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I'm far away from being a pro in this game but even i can tell you that this is just not true. I got wins without any poison with the Silent. I never even have used builds that rely on block with the Ironclad and at least the first three Acts can be won without Forst Orb spam with the Defect (Heartfight is different)
So the problem is most likely the way you are building your deck. It takes some time to figure certain things out. But in no way are you forced into certain combos to have chance for winning.
You heal all/most of your HP after boss fights.
Decks can be tailored for the boss you're gonna fight from the moment you enter the Act. Most if not all of the bosses have some basic strategy like not bringing Champ to half health before you've scaled enough, in which case if you die to his double hit... chances are it might be on the player, not the bosses or cards.
Bosses can shut down certain decks, yes, but they don't require a specific deck to be defeated, let alone specific cards. The only boss for who that could be true is the Heart, because the Heart is kind of an unbalanced mess, but you can still defeat it with more than one strategy.
In fact, if you try to stick to what you think is "the meta strat", and try to do it every runs... then yes, you're gonna lose and feel like the rng is being unfair to you, these mindsets are exactly what leads to losses and self reinforcing biases. Because it simply isn't how the game is meant to be played, there isn't a meta, instead you must make do with what you're given, and what you're facing.
Wins don't happen because "the game finally gave me catalyst/barricade", but because one made the best out of the cards they were offered. Not forcing a specific deck is usually something given as begginer advice.
Example of what you're probably talking about:
Immolate is the nuts. Headbutt to kill taskmaster n bois in 2 turns. Amazing. Fantastic. But wait, the boss is champ. Fml because I wouldn't play immolate here until I split? Nah, I'm glad I didn't take a trillion damage from taskmaster so I had the luxury of upgrading over resting, pooossibly even upgrading the limit break I got from precisely taskmaster's higher rare drop rate, so now I can cheese champ without the risk of going into the fight at low hp. Thx immolate.
1. Strength combo: Either Demon Form or Limit Break+ are key, getting both is best. Dual Wield for Demon Form and Spot Weakness also help. Getting Reaper helps with healing up in every fight, sometimes I lost 60 Health and got it all back at the end of the fight.
2. Rupture Deck: Remove as many cards as possible so you can get your Rupture+ faster, then just spam that card every turn. Double Tap is a great card for this deck. Dual Wield can help.
3. Dead Branch Deck: If you find Dead Branch, get Corruption and Dark Embrace, then just go ham. Fiend Fire is nice too.
Having an upgraded Offering is never wrong, and I really like having an upgraded Flame Barrier in my deck.
I think what these posts usually boil down to is a lack of imagination/lack of inspiration (neither or which I mean as an insult). There's a massive conceptual space here, but you've only explored a small corner of it so far. So when you cast about intuitively for solutions, the reason you're not finding anything good is that you haven't seen a lot of the good building blocks yet.
You should go and watch some streamers play, it's really the best way to grow your experiential knowledge of the game. If right now you're treading water, then doing this will be like climbing onto a powerboat. It's not necessarily about emulating the playstyles or habits or the streamers, it's about seeing what works and what's possible. Instead of slowly feeling your way through the conceptual space, you'll be getting the guided tour. Is that enough metaphors? I can add some more later.
I agree with this observation. Without creativity it's hard to formulate appropriate measures to overcome the RNG and combat efficiently against anything the game might throw at you.
I've stressed before that whatever is considered "meta" is almost akin to wishful thinking. Although StS is a deck builder, the deck builder approach is widely different compared to classic tabletop iterations such as MtG and Dominion. I would not call StS a constructed format i.e. you pick and craft your deck in advance, rather it's a weird form of limited blind draft. Hence the very notion of a "meta" must be discarded because you always lack suffcient information to predict the possible options and opponents. In a weird way your own meta emerge as you ascend the Spire, and yet the end result of a successful run might never be replicated for it to be defined as a true meta in the general sense.
Same.
