A few thoughts on burn decks

[incendia]

I'd like to hear peoples thoughts on the burn-archtype cards and how they compare to the other main archtypes.

I personally feel burn is currently a little lackluster compared to strain and discard, both in its power level and overall enjoyment.

Thats not to say the deck is neccesarily to weak or that it cant clear a run but it still feels like it has less going for it then its competitors.

A few points I've personally run into with burn.

Dead Draws

Several burn cards can be dead if you dont draw then in the right order, notable It feels akward to not start of your chain with burn fire and if you dont draw it in your opening hard it feels wastefull to apply any copies of liquid fire making that in turn feel like somewhat of a dead draw.

Ignition, while very powerfull is basicly a dead card in any single enemy encounter which includes several of the tier 3 and boss battles.

lastely cleaning flame is only usefull as a finisher, and while this really isnt a huge issue in isolation it does add up when you already have several other cards that cant always be played properly.

I personally think it would help alot if rather then doing their respective 4 and 5 points of damage Ignition and Burn fire both applied burns, ignition applying perhaps a single stack of burn or maybe even applying 2 stacks of burn when the enemy is a single target

And for Burn fire to apply 2 stacks of burn when the enemy is already effected by burn.

This way you wouldnt feel bad for drawing a burn fire on your second turn, or a second copy of it and liquid fire would indirectly become more flexible.
And I feel the deck as a whole would operate far smoother.

healing and refreshing

Due to the amount of copies of 1 mana cards like liquid and piercing fire your encouraged to stack the deck has more trouble then the other archtypes refreshing its cards after combat,

This is compiled with the fact that both discard and strain have common cards as healing options where as Scroll of purification is a rare making it harder to obtain.

Fitting in 3 rest points to restore each copy of Incineration in there on top of that leads to the deck simply having less gas then its competitors.

While this issue is somewhat related to the rest point and ash pact system as a whole, I do feel it would be beneficial if Scroll of purification was as readily available as scroll of energy or Rebirth in flames.


I'd be interest to hear what everybody else's thoughts are on the balance of burn compared to the other two archtypes.

[Selanius]

I agree with your analysis completely, Discard-Scrolls > > > Strain > Burn. There is a massive power gap between the Discard archetype and everything else, but Burn is certainly the weakest. It can make completing the game a matter of getting a bit lucky while the other two archetypes I feel like if you play well you can complete it consistently every time.

I could see two ways of fixing this, if burn was able to renew cards for cheaper at camp or Ash Pact could cost no health or refreshed a larger number of cards if you have the trait that helps burn that could assist quite a bit.

I also think both Dismantling cards and Traits needs to cost less Ore to get if we want them to be a big part of archetypes. 12 ore for traits often means I encounter the Blacksmith in a random event to buy my trait rather than actually needing to build it. If it cost less ore I feel like I'd actually build it more often.

[incendia]

Personally I'm in favor overhauling upgrades entirely, removing the ones that allow you to remove cards/curses buy statboosts/traits and making all of those available naturally in some shape or form.

Instead introducing more upgrades or potentially even a larger set of traits that actually feel like purchasing upgrades rather then lifting restrictions, that could hopefully also serve to fine tune the specfic archtypes of any given character.

In another topic there was a disccusion about making ashpact and rest points refresh cards based of manacost rather then quantity for example and I think a change like that would help burn out quite alot.

[Meat Tabbogan]

So I cant speak on the other builds since i just started playing but i will say wha ti do know. Ive been messing with burn and I have onticed that crits and burns synergize extremely well. Right now my deck has 1 scroll of fiery soul, 2 scrolls of ignition and 2 scrolls of purification. Im using 3 pure fires, 5 piericing fires 3 liquid fires and a few balms to heal mainly to get rid of ailments. My character stats are leveling crits, health and my upgrades are for neutral cards to cost 0 to renew. Im only in chapter 3 (not sure how many there are) but I posted in another thread about how many burns you can get really quick.

Your crits can burn if you get a crit you apply another burn. If your burns go off and all crit then you double it. There are a few amounts of ifs but i never run out of cards. I never have to use the renew strain card that pops up when you run out. I always renew at least 1 pure fires 2 piercing fires and 2 liquid fires then the crits do the rest. its not exactly the quickest way to kill bosses but between all the healing and the burn damage everyturn it makes it super easy to kill people.

