The Defect

[Pandabear]

I have played a lot with the defect in recent times trying to beat the heart. I've managed to do it with the other two characters, but with the defect it seems impossible. In my opinion he has much worse cards than the other two characters. If you don't get focus and orb slots you are screwed...there is no other reliable strategy, so you are dependent on luck because most cards that are offered to you are simply garbage.
I think the defect needs a little tweaking still.

[Mistakes were made]

All three characters have pretty narrow win conditions against the heart, especially at higher ascension levels. My highest win rate is with Defect among all three characters around ascension 10 so far (about 25%). Personally I struggle with Ironclad the most.

[Burdpal]

If I don't have Go for the Eyes as Defect I tend to struggle a bit with dealing with damage. Not having a good balance of Frost orbs and damage orbs, be it from Lightning or Dark, hurts too. Echo Form seems to be the bread and butter for most of my successful runs, too, especially considering the versatility of being able to attack or defend twice. Maybe I'm just bad, but I tend to struggle way more with Defect versus Ironclad or Silent given how well balanced a build just needs to be to be successful in Ascension.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by Pandabear:

If you don't get focus and orb slots you are screwed.

Welcome to defect, enjoy your stay. If you're gunning for the heart, or playing high ascension, this is a must in every single deck and thats just how it is. The only other deck that has a chance is an overpowered power deck or one that has 2+ Echo forms and you somehow manage to play them all. By the way, we're talking about a heart here, an overpowered boss that can only be beaten by specific decks. You can't expect to be able to kill it with just about anything, and that's for every class. In normal runs, you don't require focus at all, I had perfectly fine runs that didn't use any focus at all.

The class itself doesn't need any tweaking as well, it's completely fine as it is. Tweaking it based on it's ability to take on the optional overpowered boss is a terrible idea. If we're talking about the base game and ascensions, Defect does just as well as other characters, I actually found it to be the best class to take on high ascension due to how easy it is to get good defence with it. Honestly you sound like a beginner, you should learn the class and the game better before you make assesments like that.

Also, your opinion that Defect has worse cards than the other classes is completely wrong. You have some of the most powerful defensive cards of any characters (Leap, Chill, Boot Sequence, Glacier, Reinforced body etc...), even better than the Silent! You have really good tools that draw you cards, you have amazing powers that do just about anything, you also have some of the most broken cards in the game, Echo form being the crown jewel. The only department Defect lacks in is straight up damage cards, and it's also harder to get efficient AOE (unless you picked up electrodynamics). However, that is almost never an issue because you can just use other tools to compensate. Compared to glaring issues other classes face, defect is well rounded in all thre aspects: Offence, Defence, and Utility.

[K E N N I]

I also think that Defect is worse than the other heroes, but not by that much. Shoehorning yourself into an orb build is definitely not the way to go. All for One is great if you get it decently early and build around it. You can also just use efficient attacks, of which Hyperbeam is obviously the best. Such a build probably needs Echo Form, but it's an amazing card in any deck. Hell, I even had a run where I won by casting Meteor Strike 3 times a turn. For damage mitigation, Buffer is a good card. If you can use it to tank the big hit from the Heart, you're probably winning.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by patryk.drobinski:

I also think that Defect is worse than the other heroes, but not by that much. Shoehorning yourself into an orb build is definitely not the way to go. All for One is great if you get it decently early and build around it. You can also just use efficient attacks, of which Hyperbeam is obviously the best. Such a build probably needs Echo Form, but it's an amazing card in any deck. Hell, I even had a run where I won by casting Meteor Strike 3 times a turn. For damage mitigation, Buffer is a good card. If you can use it to tank the big hit from the Heart, you're probably winning.

The guy is talking specifically about a heart. You can't win with an all for one build against a heart, unless your deck is absolutely broken and you can still defend yourself while consistently playing your 0 cost cards. Meteor strike is another great way to get destroyed by the Heart.

