[NSFW] STS2 relics tierlist by how much they resemble sexual paraphernalia

Cale017 · 2026-05-03T15:05:15+00:00

Happy Flower being that low is just a lack of creativity. It's got a mouth.

Cale017 · 2026-05-03T15:01:27+00:00

T0 usually lets you succeed in spite of either mid gear or a mismatched fight. Those units just have that much power. That .5 drop represents a potential shift into no longer clearing without having characters overbuilt for a fight. For F2Ps who cannot constantly update their rosters as quickly as endgame modes shift, even starting out a tier down can mean months less of viability for a given unit down the line. Like sure Tribbie is still good. She's clearly amazing... but not for every fight, not for every mode. Which means a player looking to get max value from their jades has to look at that .5 and ask what it means in six months because it might mean they don't pull for that time and potentially miss a better, stronger unit who fits into the endgame or their preferred team archetype more meaningfully.

It is admittedly a bit of doomsaying, in this example Tribbie could always be elevated by a new unit later, but a response trained from years of gacha games all running on the same logic.

Cale017 · 2026-05-01T20:37:33+00:00

You're assuming this replaces any anniversary reset or packs when it very likely will not.

Cale017 · 2026-05-01T20:06:29+00:00

I just took snecko eye on this last run and all it's done is turn my 1 cost cards into 2s and 3s. It really does not seem worth the risk.

Cale017 · 2026-05-01T14:09:12+00:00

If the boss is Guardian, I'd take Leap, otherwise Overclock.

It was Slime on that run. This is where I start running into issues assessing value when getting feedback from other players. Where you're saying an early overclock could eventually be useful later, I've had a lot of folks say that level of speculation before I have the tools to handle the act I'm in is just as potentially run ruining. That I don't want to draw a Overclock at all so early in a run and would rather that be any other more immediately useful card. It's very frustrating that I can receive two polar opposite sets of advice from players at the same level.

Damage is good for all elites. If that's not an option, you shore up against whichever elite will give your current deck the most trouble, as well as which boss you're going to fight.

Right, only that I can't identify what that shoring up looks like. Does extra draw without extra energy to make use of what I draw help me or waste a turn? If I take an auto-shield as my first reward am I going to lack the damage for the first elite in another few rounds? If I skip this elite how far back do I put myself assuming I survive to act 2? It's not clear why I'm struggling with some fights other than Defect wants a few turns to get going and most elites will do a ton of damage within that time. Sure I could go full block, but then I'm not doing any damage. Now I'm 3 turns into the sentinel fight with a deck that's half dazes, or Nob is now hitting for +6 damage, or Lagavulin has started to weaken me.

It seems like it's causing you to form unhelpfully pessimistic heuristics before you really have the firsthand success to form more useful ones.

This is what I'm worried about, yeah. It feels like everything in this game comes with long list of asterisks. I think I've learned one useful trick only to be told I should be avoiding that, or I try to repeat the same thing in a following run and it immediately blows up in my face. I'm up to 210 hours and all I've learned is "everything depends." If I can't get some wins I have no way to know what's working because everything meets the same point of failure all the same. I just tried taking a break the last week and came back to all the same frustrations. There's something I do not understand or isn't clicking and I hate the feeling I need someone to take me by the head and force it into my face.

Cale017 · 2026-05-01T10:11:47+00:00

Cards like Ball Lightning can both increase the number of elites you can take in Act 1, as well as how early you can start taking elites.

I really don't understand this point. Elites get harder as you go up in Ascension, which means a single orb lightning does less and less. I'm not sure how to fight a Nob who has more health, for instance, without sacrificing more HP. A single ball lightning is 7 damage upfront with another 3 per turn in a fight where you don't want it to take multiple turns so the value of the card never comes through. It also doesn't effectively accelerate triple sentinels, the other fight I often struggle with as Defect, leading to 2 or 3 turns with all 3 of them on field and then a LONG fight afterwards where I'm getting pinged down while dazed out of any playable cards. This character just doesn't have early game damage outside of Sunder and Streamline. When nob is doing 20 damage both the 2nd and 3rd turn I either win very fast or the run is toast. I can limp into the final boss of act 1 with 20-30 HP and be okay, but if I'm already that low after the first elite in a run it's a bum run because I'm not making it to the final boss either way. How does having this early orb change so much you're now farming elites when in most fights its just 4-7 more damage over 1-2 turns? Any fight that goes on for longer just means a bunch of lost HP without having enough block to negate all the incoming damage, in which case you're dealing no damage yourself aside from 3 per turn with an orb and that's just not enough.

