Straight Flush vs X of a Kind

[Totes Fabulous]

Is there any advantages to straight flushes vs something like 5 of a kind or Flush 5? There are so many Spectrals, Tarots, and Jokers that let you convert and duplicate cards making "x of a kind" hands very consistent. Whereas with Straight Flushed you are more limited by your jokers and tarots to get a good run (or comparable run to X of a Kinds).

Is there something I'm missing? Do Straight Flush hands scale better? Are there FS combos that you can consistently get that blow X of a kind hands out of the water?

[RazzberryMocha]

Straight flush/flush house both have better scaling than flush five (+40 chips +4 mult vs +50 chips +3mult), but that's not the main reason to use them. The main reason on paper to use straight flush is for joker synergies such as seance or the order, but really those builds mainly happen because it makes more sense for that specific run to build towards them instead of flush five.

[CMDR Shven]

Generally in this game straights of any kind are the hardest build to make. As you pointed out there are many ways to duplicate cards so you can make a deck entirely comprised of copies of a single card thus making a 5 of a kind hand guaranteed no matter what. Meanwhile it's virtually impossible to deck fix for guaranteed straights short of literally cutting your deck down to 8 cards. It's just the nature of deckbuilders roguelikes, not much to be done about it.

Not to say that you can't win with straights particularly if you find some of the jokers that support bending the rules but if you set out on a run intending to use straights you're going to have a bad time far more often than not. Personally I tend to ignore any of the jokers that give rewards for playing straights unless I already have shortcut and even then, utility jokers like seance are frequently inferior to just having more jokers that give you more points.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από CMDR Shven:

if you set out on a run intending to use straights you're going to have a bad time far more often than not.

If you set out on a run intending to use any particular strategy, you're going to have problems. You need to adapt to whatever tools the game gives you.

[CMDR Shven]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από HeraldOfOpera:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από CMDR Shven:

if you set out on a run intending to use straights you're going to have a bad time far more often than not.

If you set out on a run intending to use any particular strategy, you're going to have problems. You need to adapt to whatever tools the game gives you.

Well yes but on lower stakes with enough econ management and strategy you can somewhat reliably brute force a lot of builds, but straights are going to be the least successful statistically because they require one or two specific jokers and are much harder to make consistent early game. I can probably successfully pull off a 5 of a kind build 75% of the time on any white stake run if I want but straights I wouldn't wager I could hit 50%.

[kone]

It's an immense amount of extra work to make a Straight Flush build and it doesn't have that big of a payoff. It's very difficult to get one off the ground because you have to thin the deck AND limit it to one suit. Not to mention if you might need to slot in jokers that make Straights AND Flushes easier it'll slow your eco and scoring down before you catch up.

For all that effort you're still rewarded with a hand type that scales only a bit faster than Straights.

Thinking about late game combos, Straight Flushes are limited by the fact they have to hit more ranks and that can fundamentally lose you potentially higher scoring.
With X of a Kind you can play only face cards or certain other ranks making use of powerful jokers that play off them.

[GTTV]

If you can get Shortcut and Smeared joker then straight flushes are an absolute breeze. Considering they are the best scaling hand AND the highest scoring 'standard' hand, you can have a fantastic (and fun) run with it.

[QuantuuM]

I've never ever played for Straight Flushes in this game.