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Zephro posted:I know one of the good things about STS is it's really hard to just rate cards in a vacuum because everything is situational etc It's up there for sure. I had a A4 defect run yesterday where I didn't have any particularly standout build going through Act 2, just a ho-hum lightning/frost orb deck. I lucked into 2 Seeks and a bottled lightning for one of them. A mummified hand later and that deck just kinda tore through the late bosses and heart on the power of quick scaling and some thorns. Seriously two Seeks and mummified hand are so hilariously broken together especially if you have heatsink.
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Jan 27, 2023 00:22
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I have never regretted taking calculated gamble
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Jan 27, 2023 00:42
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nachos posted:I have never regretted taking calculated gamble It's a hella good card, even before you consider Silent's discard synergies.
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Jan 27, 2023 07:23
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nachos posted:I have never regretted taking calculated gamble If you've got a deck that's fairly reliant on WLP/pyramid, it can be bad. Grand Finale decks come to mind.
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Jan 27, 2023 14:15
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DontMockMySmock posted:If you've got a deck that's fairly reliant on WLP/pyramid, it can be bad. Grand Finale decks come to mind. Even then, hold onto it for a bad hand/to get to another finale faster.
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Jan 27, 2023 14:56
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Dyz posted:Even then, hold onto it for a bad hand/to get to another finale faster. You might even say that your gamble has to be calculated.
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Jan 27, 2023 15:11
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Gamble works extremely well with pyramid, since your hand tends to get jammed with statuses and starter cards
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Jan 27, 2023 15:17
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Yeah gamble is a slam dunk with pyramid, incredible synergy. 0 energy discard 9 draw 9 is insanely powerful even without relevant relics and it helps so much for unclogging the hand. I will take so many calculated gambles with pyramid.
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Jan 27, 2023 17:04
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I just discovered, with delight, the interaction between Envenom and Sadistic Nature. Oh, and I also had a Mummified Hand. Probably my favorite Silent run I've ever had. Absolutely obliterated everything in my path and handled the Heart as easily as I ever had with the Silent.
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Jan 27, 2023 19:40
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A weird thing with envenom is it will make any banes hit twice regardless of whether theres poison on the enemy.
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Jan 27, 2023 20:03
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Dyz posted:A weird thing with envenom is it will make any banes hit twice regardless of whether theres poison on the enemy. I'm guessing it checks for poison after the first hit, and always finds it because the first hit applies poison.
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Jan 27, 2023 21:28
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After mostly ignoring Watcher to focus on the other three characters, I have finally achieved my first A0 heart kill with her after discovering the simplicity of her infinite. She has so many synergies that enable fear no evil/inner peace > eruption+/tantrum that it feels like playing her any other way is a mistake. Watcher seems to really depend on rushdown for card draw and mental fortress/talk to the hand for block, but I've had zero success playing her like any of the other characters. After a few successful runs she feels a little one dimensional, but inevitably I'd walk into a brick wall in Act 3 without stance dancing.
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Jan 29, 2023 16:10
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lmao, I just had a run of Champ where he straight up didn't bother attacking, just alternated between putting different buffs on himself until he died. Also holy poo poo Pressure Points is amazing now that I gave it a decent shot. Rather than thinking of it as a status effect it's better to think of it as a sort of combination of Claw and Rampage where it takes the best parts of both. Each Pressure Points effectively boosts the damage of all Pressure Points in your deck, a la Claw, but it scales up by 8 per use, the same as an upgraded Rampage. It even gets to scale up faster when upgraded! +11 damage per use adds up fast! Hell, even after one use you're looking at a 22 damage card for 1 energy. That's pretty obscene! Even ignoring the scaling, it does the damage on the first turn you use it and it's not like 11 damage for 1 energy is a bad deal. Sure, it has some minor trouble with enemies that either have Artifact or status clears, but it also gets to bypass block so it's really just a matter of chewing through a few artifact stacks instead of chewing through the barricade around spheric guardians.
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Jan 29, 2023 23:18
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Mr. Vile posted:lmao, I just had a run of Champ where he straight up didn't bother attacking, just alternated between putting different buffs on himself until he died. The big issue with Pressure Points is it doesn't interact with any of the other things Watcher does. It's like if you stuck, idk, Deadly Poison into Defect and nothing else that interacted with poison in cards or relics. Can it work? You can make just about anything work if you try hard enough. Its a hell of a gamble though especially when there are so many easier and less luck reliant ways to win with Watcher already
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Jan 29, 2023 23:25
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The biggest problem with Pressure Points is that since it doesn't interact with anything else, you want to go all or nothing on it, and if you go all in and then get Nob in mid to late act 1 he rips your face off.
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Jan 30, 2023 00:04
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True enough, it doesn't really interact with anything else. It does synergise quite nicely with Meditate to keep fetching it back out of the bin but it's not like that's a uniquely Watcher thing. It just synergises so well with itself that it doesn't really need any extra help, I guess.  It works quite nicely with Art of War for being a giant damage source that doesn't count as an attack, too.
