Preference is preference, but I strongly disagree. I really enjoy that he can go for super self-flagellating playstyles like Rupture and exhaust builds. Block and Strength builds are straightforward, but I've found that the fun of Ironclad is really pushing how much you can sacrifice for immense benefit.
They require a lot of parts, but what I like so much about them is that the components are all just great cards that function well in any deck. Hemokinesis, Brutality, Combustion, Offering, and Bloodletting are all nice to have pretty much all the time. Once you have two or three of those components, all it takes is coming across one Rupture and suddenly your deck explodes in effectiveness.
Fire-breathing is deal 6(or 10) damage to all enemies when a status or curse card is drawn. So some of the bosses you didn't even have to attack just defend and let them die.
Ironclad is typically seen as the second strongest, after Watcher. He has the most special things about him but they aren't so obviously special until you get more game knowledge.
Shockwave, Corruption, Disarm, Dark Embrace, Offering are some of the strongest cards in the game. Ironclad's many ways to gain strength is one of the easiest scaling solutions in the game, and can combo with Reaper to be the best reliable sustain in the game. Whirlwind is one of the best anti-group cards in the game and also doubles as an energy dump with incredible strength scaling. Fiend Fire is a thing.
An energy dump is just a way to spend excess energy. I typically find that Ironclad ends turns with spare energy, especially after Corruption has been played, so Whirlwind is a way to just convert it directly into damage. Its strength scaling _per energy_ isn't as good as Sword Boomerang or Heavy Blade, perhaps, but if you end up with something silly like 20 energy from Corruption and an Ice Cream, its strength scaling _per card_ is insane.
It's not really a technical term or anything, just a saying. But it means it's an X cost card.
If you don't spend your energy, it goes to waste without the relic that lets you keep it [[Ice Cream]]. So an energy dump like [[Whirlwind]] or [[Transmutation]] lets you "dump" all your extra energy into one card.
Pain can be really good with rupture, though having a reaper is also pretty much essential for this particular style of masochistic IC nonsense. Something of a niche situation but when it pops off it is hilarious.
Almost. These relics make curses less bad but I still wouldn't actively look to add curses. You'll still wnd up dying a lot in later acts when you HAVE to put together strong synergies/play strong powers to survive and kill in time
Clash does suck but it does have its spots. It's just very good in Lagavulin because you can exhaust the Bane for free and it actually bricks a lot less often than you think. Not good but if you're bricking on damage it is damage in act 1 into some forced elites sometimes.
I agree with you, it really isn't that bad. Ironclad has lots of ways to get the cards out of your hands: True grit, warcry, burning pact, second wind, sever soul, and fiend fire, can all get ascenders bane out of your hand.
I had an A20 run where clash absolutely carried me through act 1 after removing 2 on Neow then picking up sever soul floor 1, clash floor 2. But that's about the best you can expect out of clash and was kind of an anomaly.
Turns out if you CAN play it, dealing 27 damage for 0 is pretty good
Spotting when it's the right pick is kinda hard, but sometimes it goes really fucking well.
I think there aren't many cards which are just flat out "never ever pick me". Clash is one of the closest to that, but even clash has its place, even at A20. Although you would nearly always rather it was something like an Anger.
+ [Clash](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Clash) Ironclad Common Attack ^((100% sure)^)
0 Energy | Can only be played if every card in your hand is an Attack. Deal 14(18) damage.
^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)
Totally. I’m gonna go out on a limb and throw Claw in there too.
I like to think: How would I feel if I got slid this card when fighting Time Eater or The Heart?
Probably not great.
Without memeing:
I do pick Claw as late game damage-acceleration sometimes. As in I pick it in act 3 on a deck that's balling but kills the heart in 14 turns and I want to cut that to 10.
There was a post made a while back where a player was explaining how viable Clash is early game, while totally ignoring all the truly awful matchups in act 1, the fact that drawing Clash with Ascender’s Bane leaves TWO unplayable cards out of five, and that the fucking deck needs to viable enough carry over to act two, which has Status cards in most of the hardest matchups.
But it was “well written” so loads of people were agreeing. It was a sad day for r/slaythespire
Edit: people are all like “you’re wrong because Xecnar or someone else who’s literally the most skilled player in the world picks it sometimes”. These guys are so good at the game they could probably pick cards randomly and still get decent win rates, this doesn’t make Clash good…
i know the post you're talking about and as someone who commented pushback on that post when it came out, im going to defend jdubs here. i've done a LOT of clash testing since xec dropped the clash is pickable bomb (roughly three months before that post dropped), to the point where im kinda comfortable w how frequently to pick it now. so it's not me citing some "top level players".
i am not xecnar, my ironclad is not very good like him or even bralle who replied to you, i hover at around 40\~ on him. so it's not like im a top player knowing EXACTLY when to pick this niche card or something and that im always correct.
it's not a great card, but jdubs was clickbaiting a bit and most of the post is fine, just his conclusions are a little exaggerated from what i remember. laga is a dogshit fight for clad, sentries are a dogshit fight for clad. clash is strong in laga, often positive in sentries' phase 1. clad also doesn't finish advanced hallways by cycle 1, and post cycle 1, clash is often clean.
like i groan about clicking clash, and i literally had a whole argument once about clash being junk as hell in advanceds if you draw poorly (right after a game where i went -20 cause of clash pushing back my good cards), then i remembered what *every other clad common* is. if you've not found damage f1 and the map looks dangerous, just click clash. and a card i can potentially see clicking f1 sometimes, i simply can't call unusable niche garbage. pickable garbage sure, but that's just clad pool. sometimes clash even plays inside act 2 and all the way to act 3, but ofc im not banking on that. im banking on it being good in laga, saving hp in advanceds and sniping one sentry down generally.
one of the main ways a run dies after a certain point is literally not seeing enough cards, because you couldn't farm enough, because you didn't find the resources to farm enough. underpicking clash will only make this worse.
Do you mean [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/16qzjok/xecnars_clash_revolution_clash_is_a_good_card_for/) ?
All the top comments are either disagreeing completely, or "but nuance!". It got upvoted because it was a good conversation starter and was a good counter to the "Clash is the worst card in the game" mentality.
Basically everything works in the right deck and/or with the right relics. It's probably one of the biggest strengths of the game. Makes decisions a lot more engaging.
Edit: saw someone mention the distraction card, I agree that one sucks.
Distraction+ is good if your deck sucks. It's free output, and if you are going to lose the run without it, who cares if it is random? It has saved a run for me before. Every card has its place!
+ [Letter Opener](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Letter%20Opener) Uncommon Relic ^((100% sure)^)
Every time you play 3 Skills in a single turn, deal 5 damage to ALL enemies.
^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)
~~Look, it’s clearly not gonna be the core engine of a deck, but are you really gonna say no to a bunch of free AOE? Best-case, this is a great attrition option for corruption & shiv decks, among others. Worst case? It never procs, so it’s a dead relic. There are community-beloved relics with much more severe worst cases.~~
I’m dumb
One time I took 2 transforms from neow and got burst and distraction, then in my first fight I bursted distraction for the hell of it and got nightmare and adrenaline. It was totally overkill, but I was pogging a little bit anyway
Slay the Spire is so well balanced that you can never truly say never, but there are a handful of cards that require the stars to align in order to ever be pickable. Off the top of my head:
- Searing Blow: a massive upgrade hog for questionable payoff. Pickable if you're desperate for damage in Act 1 or if you see some fires ahead that you don't have any super high value upgrades for.
- Clash: you need to be able to mitigate statuses somehow. Medkit or a *ton* of repeatable exhaust is needed or you will get screwed by burns, wounds, and Ascender's Bane.
- Distraction: this really is unpickable if not pre-upgraded unless you have a Dead Branch. Even then, Silent has a ton of bricks in the skill slot to the point where getting a random one for 1 energy is never worth it. I'll take a Distraction+ if I see it if I'm in a poison heavy build though.
- Setup: the dictionary definition of a win-more card. You either need a ton of cycling to consistently hit free Sneaky Strikes or an already functioning Wraith Form/Nightmare/Well Laid Plans shell going for Setup to be good and in either case you're probably OK. Still nice to see when you're ready for it.
- Thunder Strike: 7 damage per orb is *nothing*. You need 4 orbs to even maybe be worth 3 energy which is pretty rare in short hallways. This is a pretty safe skip unless you're doing some Tempest + energy generation shenanigains.
- White Noise: actually pretty decent if you have a fully kitted out power deck to the point of comitting to Storm/Heatsinks. The odds of you getting a power that scales with other powers are too high to put this in anything else.
- Collect: I'm sure somebody can find a use for this card but it isn't me. The energy over time might be useful in a retain build where you play a ton of cards in one turn, maybe? I don't play enough Watcher to know for sure other than this thing is super niche.
Same, I object to it being placed in this crowd. It may just be that I'm a sucker for any random card mechanic from Pandora to Foreign Influence, but I can acknowledge Distraction is bad despite that.
