Suggestions for Act 4 Ironclad?

[Cuthawolf]

Hola,

So I've beaten Act 4 as both the Silent and the Defect, but have yet to get the W with the Ironclad. Been smashing my forehead against it for some time now and thought I'd pop my head in here and see if anyone had any advice.

I got to the Act 4 Miniboss with my Barricade/Entrench deck but just couldn't do enough damage. They quickly outdamaged my blocks. I've gotten to the end boss with my Demonic Strength/Heavy Blade/Sword Boomerang deck but can't seem to muster the defence. Part of my problem is definitely luck: I've done three runs in a row now and all three have gotten no defense cards at all in the City (Wall of Flame, why has thou forsaken me?), but a BIG part of it has to be my own skills.

Any general suggestions for improving Ironclad play?

[Songbird]

Heavy Blade is a particularly bad card and shouldn't be drafted in almost any Ironclad runs. 2 energy for the amount of damage it does when compared to Anger, Twin Strike or Sword Boomerang is just not a good deal for the inflexibility you get. It's one of very few Ironclad cards that I'd say is worth taking less than 1% of the time it's offered.

The strongest Ironclad cards against the heart are Feed and Corruption. That sounds stupid in a vacuum, but Corruption with Feel No Pain or even just a bunch of skills reads, "You now block for 0 every turn and can focus on doing other things with your energy." You would be surprised at how much you can get done with even a dozen or so skills in your deck if you are free to use all your energy on other things. Feed just does absolutely wondrous things for improving consistency through the virtue of having 40+ additional max HP. You still need to get block cards in either case, of course. Disarm is an extremely valuable pickup as well; just keep in mind that the heart cleanses negative strength on turns 4, 7, etc. so you ideally want to use it to erase positive strength buffs.

The other thing you need is scaling damage. This is generally either Juggernaut + Feel No Pain, Body Slam + Barricade (can theoretically operate without Barricade, and do keep in mind that you'll have a very hard time stacking excess block against the heart without Corruption), Limit Break, or Demon Form. In very rare cases, it can be Rampage or Searing Blow as well.

[Cuthawolf]

Awesome, thanks very much for the advice :)

[Ichthyic]

it depends on how much strength you can stack as to whether heavy blade is good or not. REcall that upgraded it adds 5 x strength damage to the attack.

When I last beat the heart with ironclad, I had double demon running on turn 2, 2 +5 strength pots and artifacts to keep the strength boost, plus multiple strength boosting cards. by turn 3 my strength was 14 or 15, IIRC, and then I used two double strength cards (so 56 strength!). Heavy blade was doing around 300 per hit on turn 4. I think that run also had my char with over 140 health base too, so could tank the first couple of rounds of attacks easily.

but yeah, if you don't have huge strength, then heavy blade isn't terribly good. I'm sure one could calculate the break even point where it's worth the point cost vs other ironclad offense cards, if one wanted to.

as far as beating the heart... it usually DOES involve a bit of luck from my perspective. it's very hard to plan ahead a build that will win, you just have to see what you get in the first and second acts, and work to focus on that and get rid of the rest by the end of the 3rd.

pay attention to the pattern of the heart too. know when it is going to do big attacks vs spending a turn charging up or casting debuffs on you. it's not random. if you have forgotten, go check out youtube vids (recent) of people fighting the heart, and you will see so you can at least somewhat plan for what you will want to use when. you don't want to be using your big attacks when you are weakened, for example, or maybe you can get several artifacts going before he casts his debuffs...

[Stardust]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1625596369

Dead Branch relic + Corruption = GG. Heavy Blade+ and with Limit Break later on it's a cake walk through Act 3 & 4.

[Cuthawolf]

Right bit I have to GET the Dead Branch for that to be a thing :p

[Alan Sylver]

Have no access to Act 4, but I beat Act 3 on Ascension 20 surprisingly easy for me with getting a lot of card draw and 2 Angers. I often had 10+ cards every round and cherry picked the ones I needed. I usually tanked a coule of rounds, scratched the enemy with the Angers while breeding more of them and waited until Demon Form allowed me to pummel the enemy into submission. If I had gotten one or two Rage cards, that would have taken care of the blocking pretty well on its own.

