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Sometimes, though, you just need to accumulate massive amounts of block and use the "jumping belly attack" to use that block as raw damage. Super straightforward.
If you get a snecko eye early on, piling on high cost cards will be effective, and the IronChad has plenty of those to choose from...
However, in general and more importantly, *don't try too hard to force your deck into an archetype* or a "theme". Try instead to create balanced decks that can deal with the next immediate threats (the elites and bosses in particular, but also the typical hallway encounters, for the act you are in).
The thing about Ironclad is that his synergies aren't as black and white and don't really reward leaning into them super hard like other classes do. A lot of his cards just provide solid value, with a number of cards that double down and supplement that harder. My A20 win was actually with a kitchen sink deck that basically just had a bunch of solid cards that did decent and consistent damage, plus a spot weakness and inflame. Ironclad can do a lot with far less cards that you might assume you 'need'.
As for cards to just immediately skip for the most part, there's really not many for me outside of maybe two (and one of which is specific to A10+). Sever Soul I never take because exhausting all non-attacks for 12 damage is usually just bad unless you already have a ton of exhaust synergies or you're trying to thin down your deck for something like a dropkick infinite or rampage cycle. The other card I almost never take unless I'm desperate is Clash, since thanks to Ascender's Bane there are situations where the card can just become dead weight without the blue candle relic (you can play skills to get your hand down to just attacks but you're just kinda stuck with Bane). Everything else just comes down to situational picks and planning for upcoming combats. If I see an early firebreathing in act 1 before elites I almost always take it since it wrecks sentinels, slime boss and hexa, so 1/2 the elite/boss pool. If I see an early whirlwind I usually take it since it's a guaranteed win against slime mob and gremlin mob encounters and can become an absolute house with the right relics later on.
I usually try to focus energy efficient high damage cards in the first half of Act 1 (not necessarily cheap, but anything that is doing more than 1 strike worth of energy for each energy cost). Iron Wave is a very specific pick, which I only take if I don't feel confident I can kill Nob by turn 3.
As for relics, Red Skull, Meat on the Bone, Strike Dummy if you're going with Perfected Strikes, the boat, X Potion or whatever its called if you have whirlwind, the relic from the Jaxxed event, and Brimstone can all do amazing work. If you find you have a lot of high cost by the time you see it, Snekko Eye can also absolutely make a run.
I think the main issue is your'e trying to focus on a 'build' way too early. His card pool and general theme of just cost efficient damage allows for a lot of overlap between his synergies, so if you tunnel vision a certain 'build' or 'combo' too early you kinda shoot yourself in the foot I find (unless the game is just throwing pieces at you like crazy basically SCREAMING at you to go hard into one of his more specific cards like rupture with a bunch of self harm cards or Barricade with all the good block stuff early and giving it to you upgraded, or you get 3 perfected strikes before the Act 1 boss). Take a few runs to just forget about builds, forget about specific combos and just look at the cards individually as 'what would provide the most value to my current deck'.
See, this is why you're losing. The good news is, you seem to understand this, and have taken previous advice about it. But it's not about committing to an archetype or a certain strategy, it's about incorporating (as efficiently-yet-effectively* as possible, ideally) several of them.
*I've never been good with the efficient part, which is why my decks are generally 40+ cards thick. But many times, they have been VERY effective, because they can counter any threat.
If you've found that you have hit a wall, maybe you should ease up on yourself a bit.
By that I mean purposely choose to play an ascension level or two lower than the one that you are stuck on, and then experiment with cards that are different than the ones you usually take. Still think about what cards you are taking and how they can help your deck, but letting go and experimenting can help you to learn that some cards have more synergy together than you would think.
It's ok to have a 'throw away' game every once in a while where you are just messing around.
Another thing that might help you is to 'save scum' while you are learning. If a fight is going poorly for you, you can save and quit before you die. When you continue your game you will be back at the beginning of the fight, and then you can see how making different decisions will affect the outcome of the fight.
