Disarm is probably my favorite card to see, because it really cripples the hart, but more importantly, the more disarms I have, the better brimstone becomes! Close second is rupture post update. I had a deck recently that actually utilized rupturex2 and a pain, ended with awesome results.
Just had a brimstone/vajra/du-vu doll run with a few disarms and a bottled tornado demon form. Started each combat with 6 strength, plus 5 every turn. It was incredible.
This is feed slander, that’s like top 5 cards in the game. Even if you only feed 5 times that’s a rare relic +(mango). But if you get it act 1 or act 1 boss then it’s often just 30-40 hp which is crazy
I was surprised it didn't go in s-tier, but it's not a Mango in the late game. It has several drawbacks Mango doesn't have. You don't want to play it early in the fight, so it's clogging your deck, and you need to finish an enemy with it, making you have to draw out the fight, potentially taking extra damage, or not getting the Feed off.
Thats if feed would be reliable which is not, of course in the dream scenario you always get the card that you want when you want it. Feed is Great, but a lot of times it feels like deadweight because you cant afford to wait for it as you have to kill the enemy as quickly as possible in higher Ascensions.
Dual Wield feels so good with anything that exhausts. Pummel, Feed, Reaper, Fiend Fire. Those cards are balanced around a single use, and being able to use them multiple times breaks that balance.
Came back to Slay the Spire today after years (I think when I stopped playing was close to the 4th characters launch) & surprised myself by breaking down some of my barriers - cleared Ascension 2 & 3 on Silent & then peeped at this video & broke through to 10 on Ironclad in a single shot - & I'd been slamming my head against that one for ages back when I quit. I would never take cards like Embrace, No Pain, Anger, Haemokinesis, True Grit, Rupture, etc. but it was such a breeze taking some of these cards I'd never considered before that I didn't need to heal the whole run, barely ever took damage & what's more, I didn't even manage to get the Exhaust engine set-up - I got Dark Embrace as like my last card, it was just opening my eyes & trying some of these cards I'd usually avoid that had me plowing through the spire. Usually I'd only be able to beat it if I got some ludicrous Strength scaling Heavy Blade deck going, or an Entrench & Barricade block-stacking deck going, but I was putting up a lot of block every turn without any of that, getting a lot of use out of Slam, Anger, etc. without even having relics that were particularly synergistic. Massive thanks to you.
I watch your videos while I eat breakfast every morning. I appreciate how clearly you explain your strategies, it is very helpful to a noob like me. Videos like this are extra helpful
Fire breathing has got to be my favorite card in Ironclad. An entire deck can be built around it, it makes his weird but otherwise efficient status cards feel really good. I almost always take it if I see one if my first few combats.
Dual Wield is my favorite card. I like to get dual wield and a 2-3 metalicize in my deck. When I draw a dual wield alongside a metalicize, I don't actually want to play all the copies I create, I want to keep a few in rotation, so I can dual wield them again and create even more copies. This allows me to continue scaling my block during a fight, really handy against enemies that continue scaling their attacks.
I did something similar once but to top it off, I got a randomly generated blockade out of a potion.The champ never saw it coming. The fight would have been pretty doomed otherwise cause I lacked block but it snowballed me to a clear.
Rampage is good in a very small deck mixed with draw cards and headbutt. It's situational but also not very hard to make good. Just making a small deck with draw is easy.
Nice Tierlist! My only strong disagreement is with Hemokinesis, an instant pick and upgrade in Act 1. 20 dmg for 1 Energy is just so far ahead of the curve. Unlike all other big attacks on Ironclad, you can play it with Bash on the same turn. So definitely A tier for me. I think Reaper should be B tier, since it's only really useful with strength and you put all the other good strength cards in B.
Reaper is definitely S tier, even just after vulnerable on a group of enemies healing for 18 is insane. With a good strength engine the IC can be in a position where he doesn't care about taking damage so long as he doesn't outright die
@@Thecurseofsanity S tier shouldn't be reliant on tonnes of set up though. S tier cards are cards such as Adrenalin which are universally super good. I think B+ or A- is fine for Reaper. That's still saying it's a good card.
New to the game, just a week in, but I beat the game with your ironclad gold picks. Used the eye of snecko and and having corruption my first card every match. Thanks for the help!
Havoc is unreliable, but in personal experience it's done more work for me than Clash, which I rarely ever manage to play without jumping through a lot of hoops that make other cards much better to play. While Havoc often is really bad, it isn't super bad with some exhaust synergy, and with Dead Branch I'm always happy to take any copy. I've gotten it to work with Dead Branch more than I've gotten Clash to work. My personal tier list would swap places between the two.
Yes, but it's worth keeping in mind that it'll break a combust/rupture or brutality/rupture combo, unless you're lucky enough to find two copies of the self-damaging cards.
I really think people underrate Demon Form, I get that it's slow and can be difficult to play, but there are so many fights where simply sitting on a Demon form and then healing for max with a reaper can net you extra relics and upgrades. Ironclad in general I think is at his strongest where he doesn't care that much how much damage he takes because he has 150 max hp and/kr heals from reaper. Demon form is like a B tier card, I honestly like it more than Limit Break because limit break just gets drawn before my inflame too often, or god help me I missed on my spot weakness.