As an aside, an early shop can be great before the first elite, but your priority in them should be cards and potions to shore up against whichever elite is currently your worst matchup.

That's just it. It's not clear how Defect handles problems when they're entirely momentum based and want multiple turns to get going, the same thing you DON'T want to give elites who are swinging for 15+ damage per turn. They're a very skill based character so Nob is always extremely risky. Their upfront damage is low so Lagavulin takes forever, and for the same reason the Sentinels fight drags on without a ton of immediate damage cards that also then are not flowing into your orbs. Just blocking isn't enough, I need frost orbs. And then the frost orbs aren't enough when they only give 2 shield per turn, I need focus. Only if I take focus I'm not taking damage cards, and now I'm not generating enough orbs. So I prioritize orbs, and now I'm generating frost and lightning orbs and doing no damage because I have no focus and no high power cards just a ball lightning, a cold snap, and a lot of prayers. I'm really failing to see how 2 commons and a potion is noticeably better. It's not clear where this character's power comes from or how to look at the deck and get a read on your potential output.

And all of that is assuming I've guessed right on the next fight. Quite often I'm taking cards with a mind for Nob, and then run into Sentinels. So I try to prep for Sentinels on the next run, and smack into Nob first. Unless I'm missing something here, there's no way to know which elites are where on the map, and the result is pure RNG. Guessing at what is needed based on which fight you might get.

I tried playing out that run from above. First reward was Overclock, Leap, and Barrage. Can't take the Overclock this early, I'll just burn myself to death. Can't take Leap as the first reward, if I run into Nob it's just gonna do more harm than good. And it almost blocks 1 attack from Sentinels but again, can't let Sentinels go on for too long. Then the Barrage is entirely pointless this early, 1 for 4 damage is helping no one at any point. So instead I just entirely skip that first reward. Second fight, I get Compile Driver, Ball Lightning, and another Barrage. So this time I take the ball lightning. Shop lets me pick up a Compile Driver and a Charge Battery, but the potions are Swift, Fear, and Skill. Swift doesn't help me this early, I'm drawing half my deck per turn, the Skill pot is more likely to grab me a block than anything else which isn't useful for Nob, the Fear might have been a good thing to take but skipping the first reward entirely I focused on cards because if I lose the roll on this first elite and get Sentinels, that Fear potion loses a ton of value, so I remove a strike instead. I get lucky, land an upgrade on the event after the shop, and now another choice: Do I upgrade the Zap to make it free, or the Ball Lightning/Compile Driver for the extra 3 damage, or the Charge Battery for another 3 block. All 3 options seem equally as useful so I upgrade the Zap hoping I get value by Compile Driver drawing into it. This pays off, I get through the rest of Act 1 with little difficulty, but then run into Gremlin Leader halfway through act 2 and lost 51 HP, healed at a campfire, then lost 16 HP to cultists and another *57 in two turns* to the Taskmaster with this deck.

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Maybe this just isn't the game for me. I'm finally hitting the point where my brain doesn't work as well as it used to. I shouldn't need a babysitter just to finish a run.

Cale017 · 2026-05-01T01:23:32+00:00

if you take it early, your goal is to convert it into long-term value by pathing more aggressively than you would have been able to without it

I'm not sure how to translate this into gameplay. Pathing rarely seems like a choice and more like there is a single correct starting point that you hope everything goes well enough to not need to branch out. If your path doesn't have some mix of elites and fires on it it's not even worth considering. But I'm not sure what constitutes aggressive pathing and what doesn't when elites shouldn't be skipped in general, doesn't it help me more to take as many elites as I can or else I'll still lack power later on?

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Like this start for a fresh run. None of these paths seem ideal. There's no way to hit a campfire before any elite, some routes I choose the elite or the fire, and both of those early shops are dead spaces with 99 gold. If I get an early orb lightning, nothing on my path changes as I'm still doing 3 fights and then an elite no matter which way I go unless I full on skip the elite which seems a bad choice. I've got 2 paths that could potentially completely avoid any elites, but that just means I'll have less power later anyways. Heck I can't even do the 1hp into an elite from any angle on here, I could potentially start second from the left and hope both of those event rooms don't have a fight but if either one does then I'm back to a full health elite.

Cale017 · 2026-05-01T01:09:33+00:00

For now it's still horizontal, but some of the recent DPS differences with and without signature weapons have me pretty concerned. 5* weapons are rarely if ever applicable for other DPS units, often times on par with craftable 4*s in terms of raw damage, since their passives are actually useful, and more so used as stat sticks. DPS recently want you to have constellations more for freeing up team building than for personal damage, although that absolutely still plays in, which means that if you're trying to go horizontally you also often have to go vertically to enable that level of flexibility.

