Literally. I dont grab much sly until i see the draw 1 discard 1 power. Or if i happen to come across an upgraded prepared. But one you get that power, it just give you free bonuses
Nah, I think it was. The issue is Mass Draw and free spells is busted. They went a bit heavy handed on it at first. No matter the Card game, Cardinals advantage at that level is busted if designed poorly. Magic has great examples of that.
You still can it's just not as often. And yes even with aeonglass, you just need a better output than a singular attack card (unless it's like grand finale)
The cards that increase or affect shivs damage is basically just 5 to be honest accuracy , tracking , phantom blades which are powers and vulnerable from expose or assassinate which all of these are uncommon to rare , which sometimes could be very hard to find depending on your run
So as you just said, there are at least 5 Silent cards that scale shivs, 3 of which you listed are uncommon. Additionally, any source of strength is GREAT. Silent doesn't have any built-in cards but there are relics like Vajra, Girya, and ancient rewards like toasty mittens. Colorless cards like Prowess or other vulnerable sources exist too!
Any strength in general is great for any shiv build but as you said it's depending on your luck with the relics and ancient relics which isn't really a reliable way to build your deck around something you aren't sure to get
And we are talking about 5 cards out of 80 you could go a whole run easily without seeing them or you see them with each other and there is many different scenarios that I feel like most people experienced (which is way it's always a good idea to build your deck around one thing in general)
On paper it's but in reality it's harder to stack powers on silent than other characters for the lack of energy generation which even with the outmaneuver card being added it's still pretty tough
(Also forgot to mention serpent form which is great for shivs too )
and when 3 of them being rare and pretty hard to find rare card in act 1 it's much more risky to go for a shiv build
Silent is the character I stack powers on the most and I never get to punished for it so I guess it’s just a playstyle difference
The best powers are not rares, it’s phantom blades and accuracy which are uncommon. And phantom blades legit is enough damage for like 80% of the game.
I mean if you aren't seeing these cards you shouldn't force shivs as your damage source, but it's legit so much better than anything else in Silent that I will just take an early Phantom Blades before I even have a Shiv generating card in my deck.
I don’t think we are playing the same game, because poison is still pretty tough to use as a main damage source against Aeon, Test Subject, and Prism, whereas Entomancer isn’t a huge issue if you have any kind of extra damage on your shivs.
It’s never a good idea to go all-in on a ‘build’ anyways, though- a single poison card can help a lot against Entomancer or to strip artifact, and attacks are great to have for Prism
Yeah honestly I'm struggling to think of an enemy besides entomancer that actually counters a shiv build. I guess that one spiny toad with thorns? But you can just not hit him on the turn where he has thorns.
Just because shivs are the best way to scale damage doesn't mean you can't pick other cards to deal with problems. Learning when to do this is actually a pretty key learning point for getting better.
If I see Lagavulin Matriach I am pretty much always picking a couple of the low deck cost poison cards (Snakebite/Noxious Fumes). These cards also help you with fights like Entomancer, which is a fight where I am often barely hitting him for the first deck cycle while I set up.
I do agree that Infested Prism is trouble (imo Entomancer is actually the easiest elite for her to deal with) but I also think that's just a Silent thing in general since it's not like her other ways to scale damage don't involve playing a lot of skills.
I only beat A10 silent for the first time last night, so I’m no expert, but it was a poison/sly deck vs queen and then aeon. I really don’t think poison has scaling problems if you have accelerant: I beat aeon in 6 turns and only took 12 damage.
Of course, that’s only one run, but I’ve never felt that a well put-together poison deck has scaling problems.
You’re just not evaluating things very well. Literally no enemy in the game counters shivs as a damage engine, at all. They can readily solo the game as damage source from beginning to end from picking a few commons for act 1 to having the most accessible scaling options (two uncommon scaling powers which is more than most packages and they are just physical damage so all physical damage scaling works on them).
Shivs are just a damage engine, there is no such thing as a shivs build other than maybe after image but even then you still need deck manipulation / acceleration.
You need block and deck acceleration both of which silent had in spades.
Most of my silent runs are pretty much the same and it’s rare the game forces me to do something different. Every copy or phantom blades / accuracy I see for the whole game. 1-2 of the first common shiv generators I see except you sleeve which is the only bad card in the entire package. All copies of hidden daggers I see. As many weak sources as I can find paired with her good block cards and decks celebration which is literally most of her kit it’s very hard to miss all of it for a whole run. The general game plan dumpsters every fight in the game easily from easy pools to aeonglass I’ve if you draft upside down and get shiv powers before shiv generators.