Well Demon Form sucks if you don't have max hp and reaper, and reliable block, or a snecko. Ironclad also has the exhaust package which doesn't want demon form.
This looks good overall, but I think you undervalued Feed. Meta scaling is very powerful in StS, and while I don't want to get into what meta scaling card is best, Feed's scaling is strong at face value and synergizes well with Ironclad's kit; letting you face tank while you set up to Reaper back to full, heal off incidental self-inflicted damage, etc. It's also a totally reasonable damage card (compared to say Lesson Learned, which is similar damage but twice the cost, or Alchemize which deals no damage), and it exhausts, which as you noted is really good for Ironclad since even if you Fatal it the fight isn't necessarily over. You can also grab it with Exhume, but that's more a point in Exhume's favor than Feed's. It's less powerful later on a run of course, but I don't see that as enough to keep it from hanging with the best of the best.
Feed is arguably the best card in the game if your deck is already strong(ish) when you get it basically wins you the boss gauntlets and act 4 by itself. You have much more wiggle room if you have 40-50 more max hp during those fights.
Recently I've been enjoying Fire Breathing a lot. Paired with Wild Strike, and every other card that puts a Wound or Dazed into my deck. Get loads of drawing as well, and you'll get some nice damage done, especially if you have multiple upgraded Fire Breathings.
PS plus brought me here. I'm really torn on my favorite ironclad card. On one hand, the excellent block, card draw, and reliability of shrug it off is almost always a insta pick for me. This is the card I always look for if I need some block, and it always delivers. On the other hand, perfected strike is really fun. Being able to deal massive damage with absolutely no setup cannot be understated. It requires some luck to build around (needs lots of preferably more perfect strikes, an extra energy point to not just use up all your energy, good block that doesn't use all the energy needed for perfected strike), but when it gets going it gets going. My favorite run I had so far has used something like 7 perfected strikes with red chain (I think that's the right relic), metalicize with orichalum (which I butchered the spelling of), and double tap and thunder strike (to potentially deal massive damage with a little luck). Donu and deca fell in 4-5 turns.
Sad to see Rampage get D tier, but it makes sense. Think I just have a soft spot for it as I got my minimilist achievment with it on A18 so will always enjoy it. But deffo is a rare pick up in most runs so makes sense!
I love playing as Ironclad but as it turns out I had no idea what cards are actually good lol. I overvalue Clash a lot because it's 'free' but it often gets countered by curses.
There’s something to be said about evolve + firebreath combined with wild strike/power through and the card that exhausts all non attack cards for block (second wind I think). If you can roll into a Med kit on a deck like that it really changes how you play - almost like a medic class using status effects to its advantage
I was trying to follow along with what you suggested was good. I defeated pillow but donut buffed his strength so much I couldn't hold 50 damage 💔. What an addictive game
Personally, I think Clash would be more balanced if the upgrade made it so that you can play it even if there's non-attack cards in your hand, but doing so would cause it to exhaust.
Hard disagree on barricade being b-tier. Barricade + bodyslam + any block card wins every fight in the game. You can actually take every other card that doesn't contain the word "block" out of your deck and have just a single body slam and be perfectly fine. Will one shot anything and because your block gain is guaranteed to exceed the damage scaling of every enemy by the time body slam comes around you can afk through the whole game.
Bro barricade entrench and body slam is the best build imo. I just did a run where act 3 essential I took no damage at all nearly. It's easy to look up and find yourself with 150+ defense and an attack that deals 150 with zero cost. It's simple small deck mainly defense and draw cards tryna fish out barricade fast as possible. Couple this with demon form if you want and if done right you'll find every boss is easy. After you get it set up only a couple misplays will help it
my favorite ironclad card is corruption, skills costing 0 is a good effect on a lot of defensive cards such as shrug it off and impervious and also having synergies like with Nilrys Codex, Strange spoon and most of all DEAD BRANCH, That most of all is a broken synergy
One of my personal fav runs I’ve had is using a un upgraded searing blow with multiple copies of armaments and enough card draw and energy gen to make it work. Another fun but very unviable way to use the card although the armament synergy is still very nice in runs where you do upgrade the searing blow
Intimidate is never a card I’m super excited to see but I tend to always take a copy just because the iron clad has very few ways to remove artifacts. Getting that vulnerable down with bash is a life safer especially in first 2 acts
Any place I can download the tier list? My eye sight isnt the greatest and this on in particular is hard to see. I've watched the video but i come back to it for reference but the cards are too small for me.
I got this really great rupture run where I used the Pain curse to deal reliable damage to myself and managed to luck into both black blood and the vampire event to grab a few copies of bite. I was GAINING health off of a self damaging run all said and done.
