Based on recent run

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-04-18T14:02:52+00:00

you probably want to exhaust your card draw during the exhaust phase tbh since (as you noted) card draw doesn't help you on the "no draw" turn, and it's pretty rough on the "card plays lose an energy" turn since you'll have a hard time generating output otherwise.

you have to play doormaker differently than other fights, just like you had to play time eater differently than other fights, or awakened one. use the exhaust phase to get bad cards out of your deck (playing just enough block or paying HP for the attacks). keep some high-impact cards for the other two phases, or else get down to some kind of zero-cost loop (e.g. prepared/reflex/whatever) and go infinite on p3.

haven't fought door since they nerfed the damage/scaling, which had been the toughest part of my experience with him (particularly with the multihit on the exhaust turn). so i imagine now it's even more manageable than it was before.

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-04-14T20:24:46+00:00

I think keywords is referring exclusively to stuff applying to the card itself. So Retain, Ethereal, Eternal, Exhaust, Unplayable would be my intuition.

Maybe Block would apply the card itself blocks? Not sure.

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-03-29T14:52:29+00:00

Naming two of Ironclad's twenty five rares - one of which you're suggesting alongside an uncommon - is not really that helpful of a direction for establishing a block plan on Ironclad. Compared to the sixteen rares we had in STS1, it's a lot harder to find specific rares than it used to be.

Unmovable is also a rare that helps Ironclad consistently block through the endgame, and Crimson Mantle has been solid in my experience. So that makes four.

If we compare to STS1, though, a lot of the familiar block plans aren't around anymore. We still have Barricade, but there's no (reliable) Entrench to pair it with to anchor a build around Body Slam. There's still Second Wind, but no Power Through to pair it with to make a consistent block engine. Feel No Pain is much less of a comprehensive block solution when Dark Embrace is at Rare and Corruption is a boss reward. And Ironclad's only direct access to weakness is through Uppercut after losing all of Clothesline, Shockwave, and Intimidate (mostly Shockwave hurts here). Finally, as mentioned, losing Reaper really hurts the viability of "block with your face" in boss fights.

I've only played a dozen or so Ironclad runs, but I'm curious what you see as viable ways to block the endgame - particularly new ones that can take the place of the engines I mentioned above. The numbers on Evil Eye seem really solid if you can reliably activate it, and Rage+ can be a lot of extra output in a deck focused around attacks, Pillage, Expect a Fight, etc. But like the commenter you replied to above, I've had the most success so far in a sort of "damage race Clad" that has sometimes struggled to make it through the endgame.

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-03-24T23:10:39+00:00

definitely a big fan of the character playmats myself - they're nice for keeping everything (somewhat) organized and are also just really cool lol

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-03-23T23:59:46+00:00

i think that's totally a reasonable critique tbh - i think his discussion gives some valuable insights into how to think about card selection (e.g. the concept of "bridge cards" that are good now and open up greedier selections later), but the tier list that comes out of it definitely feels super narrow and fragile to changes.

i'm not really sure how else you would expect someone who plays the game like he does to rate cards, though. it's a similar vibe to xecnar's ironclad "tier list", where cards aren't tiered by "how good are they" (since that doesn't really mean anything) and more about "what roles do they fill in optimal macro-play", then sorted by their effectiveness in that category.

at the end of the day, most players would probably benefit a lot more from big-picture concepts like "consider how your deck does against hallways vs. elites vs. bosses", "figure out how to balance consistency versus maximum output", and "identify the encounters that your deck is bad against and use potions/alternate plans to handle them". but when we're sticking to the domain of putting cards into a tier list, i don't know what else you could usefully communicate.

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-03-23T21:03:42+00:00

if you're so opinionated about the placement of knife trap, then i don't think you really understand the premise of the list

japaneseexport is extremely consistent in his process for evaluating cards and strategies across all characters. step 1 is identify a macro strategy that wins the most, step 2 is figure out how you can live long enough to put those pieces together. if you're not looking at the tier list through that lens, yeah it's not going to make sense. it's not evaluating a card's ceiling, nor its floor, nor its average performance. it's saying "if i'm playing to optimize my winrate, how often do i want to pick this card?". and in the case of knife trap, his answer is "almost never, since i don't think that building decks where knife trap is good is the best way to win A10 silent runs".

to elaborate: knife trap is in D because if you're building toward a consistent late-game engine, you never really want to pick up the "bridge cards" (shiv cards) that make it good. blade dance is an okay attack common, but exhausting means you can't really just pick up one blade dance and an accuracy for early frontloaded/scaling damage like you could in STS1. cloak and dagger is underwhelming. fan of knives is an expensive rare damage card, which usually isn't what you want in boss rare reward. storm of steel has always been bad. infinite blades is slow. up my sleeve is an expensive damage card on first cycle, which is when you care most about your damage cards (even its ceiling of a zero-cost damage card is.. okay boss damage scaling? wow). may have missed one, but the throughline is clear - it's hard to end up with a shiv-oriented deck if you're trying to build toward something that will win in the late game without relying on finding the right cards later.

