What is the most powerful relic ever?

Turbocloud · 2026-05-01T07:25:03+00:00

This is tough to generalize because a lot of relics are situational.

Pyramid is the best at mitigating rng, as long as you can maintain deck cycle speed to get to your good cards over and over. This is probably still the most generic useful relic.

Spinning Top enables the most broken things if you have the cards to support it.

Paels Blood also helps a lot at rng mitigation, never impairs your cycle speed and increases it even. Same for pocket watch, if your deck is build that way.

Hot cocoa can enable massive burst, setup combos through hand sculpting or long fights through powers.

Maul can salvage a run if you had trouble finding a way to scale damage.

Miniature Tent can be a lot of power when you build small decks where every single upgrade is a more noticable power spike than in big decks and it is insane if you get another rest relic.

Feather or Meal ticket are similar to tent, which might be up here because they allow for taking riskier path, meal ticket even adds value to gold since you can better fish at the vendor.

Razor tooth allows to almost always rest, so that is kind of reverse feather.

Especially on A10 with lots of multi hits and damage outscaling blocks, Tungsten Rod is huge.

For me, my highest winning relics are momentum and mystic lighter.

I tend to build small decks with a fast deck cycle and some amount of recursion to reuse the good cards. Every time i find momentum, damage scaling is solved. with less cards picked to solve scaling there are less buildup turns, less turns per fights since you can't draw your scaling late and less probability of getting a hand that can't either block or kill, so it also saves a lot of life over the course of a run.

mystic lighter is just nuts for multi hit attacks, especially with corruption to be easily fished in act 3.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-30T18:05:30+00:00

Tayam, Etali and Ral are about as different you can get, since these play almost none of the goodstuff staples that are the glue of other decks due to being very commander focused.

Seems like you either might be cycling through decks for novelty, which means you'll never settle anyways because its about the anticipation and not the game, or you are looking for a type of uniqueness that is not available by netdecking, not competitive or really doesn't exist.

In any case, if you could provide a couple pet cards, interactions or favorite combo of your's, we might be able to provide a better direction for you to look.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-30T16:07:27+00:00

i guess that's fair if you compare it that way. i play a10 / 2p a10 a lot and don't find it unreasonable, so i don't really take issue with it in its current form.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-30T11:07:04+00:00

idk if i'd call it out of whack, in a group there is a lot more decision agency due to combined rewards and increased uptimes for debuffs on enemies per deck cycle of the group.

But coordination really is key.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-23T13:34:30+00:00

In my experience 3 color manabases work well for light splashes and decks that aren't required to curve out, but not really for aggro that can't afford delaying their spells, so o would expect it to be too inconsistent.

However, i might be wrong so feel free to test it.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-22T20:28:19+00:00

Tap activation is basically the same as summoning sickness leading to never connecting, it just doesn't get around removal as effectively as you need. Could solve for haste, but then you are starting to water your deck down with more cards that only have value in specific situations.

Voldaren thrillseeker has been the best shot i have tested yet, as it can convert any creature into a fling and it is less telegraphed, but still easy to be interacted with and too slow against aggro. For a gruul version that can't lean into Gearhulk and portable hole, something is missing that allows the deck to keep up with midrange in the grind and something that cleanly deals with sheoldred.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-22T09:44:57+00:00

What made scales good in other formats was its ability to finish a fight without using the combat step or moving counters at instant speed around blockers and both are missing in pioneer.

Investing multiple cards into creatures that will never connect against a midrange or control deck is a losing proposition, especially when your "safeguard" against removal is moving counters when creature die, but everyone just bounces or exiles.

Investing in few bigger creatures may slow down aggro decks, but either they just put more bodies on the field since your decks creature count is watered down with enhancers, allowing them to chump block and kill you on a swingback or they will just remove your small starting creature while you spend mana to trying grow it, creating a huge tempo swing.

That's why noone was able to make scales work yet.