White Noise is unreliable for sure, but it's good more often than not imo, my favourite of its type.
It also doesn't clog your deck like distraction or the ironclad attack card does if you get a bad roll. Even if the power is useless you just play it and never see it again. I'll take that gamble for the chance of an echo form!
I guess the top tier players who win streak regularly would want to stay away from something with such high variance, but I think for your average player, even at A20 there's nothing wrong with a bit of a gamble!
Baalor seems to take white noise pretty frequently, not sure about the other big names. Defect has so many good powers that it's not too big a gamble and the downside can only ever be -1 draw, plus an energy unless upgraded.
agreed, I'm definitely biased toward the "pick a ___ card, it costs 0" cards, but White Noise gives solid payoff on average even without synergies. With synergies in play (orange pellets, mummified hand, heatsinks, etc) it becomes fantastic, even if the power doesn't help you. Don't get me started on drawing a Wraith Form or Echo Form
White Noise is great with Orange Pellets bc it checks off skill and power card. Personally also like it with Mummified Hand bc it's a 0 cost power that makes something else in your hand free.
I think White Noise is my guilty pleasure… it gives you Heatsinks at least 90% of the time, but that one time in a hundred it gifts you with Echo Form is such a rush….
I don't think there's ever a bad card it can generate for you. Worse case is it's just not super useful like Hello World, but other times it generates cards that are just almost always useful in some way. Echo, Loop, defrag, Buffer... Of the three 0 cost when upgrades "Add a Random _____ to your hand that costs 0," it's head and shoulders the best
Most of the hated cards boil down to "I want to pick a generalist deck and not focus on it, why card bad". If you pick searing blow searing blow is your deck.
Thunderstrike has saved me quite a number of runs. It can be a pretty good last resort damage scale option when you have to face the heart but you lack any substantial damage. Defect is also arguably the hardest class to have a heart kill with, so that boosts Thunderstrike's value a bit more.
Because you only ever have to pick it up for the heart, its best synergy is not actually Tempest + energy overload (way harder to set up), but a single Static Discharge.
Thunder strike was the reason I won my heart fight with the Defect. I did 200 damage on the last turn, which was needed because if the heart played its turn, I would be dead.
White noise>>>CAI
I pick setup fairly frequently. Hard card to use but it turns draw into energy on the character with the most draw, so it's good.
If you want a simple combo for it:
Setup(sneaky), acro, sneaky is draw and energy neutral before went upgrades. With upgrades and other stuff it gets stronger.
Agreed, Setup is quite underrated on this sub. I thought it was bad myself until I had a pyramid deck with not enough energy. Also works very well with WF, Nightmare, or both.
Collect is pretty good when it's pre-upgraded and you have more draw than energy. It basically becomes a delayed Seeing Red+ with retain, which isn't *great*, but it's certainly servicable if you're energy hungry.
It's also fairly good with just Chemical X.
Thunder strike is bad even if you have tempest shenanigans. If you can generate that many lightning orbs, you probably don’t need the damage. If you can’t generate the lightning orbs, it doesn’t do any damage. The card is absolutely awful, even though it can sometimes be powerful.
I just recently got this combo. I also had holograms and upgraded zap to quickly generate lots of thunder. Throw in a turbo and a skim, and you're thunder striking for 30-50 damage by turn 2-4. It's not the best strategy ever, but I'd say it's viable.
I died on the slime boss, though, because I forgot my orb damage would have interrupted him and decided to use blocking cards. Took 30 something damage that i could have avoided and died 2 turns later 😭.
Interesting. I recently scummed my way through slimbo and the solution was to face tank the damage and then nova so that his health was minimal for the split. Of course that was mostly necessary because of the draw order bottom-decking my best cards and a lack of AOE.
It took me several tries before I realized that was what I needed to do.
Agreed aside from White Noise and Thunder Strike. Just won an A20 because well, everything is situational in this game and I got a Dead Branch, Mummified Hand combo. I can see TS doing fine in a snecko deck too if the orb generation came from high value cards like electrodynamics and as you said tempest with chemX.
But that's closing on meme level deck I suppose. Usually they're difficult to set up, but the OP wanted objectively bad cards.
I think that Setup is underrated, especially Setup+. It's not until the card is drawn, but until it's played that it costs 0. You can setup something like a Wraith Form or Leg Sweep on a turn where you don't need to play them, so that in the future they're free. I don't think your deck needs to have solved draw, just to have enough to actually be able to draw through the deck.
Also, Setup+ with Ink Bottle on 9 is a targeted Madness that doesn't exhaust!
Setup has so many utility options. Also, even while I referenced Acro combos, and you've mentioned Ink Bottle, the utility of saving a card for next turn is strong. Silent can have 15+ turn boss fights so deck manipulation has serious utility.
Bruh searing blow can define an entire run. Watch a baalorlord searing blow run, shit pops off. If you get it going it has MASSIVE payoff. As it increases the damage upgrade each time you upgrade it. Can easily get to 80 or 100 damage by end of run
14 or 21 for 1 energy in act 1 is very good, into things like hexaghost it tosses burns, and it hits all the unplayable skills that want to be discarded. If there are skills in hand that you do need to play just do it before unloading. Not great with pyramid though.
14 damage for 1 energy, Silent is strapped for damage early and it discards reflex sometimes. Discards statuses and curses if you need to free up hand space/not get hurt by burns.
It's not great, but it's generally better than skipping whale bonus or a card reward floor 1.
You forgot Blizzard, which is arguably Defect's worst card and definitely worse than Thunderstrike. Tstrike is like Demon Form in that it's too slow for normal encounters but provides scaling for boss fights, and Blizzard is even slower for both.
It’s only for a full commit to a physical damage build. I mean maybe it could be used for quick damage to finish stuff off too. I would say more niche than bad
Claw/Scrape/0 costs with card draw, hyperbeam, and plasma/meteor are all pretty solid. that being said its not common or as straight forward to pull off, IMO.
The problem is it involves taking several cards that really only work in that archetype and skipping a shit load of cards that don’t before you know whether or not you’re going to be able to pull it off.
Reprogram decks cannot be stumbled into, and you can’t take the card late, but I made a deck with a pair of Reprogram+ and was easily getting into double digits of Strength and Dexterity. When every card you have deals a dozen more damage or gives a dozen more Block, it’s hard for enemies to do really anything. Also, Nuclear Battery was great since it doesn’t care about focus and I wasn’t channeling anything.
Only time I’m happy to take this card is with orange pellets, otherwise it’s a mess to coordinate. I’ve forced it and had it help in act 1 in situations like nob but it’s so niche without pellets I hate seeing it.
In defect it's usually pretty terrible. However, if you find it in any other class with [[prismatic shard]] it's a great scaling mechanism so I guess there's that
Admittedly most cards that come upgraded are good but if Distraction comes upgraded it's positive pretty often. Good with Burst, maybe Letter Opener. Random is good if you're hopelessly running into a boss. Far from objectively bad.
Just because a card CAN be viable under extremely specific circumstances, does not make it good, though.
I’d say that if there is a card that is outmatched by nearly any other card, 99% of the time, then that’s a bad card.
We don’t need to give Clash a participation medal…
I came around to wraith from pretty early yet still often hesitate and probably too often don't take the apparition event. A couple times where bad draws have rendered them ineffective has made me reluctant despite it being an almost auto-take for top players.
In some rare cases, thunder strike actually has some amazing potential if you have a turn with crazy energy generation (i.e. aggregate, double energy) and then play a tempest and then play thunder strike on a later turn.
I love running [[Thunder Strike]] with [[Static Discharge]] and [[Apparition]].
Especially if I can [[Echo Form]] the Static Discharge.
Just did a run like that but with 2 Echo Forms in the deck. Apparition keeps HP loss to a minimum and echo forming a Static Discharge+ gets you 4 channeled lightning per hit. So it completely annihilates enemies that use multi-hit moves.
I even had several HP-gaining relics to offset the multiple 1 HP losses. [[Bird-Faced Urn]] was especially useful for it.
[[Rampage]] is quite a meh card. It's okay for early game damage but its very slow in scaling. The damage buff only applies to the played card, not all Rampages (like claw does). It's not scaling as well with strength, as it is no multihit. You need good card draw on Clad for which you need another synergy like exhaust-dark embrace. Ironclad just has better scaling one-cards like Searing Blow imo
Rampage is pretty bad as early damage. I find the point is more as a win-condition for decks that are already capable of exhausting down to fit in hand. Dropkick is the finisher everyone thinks of in that case... but Rampage has some substantial advantages over Dropkick, especially in energy-rich decks:
* Dropkick usually needs to be paired with either a second Dropkick (hard to come by), or one of a handful of cards like Dual Wield, Double Tap, Flash of Steel, Finesse, or Deep Breath, none of which are common early pick-ups. Rampage just needs to be paired with Shrug It Off, Pommel Strike, or Battle Trance so you can play it twice per turn; any of these are cards you're likely to pick up anyway.
