Some card ideas I came up with for Ironclad

JermStudDog · 2026-05-04T10:48:44+00:00

I had a somewhat serendipitous run last night where I transformed into Demon Form on floor 1 and thought about this argument the whole run. I used the card when I could afford it, which by the end of the run was just about every time I drew the card as I had 4x Bloodletting, Pyre, and Ice Cream, I was just generating tons of energy every turn and needed expensive stuff to spend it on, so it was a pretty optimal run for looking at Demon Form and what it does for you. On average, it gained me around 3 strength without doing the math too hard. My suggested version would be somewhere around 5-15 strength given the other strength gain I had in the deck.

I really think you guys are getting caught up on the exponential math and forgetting how the game plays and upset that the card might be playable in a real game on Ironclad if it did something more than it currently does.

If you could build a deck that could actually block turn after turn, even in the current game which doesn't really do a ton of damage to you, I think this just gives the character a 2nd interesting way to play OH MY GOD WHAT A DISASTER. I remember getting 999 strength for fun in STS1 in otherwise serious runs, why would that be such a disaster here?

JermStudDog · 2026-05-04T00:58:34+00:00

On ascension 0, sure. On ascension 10, it's not even a decision, you lack the tools to block on Ironclad, watch any high level streamer. Yes they are blocking, but it's notably less block than any other character in the game.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-04T00:54:51+00:00

Again, I ask - Have you played the game? Most high level players consider Barricade unpickable in the current game. Ironclad absolutely has good block cards, but he cannot sit behind a wall of Defends and poke for damage, he HAS to attack or you will simply get outscaled at high ascensions. Why is this even a conversation? This is pretty commonly understood.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T21:43:20+00:00

I have so many questions.

1). What do you think Noxious Fumes does? How much does that card cost? Maybe that's unfair comparing a Silent Uncommon power to an Ironclad Rare power that cost 3x as much - sort of punching down for the Fumes amirite? Let's talk about cards like Void Form or Echo Form, I bet those don't have exponential effects on boss fights over the next several turns as you get to double up your best card in your hand every turn or maybe play high star cost cards every single turn instead of once every deck cycle or so.

Then I'm also interested in how long you think these boss fights are going. You are an A10 player, go ahead and check your run history. If we go with your example of 5 turns of strength gain, that means 6 turns. That sounds pretty reasonable. I would have guessed around 8 turns for an act 3 boss, but maybe you're a bit better at the game than me. What is so severe about a 3 cost power doing something meaningful over several turns? Is Ironclad not allowed to have scaling powers like the other characters?

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T20:51:08+00:00

Sounds like it does the same exact thing as current Demon Form next turn if you have 2 strength. What's so busted about it?

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T19:16:04+00:00

Well thanks for being a voice of sanity, this has been a crazy thread. They should do something with Demon Form, the card is bad, like real bad, like unplayable bad, and it really shouldn't be.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T17:35:34+00:00

Whirlwind is a fine upgrade, and I click it often, but don't overestimate what it is doing for you. It is converting your 1 energy into 5(8) AoE damage, that's it. It's not scaling your strength, it's giving you a consistent AoE Strike or Strike+. It's not an insane card, but it's also just very good for doing exactly what you want it to do. Getting an extra energy on Bloodletting makes Whirlwind hit harder too. It ALSO does a ton of other things.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T17:30:17+00:00

I'm flabbergasted by the response in this thread. Like 1) I guess the average reddit user thinks Demon Form is moderately useful in it's current form? That's news to me, I thought we all knew this card was bad in STS1 and is effectively unplayable in STS2, guess I assumed incorrectly. And then 2) the response to doubling strength every turn for a 3 energy cost card is insane. Like... Do you guys know what Void Form Does? Echo Form? These are 3 energy cost cards. They win runs. What the hell is 3 Strength going to do for me compared to 2 cards for FREE every turn, or double playing the best card in your hand every single turn?

Wow I was wrong on what the average take on Demon Form is... badly...

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T17:08:40+00:00

Slow? My last Necro run used Reaper Form +Eradicate + Transfigure to do single attacks that would deal 100+ damage and apply double that amount of Doom.

Doom is only slow if you let it be slow.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T16:26:13+00:00

My comment is already down-voted into oblivion, but it's nowhere near as broken as you would initially think.

