Tips for beating the heart as the defect

[Jackal]

I still haven't tryed, I already managed to beat as the silent and as the ironclad. But for the Defect, can anyone give me tips on how to build a deck (and what type of relics) to beat the heart?

[Zu]

Scale fast, basically.

Otherwise I've found myself picking go for the eyes over other juicy stuff more often just to upgrade two copies for the heart. Equilibrium helps here too.

And static discharge has finally grown past meme status.

[Steven of Astora]

I beat it incredibly easily with a frost orb build. You will need a large amount of focus and/or orb slots to be able to scale high enough though. Echo form is always a great pick up as always. Basically any high scaling defensive cards and synergies since bursting down the boss isn't a great strategy if you can't survive at least 7 turns against it.

[Jackal]

Well tought, static discharge can quickly go in damage against him!

[itssirtou]

Beat the heart, hehe...

How often does it use its cleanse?

[luckymarine]

Put your faith in frost.

[Royale With Cheese]

I've beat it twice with a lightning build. Static discharge and thunder strike are pretty sick together. Defragment helps quite a bit but I don't think it's a neccessity.

White noise and discovery are incredibly useful as well throughout the run.

[Jackal]

I did beat him with a high focus run, I had four +2 focus power and was just a matter of using the frost+lightining to wear him down and finally win. Got very good artifacts like the 1 orb slot every two turns and the mummified hand.

[eaglecamper]

Just beat the heart with defect, I used a darkness orb combined with a lot of frost. If you can get +2 focus, and the card that invokes the first orb multiple times in the first slot, the combat becomes shifting the dark orb to the front, invoke a bunch of frost, and wait awhile. It becomes really powerful with upgraded recursions, as the dark orb will keep it's power when it is cast.

[Jeff]

I also used a static discharge build. I was able to get orbs to 10 damage and just let him hit me for his 12x hit and it was badly hurt after that. All For One - Force Field kept me alive long enough to just use basic melters or whatever attacks showed up during the run to finish the fight.

Build if you are interested
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1566378471
Thunder strike would have been sick but it never showed up.

[candy]

My best advice would be after playing lots of defect, try to build a small and fast deck. Use stuff that will help you draw/resuse better cards, but avoid any junk. Your aim is a 5-10 card deck if possible. Any card above that should directly help you reuse your rare/important cards.

The defect has quite great starting kit. You can upgrade 2 cards so they cost 0 mana and they do massive damage. Invoke will give you 16 burst damage at the cost of 3 sustained damage, while summoning a ligthning orb will give you 3 sustained damage and 8 burst damage if your slots are already full.

You can come extremely far, by only upgrading 1 of those and getting rid of your strikes. That way you can play 2-3 blocks every turn and summon 1 lightning orb most of the turns. Picking up 1 dark and upgrading it will give you extreme burst potential in combination with invoke. Having a dark orb at 24 damage or more and invoking it will deal 48 damage potentially even distributed over multiple enemies.

Recommendation
3-6 defense cards (in) so I can spend up to 3 mana every turn on not losing HP.
Avoid getting too many copies of your good cards unless they cost 0 mana, even then more than 2 copies is rarely good.
Go for upgrades instead of massing cards if possible.
If you don't have enough shops to remove strikes and bad blocks (assuming you got better defense cards in your deck at that point), then you can go for mutliple copies of your good cards to increase consistency.


Nice combos
1 upgraded zap for early damage and being able to play 3 defense cards,

1 upgraded dark, 1 upgraded dualcast, (after getting enough dark orbs you can just go into defense mode, then invoke/dualcast them to kill enemies)

1 claw, 1 (upgrading worth it) beam cell, 1 (upgrading worth it if you lack defense) go for the eyes if my defense cards are bad,

infinite (upgraded) holograms. Holograms can be used in combination with any 0 mana cost card to play it multiple times in 1 turn. Upgrading atleast 1-2 holograms after everything else ensures that you can play your best cards multiple times in a long fight.

So for example you have 10-15 cards with lots of holograms and claw, and then just claw 3-4 times every turns to quickly kill a boss.

Go for upgrading your key cards on rest sites unless you think you will die. Without upgraded key cards, your damage output will be very low, so fights will last longer, and will chunk your health more.

Upgrading zap as early as possible and collecting holograms, will allow you to have a choice between getting 15 defense or 13 defense and 1-2 0 mana zaps per turn.

Holograms are easy to come buy, upgrading zap is usually possible every run.

