each time he dies so you can just shoot him with one of your spells and resummon him again over and over lol.
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# ? May 26, 2020 23:36 |
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Vargs posted:
You're definitely right, but as the guy below you posts you can lean into the non reform parts of the wax kit and those do synergize well, luckily. Recurring morsels is definitely the closest thing to an anti combo though, I would end up with a 50/30 unit that always died in one turn since you can't prevent gobbles (This was with reform specced Flicker so I couldnt choose who to get back... I would have much preferred my quick 20 damage 3x multistriker instead.) threelemmings fucked around with this message at 23:51 on May 26, 2020 |
# ? May 26, 2020 23:42 |
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threelemmings posted:You're definitely right, but as the guy below you posts you can lean into the non reform parts of the wax kit and those do synergize well, luckily. Recurring morsels is definitely the closest thing to an anti combo though, I would end up with a 50/30 unit that always died in one turn since you can't prevent gobbles The 50/30 still hits and blocks before it gets gobbled though so, yknow, it works just as well as a normal waxer in that respect... with the added bonus of it giving its death bonus
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# ? May 26, 2020 23:59 |
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Prokhor posted:The 50/30 still hits and blocks before it gets gobbled though so, yknow, it works just as well as a normal waxer in that respect... with the added bonus of it giving its death bonus I mean I kind of get your point until you realize any unit buffed that much would block just as well! Especially for boss fights I'd rather have that slot taken by a unit that will deal damage more than once, and with a reform focused deck I often get that by quickly killing and rezzing a few heavy hitters to some insane numbers. Between all the lifesteal and damage shield you get from umbral keeping my frontliners healthy against chaff has never been the issue in my runs, it's getting your unit fed enough to do appreciable damage to the boss. Like I said the two synergize but buffing your units designed to only last one turn ain't it. I'm looking forwards to a run where I draw more into the targeted reform cards, that lets you he a lot more consistent. Mod it with -1 cost and holdover and you're in business. threelemmings fucked around with this message at 00:11 on May 27, 2020 |
# ? May 27, 2020 00:04 |
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I like getting the uber buffed morsels. The turn into a nice source of damage for one turn, as well as meat shields for your other units that you might still need to feed up before they get tanky enough to shrug off attacks. Also doesn't anything that gets killed and returned by remnant come with burnout anyway? Might as well get a buff off of their inevitable demise.
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# ? May 27, 2020 00:34 |
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BobTheJanitor posted:I like getting the uber buffed morsels. The turn into a nice source of damage for one turn, as well as meat shields for your other units that you might still need to feed up before they get tanky enough to shrug off attacks. Also doesn't anything that gets killed and returned by remnant come with burnout anyway? Might as well get a buff off of their inevitable demise. Yeah, but it adds one to the Burnout timer if they already have it and gives them +5/+5 by default. It can lead to a really fun zerging playstyle, but minions clogging the death pool means you need to use some other scaling engine because it becomes unreliable to actually get back something worthwhile. I love using it with the Duff units (start with Burnout 1, Multistrike and 10 damage). Because they die and reform so often you can turn them into absolute monsters even before any augments, its hilarious.
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# ? May 27, 2020 00:41 |
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umbra is completely broken imo, the damage shield gorger can wear down any boss fight
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# ? May 27, 2020 01:02 |
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Everything seems broken until it's not. I've had seemingly invincible runs get steamrolled because something had just enough HP to get past my best unit, and the rest of the house of cards just crumbles. But trying to build for a more general deck where you spread the power out seems even less likely to win. The champion units also seem designed to get you to load all your power up on one thing, which can end you if it fails. A lot also comes down to what kind of ability the last boss gets, which is probably why they tell you specifically at the start of the run. At least that's been toned down some since the beta demo. Used to be that when Seraph got the 'devour your spells' ability, it meant all of your spells just flat out get consume added and a spell heavy deck was empty after a few turns. Focusing your power so much and tuning your deck so specifically is an interesting departure from StS, where you want a more jack-of-all-trades deck to deal with hallway fights versus boss fights, and you don't know which last boss you're going to get until you reach the 3rd act and find out that your power stacking deck gets to deal with the awakened one.