I think Inflame is pretty underrated. Obviously the best strength card one could possibly have is Limit Break, but the catch to that is that you need to actually have strength for it to work. Inflame accomplishes this by applying 2 (3 if upgraded), and leaving your deck at the same time to make way for Limit Break draws. There are other cards to set strength that you might argue do more than Inflame, but those are either really expensive to play (Demon Form) or stick around in your deck (Spot Weakness) just to quickly be outpaced by Limit Break. (Sure, Spot Weakness is +4 for one energy, but Limit Break gives more strength every time it's played while Spot Weakness remains at that fixed value that is ultimately very small once Limit Break starts doing its job.) I realized this just the other day and it made cards like Inflame and relics like Vajra all of a sudden much more valuable to me personally. If you have Vajra, you can literally start Limit Breaking right away and it snowballs faster than you might think. You might not build a deck around that combo, but it gives any other deck a considerable supplement of strength for minimal investment.
You might be interested in the stream vod from yesterday (going up on www.youtube.com/@Baalorlordunedited/ in about 12 hours). Baalor plays a Clad run that relies on dual wielding inflame for scaling. -Tomagathericon, Baalorlord Community Manager
Even after a year I still struggle to defeat the Heart with Ironclad, mostly because I never seem to be able to generate enough block. However I recently got close: The Heart only had 9 life left. The deck was surprisingly effective. It was a Perfected Strike deck with both Dual Wield and the Necronomicon. It did a crazy amount of damage even without any strength.
I think Rampage should be at least B tier (Personally I think it's A tier). Have a rampage+, and pair it with double tap and it goes to the discard pile at 24 damage. Follow that with a headbutt to bring rampage back to the top of your deck and the next turn you have a 1 cost card that does 24 damage with no drawback. Had one game where I followed that up with offering and got to use it again with another double tap I had which brought the attack up to 40. So in that one turn I did 64 damage with that one card, and later on it gave me another 40 for a total of 104 damage while costing 4 energy over the course of the battle. I agree that Rampage can scale slowly, especially if it's not upgraded. How ever if you have the cards to use an upgraded rampage multiple times in a turn it can quickly become the most powerful card in your deck. Only card that can end up being more powerful than it is an upgraded Heavy Blade, but depending on how many times you've used rampage you will need a ton of strength for Heavy Blade to be stronger.
Favorite ironclad card has to be limit break. I'd like to see someone get over 200 strength without it. Not the best since its win more, but i like it.
Ummm, sorry if I missed something obvious, but where is good old Bash? Another excellent video. And thanks again for teaching me how to stop being afraid of this game :)
Great video, but less emphasis on face cam would be good. And switching to full screen can definitely is crazy. I have to rewind constantly to read the card you’re talking about
In my personal opinion, Havoc is better than D tier, It really shines on floor one and two, simply because in the beginning Exhausting a Strike or defend is not the end of the world and can hit costly powers later on in act 2 if you have a handy head butt or warcry. Plus early on you're pretty much always struggling for energy so being able to upgrade it and make it cost 0 with an armaments or event is always worth it in my opinion.
I just don't understand ironclad at all. Unless I find a barricade and generate hundreds of block to retain, it is just a useless piece of trash. I can beat the heart on A20 with the other 3 classes reasonably often. With ironclad I rarely get out of act 2. I just don't get him at all.
Listening to guys like this who are actually good at this game makes me feel so stupid. I've literally never - not even once - taken 'Corruption' cause the idea of having all my skills be one-and-done felt like way too high a downside. This is probably why I've still only ever beaten the heart with two characters XD
This vid would be so much better if I could actually see the cards, instead of 1 third the screen taken up by your head. I'm new and don't know all the cards yet to just know what it is by saying the name of it.
I don't get it. Dark embrace is totally useless if you don't have reliable source of exhaustion. Since Ironclad has no builtin card with such mechanic, it makes card very niche, as I see it. In fact, I can't imagine why should I take it in my deck without corruption or at least true grit.
What? Ironclad doesn't have any built in mechanics. That's why you choose cards. Almost half of all ironclads cards exhuast. It's really not that hard to make a deck out of it. That's just how the game plays. You build into a deck. It is one of the most powerful draws in the entire game.
Exhausting cards is very good when you get to choose what exhausts. To do that with havoc you need a frozen eye or some form of draw pile manip (war cry, headbutt etc) in the same hand, otherwise it's a gamble on most turns.
Disagreements ... Sword Boomerang, A-tier, a favorite for strength decks ... Disarm, S-tier, this card nerfs so many heavy multi-hitters ... Dual-Wield, A-tier, duplicate your best powers Flame Barrier, A-tier, this card wins fights ... Pummel, A-tier, a stronger targeted Boomerang ... Feed, S-tier, my single favorite Ironclad card ... Exhume, A-tier, reuse your best cards Impervious, S-tier, strongest block card ... Reaper, S-tier, best sustain card in the game ... that's about all, I'd say most of the disagreements are just one tier off from your ranking PS, do me a favor and Reddit: sword boomerang vs heavy blade vs pummel
Hey I come from the future where you just won a game with clash on a20 because you got the relic that lets you play non playable cards and you got the one that lets you draw a card if you have 0 cards in hand. You were doing over 500 damage per turn.. so yeah.. maybe not a D tier card after all lol
But that requires two relics that you might not see often. Not D, but maybe C. The point still stands. If you judge every card at the best, you will find a lot of S tier cards. You cannot judge by those 1-1000 runs, or all are op
It's only really free draw when upgraded (since the upgrade makes it draw 2), since otherwise you need to first draw Warcry, then play it in order to draw another card. Simply not having Warcry would accomplish the same thing; only difference is it lets you place a card of your choice back on the draw pile.