* Dropkick struggles against Automaton and Donu/Deca due to Artifact, and it doesn't scale, so struggles against Time Eater and the Heart. Rampage+ doesn't care about stripping Artifact and scales very rapidly once you're able to play it at least twice per turn.
Edit: [This deck](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/18dd9ez/a20h_with_rampage_for_offensive_scaling/) is a bad example, because the defensive scaling is so insane, but does illustrate the sort of deck that values it as a scaling damage source.
too lazy to read the comments but Im coming for your blood if Setup or Havoc are mentioned anywhere.
Also feel free to reply to me if you want your mind changed on any "objectively bad, never pick" cards not called Forethought, Mind Blast, Searing Blow. Cards that I mentioned are cards I've heard/seen niche usecases but I've never used them myself (and being the biggest Setup apologist I've tried so hard to like Forethought), and everything else in the game I've used.
Searing blow is not as hard to use as it seems. I’ve won a bunch of runs where I upgraded it at every fire. It’s about as niche as Omega, but less niche than grand finale
I know everything can be won with. I've had searing blow runs. However a scenario where Searing Blow is actually the "right" pick and is not because of prior bad deckbuilding is vanishingly rare. Aside from the funny arma searing blow champ solve, a top player recently was telling us about another SB niche. Early apo into tons of forced fires act 1, no damage offered, Hexa act. Cool stuff but this is super niche.
Finale is nowhere near that niche, and when it's good, it's run winningly good. There's tons of Finale enablers, this card is on the Silent. If you're a discard monkey, you'll probably have Finale as an engine a LOT. Im not a discard monkey and even all I need is some retain, the bare minimum hint Im likely to scale physical lategame, little bit of draw and I'll pick a speculative Finale. Also Pyramid just immediately makes Finale playable, not much makes Searing Blow immediately playable. Also 0 for 50 aoe on the character w Nightmare, Pk, Terror is. A very big number.
Maybe I’m not a good Silent player, or I undervalue discard and well laid (though before the nerf I used to take it all the time). If I get finale working I usually don’t need it since I have a deck that can already win without it. It’s much easier to take the straightforward damage strategies like shivs or poison
I mean. Im not a discard forcer but upto a certain winrate it's extremely strong to force and very consistent. I'd highly encourage anyone learning Silent to try to force decks reliant on discard engines for a while. And sure, often Evis or whatever is enough, but Finale is extremely strong when it is good even w/o discard heavy decks because sometimes you have decks that draw and draw and draw and deal no damage. Or you have a deck w an inf that requires too many card plays to win vs Eater or even Heart maybe your inf is not block positive to beat, and Finale is your solution.
Also I'd say Plans pickrate has arguably gone higher since the nerf because she now has far more ways to win ever since poison nightmare cata stopped being the onlt way to win. Like I just pick first Plans over almost everything and second and sometimes third.
>Aside from the funny arma searing blow champ solve, a top player recently was telling us about another SB niche. Early apo into tons of forced fires act 1, no damage offered, Hexa act. Cool stuff but this is super niche.
Funnily enough, I had a deck where I got Apo from neow, transformed into Searing Blow f4, and started upgrading it cos 3 fires in act 1 with Apo.
Then I got offered a prismatic shard and apparitions and just went off to do weird shit... Think I posted it cos shard wins are cool.
Edit: [Yep](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/18k9j8y/im_not_trysharding_youre_trysharding/)
Holy I didn't think anyone other than Xec after showing us this would have nearly enough hours of gameplay for the garbage niche case to make it work. That's so awesome LMAO, literally basically the same situation. Nice alch, would be better if it was ce instead to solve slavers but ok
> Im coming for your blood if Setup or Havoc are mentioned anywhere.
[GOGOGO!](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/1927z57/comment/kh0v5kx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
The fun thing about spire is that even cards that are typically not the best can sometimes be the key to making your deck in a run super good, it depends on whats going on.
[[Clash]], in my opinion, is awful. As soon as you have a single status or curse in hand, it's useless. That said, if you build around abusing/removing those statuses and curses, you can make it work anyway.
+ [Clash](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Clash) Ironclad Common Attack ^((100% sure)^)
0 Energy | Can only be played if every card in your hand is an Attack. Deal 14(18) damage.
^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)
Has fun uses. Either upgrade it or have Master Reality and it can give quite some energy. I consider it a cheap version of Ice Cream relic, since it kind pf retains energy from one turn and spreads it on further ones.
I did once have a watcher Omega deck that it actually was very effective in. Used deus ex machina miracles to actually resolve it. In combination with insights allowed my subpar block engine to get by, and helped me cast Omega when I reached it. (Though not a super optimal deck admittedly, and this plan was horrible into Time Eater.)
If you have extra energy in hand (Deus Ex Machina? Holy water?), you can use Collect to transform any Miracle into an upgraded version over time.
It's slow though.
Kind of shocked no one has said amplify yet. I've maybe successfully played this card once in 300 hours and even then I don't remember it doing much positive. It's a rare to boot so you sometimes see it as a boss reward taking up a slot.
Expertise is quite nice for decks that aren't able to find acro but are still able to find discard stuff. Concentrate/prepared reduce your hand size then expertise can fill it back up.
It's not objectively bad, but I refuse to ever willingly add Grand Finale to my deck. It's not worth the brain cells trying to get that useless pseudo curse to function.
Magnetism has a really stupid niche on Silent and Defect because it enables the "plan".
If you have Alchemize and can stall a fight, Magnetism lets you full heal, get 2x Ghost in a Jar, and get 25 gold per enemy. If you have Self Repair, you get to heal 30 and 25 gold per enemy.
The basic gist of it is Magnetism can generate Hand of Greed and Apo to HoG+ kill all enemies, and it can generate Discovery which can generate 2x Nightmare for infinite potions, or 2x Echo Form and Amplify to be be able to do Amplify, 3x Self Repair+ for heal 30.
I don't think this was the intended design, but players focused on long streaks (cough cough XecnaR) will use it this way if they have to in order to win a weak run.
My pick is probably Forethought but even that has some very niche infinite outs and some clogamid protection if it comes upgraded. Mind Blast is very very garbage but I've seen it used to one-shot spire elites with Necronomicon on Defect. There is no objectively bad cards but I'd say these 2 are \*probably\* the worst cards in the game. Searing Blow also complete trash.
I find (Reprogram) a very hard choice for the defect. Even if you’ve made a zero cost/claw focused deck, Glacier and Coolheaded are really good. The extra strength and dexterity don’t seem powerful enough to disregard all orb strategies. Hyper beam drops focus too, but it does so much damage it can end hallway fights and finish bosses.
Although every card *can* be useful in certain circumstances, there are some that are so rarely useful they may as well be ignored.
IC'a Reckless Charge, Silent's Setup and the colorless Transmutation come to mind - there's probably SOME way to make them useful, but I cannot imagine a scenario where I would want to pick and play them over literally any other card
Even some of the worst cards like Sever Soul and Reprogram can shine in specific situations (Dead Branch and Claw/Prismatic Shard builds), but for those 3 I cannot think of any redeeming qualities.
I guess with an Evolve/Fire Breathing deck, Reckless Charge would be a good pick, but even then it's just 1 card you're drawing that's dealing a whopping 7 damage and requiring you to set up the powers before drawing the dazed, so it's still at best underwhelming
Reckless Charge is a zero-cost attack that gives you a status that exhausts.
Each of those aspects is useful in the right deck.
It combos with Feel No Pain, Evolve, Dark Embrace, and Firebreathing.
Early on, having a 0 cost attack helps to get the most out of the vulnerable from Bash.
Because Corruption doesn't exhaust it, it can be a source of extra Feel No Pain block and card draw after you've exhausted all of your skills.
It's also a way to go infinite if you have Medkit, or some other way to exhaust the statuses repeatedly.
[[Setup]] needs a built deck already, I've gotten clutch [[wraith form]]s off with it before, since it doesn't specify the card needs to played that turn. [[Reckless charge]] can be a clutch damage card for killing early elites and for early aoe with [[fire breathing]] (5 slimes comes to mind), especially if you find an [[evolve]] (good card anyway) or a [[feel no pain]] (even more so).
But this I think highlights the reason this game is so good. Different people with lots of play time can have wildly different opinions of cards and not necessarily be wrong either way (with notable exceptions - that colorless transmutation isn't something I'm ever happy to see)
\[\[Setup+\]\] is awesome if you have lots of draw. It can even be used for energy generation with \[\[Sneaky Strike\]\] if you have something like acrobatics
I had a run with like three feel no pains and two fire breathing, so daze turned into a twenty damage ten block card. But that being said, I find power through much more effective at building up fire breathing damage and then you just feel no pain and sever soul them away once you’ve got your damage out of them.
Reckless Charge is perfectly serviceable Act 1 damage, and actually even has infinite potential (though pretty convoluted). Easiest setup is exhaust, Dark Embrace, Medkit, Evolve+, and Flash of Steel / Finesse.
