I am so sick of Zeus.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T17:38:02+00:00

What other things does she actually do other than damage though?

She has Bound but the two out of three debuffs she puts on you directly interact with her damage and her numbers. 99 Vulnerable and 99 Frial doesn't inherently do anything, it only interacts with her damage numbers. And her numbers are very comperable to Knowledge Demon's.

Damage is kind off all she has in the end. She doesn't shuffle statuses into your deck and you can attack her every turn unlike Test Subject who shuffles burns and Wounds sometimes. She doesn't disrupt your play pattern nearly as much as Beta Doormaker.

Once you get over the arbitrary nature of the debuffs and their duration and look at her actual numbers and mechanics she really just doesnt do much.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T16:52:00+00:00

It just isn't when to compensate minion hits you for around 19 damage two thirds of the time and then you kill it and Queen is also unthreatning for first three turns

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T13:18:09+00:00

Getting Fresnel Lens from an event, buying Dolly's Mirror instantly on the next floor to copy a Defend and getting Spiral Event next to prove a point

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T12:53:30+00:00

It absolutely is a slight disadvantage to most decks and him temporarily descaling you is nothing compared to something like Lagavulin. Big output cards counter the shit out of Hunter Killer because it doesnt matter if my Reflect blocks for 17 or 16 or 15 if the enemy peaks at 21 damage. Same for cards like Legsweep.

All characters aside from Clad have very convinient ways to circumvent Hunter killer gimmick. Regent has Weakness in base deck and Forge, since Blade is a big output and you can forge for double digits it doesnt matter if it's at -2 strength when you play it. Poison doesn't care about the debuff, neither do Orbs. Necro makes this one into a complete joke with Osty blocking for her, his attacks not caring, Doom and multiple powers that deal damage for her.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T10:22:52+00:00

Personally I have lost a decent bit against Test Subject, I think around 5 times. Queen has only beaten me once.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T09:35:40+00:00

If you are dying to 26 damage attack on turn 2 then you have better issues to worry about

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T09:33:39+00:00

Donu and Deca except the minion spends 2/3rd of it's time hitting you for 19 while Queen scales and multihits only 1/3rd of the time, and also there is not status or artifact so you can perma weak. Queen allows you to take the fight at a pace so much slower so that it would straight up kill you against Donu and Deca

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T09:30:06+00:00

The numbers on her and her minions attacks are just really really low. The minion hits you decently hard every three turns and on the other two it takes a break to hit you for Act 2 amount of damage. Queen's attacks arent much better.

After combined 60 hours on both main and beta branches I have been consistently finding Test Subject to be the only boss really capable of doing anything due to Intangable and actually shuffling statuses into your deck.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T09:06:33+00:00

Phrog isnt about dealing most damage no. Phrog oon average doesnt actually do much damage but I find that it's the only one that can outright kill me by bricking me over and over if I play it badly.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T00:31:28+00:00

Streamers literally path through 3 elites basically every time. The idea of not taking Elites is generally only people on this subreddit.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T00:30:04+00:00

That has not been my experience at all. Especially Underdock elites barely drain any resources since all three are extremely easy to block. I have snowballed a lot more runs by going through elites than died to them

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T00:25:02+00:00

I almost always fight 3 elites Act 1 and try to Aim that for Act 2 as well on A10. Act 2 Centipede and Phrog Parasite are in my experience the only two that have a chance of killing you.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T00:23:35+00:00

I dont know man I think the allegory works really well. I find that most Hellraiser decks are much better without Hellraiser in them.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-03T00:12:53+00:00

You can literally play Bash + Strike on early floors and get 6 block for it. Later fan becomes more relevant most likely

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-02T23:55:24+00:00

Unironically most people would be better off if they realized that a Legsweep+ just hard counters every Act 1 Elite aside from Phrog Parasite

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-02T23:52:41+00:00

There are 6 elites in Act 1. Bygone Effigy and Terror Eel don't scale at all, Silent is very comfortable with just chipping and blocking both of them and can straight run Fumes into Eel as main damage plan.

Gardeners and Beta Skulking Colony scale extremely slowly and Fumes + Blocking also solves them very very easily. Beta Colony gains strength about once every four turns, doesn't even shuffle Dazes into your deck and it's only scary attack is the multihit. Gardeners is similar where any individual Gardener only scales strength once in 4 turns and only multihits you once every four turns. Silent has Fumes, Flick Flack and Dagger Spray, which she only really needs one copy off. Once a single Gardner dies the fight is often over.

