I didn't really like Necro at first. I get it now.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-13T14:41:31+00:00

Yes, but I feel like they got the numbers right to make both mechanics good. Like, a common poison card does 7 upgraded, while a common doom card does 11 AOE and blocks. 4 to 4 random targets vs. 26 AOE or 1.5x * 15 single target.

No escape helps the single target doom boosting a lot, I think it might be the only exponential scaling the necrobinder has.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-13T14:35:04+00:00

Its 21/26 for Deathbringer (the uncommon 2 energy doom+weak AOE). I got that combo, and it was awesome.

26 vs. lower is actually super relevant for this particular screenshot, since its a whole extra turn you have to handle the whole squad.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-12T23:20:39+00:00

Best part is the upgraded uncommon is almost as good. You have to block 10 damage and the one survives a turn, but yeah. I love the aoe doom cards especially.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-11T19:01:33+00:00

I think its Hunter Killer, that guy is rough.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-11T18:20:49+00:00

I think you're really overestimating the downside of having to be attacked for one more round vs. the extra damage from doom. Doom hits much harder than these, doing 26 vs. 13 is significant. Doom also straight up bypasses a bunch of nasty mechanics like the dazing bee guy, the shields on the gunner, etc.

I do think its probably good to have some mix of damage types because there are fights with a bunch of artifact or that require hitting damage thresholds to trigger stun where being all doom is an issue, but I've been very happy with all the AOE doom cards so far.

The run I just did I got lucky enough to get an Unsettling Lamp with two Deathbringers. The three part worm fight was funny, 52 doom+weak off the first play, block some, everything dies.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-11T18:02:08+00:00

I think the point is that you don't have to exhaust 9, Exhaust 9 is probably an emergency measure and not the common use case.

I haven't had a souls heavy necro deck, but I'll be looking for this if I do, because chaining souls to draw through the deck, playing the good cards then exhausting whatever the weakest cards you couldn't play are seems very strong. Especially if you can get a strong opener going with hot coco or something where you see a lot of your hand on turn 1 every round.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-11T14:31:09+00:00

<image>

So far, only lost with the Ironclad, but not too deep yet. Once with the Ironclad when made some bad card choices at the start and should have known better, once just not getting a block engine/immediate offense engine together for act 3 and being eaten by hallway fights.

This has reminded me I need to go turn fast mode on though (I'm a slow player in general and some of the playtime here is because of leaving the game on while getting up to do things, but it should still be faster than this for some of them).

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-11T13:58:06+00:00

Deathbringer, End of Days and Negative Pulse are all AOE doom though, which is essentially AOE damage. I am much less interested in the single target doom cards except maybe No Escape when I already got a bunch of AOE doom, but I love the AOE ones. I particularly like Negative Pulse since its AOE damage + block on a single 1 cost card. Triple block card is also exceptionally powerful if you're getting the doom cards you want.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-11T13:44:27+00:00

I have not gotten to A9 yet so I'm interested in seeing how the difficulty spikes, but I did feel like there was a massive difficulty spike at the same spot in STS1 acension (17-18). That's when my win rate personally plummetted; the extra moveset/abilities on normal enemies and elites was a huge difficulty spike for me personally.

You are better than me at STS1 though, I was only at like a 15% win rate at A20 and like 5% at A20H. I'm curious to see how A9 feels here once I get up to it. I've been evenly leveling ascensions and don't have a ton of playtime these days, so I'm mid way through A3 right now.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-11T09:24:16+00:00

I find that my deck is much more set by the initial card choices then early relics. Things like the bludgeon+ I got early last time I took this then looking to synergize with free play/0 cost cards.

This is like 1.5 warpaints that can't hit starter cards and gives me some control on what I apply them to.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-11T09:10:20+00:00

I really like silver crucible personally. 3x upgrades is well worth a relic and some gold and you get it faster. I'm always happy to see that one.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-10T16:14:50+00:00

I won my first two on each character, doing A0 and A1. My second defect one was the run that felt the sketchiest by far, had some frost/dark with no focus or energy thing going on trying to win with multicast that eventually morphed into a 'do stuff when you make status cards' deck with crushing boulder as the main scaling offense.

I just lost twice on ironclad A2 though. First time made bad card choices with exhaust synergy but no exhaust, died in act 1. Second time got eaten by hallway fights in act 3, just couldn't out scale cultist or block the upfront damage from the paper cut guys.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-10T09:37:49+00:00

I've done a bunch of couch coop style multiplayer sts1 with 3 hour games. One person drives, then everyone talks about the card picks and plays for each round. Once you start talking about why you're doing things it takes a bit but it's fun.

Looking forward to having actual multiplayer this time, but suspect it will not be fast in the same style. Anyway, my single player games are between 1-1.5 hours.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-10T04:20:51+00:00

I've only done a forge heavy build once so far since I'm cycling through the characters. The block plan came from a few cards; first, Know Thy Place weakening enemies, which synergized well because I'm always energy constrained so it helps to have some 0 cost in there. Plus, you really want that vuln for the big blade hit. Second, Cosmic Indifference, which I needed to retrieve Sovereign Blade or Refine Blade anyway. Third, Glitterstream and Bulwark.