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# ? May 27, 2020 01:35 |
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Darkrenown posted:I haven't seen Heartless yet, but it could turn Imps or Morsel units into damage-soaks maybe? Or you could just not take it if it's really that bad. Which isn't great from a balance PoV of course, but it's not run-ending either. Right after posting this I had Heartless appear in an event. I didn't take it because I'm using an Awoken Hollow tank and I wasn't sure if it prevents just regaining HP or if it flat out makes heals not work and the on heal abilities not function (anyone know?), but aside from that I actually had a good deck for it. I started with Fortify which I boosted to Doublestacked and copied 5 times for a 0 cost 10 armour card * 5, then gave one of them Holdover later. The extra HP would help units live until armoured up and then the constant armour negates the need for healing, plus I could trim out the regen cards.
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# ? May 27, 2020 02:24 |
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I know why they did it but I hate the variet units. The way it’s implemented just hurts card identity.
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# ? May 27, 2020 04:46 |
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BobTheJanitor posted:Everything seems broken until it's not. I've had seemingly invincible runs get steamrolled because something had just enough HP to get past my best unit, and the rest of the house of cards just crumbles. Yup. I went in heavy on spikes , regen and rage without noticing that Seraph had the ”eats 50% of your buffs” ability. When my spikes were hitting for 24 instead of 200+ it was game over for me.
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# ? May 27, 2020 07:32 |
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Game is good and fun. Umbra is the coolest for sure.
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# ? May 27, 2020 08:16 |
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I've come around to the candle crew on virtue of getting some of their unlockable cards/relics which are significantly better than their starting ones are. I still feel like the hellhorned champion is the weakest of the lot, though, needs too much support in any of the 3 modes to work consistently from turn 1.
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# ? May 27, 2020 08:45 |
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DrManiac posted:I know why they did it but I hate the variet units. The way it’s implemented just hurts card identity. The what?
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# ? May 27, 2020 09:03 |
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Einwand posted:I've come around to the candle crew on virtue of getting some of their unlockable cards/relics which are significantly better than their starting ones are. I still feel like the hellhorned champion is the weakest of the lot, though, needs too much support in any of the 3 modes to work consistently from turn 1. Yeah, the Hellhorned champion really feels the weakest overall. You really have to baby him and honestly if you're giving that level of babying there are other units probably more worthwhile. The multistrike is nice but not THAT nice especially since you can use tomes to give it to someone more worthwhile
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# ? May 27, 2020 09:33 |
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My first completed run after a bunch of tries flailing around and throwing poo poo at the wall to see what worked. Basically my first two artifacts were "all your Sting spells get +damage and Piercing" and "add a Sting spell to your hand every turn". Then when you couple this with 2 "add 3 Sting spells to your hand" cards and a collection of bonus magic power effects I could be throwing out up to around 130 damage per turn that goes through armor and spell/damage shields for 0 mana.
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# ? May 27, 2020 09:41 |
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My least favorite champion is the Remnant one that gains hp on harvest. He does fuckall damage, starts with low health, and if he survives to ramp up he attains the soaring heights of becoming a pretty mediocre tank that's completely surpassed by tons of common cards. The burnout one is a better meatshield while also annihilating anything you put in front of him. Close runner-up is the Hellhorned champion that gains rage on revenge and armor on slay. It's not worth desperately trying to keep his squishy rear end alive so he can put out really middling damage. He's a hybrid that's bad at both roles.
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# ? May 27, 2020 09:50 |
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Yeah, the Hellhorned champs can be a chore. I did just have a decent run combining +10 attack on slay + Multistrike 3 with a Railbeater tanking. The railbeater knocks units to the rear on attack and then the champ feasts on the squishy units to proc his on slay. Sadly I got a bit of antisynergy going with the Railhammer artefact which randomly does 5 damage to spawning units, since the support units often died to it leaving me with less Slays. I also realised after picking up a Quick card that it was a poor choice for my champ unless I could also put it on the Railbeater, since otherwise this would just lead to him attacking the tank. Popping the bosses for 3*100+ every round was nice though. Are there spells which can give a unit Trample or Sweep? That'd be pretty good to use on a Slay champ. Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 09:58 on May 27, 2020 |
# ? May 27, 2020 09:56 |
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Darkrenown posted:Are there spells which can give a unit Trample or Sweep? That'd be pretty good to use on a Slay champ. Umbra has a 2 cost consume spell for trample. If there's anything that gives sweep, I haven't unlocked it yet.
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# ? May 27, 2020 10:05 |
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Do none of you get put off by how glaringly they've ripped off Hearthstone's UI styling? Like sure enough, there's no doubt countless games have designs in them inspired from other games, but when a deckbuilding game almost verbatim copies the UI styling of one of the most popular deckbuilding games... that's a bit on the nose, isn't it?