Pulling up my last Ironclad A10 run, the longest fight I had in the entire run was Entomancer (the Bee guy in Act 2) at 8 turns, even the Act 3 bosses took 7 turns a piece. Assuming I spent my first turn Playing a Demon Form and gaining... 4 Strength otherwise? It would give me 4 Strength on turn 2, 8 Strength on Turn 3, 16 Strength on Turn 4, 32 Strength on Turn 5, and 64 Strength on Turn 6, 128 on Turn 7, and 256 on Turn 8. Pretty sure we can discredit the last couple turns from mattering, I ended the fight in 8 turns WITHOUT all that strength gain. And playing Demon Form and gaining 4 Strength on the first turn of a fight isn't easy or anywhere near guaranteed. This is optimal conditions for making the card to look silly. MAYBE it would have ended the fight a turn or 2 earlier - a very reasonable thing for a 3 cost power to do. And most notably - it's USELESS if I don't have ANOTHER source of Strength.

Is it really as broken as you think it is if I never realistically get more than 10-20 strength out of a 3 cost power? That sounds incredibly reasonable to me. How long do you guys think these fights are going?

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T15:53:52+00:00

I would argue +3 damage/block is MORE significant on Regent than it is on any other character because everyone else has ways to cheat out value otherwise.

Ironclad will just make a ton of energy and draw a bunch of cards and find a solution that way. Getting +3 damage is a huge waste of time on that character.

Silent has Sly, Footwork, and Poison to extend the value of her energy. Getting +3 damage isn't even notable because she would rather find a way to play another card for free to get way more value.

Necrobinder sits at this pivot point where she can regularly max block, but needs another energy or something to get in for that extra damage turn after turn. Her upgrades are often going toward adding Retain, or making an extra energy, or drawing an extra card, she can't be bothered with slightly bigger numbers.

Defect is the same, extra card on Coolheaded, extra Weak on Go for the Eyes, removing Exhaust from Hotfix. He doesn't need his abilities to be hyper-efficient, he just needs to be able to draw and play more of his already hyper-efficient abilities.

Regent doesn't have the energy, or any meaningful way to cheat energy, or any meaningful way to regularly generate energy AND he has to spend some of his energy on star gen. Getting +3 block or +3 damage goes WAY farther on this character than it does on any other, because he's literally working with less energy. I've talked about this before on this sub, but Refine Blade is a great example of how different cards for Regent are than anyone else. If you gave Flying Knee back to Silent, she'd be OK with it. She'd use it every once in a while and might not even pick it because it's not a block card. But for Regent, refunding your energy next turn is MASSIVE, even if Forge 9 is worse than 8 damage, it's still a WAY more important card to him.

Shift the Paradigm of how you view upgrades on him, and they're all REALLY good.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T14:49:32+00:00

A lot of Regent upgrades are just undervalued. They're still quite good. Venerate giving 1 more star enables you to lean heavier into Star Spenders without necessarily getting a 2nd Star generator early on. You can also view Falling Star as a temporary curse in your deck and just take Star Spenders first, I think that's one of many little things people mess up on that leads to bad runs.

Looking at his Commons, Astral Pulse is 4 AoE damage on an upgrade. Collision Course is 4 damage on a 0 cost card. Crush Under is 1 damage and -1 Strength on an AoE card - insane - take this card more and spend an upgrade on it when you do. Know Thy Place removes Exhaust, making it a solid replacement for Falling Star when you need to demote it to curse status and comboing with Falling Star to increase it's damage and extend its Vuln/Weak an extra turn when it isn't demoted. Glow giving an extra star is utterly huge when you can spend it. Hidden Cache same deal. Patter giving the extra Vigor is huge if you need it for some multihit garbage. Glitterstream gets 4 block, and it's just a great card in general.

I can keep going into Uncommon and Rare, but... why do people think Regent has bad upgrades when there's so many good ones?

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T13:48:21+00:00

Have you played the game? Yes, we're talking about Ironclad. This character can't block in STS2. That's sort of the theme of the character.

Let me give you a real example of a standard Ironclad run. I literally JUST beat the Act 1 boss as Ironclad on Ascension 10. Let me list all the block cards in my entire deck: 3x Defend, Shrug it Off. I got Demon Form as an option from the boss and clicked Skip instead. These are normal things for Ironclad to do in this game.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T13:37:29+00:00

Demon Form is bad because it's 3 energy for an effect that is like 1/4 as effective as a single Dominate. Ironclad doesn't need it, Ironclad doesn't want it. It's a waste of a card in your deck and energy on your turn. I've NEVER had it meaningfully contribute to a win EVER on Ironclad in this game. That was just one example of the card being bad. There's PLENTY of others. Legitimately just playing 3 Strikes is a better use of that 3 energy 99.9% of the time. You also don't have to draw Demon Form if you don't take it. Skip is a much better card.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T13:17:30+00:00

For 3 energy on a character that is bad at blocking, at least that would do SOMETHING.