@@exscape yeah I know that now, but still, there's usually at least one card you don't need this turn, e.g. impervious on the bosses defensive turn. The utility is worth at least half a draw, it's not like you draw one and discard one. Also, it draws one more with dark embrace. Upgraded it's A tier, no reason not to take it as a reward or from a shop.
I think my favorite Ironclad card might be Hemokinesis. It's bonkers damage for 1 energy, especially upgraded at 20 damage for only 2 health lost. I just had a glorious deck with 3 of the hemokinesis in it with a headbutt, dual wield for more hemokinesis, offering, bloodletting, battletrance, and then runic cube to draw from all the self-damaging cards I had and then managed to pull an apotheosis in act 3 to upgrade everything, with lots of max health and meat on the bone to sustain myself with. I was just missing a rupture to watch it scale into space.
Lol basically everyone who is experienced at this game agrees that Snecko Eye is a good relic. Extra draw every single turn and making your more expensive cards easier on average to play are both insanely powerful effects.
@@elim9054 Are you just going to ignore the fact the randomized cost is very much a double edged sword? The card draw is fine but what good will that be if I get a hand that's just straight up not that playable? I've been burned by the random cost too many times to really like this boss relic, sorry not sorry
@@7thRxN Cost randomization is obviously not going to help you every single turn, but if it consistently burns you then either 1) it actually isn't, and you're biased and just recalling the times it hurt more than the times it helped; or 2) you're taking Snecko at the wrong time. If your whole deck is 0-1 cost cards then it's statistically a very bad relic to take, but it basically gets better as the average cost of your deck goes up, and a few particular cards are extremely good with it even if the rest of your deck isn't all that expensive (Meteor strike, Omniscience, literally all of the "Form" powers each character has, etc) Maybe the fact that it's not good with every deck alone means it can't be top-tier, I don't know. But when it's good, it's _really good._
it’s one of the best relics in the game. not always taken, but broken on ironclad almost always and sometimes on other classes, +2 card draw is overpowered, especially with a high cost deck, or stuff like corruption
What's the ONE Ironclad card you'll take over anything else?
Probably Impervious for me.
FEEEEEEEEEEEED
Act 1 - Feed
Act 2 - Corruption
Act 3 - Offering
Yeah, I know, I didn't answer the question....
Feed or Reaper ... absolute hardest choice ... both offer sustain, in their own way
Dark embrace, I want one (or three) pretty much every run
Disarm is probably my favorite card to see, because it really cripples the hart, but more importantly, the more disarms I have, the better brimstone becomes! Close second is rupture post update. I had a deck recently that actually utilized rupturex2 and a pain, ended with awesome results.
Just had a brimstone/vajra/du-vu doll run with a few disarms and a bottled tornado demon form. Started each combat with 6 strength, plus 5 every turn. It was incredible.
This is feed slander, that’s like top 5 cards in the game. Even if you only feed 5 times that’s a rare relic +(mango). But if you get it act 1 or act 1 boss then it’s often just 30-40 hp which is crazy
I was surprised it didn't go in s-tier, but it's not a Mango in the late game. It has several drawbacks Mango doesn't have. You don't want to play it early in the fight, so it's clogging your deck, and you need to finish an enemy with it, making you have to draw out the fight, potentially taking extra damage, or not getting the Feed off.
Thats if feed would be reliable which is not, of course in the dream scenario you always get the card that you want when you want it. Feed is Great, but a lot of times it feels like deadweight because you cant afford to wait for it as you have to kill the enemy as quickly as possible in higher Ascensions.
There's better ways to get HP, though feed is certainly the most consistent.
just had an act 1 feed + exhume run, felt so good lol
@@aanon4019 nice
Dual Wield feels so good with anything that exhausts. Pummel, Feed, Reaper, Fiend Fire. Those cards are balanced around a single use, and being able to use them multiple times breaks that balance.
Dual Wield+ with Snecko means you can triplicate the 0/1 energy cards. Bonkers.
I really like it on body slam decks too
Came back to Slay the Spire today after years (I think when I stopped playing was close to the 4th characters launch) & surprised myself by breaking down some of my barriers - cleared Ascension 2 & 3 on Silent & then peeped at this video & broke through to 10 on Ironclad in a single shot - & I'd been slamming my head against that one for ages back when I quit.
I would never take cards like Embrace, No Pain, Anger, Haemokinesis, True Grit, Rupture, etc. but it was such a breeze taking some of these cards I'd never considered before that I didn't need to heal the whole run, barely ever took damage & what's more, I didn't even manage to get the Exhaust engine set-up - I got Dark Embrace as like my last card, it was just opening my eyes & trying some of these cards I'd usually avoid that had me plowing through the spire. Usually I'd only be able to beat it if I got some ludicrous Strength scaling Heavy Blade deck going, or an Entrench & Barricade block-stacking deck going, but I was putting up a lot of block every turn without any of that, getting a lot of use out of Slam, Anger, etc. without even having relics that were particularly synergistic.
