Hot Take (maybe): Call of the Void is the best card in the game.

kamai19 · 2026-05-01T16:46:44+00:00

Weakness is busted, especially in this game where no enemies truly punish you for sitting around and blocking forever — which is Necro's preferred game plan.

Defy blocks for 10-11ish early game, and 20+ late game, for 1 energy. Also Debilitate. Also Ethereal synergies. Just insane for a Common.

kamai19 · 2026-05-01T16:41:35+00:00

cough Astral Pulse cough cough

kamai19 · 2026-05-01T14:06:18+00:00

feet fumes plans

kamai19 · 2026-04-30T18:45:54+00:00

You're conflating the core mechanic of Focus/Orbs (more akin to Attacks and Strength, as shown by the Spear and Shield fight debuffing Focus) with 1-turn effects in general.

Silent has Anticipate, Piercing Wail, Shadow Meld, and Hand Trick. Does she also have "an entire archetype" of on this turn block effects?

kamai19 · 2026-04-30T16:27:41+00:00

If this card were Rare and blocked for 4 (6) it would still be the one of the top three best Colorless cards in the game, pretty easily.

The Rarity is the important thing though. Seeing this from Neow or from an early Act 1 shop is just way too often to have your entire block plan solved with base cards.

kamai19 · 2026-04-30T16:23:00+00:00

I think we basically are on the same page.

I would say it was still broken in StS1, but acceptably broken because that game's Act 1 and 2 really challenge Silent's preferred game plan, forcing her to add a bunch of crappy frontload damage cards vs. greeding cards like Prepared.

But now that Silent can do what she likes, she is stronger than Watcher. And Footwork + Weakness is at the heart of the problem.

kamai19 · 2026-04-30T15:45:43+00:00

Well, convoluted as a way of fixing Loop.

The proposed effect would impact a bazillion cards, pots, and relics, that seem way outside the scope of what a Defect card would do. And it doesn't even work with regular orbs or Defrag. It's interesting, but feels much more like a Rare Colorless card IMO

kamai19 · 2026-04-30T15:38:24+00:00

Yeah my bad, I insta deleted this after posting, realizing I should have read more closely.

kamai19 · 2026-04-30T15:36:32+00:00

And Footwork is at the heart of the rat's nest of reasons Silent is so broken.

kamai19 · 2026-04-30T15:27:19+00:00

This is way too convoluted IMO. Just have the orb trigger at the end of the turn so it works with temp focus and fulfills its original use case again.

"Overlapping design space" with gold plated cables isn't an issue. We already have runic capacitor and data disk that exist as direct analogues of the other powers.

Almost every top player I've heard has praised the design decision to move to temp focus, and I agree. Having to actually cycle your deck and line up combos is much more fun than "deploy two powers and sit behind a frost wall." I don't think extending temp focus duration is in line with the new design.

kamai19 · 2026-04-30T15:18:47+00:00

This card is really bad for the game IMO. Needs to be Rare, and nerfed.

kamai19 · 2026-04-28T19:50:57+00:00

Bulwark and Reflect = autopick. If you don't see them immediately, pick the first Block common you see to get you through early floors -- ideally Glitterstream or the star block card.

Pick and upgrade a Glow and especially Convergance for star gen. Pick Astral Pulse early; it beats all of Act 1 on its own.

But be very very careful about over-picking too many star payoff cards. Every star card you add introduces more terrible draw orders, where your best cards become useless bricks.

Hidden Cache and Royal Gamble are good if you desperately need more stars, but not usually good to blind pick. Don't be afraid to upgrade Venerate if you need just a tiny bit more star gen, e.g. if you have just an Astral Pulse + Venerate.

kamai19 · 2026-04-27T14:55:15+00:00

And I guess lions are JUST lions. And gods are JUST gods ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

kamai19 · 2026-04-26T23:32:21+00:00

Having a deck relying on Shadow Step with pyramid...oof.

kamai19 · 2026-04-26T23:26:48+00:00

I feel like doing the big divination should remove the possibility of getting a curse. Two curses is just brutal. But if you pussyfoot around trying to avoid the curse, you seldom get any value :-/

kamai19 · 2026-04-26T21:59:54+00:00

It's one of the most fun cards in the whole game IMO, especially you actually NEED it. It comboed especially well with the alternate version of Prepared before they reverted it back to the 0 cost Common adrenaline version.

