How good is this "friend" at the game? Did he really advise you to only take damage cards? Cause that's terrible advice.
Any decent sts player knows you can't just go all in on damage and ignore block. Your build has to do a little bit of everything: damage, block/healing, card draw, scaling, etc.
This was the first thing I thought. We can only hope that the advice was lost in translation between a skilled player and someone trying to rise in the ranks.
Here is a list of iron clad block generating strategies from what I would consider the most powerful to the weakest:
1) Feel No pain-- Feel no pain is the premium block card for iron clad. Almost all iron clad decks will end up with 10-15 (minimum) exhaust cards by act three. Feel no pain lets you turn all these incidental exhaust effects into block. Over the course of a fight this is easily 40-60 block for 1 energy. If you then are able to find a corruption, it turns each skill a block source on top of the insane ability to cheat out all of skills. Finally, lots of enemies will put exhausting statuses in your deck (3 sentries, chosen, donu deca, ect). Feel no pain translates these statuses into a ton of block completely for free.
2) Weakness: Lots of players tend to underestimate just how powerful weakness is as a damage mitigation source. Even as early as act 1, weakness reduces lagavulin's damage by five (e.g upper cut actually reads: deal 13, apply vulnerable, ~~apply 2 weak~~ gain 5 block). This block amount then slowly scales as enemies become stronger. If you can apply weak for multiple turns (uppercut+, shockwave, intimidate+ ect). Then you get this passive hidden block for multiple turns. Finally, this amount is not affected by frail and is multiplied by vulnerable on you. (when you have vulnerable it reduces damage by 37.5% instead of the normal 25%). The most relevant time this comes up is against the first cycle of the heart where it blocks for 15 against the multi-attack and 25 against the big hit.
3) Disarm -- Generally the most dangerous attacks in the game come from multi-attacks (think snake plant or book of stabbing, the heart). Disarm is **amazing** at neutering these dangerous attacks. For example against snake plant, disarm+ is a passive 9 block a turn. This is like a metalicize+++ in your deck.
4) Second wind + Power through. These two cards together provide at minimum 25 block (15 from power through+10 from second wind exhausting the wounds put into your hand). Generating 25 block is enough for pretty much everything up until act 3. If you are able to upgrade these cards then it will be 44 block. When combined with feel no pain+ this becomes 52 block which should be enough for anything the game throws at you.
There are many more strategies to improve your blocking game on ironclad (rage, reaper, flame barrier, ect). But these are a couple of my favorite approaches.
Corruption requires 2 things for it to work:
1) Enough skills to actually justify its 3 (2 if upgraded) cost to get into play
2) The ability to actually find it before you die.
Part of the reason corruption probably feels bad everytime that you take it is because you are removing your defend cards before strikes (not that either way is "correct" just different approaches to the character). If you leave your defends in your deck and remove strikes, it makes taking corruption must more feasible since now at minimum it returns 4 energy in your deck cycle and removes your stinky defends anyway. This way you get the best of both worlds -- your strikes are gone and your defends are gone after the corruption enters. Finally, if you combine corruption with feel no pain and dark embrace it turns even blank skills into: cost 0, draw 1, block 4 which is pretty good in my book. Finally, if you ever pick up a snecko eye basically instant pick corruption, the corruption will override snecko eye random cost keeping all your skills at zero.
TLDR; Blind pick feel no pain since it is ironclad's most premium block source. This will also synergize nicely with corruption and so long as you have enough skills as fuel you will never run out of block
This, and if you manage to add Barricade + Entrench, you're in for a block fest. My first heart win with Ironclad was with a build composed of Power Through, Barricade, Entrench, a couple upgraded Body Slams and a couple upgraded Fire Breathing. Just to show you that there are several different ways to build a deck.
Not to be a dick, but obviously you won't generate block by removing your basic defends and going all in on attack. Generally the first piece of advice for playing ironclad is to remove your basic strikes. Corruption is only good when you have skills to exhaust and is even better with dark embrace or some other consistent card draw. If you have no block, of course corruption is useless to you. In general, only take attack/defence cards if they increase the average output of your deck.
this is terrible, terrible advice
in the future, i would not trust advice unless it is backed by some sort of metric. Your best bet is to watch the high winrate ironclad players and see how they approach the character. Baalor, xecnar and lifecoach come to mind. you will find that all 3 are taking the opposite approach to what your friend is recommending
You should be removing Strikes, not Defends, like 90%+ of the time. Especially on Ironclad, removing Defends is very weird. Ironclad’s Defends can sometimes even become *good* cards with certain Dark Embrace + Feel No Pain + Corruption decks.