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Jan 30, 2023 00:43
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DontMockMySmock posted:The biggest problem with Pressure Points is that since it doesn't interact with anything else, you want to go all or nothing on it, and if you go all in and then get Nob in mid to late act 1 he rips your face off. Nob doesn't rip anything off you if you got three Pressure Points by floor 12 and upgraded one, unless you hit him as the super elite. He only has about 90 HP, and you get your turn 1 for free. Even if you only get a single regular PP on turn 1 that's still usually 54 damage for two skills played. You take 14 or 20 less whatever you can block, and it dies the next time you draw a PP.
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Jan 30, 2023 01:04
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Jedit posted:Nob doesn't rip anything off you if you got three Pressure Points by floor 12 and upgraded one, unless you hit him as the super elite. He only has about 90 HP, and you get your turn 1 for free. Even if you only get a single regular PP on turn 1 that's still usually 54 damage for two skills played. You take 14 or 20 less whatever you can block, and it dies the next time you draw a PP. Yeah but then you need to have found 3 copies by floor 12 which is not even remotely guarenteed. Or particularly likely. Like Watcher has 53 other non-rare cards. Assuming you're getting 10 fights, no rares in your rewards and one campfire you still are only looking at 30~ cards by that point. Getting 3 specific cards out of that pool is not something you should count on. Zore fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jan 30, 2023 |
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Jan 30, 2023 01:09
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Not sure if there’s a Monster Train thread but I picked it up on Switch during the recent sale and it’s incredibly fun. The UX is a lot worse and more cluttered than StS but it scratches the itch while also being different enough to not just feel like a ripoff. I definitely recommend it to fans of the genre!
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Jan 30, 2023 01:15
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Zore posted:Yeah but then you need to have found 3 copies by floor 12 which is not even remotely guarenteed. Or particularly likely. That really is the problem with pressure points. You take the first one hoping there will be more. And until you find more it's basically worse than a strike.
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Jan 30, 2023 01:46
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Cpt_Obvious posted:That really is the problem with pressure points. You take the first one hoping there will be more. And until you find more it's basically worse than a strike. I'm not sure it is though. Like, if you pick it up as your first card it's still an 8 damage hit the first time you play it. Granted, it doesn't benefit from Wrath, but the second time you play it it's stronger than a Wrath boosted Strike anyway. The only way it comes out worse than Strike is if the battle ends before you get to play it a second time and the Strike is under Wrath. I'll have to experiment with just adding one or two copies into an otherwise normal stance dance deck and see how that pans out.
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Jan 30, 2023 02:40
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Baalorlord ranked all the cards for each character, and Pressure Points defied ranking and thus had its own tier.
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Jan 30, 2023 03:11
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Mr. Vile posted:I'm not sure it is though. Like, if you pick it up as your first card it's still an 8 damage hit the first time you play it. Granted, it doesn't benefit from Wrath, but the second time you play it it's stronger than a Wrath boosted Strike anyway. The only way it comes out worse than Strike is if the battle ends before you get to play it a second time and the Strike is under Wrath. I'll have to experiment with just adding one or two copies into an otherwise normal stance dance deck and see how that pans out. Most act 1 hallway fights end before you play it twice, and some act 1 elites might too. Strike does 4 more damage most of the time and doesn't trigger Nob or get blocked by Sentries' artifact. Even if you're bad at going into wrath, and not fighting Nob or Sentries, it's at best slightly better than a strike, and quite a bit worse than every other damage common. You don't take PP because it's good now, you take PP because you have faith that it WILL be good later. The main reason I end up taking it is if I get like four card rewards deep and have found absolute garbage, so I take one and hope the next elite is Lagavulin. Occasionally it works out; it can be an absolutely devastating deck later in the run.
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Jan 30, 2023 03:22
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I think it'd be better on any other character. Watcher's stances just reward you so much for picking attacks that it seems crazy to pick a damage skill instead.
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Jan 30, 2023 03:33
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Mr. Vile posted:I'm not sure it is though. Like, if you pick it up as your first card it's still an 8 damage hit the first time you play it. Granted, it doesn't benefit from Wrath, but the second time you play it it's stronger than a Wrath boosted Strike anyway. The only way it comes out worse than Strike is if the battle ends before you get to play it a second time and the Strike is under Wrath. I'll have to experiment with just adding one or two copies into an otherwise normal stance dance deck and see how that pans out. 2 wraths strikes = 24 damage. 2 pps = 24 damage. So after going through your entire deck twice, the pp is now breaking even with strike. Before that, it's worse. The only fights in act 1 where it's going to be useful are lag and 2/3 bosses (sentinels have artifact, slime boss purges when he splits) so it's kind of really hard to start picking in act 1.
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Jan 30, 2023 03:35
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Also looking at the list drat Watcher's common attacks are insane.
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Jan 30, 2023 03:40
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the best time to invest in Pressure Points was two acts ago. the second best time is now.
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Jan 30, 2023 04:55
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There's a few mods on the Workshop that add Pressure Point support cards and the mechanic goes from "really bad, but okay if you go all-in" to "absolutely beyond game-breakingly powerful". Nothing in between.