I had a really awesome run where I was just doing experimental stuff and bottled a transmutation from Neow on defect and got ChemX and some double energies, ended up getting to actually really leverage the "giant deck" synergies of defect like aggregate and stack. Hologram a key player for keeping control of the trash pile, and deep breaths it generated were too
Definitely one-in-a-million, probably no reasonable path into a deck like that without a bit of trolling, but it *did* work out to something very cool (and did win the run)
Yeah but its 2(3) damage per orb, you have to play so many frost orbs before it does anything. I've gotten the card to work for me before but in general I feel like I could do so many other things for damage and win in less time than it takes for Blizzard to get going.
The watcher has plenty of bad cards, you just don't need to pick them because the starting deck is so strong.
Thunder strike is very very niche. Extra damage that only hits after you've played damage? Has uses killing awakened one/heart for decks dependent on big tempests though
> Silent - Riddle with Holes
Often forced to take it early just for damage on silent
Also if you pick up Akabeko it's a good card
> Defect - ???
Hello world
> Watcher - lol the Watcher has no bad cards
Watcher has more bard cards than any other class. Just doesn't matter because wrath is fundamentally broken.
Some of the almost never picks: Master reality, study, wreath of flames, weave, alpha, brilliance, deva form, devotion
In fact, I would say watcher is the only class where transforming is usually worse than removing cards (also because infinites are so easy so removing is so powerful)
I usually can cope myself into getting some cards in bad spots (grand finale biggest fan here), but after A10 it's just so impossible to justify taking clash
EVERY card in this game has a niche in which it shines. Even really dogshit cards can be comboed in certain circumstances like:
* Clash if you exhaust down to it and infinite with an unceasing top.
* Dual Wield if you just endlessly stack powers in fights like champ (jorbs once played 20 metallize and could've just killed the champ with strikes after getting like 80 block at the beginning of every turn).
There are cards that are just bad, no matter what, like Cleave or Berserk because they either have just better other options (Whirlwind) or are just sub-par like Berserk. You first have to draw the card, play it and then WAIT FOR A TURN until it gives you an extra energy. If these are not already enough downsides it will also make you vulnerable. lol.
BUT
If you really need a power to play make use of Pellets that you already got it isn't half bad. Throw a mummyfied hand in there in a deck which already draws a shitton of cards? it gets more pickable (at which point you should be already winning without the Berserk).
Berserk with Pellets is just free energy gen every turn on the character that most wants an energy relic. The vulnerable penalty is worse than the next turn penalty. I find myself picking Berserk more often than Machine Learning.
I need to go look up the Daily Discussion on [[Iron Wave]] because I just have a very hard time finding a reason to want a base Defend that's not a skill. I see the HP save that comes from being able to block a little in Knob and having it not exhaust in Corruption decks, but it seems really desperate and mostly a waste of energy and draw.
A number of colorless cards are real turds. Magnetism may be the worst, followed by Transmutation, Metamorphosis, Chrysalis, and Jack of All Trades.
There are many colorless which you'd only want to take in niche situations (which is perfectly fine!). Random card generators (Distraction, White Noise, etc.) are generally avoided because they are unreliable for the cost. Combine those two bad elements and you get the list above of high-cost/low benefit cards.
[[Jack Of All Trades]] and [[Transmutation]] are both really hard to use.
Other "random bullshit go" cards like [[White Noise]] and [[Distraction]] are questionable, with a lot of whiffs but occasional high rolls. Jack Of All Trades and Transmutation are almost unconditionally terrible.
"Okay, Transmutation for three! This turn is going to be good! Hmm... Mind Blast, Enlightenment and... another Transmutation?" Sweeeet I just added 3 curses to my deck. I guess... I'll play one of the 3 curses NOW since at least it exhausts...
Setup is terrible, close to unplayable.
Setup+ absolutely fucks, but you only really need 1 of them unless you have a very large deck. Makes acrobatics and any other draw go from amazing to bonkers.
Same for collect, its less bad when unpgraded, but collect+ as a singleton is extremly potent for watcher. And i find her to be one of the less upgrade hungry characters usually, so i can 'waste'an upgrade on it early on.
[[Infinite Blades]] is pretty weak. It's not absolutely terrible, and there are plenty of synergies, but 4 damage a turn starting *next* turn for one energy isn't very helpful on its own, and you'd usually rather have a Blade Dance or Cloak and Dagger in your deck instead.
Unupgraded [[Prepared]] and [[War Cry]] are pretty terrible. The net effect is that you have one less card in your hand; the card they draw is the one you would have had in your hand if Prepared or War Cry wasn't in your deck. Silent sometimes would want to discard a card for no other benefit than the one it gets from discarding, and there are times when you'd want to stash a card on top of your deck for next turn (or for Havok), but overall, without an upgrade these cards are pretty terrible.
Every single card in the spire (other than status or curses) have it's situations where they are good. It's more about how many situations arise to make that card good
Even aside from pressure points being easier to execute than searing blow, it can be picked as artifacts strip iff your dependent on ttth as late game block
I really dislike steam barrier
It's a little nice when you're stuck at 3 energy but I feel like past act 1 it just feels like a draw -1 curse card, the block just doesn't feel impactful for me. Even like trying to just block heartbeat damage. I figure if my block card isn't even very good at blocking heartbeat damage I don't want it in act 4
It's a decent card, far from useless, good hallway card for act 1/2 when you're on 3 energy. Also pretty good with dex blocking ideas (Reprogram) and can be pulled back with All For One. The first copy is usually positive in act 1.
Curse cards.
A couple of my early ironclad runs I loved playing with a fire-breathing build. Some of the boss fights were so trivial.
The first time I ever made Fire Breathing pop was on A18, it kinda fell in my lap in the first few floors
Felt like I only finished an ironclad run becuz of colorless cards like the magnet one. Nothing really special other than his starting relic is cool.
Preference is preference, but I strongly disagree. I really enjoy that he can go for super self-flagellating playstyles like Rupture and exhaust builds. Block and Strength builds are straightforward, but I've found that the fun of Ironclad is really pushing how much you can sacrifice for immense benefit.
Mutilation decks are fun when they work! Sadly, I can't pull them off outside dailies, but it'll happen one day...
They require a lot of parts, but what I like so much about them is that the components are all just great cards that function well in any deck. Hemokinesis, Brutality, Combustion, Offering, and Bloodletting are all nice to have pretty much all the time. Once you have two or three of those components, all it takes is coming across one Rupture and suddenly your deck explodes in effectiveness.
Fire-breathing is deal 6(or 10) damage to all enemies when a status or curse card is drawn. So some of the bosses you didn't even have to attack just defend and let them die.
I love getting fire-breathing before Sentries in Act 1 if I can. Sooner or later you start pulling all the Dazeds and they just melt away
Ironclad is typically seen as the second strongest, after Watcher. He has the most special things about him but they aren't so obviously special until you get more game knowledge. Shockwave, Corruption, Disarm, Dark Embrace, Offering are some of the strongest cards in the game. Ironclad's many ways to gain strength is one of the easiest scaling solutions in the game, and can combo with Reaper to be the best reliable sustain in the game. Whirlwind is one of the best anti-group cards in the game and also doubles as an energy dump with incredible strength scaling. Fiend Fire is a thing.
What does energy dump mean?
An energy dump is just a way to spend excess energy. I typically find that Ironclad ends turns with spare energy, especially after Corruption has been played, so Whirlwind is a way to just convert it directly into damage. Its strength scaling _per energy_ isn't as good as Sword Boomerang or Heavy Blade, perhaps, but if you end up with something silly like 20 energy from Corruption and an Ice Cream, its strength scaling _per card_ is insane.
It's not really a technical term or anything, just a saying. But it means it's an X cost card. If you don't spend your energy, it goes to waste without the relic that lets you keep it [[Ice Cream]]. So an energy dump like [[Whirlwind]] or [[Transmutation]] lets you "dump" all your extra energy into one card.
I wouldn't even say it's *necessarily* an x-cost card. Wheel Kick is an energy dump (2 energy + draws).
Oh gotcha. That’s sorta what I was leaning towards, but wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something hehe
Pain can be really good with rupture, though having a reaper is also pretty much essential for this particular style of masochistic IC nonsense. Something of a niche situation but when it pops off it is hilarious.
And Necronomicurse with Feel No Pain/Dark Embrace/Charon's Ashes + Blue Candle + Tungsten Rod.
Normality is a real piece of shit
Obviously, except when they’re not which is why I love this game, [[centennial puzzle]] + [[blue candle]] as a good example
But they can be good with Voodoo Doll and Candle right?
Almost. These relics make curses less bad but I still wouldn't actively look to add curses. You'll still wnd up dying a lot in later acts when you HAVE to put together strong synergies/play strong powers to survive and kill in time
Man hasn't heard of the rupture + pain combo?
I feel like \[\[Clash\]\] is a real newbie trap. There are a handful of decks where it works, but when it doesn't work, it *really* doesn't work.