You don't have to use it if you consider it cheating. But it's a single player game and it can help you to learn how to play better. Of course at some point you should be trying to win without resorting to save scumming, but in the meantime you can use it as a crutch to learn.
And card order. The order in which you play your cards in a round often matters very much. Slow down and think about why you would want to play some cards before others. Also consider that there might be times when you don't want to play a card even if you could.
Anyway, good luck! Don't be too hard on yourself, every new game is a chance to learn how to play better.
The biggest problem I see when playing this character is that if I don't have the complete package, the cards that have synergies with each other, I end up halfway to nowhere. I think that unlike other characters, individually his cards are weaker if they're not specifically connected to others, so when I'm considering the first offers, I feel like I don't have the same leeway as with Silent or Defect for example, and once I accept the first or first 2 cards, I am already sentenced to follow a certain path and I have no choice but to pray that from then on, RNGjesus provides me with everything I need.
I am not saying that this is the case, it is surely my perception because I have not yet fully mastered the character butI am going to give some examples of what has happened to me in some of my last games:
I start off pretty good, between fruit relics and events I hit 106 HP and the first cards I get are Whirlwind and Flex. However, in subsequent fights, they don't give me any energy cards, so I can´t multiply the effects and get the most out of it. I defeat the boss of the first act but the only relic to increase energy that they offer me is the one that prevents me from seeing the enemy's intention, which seems like suicide to me, so I have no choice but to continue with 3 action points per turn and with my best trick at half throttle. With which, during act 2, the enemies of ascension 8 slowly bleed me out until I reach the elite book and finish me off. (which has become my run ender and particular nemesis)
In another game, I see that along the way I can access 3 merchants, so I ask the whale from the first event to give me the money and decide to invest in getting rid of as many Strikes and Defends as possible. After the first battle they offer me Barricade which I think is a good ability if I can combine it with other blocking abilities, so I accept and arrive at the first store with 300 coins. There I find out that the Caliper is for sale so I immediately change my plan and spend all the gold to buy it. Well, from there, all the way until the damn book that killed me again, they only offered me ONE blocking card: Armaments. And also I couldn't get rid of the cards that I had planned at first...
In order not to go on too long, I will only comment that I have also tried strategies with Perfected Strike, Corruption + Body slam, or forging Searing Blow several times but none of that has worked for me so far. At the end of the day, the only thing I can really rely on with Ironclad is the strength increase strategy and spamming my best attacks like Heavy blade, Sword boomerang or Pummel among others.
But I´m not giving up yet. I will put your advice into practice and try to give another twist to the matter
Personally I've never had too much luck with Searing Blow myself, but I think the real way to make it work is to work it into a deck that has a good number of exhaust cards so you're hitting it consistently along with armaments to make sure you're just powering it up in combat.
As for the Whirlwind + Flex run, even just upgrading whirlwind can do a decent amount of work through most of Act 1, and during act 2 it either can get better with strength cards if you find them or just acts as a counter to birds and gremilin leader once you hit Act 2 at worst. It still seems like you're hyper focusing on a few cards to do all the work rather than looking at the deck as a whole. Wish Spire Logs was still a thing so I could show you an example of some of my decks (sadly resorted to logs more than I did screen shots).
Thank god for run statistics:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992377597
My A20 win. There weren't really any specific "builds" in the deck, just good damage, and impervious + and exhume to get it back for defense, paper frog with some vulnerable procs, and... 4 perfected strikes... because OF COURSE I OF ALL PEOPLE BEAT A20 WITH A PERFECTED STRIKE DECK.... even when I'm not trying to make a joke about proving the game's beatable with a janky perfected strike deck I'm beating the game with a janky perfected strike deck...
