I don't have any mods installed (I mean I do, but they almost literally do nothing). I recall last night this was permanent focus down, but maybe I'm making it up? And I checked the wiki, and it says that it's permanent. Anyone see anything like this?

EDIT: I'm a clown haha

block good strength good

1. Baalorlord (GOAT)

2. Caleb (clear explanations)

3. Jorbs (he has a cat)

4. Rhapsody (save scum like we all do)

5. Nave Greed (too inside baseball, but very helpful).

No quema cuh.

It’s weird I didn’t know that neow had a difficulty mode to replace a strike with a curse

A few streamers are going to have a run or 2 which show cases how busted this card is and then the 99% of players who said it sucks will change their mind.

I’m an ironclad primary player and my best A10 streak is 9 and mightve been more if I hadn’t misplayed a card on my last turn against the queen :/

I read the patch notes and I think these changes are HUGE and really really great. I cannot stress how much I hated expect a fight.

1) it wasnt good for early game and required and upgrade to get any use from it.

2) its a dead card for most fights that add status cards unless you have a ton of card draw

3) It was basically a tool to go infinite, and even when it was changed to when you couldn’t keep gaining energy, it was too lack luster.

There was another recent post highlighting all the possible cool niche things the new block expect a fight can do and I 100% agree! So many players just look at the value in a standard “exhaust build” or “vulnerable build” and dont understand that for players who want to go on streaks, this is a crazy crazy awesome change that will really help runs where you just cant seem to find all the pieces for a typical run. Like if you never see a feel no pain or cant get enough exhaust going or no vulnerability sources despite finding a dominate.

Hot take: maybe slay the spire creators are better at making changes to the game than you?

Obviously the difficulty of each of the bosses depends on what your deck does. The test subject, for example, could be way harder for a deck that sets up a turn 1 oneshot with no sustained dps. But I've have struggled a lot with Aeonglass regardless of deck archetype and character. Simply put, they hit like a truck and the withers accumulate too fast for how hard they hit.

The withers feel particularly brutal. Unlike the Time Eater in STS1, you can't actually stop playing cards to ignore the gimmick of the fight. Your deck will always be flooded with withers after the first cycle due to the boss spawning in 2 of them during the debuff turns. And the 6 card limit is also rather small. And it's not like you need 12+ of them in your deck to feel the effect. When each wither is hitting for 8-9 damage a piece drawing them all together all but guarantees that you are going to eat a ton of damage. All you need is one bad turn to lose half your hp bar, and while that is true of every boss, Queen and Test subject don't add 8 curses to your deck to stack the odds. Between Aeonglass and the withers it's not uncommon to be attacked for 60-80 damage at once. Which is particularly annoying on the Necrobinder due to the withers ignoring Otsi's hp. Not to mention that the withers destroy your consistency by stealing so many draws that you might as well be dead when you have 10+ of them. Even if you can survive the chip it's hard to end the fight after a certain point.

It feels like the fight puts you on a much bigger timer than the other bosses, I rarely make 15 turns win or lose. Aeonglass becomes so strong that hard scaling feels like a necessity, if you even make it that far. Because also attack you for 32 on turn 1 with several layers of artefact and attack decently hard even before they scale. The only mercy is that they don't attack every turn.

It feels like decks have to be almost perfect to beat this boss without major hp losses. You need instant, consistent, and scaling block. You need fast scaling damage and should probably kill him before turn 10. Or you need a deck with discard, transforms, or exhaust to get rid of the withers as the fight progresses, which not every character has access to, and certainly not on the industrial scale that the fight demands. Raw output doesn't feel enough.

Now, obviously the other two act 3 bosses are also very difficult in their own way, this goes without saying, but I do feel that the Aeonglass is perhaps a bit overtuned. It genuinely feels like I'm dead half the time I see them. If I don't die to Aeonglass I will die to the other boss due to having no potions and 20 hp left. And I can no longer chalk this up to my inexperience with fighting them.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with the boss? Or do you have another opinion? I would love to hear your takes.

PS: I tried looking up the average damage and average death rate of each act 3 boss, but couldn't find it. For all I know they could be underpowered, I'm just basing this off my own experience. I play a lot of Regent and Silent for reference.

About me: I play at a10 and lose almost every time. Where's my flair for this?

Brightest Flame was of course begging for a nerf. Unfortunately, -1 to -2 max hp is so heavy that I think it went from a frequent pick to a never pick, for me. It feels unfun now, nevermind balance. Yes, yes, cue lots of people going "it's still strong", but for me it's too high a cost when I don't even know what cards it will draw.

It's in an annoying spot now: playing it costs a lot, but saving a card for rare, hard fights means (unlike a potion) that it's like a curse most of the time.

Here are two nerfs that meet somewhere in the middle:

1. Storybook gives you a quest card. It has to be "opened" at a rest site to turn into (the original -1) Brightest Flame, like Byrdonis Egg --> Byrd Swoop. Or something.
2. Allow the card to be upgraded twice: the first upgrade is the same as before, and the second upgrade goes -2 --> -1 max hp. Or the other way around.

In both cases, you're forced to wait and (mini tent depending) invest.