Base game? You can do whatever the hell you want, since Defect has some of the best cards in the game, and thanks to things like echo form you can make almost any stupid build you imagine work. I really don't undersatnd people who claim defect is the weakest of the characters, maybe you guys just need to build better decks?

[K E N N I]

Originally posted by DaBa:

Originally posted by patryk.drobinski:

I also think that Defect is worse than the other heroes, but not by that much. Shoehorning yourself into an orb build is definitely not the way to go. All for One is great if you get it decently early and build around it. You can also just use efficient attacks, of which Hyperbeam is obviously the best. Such a build probably needs Echo Form, but it's an amazing card in any deck. Hell, I even had a run where I won by casting Meteor Strike 3 times a turn. For damage mitigation, Buffer is a good card. If you can use it to tank the big hit from the Heart, you're probably winning.

The guy is talking specifically about a heart. You can't win with an all for one build against a heart, unless your deck is absolutely broken and you can still defend yourself while consistently playing your 0 cost cards. Meteor strike is another great way to get destroyed by the Heart.

Base game? You can do whatever the hell you want, since Defect has some of the best cards in the game, and thanks to things like echo form you can make almost any stupid build you imagine work. I really don't undersatnd people who claim defect is the weakest of the characters, maybe you guys just need to build better decks?

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198306622559/screenshot/951852609749529325

So I guess this deck was absolutely broken. Is 3 All for Ones all it takes? I don't even have Echo Form. I took a lot of damage from the Heart, 74 to be exact, but this is fine. A lot of stuff is viable against the Heart when you realize it takes it 5 turns to kill you from full HP.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by patryk.drobinski:

So I guess this deck was absolutely broken. Is 3 All for Ones all it takes? I don't even have Echo Form. I took a lot of damage from the Heart, 74 to be exact, but this is fine. A lot of stuff is viable against the Heart when you realize it takes it 5 turns to kill you from full HP.

Let's see:

- 3 All for ones
- 4 claws
- Two UPGRADED holograms
- Both beam cell and go for the eyes
- Good draw cards, including inate (bottled) Machine Learning
- Very little filler cards, almost every card here looks like it fits, minus 3 outliners maybe
- 31 bloody relics, including bronze scales (rip heart). No main energy relics but you had cards that generate it + 2 other relics for that so you seem to have covered yourself

Oh dude, if this isn't an overpowered deck then I don't know what is. As far as All for one-claw decks go, this is insane. You managed to kill heart fast enough and lived? The fact that you won against a heart with it is a good enough indicator, beat of death and general lack of defence in those decks is what kills you. You had enough max HP to tank it, and other tools to negate damage. You also had enough damage that ramped fast enough to kill it before it kills you. And even then, it almost killed you, even though your run WAS broken.

[Zu]

^Also fossilized helix, but might've gotten multihit turn 2.

[K E N N I]

I won't argue about brokenness, although the thing I would point out is the elite hunting package, which allowed me to get so many relics. My point is that this kind of deck can be built somewhat reliably, as it's just All for One + a bunch of common cards. Such a deck will take a lot of damage from the Heart, but as I said, it's fine, you have easily 5 turns to finish the job. 3 All for Ones was lucky, but I was prepared for a shortage with lots of draw and 2 Holograms+. I got my first All for One from act 1 boss btw, so not super early. I'm not arguing the same about a Meteor Strike deck, as this is indeed very situational.

Edit: my buffer from the Helix went down to Beat of Death on turn 2 because no block in hand lol.

