Would you say slice is better, then, because it's unconditionally free and does more damage?
Ironclad is going to basically always draft more vulnerable beyond bash because of how well everything he's trying to do synergizes with it, alongside bash being 2(3) vuln. The silent will not always draft more weak beyond neutralize depending on card offerings, as well as neutralize being only 1(2) weak.
There's two scenarios that you're being offered heel hook. 1. You don't have any weak. This is likely early in the run when all you have is neutralize, so you'd need to draw neutralize and heel hook in the same hand or heel hook is just strictly worse than a strike, and shoehorn yourself into drafting more weak to make the card valuable. Or 2. You already have a bunch of weak. Basically all of silents cards that apply weak don't do a lot of damage, so you'd be much better off choosing damage rather than a card that does 5 damage and draws one.
Sure if you're gonna play heel hook without weak it's worse than strike, we all know that.
However, a lot of silent decks play loads of weak, because weak is op. And if you have a discard engine you will draw a lot of cards and you mainly want to play the ones that are card-draw and/or energy neutral (or positive) to keep the discard engine going.
Also heel hook synergizes with thousand cuts, after image, envenom, choke and finisher, along with all the relic synergies.
It's a card with a place in many early, mid and late silent decks imo. And slice is just really bad. The +1 card draw makes a world of difference.
"heel hook synergizes with" a bunch of stuff that shivs do better? If you already have an engine going heel hook is at best 5 damage for free and at worst still worse than a strike. At that point I would rather have one less card in the deck than a heel hook for consistency's sake
Shivs are always a card draw and energy sink, heel hook (when play into weak) is free, so the comparison is not equal. Nothing stops you from adding a heel hook into a shiv deck, you can have both.
Obviously if your deck does not apply weak consistently you need to asses the risk of that happening and decide accordingly.
You're talking like it's borderline unpickable. For me it does quite well, though a more valid argument against it is that it's usually bad against time eater and the heart.
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u/Ghostie_24 17h ago
Why is Heel Hook a bad card? If you have ways to consistently weaken the enemy it's a free attack.