You should be able to spend 3 mana every turn on defense, so if you have more cards, you need more defense:
1-2 leap/charge battery are nice unless you get key cards.
Charge batteries are generally free, because you get your mana back next turn, so it's basically 0 cost block for 7/9. The only problem is against bosses/enemies that grow every turn, where you have to think about the trade off between damage now or defense.
1-2 Equilibrium are nice, it prevents you from redrawing the cards you have in hand, and increasing your chances of drawing something from the discard pile, it also helps you to keep a few blocks in your hand for next turn.
1 Reinforced body can be ok, if nothing else useful is in the choice.

1 Defragment/consume is ok, if nothing else useful is in the choice.
1 Ftl is ok when nothing, if nothing else useful is in the choice.
1 Fusion can be ok, if nothing else useful is in the choice.
1 Loop can be ok, if nothing else useful is in the choice.

1 Melter can be great, it helps against those fights with high block enemies.

1 Scrape can be situationally useful.
1 Skim can be situationally useful.
1 Sunder can be situationally useful.
1-2 All for one can be situationally game enders if you have enough 0 cost cards.
1 Buffer can be situationally useful against 1 target that doesn't use multiple attacks.
1 Electrodynamics can be situationally useful for AOE.

Upgraded fissions are always great, but unupgraded ones suck.

1 Hyperbeam is a last resort if your deck lacks AOE damage/single target, if picked up very early you can focus on not picking crappy cards and passing, because you can 1-hit many encounters.

1 Machine learning is great if nothing more important is in the choices.

1 Rainbow can be a great activator for Dark orbs or up to 24 burst damage without dark.

Reboot is generally always pickable if nothing more useful is in the choice.
Seek is generally always pickable if nothing more useful is in the choice.
Turbo is generally always pickable if nothing more useufl is in the choice, it helps if you have lots of draw, because then you can combo it with holograms to get infinite mana if both cards are upgraded.

Everything not mentioned here is crap most of the time or very situational.

It's rarely good to pick up more than 1 copy of cards, the exception are those that don't have a 1 in my list.

[Jackal]

Originally posted by Guffmaw:

Originally posted by Jackal:

I still haven't tryed, I already managed to beat as the silent and as the ironclad. But for the Defect, can anyone give me tips on how to build a deck (and what type of relics) to beat the heart?

Sorry to hijack the subject here, but any tips on doing the silent? she is far by my weakest character and i don't see a poison build surviving long enough against the heart, i barely won with a ironclad barricade deck.

It was easy for me using mirror image, blur and shivs. I had a kunai, that the challenge a bit easier after some setup

[Jeff]

Caltrops is especially useful against this boss. I added 3 by the end. I also went poison and it was generally effective too.

Blocks are very important. Best 2 block combos I had were Madness + Backflip + Footwork, and Blur + Burst.

Final deck had 3x caltrops+, 2x footwork+, 3x deadly poison+, and a Burst+. This boss has very little way to prevent death by poison (it adds +1 artifact every 4th or 5th turn).

[JellyPuff]

I sure hit a brick wall with the Heart as Silent and Defect. The thing is just silly.

That turn 2 attack...no matter how much block i have in my deck, if the block-engine isn't super OP, it's 60-dmg to the face.

[twins10]

edit : one more general act 4 tip : dont go for the keys the moment you can.
the rest key should only be taken when you have nothing good to upgrade.
the chest key should only be taken when you get a bad relic.
the elite key should only be taken on act 1 if the path to it lets you take at least 2elite and 2fireplace, otherwise take it in act 2 so you dont lose all the early power to snowball.


the turn 2 attack is free damage if you have a deck thats set for it.

ironcald - drop a disarm on him, two if you can swing it (in a snecko eye deck i managed to drop 3 disarms on him before the multi attack but thats snecko eye which is easy mode)
a firewall can take advantage of the attack to chop allmost 100 hp off him as well.

impervious will do in a pinch.


silent - malaise, caltrops, anything with weak, wraith form, a potion for a round of intagability.......

defect - if you havent got anything good to handle fast ramp up just start saving up potions and buying if necessary, defect can insane mileage from power potions and focus potions and energy potions can let you play more powers/glacier/whatever


general advice -

if you are trying to win in no ascension play on ascension 1 instead, the extra elites make it easier then no ascension and an extra 2-3 relics plus early snowballing make a big diffrence

if you arent playing on high ascension save good potions for the heart, it makes an enormous diffrence

[JellyPuff]

Originally posted by twins10:

the turn 2 attack is free damage if you have a deck thats set for it.

It's the one that hits for 60 once (due to 1st turn debuff), not his multi-attack.

Edit: Got Silent down finally. Now The Defect's turn. Seems like Retain is extremely good for this fight in general.