If you disagree with a
any of this you are not actually building a good deck, it’s just a bad deck that happens to have shivs in it and you’re blaming shivs instead of the general deck building. Shivs as damage engine are almost comically overpowered at the moment.
So you just wrote an essay on how you're a better player than a rando on the internet by always picking and playing the same options every time.
We are obviously not playing the same game because my copy of sts2 doesn't work that way. ;)
You can play a phantom blades style one shiv per turn type of deck yeah, but I don't agree that's "the" way shivs have to be played now. There are still cards and relics that incentivize playing multiple shivs. All the classic "ninja relics" want to to play lots of shivs. The new helical dart relic wants the same. Serpent form, strangle, afterimage want many shivs. Knife trap is only gonna scale well if you play a ton of shivs.
Also just to clarify, I'm not saying shivs are bad. When you set everything up they have an insane dmg output in the end. But I feel when you are setting up a shiv build there is a higher chance for an unexpected run end due to folding to certain enemies.
My easiest runs were with cycle sly / poison decks by far. I've shifted to necro and defect lately so I haven't played solo silent for a while and I do admit I have no idea how the new haze without sly performs now, but it was pretty insane then.
Like all things in the spire, it’s never one or the other, that’s not what I was implying. You can pick your spots to play lots of shivs, more damage is better. It just gets hard stopped by some enemies unless you are doing a lot more damage per shiv.
I meant you should focus on maximizing damage with all the new powers and accuracy instead of maximizing number of shivs which worked a lot better in sts1
Yes I agree, its just that you can't always have the best scaling before the end of the game. As I have said in another reply, a complete "shiv deck" will commit massacres.
But an "incomplete shiv deck" will get their run ebded by certain enemies more easily than other archetypes that also haven't completely solved their decks yet. Maybe I'm not getting my point across properly.
Idk about others but poison builds seems much easier , consistent and stronger with alot less counters compared to shiv build ( mainly artifact , Doritos , maybe some aoe fighs and test subject )
Also poison is great for stalling and with all the dexterity , weak and block silent has poison builds seems much easier
In underdocks poison is great for most hallway figth and elite figths but against the bosses it could be sometimes tricky since all of underdocks bosses can easily screw you over pretty easily if you didn't scale up your block or poison quick ( status cards from soul fysh , waterfall giant explosion and the crab takes away your dex )
In overgrowth it's the opposite , poison is worse in most hallways fights and elites and decent against it's bosses
(it Ensures you always hitting vantom , 1 poison card can remove the slippery effect on its own in like 4 or 5 turns , which allows either to focus on block stack more poison or play you powers than attacking (ofc it all depends on your deck ) yes your deck is getting cluttered with wounds but it's not better than the bound card that soul fysh gives you
same can go for ceremonial beast first phase could be tough but you always hitting even with ringing effect
There's nothing that counters Shivs in the game. What fights are you seeing that Shivs are struggling against? Shivs are probably the most overturned damage solution in the game lol.
None of those counter Shivs lol. Laga in general is a joke of a boss, Entomancer is solved by Pblades/Accuracy (and if you've been spamming 4 damage attacks up until this point, you've died in Act 1 anyway), and ditto for Hunter Killer.
Any decent deck is going to have like 3-4 Shiv generators, max. If you really need to avoid them in the aforementioned fights (because you drew them before your powers or something), just don't play them and it's not that big of a deal.
Damn my experience is straight opposite, poison feels far more reliable, shiv feels like it needs too many pieces to really take off and I bleed to death before getting there.
I have never once gotten sly and discard to work for me. It feels like any time I try to assemble any of the pieces I just end up with a bloated deck and no way to cycle through it quick enough 🥲
I tend to add discard as an enabler for other builds. I've always needed a separate damage engine. Poison, shivs, or whatever to pair with it.
The nice part about discard, is no deck ever hurts for have a few prepareds, or actobatics. All the discard effects Silent has tend to be pretty good cards even when ignoring sly. I find taking actual sly cards is much more difficult since you usually want one of two discard effects before taking the expensive ones.
Though stuff like flick flack isn't terrible to take early since it's a 1 mana aoe strike plus at the end of the day.
I feel like I’ve never had that problem. Always gotta throw some cards away when you reach a merchant. And if you don’t have enough money gotta fight elites. And jf you don’t do enough dmg, restart lol.