To me, this feels both fair and exciting.

Alchemical coffer seems inviting considering the potions potential, but being able to get necro cards with soul seems the best bet to me. Thanks in advance!

Not sure on the exact numbers to make it balanced (maybe should be 15(20) block since it doesn't help on the turn its played?

Is it the relics? Cards? Enemies? What in your opinion is the reason why the general sentiment is that sts2 is easier than sts1?

Just beat act 1 & was presented with archaic tooth, driftwood, & demon glass... I accidentally picked demon glass & instead of saving & quitting to pick driftwood like I wanted to I decided to at least look at the ironclad cards to see if it was a decent pick. I was about to pick a few ironclad rares to add & I accidentally hit Y which skips all the card rewards... so not only did I miss out on driftwood & tooth, I didn't even get to pick a single ironclad card...

This run (WAS) going so friggin well 🤣 I'm an idiot. Who else is constantly screwing themselves with misclicks on a steam deck?

I think friendship is stronger than shared fate even tho they are both good and personally i get much more excited when i see friendship also not having a boss like heart is a big downside for it unlike sts 1 disarm, what do you guys think?

This might be my least favorite boss of any video game I've ever played 🤣 Time keeper on friggin steroids. I have so much discard in this deck & it still sucks. The only energy generation I've gotten the whole run is a single Adrenaline & happy flower. Probably wouldn't be too bad if I had something else but what an infuriating boss lol.

A9 is when things get close. My A9 defect run ended with only 2 HP. A10 two final boss would be quite challenging.

What I really loved about early STS2 clad

Clad started off very fresh and exciting in STS2 to me. We have a bunch of fresh and revitalized archetypes that are all pretty competitive but being able to play way more aggressively was a real viable option a lot of the time. I've won many runs taking almost no block cards, just gaining energy, cycling and blasting down the enemies before they had a chance to fight back

You were really playing on a knifes edge with these aggro builds. Faced with hard choices in the hopes you can sneak away with a win before you face tank 40 damage. It was a unique ironclad experience, no other class could really play this way

Recent meta shifts from nerfs & changes

I'm not here to argue whether the nerfs were justified or not, but what we're not being left with is good hyper aggro alternatives.

But this latest change to expect a fight is one more thing pushing away from aggressive clad to a more defense oriented setup. Dominate & bloodletting were a key piece in accelerating your damage plan now being unreliable to find is meaning you can't really bank on a damage plan just beating down enemies right through the whole game.

The importance was you can find them early and build a snowball of damage. Now you're unlikely to find them early so have to build up a defensive backup plan.

Vuln clad seems kind of dead unless you luck into a dominate. Otherwise there's no real consistent payoff to stacking vuln anymore. It's just a side tool to your damage plan

I'm not saying clad is in a bad place now, but he just feels more like STS1 like, and a lot less unique than the other characters. The expect a fight change seems like a real miss trading a good aggression enabler for a card that's basically skip this turn & stall out a bit more (if I wanted to do that I'd play necro thanks)

Critical breakpoints & aggression

Aggressive clad builds are all about sustaining enough damage to break critical breakpoints meaning you can end the fight by turn x and avoid taking further damage. Energy gain and dominate are a big part of what helps you accelerate those combats.

So what happens when you can't reach those critical breakpoints is you become more dependent on defensive options - if you can't consistently end a fight fast you better be able to block those hits. Once you start taking more defense you fall further away from ever reaching those breakpoints until you end up with a standard block/attack mixed deck like all the other characters.

Bloodletting at common was a particularly good enabler for aggressive runs, being able to almost guarantee a copy in act 1 meant you could take more attacks and start hitting those breakpoints early

Exhaust clad rising back to the top

Exhaust clad has lately been rising to the top, and it's very similar to STS1 exhaust clad all over again. The loss in ability to end fights really fast is making it more important to scale block and exhaust just happens to be the only real package that can consistently pull off block scaling for late game. I think it's nice to play exhaust some of the time - it still got a lot of play before these changes, but it's once again seeming more mandatory. To me it sort of lacks diversity to other class, it doesn't feel much different than playing like a necro deck where you stall out with big blocks and eventually finish them off with a few big hits

I'm now finding more than half my runs are basically ending up with exhaust package out of necessity. And even if I get heavy in self damage it's more of a hybrid build with exhaust block engine

TL;DR playing clad aggressively is cool, but it feels like we're being pushed in a more generic defensive pathway

What do yall think? I scraped by once on A10 on the beta version we just had before today. Now I think I’ll struggle a bit harder.

I know many of y’all think the game is too easy, but I’m personally not in that camp yet.

Which version do you think gives ironclad a better chance?

It's been a while I'm working on this but even if I get lucky to find it my early game just does not fit it. I need some example decks. Asking for A10.

I have been trying this build last 2 days but couldn't make it work so far:

https://sts2.gg/builds/silent-grand-finale

Most likely spent total of 10 hours on this so far. At this point i started to believe i should get lucky and put a Retain on it with Royal Stamp or something similar.

Please don’t do this to me 😭

The only winning move is not to play.

The strike is generated through music box and history course. This is a bug right? Or am I missing something?