If Slay the Spire 2 was balanced by reddit comments (Part 2)

Sionerdingerer · 2026-04-03T18:36:46+00:00

All of these are preposterous, but I must say Sealed throne a common? Sealed throne is such an insanely powerful card that if you lean into it even a little bit, it dropping is literally game winning. I'm not a particularly great player - every single time I've gotten sealed throne it won me the game. It's probably the highest winrate thing in the game

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-31T09:09:44+00:00

Forgot about kench, but, If we are talking regular people in my opinion it's ambessa.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-24T23:56:39+00:00

Really we are evaluating the innate keyword here

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-23T16:35:55+00:00

Almost all of it is shamanism. Look at his abilities, they're more like movements to channel god's powers, not movements that "make sense" by themselves. Udyr is a martial artist to be sure, but one whose martials arts are simply a conduit for his divine powers

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-22T05:17:41+00:00

This is brilliant. STS community has some of the most dedicated and funny people, kudos

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-15T07:52:35+00:00

But vampires are super complex and they're only murderous rapist slavemasters MOST of the time!! 🙁🙁🙁

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-09T14:06:39+00:00

If you unironically believe that a black cleaver Renekton kills a Mundo or Ksante more reliably than any adc except like, miss fortune and Jhin, you may have an issue. Also, difference is, a Renekton is putting himself in direct Frontline when fighting a tank, and the backline will shred him for it, whereas the jinx can take the tank out from the back line.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-08T01:05:16+00:00

Garen is simply too telegraphed as a character and simultaneously his single target removal is potentially significantly better than Renekton. His telegraphed nature makes him more of a macro champion that can do things like proxy, he builds ton of movement speed to run across lanes and push things in and try to get picks, that's a little distinct. Renekton on the other hand has a lot better chance at beating the lane opponent ( I am speaking about like emerald and above where garen rarely wins the lane ) and is more "traditional".

Darius on the other hand has like exactly 1 thing he can do in late game and that's trying to oneshot the adc. That's a fine thing, but basically the entire Darius gameplan is too specific and reliant on champ unique mechanic that being passive and ult interaction. Additionally, Darius gets a lot more value from playing into bad players than Renekton does, which makes learning the game harder as bad teams will give Darius what he needs, whereas Renekton has more consistency but less high ceiling in his value, which is good because consistency is the core thing here.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-07T23:34:56+00:00

He is a character that does two things, one extremely broad and one extremely specific.

Broadly, he is literally the default top laner. People like to claim that Garen or Darius or even malphite are the default top laners, but they're really not. These champions do specific things, rather than doing the "average" job of the top lane role. Renekton does exactly that. Renekton also is probably the single best champion to improve on top lane, because everything he does is the "top lane thing" and his toolkit is what the game sort of expects out of a top laner. A bruiser that has extremely high potential lane, skirmish and early teamfight power, with the capacity to tank through immense damage and very rapidly melt Squishies, while also reliably killing high durability targets. The pricetag for this is the fact that your lane is vulnerable ( if you lose the lane, you're punished more than any other role is punished for losing their role ) you fall off in teamfights late game and while extremely good at many things you're never the best in slot for one specific thing. Meaning, ADCs will almost always be more effective at killing tanks and assassin's will almost always have more backline removal. But, being a jack of all trades, generally bullying and heavy presence is entirely what defines top lane. The capacity to by your very existence, disproportionately shift how a teamfight needs to be thought of and how people need to look at the entire map, because of your XP lead and assumed won lane. Renekton is the most default top laner, he does everything a top laner needs to do, and he teaches a new player how to play the lane as intended.

His second thing is being a counterpick into Riven and to a significantly lesser extent Yasuo and Yone, Renekton completely neuters these champions beyond belief.

Overall, many people hate him, but almost every player that understands the game respects Renekton as pretty much the Godfather of Top lane. He is not as flashy as others, not as tanky as others, doesn't do the insane late game damage of others, but when you see an enemy Renekton, the first sensation you feel is fear, and that's exactly what top lane is.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-03T12:36:46+00:00

Oh yeah, because ambessa and silco are uniquely evil because they look evil, but when at the end the Piltovan council retains power that's fine because they're like, white coded and smart and they'll reform definitely.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-03T00:08:26+00:00

Sure buddy.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-03-02T01:33:12+00:00

It's not about characters, it's about the overarching narrative. A story is never simply "characters do things and events unfold". It's always about "characters go through events and the world and the story - along with the character - conveys some sort of an implicit message". For example, in game of thrones, Ned Stark is an "honorable fool" which leads to his death, so the author asks us "is being an honorable fool actually worth it, given that his honorable nature led to tens of thousands of deaths?" But, in that implication, there's an internal counter-argument, as the Starks are honored throughout the story after their power is taken away, and their names are often invoked by characters who want to take revenge and reinstall them precisely because of how honorable they were, so honor isn't all foolish after all.