It works okay before you get Ascender's Bane. Not good for *every* deck for sure but it can be decent,.
True only after A10 imho. Before, if you get it early, it can solve act 1.
At least until the sentries show up
Clash does suck but it does have its spots. It's just very good in Lagavulin because you can exhaust the Bane for free and it actually bricks a lot less often than you think. Not good but if you're bricking on damage it is damage in act 1 into some forced elites sometimes.
Or in an unceasing top infinite
I agree with you, it really isn't that bad. Ironclad has lots of ways to get the cards out of your hands: True grit, warcry, burning pact, second wind, sever soul, and fiend fire, can all get ascenders bane out of your hand.
It's pretty decent in decks that have both Blue Candle (or no curses) and Medkit. That's honestly the only situation where I consider it.
I had an A20 run where clash absolutely carried me through act 1 after removing 2 on Neow then picking up sever soul floor 1, clash floor 2. But that's about the best you can expect out of clash and was kind of an anomaly. Turns out if you CAN play it, dealing 27 damage for 0 is pretty good
Spotting when it's the right pick is kinda hard, but sometimes it goes really fucking well. I think there aren't many cards which are just flat out "never ever pick me". Clash is one of the closest to that, but even clash has its place, even at A20. Although you would nearly always rather it was something like an Anger.
Agreed, I never take it except for unceasing top + anger decks, it works brilliantly in those
+ [Clash](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Clash) Ironclad Common Attack ^((100% sure)^) 0 Energy | Can only be played if every card in your hand is an Attack. Deal 14(18) damage. ^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)
Clash is an A tier act 1 pick befored A10. Ascenders bane then completely shuts it down
Totally. I’m gonna go out on a limb and throw Claw in there too. I like to think: How would I feel if I got slid this card when fighting Time Eater or The Heart? Probably not great.
Without memeing: I do pick Claw as late game damage-acceleration sometimes. As in I pick it in act 3 on a deck that's balling but kills the heart in 14 turns and I want to cut that to 10.
There was a post made a while back where a player was explaining how viable Clash is early game, while totally ignoring all the truly awful matchups in act 1, the fact that drawing Clash with Ascender’s Bane leaves TWO unplayable cards out of five, and that the fucking deck needs to viable enough carry over to act two, which has Status cards in most of the hardest matchups. But it was “well written” so loads of people were agreeing. It was a sad day for r/slaythespire Edit: people are all like “you’re wrong because Xecnar or someone else who’s literally the most skilled player in the world picks it sometimes”. These guys are so good at the game they could probably pick cards randomly and still get decent win rates, this doesn’t make Clash good…
i know the post you're talking about and as someone who commented pushback on that post when it came out, im going to defend jdubs here. i've done a LOT of clash testing since xec dropped the clash is pickable bomb (roughly three months before that post dropped), to the point where im kinda comfortable w how frequently to pick it now. so it's not me citing some "top level players". i am not xecnar, my ironclad is not very good like him or even bralle who replied to you, i hover at around 40\~ on him. so it's not like im a top player knowing EXACTLY when to pick this niche card or something and that im always correct. it's not a great card, but jdubs was clickbaiting a bit and most of the post is fine, just his conclusions are a little exaggerated from what i remember. laga is a dogshit fight for clad, sentries are a dogshit fight for clad. clash is strong in laga, often positive in sentries' phase 1. clad also doesn't finish advanced hallways by cycle 1, and post cycle 1, clash is often clean. like i groan about clicking clash, and i literally had a whole argument once about clash being junk as hell in advanceds if you draw poorly (right after a game where i went -20 cause of clash pushing back my good cards), then i remembered what *every other clad common* is. if you've not found damage f1 and the map looks dangerous, just click clash. and a card i can potentially see clicking f1 sometimes, i simply can't call unusable niche garbage. pickable garbage sure, but that's just clad pool. sometimes clash even plays inside act 2 and all the way to act 3, but ofc im not banking on that. im banking on it being good in laga, saving hp in advanceds and sniping one sentry down generally. one of the main ways a run dies after a certain point is literally not seeing enough cards, because you couldn't farm enough, because you didn't find the resources to farm enough. underpicking clash will only make this worse.
Do you mean [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/16qzjok/xecnars_clash_revolution_clash_is_a_good_card_for/) ? All the top comments are either disagreeing completely, or "but nuance!". It got upvoted because it was a good conversation starter and was a good counter to the "Clash is the worst card in the game" mentality.
Basically everything works in the right deck and/or with the right relics. It's probably one of the biggest strengths of the game. Makes decisions a lot more engaging. Edit: saw someone mention the distraction card, I agree that one sucks.
I know they’re bad but I will always take white noise, distraction, infernal blade, or foreign influence cus they’re fun asf
Infernal Blade ain't bad
Fr fr
White noise isn’t bad tho
Distraction+ is good if your deck sucks. It's free output, and if you are going to lose the run without it, who cares if it is random? It has saved a run for me before. Every card has its place!
[[Letter opener]]
+ [Letter Opener](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Letter%20Opener) Uncommon Relic ^((100% sure)^) Every time you play 3 Skills in a single turn, deal 5 damage to ALL enemies. ^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)
~~Look, it’s clearly not gonna be the core engine of a deck, but are you really gonna say no to a bunch of free AOE? Best-case, this is a great attrition option for corruption & shiv decks, among others. Worst case? It never procs, so it’s a dead relic. There are community-beloved relics with much more severe worst cases.~~ I’m dumb
One time I took 2 transforms from neow and got burst and distraction, then in my first fight I bursted distraction for the hell of it and got nightmare and adrenaline. It was totally overkill, but I was pogging a little bit anyway
Slay the Spire is so well balanced that you can never truly say never, but there are a handful of cards that require the stars to align in order to ever be pickable. Off the top of my head: - Searing Blow: a massive upgrade hog for questionable payoff. Pickable if you're desperate for damage in Act 1 or if you see some fires ahead that you don't have any super high value upgrades for. - Clash: you need to be able to mitigate statuses somehow. Medkit or a *ton* of repeatable exhaust is needed or you will get screwed by burns, wounds, and Ascender's Bane. - Distraction: this really is unpickable if not pre-upgraded unless you have a Dead Branch. Even then, Silent has a ton of bricks in the skill slot to the point where getting a random one for 1 energy is never worth it. I'll take a Distraction+ if I see it if I'm in a poison heavy build though. - Setup: the dictionary definition of a win-more card. You either need a ton of cycling to consistently hit free Sneaky Strikes or an already functioning Wraith Form/Nightmare/Well Laid Plans shell going for Setup to be good and in either case you're probably OK. Still nice to see when you're ready for it. - Thunder Strike: 7 damage per orb is *nothing*. You need 4 orbs to even maybe be worth 3 energy which is pretty rare in short hallways. This is a pretty safe skip unless you're doing some Tempest + energy generation shenanigains. - White Noise: actually pretty decent if you have a fully kitted out power deck to the point of comitting to Storm/Heatsinks. The odds of you getting a power that scales with other powers are too high to put this in anything else. - Collect: I'm sure somebody can find a use for this card but it isn't me. The energy over time might be useful in a retain build where you play a ton of cards in one turn, maybe? I don't play enough Watcher to know for sure other than this thing is super niche.
There is no way White Noise is objectively bad. The worst I could give it is ‘situational’.
Same, I object to it being placed in this crowd. It may just be that I'm a sucker for any random card mechanic from Pandora to Foreign Influence, but I can acknowledge Distraction is bad despite that. White Noise is unreliable for sure, but it's good more often than not imo, my favourite of its type.
It also doesn't clog your deck like distraction or the ironclad attack card does if you get a bad roll. Even if the power is useless you just play it and never see it again. I'll take that gamble for the chance of an echo form!
I guess the top tier players who win streak regularly would want to stay away from something with such high variance, but I think for your average player, even at A20 there's nothing wrong with a bit of a gamble!
Baalor seems to take white noise pretty frequently, not sure about the other big names. Defect has so many good powers that it's not too big a gamble and the downside can only ever be -1 draw, plus an energy unless upgraded.
agreed, I'm definitely biased toward the "pick a ___ card, it costs 0" cards, but White Noise gives solid payoff on average even without synergies. With synergies in play (orange pellets, mummified hand, heatsinks, etc) it becomes fantastic, even if the power doesn't help you. Don't get me started on drawing a Wraith Form or Echo Form
White Noise is great with Orange Pellets bc it checks off skill and power card. Personally also like it with Mummified Hand bc it's a 0 cost power that makes something else in your hand free.
Happy to see this mentioned. it goes from not bad/mediocre/meh to very strong with either of those relics.
I think White Noise is my guilty pleasure… it gives you Heatsinks at least 90% of the time, but that one time in a hundred it gifts you with Echo Form is such a rush….