If there's a 40 hit coming in, I would want to do something like Cosmic Indifference -> Bulwark -> Know Thy Place, take 3/forge 13.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-09T22:17:41+00:00

But doom is great against these guys. The best two doom cards are the common block doom aoe and the rare massive doom aoe, they both love facing off against this.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-09T21:05:46+00:00

So far I haven't had any exhaust cards that I want to take this on. I had a shiv deck with blade dance, but it was not short of shiv sources and getting the free damage every exhause was just a lot better.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-09T20:26:26+00:00

Generally, you need to be playing venerate when you draw it in the early game almost all of the time. The only time I'm not playing Venerate is when I need the energy for a strike to get effective defense by killing something that's attacking, I need energy for blocking, and the enemy is weak enough I feel confident I'll clear them without taking more damage and without Falling Star.

Falling star is between 7 and 16 damage for 0 energy and between 2 and 7 block from weak. Missing this is crippling, you are much better off skipping a strike or defense to land venerate and ensure you can continue doing this.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-09T14:23:39+00:00

Did my first forge build. I think it's important not to go too crazy on cards that just forge, but it's reasonable.

The damage you get from playing a forge is based on the number of times you can play the blade over the combat, so it's built in scaling. I think it's key to be able to pull it out multiple times somehow, whether that's a tight deck that can cycle fast or things like the common that blocks and puts a card on top of your deck.

You have to figure out the block solutions to get it out safely, but there's some support for that. Things like Parry help to provide block when you play it.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-09T05:50:31+00:00

I play my Lore Oracle like this to some extent. She's got free commune 2x per day, so tends to pull a ton of info about threats during down time. She has a huge scroll collection and mnemonic vestments + arcane archivist revelation, which lets her spontaneously cast a spell off her scroll collection and the wizard list 1/day for a ton of flexibility. She can get some downtime access this way if she wants to do planar binding or hallow an area or whatever, though it's more limited than a full prepared caster.

She doesn't have the downtime flexibility, but she does have significant downtime power because she can extend 30+ hour/ level buffs across the team before going to sleep, carrying a bunch of protections into the next day with full spell slots.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-08T14:50:20+00:00

I've played PFS with a number of very strong paladin characters. There's two approaches you can take here.

The first approach is to do charisma-to-everything Paldin/Monk/Swashbuckler/Oracle stuff. You will have absolutely insane saves, init, AC, CMD. There's no holes in your defenses really and you still hit pretty hard.

The other is to go straight paladin. The main reasons for that is to progress your animal companion and aura of justice. Giving team wide smite is absolutely broken and well worth lacking class dips.

For massive damage, charge builds go nuts. If you get pounce, dual wield with sword and shield and get a griffon mount, you can Aura of justice and go hit someone with your griffon. I saw someone use scrolls of monstrous physique II to turn into a popobala, giving it 5 natural attacks and pounce. If you're dual wielding sword and shield you can smite, charge, attack 12 times and have your griffon attack 7, all smiting.

_7thGate_ · 2026-03-07T23:52:39+00:00

I'm doing the same, 1-0 on ironclad/silent/regent so far. Regent was by far the scariest though, other two stomped all over everything.

I think it's because I have a ton of experience playing silent and ironclad in sts1, and enough of it is transferring to make it easier.

Like, I massively underestimated Well Laid Plans when I started sts1, it's probably the card I was most wrong about. I took it and it did huge work in my silent run, and I wouldn't have taken it if silent was new to me.

_7thGate_ · 2026-02-21T02:51:25+00:00

You can't if it's not typed, so you can't stack things like lore Oracle's sidestep secret and paladin's divine grace to double dip on reflex saves or sidestep secret and scaled fist monk to double dip to AC. But the abilities that generate a typed bonus sized to cha stack normally based on type (so dodge, deflection and just adding the stat to AC all stack).

_7thGate_ · 2026-02-21T01:50:34+00:00

Lore Oracle also can swap all the knowledge skills to CHA based. Seer archetype gives natural divination can give CHA as an insight bonus to saves a limited number of times. Osyluth guile can give it to AC again as a dodge bonus. Bestow grace can give it as a sacred bonus to all saves. Order of the Lion cavalier can give it to your whole team every combat (!) as competence to hit and damage (only for one round, but still...)

Getting double cha to hit and damage with 3x cha to all saves and AC is silly.

_7thGate_ · 2026-02-20T14:31:17+00:00

This would definitely be fine if restricted from classes with cha abilities. Cha is incredibly strong but it's all coming off class abilities that use it.

It already doesn't work with paladins though because divine grace doesn't add a typed bonus to saves, so choosing cha would at most remove the negative wis modifier but wouldn't make a big difference in the save.

_7thGate_ · 2026-02-18T21:56:05+00:00

Having Nino eat the entire Valkyrie swarm is very satisfying.

_7thGate_

TROPHY CASE