That said, I got Toxig Egg early, which means all my Battle Trances, Shrug it off and Flame Barriers were upgraded. Running into a triple enemy attacking for 30+ damage in the first round, and answering that with dual Flame Barrier was extremely satisfying.

Originally posted by Stardust:

Dead Branch relic + Corruption = GG.

Is that reliable enough? Sounds like Dead branch could fill my deck with a lot of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ attacks, or my deck runs dry on skills.

[gantybop]

Originally posted by Alan Sylver:

Have no access to Act 4,

?

You need to collect the 3 "keys" to access act 4. One from a non boss chest, one from a campsite (recall) and one from an elite. The elite will be animated on the map. This can be done over the 3 acts so don't feel you have to get them all at once.

[Mistletoe The Bard]

Just to make my suggestion sounds a bit more pursuading, I've done Ascension 20 with Ironclad.

From the cards choices you talked about. I think you need to try more cards with debuff. Weak(or disarm) for being out damage, and vulnerable for more damage. Do not underestimate them.

Limit break is also a much better cards than Demon form. Do not underestimate how good Reaper is when you can stack up strength quickly.

Nevertheless, offense is the best defense in Act 3 and Act 4 in higher Ascension, so it will be good to try to get used to it even in normal run. Barricate blocking usually doesn't really work unless you have entrench and body slam later on(especially entrench), as you said the enemey scales up in damage too quickly.

Corruption, feel no pain, dark harvest/(or dead branch) is one way to go defense, but it is a no brainer to play. Since you need a lot of componenet together to make them work, getting those cards and dead branch are almost like praying for RNG to be nice to you.

In my opinion, WHAT YOU NEED THE MOST NOW is to "try to pick the cards you never picked before, picked the cards you thought it's bad before" and then play with them and try to build a deck around them. You will die a lot in Act 1, but you will soon notice how some cards works well together or works well against certain boss/enemy.
(Limit Break, spot weakness, feed, and feel no pain are probably the 4 most OP cards in Ironclad, but none of those were mentioned by you.)

You can also try to upgrade them and feel about it.
For example, upgrading Bash is actually pretty good early, but I didn't find out about that until I beat AS 5(I also found out Heavy Blade is pretty garbage during the same time).

Get out of your comfort zone while building your deck.
I can beat AS 0 heart with perfected strike deck or a clash deck. There are a lot of ways you have to explore the cards you thought it's bad, and explore the deck type you didn't play before. It's AS 0, everything will work. I even saw people who've done a clash deck in AS 20 and beat the heart on Reddit.

P.S One more suggestion. If you are playing this in AS 0, try to always go for at least 2 Elite + the key Elite in Act 1, and 2 Elite in Act 2. If you died because of it, just go for another run. This is a cheaty way though, because you will not learn anything from doing this. All you did is just hoping for best RNG in the seeds. If you are just trying to get the achiement without wanting to improve then go ahead and do this.

[Cuthawolf]

I love Feed, it's one of my favorites. But I totally blew a run where I had like...150 HP thanks to getting Feed from Neow, so I'm down on myself about it. Don't think I can play it well.

[DaBa]

Entrench decks with body slams are the most consistent in terms of beating act 4. They are relatively easy to draft, very safe to play. If you have drafted a good deck, and have useful relics, you should be able to outblock them and deal damage with body slams.

Other decks can work as well. Corruption + dead branch is almost always a win of course, a quick limit break deck can also work but it has to be QUICK or have enough defence to stall (apparition for example), exhaust deck would also work but without dead branch you are liable to run out of fuel in the heart fight unless you manage your resources well or draft a thick enough deck. You can find success with all the archetypes actually, the only difference for act 4 is that those decks will have to be very consistent and optimized, and feature heavy emphasis on defence or damage mitigation.

[ChaosSound]

I managed to kill the heart with a perfected strike build, worked out pretty well, was hitting for 100ish damage with a vuln on the target.

[Cuthawolf]

Got him, finally. Many thanks to everyone for their advice and feedback. Neow gave me Demonic Strength at the beginning of Act 1. Almost didn't make it through Act 3, but turned it into a win. I have no idea how to post my screenshots, but you can check out the most recent three for what my deck and relics looked like at the end.