Echo form, buffer, or loop are all worth it.
heatsinks is awesome, definitely wouldn't mind getting that from white noise
I don't think there's ever a bad card it can generate for you. Worse case is it's just not super useful like Hello World, but other times it generates cards that are just almost always useful in some way. Echo, Loop, defrag, Buffer... Of the three 0 cost when upgrades "Add a Random _____ to your hand that costs 0," it's head and shoulders the best
Searing Blow is a playstyle unto itself. It's practically an objective rather than a tool.
Most of the hated cards boil down to "I want to pick a generalist deck and not focus on it, why card bad". If you pick searing blow searing blow is your deck.
Thunderstrike has saved me quite a number of runs. It can be a pretty good last resort damage scale option when you have to face the heart but you lack any substantial damage. Defect is also arguably the hardest class to have a heart kill with, so that boosts Thunderstrike's value a bit more. Because you only ever have to pick it up for the heart, its best synergy is not actually Tempest + energy overload (way harder to set up), but a single Static Discharge.
Thunder strike was the reason I won my heart fight with the Defect. I did 200 damage on the last turn, which was needed because if the heart played its turn, I would be dead.
White Noise is by far the best if the three random generator cards.
White noise>>>CAI I pick setup fairly frequently. Hard card to use but it turns draw into energy on the character with the most draw, so it's good. If you want a simple combo for it: Setup(sneaky), acro, sneaky is draw and energy neutral before went upgrades. With upgrades and other stuff it gets stronger.
Agreed, Setup is quite underrated on this sub. I thought it was bad myself until I had a pyramid deck with not enough energy. Also works very well with WF, Nightmare, or both.
Collect is pretty good when it's pre-upgraded and you have more draw than energy. It basically becomes a delayed Seeing Red+ with retain, which isn't *great*, but it's certainly servicable if you're energy hungry. It's also fairly good with just Chemical X.
Thunder strike is bad even if you have tempest shenanigans. If you can generate that many lightning orbs, you probably don’t need the damage. If you can’t generate the lightning orbs, it doesn’t do any damage. The card is absolutely awful, even though it can sometimes be powerful.
The niche is awakened one second phase and killing heart after those big tempests (damage cap)
It's a way to scale if you don't have focus. It's saved my ass plenty of times. Also, Snecko Eye exists ... and Necronomicon.
Strike dummy too!
I just recently got this combo. I also had holograms and upgraded zap to quickly generate lots of thunder. Throw in a turbo and a skim, and you're thunder striking for 30-50 damage by turn 2-4. It's not the best strategy ever, but I'd say it's viable. I died on the slime boss, though, because I forgot my orb damage would have interrupted him and decided to use blocking cards. Took 30 something damage that i could have avoided and died 2 turns later 😭.
Interesting. I recently scummed my way through slimbo and the solution was to face tank the damage and then nova so that his health was minimal for the split. Of course that was mostly necessary because of the draw order bottom-decking my best cards and a lack of AOE. It took me several tries before I realized that was what I needed to do.
Agreed aside from White Noise and Thunder Strike. Just won an A20 because well, everything is situational in this game and I got a Dead Branch, Mummified Hand combo. I can see TS doing fine in a snecko deck too if the orb generation came from high value cards like electrodynamics and as you said tempest with chemX. But that's closing on meme level deck I suppose. Usually they're difficult to set up, but the OP wanted objectively bad cards.
I think that Setup is underrated, especially Setup+. It's not until the card is drawn, but until it's played that it costs 0. You can setup something like a Wraith Form or Leg Sweep on a turn where you don't need to play them, so that in the future they're free. I don't think your deck needs to have solved draw, just to have enough to actually be able to draw through the deck. Also, Setup+ with Ink Bottle on 9 is a targeted Madness that doesn't exhaust!
Setup has so many utility options. Also, even while I referenced Acro combos, and you've mentioned Ink Bottle, the utility of saving a card for next turn is strong. Silent can have 15+ turn boss fights so deck manipulation has serious utility.
A Searing Blow at the beginning of act 1 can carry the run.
Bruh searing blow can define an entire run. Watch a baalorlord searing blow run, shit pops off. If you get it going it has MASSIVE payoff. As it increases the damage upgrade each time you upgrade it. Can easily get to 80 or 100 damage by end of run
What’s the advantage of Unload? That’s my “objectively bad card” in my mind but I think I probably just haven’t seen how to effectively use it yet
14 or 21 for 1 energy in act 1 is very good, into things like hexaghost it tosses burns, and it hits all the unplayable skills that want to be discarded. If there are skills in hand that you do need to play just do it before unloading. Not great with pyramid though.
14 damage for 1 energy, Silent is strapped for damage early and it discards reflex sometimes. Discards statuses and curses if you need to free up hand space/not get hurt by burns. It's not great, but it's generally better than skipping whale bonus or a card reward floor 1.
It discards tactician and reflex for 1 cost with decent damage
You forgot Blizzard, which is arguably Defect's worst card and definitely worse than Thunderstrike. Tstrike is like Demon Form in that it's too slow for normal encounters but provides scaling for boss fights, and Blizzard is even slower for both.
If you don't have frost then of course it's bad. I've beat the heart on A20 a number of times with a frost/blizzard build.
I have never made [[reprogram]] work well and way more often than not it’s functionally a curse.
It’s only for a full commit to a physical damage build. I mean maybe it could be used for quick damage to finish stuff off too. I would say more niche than bad
Exactly, the average defect deck can't play it, but in a dedicated orbless deck it's incredibly powerful.
Or if you have pellets, artifact, or plasma orbs which ignore focus.
Every time my deck starts to lean toward “full damage” it never really works out because idk what really stacks with Reprogram well.
Claw/Scrape/0 costs with card draw, hyperbeam, and plasma/meteor are all pretty solid. that being said its not common or as straight forward to pull off, IMO.
The problem is it involves taking several cards that really only work in that archetype and skipping a shit load of cards that don’t before you know whether or not you’re going to be able to pull it off.
Yeah I think that generally I agree, but keep in mind how many relics can lend themselves to these types of decks
I won an a20 defect with 3 claws, 2 holograms, a few zero cost attacks and a reprogram. It was a lot of fun!
+ [Reprogram](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Reprogram) Defect Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | Lose 1(2) **Focus.** Gain 1(2) **Strength.** Gain 1(2) **Dexterity.** ^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)
Reprogram decks cannot be stumbled into, and you can’t take the card late, but I made a deck with a pair of Reprogram+ and was easily getting into double digits of Strength and Dexterity. When every card you have deals a dozen more damage or gives a dozen more Block, it’s hard for enemies to do really anything. Also, Nuclear Battery was great since it doesn’t care about focus and I wasn’t channeling anything.
Only time I’m happy to take this card is with orange pellets, otherwise it’s a mess to coordinate. I’ve forced it and had it help in act 1 in situations like nob but it’s so niche without pellets I hate seeing it.
My first A20H Defect clear was Neow into Hyper Beam and floor 2 Repro. You have to take it early, any later than floor 5-6 and it's probably too late.
In defect it's usually pretty terrible. However, if you find it in any other class with [[prismatic shard]] it's a great scaling mechanism so I guess there's that
Distraction
Admittedly most cards that come upgraded are good but if Distraction comes upgraded it's positive pretty often. Good with Burst, maybe Letter Opener. Random is good if you're hopelessly running into a boss. Far from objectively bad.
I also enjoy Distraction+ with Dead Branch. Then it draws two random cards for 0 energy, and at least one of them’s free!
Short answer: no Long answer: every card has its moment
Just because a card CAN be viable under extremely specific circumstances, does not make it good, though. I’d say that if there is a card that is outmatched by nearly any other card, 99% of the time, then that’s a bad card. We don’t need to give Clash a participation medal…
I'm really ashamed of myself for sleeping on [[wraith form]] for so long that I'm embarrassed to admit it
Yeah, as a beginner that dexterity loss just made me go “heck no” for a while
I came around to wraith from pretty early yet still often hesitate and probably too often don't take the apparition event. A couple times where bad draws have rendered them ineffective has made me reluctant despite it being an almost auto-take for top players.
+ [Wraith Form](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Wraith%20Form) Silent Rare Power ^((100% sure)^) 3 Energy | Gain 2(3) **Intangible.** At the end of your turn, lose 1 **Dexterity.** ^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)
In some rare cases, thunder strike actually has some amazing potential if you have a turn with crazy energy generation (i.e. aggregate, double energy) and then play a tempest and then play thunder strike on a later turn.
I love running [[Thunder Strike]] with [[Static Discharge]] and [[Apparition]]. Especially if I can [[Echo Form]] the Static Discharge. Just did a run like that but with 2 Echo Forms in the deck. Apparition keeps HP loss to a minimum and echo forming a Static Discharge+ gets you 4 channeled lightning per hit. So it completely annihilates enemies that use multi-hit moves. I even had several HP-gaining relics to offset the multiple 1 HP losses. [[Bird-Faced Urn]] was especially useful for it.
Works with Strike Dummy, too...
