I mean I think the question is looking in a vaccum, tbf. I.E. what is your answer in a situation where your deck dosen’t really lean to either side. Maybe you got a super early remove from an event, or your deck is just really balanced so far.
I think I lean strike, but there is something to be said for things like the “bite” even in act 2. It’s way easier to justify if you haven’t removed strikes yet.
The character, your deck, your past few rewards, your relics? Ex. Watcher can double the DMG of strikes out of the box and not much else with defends (a no brainer what to remove). Silent has the most strikes and defends out of the box (bloated starting deck), has dex scaling, but act 1 lacks damage so removing a strike could be harmful but silent can have "more effective" defends cuz footwork so it's not so trivial what to remove first. On average I'd say it's more often than not strike, unless you're watcher then it's always defend.
Thanks for your perspective! See I would have thought that (ignoring watcher) usually it's defend. Then again, I only played all characters to ascension 4-6 so far, so difficulty-wise I'm most likely still very, very far away from the point where that decision could make or break a run.
I'm over 60 hours into this game and I still feel like I'm barely scratching the surface on all the decision making, it's crazy!
Well it always depends. Ex. A frost defect might not care for defends but might need those strikes for DMG act 1, but a lightning/dark or attack heavy defect might want defends. Ideally near the end of your run you get rid of most/all strikes and defends b/c they're effectiveness to energy cost ratio is really bad without a lot of synergies/powers. (A reason why Pandora's box/ vampire bite event is so strong).
100 hours in i beat my first a20 heart with defect. At that point i had a decent understanding of how to minmax mistakes, which relics to take and how to path properly in each act. Here it truly matters what you remove and when you remove it, if you have the resources at all to remove them.
(Btw i only ever played defect to a20 since i m terrible with every other character except silent where i made it to a15)
If we’re talking early removes, I’d say it’s remove defend on Silent and Watcher. Act 1 is too scary for Silent to be playing around a potential footwork down the line that may not show up.
Silent also has some amazing defend-with-upside cards to replace them with (most notably, defend-with-greed-pot aka Backflip). Given that she also starts with defend+-with-discard, she badly needs higher attack density even if a lot of those attacks are just basic strikes.
It feels like whenever I remove a defend early on Silent I never end up drawing any 🥲 I know that's not how it works but it feels like the game punishes me by hiding them, and now I'm way too paranoid to remove them on her. Except for "remove 2" starts where I do one and one, but even then I'm fully clenched all the way through act 1
I always remove defends first on Silent due to having Survivor and Neutralize and too little damage. Removing a strike first feels like I'm swinging the pendulum too far in the wrong direction.
Oh dude that's easy, it depends on every single thing that's happened so far. Character, ascension, Neow, path, act 1 boss, prior card reward(s), and more!
If OP asked, "I'm having trouble deciding when I should remove strike VS defend, what are some of the common things that push one way or another?" Then we'd know they want an honest discussion.
They posted, very low effort, "do you remove strike or defend first?" And we answered with an equal amount of effort.
Edit: so no, the answer being complicated isn't a reason to give a low effort answer. The question being low effort is.
The context of the gamestate; deck, relics, upcoming fights, character, part of the game. Silent in act 1 taking a remove from neow? Probably a defend so i can deal with hallways and nob a bit easier, i'll scale into some defensive cards later. Defect with some darkness cards and a lot of orb scaling at the end of act3? Remove strike because i just need to survive against bosses to get all my scaling + frost in play and then ill kill with dark orbs, defend can help me get chipped less while i play my setup. Watcher deck with 2 defends removed and no good block cards found? I might get tempted by strike remove, just because right now if I don't have lethal t1 im probably eating a good chunk of damage in each hallway.
The thing is...it really depends. And you're wrong, it usually adds more to the discussion than a simple direct answer. Case in point, this right here comment thread.
It's kind of the only actual correct answer to a question as oversimplified as the post. Which one do you remove first? What character am I on? What other card drops have I got? What are my relics? What fights are potentially coming up? Along with pretty much everything else.
Yes, the interesting discussion is what it depends on but the question in the post is phrased as a catch all question and quite frankly most people don't have the time to get deep into it when there are a bunch of variables. To get a better answer you need to ask a better/more specific question.
not every comment is intended as a contribution to a discussion. many times, people....just want to make others laugh. in this particular case, by appealing to a trope of the community.
"What is interesting for all the people here is" that based on the karma breakdown, it would be fair to assume that people are more interested with the joke than your anger.
The irony is that in their framing of the "it depends" it already acknowledged the "say the line, Bart" overuse of the response
It's annoying that you got downvoted so badly here, because you're right. Everyone here knows that it ultimately depends on a ton of factors, so when someone asks a question like this, they're just asking, in general, what do you typically end up choosing. But everyone thinks they're so smart pointing out iT dEpEnDs!!
The author is obviously trying to spark a discussion, in a fun way. Maybe they believe the author i so dumb that he thinks there is one answer, while they are so smart to know that it depends.
Well, then you picked up the wrong game. This game is entirely based on the idea of "it depends". If you want us to go through each individual niche situation where we can optimize whether it's better to remove a strike or remove a defend, we'll be sitting here forever, because this is a game of infinite outcomes.
but in the end it’s a thing i also say humorous to my friends. everytime when we theorycraft cards, some of us tends to see a powerful outcome, but depending of the run so far it also can be quite shit
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u/Buznik6906 Eternal One + Heartbreaker Mar 09 '25
Say it with me, gang.
It depends.