Watcher [Pressure Point]

[Succ]

Skill: Apply 8 Mark
Upgraded: Apply 11 Mark
Deals damage to all enemies Marked.

Me: 2 upgraded [Pressure Point] and beat act 4 with 12 card deck.
Mark dang op.

[mco12]

Yes, that is how it works and grats on your kill. I think my A1 or A2 kill was with a similar type of deck.

I am not sure I would call it op vs other 2 card Watcher combos.

[Crater]

What ascension are we talking? Yeah it's strong when no one has artifacts, but it struggles when they do + when it's multiple enemies.

[Rabid Ice Weasel]

I beat the A3 boss for the first time with this build just yesterday. Thinking of either this one or a Silent poison build for my first attempt at the heart.

[1.2M | Missingno.]

It's a kinda gimmicky card that requires you to go all in on it by getting more copies and building your whole deck around it, doesn't do enough for you when you first put one copy in your deck. Then it ultimately gets hard countered by enemies with Artifact so good luck fighting Donu and Deca. There's almost no synergy with any other Watcher cards, most notably it isn't affected by Wrath or Divinity. And most importantly, it's kinda just one of those cards that just falls off at higher ascension levels - anything that demands a thin and/or one-trick deck isn't good for A20. Everything you need to try and make it work is just too unreliable.

[Donathan Cheadledge]

As above, it's an all in card with no synergies. If you pick one up early and don't get another it's effectively a dead draw most of them time.

The fact that it's a skill rather than attack like claw means it doesn't even work with kunia/shuriken/ornamental fan, and has no real relic scaling at all.

Lower ascensions of course this doesn't matter so much, so long as you don't roll bosses with artifacts.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by Retired Messiah:

As above, it's an all in card with no synergies. If you pick one up early and don't get another it's effectively a dead draw most of them time.

The fact that it's a skill rather than attack like claw means it doesn't even work with kunia/shuriken/ornamental fan, and has no real relic scaling at all.

Lower ascensions of course this doesn't matter so much, so long as you don't roll bosses with artifacts.

Well, letter opening still exists though.

[Khor]

Originally posted by DJDiceZ:

Originally posted by Retired Messiah:

As above, it's an all in card with no synergies. If you pick one up early and don't get another it's effectively a dead draw most of them time.

The fact that it's a skill rather than attack like claw means it doesn't even work with kunia/shuriken/ornamental fan, and has no real relic scaling at all.

Lower ascensions of course this doesn't matter so much, so long as you don't roll bosses with artifacts.

Well, letter opening still exists though.

I get you like your Pressure Points

Serious question, you have some a20 runs where it paid off?
I won`t mind playing a couple of Pressure games for the lulz

[sandman25dcsss]

Well, I had a very easy game with early bottled Apotheosis and 3 PP (wave of hands removed 2 artefacts on every monster), my only attacks were Signature Move and Consecrate, but that was not on A20. Still I think it would work on A20 too thanks to all cards upgraded right on turn 1 for 1 energy.

[Bopple]

On higher ascensions, it's far from op, but only meh.

[DaBa]

After making it past ascension 10, I can safely say that pressure point is a pretty bad card.

- On it's own it's too slow, so picking it up without support will hurt your deck more than it will help it.
- It's the only card that does anything with the mark mechanic, so it's hard to build towards as a main part of the deck.
- It doesn't synergize with stances or common damage modifiers like strength or vulnerability.

It's one of those cards that looks good on paper, but in practice it actally doesn't work well. It doesn't feel like a Watcher card at all. Trying to play around it is like trying to build a good poison deck using only deadly poison, it's bad and it's not worth it. And if I already feel that way in ascension 10, I can only imagine how much worse it will be in a20. It definitely is one of the weakest cards in Watcher's arsenal.

[nerdcommando.gamestudios]

My ascension 20 was with a fairly average Pressure Points deck: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1982409124

Up to ascension level 17, it's even easier to win by the pressure points. People just have way, way too inertial thinking and don't understand that thick decks don't work for the Watcher as well as they do for the other classes and that she performs best when you're playing thin and loopy. She has all the necessary tools to do so and lots of insta-kill options.

[Dusk_Army]

Originally posted by DaBa:

- It's the only card that does anything with the mark mechanic, so it's hard to build towards as a main part of the deck.

I think this is the weirdest thing about the card. Like, okay, it would probably be stronger than poison if there were as many cards that apply it, but really? Only one? The chances of getting a common card are pretty high, but the chances of getting a specific card are that much lower.

And that's to say nothing about how, unlike poison and several other similar mechanics, it has no synergy with cards that don't do its thing.

[Nightmyre]

Overall it's a pretty garbage card.

1) It takes far too long to scale up. The first time you use it, it does 12 damage to a single target. Even the second time, it's still only 24 damage. Most other attacks, by that point, are hitting considerably harder.

2) As others mentioned, it suffers hugely from artifact. Any mob that has artifact essentially shuts the build down completely.

At least other classes that have similar cards, have other cards that work with it - like for example, Claw for the Defect. On its own, it's equally terrible, but at least Defect has a few cards that work well with zero-cost cards - specifically, All for One, which lets you cycle back all those claws for another use, letting them scale up far faster.

[Nightmyre]

Alright I think I need to revise my comment a bit. I still think the card isn't great, but in the right conditions, it can work.

The thing which I hadn't properly accounted for, is just how quickly the damage scales up. You can rip apart bosses way faster than with any other type of attack.

However - it really doesn't synergize with *any* other card that the watcher has. I was lucky in my run, in that I got four of them very early on - but even with that, by the end of the run, my deck still had far too many useless cards in it.

Admittedly, part of that is my fault - taking certain power cards which didn't really have a big benefit, for example. But part of that is also because it really isn't obvious up-front how useless literally every other watcher card is, if you want to make a pressure point build work.

So - to make the build work properly, you need two things to happen:

1) Early on, you absolutely need to get a few pressure points. At least two, hopefully three.
2) You need to skip almost every other card option. You want to be basically only drawing your pressure points.

[Dusk_Army]

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

Alright I think I need to revise my comment a bit. I still think the card isn't great, but in the right conditions, it can work.

The thing which I hadn't properly accounted for, is just how quickly the damage scales up. You can rip apart bosses way faster than with any other type of attack.

However - it really doesn't synergize with *any* other card that the watcher has. I was lucky in my run, in that I got four of them very early on - but even with that, by the end of the run, my deck still had far too many useless cards in it.

Admittedly, part of that is my fault - taking certain power cards which didn't really have a big benefit, for example. But part of that is also because it really isn't obvious up-front how useless literally every other watcher card is, if you want to make a pressure point build work.

So - to make the build work properly, you need two things to happen:

1) Early on, you absolutely need to get a few pressure points. At least two, hopefully three.
2) You need to skip almost every other card option. You want to be basically only drawing your pressure points.

I'd amend that just a bit further: utilize scry as much as possible, and any attack cards you do take should be of the "inflicts weak/vulnerable" variety to burn through artifact faster.

Which is again, not good nor is it actually a direct synergy. But those are the things most "compatible" with it.