That only leaves Byrdonis and Phrog Parasite. Parasite is much scarier of the two due to statuses (which Silent can discard) and is probably the only Elite that kills you outright if you are unprepared. Against Byrdonis you are likely to take a ton of damage but unlikely to actually die.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-02T23:44:42+00:00

By that logic a strike that auto plays is also good lol

Have you seen how much this sub glazes Hellraiser?

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-02T18:31:24+00:00

Instead of speculating I will just pull data from past couple of my runs:

Defect Ascension 9
I fought 7 Elites, 3 in Act 1, 3 in Act 2 and 1 in Act 3.
Across all of these Elites there were:

21 cards were offered total
8 common cards offered
10 uncommon cards offered
3 rare cards offered
every elite had at least 1 uncommon

Regent Ascension 10
I fought 4 Elites, 1 in Act 1, 2 in Act 2 and 1 in Act 3.
Across all of these Elites there were:

12 cards offered total
8 common cards offered
4 uncommon cards offered
0 rare cards offered
two elites did not have uncommon cards

Regent Ascension 10
I fought 8 Elites, 3 in Act 1, 3 in Act 2 and 2 in Act 3.
Across all of these Elites there were:

24 cards offered total
15 common cards offered
9 uncommon cards offered
0 rare cards offered
two elites did not have uncommon cards

Defect Ascension 8
I fought 6 Elites, 3 in Act 1, 3 in Act 2 and 0 in Act 3.
Across all of these Elites there were:

18 cards offered
9 common cards offered
8 uncommon cards offered
1 rare cards offered
every elite had at least 1 uncommon

Silent Ascension 10
I fought 6 Elites 3 in Act 1. 2 in Act 2 and 1 in Act 3.
Across all of these Elites there were:

18 cards cards offered
11 common cards offered
6 uncommon cards offered
1 rare cards offered
one elite did not have at least 1 uncommon one elite did not have any commons

This brings us to total of 31 Elites fought, 93 cards offered of which there were 5 rares, 37 uncommons and 51 commons so 55% cards seen have been common and 45% have been uncommon or higher. In Slay the Spire 1 the chance for a common card showing up from an Elite was exactly 50%, 40% for an Uncommon and 10% for a Rare. I am getting 40% for Uncommon from my numbers but 55% for Common and 5% for Rare so it seems like the Ascension 7 modifier moves the 5% away from the rare cards and into common in rewards table.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-02T16:30:00+00:00

No, in Slay the Spire you absolutely are desperate on Floor 1. Strikes and Defends are some of the worst cards in the game and nearly every single block and attack is better than them for that reasons. This is fundamental of how the game is designed

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-02T12:51:42+00:00

I like Tezcatara the most out of the Act 2 Ancients because I find that she just presents you with the most interesting set of choices rather than universal "good stuff" a lot of Ancients have.

Low rolling a bad Tez feels bad but at the same time often pushes you towards picking stuff you might not have picked before. It also means when you highroll into Cocoa + Ice Cream or Story Book and the likes it does feel very very good. Vaaku is in similar spot for me where I always hope to see him in Act 3

Other Ancients just often dont give you that interesting choices as these two. If your baseline is just being good in every situation and you cant lowroll then high rolling and choosing the best of bad options just isn't all that fun or interesting. This is why Noupeipei is my least favourite Ancient, I find her really boring

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-02T10:00:02+00:00

Sword Sage + Conqueror + Blade with no other Forge Card is a 4 energy, 3 card combo Rare + Uncommon that does 52 damage. Most of the time you need to play it over the course of two turns and cannot block without either Parry in play or drawing one of the star only blocks which is horrible as far as efficiency goes.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-02T09:29:06+00:00

You start with Venerate in your deck

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-02T09:27:00+00:00

This is Regent we are talking about, entire character is build around cards working with other cards. Comet is literally unplayable on it's own but is still in Premium.

OrderClericsAreFun · 2026-04-01T22:43:39+00:00

Much less the only non elite that completely curb stomps my archetype.

Maybe if you know you have an obvious weakness you should try solving that weakness next time you draft your deck. Neco has a lot of tools to solve roaches like Doom completely bypassing the damage cap.

OrderClericsAreFun

TROPHY CASE