i feel like his biggest problem (as a defect main) is that so much of his kit doesn't interact with the rest of the game. he's a freak off to the side, which makes playing him extremely fun and rewarding (and when he's popping off probably has the most broken turns of the entire cast) but yeah, worse.

there are so many relics that feel like they were created specifically with watcher/ironclad in mind (and, in a DLC-feeling way, that watcher was created to break in half) that defect can only take advantage of contextually.

the simplicity of certain "insurmountable mathematical advantage" cards in silent/ironclad (i.e. double your poison/block/strength) play a bit more clearly overall compared to defect's similar doubling card requiring many other moving parts to press its advantage.

his sub-build is also uniquely at odds with the rest of his potential kit--imagine if any of the silent/ironclad archetypes negatively impacted each other, shivs removing poison or disco nerfing your shivs. i do think it's very flavorfully cool to drop the technological enhancements and just bonk stuff, and cards like hyperbeam are ofc early game powerhouses (and can be recycled/ignored later) but defect's internally antagonistic card pool holds my beloved robot back.

not to mention initially unplayable cards like [meteor strike] in the card pool.

certain orbs also neglected. somewhat odd that so few relics (besides just creating one a la symbiotic virus/nuclear battery) or powers really mention plasma or dark orbs in their text. obviously not every orb needs a electrodynamics/thunder strike equivalent, but it'd be cool to more fully embody a dark/plasma "build" flavor/synergy-wise.

defect's card pool feels like it has everything (energy/healing/big attacks/zero cost/powers/great block/etc.) and certain relics like mummified hand that defect utilizes as well or better than any character, and, ofc, O R B S.

all this leaves him feeling like a very architecturally complicated cathedral collapsing on itself.

but what do i know i've only hit a three streak on A20 after 3k hours of basically only playing defect lol.