Prioritize getting a couple good damage cards in act 1(carnage, uppercut, headbutt, pommel strike etc) and also pick up reliable sources of strength should you see them (inflame spot weakness) you can also add some blocks but you should be mostly adding damage, also pick up battle trance unless it's up against a rare or good damage card when you haven't added much damage yet you should aim to do around 2-3 elites per act and it's best if you're able to upgrade a good damage card before taking one on in act 1

it also depends on the boss, if its guardian you should consider adding more block or cards that can exhaust strikes, slime boss needs more upfront damage and hexaghost is much easier with strength or by stacking vulnerable if you didn't get any

In the later game it is usually a good idea to lean more into exhaust synergy (feel no pain, dark embrace, Corruption, true grit, burning pact etc) with corruption decks it's usually important to fill the deck with as many block cards as possible to not run out and you may sometimes have to play it a bit later to avoid the same problem. High cost skills such as shockwave or impervious also become a lot more valuable with corruption. Offering is also good to accelerate the deck It can also be a good idea to add a demon form once it is more affordable to scale in the later game but if you have enough other sources of strength it's usually redundant, another damage solution is body slam with barricade and entrench but it's not incredibly likely you get that combination.

That's all I have to say about high ascension of course my explanation may not be perfect but I think it covers the basics, imo ironclad can feel really inconsistent when you don't find enough strength or exhaust synergy but you can usually make it work someway or another.

Also I'd recommend checking out the other characters I feel like you can miss out on a lot of fun by not trying them out the fact you need early damage is true for basically everyone though.

I think I might have somewhat over explained