What is your favorite Watcher Common/Uncommon/Rare ?

[Crater]

Obligatory "everything is situational" but what are the cards in each rarity level which you will pick over others almost every time?

List of cards: https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Watcher_Cards

[incendia]

Empty punch, Mental fortress and scrawl.
With shout outs to flurry of blows, Tantrum and deus ex machina.

[Sinsling]

Prostrate, empty mind, devotion.

[Crater]

Pressure points / Study / Vault for me

[Korbo]

Protect, Talk to the Hand and Vault are my favourites for practicality, but the Expunger is so fun to use.

[DJDiceZ]

Common: Flurry Of Blows hands down. It's an amazing stance dance staple.
Uncommon: Tough one... Wreath Of Flame because it has a special place in my heart. It was underestimated throughout the whole beta, and it will probably keep being underestimated. In the right deck though, you can give A20 heart a good beating. Second and third place would go to Tantrum and Talk To The Hand.
Rare: Guess who. It's ya boi Ragnarok. I had to decide between Conjure Blade and Ragnarok, but Ragnarok is fun, especially with strenght or vigor. It also happens to destroy everything with proper setup, which isn't that hard to pull off, especially with Akacow.

I think my favorite decks are Strenght/Vigor Stacking, aswell as Stance Dancing/Switching. Followed by Retain and Mantra Stacking decks.

Special Mentions: Like Water makes calm feel like the proper defensive stance Watcher doesn't have and feel like she should. Brilliance because personal bias, ey, mantra stacking! Establishement because it makes retain decks go from viable to amazing. Judgement because it's actually quite handy, and you can JUDGE the hell out of every foes you encounter. Blasphemy because it's strong as ♥♥♥♥. It's Cognitive Bias and Wraith Form on steroids. Signature Move, especially pairs well with Pressure Points, regardless it's a really strong attack in the early game if you can set it up or go for a deck with very few/cheap attacks. Rushdown, in a stance switching tantrum deck, can be a massacre. Mental Fortress because i like stance switching. Scrawl, hell yeah, draw until that hand is full! It's Expertise but better. Foreign Influence is hit or miss, but when you feel like gambling, it can create some interesting situations.

Yes i've seen grand finale Watcher, what are you gonna do about it.

A few more interesting cards while i'm at it:
Sands of Time/Wallop - It's just good.
Protect - The block equivalent of the just good attacks.
Study - a fun cycling engine.
Swivel - It's a bad card overall. But it has some very niche uses, it could be a very interesting card if it was buffed from 8(11) Block to 8(14) Block.
Wave of the Hand - Oh boy the older versions were so, so strong.
Windmill Strike - A bit on the underwhelming side, it's still a nice addition to retain decks, i like the slow scaling.
Battle Hymn - Strange card that gets kinda strong with divinity.
Inner Peace/Indignation - Good stance switch cards, i like em. Much like the retain, cheaper, one use ones.
Meditate - I like it and i dislike it. I wanted a card that interacts with the discard pile, but it ends your turn so it kinda breaks the flow if you got a combo going. Still can have some strong setups, end-your-turns cards pair very poorly with eachothers though.
Vault - A strange and interesting card, although a bit OP.
Pressure Points - Interesting cards that can be used either as scaling damage or aoe damage depending on how you set it up, it's pretty self sufficient and self synergizing, and it's common.
Just Lucky - Seemingly bad, it however shines in scry and fasting decks.
Halt - Can be amazing in some decks, but i have mixed feelings about it.
Bowling Bash - Watcher's common answer to aoe. Because she has such strong single target damage, she has very poor aoe capabilities, and thus struggle against the Sentries, more so than other characters.
Sash Whip/Crush Joints - Good status cards.
Third Eye - For a common, it's a really good Block card.
Worship/Devotion - Solid Mantra generating cards.
Fear No Evil - I jokingly call it "the better empty fist", although they both can fill different roles, this is still an amazing card for leaving Wrath.
Reach Heaven - Might seem bland and underwhelming, but it can be one of your main sources of damage in the right deck.
Deceive Reality - Solid Block, especially paired with Establishement.
Wish - It's strong, and i love the idea of choosing between an offensive, defensive, or meta gain, but the card has had a history of... being very hard to balance.
Cut Through Fate - Pretty decent common attack all things considered. Perhaps her best common in a vacuum besides Third Eye and Protect (wait it's common?), but if you go Fasting or Wreath, give Flying Sleeves a go aswell!

Cards i don't like:
- Deva Form. Sorry, even if you're a much better card, i'll never accept you and the mess you've been in the beta.
- Alpha. You can make something with it, it's kinda interesting. But it's also slow and usually on the underperforming side
- Master Reality. Shoehorned into the kit, even worse so than Deva Form.
- Omniscience. Very Strong, but costly, and a bit boring save for a few cases.
- Lesson Learned. Yeah, upgrading your whole deck for free. It's kinda boring tho.
- Follow-Up. It's kinda bad, even for a common.

I've hinted at quite a few builds here.

[PsychoDino]

Originally posted by Andy:

Obligatory "everything is situational" but what are the cards in each rarity level which you will pick over others almost every time?

List of cards: https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Watcher_Cards

talk to the hand

[Vicious]

Can you explain what makes Follow-Up bad please? Isn't it basically a free attack?

