The Watcher: Start Great but Soon Overwhelmed

[coyote720]

I'm okay with Silent and Defect, and I just started playing the Watcher. Early on, the character is a blast. It also has some of the coolest cards in the game. However, by the third act, I fall behind in my ability to mitigate damage especially against multiple enemies.

Any Watcher tips, guides, or videos you masters would recommend?

[mldb88]

Watcher really requires you to plan ahead and work off of what the enemy is or will be doing. In act 1 it's not too bad since the stakes are kind of low, and even if you screw up and end up in wrath form for an attack or two it's going to be maybe 18-26 at most from normal enemies. Act 3 is a LOT less forgiving in that regard. Aside from just learning enemy patterns (this goes a LONG way with Watcher specifically but helps with every character), my best advice is to try to use scry to set up your next turn to have an out if you're in wrath form already (shift to calm or one of the "empty" cards) and don't know what the enemy is going to do next. Abuse the double damage to nuke the biggest threats quickly (or most unpredictable enemies) and then deal with anything else that's left, and don't worry too much about building a specific 'theme' deck. Watcher is probably the one who can get away with just a "good stuffs" deck the most.

[LHGreen]

Watcher is a glass cannon, outside of going infinite. Treat her as such.

[Zu]

Usually you should be consistent enough at cycling stances that you kill low health enemies quickly and have energy to spare on defense or scaling.
Would be nice if you always had mental fortress turn 1 but talk to the hand with flurry and tantrum is good too.
Sometimes you start with wave of the hand and a bunch of random block cards.
Other times you stall with multiple vaults while setting up powers.
If you're lucky, you chain omniscience and kill errything turn 1.
Nirvana's ok but scrying can be redundant if you don't discard anything.
Sometimes you go wrath, miracle, joints, huge wallop so you can stay in wrath.
And you prolly have relics to help you block since watcher's so good at steamrolling elites.
So, really, you have lots of options.

[burningmime]

Watcher requires math. More than any of the others, you need to be able to calculate the exact amount of damage you can do, enemies can do, etc. A great deal of Watcher's later acts are all about bursting down enemies and you need to know very specifically how much damage you're capable of doing. The best advice I can give is just to calculate, calculate, calculate. You may even want to write it down with pencil and paper.

[coyote720]

Thanks for all the tips, everyone. I had my best run yet, making it all they way to the final boss. Unfortunately, my hand was terrible for dealing with the Time Eater as I had a deck that needed to and was able to play a lot of cards in a turn. Still I was able to give it a good fight, and I look forward to my next run with Watcher.

[LHGreen]

Originally posted by coyote720:

Thanks for all the tips, everyone. I had my best run yet, making it all they way to the final boss. Unfortunately, my hand was terrible for dealing with the Time Eater as I had a deck that needed to and was able to play a lot of cards in a turn. Still I was able to give it a good fight, and I look forward to my next run with Watcher.

Lol, Watcher has a hard counter to Time Eater. If you use Vault as your 12th card, it skips his turn and you get to go again like normal. Sorry we forgot to mention that one earlier. ':-D

[Cress]

Long video, but will probably be the most comprehensive guide to how to build a successful watcher run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9czLA-7ELdM

[RopeDrink]

Originally posted by LHGreen:

Watcher is a glass cannon, outside of going infinite. Treat her as such.

Personally, I would have worded it like "Watcher favours offence more than defence compared to the other characters". It's hard to argue the term Glass Cannon when her gimmick is literally "deal (and receive) double damage", but it's not like she's incapable of defensive styles and builds either.

I can't speak for higher ascensions, but my last notch on the ladder was a Watcher build that rarely used damage stance and would Hand-Wave, Hand-Talk, Relic + Triple Wish and Double Deva their way to 60-150+ armor per turn with infinite energy over time while doing whatever damage I had on hand.

Of course, this is less efficient compared to playing into her double-damage, and as the above poster said, she's the type of character where you really need to be mindful of lethal (in both directions), and how much damage or defence is optimal per turn - because her mistakes can be much more costly - such as having no choice but to end a turn in furious mode after leaving an enemy with 1 HP, then eating tonnes of damage due to the miscalculation, misplayed card, overconfidence, or whatever.

Despite being so different compared to the other three, and having the capability of blitzing so many fights with double damage via all kinds of crazy and/or fun builds, she's my least favourite character overall because I find her a lot more finicky and picky compared to the more standardized alternatives.

[Zu]

Originally posted by RopeDrink:

Hand-Wave, Hand-Talk, Relic + Triple Wish and Double Deva their way to 60-150+ armor per turn

That sounds like a lotta work for numbers you can reach with a few more 👉✋ and rushdown.

[LHGreen]

Originally posted by RopeDrink:

Originally posted by LHGreen:

Watcher is a glass cannon, outside of going infinite. Treat her as such.

Personally, I would have worded it like "Watcher favours offence more than defence compared to the other characters". It's hard to argue the term Glass Cannon when her gimmick is literally "deal (and receive) double damage", but it's not like she's incapable of defensive styles and builds either.

Well, then, let me ask you this: What exactly is a glass cannon? What makes it so? Also, how do you keep a glass cannon alive, so that it keeps working? Simply by shooting first and killing anything that can kill you before it gets off an attack, or is there more to it than that?

Originally posted by RopeDrink:

Despite being so different compared to the other three,

She's really not that different from Silent or Ironclad. Defect, now THAT one's different.

[RopeDrink]

Originally posted by LHGreen:

That sounds like a lotta work for numbers you can reach with a few more 👉✋ and rushdown.

The numbers were off the top of my head, to be honest. Ultimately, the run very quickly went immortal, to a point where the damage being dealt by myself and the enemy was irrelevant.

Originally posted by LHGreen:

Well, then, let me ask you this: What exactly is a glass cannon?

To me, Glass Cannon is something that thrives at dealing huge damage when left to its own devices - but crumbles defensively under pressure. I typically use the term in PvP games where you might forgo defensive stats and abilities to make a bursting build (at the risk of being caught and killed very easily by an opponent).

In those games, it's usually a pre-battle commitment you can't change until the final result, but for Watcher, it's your own choice via stance-dancing, so the term "Glass Cannon" applies more to entering Fury Stance (rather than a permanent 100% all-the-time description of Watcher as a whole). She has a plethora of defensive cards to choose from, and it's not like you have to stay in Furious, so it's more of a choice.

Either way, I wasn't disagreeing. I merely stated that I wouldn't have used the term as a full-time representation of the character, even though it certainly does apply when Furious.

Hope that makes sense.

Originally posted by LHGreen:

She's really not that different from Silent or Ironclad. Defect, now THAT one's different.

It's the opposite for me. There is no character I dislike, but Defect is when I clicked with the game, whereas Watcher still feels the most alien.

To me, Defect Orbs are just passive effects you can monitor on-screen - and can incorporate a lot more passive play in various simple ways without as much forethought - so it feels more comfortable and familiar.

As for Watcher, she technically has 4 stances to consider ahead of time (which can interact with each other across their own web of cards), and the double-down gimmick requires a lot more care compared to the others - benefitting the most from mechanical knowledge, forethought, planning, and a bit of maths.

As someone who likes to give every character a fair chance, I'm finding Watcher the most awkward to progress with, despite the concept simply boiling down to "double-damage-dancing".

I can see why someone would call Defect 'different', but to me, Watcher is the starkest contrast to the other characters.