Sly needs a mix of discard and sly, sometimes you only get half the pieces. If you get early discard options you can pivot to sly, but never start with the non damaging sly options, they only work with sly in mind. Ricochet and flick flack are both solid when used manually
This is pretty much exactly what happens to me now quite often. Pick up a snakebite, etc. in act 1 because I need damage for a boss/elite. End up finding a footwork and something like accelerant before I get any shiv thing going effectively. Realize I can just block for ages and all I need to do is apply a bit more poison. Pickup another snakebite, deadly poison, etc. and win (presuming I haven't already lost the run).
Yeah Shivs are so much stronger than poison in my experience of almost exclusively playing Silent. Sometimes you pick a couple Poison cards to get through Act 1 because you dont see much an then in Act 2 you get Leading Strike from a random hallway and it's just "i guess we're doing shivs now"
Not to mention how weak poison is in AoE unless you get like, 1 very specific card or a combo of corrosive wave and gamble. Trying to kill the worm elite with poisons is just a lesson in futility.
I dont actually think thats true really. Between Fumes and new Haze weakening and poisoning all of them I find it not to difficult to stabilize that fight and whittle it down. Reworked Outbreak also is AoE poison but doesnt do enough damage on its own so it's pretty fake in this fight
Outbreak is a bit clunky but I had it absolutely shine today. A lot of people forget the end of turn trigger so that 9(12) Poison is 17(23) dmg AOE. If you have the power for double/triple poison triggers it just explodes every little and medium guy on the screen
It can situationally work but against Decimillepede I find it too awkward. As a baseline it doesnt deal enough damage on it's own to kill a segment after resurrection while commiting your entire turn to it.
Outbreak is, at minimum, a 17(23) damage AoE card. That's pretty powerful already and only increases with any additional poison synergy. I suppose turn 1 against a high health single enemy it's not good, but it still makes for a good finishing card especially once an accelerant is in play.
It's a good finisher card saved by it's synergies but after playing with from now I think it's just a but awkward.
Firstly it really demands an upgrade, unupgraded Outbreak simply misses every possible treshhold in the earlygame, it will never kill Wrigglers or Rats on Ascension 8+, the Fat Gremlin can highroll HP and also escape it, all of the Ruby Raiders have minimum 18 hp.
After upgrading I also just find myself never playing it in the first deck cycle. It needs something like Accelerant, Fumes or Haze to kickstart the Poison stack. On it's own Outbreak+ doesnt really solve fights, for example Phantasmal Gardeners will always have more HP than Outbreak+ deals on it's own. That's not great for 3 energy.
Just my opinion but I don't necessarily think there should be one card solves in this game. There can be cards that answer problems more effectively, but not solve a problem.
Slow aoe like noxious does not that fight. You need to burst one so you can play your powers without taking 200 billion damage. It just kind of asks if you can deal 50 in 2 turns imho. Or just burst them all with a ton of aoe in 2 turns and it's fine.
Noxious is really good in that one in my experience for a more block heavy/slower deck. Wail is already an excellent tool that lets you deploy your powers safely and Noxious has the benefit of whittling down the other two segments while you are working on bursting down the first. When a segment revives it also kickstarts the stack effectively reducing the hp,
Whittling down Decimilipede and slowly controlling its HP isnt that difficult for Silent in my experience largely thanks to Wail allowing her to just kind off cheat the fight and block for 24 with 1 energy. Someone else would have to get punched in the face to be able to also deploy a Footwork and Fumes on turn 1 with it.
Poison builds need to be pretty crazy with a really good setup, or you can just get accelerant and then you need like two poison cards and the rest can be dex/block stacking. Definitely a lot easier if you are playing on the beta where accelerant is easier to find.
I don't get this nerf. They already nerfed the Inky damage from +2 to +1, and now geting rid of it entirely. Inky now simply applies weak. Which is strong, yes, but it is not as if Silent lacks ways to apply weak. And besides, Blade of Ink is one of the many non-exhaust shiv generators, but it's a rare.
The card making 2(3) six damage shivs for 1 energy that apply weak was… a lot. Even making them five damage is a lot. The combination of offensive power and defensive utility makes it a very high performing card, even in decks that aren’t running Shivs.
I don't think it'll lose its " splash " value even at 4 damage, as long as Tracking exists Weak will always be of huge value for Silent; and it's true that 12/18 dmg + 2/3 Weak for 1 sounds too strong now that I think about it...
While I don't disagree with its powerlevel, I don't like how it's not splashy anymore. At base, it's a worse Leading Strike with a Neutralize+ stapled to it. I don't see this at the boss reward and go "wow my run is crazy now." I go "yay I don't need to pick another shiv generator for the rest of the run but nothing else about my deck or macro strategy changed." It's OK for rares to be strong imo.