Massive thanks to you.
I watch your videos while I eat breakfast every morning. I appreciate how clearly you explain your strategies, it is very helpful to a noob like me. Videos like this are extra helpful
That's my morning routine now 😂.
Fire breathing has got to be my favorite card in Ironclad. An entire deck can be built around it, it makes his weird but otherwise efficient status cards feel really good. I almost always take it if I see one if my first few combats.
Is that based on lower ascension levels or A20 heart?
@@SuperYtc1this is how i finally beat my first a20 run with Ironclad
I don't always take corruption, but when I do, I know I'm about to have a good time
Dual Wield is my favorite card. I like to get dual wield and a 2-3 metalicize in my deck. When I draw a dual wield alongside a metalicize, I don't actually want to play all the copies I create, I want to keep a few in rotation, so I can dual wield them again and create even more copies. This allows me to continue scaling my block during a fight, really handy against enemies that continue scaling their attacks.
I did something similar once but to top it off, I got a randomly generated blockade out of a potion.The champ never saw it coming. The fight would have been pretty doomed otherwise cause I lacked block but it snowballed me to a clear.
Rampage is good in a very small deck mixed with draw cards and headbutt. It's situational but also not very hard to make good. Just making a small deck with draw is easy.
Nice Tierlist!
My only strong disagreement is with Hemokinesis, an instant pick and upgrade in Act 1. 20 dmg for 1 Energy is just so far ahead of the curve. Unlike all other big attacks on Ironclad, you can play it with Bash on the same turn. So definitely A tier for me.
I think Reaper should be B tier, since it's only really useful with strength and you put all the other good strength cards in B.
Reaper is definitely S tier, even just after vulnerable on a group of enemies healing for 18 is insane. With a good strength engine the IC can be in a position where he doesn't care about taking damage so long as he doesn't outright die
@@Thecurseofsanity S tier shouldn't be reliant on tonnes of set up though. S tier cards are cards such as Adrenalin which are universally super good. I think B+ or A- is fine for Reaper. That's still saying it's a good card.
Same with Feel No Pain/Dark Embrace. They need other cards to be good. A tier at best, definitely not S.@@SuperYtc1
New to the game, just a week in, but I beat the game with your ironclad gold picks. Used the eye of snecko and and having corruption my first card every match. Thanks for the help!
Flex and Orange Pellets is one of my favorite combos
Havoc is unreliable, but in personal experience it's done more work for me than Clash, which I rarely ever manage to play without jumping through a lot of hoops that make other cards much better to play. While Havoc often is really bad, it isn't super bad with some exhaust synergy, and with Dead Branch I'm always happy to take any copy. I've gotten it to work with Dead Branch more than I've gotten Clash to work. My personal tier list would swap places between the two.
Wow the face cam takes up so much valuable space here that could otherwise make the cards actually readable
If you get Tungsten Rod with Combust, do you just get free seven damage to all enemies?
Pretty much. Tungsten Rod combo on Combust and Brutality is pretty awesome. Free card draw and AOE damage.
Yes, but it's worth keeping in mind that it'll break a combust/rupture or brutality/rupture combo, unless you're lucky enough to find two copies of the self-damaging cards.
Yep
@@SooshiShef I got Tungsten Rod as well as Torri basically nullifying any attack that hit for 5 or less at a time
@@elim9054 I had to learn that the hard way. Picking up the Tungsten rod act 3 destroyed my turn by turn scaling combo
I really think people underrate Demon Form, I get that it's slow and can be difficult to play, but there are so many fights where simply sitting on a Demon form and then healing for max with a reaper can net you extra relics and upgrades. Ironclad in general I think is at his strongest where he doesn't care that much how much damage he takes because he has 150 max hp and/kr heals from reaper. Demon form is like a B tier card, I honestly like it more than Limit Break because limit break just gets drawn before my inflame too often, or god help me I missed on my spot weakness.
Yeah Demon form might be my favorite card to see first turn
Well Demon Form sucks if you don't have max hp and reaper, and reliable block, or a snecko. Ironclad also has the exhaust package which doesn't want demon form.
Also the strong card in that deck is REAPER, not Demon Form, spot weakness and limit break arguably better than demon form.
Havoc+ is a crazy card if you lack energy. But unplayable otherwise imho
This looks good overall, but I think you undervalued Feed. Meta scaling is very powerful in StS, and while I don't want to get into what meta scaling card is best, Feed's scaling is strong at face value and synergizes well with Ironclad's kit; letting you face tank while you set up to Reaper back to full, heal off incidental self-inflicted damage, etc. It's also a totally reasonable damage card (compared to say Lesson Learned, which is similar damage but twice the cost, or Alchemize which deals no damage), and it exhausts, which as you noted is really good for Ironclad since even if you Fatal it the fight isn't necessarily over. You can also grab it with Exhume, but that's more a point in Exhume's favor than Feed's.
It's less powerful later on a run of course, but I don't see that as enough to keep it from hanging with the best of the best.
Feed is arguably the best card in the game if your deck is already strong(ish) when you get it basically wins you the boss gauntlets and act 4 by itself. You have much more wiggle room if you have 40-50 more max hp during those fights.