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# ? May 27, 2020 10:38 |
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gredgie posted:Do none of you get put off by how glaringly they've ripped off Hearthstone's UI styling? Literally every deck building game going back to Magic the Gathering in 1993 has a picture at the top, a text frame at the bottom and the cost of the card in one corner. It's how you make cards readable in the hand without having to separate them individually.
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# ? May 27, 2020 10:49 |
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My main problem with Hellhorned (and stygian) is that they have no good way to tank or mitigate damage. Some units have decent starting health/armor, but lategame that's never enough and you need some sort of heal/lifesteal/revive/damage shield/stealth/quick if you want to keep your big unit alive and healthy until the boss shows up. The armor spells don't scale and are generally not that strong. Your best bet is getting an endless imp but that uses up an unit slot, a card draw and 1 energy every single turn. Stygian kan try to mitigate by first killing things with spells and the armor on incant unit can help a little bit. Of course, you can always get a solution for this from your second clan, but it's certainly still a drawback.
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# ? May 27, 2020 10:51 |
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Walh Hara posted:My main problem with Hellhorned (and stygian) is that they have no good way to tank or mitigate damage. Some units have decent starting health/armor, but lategame that's never enough and you need some sort of heal/lifesteal/revive/damage shield/stealth/quick if you want to keep your big unit alive and healthy until the boss shows up. The armor spells don't scale and are generally not that strong. Your best bet is getting an endless imp but that uses up an unit slot, a card draw and 1 energy every single turn. Stygian kan try to mitigate by first killing things with spells and the armor on incant unit can help a little bit. Getting Endless on the armour imp (aka The Devil's Dustbin) along with a sacrifice spell solves a pot of problems, especially if said spell is Imp-portant Work so you don't lose the draw. Putting the guy who gains 5 armour at Resolve on the top floor is pretty good too if you get him early, he will have a ton of armour by the time the boss arrives.
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# ? May 27, 2020 11:02 |
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Walh Hara posted:My main problem with Hellhorned (and stygian) is that they have no good way to tank or mitigate damage. Some units have decent starting health/armor, but lategame that's never enough and you need some sort of heal/lifesteal/revive/damage shield/stealth/quick if you want to keep your big unit alive and healthy until the boss shows up. The armor spells don't scale and are generally not that strong. Your best bet is getting an endless imp but that uses up an unit slot, a card draw and 1 energy every single turn. Stygian kan try to mitigate by first killing things with spells and the armor on incant unit can help a little bit. Both clans remind me of mono-red aggro decks from MtG - fragile builds that try to be proactive about removing threats. Hellhorned tend to have an easier time killing dangerous backline units because they can actually target them with spells, unlike the Stygnan for the most part, and you don't have to heal when you don't take damage! The basic spells are usually kinda junk, but upgrading one or two Torches with +10 damage (you'd prefer a Horn Break but still) can be worth investment, as they'll stay relevant in killing dangerous backline enemies all the way through (gently caress those 10x2 guys near the end!). Stygnan really want Quick and a damage upgrade on one of their Sweep units, as they don't really have many solutions for backline units inside the clan. Jedit posted:Getting Endless on the armour imp (aka The Devil's Dustbin) along with a sacrifice spell solves a pot of problems, especially if said spell is Imp-portant Work so you don't lose the draw. Putting the guy who gains 5 armour at Resolve on the top floor is pretty good too if you get him early, he will have a ton of armour by the time the boss arrives. Similarly, Enflame is great, especially with a -1 cost and the double effect upgrade. With a small enough deck, with all your creatures out, you'll be casting it nearly every turn for a whole lot of extra armour and damage. This is pretty key, really - if your deck is small, even pretty average cards can do a lot of work if they're cast over and over. To be honest, though, most of my wins with Hellhorned so far have basically boiled down to 'Demon Fiend + Multistrike = Many Dead Angels'.