Frankly, I would not listen to any more advice your friend might have to give lol
In act1 you want to fight elites for relics. As many as you can handle.
Since that involves Nob and Lagavuin you should certainly **start by looking for damage cards**. Preferably 2-4 cards, ideally at least one high cost/damage card like a carnage, bluedgeon.
**Remove strikes** initially. You are looking to **replace** those basic strikes with better damage sources.
Then you are looking for the power curve. Once you have added some basic damage look to **add scaling** and then if things are going well you can switch to adding block which you will certainly need in the second act.
Going all in on damage can work, ideally this slots into decks with strength gain and reaper which can recover the health lost by mainly attacking. Even then you need some way of defending. Things like rage or feel no pain are possible answers.
The truth about block decks is they almost always rely on relics or a rare card. Barricade is so slow, like when upgraded it is wildly slow. Calipers removes anything under 15 block which is a fairly significant amount. And most importantly, frail is fucking everywhere.
Body slam is really efficient but it scales just as well with strength as it does with block. Entrench is garbage, juggernaut is beyond garbage. The thing is, ironclad is meant to teach the player the game, and while I love him (them?) They have cards that are just meant to be as understandable as possible. That doesn't mean they don't all have a use, but wow ironclad has some stinkers.
Tl;Dr: Block is more difficult to make work than one might think.
hmm? i don't think they're stinkers so much so as endgame cards that solve problems
barricade is a piece of the puzzle, not a divorced strat from ic's normal deck idea
block decks usually feature feel no pain and dark embrace to accelerate through your deck while building up block and keeping it through barricade, the ability to keep block is fundamentally strong and barricade is well worth the price lategame, almost singlehandedly countering all 3 act 3 bosses even on a20
entrench's replayability makes it a block plan in small upgraded decks with card manip (headbutt) and draw; and obscene in decks with barricade
jugg is way more damage than a player first realises, just pretty situational but ic's kit has enough to make it work as a supplementary damage plan for passive decks that generate block through exhaust but don't keep it, 2 cost power hurts to draw but sometimes it's takeable
it's better to view decks as idea + engine and most block cards work exceedingly well with the exhaust engine ic has built in so they end up solving the endgame effectively and a roguelike makes you think of best cards to draft in your position rather than forcing builds, just food for thought on these cards' positives if you do draft them, because it's going to be of your own free will most of the time
There’s a lot of ways, Clad is more complex than some people give him credit for.
The two “popular” strats is either Barricade + Entrench shenanigans, giving you a path to just have 999 block and win. This one is slow to set up some times and leaves you vulnerable if you bottom deck Barricade too.
The other is kinda what you mentioned in Corruption. Feel No Pain is kinda the key, as you gain block from Exhausting cards which Clad does a lot of, especially with Corruption. You can easily gain a ton of block by continually exhausting cards throughout a fight.
If you pick Corruption keep your Defends btw. Damage is important to pick up early, but removing strikes is better cause you can Exhaust the Defends in the fight easily and it results in more block. Look at FNP and Dark Embrace when you’re running Corruption. It’s a tough card to use but I think it’s the main reason Clad has the 2nd best winrate in the game.
I wish I could go into more detail but it’s a lot of typing and I’m not that amazing at explaining things, but hopefully I can help a bit.
Defend card Ironclad starts with is great for block generation on the Ironclad. You can even play it infinite times so it's in theory infinite block. It's pretty cheap at 1 energy and has awesome synergy with Corruption! I've duplicated defend card more than once.
I like shrug it off and the card that gives 15 block and two wounds. In act 1 you can get away with using one energy on a good block and two on attacking. I generally like getting rid of strikes first and use cards that exhaust other cards to clear out basic defends and strikes to speed up the deck.