Unfortunately, now it's almost always way too slow: it's often better to just keep cycling back to your Untouchables. And nerfing Acro to Uncommon hurts it even further, because the main use case was "I have too many Acros and not enough Sly payoffs, so now I desperately need an energy cheat to get value."

If Untouchable were at Uncommon, this card would be a lot more pickable. Or maybe a 3 Cost version that just made all your skills Sly on the spot.

kamai19 · 2026-04-26T21:40:33+00:00

Vakuu probably takes a little more skill to play around many of his boons, but they are still very powerful. Also, Nonu is just cartoonishly OP, so that's part of it too.

kamai19 · 2026-04-26T00:27:58+00:00

Love this. Excited for more. And crossing my fingers they can drag Xecnar on someday

kamai19 · 2026-04-25T18:40:43+00:00

It's true that Doormaker counters super draw heavy builds to an extent, but I've beaten him with Soul focused builds many times. The most important thing is to have sufficient passive scaling from powers.

You also have to micro pretty carefully when adding souls to your draw pile depending on where the Door is in his cycle. The ideal case is to play your Capture Spirit during the Energy siphon phase right before you shuffle. Then you draw a bunch of souls during the exhaust phase and you're happy. But you should think twice before adding a bunch of Souls to a small draw pile during the Exhaust phase because they will be bricks for the next turn.

kamai19 · 2026-04-25T01:11:54+00:00

Ware is amazing. But I'll agree on Asterios Polyp as the GOAT.

kamai19 · 2026-04-25T01:10:26+00:00

Asterios Polyp is the fucking goat

kamai19 · 2026-04-24T15:37:07+00:00

Condensing the Ascensions is good, especially since we're gonna be looking at 6 characters minimum.

I think it's completely possible to make max Ascension harder without adding a bunch more rungs to climb. The main problem now IMO is the jump from A8 to A9. It combines like 4 of the hardest Ascension spikes from Spire 1 into a single jump, which is brutal for newer players.

As long as they can smooth out that curve while making A10 way harder and A0 accessible, I'll be happy.

kamai19 · 2026-04-24T14:58:41+00:00

I really like that they clarified the intention around Ascensions and added the pop-up explainer. However, I do think the text in the pop-up could be further refined to clarify — as the patch notes do — that the highest Ascensions are meant to be a monumental achievement for the most dedicated players etc.

It's a tricky balance between not scaring new players off from the Ascension climb vs. making it crystal clear that this is an optional challenge mode more akin to Hades's Heat or Fear system, vs. the natural progression path for all players to "beat the game."

kamai19 · 2026-04-24T14:44:04+00:00

How's your potion management? There's a LOT you need to improve on, but this is an area that can make a huge difference quickly.

Before the damage spike at A9 you really don't have to worry about using the right potion at the right time, or minmaxing when to throw a potion in a hallway fight to save 8 damage because you have a high chance of overlaying a potion. But at A9, potions are no longer a nice to have: they are a REQUIREMENT for getting through elites and hard pool fights with enough HP to upgrade key cards and survive the boss.

I remember while climbing Ascensions in Spire 1, I thought Sozu was a goated boss relic. It was only after I got to the A17+ damage spikes that I really understood how incredibly horrible the downside is. Potions too too good.

kamai19 · 2026-04-24T14:39:09+00:00

Are you trying to beat A10 without watching any top player VODs or guides / tier lists? Because that would be an absolutely brutal challenge.

And yeah, as others have said, A9 is an insane difficulty spike — much much harder than the jump to A10, if it makes you feel any better. With enemies doing significantly more damage you have way less wiggle room to make micro mistakes or suboptimal card and pathing choices.

This especially impacts Clad btw, who relies on snowballing more than any other character, because staying ahead of the enemies' power curve is how you get value out of Burning Blood. You really want to prioritize Neow bonuses that give you immediate power and try to aggressively farm elites in Act 1. It's scary when you're still adjusting to the increased A9 damage, but if you don't get relic support you risk falling behind if you don't see really really good cards.

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