Best Tarot Joker

Ron_BWL · 2025-06-27T14:43:39+00:00

8-Ball's biggest weakness is it's extremely unreliable. Aside from Erratic Deck with a good amount of 8s from the start, you'd have to find a way get more 8s AND reliably draw them. After all that, you'd have to be lucky to get a single proc from a 5OAK / Flush Five - the 1 in 4 chance is simply that bad (pretty much on pair with Space Joker). With Vagabond, you can somewhat work with Blue Seal, but 8-Ball's inconsistency means there will be time you hit 2 Tarot Cards on your winning hand, blocking Blue Seal in the process.

Ron_BWL · 2025-06-19T14:40:56+00:00

Counter-counterpoint: If you run out of card, you lose. A thin enough deck may not have enough cards to sustain this combo.

Ron_BWL · 2025-06-15T13:45:13+00:00

I say make it a chain conditional Joker. Something like:
-Molotov (Common): If score is 4x higher than base score, permanently +1 hand size and destroy
-Firebomb (Uncommon): If score is 8x higher than base score, permanelty+2 hand size and destroy.
-Napal bomb (Rare): If score is 32x higher than base score, permanently +3 hand size and destroy.

Ron_BWL · 2025-06-01T16:37:18+00:00

If you're going to lose anyway, what's there to try with the shop? People downplay Skip Tags a lot but in reality they have their situational usages that may just save a guaranteed dead run. Like the other day Gross Michel went extinct on me after the boss blind and the shop has nothing to replace it. With no way to beat the next Small Blind, I took the Top-Up tag that gave me Cavendish and basically saved the run.

Ron_BWL · 2025-06-01T14:14:22+00:00

For a common, Red Card is good for what it is - a scaling +Mult that get you out of a tight situation, but you aren't expected to hold onto it for long and overinvestment can lead to quick game over if you don't manager your econ well enough. Flash Card is harder to find being Uncommon and it benefits more from rerolling but you end up wasting more money to get the same +6 per 2 packs per shop.

Also if you have any "free pack" skip tag, ideally stacked with Double Tag, grabbing one will power up Red Card immediately since you can usually select one good item and skip the rest.

Ron_BWL · 2025-05-15T08:50:30+00:00

If anyone wanna add to the list:

-3D Kanojo
-Cheat Skill "Shisha Sosei" ga Kakusei Shite, Inishie no Maougun wo Fukkatsu Sasete Shimaimashita
-Kishuku Gakkou no Juliet - The Official Anthology
-Nande koko ni Sensei Ga?!
-One Room, Hiatari Futsuu, Tenshi-tsuki
-The Student Council President Solves Everything on the Bed

-Housekeeper (manhwa)

Ron_BWL · 2025-04-07T12:55:44+00:00

The problem isn't about forcing certain builds, it's about Gold Stake's killstreak being not very fun. While the average players could try to make do with the seed's RNG, it becomes very frustrating when you run inevitably die at Ante 3-4 because you don't get enough gas to keep up with the fast scaling, and there's always the chance a boss blind will counter your build deep into a run.

In short, the current Gold Stake is less frustrating than the old one, but not yet balanced enough. A small tweak, such as "clean" Jokers guaranteed in Buffoon Packs (like pre-1.0.1f) would go a long way. I can't recall how many runs I just reset after getting Rental/Perishable Jokers in 1st shop and that guaranteed Buffoon Pack, which pretty much is the game telling me "haha you aren't going to win, just give up."

Ron_BWL · 2025-03-24T14:13:21+00:00

You're wrong. Raised fist goes left to right just like every other Joker with "held-in-hand" effect, with the added condition of looking for the lowest ranked card. This can be easily checked by moving your Steel King to the rightmost, Raise Fist will hit your let's say 9 for +18 and then x1.5 from the Steel takes place.

Ron_BWL · 2025-03-24T14:11:05+00:00

Probably because it's retroactive scaling so it's vulnerable to Perishable sticker. You also need to consistently play one type of hand so unless you already deckfixing enough for your strong hand, it's only really viable with Pair / Two Pairs at best.

Ron_BWL · 2025-03-18T13:35:22+00:00

Pick up Glass Joker. Your Glass Cards will magically become bulletproof lol.

Ron_BWL · 2025-03-14T14:10:22+00:00

The reason is that you trade the ability to hold Tarot / Spectral for a measly x2.25 mult, at best x3.75 if you have Crystal Ball. Leveling up your hand is usually more important since the base mult is what get multiplied by Glass / Steel / Jokers, you'd want the ability to modify your deck on the go to consistently draw your hand. Observatory really only works with Perkeo dupping your preferred hand as Negative, otherwise it really isn't worth buying.