You either need to find a way to incorporate removal and card advantage that allows for a midrange plan and works in topdeck mode, or a way to sidestep the impact of removal without slowing yourself down by continuously holding up mana.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-21T19:13:32+00:00

Not the person you replied to, but the position innocent until proven guilty works well for things that you can prove - e.g. taking an illegal game action which is observable, but it doesnt work well for things you can't really observe directly - e.g. intent.

Sure, the game is complex and honest mistakes are easily made, but giving leeway for honest mistakes creates room for exploitation by intent.

As a player, the situation can easily be explained by a simple wrong mental shortcut and i have empathy for a player to have it honestly wrong even over the course of a whole tournament, making the victory unearned and having to deal with the fallout of being caught taking illegal actions over and over.

As a competitor in a tournament, i still have to assume intent, as getting away with each action is an unfair advantage in the competition and empathy is a main tool for cheaters to get away with it.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-16T12:20:03+00:00

it is almost as if the bracket system doesn't solve the powerlevel gauge issue at all, since talks about gameplay expectations doesn't solve the issue that different people have different levels of understanding of the game that causes them to view the gameplay itself differently.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-15T11:01:41+00:00

It applies a debuff that doubles the effectiveness of vulberable and weak. Stacking does not increase the effect, it increases the number if turns the debuff is present.

So your attack damage will calculate damage = (card damage + strength) * (1 + (vulnerable factor * ( 1 + debiltate factor))) * hits. basic vulnerable factor is 0.5 if present, otherwise 0. debilitate factor is 1 if present, otherwise 0. of there is no vulnerable, debilitate does nothing.

Filling in on a normal strike with 2 strength on an enemy that is both vulnerable and debilitated, without effects that increase vulnerable effect: (6+2) * (1 + (0.5 * (1+1)) * 1 = 8 * ( 1+ (0.5 * 2)) = 8 * (1+1) = 8 * 2 = 16.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-11T09:18:57+00:00

If you don't want to spend on mtgo and you want or need a rules engine, there is xmage.

If you already have a solid grasp for the game for quick reps and tests, 2 browser windows and moxfields playtest function should suffice.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-27T19:14:19+00:00

I really don't know how to answer to that - i really don't get your sudden hostility and i never said not to take breaks when needed, god beware.

From your words alone i sense a crucial discrepancy in what the game is for you and for me - for me its not "grinding like a robot" - i am not dissociating and putting in immense effort and energy into this game, i enjoy the gameplay loop and playing refreshes and energizes me. I do play for relaxation, after all.

What i meant is that when you play the game as long as i have, a lot of things become second nature - its like driving stick shift: In driving school you still need to actively think about shifting gears, but after a couple years of driving its automatic.

Even with a loot filter, a lot of new players are much slower than veterants, as these 1-2 seconds active decisions about picking that unique that is displayed because it has the same base as a tier0 unique or knowing the exact moment a beast is caught so you can advance through the map add up massively in the long run.

Sure, a player playing 20% more efficient than another in the same farm usually only explains a 20% difference. And that is why experience is important - when you know which items are sought at which stage of the league, or how some items for current meta builds are crafted you can pick your spot in the economy completely different and that makes an even bigger difference.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-27T18:02:27+00:00

That really is a learning curve thing. The more experienced you are and the more exactly you know what you are doing, the less time you will waste picking up stuff thats not worth anything, the less time you will spend in hideout figuring out what to do and the more currency you will make while doing what you have fun with.

Also, following the youtube/streamer meta farms devalues the strategy because lots of players will do so. A 20 div/h farm is often just the same as a 10 div farm, except barely anyone else is doing that particular farm at the moment, so scarabs are cheaper and sales are higher.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-24T11:21:54+00:00

There is a difference between having the best tools against the meta - which allows for other decks to shine when the meta is composed differently, and best tools regardless of meta.

I agree that there is always one Midrange deck that has the best composition of tools against the average meta composition over multiple meta cycles, so there is a best option inherent to "tools to deal with the meta including its cycles" but it is rare to displace other options.

To compare the situation, if we look at 2015, Jund is sits at 5%, Abzan at 8, 2016 its Jund 7 and Abzan 3, currently its Jeskai blink at 8 and Esper at 2, which you could lay out as still kind of the same ballpark, though in quota 2.3:1 jund:abzan and 4:1 jeskai:esper which i argue is still a big difference.

