Can't seem to win with the new character

[MobyPhallus]

Any advice on using her? I have tried about 4 or 5 times now and I can't even make it to the final Act 3 boss. The biggest thing is scaling, the earlier acts are pretty easy but she doesn't seem to scale up with the enemies like the other characters do, but I am probably not playing her correctly. The only strategy relatively succesful for me so far is using the retain synergy with the pwoer that lowers their cost each turn.

[Songbird]

Establishment is absolutely fantastic, yes. You can use it to set up super turns where you switch in and out of Wrath and Calm to play half your deck at double damage. Adaptation is great as well.

Crescendo and any practical cards to get into Calm stance (Clear the Mind, Fear no Evil for example) are great additions to your deck. Crescendo lets you hit Wrath stance on turns where you have attacks and can combo out without being hit back for 60. I'm not sure if there are any better cards for this yet, but the Retain on that card is extremely valuable.

Upgrading Eruption should be an obvious early priority unless you have something else that's really necessary to upgrade. It's just a ton of extra damage and that's just what you lack early.

Other than that, it's mostly just identifying good attacks and skills and avoiding too many low-impact cards. Balancing cards that remove your stance against the amount of calm and wrath you have is important; you generally don't need many of these as they are otherwise low-impact. Cut Through Fate is absolutely fantastic for a damage common and scales exceptionally well. Flying Sleeves is efficient damage. Sands of Time is a good pseudo-scaling card that can be played multiple times a turn later in fights, but doesn't cover your turn 1. Evaluate, Protect, Sanctity, and Deceive Reality are quite good for defensive cards; Third Eye is a fair bit weaker unless upgraded.

[Robin]

I think her main scaling is probably wrath. Compare that to strength scaling for instance. if you'd get +6 strength that'd be pretty good scaling already, with wrath, almost every card gets at least that usually. Combine that with vulnerable and that works really well. For bosses you can also go for artifact + speed/flex potion if you ever get that. Divinity is ofc another way to scale. The two cards that deal more damage to longer they are retained (or more block) are also nice scaling in combination with the already mentioned wrath.

But yeah, I find her tricky to play as well, often not even getting through act 3 so far (though got to A3 at least).

[Songbird]

I don't think the cards that increase in power if they are retained longer are very good, personally. They're excruciatingly slow and have garbage bases. Sands of Time fits the same role much better since it's good to spam for the rest of the fight after two turns if you have Establishment active.

The best scaling cards I've seen so far are Deva Form+ and Talk to the Hand. Honestly, just Talk to the Hand+ alone can generate you 30 block on a good turn. The rest of your scaling comes from deck quality; Spamming cards like Evaluate+ and Cut Through Fate+ will let you draw absolutely ridiculous numbers of cards, for example, with great amounts of control over what kind of cards you're drawing.

I'm currently at 2 heart kills in 2 runs with this character.

https://i.imgur.com/F2NpBhz.jpg In this run, I was generating about 100 block and 150-200 damage a turn. I would say the rare cards were the weakest part of the deck. (Unraveling did some really cool stuff earlier with Crescendo and Sands of Time, but wasn't so good once I had 3 copies of Crescendo). Ink Bottle was going off roughly twice per turn (relic seems incredibly OP for a common relic TBH).

The one thing I feel like I'm missing is more ways to enter Wrath. So far I've found the rare card that switches your stance (pretty good, can be dead turn 1), Crescendo (incredible, but exhausts), Eruption (expensive, only one copy) and the one that only works if you have lower HP than last turn (seems bad).

[billy bastard]

Actually it is really easy to go infinite in turn one with the Watcher.
2 of the key pieces: eruption and vigilance are already in the starter deck.
What you need is a combination of: adaptation, mental fortress, empty mind, path to victory, flow state, fear no evil, violet lotus etc... A lot of choice here and you won't need them all.
Essential only are adaptation and a second reliable way to calm. (uncommon)
The key is to keep your deck small. 12 cards is probably the max.

When you're set up you are only playing eruption and fear no evil,
or fear no evil and empty mind. Or...
There's a lot of different ways to go infinite. And vigilance enables you to do that with a slightly larger deck. Easy.

[Songbird]

Every time I hear "the key is to keep your deck small", I think "The key is to keep your deck weak and hope you can assemble all the pieces before you die", honestly. Not a fan of that strat.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by Songbird:

I don't think the cards that increase in power if they are retained longer are very good, personally.

I don't know, i just got my first win by near OTKing the first boss after cycling through my deck once, and i had three of them in hand when i did 350+ damage to Time Eater. Not sure if it would work for A20 but yeah.

Talk to the Hand, Deva Form and Establishment are definitely some of her strongest cards so far.

[PsychoDino]

Originally posted by MobyPhallus:

Any advice on using her? I have tried about 4 or 5 times now and I can't even make it to the final Act 3 boss. The biggest thing is scaling, the earlier acts are pretty easy but she doesn't seem to scale up with the enemies like the other characters do, but I am probably not playing her correctly. The only strategy relatively succesful for me so far is using the retain synergy with the pwoer that lowers their cost each turn.

yeah its a bad char

[Khor]

Originally posted by DJDiceZ:

Originally posted by Songbird:

I don't think the cards that increase in power if they are retained longer are very good, personally.

I don't know, i just got my first win by near OTKing the first boss after cycling through my deck once, and i had three of them in hand when i did 350+ damage to Time Eater. Not sure if it would work for A20 but yeah.

Talk to the Hand, Deva Form and Establishment are definitely some of her strongest cards so far.

I have to agree with Sands being better overall, Windmills need 5 turns in hand to reach that damage

Overall she`s pretty good but with a rough start, i wouldn`t be surprised if her starting cards get some buff

[Robin]

Honestly I haven't tried sands yet, since I didn't realize the lowered cost stays until end of fight.

The thing about the Windmill is that you don't need to wait 2-3 turns before you can play it in a regular fight and it works well to set up big wrath/divinity turns, guess for boss fights both cards work about the same way, but for hallway fights I'd rather draw a Windmill than a Sands/curse

[billy bastard]

About Establishment:
I tried the deck. It is indeed real fun. Here's pointers.

I found devotion to be surprisingly good in the deck. You sit back waiting for a few turns and when establishment has done its job you enter divinity mode. I killed the head in 1 turn. No real damage before that.
Other standout cards were Deceive Reality and Carve Reality. Truth and Safety become free to cast because of Establishment. It was a lot of fun to stock up on Truths and it feels kinda divine to do that much damage in 1 turn.
Sands of Time and Protect are nice. You should pick those above the cards that need longer to set up. And I find myself picking Deceive and Carve Reality above just about everything. They are among the best cards on level 1 and also your best cards when the deck gets off.

[DJDiceZ]

Master Reality seems REALLY good.

[1.2M | Missingno.]

just find dead branch

[TripSin]

i don't know if i'm just bad or what, but yeah, i've only been managing to lose a whole bunch with her FeelsBadMan

[Zu]

Starting to wonder if everyone's already playing at A20 since the only time I died in act 3 was because I picked way too many attacks, baited by the shiny scry keyword.

[Khor]

Originally posted by Zu:

Starting to wonder if everyone's already playing at A20 since the only time I died in act 3 was because I picked way too many attacks, baited by the shiny scry keyword.

Lol, i was thinking the same thing.
Most of the complaints are valid at A20... she is kinda "slow"