[incendia]

Both of the crit cards are of epic quality meaning they dont always consistently drop in a run and If they do its not uncommon to only get them near the end of one.

Even the healing card is a rare where as both of the other archtypes get theirs in common format.

The deck is certainly fully capable of clearing runs with or without the crit package, but the speed and consistency at which it does so falls far below that of strain and discard.

[Meat Tabbogan]

I will try a run with staring and discard and see how it goes. For me on a playthrough I run to the outside ring taking an fights along the way. in chapter 2 and 3 those cards are really easy to get out of the level 3 chests which if you stay and fight only in the very outside areas you can get keys really fast. It is a little up to rng though and everytime the stock changes in stores and when the storms come i made it a point to at least look at what was being sold and offered to make sure I was maximizing on what I could get burn wise.

I only bought those 2 upgrades for the shop the whole time as I was only excavating the far sides so resources were limited but you can trade for what you need using the ones you dont and after that it was just a matter of keeping the correct cards burned at all times and only renewing the ones you really needed to start the chain of burns every fight. Ill see if I can make a playthrough of it and see if I can explain it easier with visuals but burn is really good and made the playthrough fun but also had ensured that the entire time you were paying attention to your strategy so it came with its challenges.

[incendia]

Currently discard is absolutely broken, to the point where it manages a 99% first turn kill on every single encounter starting chapter 2.

Just to show how silly it can get, heres 11237 damage on turn 2 with greater sacrifice.
https://i.imgur.com/PkFd4LF.jpg

But typically it just does 250-1000 damage on turn one with a 100-300 heal on top

The key with discard in my experience is to get the trait that enables you to refresh neutral cards for 0 rest points and to stack all of the neutral draw cards to get very consistent draws and cycles.

Strain on the other hand is likely closer to an ideal powerlevel but it takes a bit more to get going.

[Fringehunter7719]

Interesting.

Why is scroll of incineration doing so much damage?

How does the deck work? Are you trading resources for ankhs to get the neutral refresh then just stacking your deck with ailment cards?

What happens if your starting hand is bad, it seems you have around 90 possible draws there, and presumably all of them can't be sacrifice cards?

[incendia]

Well in that screenshot every copy of scroll of combustion multiplies with each copy of scroll of incineration.

During one run i had 5 combustions and 8 incincerations with the 10 mana boon and the +1 mana trait, simply passing a turn this way gives you an additional 1100% damage making each discard go for 55.

This is however totally overkill and the deck never even needs the additional damage

Typically how I run discard is by giving priority to as many copies of scroll of incinceration and at least 2-3 copies of lesser sacrifice.

Scroll of energy is nice but you dont need alot of copies, 1 or 2 is typically sufficient for full heals.

Aditionally potion of sloth is something I prefer to pick up as early as possible, lets say you pick up 2 of these early on, you can now generate 80 curses over 20 encounters, this gives you some insane 30-120 damage reduce to ashes, granted lesser sacrifice is so potent your unlikely to even need this additional power but I have not experienced any lack of consistency for running it.

All of the neutral draw cards are great, both pauldrons , unholy tome, dexterity potion (returning cards is optional for this one) and wide holster are all great, and I craft as many copies as I can get my hands on.

At this point your just refreshing all your neutral search/draw cards for free, playing typically an unholy tome or two, maybe a wide holster to seach out and discard 14 copies of parasite or something to that effect, occultist pauldron with the 3 mana search always leads into lesser sacrifice , champions pauldron 0 mana search leads into wideholster or occultists pauldron
This way you typically have a good 5-10+ effective copies of lesser sacrifice and tons of draw.

And then you just let it rip, you will discard a card from unholy tome, another few from pure overdrawing, then your sitting on a 10 card hand with 5-10 previous discards, and all of those will deal a good 30-ish damage a pop and realistically you just clear out every single encounter in one turn this way.

I ignore cards like cindering ring, greater sacrifice and sacrifical skull,plague perfrum and shield of pride, while they have discard effects they arent actually worth their deckslot, you'd always rather draw unholy tome compared to cindering ring for example.

Also After the free refresh upgrade i rush the store upgrade that gives you 12 purchases this really gives you alot more copies of all of your desired cards.

Tldr: one turn kills, full heals, rest points for days, doesnt have to remove cards, curses are actually a benefit and it only really needs common rarity cards to succeed.
Just as broken as can be.

[Fringehunter7719]

Thanks for the answer, that's great.