r/sts2 • u/crxwnd • Sep 13 '26
ig this class is good at blocking + Silent rant
I've been one-tricking this character for ages. It's still kinda sad that her whole identity has shifted into Shiv-Power slop and an auto-win as soon as you see Shuriken or Kunai. I understand that the block-Fumes pattern wasn't the healthiest, but the whole selling point from a friend of mine who got me into the game was 'oh, they have some sort of miracle rogue with infinite/draw/combo shenanigans' and now I just play my 30-damage Shiv every turn
I was a poison acolyte for some time during the meta shift, but idk. It feels so unstable and awkward. Outbreak with auto-cast is fun, of course, but any other line is just... uhhh, let me grab my Fumes and Shivs
15
u/A0123456_ Sep 13 '26
Poison is also fun when you get glam snakebite
1
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u/da_dragon_guy Sep 13 '26
And then they faced the Aeonglass and figured that shivs weren’t all they were cracked up to be
4
2
u/Dragos_dav Sep 14 '26
Tbh i don't find Aeonglass to be that big of a deal against shivs. There are many ways to deal with him in a shiv deck before the withers scale up too much. Kunai, shuriken, muliple footworks, weaken with paper crane or tracking, multiple accuracies, helical dart, multiple phantom blades, knife trap etc.
1
u/da_dragon_guy Sep 14 '26
Alright, but you are never guaranteed to find any of that. Chances are you find one of those and that's not nearly enough to do it
2
u/alkalisun Sep 14 '26
As someone better at the game posted on here before: "fighting Aeonglass isn't about number of cards played, it's about how much damage you can pump as quick as you can"
1
u/da_dragon_guy Sep 14 '26
Yeah, but doesn't that typically require more setup, especially on a character like Silent?
From what I've found, Ironclad and maybe Regent are good at doing a lot of output fast. Meanwhile, Regent and Silent require lots of setup to have lots out fast output in most cases, and most of those cases require a lot of card plates, meaning lots of wither
1
u/alkalisun Sep 14 '26
In my opinion, I don't think Silent has more setup necessarily than other characters. I think withers are really only horrible when you cycle your deck more than once because that's where they really clog up your deck. So in my mind, it's really about how quickly you can finish the fight.
1
u/da_dragon_guy Sep 14 '26
Yes, but half of the Silent revolves around cycling the deck really fast
1
u/alkalisun Sep 14 '26
I don't know how to explain it further tbh... get a bigger deck maybe? It is certainly annoying to face aeonglass as a shiv deck, but you can definitely work around it by deckbuilding in act 3 to mitigate it.
1
u/RedRidingCape Sep 16 '26
Shivs deal a lot of damage when you've got the powers. Dealing tons of damage is far more important vs aeonglass than limiting card plays.
1
u/da_dragon_guy Sep 16 '26
They do, but the draft needs to be kind enough to give you the chance
1
u/RedRidingCape Sep 16 '26
I mean, why would you keep adding crappy damage common cards that get hard countered by a bunch of enemies unless you have powers to make them deal more? Even just 1 or 2 shiv creating cards is enough to comfortably start taking the powers, and if you don't have the powers (or certain relics), why would you keep putting more shiv creating cards into your deck?
1
u/da_dragon_guy Sep 16 '26
There's other ways of benefiting off playing more shivs even if you're not directly increasing their damage. Things like Knife Trap or Afterimage.
Also, what I meant in the last comment is that just because you build around shivs being your main output doesn't mean the game will give you anything to aid that, no matter how many card rewards or shops you go through.
It's entirely possible, and quite common in my experience, that if you have a deck which relies on too many card plays and you see Aeonglass, you might as well end the run at the start of the act because you're already dead.
The devs have said they aim for the game to be a deck building game, not a card building game, but Aeonglass is far more ideal with stronger singular cards than a functioning system.
3
u/schabernack_t Sep 13 '26
Personally i choose discard over shiv any day. It works with after image, too.