IMO, the game is great on Sub Ascension ~5, probably even ~10. However once you hit 10+ Ascension, you basically are pigeon holed into using specific kinds of Decks in order to win.(Though it is "hard mode" so kinda irrelevant)
This is a great example(and great advice). IMO, there's only ~3-5 different Decks to play as Ironclad if you actually want to win. IMO, the same is true for the other Characters.. ~3-5 Decks or you aren't really playing to win.(Note, I'm referring to winning the Heart fight not just clearing Act 3 even though you only need to win the Heart fight once for each character)
That said, OP is, IMO, extremely biased. The examples he brings up seem like they come from someone who has never beaten Ascension ~10+. Yeah, it sucks certain Bosses essentially Hard Counter certain Decks.(Like Time Eater vs Silent Shiv or Infinite chain Decks) However, on "Normal" pretty much anything cobbled together in a smart manner can win. Granted Heart Fight is going to be incredibly difficult unless you built specifically with it in mind or had some great luck.
Game is great and sadly only one of very, very few Deck Builder games that is actually good.
I hate to burst the bubbles of people around here but that simply isn't true.
The cold, hard truth whenever it comes to a game like this is that there is always going to be a certain degree of RNG involved in your successes and failures simply due to the variable nature of the game in question and the way it withholds information from the player (like most roguelikes do).
You can, of course, mitigate the negative impacts of RNG on your playthrough with astute decision making and understanding which cards have which interactions with each other in what way (and thus enabling you a greater deal of flexibility in deck crafting and deck use in battles) but at the end of the day, if the game throws a hard counter at you when you haven't had much luck with card selection then odds are on that your run may very well be doomed with little that can be done to save the situation (the Snecko is by far the worst offender for this with it's main gimmick more or less being pure RNG based around the mana costs).
I'm not complaining that 'the game is too hard' or anything like that but that I can understand why the random nature of many of the design choices in the game can come off as cheap and artificial forms of difficulty, remember, just because you're good at a game and can counter the challenges it presents to you doesn't suddenly mean it's well designed and just because you enjoy a game doesn't mean you can't offer criticism to improve it (before I get the 'git gud' types leaping down my throat).
A random resource pool doesn't mean that a meta cannot emerge, in most games the 'meta' simply refers to whatever the most agreed upon best loadouts or builds are, the options one can take within a game that offer the most power to a player or, in particularly extreme examples, render a player effectively unable to lose.
For example, The Binding of Isaac, another roguelike game with a focus on building power throughout your run by grabbing randomly selected items of varying power and usefulness (in conjunction with picking a character at the beginning with pre-defined stats and intended playstyles), you can in no way predict what items you will get in any given run but there are absolutely meta choices that are agreed upon by the majority of the playerbase to be automatic picks due to their ability to win runs singlehandedly or to save a run that's going poorly (most notable examples being items such as Brimstone or Evil Bum).
If you are under the belief that a game simply having random item generation (thus meaning you can't always predict what you will get in a run) prevents a game from having a meta then I have to be the one to break it to you that you don't understand what the term actually means, since this meaning would also mean that games like Diablo, Borderlands and most MMO's also don't have metas (given how most items in those games are also tied to RNG dependent loot tables) and I don't think you'll have much luck arguing that since it's rather widely known that they do.
What kind of defense does a strength deck have? Well, it's not really part of the build, so whatever we want/find, I guess? Maybe Barricade with a few high value blocks like Impervious, maybe Corruption/Feel No Pain, maybe just a bunch of value blocks like Shrugs? Or any number of other combinations, probably? And how much defense do we actually need, by the way? I guess it depends on how quickly we're killing things. Which attacks are we using? Did we take a few heavy hitting frontloaded attacks like Immolate or Bludgeon, or are we just relying on strength dumps like Sword Boomerang, Pummel, and Heavy Blade? If it's the latter, we need more defense because it'll take longer to kill. Or will it? How fast are we scaling strength? If we have good card draw and headbutts to recur Limit Break or Spot Weakness, we could still kill pretty quickly. And are we using Demon Form, Spot Weakness, or Limit Break to scale indefinitely, or just a few flat amounts from Inflame or relics?