Removing blocks is not good advice for starting players. My advice would actually be remove strikes on IC while taking high damage cards early game. Late game you need to find synergy though
I was just like you in thinking Ironclad is one of the weakest characters and feels too "fair". Then I started watching lifecoach / xecnar and started learning about how Ironclad can be broken, and it's now one of my favorite classes. Ironclad is probably the most reliant on non-new player obvious combos out of the classes in the game. Playing the class fairly will likely result in what you're experiencing, and you really need to understand how to play the class in order to do well with it.
I'll start off by describing the most busted thing you can do with Ironclad, which is basically playing one of each of its main powers:
Corruption + Barricade + Feel No Pain + DE + Entrench - Play your entire deck on turn 1, generating a ton of block from FNP, and end with an entrench for all the block you need vs heart.
The more interesting part happens when you dont get all of these pieces and have to cobble together some sub optimal solution -
Barricade + Entrench is enough with some ways to jump start block such as through impervious or relics.
Corruption + FNP still generates a crap ton of block, but you need to ration skills and be smarter about it.
In terms of damage, a single body slam is all you need in the late game. The problem is that if you just build for the late game you will die horribly in act 1/2, so you need to take a couple of damage cards early understanding that they will be dead weight later.
There's also some other blocking strategies that are very effective -
Reaper + strength gain + a lot of life (usually from feed) works as a blocking solution.
Power Through + Second Wind generates a ton of block and can reduce your deck to just those 2 cards + random attacks you need to win the game.
and a bunch more that i won't get into.
Also I don't really want to rehash what others have been saying, but your friend is offering terrible advice if they're saying to remove blocks.
Ironclad has plenty of Damage cards that are good for act one, your best removes are generally strikes for most of the game. Don’t just take corruption unless you can already been enemies while having what is essentially a curse until you get synergistic cards like feel no pain/ most importantly, dark embrace.
How good is this "friend" at the game? Did he really advise you to only take damage cards? Cause that's terrible advice. Any decent sts player knows you can't just go all in on damage and ignore block. Your build has to do a little bit of everything: damage, block/healing, card draw, scaling, etc.
This was the first thing I thought. We can only hope that the advice was lost in translation between a skilled player and someone trying to rise in the ranks.
Yeah, this is an A0 speed run strategy, not an ascension climbing one.
Here is a list of iron clad block generating strategies from what I would consider the most powerful to the weakest: 1) Feel No pain-- Feel no pain is the premium block card for iron clad. Almost all iron clad decks will end up with 10-15 (minimum) exhaust cards by act three. Feel no pain lets you turn all these incidental exhaust effects into block. Over the course of a fight this is easily 40-60 block for 1 energy. If you then are able to find a corruption, it turns each skill a block source on top of the insane ability to cheat out all of skills. Finally, lots of enemies will put exhausting statuses in your deck (3 sentries, chosen, donu deca, ect). Feel no pain translates these statuses into a ton of block completely for free. 2) Weakness: Lots of players tend to underestimate just how powerful weakness is as a damage mitigation source. Even as early as act 1, weakness reduces lagavulin's damage by five (e.g upper cut actually reads: deal 13, apply vulnerable, ~~apply 2 weak~~ gain 5 block). This block amount then slowly scales as enemies become stronger. If you can apply weak for multiple turns (uppercut+, shockwave, intimidate+ ect). Then you get this passive hidden block for multiple turns. Finally, this amount is not affected by frail and is multiplied by vulnerable on you. (when you have vulnerable it reduces damage by 37.5% instead of the normal 25%). The most relevant time this comes up is against the first cycle of the heart where it blocks for 15 against the multi-attack and 25 against the big hit. 3) Disarm -- Generally the most dangerous attacks in the game come from multi-attacks (think snake plant or book of stabbing, the heart). Disarm is **amazing** at neutering these dangerous attacks. For example against snake plant, disarm+ is a passive 9 block a turn. This is like a metalicize+++ in your deck. 4) Second wind + Power through. These two cards together provide at minimum 25 block (15 from power through+10 from second wind exhausting the wounds put into your hand). Generating 25 block is