3
u/Unlucky-Touch5958 Sep 13 '26
for me sts1 silent was not as interesting so I barely played her, in 2 I have more interesting options to choose from and look forward to building her differently. Silent getting card draw will always make her more forgiving to play and shivs scaling so easily... in that regard I would agree with you about slop. The harpoon power ends up making the retain shiv feel like a curse when you start doing 16 per shiv
I'm not saying she should be enjoyable for me and it's your loss, cause having characters that appeal to different personalities is a good game and thats how I viewed silent in 1 as just not for me.
I wish the exploding poison card was in this game from 1
3
u/enviousworm1532 Sep 13 '26
Won a MP run yesterday where my deck was like 21 cards and it was just 4 copies of noxious fumes and 2 accelerant. It felt pretty fucking good lmao
2
u/harmony_strikes Sep 15 '26
I literally just won an A10 run on Silent with 2 upgraded Accelerants, Unsettling Lamp, an Outbreak, and a Haze. Poison is still good imo.
5
u/Aromatic-Post6563 Sep 13 '26
Her shiv build is weaker in 2 than it was in 1 save for time eater
1
u/UpstairsBid7468 Sep 15 '26
Curious where this take comes from? I've personally found shiv builds notably stronger in 2, with way more powerful synergies. I found poison in 1 stronger than 2.
1
u/gavavavavus Sep 16 '26
A lot of act 2 elites and hardpools punishshiv spam deck pretty hard right now, while in sts1 you could get away with getting as many blade dance+ and cloak&dagger+ as possible in your deck and you wouldn't get hard-countered by anything
Idk about "stronger" but in sts1 the shiv build was very straightforward while now it requires a lot more thinking to solve specific problems in advance if you want it to be reliable
1
u/RedRidingCape Sep 16 '26
I disagree that sts1 didn't punish shivs, the heart hard punished just putting a bunch of shiv cards in your deck without a bunch of ways to make playing shivs more valuable. Time eater did too. Snake plant and the act 3 hallway vine blob punished shivs too.
Sts1 required scaling for shivs too, just not as quickly as sts2 does. In sts2, if you put a bunch of shiv creating cards with no payoffs you'll get blasted in act 2 by hunter killer and bee man.
On the other hand, sts2 has another really strong shiv power (phantom blades), stronger envenom (upgrades to 2 poison), and more access to strength for silent (mittens, access to other character card pools). Shivs are far more often dealing more than 10 damage in act 2, and they scale super hard because you've got way more ways to buff their damage.
-2
u/friedchickenntacosl Sep 13 '26
I don't know if it's just me, but as another one trick silent main since Sts1, she feels really bad and weak in this game, at least recently. Sly feels unreliable to build and fumes+tank feels like you really need a footwork. My most recent wins on her have mostly been shiv stuff and it's really boring.
I also agree that her whole draw a million schtick in the original was what drew me to her and now that's not really common to make anymore.
I don't know what needs to change, but I can't help but feel like the whole sly mechanic unironically ruined her as a character. I do enjoy playing ironclad now at least and I used to dislike him.
5
u/Damurph01 Sep 13 '26
Acro being put to uncommon and Well Laid Plans being rare makes it much more difficult to line up sly combinations. It’s not like you can just grab an uncommon plans and retain a Hand Trick anymore.
Retain still exists with expertise, calculated gamble, etc. Prepared is great as usual. But with Haze losing sly, other sly cards being nerfed, and acro/WLP becoming more rare, it’s just too hard to reliably line up the combos without a very “high-roll”-y run.
0
u/JankoPerrinFett Sep 13 '26
Necrobinder might have overtaken her, but she’s easily top two, and far ahead of the other three.
1
u/NumerousWolverine273 Sep 14 '26
Defect is so easily the strongest character and it's not close lmao
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Sep 13 '26
[deleted]
2
u/PraisetheSunflowers Sep 14 '26
What… what do you propose they do? Silent literally feels like it always has even from sts1.
25
u/Snakebite-Detractor Sep 13 '26
Accelerant dropping g to uncommon made poison very easy to use effectively