I don't know about you guys, but that sure seems like variety to me. It doesn't seem specific at all. We're touching here on why thinking in terms of deck types or archetypes tends to be maladaptive in the long run: they're simultaneously too narrowly focused (in that they cut you off from viable card choices that just happen to belong to a different arbitrary category) and too unfocused (in that they apply to such a wide variety of actual deck configurations that they often fail to offer any real guidance).
Now, if you believe the only way you're going to win is with strength cards and you don't get offered any, then it's understandably going to feel like you've been ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over by the game. But that's really just a misconception stemming from inexperience and lack of game knowledge. The only specific way of playing that you'll ever really be forced into is "effectively" and there are far more ways of accomplishing that than any of us realize. There are more things in heaven and Spire, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your archetypes.
I have to take slight issue with the way you're using "meta" here. I assume we're talking about "metagame" or "metagaming," which is to say interactions with a game that are above or outside the basic ruleset and schema of the game proper, and which has mostly been corrupted in the vernacular to "the set of dominant/optimal/most effective strategies and techniques for winning the game."
If I'm understanding you right, when you're referring to the meta here, you're talking about meta builds, which is to say optimally completed decks in the vein of archetypes. But for the very reasons you've laid out here and in the other thread, the real meta for this game couldn't possibly involve preconceptions about what the completed decks should look like. You're definitely right that the concept of a meta build is useless for STS, but I doubt many people would think of archetypes as the meta, archetype thinking tends to get stomped on pretty hard these days.
If there is a meta for this game, it's about general approaches that apply to every run. Stuff like thinking about your deck in functional terms (frontloaded damage, scaling damage, frontloaded defense, scaling defense, draw/deck manipulation) and realistically evaluating the cards you're offered in those terms (with the understanding that you might not get anything better). Or hunting elites as aggressively as you can afford to because they give you the best chance at a power boost. Or more specifically, immediately adding a few attack cards in Act 1 because all Act 1 elites (and bosses, somewhat) are damage races, then pivoting to a more conservative/defensive approach in late Act 1/early Act 2 because Act 2 hallway fights are more dangerous.
Hardly an exhaustive list, but the point is that there do exist certain dominant, clearly superior strategies which could easily fit the bill for "meta." This is really just a taxonomy quibble, we don't disagree on anything substantive, but I wanted to comment on this because I think you might be confusing people a bit.
Except it does though, especially the Heart fight(s); which is why I mentioned by "win" I mean beat the Heart. I also touched on how Bosses Hard Counter certain Decks. You could be rocking a Shiv/Poison hybrid(through envenom) and get Time Eater as a Boss. This means you either need to get supplemental cards ASAP or you are most likely dead since you can't Shivplode.
I'm sorry but you just illustrated how RNG is a large factor in Deck construction while also showcasing how thinking with a "Meta"/Archetype mindset pays off.
Your call of "variety" isn't a good example at all. You are listing "possible choices" but ultimately you get pigeonholed based on what you are doing and the Cards you are dealt. A Player can't go "Gee, I want Demon Form with Barricade and Impervious and I think I'll do Sword Rang with Spot Weakness!" When the game can doll out a single Spot Weakness, no Limit Breaks, No Demon Form and Barricade shows up in Act 3. You have to make due with what you get... which is fine but the point is there are specific Decks aka "archetypes" aka "Meta" that you build for.
An experienced player knows they can't build around specific cards but rather a specific archetype. You want STR Deck, you personally prefer Spot Weakness + Limit Break. End of Act 1 you can get a Demon Form, so you shift from doing Weakness/Break to more Defensive so you can safely ramp from Demon and your attack cards are golden since you've been choosing since Act 1 with STR scaling in mind...(as one example)
Oh, okay. So someone can slap whatever they want into a Deck and win as long as there is some interaction and beat the Heart right? Double Tap and Pummel should be good for offense and my Barricade with Dark Embrace and Sentinel should be enough for Defense, then thanks to the energy from Sentinels I can play Bludgeon for burst damage. I'll totally win no problem! (I actually came close to winning with something akin to this. Died to Heart though)
Except nobody said "only with Strength cards". Don't twist a sentiment and make a Strawman. We are specifically talking about the circumstance that there is only ~3-5 Deck archetypes that actually win the game. If you don't build with such Archetypes in mind, you will most likely lose.(Again, not speaking on Sub 5 Ascension since pretty much anything can win as long as you build with synergy in mind.) Furthermore there are certain Cards that are so good you almost always take them if they suit your "Meta". Off my head, Catalyst with a Poison Deck.