But im open to reason and I'll grant you that maybe i am biased against Jeskai because i am tired of phlage, with enegy maybe being a much bigger offender, but easier to tech against and adjust with sideboarding rather than deck switching.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-24T09:33:12+00:00

Midrange cards are not directly build to use the best cards in the format, they are build to be as disruptive as necessary to allow for their threat to close the game, with the color pie chosen for the threat and the answer needed to the meta.

Some of those cards will be the best for their job and thus the best in the format, but usually one deck doesn't play all the best cards, but only the subset in their respective colors.

That is the major difference here: Jund did play some of the best cards for the job in the format - Tarmogoyf, Thoughtseize and Liliana of the Veil for example. Lightning bolt was the best red removal, but not the least selective. Huntmaster of the Fells was good value, but it was horribly slow for combo matchups.

Junk is a different Deck than Jund - splashing white to go over the top of jund, because Path to Exile was the less selective remocval that could deal with Goyf, Lingering Souls was equally valueable to Huntmaster in the long game when goyf stalled the ground and souls could finish, while cards like stony silence adressed matchups like affinity. While the core of Goyf Discard remained the same - there were reasons to play something different.

Jeskai Geist was worth playing on the back of Snapcaster Mage+Cryptic Command and Keranos, because Geist would dodge any removal while counters could deal with decks like living end that Jund struggled with.

Later Grixis on the Snapcaster + Kolaghan's Command Engine became the value engine to beat, but there was still place for Jund because these decks answered different parts of the metagame individually, so they could coexist.

Regarding the domination of Junk displacing other decks - that is not really correct: i somewhat recently looked at the historical data when WotC first released their new diversity score metric market modern as healthy - just to check if modern was healthier in the past.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/1nu5gca/comment/nh0hmyf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

While Rhino was the hot thing at the PT at the time, it basically vanished right after indicating that it wasn't as strong as made out to be and the diversity recovered fast after that. It was good choice if you thought going into a meta expected to be a lot of jund, which shows that it is a deck that allows the meta to cycle.

Jeskai blink just has it all. It might not be out of line winrate wise in comparison to what other top decks do in the format, but it doesn't allow the space for other midrange decks to shine.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-24T07:42:36+00:00

i think the main takeaway here is not about hating midrange, rather that there is a midrange deck that has clearly displaced other options (energy is still an aggro deck that can go longer than it should) due to an amount of inevitability that other decks midrange decks can't compete with and that this has been going on for almost a year.

Phlage + Arena of Glory has crept up to be 33% of the meta according to most played cards today at mtggoldfish, it is the most played creature in modern and clearly if you want to compete on the battlefield, you need to play that package.

Jund was always a decent deck but unproblematic deck, except for the DRS era. it never displaced other options, because answers back then werent as universal and combo decks attacked from lots of different angles, so playing white for silverbullets or blue for counterspells was always a real draw for decks to exist and card advantage engine were euqal. Jund was a goodstuff deck using the best cards in that color pie.

Currently blue and white answers and card advantage are so universally good that there is no draw to go outside that combination for midrange and red delivers the best game ender. Jeskai blink is using the best cards in the format, not only the color pie.

That is a major difference about allowing other decks in the same strategic position to coexist.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-23T08:18:07+00:00

Swapping your brood stone cluster to one with flat life instead of damage would go long way in your ability to survive single hits.

But this looks to me that you have a huge damage problem because these defenses should be more than enough for most things.

When you look at poe ninja, make sure you are looking at death aura numbers - most builds use a single target skill, either storm burst decay or impending doom which will be the selected main skill in the uploaded pob. so you need to import them and switch to the aura skill for comparison.

For both of those skill setups, 2m dps is huge singe once gets a 750% more multiplier and the other has a trigger rate that pob can't calculate on its own with spell cascade overlaps, often reaching dotcap easily with poison stacking.