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# ? May 27, 2020 11:34 |
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Walh Hara posted:My main problem with Hellhorned (and stygian) is that they have no good way to tank or mitigate damage. Some units have decent starting health/armor, but lategame that's never enough and you need some sort of heal/lifesteal/revive/damage shield/stealth/quick if you want to keep your big unit alive and healthy until the boss shows up. The armor spells don't scale and are generally not that strong. Your best bet is getting an endless imp but that uses up an unit slot, a card draw and 1 energy every single turn. Stygian kan try to mitigate by first killing things with spells and the armor on incant unit can help a little bit. I played a Stygian/Hellhorned run where I finished Seraph at boss rush 7. I used a beefy stygian unit up front, followed by conduit Tethys behind then the totem that gives armor 1 with incant. I also got the artifact that gives 4 extra armor with each armor application. I also got the armor spell from hellhorned that costs 0 and upgraded it with doublestack to give 18 armor per application, and lucked into the 5x card duplication event to make 6 total of these. So I would use all the spells each turn to incant 25+ armor onto all my units, then my finisher was 3 holdover copies of "Battering Ram" from Hellhorned which did 4x total armor on friendly units. Combined with a bit of spell weakness I managed to erase both Fel and Seraph. Seraph had 2 mooks in front of him and I happened to get the third Battering Ram that turn and kill all 3 of them.
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# ? May 27, 2020 12:09 |
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I'm convinced the best hellhorned card is the one that lets you ascend units to make one viscious floor o death
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# ? May 27, 2020 12:14 |
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Funny you mention that... Started with the 'summon four random units from your deck' artifact, got one of these guys Multistrike, then hit the copy 5 cavern event, the first time I've actually used the copy five choice! I have both Ascend and Restoring Retreat, so I look forward to the eventual Sentient in front of six demons setup. edit: of course I could never get Sentient to the front, but it never mattered anyway. Seraph (buff-removing variant) got through only one demon before he bit it. Coucho Marx fucked around with this message at 13:19 on May 27, 2020 |
# ? May 27, 2020 12:49 |
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Daedalus is like "well poo poo."
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# ? May 27, 2020 12:52 |
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So after my complaining I decided to give it a try myself on ascension 10. Thoughts: * the artifcat that gives all demons multistrike was pretty essential for the middle game to be honest (before I had my spikedriver colony online) * apparently when you use imp-portant on an endless imp you return that imp to your hand * despite 5 march of the shields (of which 3 doublestack) and an endless imp it was still pretty tough to keep units on the bottom alive, but compared to other builds much fewer enemies reached the second (let alone the third) floor so I had much more time to set up boss defeating units there * I was sad that I didn't find a holdover for my doublestack frnezied swarm (applies 2 dazed to all enemies) * the 4 spikedrivers ants started with 50*2 damage * probably still not as overpowered as the builds posted above
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# ? May 27, 2020 13:36 |
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Coucho Marx posted:then hit the copy 5 cavern event, the first time I've actually used the copy five choice! The gently caress? That option is literally the single most broken thing in the game. Unless you get it in the first two circles before you have a properly upgraded spell, it may as well just take you straight to the victory screen. It's been raised with the devs, and they just said "we know, but it's fun so we're leaving it".
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# ? May 27, 2020 13:51 |
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Umbra champion combo Top row, morsel maker on the left and your champion on the right Middle row, tank+damage to soften things up for the top row Champion - Gorge stat boost Fossilized Fangs - Gorge triggers a second time Shroud Spike - Consume morsel. Trigger as if morsel was eaten X times Furnace Tap - Apply multistrike In later levels by the time the boss turns up your champion should be hitting for 1000-2000 damage twice per turn. Damage shield can cover for low initial health and provide some tanking as the boss appears early game. I focused on two morsel masters on the top row as it fits into the 7 unit cap but I think that was overkill with the artifact. It turned out to have two problems 1) Dealing with 3~ units hitting the top row when the champion only hits twice even if it's doing big damage. This also means spikes trial can cause problems for your morsels. 2) 120-160hp mobs in the early waves of the final boss when you don't yet have ramped up damage. So don't neglect your other rows Carecat fucked around with this message at 14:17 on May 27, 2020 |
# ? May 27, 2020 14:14 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 10:35 |
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Jedit posted:The gently caress? That option is literally the single most broken thing in the game. Unless you get it in the first two circles before you have a properly upgraded spell, it may as well just take you straight to the victory screen. It's been raised with the devs, and they just said "we know, but it's fun so we're leaving it". I've only hit it I think two or three times, either early on or during Remant/Umbra runs where card synergy was paramount and I was endeavoring to thin my deck as much as possible, to the point where my hand was almost the same every turn after my creatures were played. It's extremely possible to poo poo up a deck with too many of a good card, especially if you're relying on several cards to show up at the same time and your card draw sucks! It just worked well in this case because four of the five copies started on the field so it didn't really hurt how the deck ran.
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# ? May 27, 2020 14:30 |