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Jan 30, 2023 04:57
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Harriet Carker posted:Not sure if there’s a Monster Train thread but I picked it up on Switch during the recent sale and it’s incredibly fun. The UX is a lot worse and more cluttered than StS but it scratches the itch while also being different enough to not just feel like a ripoff. I definitely recommend it to fans of the genre! Played a few runs a couple months ago and … I didn’t know why I succeeded or failed. I didn’t really get what the idea of it all was. Perhaps I need more runs.
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Jan 30, 2023 05:05
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I've relic swapped into tiny house three times in a row. Not the worst start you can have, but it still a bummer.
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Jan 30, 2023 05:06
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I’ve only just started playing watcher after getting to A20 with the others but only barely touching a run with her. The fact i was missing her unlocks eventually got me to play enough to get hooked. Had a real fun alpha/beta/omega deck run that ended up killing the heart. Sneko eye reduced the card cost and gave me more draw to reach beta/omega faster, deus ex machina ensured I always had enough energy to play them and I found ANOTHER alpha as backup. Then an omniscience as card reward for act 2 meant I could play one if my omegas twice - so come the heart I was doing 150 damage a turn passively. I didn’t really go into wrath after act 1. While stance dancing calm into wrath is the most straightforward way of doing big damage just hopping in an out of calm using “empty mind/body/hand” is a good way to build energy for block and card draw while you build pressure points/omega/divinity or line up the perfect ragnarok massive spider fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jan 30, 2023 |
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Jan 30, 2023 09:13
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Cpt_Obvious posted:That really is the problem with pressure points. You take the first one hoping there will be more. And until you find more it's basically worse than a strike. One Pressure Points is on par with Rampage+, barring only that it isn't doubled by Wrath and can be blocked by artifact. Pressure Points+ far outstrips anything else - even on its first play on a target it's almost as good as a Strike in Wrath, and every subsequent play just gets better. And the more copies you add, the crazier it becomes. Three Strikes in Wrath do less damage than three un-upgraded PPs. It's easily capable of beating A20H.
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Jan 30, 2023 11:31
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EconDad posted:Played a few runs a couple months ago and … I didn’t know why I succeeded or failed. I didn’t really get what the idea of it all was. Perhaps I need more runs. Monster Train is different from Spire in that it doesn't really coalesce and force you to learn the game until deeper into the covenant levels (ascension equivalent). Once you get there, imagine Monster Train as a version of StS where Dead Branch+Corruption is the minimum on how busted you need your setup to be.
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Jan 30, 2023 15:03
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Yeah I thought the overall flow of the game was a lot worse. In Slay the Spire almost every floor is a relevant challenge that can take chunks out of you if you haven't respected certain aspects of your build (eg AoE fights, front loaded damage). In Monster Train it seems more like you put together something that trivially steamrolls everything until it does or doesn't hit a brick wall later on when the game finally catch up.
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Jan 30, 2023 15:31
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P-Mack posted:Monster Train is different from Spire in that it doesn't really coalesce and force you to learn the game until deeper into the covenant levels (ascension equivalent). Definitely sounds harder to learn in any sort of sequential way. More of a trial by fire, basically. Over and over. I'll probably give it another try someday soon.
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Jan 30, 2023 19:10
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Yeah I thought the overall flow of the game was a lot worse. In Slay the Spire almost every floor is a relevant challenge that can take chunks out of you if you haven't respected certain aspects of your build (eg AoE fights, front loaded damage). In Monster Train it seems more like you put together something that trivially steamrolls everything until it does or doesn't hit a brick wall later on when the game finally catch up. Big  to this post. Beyond that, in the base game (haven't played the expansion) there are IMO basically only two (and a half) viable strategies: make one monster really cool (e.g. the morsel eater that gets lifesteal), or stack 7 monsters in one floor via ascend/descend shenanigans. If you look ahead and the final boss isn't one of the ones that hoses it, you can sometimes get away with a spell-based build using either damage multipliers or frostbite (MT's equivalent of poison) but that's a lot less reliable. Basically, the game feels really shallow and unbalanced. Idk how much the expansion addresses these issues or not.
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Jan 30, 2023 19:34
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Expansion addresses early floors being boring by scaling them up if you use the new shard mechanic, which also is what unlocks the dlc boss. Said DLC boss requires things from your deck that no other fight will, which is good for the extra challenge but also shuts down options which could otherwise be fun and/or viable. If you feel straitjacketed in the base game the expansion probably won't solve that particular issue, but overall I enjoyed it.
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Jan 30, 2023 19:44
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Monster Train is great if your favorite way to play StS is trying to force a gimmick to work, because Monster Train basically goes "hell yeah, run that poo poo into the ground and you'll win." It's very different from StS, but I do enjoy it when I want to see silly poo poo unfold on my screen.
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Jan 31, 2023 02:15
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Monster trains gameplay feels padded with extraneous stuff to me but some people like the tactical options that offers.
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Jan 31, 2023 02:58
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Monster train lets you mix and match classes to a degree so it’s default mode is basically the equivalent of starting every StS run with prismatic shard. It leans a lot more into the bullshit decks style of play.
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Jan 31, 2023 12:36
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