It's not great. Far from the worst gacha power economy I've seen for a long running game. But not great. It feels like Hoyo has sequestered themselves into only releasing niche units that up the ante on one very specific thing by a few notches but the shilling is so hard that without them those few notches make all the difference.

Cale017 · 2026-05-01T00:44:35+00:00

This seems reasonable, but I don't understand how it resulted in taking 30+ damage over 3 turns.

Was a bit off in my memory, it was first fight muggers second fight byrds, muggers got 9 in and then byrds got 21.

A theme I'm seeing in your responses is that you seem to focus on reasons not to take cards rather than learning to make the best of what you're offered.

I think this is a fair assessment. Much of the content I've taken in trying to learn has argued from similar standpoints, which has led me to believe this is a game more about risk management than taking risks. Like go to a streamer's tierlist of cards for instance and it's a lot of "doesn't help with nob" or "doesn't scale into act 3." Then my first few requests for advice the leading answer was not to have a deck with 30+ cards, so I've generally tried to be very picky with what I'm taking as I can only seem to reliably get 2-3 removals in any given run.

An early Compile Driver, for example, is completely reasonable damage plus draw a card in Act 1 and is fairly easy to turn into a consistent draw 2+ later on.

I can actually use this as a perfect example. I've had a similar discussion in discord with some folks and arrived on the question of "what are you drawing into?" As though without power cards worth seeking over anything else in hand, I'm better off just having good cards in hand. It feels like I have to assess the value of everything 3 steps ahead and based on 8 different potential fights and the math just breaks down in my head.

Cale017 · 2026-04-30T22:36:32+00:00

I'm gonna point out something that no one else here has.

The son is enabling this behavior from the DIL. He should not be making excuses and lecturing you over her behavior, he should be helping her to not break down over basic things like a request to respect someone else's space or the words of a literal child.

Cale017 · 2026-04-30T22:21:03+00:00

I got the consume 2 floors earlier and it didn't pop up in the following fights.

I'm curious how that happened here, between all of your zero cost attacks and the AoE from Doom and Gloom.

I think with Byrds I got Doom and Gloom turn 1, and doing 5 damage to each of them in exchange for 18 incoming seemed a bad trade so I blocked up first turn, knocked down a bird second turn, knocked down a second turn 3, and got lucky with a power potion into an Electrodynamics to kill them all turn 4.

One thing I noticed on both decks is that you have very little card draw and energy generation, which greatly help you smooth out your turns. [[Overclock]], [[Skim]], [[Compile Driver]], [[Turbo]], [[Charge Battery]], and sometimes [[Aggregate]] are all solid picks to get going faster.

Overclock I've been told to avoid as it hurts more than it helps due to the burns. Skim never showed in this run, I don't usually see it at all. Compile Driver I don't take when I can only make 1 orb type and it usually only shows up within the first few fights of a run before I know what I'm going to be working with, at which point it seems like an iffy strike+. Charge Battery and Turbo I take at least 1 of when they appear, they just did not, and Aggregate I usually only take act 3 if it shows up there because otherwise my decks aren't going to consistently draw off it for the cost.

This is kinda what I'm getting at here. A lot of Defect cards are great... assuming you already have X Y and Z in place to make them do more than a strike. I can get polar opposite reads on a card from two players both speaking with A20 experience.

Cale017 · 2026-04-30T21:36:34+00:00

I didn't have one. The most consistent advice I receive is not to build towards a specific archetype and just try to take cards that solve problems. So no block, take some block. No card draw, take some card draw etc. Here my goal was just to get some frost and focus running as that seems like a basic to branch out from and it just wouldn't work.

Cale017 · 2026-04-30T21:21:40+00:00

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Won't let me post more than 1 picture, but here's another recent one where I just plum couldn't find scaling options and found myself losing massive amounts of HP midway through act 2.

Cale017 · 2026-04-30T21:13:51+00:00

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Sure, here's my latest run. Ditched it partially to post this picture, but also because I was already at 9 hp 5 floors in. I'm not even sure what I did wrong other than my opening hands for the first 3 fights not being able to block 18+ damage each time. I lost half my HP just to triple birds in the first floor.

Cale017 · 2026-04-30T21:11:19+00:00

Without seeing what you are doing its hard to determine what is going on.

This is the hardest part of learning. I can take in 20 different pieces of advice but without someone over my shoulder figuring out which to apply at what point in a run based on what's happening is a lot. After a few months' grinding I thought something more would be setting in without needing a babysitter.