[DaBa]

I also don't argue that this deck can't be built reliably. You can, It actually only requires a single rare card that is all for one. What I argue is that getting all the correct tools you got, in the ridiculous quantity you got, helped by 31 relics, is the kind of a run you can't get reliably. Your average zero cost all for one build would have about half the tools you got provided here, and there is zero chance it would've won against a heart if that was the case. I don't think you would disagree with that, I know because I had those runs, and even when it went as good as I could have hoped for, I always lost, even with decks that blazed through every other combat, elites, and bosses.The heart directly counters this archetype with beat of death, having insane amounts of health, and dealing ridiculous damage that you normally can't defend against while playing all your offence.So you need either a lot of HP to tank (can't get reliably), enough all for ones to be able to dilute your deck with defensive cards (can't get more than one reliably), or have a bunch of relics that compliment your survivability in another way (can't get those reliably), quite possibly all three at once actually, given the fact you had them and it still went down to the wire by your own account.

Can you get an all for one deck that wins against a heart? Yeah, never disputed that. Can you reliably build one that can beat the game? Yeah, unless you get really unlucky. Can you reliably build one that wins against a heart? No. You can try, but you will need to get really lucky to get a run that is bonkers enough to stand a chance. So, do you still believe a normal deck will have a chance against a heart? Did you have a run like this that beat a heart? I know I didn't, didn't get lucky enough to get a run like yours as well. I wish I did it looks really fun.

[K E N N I]

This was undoubtedly a lucky run, but you need a little luck to defeat the Heart, right? It's not like you can get your Defragments and Capacitors every time and just win. It was not as lucky as you're saying, though. Relic quality was poor: 17/31 commons. And the deck was lacking in defense, if I just had another Leap, I wouldn't need 100 HP to win.

I think you overestimate how difficult it is to get cards for your All for One deck and should keep trying. Once you know exactly what you're looking for, the merchant is your best friend. And this goes for any kind of deck, this is not the first time I killed the Heart without using orbs.

[Mistakes were made]

Originally posted by DaBa:

The only department Defect lacks in is straight up damage cards...

Not entirely true, Defect can channel dark orbs which can charge up to deal huge damage.

Many of my boss fights as Defect are charging up a dark orb and then Dualcast to essentially one-shot the boss.

[Khor]

meh...
3 energy, low defence... the deck`s good but far from OP i`m not even sure it`s enough for A20

Frost`s the easy way to kill the Hearth but a mix of relics, apparitions, Echo Forms, Buffers and Madness(in the case of All for One) can be enough.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by Baby Nurse:

Originally posted by DaBa:

The only department Defect lacks in is straight up damage cards...

Not entirely true, Defect can channel dark orbs which can charge up to deal huge damage.

Many of my boss fights as Defect are charging up a dark orb and then Dualcast to essentially one-shot the boss.

Dark orb generation is not direct damage, it's a delayed effect. I didn't mean single target burst, of course defect has that with dark orbs. I meant efficient damage cards with immediate effect like Immolate. The only thing that comes close is sunder and it's still more of a gimmicky card.

[bastardmessiah]

I enjoyed success against the Heart with Static Discharge+ and a Thunder Strike.

Cards (22): 3 Rare, 8 Uncommon, 1 Common, 10 Starter

Buffer+, Electrodyamics, Thunder Strike, Boot Sequence+, Bullseye, Consume, Genetic Algorithm, Loop+, Reprogram, Static Discharge+, Storm+, Rebound, 4x Defend+, Dualcast, 4x Strike+, and Zap+.

Relics: Cracked Core, Lee's Waffle, Pear, Singing Bowl, Lizard Tail, Centennial Puzzle, Gold-Plated Cables, Kunai, Sozu, Bottled Tornado (on Static Discharge), War Paint, Cultist Headpiece, Frozen Egg, Unceasing Top, Strawberry, Stone Calendar, Happy Flower.

Heart did its 12x attack, channeled 24 Lightning Orbs, and Thunder Strike dealt 124 damage.

The 24 channeled Lightning Orbs did 120 damage by themselves (or 168 damage with Consume).

The Lizard Tail helped a lot, as I apparently went into the fight with 59 HP and took 110 damage (125 max HP, thanks to Singing Bowl).

The fight took 6 turns.

(By contrast, I just beat the Heart with Ironclad in 8 turns using a 38-card deck while taking only 42 damage.)