Recently I've been enjoying Fire Breathing a lot. Paired with Wild Strike, and every other card that puts a Wound or Dazed into my deck. Get loads of drawing as well, and you'll get some nice damage done, especially if you have multiple upgraded Fire Breathings.
PS plus brought me here.
I'm really torn on my favorite ironclad card. On one hand, the excellent block, card draw, and reliability of shrug it off is almost always a insta pick for me. This is the card I always look for if I need some block, and it always delivers. On the other hand, perfected strike is really fun. Being able to deal massive damage with absolutely no setup cannot be understated. It requires some luck to build around (needs lots of preferably more perfect strikes, an extra energy point to not just use up all your energy, good block that doesn't use all the energy needed for perfected strike), but when it gets going it gets going. My favorite run I had so far has used something like 7 perfected strikes with red chain (I think that's the right relic), metalicize with orichalum (which I butchered the spelling of), and double tap and thunder strike (to potentially deal massive damage with a little luck). Donu and deca fell in 4-5 turns.
I just got my first win because I saw this video and decided to try out the exhaust synergy, it was awesome!
Sad to see Rampage get D tier, but it makes sense. Think I just have a soft spot for it as I got my minimilist achievment with it on A18 so will always enjoy it. But deffo is a rare pick up in most runs so makes sense!
I love playing as Ironclad but as it turns out I had no idea what cards are actually good lol. I overvalue Clash a lot because it's 'free' but it often gets countered by curses.
- How many exhaust?
- Yes
There’s something to be said about evolve + firebreath combined with wild strike/power through and the card that exhausts all non attack cards for block (second wind I think). If you can roll into a Med kit on a deck like that it really changes how you play - almost like a medic class using status effects to its advantage
I was trying to follow along with what you suggested was good. I defeated pillow but donut buffed his strength so much I couldn't hold 50 damage 💔. What an addictive game
Seeing Red is at 24:38, for anyone who scanned the timestamps and didn't see it
Personally, I think Clash would be more balanced if the upgrade made it so that you can play it even if there's non-attack cards in your hand, but doing so would cause it to exhaust.
Great list. And my favorite is probably fnp. Cant agree with headbutt being in the a tier. Probably a C for me
Fire breathing is my favorite as long as I have some wild strikes and power throughs. Immolate and reckless charge for extra devastation.
Hard disagree on barricade being b-tier. Barricade + bodyslam + any block card wins every fight in the game. You can actually take every other card that doesn't contain the word "block" out of your deck and have just a single body slam and be perfectly fine. Will one shot anything and because your block gain is guaranteed to exceed the damage scaling of every enemy by the time body slam comes around you can afk through the whole game.
That and it has incredible synergy with an exhaust deck because you can generate obscene amounts of block with feel no pain and retain it across turns
Eh it's too deck specific, definitely a decent card and in the right deck is broken but it's a waste in others
Bro barricade entrench and body slam is the best build imo. I just did a run where act 3 essential I took no damage at all nearly. It's easy to look up and find yourself with 150+ defense and an attack that deals 150 with zero cost.
It's simple small deck mainly defense and draw cards tryna fish out barricade fast as possible. Couple this with demon form if you want and if done right you'll find every boss is easy. After you get it set up only a couple misplays will help it
a bunch of bludgeons with snecko is hilariously broken.
my favorite ironclad card is corruption, skills costing 0 is a good effect on a lot of defensive cards such as shrug it off and impervious and also having synergies like with Nilrys Codex, Strange spoon and most of all DEAD BRANCH, That most of all is a broken synergy
29:55 "Impervious is almost always something that I'm gonna strongly consider when I take it."
One of my personal fav runs I’ve had is using a un upgraded searing blow with multiple copies of armaments and enough card draw and energy gen to make it work. Another fun but very unviable way to use the card although the armament synergy is still very nice in runs where you do upgrade the searing blow
That's really neat haha
Intimidate is never a card I’m super excited to see but I tend to always take a copy just because the iron clad has very few ways to remove artifacts. Getting that vulnerable down with bash is a life safer especially in first 2 acts
Any place I can download the tier list? My eye sight isnt the greatest and this on in particular is hard to see. I've watched the video but i come back to it for reference but the cards are too small for me.
I got this really great rupture run where I used the Pain curse to deal reliable damage to myself and managed to luck into both black blood and the vampire event to grab a few copies of bite. I was GAINING health off of a self damaging run all said and done.
Ah baalorlord is so funny, how he wiggles from side to side xD
Sentinel's great in a Runic Pyramid exhaust deck. It's very similar to Tactician on the Silent, but with more energy gain and a bit more utility.
keep hearing baalor's voice in my head saying "its a little bit...unreliable" every time im deciding whether or not to take a meme card.
Love your guides!
my favorite got to be whirlwind its so fun to just click offering whirlwind every combat and win the whole game
I think Inflame is pretty underrated. Obviously the best strength card one could possibly have is Limit Break, but the catch to that is that you need to actually have strength for it to work.