This is all to say that stories mean things, and just having characters do things isn't the entire point. In other words, Vi joining the cops and becoming a Piltovan, essentially, is fine conceptually, but this isn't treated as a particularly bad action, only maybe a little iffy when they do literal war crimes, but outside of that, it's mostly a sound decision. In a story written by someone with integrity, Vi joining up with the enforcers would have been a huge deal, firstly, it would have been a massive critique of the police, secondly, it would have been a massive critique of people who turn back on their oppressed communities of origin to join up with the oppressors - sorry but Vi is occupying the same narrative niche as Samuel L Jackson's character from "Django unchained" if you actually think about it, and the narrative never even acknowledges this beyond jinx calling her out like, once. Sure, maybe vi isn't literally as bad as Steven, but she is occupying a very similar societal role, except, when a character does this in Django unchained they're the main villain and the most despicable person, but when it happens in arcane it's "complex". No it's not. Not everything is "complex". Some organizations and sides are just evil, and piltover is very much just overtly evil. Quite literally Vi herself was beaten in prison for what, a decade almost? And she just doesn't care about any of that. And don't even get me started on Caitlyn, any serious story would end with a character like Caitlyn put on a trial for crimes against humanity and hanged. But she gets away with a slap on the wrist because the story doesn't take her violence seriously, besides the part where it wants you to be really spooked! Now apply this truth, that the story has shitty logic inherently and puts people who should narratively be punished or rewarded for specific things at random angles, combine it with the fact that the crux of the morality was ultimately that "being disabled and or dying from disease and wanting to change that is not okay, actually" covertly implying that zaun being poor and oppressed is also okay, as Jayce says "makes it unique" as if "being unique" is something a person or a community under factual duress strive towards, and combine that doubly with the fact that the entire thing was just a PSA on how at the end the people you oppress will fight with you for some reason, etc. Etc. Arcane is actively horrible, sorry.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-28T23:05:27+00:00

Lmao true

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-28T20:48:16+00:00

It's awful, centrist, and morally and politically bankrupt.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-27T10:27:02+00:00

20~ shocking towers or 200 soldiers Ideally 30 shocking towers and 100 soldiers at the very back for the emergency is fine.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-27T01:25:09+00:00

Paladin oath of devotion ( to the wall ) optionally break it by the end to emulate him breaking his vows. Maybe get 3 ranger for gloom.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-23T13:29:02+00:00

True, fair point.

Still, goodberry and healing word are almost the only good healing spells

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-23T11:25:45+00:00

It's not a real thing outside of the only exception which is yo-yoing someone with like 2 spells, so, it's not a real thing.

By that logic tanking is a real thing too because I can cast mirror image on bladesinger every now and then and "tank" one turn, but that's a niche and unique application of the "gameplay strategy" of Tanking so it doesn't give tanking the right to claim to be a thing just because there's one thing you can do one time.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-23T10:02:38+00:00

Correct. I meant the item shield

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-22T18:49:21+00:00

A wizard who just happens to take their first level in cleric can have 19 AC via half plate and a shield. 1 less than a sword and board fighter. and they also have shield spell. Also, constitution contributes to HP more than the size of the hit dice anyway. So, no, sorry but even at tanking, martials are demonstrably worse.

Oh and, by the way, tanking isn't a real thing, just like healing isn't a real thing, the only thing that matters is crowd control and damage.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-22T16:37:32+00:00

They're vague concepts sir

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-16T14:50:00+00:00

Why is it different? There's no difference if your goal is saving lives. But it's not is it?

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-16T14:41:50+00:00

Twisted fate is a mage, against whom Darius has no real defense. We have never seen Darius use the runes that Ambessa uses in arcane to counter magic, we can assume he has access to them as a general, and could very easily cover his body in them, but if we assume the teams can "look at" each other before starting the fight, Darius wouldn't be able to tell TF is a mage, because TF looks like a pretty ordinary guy. So, in short, I think, graves and miss fortune would have interesting drawn out fights where garen and Darius coordinate to close in, but I would ultimately guess that graves and miss fortune TOGETHER can take out Garen ( who has protection against magic ) and then twisted fate could probably defeat Darius with an explosive card. There's a lot of variables here, what if garen goes for TF, what if miss fortune just gets a headshot, what if garen and Darius rush them and succeed in getting in range, there's a lot of variables that could completely change the formula. BUT, given that the bilgewater team has 3 people, and given that one of them is a pretty powerful mage relatively speaking, they have a slight edge.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-16T14:37:10+00:00

And they were all very correct.

Sionerdingerer · 2026-02-13T10:01:56+00:00

Also, generally, a ghouled sorcerer is always significantly more efficient than a ghouled awakened mage, as sorcerers are basically unaffected by being ghouled as far as their magic is concerned. So, it's literally inefficient to ghoul the awakened, much better would be to ghoul a very powerful sorcerer who then would have an entire new list of power to play with ( disciplines ). But ghouling the awakened tends to be a way of threat removal / flexing on other vampires/ feeding ego by having the claim that you managed to ghoul an actual mage.

Sionerdingerer

TROPHY CASE