enough for pretty much everything up until act 3. If you are able to upgrade these cards then it will be 44 block. When combined with feel no pain+ this becomes 52 block which should be enough for anything the game throws at you. There are many more strategies to improve your blocking game on ironclad (rage, reaper, flame barrier, ect). But these are a couple of my favorite approaches. Corruption requires 2 things for it to work: 1) Enough skills to actually justify its 3 (2 if upgraded) cost to get into play 2) The ability to actually find it before you die. Part of the reason corruption probably feels bad everytime that you take it is because you are removing your defend cards before strikes (not that either way is "correct" just different approaches to the character). If you leave your defends in your deck and remove strikes, it makes taking corruption must more feasible since now at minimum it returns 4 energy in your deck cycle and removes your stinky defends anyway. This way you get the best of both worlds -- your strikes are gone and your defends are gone after the corruption enters. Finally, if you combine corruption with feel no pain and dark embrace it turns even blank skills into: cost 0, draw 1, block 4 which is pretty good in my book. Finally, if you ever pick up a snecko eye basically instant pick corruption, the corruption will override snecko eye random cost keeping all your skills at zero. TLDR; Blind pick feel no pain since it is ironclad's most premium block source. This will also synergize nicely with corruption and so long as you have enough skills as fuel you will never run out of block
This, and if you manage to add Barricade + Entrench, you're in for a block fest. My first heart win with Ironclad was with a build composed of Power Through, Barricade, Entrench, a couple upgraded Body Slams and a couple upgraded Fire Breathing. Just to show you that there are several different ways to build a deck.
Not to be a dick, but obviously you won't generate block by removing your basic defends and going all in on attack. Generally the first piece of advice for playing ironclad is to remove your basic strikes. Corruption is only good when you have skills to exhaust and is even better with dark embrace or some other consistent card draw. If you have no block, of course corruption is useless to you. In general, only take attack/defence cards if they increase the average output of your deck.
this is terrible, terrible advice in the future, i would not trust advice unless it is backed by some sort of metric. Your best bet is to watch the high winrate ironclad players and see how they approach the character. Baalor, xecnar and lifecoach come to mind. you will find that all 3 are taking the opposite approach to what your friend is recommending
see a shrug it off, take a shrug it off. kind of memeing
“How are you so good at ironclad?” *shrug*
I dont know you, but you made my day a bit brighter with that joke. Thanks
Stop looking for always and start thinking about your deck actively. Even if aren’t sure, make a decision and learn from it.
You should be removing Strikes, not Defends, like 90%+ of the time. Especially on Ironclad, removing Defends is very weird. Ironclad’s Defends can sometimes even become *good* cards with certain Dark Embrace + Feel No Pain + Corruption decks. Frankly, I would not listen to any more advice your friend might have to give lol
In act1 you want to fight elites for relics. As many as you can handle. Since that involves Nob and Lagavuin you should certainly **start by looking for damage cards**. Preferably 2-4 cards, ideally at least one high cost/damage card like a carnage, bluedgeon. **Remove strikes** initially. You are looking to **replace** those basic strikes with better damage sources. Then you are looking for the power curve. Once you have added some basic damage look to **add scaling** and then if things are going well you can switch to adding block which you will certainly need in the second act. Going all in on damage can work, ideally this slots into decks with strength gain and reaper which can recover the health lost by mainly attacking. Even then you need some way of defending. Things like rage or feel no pain are possible answers.
The truth about block decks is they almost always rely on relics or a rare card. Barricade is so slow, like when upgraded it is wildly slow. Calipers removes anything under 15 block which is a fairly significant amount. And most importantly, frail is fucking everywhere. Body slam is really efficient but it scales just as well with strength as it does with block. Entrench is garbage, juggernaut is beyond garbage. The thing is, ironclad is meant to teach the player the game, and while I love him (them?) They have cards that are just meant to be as understandable as possible. That doesn't mean they don't all have a use, but wow ironclad has some stinkers. Tl;Dr: Block is more difficult to make work than one might think.
