Quick thoughts (and suggestions) on Ice and lightning orbs on defect.

[PogGamer]

Lightning orbs are cool. They do passive damage and can deal a small amount of burst damage. It's really cool seeing 3-10 of them activate every turn for 9-30 damage.

Ice orbs... are not cool. They give a very small amount of defense per turn ranging from 2-20 block per turn. Activating them is also a terrible idea since they only give one defend's worth of block, netting you a +3 block gain.

Without any amount of focus, the lightning orbs can be managed but Ice orbs tend to just get you killed. Enemies scale extremely highly each turn and deal more than you can block without using other blocking cards, none of which channels a frost orb afaik. I am playing the defect solely on ascension mode so maybe it's not best for me to use my own data for this argument.

Suggestion: Make it so that orbs have increasing power based on how many are currently channeled. A good example would be lightning does 3 damage on with a single one channeled, does 4 damage each with 3 channeled, does 5 damage each with 6 channeled, and does 6 damage each with 10 channeled lightning orbs. The damage increase for each number of channeled lightning orb would be 0-0-3-4-5-12-14-16-18-30. With this new increasing overload of damage, 10 channeled lightning orbs would deal 60 damage per turn. If it's too strong then maybe start at 2 damage passive.

I feel this kind of change would be highly beneficial for frost orb builds since having 10 frost orbs just doesn't feel powerful.

[King Joshington]

I'm sure others will jump in, but this doesn't sound like a good idea. Lightening orbs are already fine, as you said. They are easy to channel and doing so often evokes orbs to make way, building up damage really quickly.
If frost orbs aren't offering you the defense you would like, take a look at how you're playing -- is there anything you could do to capitalize on them? Having extra focus quickly makes frost orbs powerful! That plus the other block cards (leap, auto-shields, stack, etc.) quickly provide some good defense for the Defect.
Glacier is a key card when trying to master the frost orbs. Couple this with the Cool Headed (gain a frost and draw 1(2) cards), plus Blizzard -- you can stack defense and do some offense, while cycling through your deck.

I personally like frost orbs, as they quickly amount to being an impenetrable turtle.

[Nameless]

Frost orbs don't need any help. Rapidly evoking them with cards like Glacier and Rainbow is a key strategy for generating turn by turn bursts of block with low orb slots. If you have large amounts of orb slots you should be focusing on filling up those slots and getting permanent sources of Focus - even just one Defragment+ boosts your hypothetical 10 Frost orb scenario into passively generating 40 block per turn which trivializes tanking even final bosses like Awakened One and Time Eater and allows for extended stalling against Donu and Deca.

The only problem with Frost is that the only exceptional Frost card is Glacier.

[PogGamer]

Originally posted by Nameless:

The only problem with Frost is that the only exceptional Frost card is Glacier.

I just recently got that card but I have not encountered it yet in my runs. So far I've been having a difficult time setting up the orb slots while maintaining enough health waiting for the ice orbs to stack, especially while going through normal rooms. Without Glacier I end up using offensive frost cards or cards that draw, which is pretty useless on the first floor.

Do you think envoking them right away is a better strat then keeping them up? I'm not too sure if I should be maintaining their passives or envoking but I always try to keep them up.

Also I might be messing up by adding a bunch of defend cards so when I end up going against an enemy that blocks or has plated armor I could barely ever dish any damage. I'm guessing rainbow would solve this situation by adding in that single dark orb.

[PogGamer]

Originally posted by King Joshington:

I'm sure others will jump in, but this doesn't sound like a good idea. Lightening orbs are already fine, as you said. They are easy to channel and doing so often evokes orbs to make way, building up damage really quickly...
I personally like frost orbs, as they quickly amount to being an impenetrable turtle.

Yeah it was just a suggestion I thought would be cool. With the focus mechanic in play this will probably never go into effect but who knows, maybe a fourth character can use this algorithm.

I want to like frost orbs too so that I can become an impenetrable fortress but it just doesn't seem to work for me. Maybe a few more runs then I'll see it.