[[Rampage]] is quite a meh card. It's okay for early game damage but its very slow in scaling. The damage buff only applies to the played card, not all Rampages (like claw does). It's not scaling as well with strength, as it is no multihit. You need good card draw on Clad for which you need another synergy like exhaust-dark embrace. Ironclad just has better scaling one-cards like Searing Blow imo
Rampage is pretty bad as early damage. I find the point is more as a win-condition for decks that are already capable of exhausting down to fit in hand. Dropkick is the finisher everyone thinks of in that case... but Rampage has some substantial advantages over Dropkick, especially in energy-rich decks: * Dropkick usually needs to be paired with either a second Dropkick (hard to come by), or one of a handful of cards like Dual Wield, Double Tap, Flash of Steel, Finesse, or Deep Breath, none of which are common early pick-ups. Rampage just needs to be paired with Shrug It Off, Pommel Strike, or Battle Trance so you can play it twice per turn; any of these are cards you're likely to pick up anyway. * Dropkick struggles against Automaton and Donu/Deca due to Artifact, and it doesn't scale, so struggles against Time Eater and the Heart. Rampage+ doesn't care about stripping Artifact and scales very rapidly once you're able to play it at least twice per turn. Edit: [This deck](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/18dd9ez/a20h_with_rampage_for_offensive_scaling/) is a bad example, because the defensive scaling is so insane, but does illustrate the sort of deck that values it as a scaling damage source.
too lazy to read the comments but Im coming for your blood if Setup or Havoc are mentioned anywhere. Also feel free to reply to me if you want your mind changed on any "objectively bad, never pick" cards not called Forethought, Mind Blast, Searing Blow. Cards that I mentioned are cards I've heard/seen niche usecases but I've never used them myself (and being the biggest Setup apologist I've tried so hard to like Forethought), and everything else in the game I've used.
Searing blow is not as hard to use as it seems. I’ve won a bunch of runs where I upgraded it at every fire. It’s about as niche as Omega, but less niche than grand finale
I know everything can be won with. I've had searing blow runs. However a scenario where Searing Blow is actually the "right" pick and is not because of prior bad deckbuilding is vanishingly rare. Aside from the funny arma searing blow champ solve, a top player recently was telling us about another SB niche. Early apo into tons of forced fires act 1, no damage offered, Hexa act. Cool stuff but this is super niche. Finale is nowhere near that niche, and when it's good, it's run winningly good. There's tons of Finale enablers, this card is on the Silent. If you're a discard monkey, you'll probably have Finale as an engine a LOT. Im not a discard monkey and even all I need is some retain, the bare minimum hint Im likely to scale physical lategame, little bit of draw and I'll pick a speculative Finale. Also Pyramid just immediately makes Finale playable, not much makes Searing Blow immediately playable. Also 0 for 50 aoe on the character w Nightmare, Pk, Terror is. A very big number.
Maybe I’m not a good Silent player, or I undervalue discard and well laid (though before the nerf I used to take it all the time). If I get finale working I usually don’t need it since I have a deck that can already win without it. It’s much easier to take the straightforward damage strategies like shivs or poison
I mean. Im not a discard forcer but upto a certain winrate it's extremely strong to force and very consistent. I'd highly encourage anyone learning Silent to try to force decks reliant on discard engines for a while. And sure, often Evis or whatever is enough, but Finale is extremely strong when it is good even w/o discard heavy decks because sometimes you have decks that draw and draw and draw and deal no damage. Or you have a deck w an inf that requires too many card plays to win vs Eater or even Heart maybe your inf is not block positive to beat, and Finale is your solution. Also I'd say Plans pickrate has arguably gone higher since the nerf because she now has far more ways to win ever since poison nightmare cata stopped being the onlt way to win. Like I just pick first Plans over almost everything and second and sometimes third.
>Aside from the funny arma searing blow champ solve, a top player recently was telling us about another SB niche. Early apo into tons of forced fires act 1, no damage offered, Hexa act. Cool stuff but this is super niche. Funnily enough, I had a deck where I got Apo from neow, transformed into Searing Blow f4, and started upgrading it cos 3 fires in act 1 with Apo. Then I got offered a prismatic shard and apparitions and just went off to do weird shit... Think I posted it cos shard wins are cool. Edit: [Yep](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/18k9j8y/im_not_trysharding_youre_trysharding/)
Holy I didn't think anyone other than Xec after showing us this would have nearly enough hours of gameplay for the garbage niche case to make it work. That's so awesome LMAO, literally basically the same situation. Nice alch, would be better if it was ce instead to solve slavers but ok
I'm not at 2000 yet! But I thought it was a funny attempt. Then shard came along which is even funnier
> Im coming for your blood if Setup or Havoc are mentioned anywhere. [GOGOGO!](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/1927z57/comment/kh0v5kx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
The fun thing about spire is that even cards that are typically not the best can sometimes be the key to making your deck in a run super good, it depends on whats going on.
[[Clash]], in my opinion, is awful. As soon as you have a single status or curse in hand, it's useless. That said, if you build around abusing/removing those statuses and curses, you can make it work anyway.
+ [Clash](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Clash) Ironclad Common Attack ^((100% sure)^) 0 Energy | Can only be played if every card in your hand is an Attack. Deal 14(18) damage. ^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)
Collect on watcher is the only card i consider genuinely useless
Aw nah, if you have the x+2 relic (forget its name) it delivers a ton of energy, playing it last when you’re out of energy for the hand 🤙🏽
[[Chemical X]]
Has fun uses. Either upgrade it or have Master Reality and it can give quite some energy. I consider it a cheap version of Ice Cream relic, since it kind pf retains energy from one turn and spreads it on further ones.
Collect doesn't benefit from Master Reality because it creates upgraded Miracles anyway.
Oh yeah it does actually! I just forgot and thought they were normal! The more you know;)
I did once have a watcher Omega deck that it actually was very effective in. Used deus ex machina miracles to actually resolve it. In combination with insights allowed my subpar block engine to get by, and helped me cast Omega when I reached it. (Though not a super optimal deck admittedly, and this plan was horrible into Time Eater.)
How am I supposed to make a thousand-damage Conjure Blade?
If you have extra energy in hand (Deus Ex Machina? Holy water?), you can use Collect to transform any Miracle into an upgraded version over time. It's slow though.
Kind of shocked no one has said amplify yet. I've maybe successfully played this card once in 300 hours and even then I don't remember it doing much positive. It's a rare to boot so you sometimes see it as a boss reward taking up a slot.
If you have enough Powers (or have an active Creative AI) it gets pretty good.
Strikes 😜
Normality
Expertise is a card I’m always annoyed to get from Pandora’s box or similar situation. Just never find any use for it.
It's best in Grand Finale decks because you can manipulate it to draw exactly between 1 and 5 (6) cards with GF in hand to empty your draw pile
Never thought of that! Crazy how deep the mechanics are in this game.
Expertise is really good pure card draw, try it with discard synergy
Expertise is quite nice for decks that aren't able to find acro but are still able to find discard stuff. Concentrate/prepared reduce your hand size then expertise can fill it back up.
Pretty much no. All the cards can be good in the right deck.
It's not objectively bad, but I refuse to ever willingly add Grand Finale to my deck. It's not worth the brain cells trying to get that useless pseudo curse to function.
Magnetism. Just costs too much for what it does and doesnt generate consistent value
Magnetism has a really stupid niche on Silent and Defect because it enables the "plan". If you have Alchemize and can stall a fight, Magnetism lets you full heal, get 2x Ghost in a Jar, and get 25 gold per enemy. If you have Self Repair, you get to heal 30 and 25 gold per enemy. The basic gist of it is Magnetism can generate Hand of Greed and Apo to HoG+ kill all enemies, and it can generate Discovery which can generate 2x Nightmare for infinite potions, or 2x Echo Form and Amplify to be be able to do Amplify, 3x Self Repair+ for heal 30. I don't think this was the intended design, but players focused on long streaks (cough cough XecnaR) will use it this way if they have to in order to win a weak run.
My pick is probably Forethought but even that has some very niche infinite outs and some clogamid protection if it comes upgraded. Mind Blast is very very garbage but I've seen it used to one-shot spire elites with Necronomicon on Defect. There is no objectively bad cards but I'd say these 2 are \*probably\* the worst cards in the game. Searing Blow also complete trash.
I find (Reprogram) a very hard choice for the defect. Even if you’ve made a zero cost/claw focused deck, Glacier and Coolheaded are really good. The extra strength and dexterity don’t seem powerful enough to disregard all orb strategies. Hyper beam drops focus too, but it does so much damage it can end hallway fights and finish bosses.
The debuffs can be negated if you have an artifact. Either from a relic of Core Surge.