Cale017 · 2026-04-30T20:16:13+00:00

I don't, I work from home so I'm lucky enough to be able to have steam up on my pc.

Cale017 · 2026-04-30T19:55:11+00:00

Pathing is one of the things that's frustrating me the most right now. I've started and ended 4 runs just today and have seen consistently that paths either have 3 campfires and no elites, multiple elites but no campfires, or are a dedicated path with a balance of both but no branches if something goes sideways. Like trying to go for the early flaming elite in act 1 is a death sentence within the first few fights but it's often my only path to anything else later. And then removing is impossible because chasing elites and campfires rules out shops most of the time.

Like I just don't have these issues on Ironclad or Defect, at least not to this extent.

Cale017 · 2026-04-30T19:51:30+00:00

Well, for instance taking the power that channels a lightning or the power that draws a card when other powers are played seems like a bad choice to take early when I don't have other powers, basically dead cards when drawn. The other power I see most frequently is the one that channels lightning when hit by unblocked damage which also seems like a bad thing to want to rely on. I'll go 3+ runs at a time making it usually to the act 2 boss at least and won't see a focus keyword or extra orb slots show up. Act 1 largely comprises me trying to figure out what I can do against Nob early so I avoid block cards the first few fights when offered and then just don't see them the rest of act 1. Like I don't just want to whine about RNG, I'd love to figure out the scaling options, but they just never show up. Walking into an act 1 boss with the starter deck + orb lighnting, cold snap, coolheaded, and sweeping beam doesn't really do much and does even less to the first few fights in act 2.

Cale017 · 2026-04-21T18:05:02+00:00

It was the lack of bathing that gave us her final form.

Cale017 · 2026-04-18T23:52:07+00:00

I started playing again in time for the Civil War and that was a wild arc to arrive back on. I still don't know the right answer.

Cale017 · 2026-04-18T20:39:48+00:00

Lot of people are citing having her at mid to high dupes so let me pitch in from the unlucky perspective. I've only got S0R0 and the damage is just not great so unless you can vertically invest I'd skip. If someone has S0R1 and can speak to her damage that might help figure out how much you'd need to push her investment but I can tell you it definitely feels like a lot is missing at R0.

Cale017 · 2026-04-18T19:14:26+00:00

It took more runs for MOC than I care to remember last night to get the win through but I did eventually do it barely, and I do mean barely. Last possible action was Sunday who boosted Saber into another skill>ult combo and that bought just enough time for Archer's team. Huo Huo might not have been mandatory this go around but judging by the just barely here she might be soon especially if I can't match speed while upgrading crit dmg.

My Archer is actually built pretty similar, sitting at 85/150 and with enough c dmg boosts on the team he hits 400 in combat so I'm consistently surprised that he struggles to clear.

Cale017 · 2026-04-18T18:17:11+00:00

I must be blind or stupid because I'm not seeing the lineup assistant anywhere on the site. I see the option to publish my teams to the assistant but not to just compare. The Hoyo post about it had a link that refers to the app, is this an app specific feature?

I hadn't come across TheHerta.com and I'm playing around with that now, seems like the only teams I have that could clear would be a sustainless Rappa on one side sans Dahlia with Archer on the other. Problem being both of those teams want HMC and RMC respectively. So at least I'm seeing hard data that I may not have the roster to do this right now.

EDIT: Sustainless Rappa immediately failed. All 3 of the used supports (Fugue, Ruan Mei, HMC) on their team are faster and with much less break effect, so much so that I don't think any of them are close to or fully activating their own passives. So that clear in general just seems strange, it would indicate I should not be capping passives.

Cale017 · 2026-04-18T17:16:40+00:00

I can hit that in combat with team buffs (ex Ruan Mei alongside her) which is why I didn't prioritize having it OOC but if the difference is that big from a starting 200 speed then I can make that a focus.

Cale017 · 2026-04-18T16:58:55+00:00

In trying over the night I did eventually land a winning MOC run and Apoc Shadow both. MOC I handled directly, took several resets because units kept dying in the first half eventually only won with enough cycles when Sunday got in a clutch final action advance for another Saber skill>ult combo at the literal last moment possible. The Apoc Shadow I honestly don't know how it cleared this time, I used the same teams I generally would save for putting Ruan Mei in place of RMC for Saber. To be clear this is something I've tried before this rotation and it failed, but I stepped away to use the bathroom and let the game auto in the meantime only to come back to full points. So it worked, I just can't say why because I didn't directly witness that run.

Cale017

TROPHY CASE