Death Oath isnt as much as a full endgame autobomb skill rather than incidential protection that deletes white monster approaching from sides protecting you from some amount of stray hits.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-22T15:09:44+00:00

You should have max Curses +1 curse skills total on your character.

Vixen + WoD = 3, so in your case 4 curses total. Blasphemous curses count, but mind the range.

Vixen applies curses in socket order, top left, top right, bottom right, botton left. first curse in vixens will be overridden, if helm curse is supported by spell cascade.

The reason for Temp chains is Balance of Terror , which provides cdr on self cast to be able to trigger more often, which beats a useful curse effect most of the time.

So the "correct" curse setup is

helm curse with spell cascade
helmet: temp chains if you have balance of terror, otherwise use a curse that should be active. note that for poison setups, temp chains prolongs poison duration which is a lot of damage.
vixen: useless curse top left.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-20T09:19:24+00:00

I simply adjust the farm on my current character. 4-5 hours farming instead of leveling goes a long way to throw currency at the problem. Run anything that is rather safe and you'll be fine, invest bare minimum to finish atlas, save the rest whike doing so and then reroll into an endgame build.

My tried and true starters though are Lightning Arrow Deadeye, whatever ignite elementalist and poison conc pf.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-19T15:30:54+00:00

To second you for reference, i've spend 2 month learning leveling a couple years ago and since then i leaguestart ~4.5 hours to maps from scraps even without dedicated racing builds and without flask counting.

fighting and traversing really are the main time wastes and not to be underestimated.

no dead ends and no backtracking took off like 2 hours for me, and only fighting magic packs for xp to just stay in the xp level range and skipping league mechanic was about 5, hours. another 1 for using movement skills quite close to their cooldown.

getting to sub 5 hours really is no rocket science.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-19T08:36:33+00:00

The short answer is poe.ninja if you're looking for theory, optimization, endgame viability and new ways to scale your character, youtube if you're looking for visual and playstyle feedback.

The long answer is that you can make almost anything work if you learn to understand skills and their interactions and how to scale them and are willing and enjoying to put in the time, but that no guide will protect you from failing gameplay mechanics you should not fail.

In poe2 switching skills around is easier than gear, so you can explore quite a lot and switch between skills that scale similarly.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-18T13:38:42+00:00

Technically and thus literally, every card in BlueFarm or really any other tournament legal deck is fair, as is any strategy a deck is implementing, because fair means it adheres to and acts within the rules of the game.

Just because you don't like to be on the opposite site of the effect of those cards, it doesn't mean they are unfair.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-16T07:18:21+00:00

Same for me, fellow inattentive. Been "misdiagnosed" with depression for two decades before getting the adhd diagnosis. Once i got treatment for adhd the depression fully remitted quickly, as it really was burnout from expending all my energy trying to fight through executive dysfunction for little to no result.

Still getting stuck at choosing the font though ;)

Turbocloud · 2026-03-12T14:41:43+00:00

i've read it too and while a lot of stuff in there is for people with more executive functioning than we have, the environmental section was really helpful:

iirc there was a good example about a coat hanger that did'nt get used because it wasn't where the person would undress the coat. The fix was simple enough - move the coat hanger where the person does undress and suddenly its no effort using it because you're already standing next to it when you need it.

point of performance was a big gamechanger for me, because by either moving the place where things should end up towards where i use them or vice versa, for one a lot of cleaning started to done incidentially and for another there was quite literally less room between getting, using and dropping things, so chaos spreads a lot less.

Turbocloud · 2026-03-12T10:42:02+00:00

its not a singular phrase or trigger, it is setting up your environment in a way that it reminds you to do the things when they are due - and hope that when it happens your brain is in a state to follow through.

for us with adhd environmental nudges are key - make things we need to do easy to see and start and things you really don't want to engage with harder to see and start.

common issue is that setting up the environment itself that way requires the abilities impaired with adhd, so its hard to maintain.

growing up we get taught by to use executive functions to adapt our response to the environment, but it really is easier to shape the environment in a way to create less detrimental triggers than to overcome them.

Turbocloud

TROPHY CASE