Sounds to me like you're picking up cards that require synergies way too early and then carry a dead weight around in your deck, hoping the game will give you the synergy you're looking for. That is really not how you should play any of the characters, it's a recipe for disaster, especially on high ascensions. What you should focus on early is picking up cards that are a good value on their own, things like pommel strike, cleave, double strike, headbutt, Shrug it off, and so on. You said that ironclad's cards are "individually weaker", but I couldn't disagree more and have no idea where you're coming from with this. You have plenty of valuable options to choose from.
Second point: you keep talking about strength increasing cards as if that is your only archetype. As a matter of fact, when I played the game I almost never went for the limit break decks because they required too many specific cards and relied too much on getting good draws. The easiest archetype to go for is block + body slam, you can even make that deck work without getting a single entrench or barricade. But archetypes is really not what you should be thinking of when playing Ironclad, at least not at the start of a run.
By far the easiest way to win with Ironclad is to not go for any archetype at all (unless of course the game gives you an opportunity to do so as you play). All you want is to pick good cards, grab a few supporting effects to boost those cards and you're good to go. Most of my wins as ironclad have been from decks that simply had a few good cards that worked very well together, compromised almost entirely from just common and uncommon cards. Some examples:
- Whirlwind + one or two strength increases
- Few upgraded Shrugs and body slams
- Snecko eye relic with a few high cost attack cards.
- Early searing blow supported by a bunch of value cards for block and attack early in the run
- Spot weakness, twin strike, boomerang
- Shuriken relic with anger card(s)
As you can see, all of these are very simple combinations and they are all supported by other, good generic cards to supply additional block, draw or attacks as needed. Ironclad is, by far, the least dependent on actually getting a good synergy going. You have good individual card options, you heal automatically which makes block not as important early on, you have easy access to good effects that most of your cards benefit from (vulnerable, strength, lots of cheap draw). All of this makes making a strong deck relatively easy, provided you don't blind yourself by trying to go for specific archetypes for no reason.
Your problem is you try to play Ironclad like you play Silent or Defect, classes that heavily rely on their archetypes and almost cannot exist outside of them. Don't do that, just pick good cards that support one another and before you realize you will have a good deck that can take you through most of the game and buy you enough time to assemble a winning combination by the time you fight act 3 elites.
To OP, you need to stop thinking grand strategy and more in the moment. How are you beating the boss, are certain elites doable or suicide, how are you dealing with the next few floors- not whether a card will pay off sometime in act 3 if you luck out on card offerings. Focus on damage and card draw to begin with, pick up utility cards such as strength gain as they come but don't rely on it.
Your barricade pick is really bad, I wouldn't touch a barricade until late A2 at the earliest, barring some extremes like mummified hand or snecko. Buying calipers after barricade is a waste of resources, I would even consider skipping it for blue key at that point.
You have a good idea combining strength with whirlwind, but this shouldn't be something you're particularly building around. Build a core set of cards first, and the rest will fall into place. Without pyramid you cannot even be assured this combo will happen in any fight.
I totally missed the branch when I was finding the image lol yea, now that I see that good point,
Despite the fact that it was a comfortable victory, I think I've been quite lucky because of all the good things that have come my way.
In the first Act, they gave me 2x Ghostly armor, Shrug it off, Body slam, Panic button, Impervious and Barricade, which has made things a lot easier for me defensively. Special mention for the Pandora's box that I simply think is the best Boss reward you can find. It has changed all the garbage for incredible cards like Immolate, Demon form, Reaper or Inflame. In the second Act I have taken 4x Seeing red, 1 Limit break, 1 Flame barrier and 1 Bloodetting as the most remarkable cards and finally, in act 3 I have obtained the Shovel very early, which has allowed me to dig in 4 rest areas and get a bunch of good relics such as Fossil, Turnip, Scales and Clay.
The conclusion I draw from this game is that although I think I've been lucky with the stuff I've been given, I've played it well and above all calmly. Sometimes when you are in a bad streak you have to know how to get your head out of the sand, take a deep breath and analyze your mistakes to find solutions. In the latter, you are the ones who have helped me so I can only thank you for the advice once again.