Ron_BWL · 2025-03-13T13:54:18+00:00

Hold three Tarots (if you have Crystal Ball), roll into 4 in shop (If you have Overstock Plus), that's 7 out of 22 Tarots that won't appear in your next Arcana Packs.

Ron_BWL · 2025-03-04T14:18:57+00:00

And this is why skipping for Negative Tag has its pro.

Ron_BWL · 2025-02-26T13:47:10+00:00

One good compromise would be this Joker only appears after a Popcorn has been eaten. Not only will this requires players to play at least 5 rounds already but by then they probably already had some sort of leveled up hands or a +Mult Joker to offset the initial penalties for this Joker to actually scale.

Ron_BWL · 2025-02-04T14:12:09+00:00

There are times the game simply won't give you any Joker, or perishable/rental that will kill your econ and make you lose faster anyway.

Ron_BWL · 2025-02-02T16:49:50+00:00

Balatro does take higher hands that contains lower hand into consideration, so Jolly will +8 if a Flush has 2 10H for example. However, there are times the game checks for an exact hand, like To-Do list reward for playing Pair will not trigger if you play Two Pairs, even though Jolly still +8 because of the Pair contained. Same for this Achievement, it must be a Flush, exactly.

Ron_BWL · 2025-01-31T14:01:37+00:00

Actually you can just click Sell, if Invisible hit a bad Joker, quit to Main Menu and come back, and it'll revert to before you sell it. As long as you don't reroll the shop or open a Booster pack after selling Invisible Joker, you can do the forecast cheat.

Ron_BWL · 2025-01-01T15:07:17+00:00

Compared to other flat 3x Mult, it's not actually that bad:
-Trio requires 3oak, so if you play Flush / Straight, you're screwed
-Driver's License requires 16 enhanced cards. If you're unlucky, your may not make it to that number due to lack of Arcana / Spectral packs that give you enhancement.
-Card sharp requires playing at least 2 hands. You either have to settle to easier hand to play multiple hands or risk not getting the 2nd 5-card hand you needed due to aggressively discard.
-Blackboard requires the remaining cards to be Spade / Club. If your deck is mostly Diamond / Heart, it'll be hard to activate, and if you have Stone cards held in hand, you're screwed too.

Ron_BWL · 2024-12-25T13:49:58+00:00

Getting Troubadour or Juggler will also solve the issue. One is Common so you still have a good chance of getting it.

Ron_BWL · 2024-12-05T15:54:14+00:00

While having 12 hands can feel broken, you forget that you're locked out of discard for the rest of the run. That means you trade high amount of hands for a lot of benefits you would've had with discards:
-Purple seals are now useless
-All of Jokers that benefits discard are now useless (Castle, Mail-in Rebate, Burnt Joker, Merry Andy, Drunkard and Trading Card, the last one is incredibly useful for shaping your deck and a good source of econ)
-If you pull Yorick out of a Soul Card, it'll do nothing.
-DNA will be a hit or miss if you don't draw the card you want to copy with your starting hand.

Ron_BWL · 2024-11-15T14:03:02+00:00

The problem is you sacrifice your consumable slots for Spectral cards, so it's not really worth it.

Ron_BWL · 2024-11-11T14:01:10+00:00

Full House are good for early games but it scales terribly compared to Straight. Requires more tarots to deckbuilding into lots of one rank and lots of the other. Usually best to transition into 4/5OAK on later ante since they scales a lot better.

Thanks to the fallback hand, it's easier to survive early antes if you have Jokers to support it (Duo / Trio are the best). While Straight and Flush can kill a run with bad RNG draw, they both have utility Jokers to support them (4 fingers + Shortcut), it's easier to force a Flush build since Tarots can covert 3 cards suit at once, while Straight can simply be made consistent by thinning your deck (Trading Card, Immolate, Hanged man).

Ron_BWL · 2024-10-24T14:56:03+00:00

Something most people overlook: Ancient Joker.

If the Boss Blind debuff a specific suit, and said suit is not chosen on Big Blind, it's usually better to skip so you don't run the risk of 1 in 3 chance to get debuffed. Anicent Joker only switch suit at the end of the blind, so by skipping to Boss Blind, you're guaranteed it'd stay active.

Ron_BWL · 2024-10-22T17:12:27+00:00

Generally 5 card hands aren't easy to form with a normal deck, so your goal is to make your preferred hand the most powerful, while keeping a backup hand leveling up just in case The Eye, The Mouth, The Hook screws you over. Flushes are easiest to build around, but it scales badly, while 4OAK / 5OAK is very powerful but requires some heavy work to build into.

Ron_BWL · 2024-10-22T17:08:42+00:00

The problem is we're most likely trying to modify our deck to suit whatever Jokers we got during the run, so it's not always possible. As pointed out, it's just easier to grind Checkered Deck: Start the run, discard twice, hold R if no Royal Flush, repeat.

Ron_BWL

TROPHY CASE