[Ghostlight]

Bad idea, because you will typically only want a small number of Orbs channelled at any time, so that you can get free evocation whenever you channel new ones (Conduit is a trap imo; at least more than one of them is). This change is forcing the Defect to get as many Orb slots as possible asap, which is in fact the opposite of what you want (in most builds so far).

Do you think envoking them right away is a better strat then keeping them up?

Neither. My best runs have been with a very small number of Orb slots (4 max) and then you keep channeling Orbs, ideally as a secondary effect of something else, but not necessary. This way, your new Orbs keep pushing your old ones out and you get multiple free Evokes.

[Zu]

The short answer is don't try to go for it in act 1 and don't tunnel vision. Tempo first, value later. That's what evoke is for.

Once that slaver is dead, you can take all the time in the world to stall against the parasite.

[PogGamer]

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

Bad idea, because you will typically only want a small number of Orbs channelled at any time, so that you can get free evocation whenever you channel new ones (Conduit is a trap imo; at least more than one of them is). This change is forcing the Defect to get as many Orb slots as possible asap, which is in fact the opposite of what you want (in most builds so far).

Hm but if you're saying that a low amount of orb slots is the better way to play, wouldn't it mean that they need to buff runs where you have a lot of orb slots? Also is conduit the skill that envokes all your channeled orbs and gains that many orb slots? I accidentally got a second one with hello world or something and it was such a dead card, especially after I found out the 10 orb limit.

Edit: I can't seem to find this card anymore. Must be removed and most likely not called conduit.

[Nameless]

Originally posted by Ai:

Originally posted by Nameless:

The only problem with Frost is that the only exceptional Frost card is Glacier.

Do you think envoking them right away is a better strat then keeping them up? I'm not too sure if I should be maintaining their passives or envoking but I always try to keep them up.

Also I might be messing up by adding a bunch of defend cards so when I end up going against an enemy that blocks or has plated armor I could barely ever dish any damage. I'm guessing rainbow would solve this situation by adding in that single dark orb.

Whether or not to evoke or leave orbs in a given turn is a part of the Defect decision making process and depends on your specific situation. Generally, my strategy with Frost is to fill up as many slots with Frost to reduce the chip damage you take per turn and thus per battle and evoke them as necessary with channeling cards if you need the extra block on a given turn. I think taking a few extra block cards early is okay, but my priorities early on tend to be offense - Streamline, Beam Cell, Go For The Eyes, maybe Claw or Sunder if lucky or Ball Lightning or Cold Snap if I have to. It doesn't really matter how you do it - you need to be able to do a bit of damage while still maintaining your block.

The beauty of Glacier is that playing Glacier when you're playing Frost is almost never bad. It gives you large amounts of Frost orbs, potentially evokes extra Frost orbs or other orbs, and gives you block on top of that - it's literally everything you want to do while you stall and hopefully build up towards a state with no fail scenario because you cannot be killed.

[Ghostlight]

Sorry, I meant Capacitor.

And as for buffing the 10-Orb build. Nope. You should only be going for a large number of Orb slots if you get cards that increment your Focus reliably in the first place. Then you can hang 10 Orbs up there and go make coffee while you passively murder everything while generating 60 Block per turn.

[Karmigula]

I just got the PERFECT! Achievement while fighting The Awakened thanks to my absurdly high frost orbs. If anything, The defect is hella over-powered.

[Zu]

>awakened

You mean the easiest boss to stall against?

[Ikiry0]

I like frost orbs. They are slow to start but they allow you to really steamroll if you can get them set up.

[Karmigula]

Originally posted by Zu:

>awakened

You mean the easiest boss to stall against?

I have literally no idea what that means. I just kill ♥♥♥♥ gud.

[ZexxCrine]

Originally posted by SoulM:

Originally posted by Zu:

>awakened

You mean the easiest boss to stall against?

I have literally no idea what that means. I just kill ♥♥♥♥ gud.

he is saying that the awakened is the easiest boss to stall against.

the awkened(as long as you are not running a metric ton of powers) can be stalled out on his first form extremely easily until you ramp up. then you kill his first form and laugh at the fact that his second form either dies in one turn or can no longer hurt you.