Inflame accomplishes this by applying 2 (3 if upgraded), and leaving your deck at the same time to make way for Limit Break draws. There are other cards to set strength that you might argue do more than Inflame, but those are either really expensive to play (Demon Form) or stick around in your deck (Spot Weakness) just to quickly be outpaced by Limit Break. (Sure, Spot Weakness is +4 for one energy, but Limit Break gives more strength every time it's played while Spot Weakness remains at that fixed value that is ultimately very small once Limit Break starts doing its job.)
I realized this just the other day and it made cards like Inflame and relics like Vajra all of a sudden much more valuable to me personally. If you have Vajra, you can literally start Limit Breaking right away and it snowballs faster than you might think. You might not build a deck around that combo, but it gives any other deck a considerable supplement of strength for minimal investment.
You might be interested in the stream vod from yesterday (going up on www.youtube.com/@Baalorlordunedited/ in about 12 hours). Baalor plays a Clad run that relies on dual wielding inflame for scaling.
-Tomagathericon, Baalorlord Community Manager
Flame Barrier is my fave. Because fuck the birds.
It's so ridiculously hard to find power through and second wind in the same run.
I love Demon Form
It's got to be limit break, all the way
why all the tier lists look like they are in 480p
Even after a year I still struggle to defeat the Heart with Ironclad, mostly because I never seem to be able to generate enough block.
However I recently got close: The Heart only had 9 life left.
The deck was surprisingly effective. It was a Perfected Strike deck with both Dual Wield and the Necronomicon. It did a crazy amount of damage even without any strength.
Your channel it's a gold mine :D
I think Rampage should be at least B tier (Personally I think it's A tier). Have a rampage+, and pair it with double tap and it goes to the discard pile at 24 damage. Follow that with a headbutt to bring rampage back to the top of your deck and the next turn you have a 1 cost card that does 24 damage with no drawback. Had one game where I followed that up with offering and got to use it again with another double tap I had which brought the attack up to 40. So in that one turn I did 64 damage with that one card, and later on it gave me another 40 for a total of 104 damage while costing 4 energy over the course of the battle.
I agree that Rampage can scale slowly, especially if it's not upgraded. How ever if you have the cards to use an upgraded rampage multiple times in a turn it can quickly become the most powerful card in your deck. Only card that can end up being more powerful than it is an upgraded Heavy Blade, but depending on how many times you've used rampage you will need a ton of strength for Heavy Blade to be stronger.
Favorite ironclad card has to be limit break. I'd like to see someone get over 200 strength without it.
Not the best since its win more, but i like it.
Almost every time someone says exponential they are using it wrong but the one time someone uses quadratic it actually is exponential!
Yes! Searing Blow scales quadratically (with upgrades), because the amount by which it increments (i.e. its first derivative) scales linearly.
Very good explanations thank you, is there a place we can access this list?
Ummm, sorry if I missed something obvious, but where is good old Bash?
Another excellent video. And thanks again for teaching me how to stop being afraid of this game :)
presumably not included as it's not a card you get offered (with I suppose the exception of the card matching event)
Bash is beyond being in a tier, it's literally too good, that's why you cant get more
@@everinghall8622 I remember when I first started StS and I would always remove bash first because I hated 2 mana cards lmfao
Great video, but less emphasis on face cam would be good.
And switching to full screen can definitely is crazy. I have to rewind constantly to read the card you’re talking about
In my personal opinion, Havoc is better than D tier, It really shines on floor one and two, simply because in the beginning Exhausting a Strike or defend is not the end of the world and can hit costly powers later on in act 2 if you have a handy head butt or warcry. Plus early on you're pretty much always struggling for energy so being able to upgrade it and make it cost 0 with an armaments or event is always worth it in my opinion.
Really wish you linked the actual tier list somewhere
Noob who has only beaten Act 3 with the Silent after a week of play, Flame Barrier is my favorite Ironclad card
I just don't understand ironclad at all. Unless I find a barricade and generate hundreds of block to retain, it is just a useless piece of trash. I can beat the heart on A20 with the other 3 classes reasonably often. With ironclad I rarely get out of act 2. I just don't get him at all.
whirlwind my beloved. favorite card in the game
Got a lot of good insights from this video, thanks!
Rupture is my favorite card that I can never find when I need it 😅
Rupture is funky because I think it's the only power you can't reliably take naked (with no synergies). You need something that makes it good already
I can’t believe you ranked rage as C, ridiculous I tell you. Minimum B, I would put it A
nice vid
Haircut is wild lol
Listening to guys like this who are actually good at this game makes me feel so stupid. I've literally never - not even once - taken 'Corruption' cause the idea of having all my skills be one-and-done felt like way too high a downside.
This is probably why I've still only ever beaten the heart with two characters XD
Pommel and true grit worse then anger? Old Baalor was wild.
Clash is rough....I don't think it's more often usable than Rampage is
Nice use of the Smash Ping at 29:15. Request to the editor: Please remember to use this on a paticular Watcher card, when that tier list happens.
Haven't watched but I bet Corruption is on the miniature as clickbait
This vid would be so much better if I could actually see the cards, instead of 1 third the screen taken up by your head. I'm new and don't know all the cards yet to just know what it is by saying the name of it.