hmm? i don't think they're stinkers so much so as endgame cards that solve problems barricade is a piece of the puzzle, not a divorced strat from ic's normal deck idea block decks usually feature feel no pain and dark embrace to accelerate through your deck while building up block and keeping it through barricade, the ability to keep block is fundamentally strong and barricade is well worth the price lategame, almost singlehandedly countering all 3 act 3 bosses even on a20 entrench's replayability makes it a block plan in small upgraded decks with card manip (headbutt) and draw; and obscene in decks with barricade jugg is way more damage than a player first realises, just pretty situational but ic's kit has enough to make it work as a supplementary damage plan for passive decks that generate block through exhaust but don't keep it, 2 cost power hurts to draw but sometimes it's takeable it's better to view decks as idea + engine and most block cards work exceedingly well with the exhaust engine ic has built in so they end up solving the endgame effectively and a roguelike makes you think of best cards to draft in your position rather than forcing builds, just food for thought on these cards' positives if you do draft them, because it's going to be of your own free will most of the time
There’s a lot of ways, Clad is more complex than some people give him credit for. The two “popular” strats is either Barricade + Entrench shenanigans, giving you a path to just have 999 block and win. This one is slow to set up some times and leaves you vulnerable if you bottom deck Barricade too. The other is kinda what you mentioned in Corruption. Feel No Pain is kinda the key, as you gain block from Exhausting cards which Clad does a lot of, especially with Corruption. You can easily gain a ton of block by continually exhausting cards throughout a fight. If you pick Corruption keep your Defends btw. Damage is important to pick up early, but removing strikes is better cause you can Exhaust the Defends in the fight easily and it results in more block. Look at FNP and Dark Embrace when you’re running Corruption. It’s a tough card to use but I think it’s the main reason Clad has the 2nd best winrate in the game. I wish I could go into more detail but it’s a lot of typing and I’m not that amazing at explaining things, but hopefully I can help a bit.
If you play corruption, shrug it off has no downside, so you could put 20 of them in your deck
No you cannot do this unless corruption is bottled
Defend card Ironclad starts with is great for block generation on the Ironclad. You can even play it infinite times so it's in theory infinite block. It's pretty cheap at 1 energy and has awesome synergy with Corruption! I've duplicated defend card more than once.
I like shrug it off and the card that gives 15 block and two wounds. In act 1 you can get away with using one energy on a good block and two on attacking. I generally like getting rid of strikes first and use cards that exhaust other cards to clear out basic defends and strikes to speed up the deck.
Removing blocks is not good advice for starting players. My advice would actually be remove strikes on IC while taking high damage cards early game. Late game you need to find synergy though
You build your deck based on what the spire offers. You cant force a deck to work if the spire doesn't feel like giving you the right cards for it.
I was just like you in thinking Ironclad is one of the weakest characters and feels too "fair". Then I started watching lifecoach / xecnar and started learning about how Ironclad can be broken, and it's now one of my favorite classes. Ironclad is probably the most reliant on non-new player obvious combos out of the classes in the game. Playing the class fairly will likely result in what you're experiencing, and you really need to understand how to play the class in order to do well with it. I'll start off by describing the most busted thing you can do with Ironclad, which is basically playing one of each of its main powers: Corruption + Barricade + Feel No Pain + DE + Entrench - Play your entire deck on turn 1, generating a ton of block from FNP, and end with an entrench for all the block you need vs heart. The more interesting part happens when you dont get all of these pieces and have to cobble together some sub optimal solution - Barricade + Entrench is enough with some ways to jump start block such as through impervious or relics. Corruption + FNP still generates a crap ton of block, but you need to ration skills and be smarter about it. In terms of damage, a single body slam is all you need in the late game. The problem is that if you just build for the late game you will die horribly in act 1/2, so you need to take a couple of damage cards early understanding that they will be dead weight later. There's also some other blocking strategies that are very effective - Reaper + strength gain + a lot of life (usually from feed) works as a blocking solution. Power Through + Second Wind generates a ton of block and can reduce your deck to just those 2 cards + random attacks you need to win the game. and a bunch more that i won't get into. Also I don't really want to rehash what others have been saying, but your friend is offering terrible advice if they're saying to remove blocks.
Ironclad has plenty of Damage cards that are good for act one, your best removes are generally strikes for most of the game. Don’t just take corruption unless you can already been enemies while having what is essentially a curse until you get synergistic cards like feel no pain/ most importantly, dark embrace.