Pressure Points

[Kiru]

A card I never cared about, considering it bad. Still tried it out, seeing how the very first fight gave one as an option, and tried to make a Pressure Points deck. Ends up going all the way and even beats the heart. (with mighty help of Tungsten Rod and Torii)

I like how this game never really gets old. I never would've assumed this can beat the heart. Heck, even the donuts I figured would be too much, given how they start with artifact. (low ascension made that only 1 for each though)
Guess sometimes you gotta be lucky.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2366115986

[LHGreen]

Wow. That's a lot of pressure points. Yeah, that'd just about do it.

[Jimmy Hunter]

Pressure Point in itself isn't a bad card. What makes it not that great is that it has no synergy with the rest of her card set as nothing else applies or works off of Marked. I don't believe there are any relics that interact with it either.

[Kiru]

That's the problem, and why I never really gave it much thought. It doesn't work with your stances, divinity and so on. Scry is fine, and like the only thing to really use with it, but it doesn't change that you WILL need a lot of pressure points and little other cards. (so prepare to spend most money on removing cards) Scry's own synergy with other things is unfortunately also unusable, as it's clogging up the deck.

I also considered it next to impossible to go against the heart, as it builds up slowly, and you can't afford getting too much tanky stuff. I was in luck that my relic combi basically made the heart's multi attack deal 0 damage, so I had enough turns to kill it, without that.. I don't even know what could work.


Would've been nice if mark had other uses, because in all honesty, I doubt I'd ever get another run like this that manages to win. And unless you really go all in, it's not worth. I think at least. It definitely feels weird giving up on stances entirely with the watcher.

[Spawnling]

Originally posted by Jimmy Hunter:

Pressure Point in itself isn't a bad card. What makes it not that great is that it has no synergy with the rest of her card set as nothing else applies or works off of Marked. I don't believe there are any relics that interact with it either.

No synergy? There's Scry to play Pressure Points (PP) faster, Meditate to get PP back into your hand and Like Water to block while you play your PP. ^^

[Tumalu]

I've killed the heart with 3 pressure points before, meditation and foresight are amazing for playing and replaying them constantly. I very nearly got the speedrun achievement off a PP deck too, but I had been playing slow in act one before I realized.

But the downside is you really have to build the deck to do nothing except spam PP, and if you don't get a deck that can spam it hard enough, you're wrecked.

[Jimmy Hunter]

Originally posted by Spawnling:

Meditate to get PP back into your hand and Like Water to block while you play your PP. ^^

Oh my.

[Dusk_Army]

Originally posted by Spawnling:

Originally posted by Jimmy Hunter:

Pressure Point in itself isn't a bad card. What makes it not that great is that it has no synergy with the rest of her card set as nothing else applies or works off of Marked. I don't believe there are any relics that interact with it either.

No synergy? There's Scry to play Pressure Points (PP) faster, Meditate to get PP back into your hand and Like Water to block while you play your PP. ^^

One might argue that isn't so much that Pressure Points synergizes with Scry and Meditate as it is that Scry and Meditate synergize with everything. Pressure Points is such an odd card simply because nothing else directly gains off of it. I can't even think of a comparable card for another class, as even the Defect's "negative Focus" cards still synergize with Plasma and Claws. It would be like reworking the Silent so that everything is Shivs, and she just had Deadly Poison as her only means of inflicting Poison.

Odd thought: maybe Pressure Points would be (sort of) more viable if it had a lower value but was affected by Wrath and Divinity? At least then it would be interacting more with her other cards. (Note: this is a half-serious suggestion based on all of five minutes worth of thought.)

[Kiru]

I think it would be less viable, because pressure point's advantage right now is, that wrath is not necessary. If you need to mess around with wrath, you need more cards with wrath and calm effects (or exit stance), making your deck bigger, and the entire build much less good.
Outside of literally adding additional cards that utilize it, you can probably not do much to improve the usability. Due to its nature, it's hard to mix it into a deck, so it's always going to be all in, performing best in small decks and as such automatically limiting synergy.

It's simply an idea to control your battle as much as possible, arguably the safest way of playing Watcher, who generally struggles with drawing bad hands. (oh, still in wrath and enemy attacks with no way to kill or get out of the stance? Well...) You trade that for heavy reliance of actually getting more than one pressure point and some helping card (scry, draw..)
There's just one problem you always going to have: The heart. But I suppose every build's ultimate challenge is going to be that.

[Khor]

Originally posted by Dusk_Army:

Originally posted by Spawnling:

No synergy? There's Scry to play Pressure Points (PP) faster, Meditate to get PP back into your hand and Like Water to block while you play your PP. ^^

One might argue that isn't so much that Pressure Points synergizes with Scry and Meditate as it is that Scry and Meditate synergize with everything. Pressure Points is such an odd card simply because nothing else directly gains off of it. I can't even think of a comparable card for another class, as even the Defect's "negative Focus" cards still synergize with Plasma and Claws. It would be like reworking the Silent so that everything is Shivs, and she just had Deadly Poison as her only means of inflicting Poison.

C`mon, that was probably a joke.
It literally ends with "Block synergizes with PP because it blocks damage" and a Smile

[LHGreen]

Originally posted by Dusk_Army:

Pressure Points is such an odd card simply because nothing else directly gains off of it. I can't even think of a comparable card for another class,

Choke, sort of? Although even that activates with any card played. It's kind of like a weird blend of the way Choke/Talk to the Hand works, and the way Claw/Rampage works. It definitely needs to be tuned up a bit so that it either works more like the cards in one direction or another, or so that other things activate it. Maybe have it do much less damage, but activate and do damage each time you play a card that gives you Mantra, or something? Of course, the Watcher is already ridiculously powerful as it is, so it's not like she needs it.

[Dusk_Army]

Originally posted by Khor:

Originally posted by Dusk_Army:

One might argue that isn't so much that Pressure Points synergizes with Scry and Meditate as it is that Scry and Meditate synergize with everything. Pressure Points is such an odd card simply because nothing else directly gains off of it. I can't even think of a comparable card for another class, as even the Defect's "negative Focus" cards still synergize with Plasma and Claws. It would be like reworking the Silent so that everything is Shivs, and she just had Deadly Poison as her only means of inflicting Poison.

C`mon, that was probably a joke.
It literally ends with "Block synergizes with PP because it blocks damage" and a Smile :conwayshrug:

I'm sort of oblivious to that kind of thing, so joke or not, you can expect a serious response (though, sometimes a comically serious response if I think someone is joking).

Originally posted by LHGreen:

Originally posted by Dusk_Army:

Pressure Points is such an odd card simply because nothing else directly gains off of it. I can't even think of a comparable card for another class,

Choke, sort of? Although even that activates with any card played. It's kind of like a weird blend of the way Choke/Talk to the Hand works, and the way Claw/Rampage works. It definitely needs to be tuned up a bit so that it either works more like the cards in one direction or another, or so that other things activate it. Maybe have it do much less damage, but activate and do damage each time you play a card that gives you Mantra, or something? Of course, the Watcher is already ridiculously powerful as it is, so it's not like she needs it.

By all means, yeah. It's not so much that Watcher needs a buff, I'm just kinda doing a thought experiment.

[LHGreen]

Originally posted by Dusk_Army:

I'm sort of oblivious to that kind of thing

My condolences. That can often make for a pretty crappy forums experience.

Originally posted by Dusk_Army:

It's not so much that Watcher needs a buff, I'm just kinda doing a thought experiment.

Yeah, same here.