Uh huh. If I didn't know better I'd say someone is trying to get a use out of their Psychology/Philosophy degree here with this comment.
You argue there is no "Meta" then go on to list basic Meta Archetypes. Hrm, lets use Ironclad...
Scaling Damage = Strength Deck
Scaling Defense = Barricade Deck
Deck Manipulation = Exhaust Deck(Being a bit over simplified here)
So playing the game like an experienced player doing Ascension then... like what you are supposed to do?
I'm going to chalk this up to my bias clouding my perception of your manner of posting and just bow out and agree to disagree here. After your comment here, I can't help but think of an Elitist refuting any criticism over their favored game. You probably aren't that way but I'm having a hard time not getting that vibe from your post. Don't mean to be offensive, just explaining why I might come off as prickly. :/
Who ever said it wasn't? But not knowing what you're going to get in any given run is a point against archetype thinking, not for.
It's a good example of what the word "variety" means. The point is not that you'll get all those choices in the same run, just that they exist. You could play several "strength archetype" decks and have them all be substantively different, hence variety.
As for variety within the run, or getting pigeonholed into specific archetypes, well sometimes there's really only one set of optimal choices (or maybe even none). But that can happen on any ascension and there's no reason why it would keep shunting you into the same archetypes each time, or into an archetype at all. Of course, if you're only able to recognize those instances that can be understood as archetypes and you just lose all the rest, then it could easily seem like the game's forcing you to play according to those archetypes or die. But since not everyone has that experience, we can be pretty sure that the game isn't inherently like that.
That first sentence makes me think you're just trolling. Actual experienced players do exactly that: they build around the specific cards that they actually lay their hands on, instead of deciding ahead of time what their deck should look like and hoping they stumble upon the pieces later on. "You have to make [do] with what you get" is my line, not yours. Archetype thinking is what prevents people from recognizing immediate value and holding out for some ideal deck that never comes. It's what prevents people from taking cards they desperately need just because it would violate some cosmetic sense of a "shiv card" not belonging in a "poison deck."
I never said that there's no meta. I said that there are no such things as meta builds. I think I already went over how "meta" can just as easily refer to dominant strategies as it can to dominant builds. What I've listed there are not archetypes or deck categories, they're aspects of your deck. They're functions that every deck wants to perform in some measure, and measures for evaluating cards. The idea is that you think of each card in terms of what it actually does, what problems it solves, instead of what cosmetic category it belongs to. I would expect pretty much every advanced player to think along these lines, but since there would probably be variation and disagreement as to the exact functional definitions, I hedged and said "if there is a meta." Because I don't really know how widespread the agreement is.
But I do know any variation on that theme is leaps and bounds ahead of archetype thinking. It's pretty much a settled issue in the community that archetypes should at most be a stepping stone for people that are just learning the game. They can help introduce you to the cards and show you some of the more powerful interactions and synergies, but they'll hinder you if you don't move past them.
What you want to do is distill the archetype down to it's core interactions, to break it down into its building blocks, and then try to use those blocks to build other things. Learn to mix blocks from different archetypes together, it's allowed. Think about what the cards and card combinations are actually doing, in the functional terms that I mentioned, and not about what label would best fit.
Miscellaneous:
You're taking this quote out of context. That was just a continuation of my strength archetype example. You should read this as "if you believe there are only a small number of ways to win, and you're not given the right cards for any of them, then it's understandably going to feel etc."
That's just a little joke. If you don't get the Hamlet reference, don't worry about it.