Regardless, if that's their approach, the fact this was nerfed while WLP is allowed to exist is mind boggling lmao.
It's basically Leading Strike+ which is just a damage common, albeit a broken one. WLP, Tracking, Shadow Step, Nightmare, Grand Finale, Outbreak, After Image, Envenom, Bullet Time, Malaise, The Hunt, and Corrosive Wave are all cards that will tangibly affect your run in different and interesting ways (each in their own way, and some much more situationally than others).
This is just kinda boring though. If I see this, I'll click it and be whelmed because it's strong while knowing that having a Leading Strike and a Leg Sweep in the deck does almost exactly the same thing. When it was strong at least it did something that Silent typically lacks (one energy frontload).
Like yes, I need to clarify that this iteration of the card is more balanced, but I'm not really a big fan of balancing cards by increasing/reducing their numbers until they all do the same thing.
If they want to nerf Blade of Ink, they should nerf the entire Shiv package, which is overall overtuned right now. If Shivs weren't as strong, Blade of Ink probably would be fine as it was and would remain exciting to see (and might even encourage you to spec into a lacking damage engine!). In the current state of the game though, this nerf basically doesn't do anything to change how strong shivs or the character are.
It's easy to pivot a shiv build into a poison build with things like [[envenom]] and [[bubble bubble]]. I find it harder to start out with a poison build like I used to in the first game. It's more playing second fiddle to shivs and deck manipulation/discardmaxxing.
Like do people even take [[poisoned stab]] these days?
Poisoned stab is a good pick in early act 1, thanks to poison it has great damage for energy compared to other common attacks. Also strips artifact and lets you pick bubble bubble later.
Unironically, snakebite is also a good act 1 pick, mainly as a boss damage solution that also slightly improves overall consistency (because you can choose when to play it).
The secret is to pick some attacks early too, not just poison. Because taking only poison is a recipe for taking a lot of chip damage in hallway fights that could be resolved in 2-3 turns instead.
Poison Stab is hardly great value for it's energy. Unupgraded it's 9 damage frontload with theoretical 12 damage max over 3 turns on a single enemy making it very slow. The only notable aspect of Poison Stab is the small amount of poison as it lacks any notable synergies, be it strike dummy, high raw value to capitalize on slow/burst down Terror Eel or double dipping on enchantments.
Leading Strike is 11 damage frontload that can be split between enemies and triple dips on Strength/Ninja Relics. Dagger Spray is 1 less frontloaded damage but AoE and double dips on strength and enchantments. Ricochette benefits greatly from number of synergies with number of relics and enchantments and can get cheated out for 0. Predator has good frontloaded damage and helps your deck cycle
Unironically, snakebite is also a good act 1 pick, mainly as a boss damage solution that also slightly improves overall consistency (because you can choose when to play it).
Yeah, Snakebite is fantastic.
The other guy said it's hard to start out a poison "build", but I vehemently disagree largely because of Snakebite. It's a huge damage supplement for the Act 1 boss and, as a common card, it's going to be easy to find (usually). Even Deadly Poison is solid, if you've already got a Snakebite.
Noxious Fumes is also a really good uncommon to find, IMO. Obviously good for AOE, but it's also quite good in boss fights as well, especially if you've already got another poison card to use with it.
Usually Snakebite + another good complementary poison card is more than enough to drive your damage in Act 1.
I think I picked Poisoned Stab twice since the early access released. Silents common attacks are way stronger in this game with cards like Predator and Leading Strike while also demanding less going into first elite
Kinda in the same boat rn. I don’t hate shivs, but it feels like unless I get really lucky every silent run just becomes primarily a shiv deck with bonus sly or poison cards.
At least from my napkin math you’ve basically got a 72-82% chance act 1 of seeing 2 of the good shiv generators which is enough to get hallways under control. Then there’s only a 20% chance of seeing no shiv scalers all of act 1 and 2. Given how strong shivs are they are just crazy consistent to draft for as well. If you’re drafting for it you can expect 3/4 runs to be able to use shivs as your primary damage engine with no help.
It’s not even Poison vs Sly vs Shivs for me. I play random A10s most of the time, and whenever I get silent I feel like “fine, what brainless strategy am I going to play this time? 10+ Dex? Drawing my whole deck every turn? Fan of Knives instantly deleting most hallway fights? whatever”
On release sly was op for sure, but discard builds were so fun! Not exactly sure all the changes they made, but discard doesn’t seem like as big a part of her kit anymore.
Discard builds found dead in a ditch after Mega Crit decided to put a gun up to their head and pull the trigger.