[incendia]

Originally posted by Vicious:

Can you explain what makes Follow-Up bad please? Isn't it basically a free attack?

I think its quite playable although not exceptional. It's an early game card for when you're in need of one. Similar to cards like anger, slice, endless agony etc. They are not good late game cards but at high ascensions you don't always have the luxury to be picky about your tools.
The bottom line is that you want to kill as many act one elites as possible and to that end follow-up, much like the above mentioned cards is a perfectly suitable means to an end.
You wan't to be playing attack cards to get yourself into wrath anyway so in a world where slice is a valid A20 pick in the silent Follow-up is most certainly a valid pick for the watcher.
It does take up a card draw however which is why you wouldn't want to pick it late or stack multiple of them.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by Vicious:

Can you explain what makes Follow-Up bad please? Isn't it basically a free attack?

It just does nothing good that another card can't do better. It's a free stike, that's it. It's her worst attack besides Strikes.

I'd rather have a Consecrate. For 3 less damage, i get an aoe. Or Just Lucky. If i want pure damage, Flying Sleeves and Cut Through Fate do the job, while enabling certain decks. Bowling Bash can do a lot of damage in hallway fights. Crush Joints will always be useful due to the vulnerable. Every cards here can be nice in their own way. Follow-Up is just kinda... cheap damage i don't care about when i could have drawn something better. She has plenty of good single-target damage options, and it isn't really one of them. It's not the card that is gonna help me kill that lagavulin or nob. And it has no other uses besides doing damage. Not that she needs much help in the first act as far as damage goes anyway. It has a few edge cases here and there like a cost reduction from a relic, but i'd rather have a Slice on Silent than a Follow-Up on Watcher. The main reason you could justify it for is that in the first act you don't get to play a full hand right off the bat.

But it's fine for her to have bad cards, i never took issue in that specifically.

[Zu]

No way I can choose one each. :U

Commons: Cut fate, flurry, third eye, never lucky BabyRage
Uncommons: Deceive reality, hand wave, nirvana, 👉✋
Rares: Omniscience, vault.

[gussmed]

A couple of cards have been mentioned but I don't understand why they're considered great.

Talk to the Hand. A weak attack and an defensive bonus that seems on par with Metallicize, since most turns you'll get 2-4 block out of it once you've played it, and then only if you're facing a single enemy.

Wreathe of Flame - isn't this just 5 damage for 1 energy? Why is that good? Are there some interactions that aren't clear from the text?

[incendia]

Originally posted by gussmed:

A couple of cards have been mentioned but I don't understand why they're considered great.

Talk to the Hand. A weak attack and an defensive bonus that seems on par with Metallicize, since most turns you'll get 2-4 block out of it once you've played it, and then only if you're facing a single enemy.

Wreathe of Flame - isn't this just 5 damage for 1 energy? Why is that good? Are there some interactions that aren't clear from the text?

Naturally you'll pick up alot of attacking cards like empty fist and fear no evil but where talk to the hand really shines is in conjunction with Flurry of blows. it's not uncommon to switch stances half a dozen times and as a result play one or multiple copies of Flurry of blows repeatedly.
This not only works wonders with talk to the hand but also with ninja relics for example.

Wrath of flame. I personally don't see it. The obvious interaction is with multi-hit attacks like tantrum or ragnarok where all the hits will be buffed and the effect persists throughout turns.
So yeah in an optimal scenario its 32/40 damage for 1 mana which seems good at enough at face value but to me never justifies the inconvience of it because the watcher is certainly not lacking for damage in the first place. I think it's one of those cards where its easy to overlook the frequent amount of times where its unremarkable and only look at the few moments where it excels.

[Vicious]

Originally posted by gussmed:

A couple of cards have been mentioned but I don't understand why they're considered great.

Talk to the Hand. A weak attack and an defensive bonus that seems on par with Metallicize, since most turns you'll get 2-4 block out of it once you've played it, and then only if you're facing a single enemy.

Wreathe of Flame - isn't this just 5 damage for 1 energy? Why is that good? Are there some interactions that aren't clear from the text?

Far as I understand, you combine Talk to the Hand with multi hit cards like Tantrum and Ragnarok, and/or with 0 cost cards like Flurry of Flows in a Stance deck and Weave in a Scry deck.

Edit: oh, I didn't realize Wreathe of Flame buffed every hit. I assumed it just added 5 on top of the final damage.

[gussmed]

Originally posted by incendia:

it's not uncommon to switch stances half a dozen times and as a result play one or multiple copies of Flurry of blows repeatedly.

When you say "switch stances half a dozen times" you mean per battle, I assume? Because it's pretty rare for me to switch stances more than 2 times in a turn. Typically it's Calm -> Wrath -> out of wrath for safety.

Which gets you 2 plays of Flurry of Blows. 3 if you had it in hand at the start of the turn.

[Sinsling]

Originally posted by gussmed:

Originally posted by incendia:

it's not uncommon to switch stances half a dozen times and as a result play one or multiple copies of Flurry of blows repeatedly.

When you say "switch stances half a dozen times" you mean per battle, I assume? Because it's pretty rare for me to switch stances more than 2 times in a turn. Typically it's Calm -> Wrath -> out of wrath for safety.

Per turn. If you have a deck set up around it you can drop in to and out of stances 3-5 times a turn. Note that "exit your stance" effects from the empty cards also count as changing stances.