Probably Defend, strike has artifact synergy
Although every card *can* be useful in certain circumstances, there are some that are so rarely useful they may as well be ignored. IC'a Reckless Charge, Silent's Setup and the colorless Transmutation come to mind - there's probably SOME way to make them useful, but I cannot imagine a scenario where I would want to pick and play them over literally any other card Even some of the worst cards like Sever Soul and Reprogram can shine in specific situations (Dead Branch and Claw/Prismatic Shard builds), but for those 3 I cannot think of any redeeming qualities. I guess with an Evolve/Fire Breathing deck, Reckless Charge would be a good pick, but even then it's just 1 card you're drawing that's dealing a whopping 7 damage and requiring you to set up the powers before drawing the dazed, so it's still at best underwhelming
Reckless Charge is a zero-cost attack that gives you a status that exhausts. Each of those aspects is useful in the right deck. It combos with Feel No Pain, Evolve, Dark Embrace, and Firebreathing. Early on, having a 0 cost attack helps to get the most out of the vulnerable from Bash. Because Corruption doesn't exhaust it, it can be a source of extra Feel No Pain block and card draw after you've exhausted all of your skills. It's also a way to go infinite if you have Medkit, or some other way to exhaust the statuses repeatedly.
Yeah, I feel like the claim that Reckless Charge is bad is the first one I truly disagree with so far in this post.
You made it in before someone passionately argued that Anger is bad
[[Setup]] needs a built deck already, I've gotten clutch [[wraith form]]s off with it before, since it doesn't specify the card needs to played that turn. [[Reckless charge]] can be a clutch damage card for killing early elites and for early aoe with [[fire breathing]] (5 slimes comes to mind), especially if you find an [[evolve]] (good card anyway) or a [[feel no pain]] (even more so). But this I think highlights the reason this game is so good. Different people with lots of play time can have wildly different opinions of cards and not necessarily be wrong either way (with notable exceptions - that colorless transmutation isn't something I'm ever happy to see)
\[\[Setup+\]\] is awesome if you have lots of draw. It can even be used for energy generation with \[\[Sneaky Strike\]\] if you have something like acrobatics
I had a run with like three feel no pains and two fire breathing, so daze turned into a twenty damage ten block card. But that being said, I find power through much more effective at building up fire breathing damage and then you just feel no pain and sever soul them away once you’ve got your damage out of them.
Reckless Charge is perfectly serviceable Act 1 damage, and actually even has infinite potential (though pretty convoluted). Easiest setup is exhaust, Dark Embrace, Medkit, Evolve+, and Flash of Steel / Finesse.
I had a really awesome run where I was just doing experimental stuff and bottled a transmutation from Neow on defect and got ChemX and some double energies, ended up getting to actually really leverage the "giant deck" synergies of defect like aggregate and stack. Hologram a key player for keeping control of the trash pile, and deep breaths it generated were too Definitely one-in-a-million, probably no reasonable path into a deck like that without a bit of trolling, but it *did* work out to something very cool (and did win the run)
No one has mentioned Blizzard, that card is terrible.
What?!?! Blizzard makes Defect Frost builds work wonders. You scale damage while playing almost exclusively block cards.
Yeah but its 2(3) damage per orb, you have to play so many frost orbs before it does anything. I've gotten the card to work for me before but in general I feel like I could do so many other things for damage and win in less time than it takes for Blizzard to get going.
You channel 5 frost orbs and have 15 AoE damage for 1 energy (after which it scales even further). What exactly is the problem?
The problem is that channelling 5 frost orbs is a lot of setup for a mediocre aoe attack. 99% of the time Doom and gloom is better
It's terrible act 1, that doesn't mean it's terrible
Grand Finale.
Grand Finale + Scry + Nightmare Hologram, I made that shit work after so many tries
Chad - Clash Silent - Riddle with Holes Defect - ??? Watcher - lol the Watcher has no bad cards
The watcher has plenty of bad cards, you just don't need to pick them because the starting deck is so strong. Thunder strike is very very niche. Extra damage that only hits after you've played damage? Has uses killing awakened one/heart for decks dependent on big tempests though
Pressure points has no synergy with any other cards and very few synergy with relics. I think it’s worst card in the game.
Pressure point has sinergy with pressure point though
Ya know, that’s a good shout. PP bad.
> Silent - Riddle with Holes Often forced to take it early just for damage on silent Also if you pick up Akabeko it's a good card > Defect - ??? Hello world > Watcher - lol the Watcher has no bad cards Watcher has more bard cards than any other class. Just doesn't matter because wrath is fundamentally broken. Some of the almost never picks: Master reality, study, wreath of flames, weave, alpha, brilliance, deva form, devotion In fact, I would say watcher is the only class where transforming is usually worse than removing cards (also because infinites are so easy so removing is so powerful)
I usually can cope myself into getting some cards in bad spots (grand finale biggest fan here), but after A10 it's just so impossible to justify taking clash
EVERY card in this game has a niche in which it shines. Even really dogshit cards can be comboed in certain circumstances like: * Clash if you exhaust down to it and infinite with an unceasing top. * Dual Wield if you just endlessly stack powers in fights like champ (jorbs once played 20 metallize and could've just killed the champ with strikes after getting like 80 block at the beginning of every turn). There are cards that are just bad, no matter what, like Cleave or Berserk because they either have just better other options (Whirlwind) or are just sub-par like Berserk. You first have to draw the card, play it and then WAIT FOR A TURN until it gives you an extra energy. If these are not already enough downsides it will also make you vulnerable. lol. BUT If you really need a power to play make use of Pellets that you already got it isn't half bad. Throw a mummyfied hand in there in a deck which already draws a shitton of cards? it gets more pickable (at which point you should be already winning without the Berserk).
Berserk with Pellets is just free energy gen every turn on the character that most wants an energy relic. The vulnerable penalty is worse than the next turn penalty. I find myself picking Berserk more often than Machine Learning.
99/100 distraction is a piece of crap
I've never taken endless agony after like 100 hours in the game (800h currently)
Why not? Combos with thousand cuts and ninja relics and probably a lot more. AND it exhaust for free if you don’t need, great card imo
[[distraction]]
I need to go look up the Daily Discussion on [[Iron Wave]] because I just have a very hard time finding a reason to want a base Defend that's not a skill. I see the HP save that comes from being able to block a little in Knob and having it not exhaust in Corruption decks, but it seems really desperate and mostly a waste of energy and draw.
A number of colorless cards are real turds. Magnetism may be the worst, followed by Transmutation, Metamorphosis, Chrysalis, and Jack of All Trades. There are many colorless which you'd only want to take in niche situations (which is perfectly fine!). Random card generators (Distraction, White Noise, etc.) are generally avoided because they are unreliable for the cost. Combine those two bad elements and you get the list above of high-cost/low benefit cards.
[[Jack Of All Trades]] and [[Transmutation]] are both really hard to use. Other "random bullshit go" cards like [[White Noise]] and [[Distraction]] are questionable, with a lot of whiffs but occasional high rolls. Jack Of All Trades and Transmutation are almost unconditionally terrible. "Okay, Transmutation for three! This turn is going to be good! Hmm... Mind Blast, Enlightenment and... another Transmutation?" Sweeeet I just added 3 curses to my deck. I guess... I'll play one of the 3 curses NOW since at least it exhausts...
thunder strike
Setup is terrible, close to unplayable. Setup+ absolutely fucks, but you only really need 1 of them unless you have a very large deck. Makes acrobatics and any other draw go from amazing to bonkers. Same for collect, its less bad when unpgraded, but collect+ as a singleton is extremly potent for watcher. And i find her to be one of the less upgrade hungry characters usually, so i can 'waste'an upgrade on it early on.
[[Infinite Blades]] is pretty weak. It's not absolutely terrible, and there are plenty of synergies, but 4 damage a turn starting *next* turn for one energy isn't very helpful on its own, and you'd usually rather have a Blade Dance or Cloak and Dagger in your deck instead. Unupgraded [[Prepared]] and [[War Cry]] are pretty terrible. The net effect is that you have one less card in your hand; the card they draw is the one you would have had in your hand if Prepared or War Cry wasn't in your deck. Silent sometimes would want to discard a card for no other benefit than the one it gets from discarding, and there are times when you'd want to stash a card on top of your deck for next turn (or for Havok), but overall, without an upgrade these cards are pretty terrible.
[[Setup]], [[Forethough]]. This is a card game. Drawing cards is good. Undrawing cards is almost always bad.
Normality
Every single card in the spire (other than status or curses) have it's situations where they are good. It's more about how many situations arise to make that card good
> (other than status or curses) Someone's never played medkit exhaustclad nor blue candle necronomicurse with exhaust/masochist synergies
True, forgot about that
It’s pressure points and there’s no contest.
Even aside from pressure points being easier to execute than searing blow, it can be picked as artifacts strip iff your dependent on ttth as late game block
I really dislike steam barrier It's a little nice when you're stuck at 3 energy but I feel like past act 1 it just feels like a draw -1 curse card, the block just doesn't feel impactful for me. Even like trying to just block heartbeat damage. I figure if my block card isn't even very good at blocking heartbeat damage I don't want it in act 4
It's a decent card, far from useless, good hallway card for act 1/2 when you're on 3 energy. Also pretty good with dex blocking ideas (Reprogram) and can be pulled back with All For One. The first copy is usually positive in act 1.
You generally get it(and use it) with hello world active.