I like whirlwind with the omni tomb and pen nib
Stuck on a15 with ironclad. Been 2 weeks now. Ugh
My favorite is offering for sure
I don't get it. Dark embrace is totally useless if you don't have reliable source of exhaustion. Since Ironclad has no builtin card with such mechanic, it makes card very niche, as I see it. In fact, I can't imagine why should I take it in my deck without corruption or at least true grit.
What? Ironclad doesn't have any built in mechanics. That's why you choose cards. Almost half of all ironclads cards exhuast. It's really not that hard to make a deck out of it. That's just how the game plays. You build into a deck. It is one of the most powerful draws in the entire game.
Your mic still doesn't sound right since you switched. It sounds compressed and grainy.
in what world is havoc D tier? the card says exhaust on it already makes it a better card than half the common pool
Exhausting cards is very good when you get to choose what exhausts. To do that with havoc you need a frozen eye or some form of draw pile manip (war cry, headbutt etc) in the same hand, otherwise it's a gamble on most turns.
Disagreements ... Sword Boomerang, A-tier, a favorite for strength decks ... Disarm, S-tier, this card nerfs so many heavy multi-hitters ... Dual-Wield, A-tier, duplicate your best powers
Flame Barrier, A-tier, this card wins fights ... Pummel, A-tier, a stronger targeted Boomerang ... Feed, S-tier, my single favorite Ironclad card ... Exhume, A-tier, reuse your best cards
Impervious, S-tier, strongest block card ... Reaper, S-tier, best sustain card in the game ... that's about all, I'd say most of the disagreements are just one tier off from your ranking
PS, do me a favor and Reddit: sword boomerang vs heavy blade vs pummel
Hey I come from the future where you just won a game with clash on a20 because you got the relic that lets you play non playable cards and you got the one that lets you draw a card if you have 0 cards in hand. You were doing over 500 damage per turn.. so yeah.. maybe not a D tier card after all lol
But that requires two relics that you might not see often. Not D, but maybe C. The point still stands.
If you judge every card at the best, you will find a lot of S tier cards. You cannot judge by those 1-1000 runs, or all are op
Why is Warcry C tier? I take it every time. Can't go wrong with free draw. Also it has exhaust synergies.
It's only really free draw when upgraded (since the upgrade makes it draw 2), since otherwise you need to first draw Warcry, then play it in order to draw another card.
Simply not having Warcry would accomplish the same thing; only difference is it lets you place a card of your choice back on the draw pile.
@@exscape yeah I know that now, but still, there's usually at least one card you don't need this turn, e.g. impervious on the bosses defensive turn. The utility is worth at least half a draw, it's not like you draw one and discard one. Also, it draws one more with dark embrace. Upgraded it's A tier, no reason not to take it as a reward or from a shop.
I'm just shocked at how many cards there are
I think my favorite Ironclad card might be Hemokinesis. It's bonkers damage for 1 energy, especially upgraded at 20 damage for only 2 health lost. I just had a glorious deck with 3 of the hemokinesis in it with a headbutt, dual wield for more hemokinesis, offering, bloodletting, battletrance, and then runic cube to draw from all the self-damaging cards I had and then managed to pull an apotheosis in act 3 to upgrade everything, with lots of max health and meat on the bone to sustain myself with. I was just missing a rupture to watch it scale into space.
My favorite card is the shrug
What a handsome lad.
Orange pellets and berserk
i miss the hair
+sub
man, probably flex...
Armaments easy S tier
stop clickbaiting thumbnails
i htink body slam is 1 of the worst attack cards ironclad has
@Baalorlord when you do these, explicitly state what tier each card goes into. I can't tell when I'm falling asleep where you're putting them.
Mj ou
Sounds like you play defensive. Doesn’t sound like you like aggro decks. There’s a few gem decks that are aggro but you placed them low.
I disagree with the premise of your video.
I want to like this guy but he gave Snecko Eye a high tier which is pretty undeserved so
Lol basically everyone who is experienced at this game agrees that Snecko Eye is a good relic. Extra draw every single turn and making your more expensive cards easier on average to play are both insanely powerful effects.
@@elim9054 Are you just going to ignore the fact the randomized cost is very much a double edged sword? The card draw is fine but what good will that be if I get a hand that's just straight up not that playable?
I've been burned by the random cost too many times to really like this boss relic, sorry not sorry
@@7thRxN Cost randomization is obviously not going to help you every single turn, but if it consistently burns you then either 1) it actually isn't, and you're biased and just recalling the times it hurt more than the times it helped; or 2) you're taking Snecko at the wrong time. If your whole deck is 0-1 cost cards then it's statistically a very bad relic to take, but it basically gets better as the average cost of your deck goes up, and a few particular cards are extremely good with it even if the rest of your deck isn't all that expensive (Meteor strike, Omniscience, literally all of the "Form" powers each character has, etc)
Maybe the fact that it's not good with every deck alone means it can't be top-tier, I don't know. But when it's good, it's _really good._
it’s one of the best relics in the game. not always taken, but broken on ironclad almost always and sometimes on other classes, +2 card draw is overpowered, especially with a high cost deck, or stuff like corruption
Jorbs made an entire video explaining why Snecko eye is one of the best boss relics. Check it out.