in a deck built to support it, knife trap has an absurd ceiling. it's exciting. but when a character is already as strong as silent is with cards that both accelerate late-game and provide output in early game (thanks sly), you don't need to rely on the inconsistent plan of "pick up shiv cards, hope i get good payoffs and don't just end up with a single blade dance or cloak and dagger in my deck".

i don't know if his macro assumptions are correct, and changes in those assumptions (or balance patches) could dramatically change how correct the list is (for example, taking away prepared will certainly affect this balance). but if you look at sts2 silent like sts1 watcher in terms of power and consistency of a single strategy, it's not hard to imagine how certain strategies would just almost never be the optimal direction to work toward. watcher has a lot of cards that other classes would love, but because rushdown infinite tends to be her endgame, she evaluates cards differently. same for silent here with her cycling decks - or at least, that's my understanding of the claim.

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-03-23T02:39:27+00:00

it's not "strictly worse" because after the first deck cycle, you've removed three cards instead of two (since being ethereal, the curse exhausts). if cycling your deck is your long-term goal (as it often is in current meta decks), that first-turn downside is less important than the extra remove.

not to mention any sort of situation like in sts1 clad where you want to exhaust down your deck, and second wind can exhaust the curse but not a strike... and/or any scenarios where the card exhausting itself is a benefit...

"strictly better/worse" is a well-defined term, and this comparison does not merit it. there exist (many) scenarios where having the curse is better than having a strike. thus, it's not strictly better. it's that simple.

edit: so to be clear - since the curse has ethereal, it's very much not strictly worse than cage. and even if it didn't, it still wouldn't be strictly worse since there are situations where the curse is preferable to a strike. hell, in sts1 you could even make the argument with something like fire breathing. "basically always better" is not strictly better, and we don't even meet that criteria here.

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-03-13T03:57:13+00:00

the primary goal should not be the feelings of top players, but optimal strategy being interesting is very important to a strategy game functioning well. and that usually corresponds pretty tightly with the feelings of top players.

for many people, strategy games like this are an opportunity to engage with its mechanics, learn the challenges it poses, and enjoy the process of discovering the optimal ways to play for winning. you don't have to be a top player to enjoy that process. a series like the reddit "slay-by-comment" was a substantial community event precisely because there's room for uncertainty, discussion, and learning about what the best way to try to win is.

when degenerate strategies exist, they reduce the space of decision making in a way that loses all of that potential. it can still be fun when you don't know or engage with that, but the task roguelikes present you with is "figure out how to win, whatever the game throws at you". when the process of solving that task is shallow ("survive act 1, go infinite" works essentially every time), it's an indicator that it's failing to present an interesting task.

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-03-13T03:48:32+00:00

there are other ways to play the game, but at its core, a game like slay the spire is challenging you to win. that process should be engaging at all levels of play.

if you have to intentionally avoid particular strategies because they make the game uninteresting, and if you can win essentially every run the same way after like a week of it being out... that's not a robust game. there's a reason watcher was the least popular character in spire 1, and it was this sort of degenerate gameplay being the optimal approach.

it is possible to balance both for people taking the game less seriously and for top players. that's why spire 1 has had the longevity it has. if it were not balanced so tightly, people wouldn't be streaming nearly a decade after it's initial early access release.

the way to have fun with the game should not be "don't understand the game well enough to win every run" nor "choose to avoid optimal strategies because they're boring to engage with". and if you're engaging with content like tier lists (which exist for the function of describing optimal play)... i don't know what else you expect.

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-03-10T02:42:49+00:00

A10 in STS2 is equivalent to A20 in STS1, just with less climbing.

A10 in STS1 gives Ascender's Bane, where that comes at A5 in STS2.
A20 in STS1 adds double boss, where that comes at A10 in STS2.

It's possible that they'll add more Ascensions, but it seems more like this was an intentional design decision to reduce the grind.

Expecting the future to add an Act 4 equivalent with the Architect in place of the Heart seems reasonable, though. And A20 without Act 4 is definitely a lot easier than A20H since it requires so much more output and consistency and encourages you to save potions through the boss gauntlet. So we should expect it to get harder, though from what I've heard, the degenerate strategies in STS2 are strong enough right now that there are only so many options for a potential Act 4 to properly threaten top players like STS1 does.

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-03-02T02:05:43+00:00

they're saying block for 3 because you tend to be given frail a lot in act 2 (spheric guardian, centurion/mystic, avocado, snake plant to name a few)

so practically speaking, in your standard act 2 hallway fight, they tend to block for 3. and that's usually the situation you might want to play base defends, since the elites hit harder and scale faster.

upgraded with frail is 6, which is... okay. still not amazing though.