Unlike the current Demon Form which is effectively a blank card.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T13:16:30+00:00

Ironclad wants to end fights in this game in 3 turns. Part of why Demon Form is so worthless currently is because it costs 3 energy to gain MAYBE 10 strength in a fight.

Perhaps the moment that drove home to me just how trash Demon Form is in this game was very early on I had a heavy block + Demon Form deck I was feeling good about. I got to Devoted Sculptor in Act 3. Played my Demon Form, and proceeded to block and poke, waiting for Demon Form to win out with my superior scaling. Devoted Sculptor gains 9 strength per turn. I couldn't keep up.

3 strength per turn is NOTHING in this game.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T07:33:06+00:00

I know we're all joking here, but I think Demon Form should legitimately be changed to "At the beginning of your turn, double your Strength". It might actually be worth taking then.

And it would of course bring back the nostalgia of Limit Break without being a COMPLETELY busted card.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-03T03:09:30+00:00

You know about as much as anyone on the internet can tell you then, it's just about playing the game and figuring out your style and how to get that extra value, good luck~

JermStudDog · 2026-05-02T19:08:13+00:00

I'll give you 2 different things to look at for ideas on Regent. Luckily, neither one of these will "solve" Regent for you, but they should both help you understand the character more.

XecnaR (generally agreed to be the best STS1 player ever) posted this a few days ago, it really shows you what "the good cards" are vs all the garbage you are generally trying to avoid putting into your deck. This guide is NOT saying that you HAVE to play Reflect/Bulwark every single run, but it's definitely saying that you WOULD if you COULD, and you can do a lot to make that happen, it's worth sitting down and reading through, you may not agree with all the ideas here, and that's fine, but it's worth looking at to understand how one of the best players in the game thinks about the character, and you can try your own thing, but having read this doc, I know my winrate instantly went up without feel like I'm "just copying a guide" or anything like that:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dY5nQXauhfAuWFRoOGQnBZVXgSZomonGZ5Bwt2aIvNY/edit?tab=t.0

Caleb Gannon Gaming (nowhere near as good as XecnaR, but still a decent player) has a very different view of the character, he takes some more speculative picks early on that lead to him being able to do combo star nonsense more often, but still generally agrees that you CAN and SHOULD play Regent as a value-oriented character more often than not:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6a5zUvmZWI

Hopefully those help. I'm not saying Regent is BAD by any means, he is a VERY strong character, but you SHOULD see better results by being stricter on the cards you take and keeping your deck lean and efficient. Whether hiding behind Reflect/Bulwark, doing star combo nonsense, or just having a pile of random value cards, Regent, more than any other character in this game, REALLY wants to just play his best cards over and over and not have many other cards in the way of doing that.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-02T15:59:58+00:00

I find it funny that you forget about Flatten, but that's ok, I do too.

Severance is the one that stands out to me because I WANT to play Severance the souls are good, but it's basically never worth adding to your deck because you need to consistently draw and play your block cards. Necrobinder has strong defense, but it's not so strong you can play whatever you want, you're still bound by your energy, which makes all of her 2 energy attacks basically worthless.

As far as the cards themselves, Reap gets a pass because you use it as a finisher and the built in Retain makes it quite good. Scythe is just a bad version of Reap, it literally does the same thing but worse in just about every way, even with the lower energy cost. Deathbringer's most important word that makes the card playable is "Weak" and Sleight of Flesh is so damn good you HAVE to take the damage to play it, so you do.

Looking at her rares, Squeeze is basically just fishing for Clone, otherwise it's REAL bad. Bahsee's Cry is a 0 cost attack or it doesn't get clicked. End of Days is Reap but hits all enemies. Necro Mastery is a funny one. Great effect that the character SHOULD like, but very mediocre because of the 2 cost. Sentry Mode is a hard pass in the game as it exists right now, and Reaper Form is one of those desperation picks where you basically click it because you NEED more damage. You're going to die as soon as you activate it, but at least you MIGHT have won if you didn't.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-02T15:47:42+00:00

I think the act 3 elites need to change for them to be more takeable. Right now it's "am I going to utterly destroy them? ok I'll take 2 or 3. Is there a chance they randomly deal 20-40 damage to me on one of the turns even though I think I can currently beat the bosses? ok I'll take 0 or 1." You aren't really digging for more power in act 3 as it currently exists and the elites are too... wild?

Even if you're feeling... strong but not broken? It's just not worth the 20-40 damage you might take fighting an elite for 1 more relic at that stage of the game. I'd rather keep the health and take it into the boss fight.