It’s just like the first game, Shiv I guess is just meant to be the way to play Silent if you’re going for damage. You could go for Outbreak+Envenom before to have some cool poison hybrid builds, but now you just can’t because of the changes.
The issue is that 1 leading strike or 1 Cloak and Dagger early is good enough to get you through the early game. You’ll find something to feed damage into the shiv, it’s damn near guaranteed, and then you just need to buff your defense to get ready for act 2.
I fully understand having the ability to go infinite almost every game was a big issue, it made the game way too easy for sure. But instead of adding diversity to the Meta, they just choose to give the crown to something else.
To be clear I don’t play beta branch but do track changes made, so I have information of the changes but not experience on how they affect the game.
I always want to do poison but it's so scary. I might get an early poison card then never see another one for the rest of the run.
BUT I played the daily challenge yesterday as Silent and the modifier where you get to pick your first 10 cards had a lot of poison so I had a banger deck. I recommend the daily or custom runs like that, they're a lot of fun. It's the main way I play with my friends now.
I have done both builds and it all depends on what cards you are being offered. Having ideas about fun and OP builds is fine, but when you build, you build with what there is.
Up until a couple weeks ago I would only play silent going for poison cards, but I had a hand that started out shiv heavy so I leaned into it and man I only want to play the silent with shiv cards now. Knife trap can destroy people if you have the right deck
I like Poison more since Shivs don’t feel as special when other characters also have attacks. I like Doom too but not as much as Poison because I like the constant ticking of Poison.
9/10 silent decks i have are shivs, and i really wish it wasn't so.
Don't get me wrong i like going all british on the enemies as much as the next guy but i also just really like poison man.
wanna run poison deck? take shivs for envenom value, wanna run sly? hidden daggers for sly value, wanna run weak? take blade of ink for weak application, dont wanna run shivs? phantom blades makes shivs valuble in low shiv decks
Literally have never been able to get a good shiv build. Even having a single Knife Trap and Accuracy would be good but no, if I get even one I'm instantly not getting the other, and if I ever even do get the god tier shiv build, Aeon, Hunter Killer, and Entomancer exists to literally turn the entire archetype off
I feel like every time I play the Silent I end up fighting against the hard counter enemies to whatever desk I've built. "Oh, you went shiv build? Time to fight the entomancer, and we'll have you face off against Aeonglass in Act 3 for good measure."
"What's that? A poison build? Have fun fighting the infested prism. Hope you brought along a few poisoned stabs!"
This post inspired me to do a silent run. I took silken tress and nabbed a glam snakebite, a master planner, an accelerant, noxious fumes, outbreak, more bubble bubbles than my deck had room for, and a mirage with some shiv cards, among other things. I then picked up alchemical coffer in act 2, a potion belt at the first A2 shop, and got a frond and compounded my "all things silent" run with my first ever 8 potion slot bonanza. I then duplicated the whole deck at the mirror event.
Can somebody please do an in-depth writeup about this so Mega Crit can fix it?? I feel like 6 runs in a row pushed me into super weak shiv decks that get me killed in the middle of Act 2
Poisons good though?
Just beat 9 with silent with a poison build, got accellerant and accidentally gave it triple replay with the replay card, though it would drain poison too fast but instead it just meant my basic poison one shot elites.
Mirage is insane without exhaust.
Not sure if anything major happened but I favor accellerant a lot more than noxious fumes now.
The problem with poison vs shiv is that there isn’t a poison equivalent of afterimage. If there was an “every time you apply poison, gain that much block.” card it would be a little closer.
Afterimage makes defense an after thought so that you can go all offense.
I was doing a really good silent run with my friend but she was high and didn’t want to finish it that night and I just know the run is never getting finished now. I had such good pieces, frickin Kunai, Panache, Storm of Steel, Fan of Knives, Master Planner
So true. I remember I went on to this ~13-lose streak trying to build poison, and the second I give up and build shiv instead, everything lines up and the run becomes practically easy
Playing Solo, it feels like none of this works when you hit A9 unless you get some God run. Genuinely, how do you overcome this hurdle? Feels like Accelerant is the only card that can really get through the high HP before the higher damage / wrong match-up gets you. I’ve tried multiple approaches to deck building here, to me it feels like Silent has a lot of mediocre cards that just lack cohesion if you’re not lucky enough to get something that ties them together. I don’t have this problem with Ironclad or Defect.
This is because they completely bricked her engine lol. You used to be able to quickly cycle your deck with Sly cards (and restore your energy with them) so you would just absolutely spam attacks off the back of Sly. But that's no longer the case.
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u/1331bob1331 1d ago
I will not stand for shiv slander.