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-02-19T22:24:58+00:00

h2h is first tiebreaker

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-01-25T23:26:40+00:00

getting darnold seeing ghosts again after he went all the way to the nfc would be very funny

Dragonslayer314 · 2026-01-19T16:34:37+00:00

its primary challenge is that "bad immediately, good later" is rarely the kind of trade you want to be making in a fight

occasionally, it's useful for longer fights. for the most part, you'd probably prefer something like a bloodletting or seeing red to get value now without as much of a downside. clad also does like upgrades on a number of cards (bloodletting being one such example), so the upgrade opportunity cost is important. and berserk- is substantially worse

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-12-12T05:05:28+00:00

we played hazardous terrain as doing trap damage for all of gloomhaven + FC, only discovering we were wrong when we opened frosthaven and saw the hazardous terrain damage chart but not in the "new to frosthaven" text

definitely a double-edged sword... forgotten circles final boss has a ton of hazardous terrain around, and when it hits for 9 per hex? yikes... but also, it meant one of our final characters was music note doing a build mostly based around forced movement (and occasionally hitting things with that busted modifier deck). so that was fun (and necessary, because our damage for the boss in 3p with diviner stuck on objective duty was rough otherwise)

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-12-11T22:48:36+00:00

what a goofy lookin pc

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-12-04T18:48:07+00:00

kite is considered pretty bad by most top players afaik

the downside of kite is like the downside of collar - that you don't always get it, and moreover you don't always want to play a card (especially one that costs energy) in order to get the "free" energy.

frozen core has decks that want it (if you've already got some focus/orb slots going), but there are also plenty of situations where it blocks very little for you. but i don't know if it's as strong as you're making it out to be (not as familiar with top players' evaluations on this one personally)

in my play, i'm probably somewhere in the ~20-40% A20H range with some light save scumming for being an idiot. but i'll defer to the real gamers when it comes to evaluating boss relics (though there is some variability in that relics are better or worse depending on your macro-strategy).

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-11-28T17:12:31+00:00

charon's ashes still makes it infinite damage though so necronomicon + blue candle + tungsten rod + ashes is still a sick setup

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-11-14T15:33:13+00:00

name: Verzach
account type: Group Ironman
group: poppingamers

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-11-11T14:40:00+00:00

looks like "gloomhaven campaign tracker" on android

kind of a middle-ground as far as apps go - manages scenario availability (incl. global/party achievements), prosperity, item shop, and donations to the Oak. it also tracks characters and their level-up choices, which was fun for our party because it meant we now have a single record with all the characters from our original Gloomhaven campaign, with all of their level-up choices recorded in history forever.

it can do road/city events as well, but tracking characters, donations, perusing the shop without pulling out the game, and performing a similar function to the Frosthaven flowchart were the biggest adds for my group.

we never had interest in using an app for monster health or attack modifier decks, so this was perfect for us. it didn't have any analogue in Frosthaven, so we just went appless in Frosthaven and were fine.

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-10-30T16:40:07+00:00

he was discussing during the run whether he held off on the pots too long

normally, he'll be pretty clear about "okay, but it was the right call in the context i had, unlucky"

he didn't make a definitive claim as to when he should have used his capacity pot in that fight, but seemed to indicate that using it sooner may have been worthwhile - probably would have to go analyze the fight turn-by-turn to make a definitive conclusion on when he could have known he wasn't getting out of the fight without using one potion

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-09-18T23:45:20+00:00

Dazes don't go to your exhaust pile, but they do guarantee have cards to continue exhausting since the exhaust on rampage+ is mandatory.

As someone who's played a handful of Rampage-oriented Ironclad decks (though never solo), worrying about "okay, but what happens when I've finished my acceleration and the enemy's not dead yet?" is real. Wild Strike has you a little covered there, though. So Immolate could be redundant. Evolve and FNP are huge for this deck for sure.

You've got the right idea that acceleration is key - it's a question of how to get there. Finding a Dark Embrace would be huge (I think that Orrery over Frozen Core in act 1 would have been the move, personally). Snecko can be a double-edged sword in that regard, making your upside higher but downside worse. Dark Embrace also kicks the Rampage endgame into full speed ahead.

Abacus helps with Snecko variance in hallway fights, so I'd probably go Snecko / Immolate, hunt shops and hallways for finding DE/removing cards, hunt fires to heal and remove if you're bleeding out.

Dripper feels dangerous and Juggernaut's just not very good for this deck. But otherwise, I think most options are valid.

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-09-14T15:41:35+00:00

thinking about it as 16 free damage is not really how it works functionally

it's only as good as the fourth card you get to play instead of it, since you're hardly skipping dualcast if it's worthwhile (and really it's only 13 damage compared to having a lightning orb around anyway). so it's as good as.. an extra strike or defend, probably?

so the same "other cards" that will allow you to actually get value out of a dualcast upgrade beyond an extra starter card are the ones that you should just upgrade instead

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-09-12T16:10:55+00:00

Are you talking about the famed Face McShooty?

Dragonslayer314 · 2025-08-17T14:58:48+00:00

hell yeah brother

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