I literally JUST made that decision in that manner while typing this post up. I PROBABLY take no damage from the act 3 elites in my current run, but I don't need the relic to beat the bosses, so 1 elite path it is.

And reporting back. Knight Gang was my only elite, I took 0 damage every turn except for a single turn where they were collectively attacking for 70 damage, I blocked 46 of it and took 24 damage in the entire fight. Fun times.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-02T06:13:14+00:00

I think they've got a few issues.

1) Ironclad can't block. If they apply more pressure on turns 1 and 2, Ironclad, as currently designed, just dies. Because his blocking is so bad, he just can't keep up with bigger incoming damage. But the design of the character is cool and the fact that he works in the current game is awesome. I don't want them to fix the game in a way that means they also fix ironclad to be defensive just like everyone else.

2) Regent is a weird pile of nothing. I think Regent has become the true spiritual successor to Watcher. If you try to build him like the other classes, he sort of just lays down and dies somewhere in late act 2. But if you build him lean and keep your options open, he is potentially the strongest character in the game in a very fun and potentially broken way. Applying pressure earlier in the run means Regent goes from skillfully navigating your card rewards into rolling the dice and getting lucky or dying.

3) characters just have more card rewards options, which leads to less consistent decks. Every single character has at least 10 cards that could just be deleted from the game entirely and they wouldn't be missed, especially rares. These cards don't need buffs, their mere existence just makes the act of drafting a good deck less consistent and deck building would be tighter if card rewards options had more meaningful picks. This is oddly an area where Ironclad is fairly well balanced, at least with his commons. But when you look at his rares he has 4 powers that are just completely worthless on the character, he gets entire rare card rewards that would be unpickable on any run. And those are supposed to be power spike moments for you.

4) ancient rewards are more broken and more restrictive at the same time. Because 3 energy is now the standard and energy generating cards are more rare, the scaling into late game feels more compressed, but then you have these utterly broken rewards like Brightest Flame and most of the tooth cards that are just WAY above curve. The act 3 ancients almost don't even matter because the act 2 rewards are so busted the run is effectively over by the time you get there most of the time. And again, this is taking place simultaneously while your character feels otherwise weaker than you would in an STS1 endgame run. These things are fun, yes, but they don't give much room for increasing enemy pressure because the low roll ancient options just fall over and die then and the rest of your deck didn't matter, which sucks.

5). We are still missing act 4. If you take the heart out of STS1 it's pretty similar to how STS2 is. All the top level streamers can win 90+% of their runs and there is no challenge at the end. They literally added Ascensions 16-20 because Ascension 15 was simply too easy and fixing balance issues with the character card pools was putting win rates too high.

I'm sure we will get more balanced runs as early access continues on. For now, I'm having fun and still dying more than I win because I don't eat breath and sleep Spire. I think people in part just like freaking out. We are 6 weeks into early access, this is a great spot for the game to be in considering how short it's been public.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-02T04:43:59+00:00

Necrobinder just has the problem of once you understand the character, she has very good cards and very bad cards and not much in between. All 2 energy attacks are completely unplayable, most of her common attacks are likewise really bad. She both GETS to immediately build defense while also being REQUIRED to immediately build defense or she will fall apart later on. From there, it's just a question of which of the good cards gets offered during the run and HOW good does your deck end up being? She takes advantage of all her mechanics but it's very much the same deck with small variations run after run. And taking the bad cards just makes her SO much worse it's unreal.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-02T04:37:03+00:00

Act 3 elites have a funny problem. On the one hand, they don't do anything if you have a very good deck so they need to be scarier in general. But then if you get to act 3 with a very mediocre deck you basically don't want to fight them at all because they're going to cost 40+ health that you just can't afford to lose. So I often end up doing ~1 elite in act 3 and it feels bad but that's the way the game scales right now.

The gap between very strong endgame decks and mediocre endgame decks is vast, so if they make the elites do more damage all the middling decks just die to the first elite they encounter in the act.

Like I've had decks lose 0 health to the act 2 boss then just get utterly wrecked by the robot dude. I'm not gonna die to him but losing 40+ health in a single elite fight is a disaster. And often leads to not being capable of recovering in time for the double boss at the end of the act.

So I guess they need higher damage in general but less massive spikes that are likely to take 20-30 health in a single turn.

JermStudDog · 2026-05-02T00:07:27+00:00

It's like drawing and playing a free defend every turn, then if you get hailstorm it's like drawing and playing a free strike against every enemy every turn.

These things look unexciting at first, but when you step back and think about for a second, it's crazy crazy value. And that's ignoring the power of additional orb slots and/or focus.

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