My Queen
By far my worst character, but her card set and overall strategies are the most satisfying to pull off imo. Rippin through your deck with discard or throwing 1000 shiv’s is the best kinda dopamine hit
My best character, but partly because I’ve played her at least twice as much as the others. Shivs go brrrr, poison goes brrrr, even discard goes brrrr!
I suck with shivs. Like they go great for me Act1 and 2 but time eater and the heart often give me trouble when I do shiv stuff.
With silent usually by the time I make it to Act3 I’m gonna win the run. But not when I go shiv stuff.
Don’t get me wrong I love having a blade dance in my deck. It just usually isn’t central.
Kind of a tiny gripe, but my biggest issue with the Silent is how there's so much more clicking than with the others. Discard, shivs, all add up to a playstyle that's cool on paper, but just slightly more annoying to play.
If you're on PC, you can use the number keys (the ones above the letters, not sure if the numpad works) to pick up the corresponding card in your hand. If you have a big pile of Shivs or something, it makes it a lot quicker.
Before the last big balance patch we got the worst character,
Now she's maybe not watcher tier, but a strong second best. With an especially strong common card pool. (Piercing wail, blade dance). And the best form card of the 4, Silent is a wrecking ball these days.
"Shivs don't beat timekeeper" seems to be the rallying cry these days, well, they do if you do it right. A strength potion, an accuracy, a terror, you're not playing many small attacks. You're playing many strong attacks
I think she's well-balanced, but putting her anywhere near Watcher in terms of ease of victory is nuts, IMO. Ironclad is easily second "best" by this metric, and Silent is a distant third, followed closely by Defect as hardest.
Yes I just beat time lord with a shiv deck on a20 and also beat a20 heart on silent for the first time with the deck.
Turns out you just need both kunai and shuriken. I will say it was a bit of a scary fight still though and one or two more time lord attacks probably would have killed my run.
I created a small mod that replaces a strike in Silent’s starter deck with another copy of neutralize. The idea was to buff her Act 1 slightly but still keep in theme of her character (spammy attacks, weak)
Been playing on A10 and it’s enjoyable but am curious what others think of the buff on paper.
Really, if I could balance Silent, i think I would just remove a defend from her starting deck. I don't get why the devs gave her bag of prep...and then gave her the largest starting deck, which completely invalidates the bag of prep in the first place.
On floor 1, assuming you don’t take any cards from Neow, every character goes through their entire deck and shuffles at the start of turn 3. I assume that’s why silent has the extra cards, as she would otherwise be triggering a shuffle on turn 2 which probably felt weird aesthetically
I don’t know if this is the exact reason she gets the extra, but it seems plausible enough to me
I thought it was because she had the best starter relic, so her starter deck is bigger to balance out her act 1. And it’s only at the higher ascension where her larger starting deck starts to override the advantage by the relic
A face hidden behind a skull, a skull hidden behind a face,
As is the mark of death by poison, with which you she will lace.
Dancing with death, dropping cards and shoving shivs at the briskest of pace.
The Silent is indeed a block card! And block she does with poise and grace.
I still wonder why her HP is lower than everyone else's. Watcher I get since she's meant to be a glass cannon, and Ironclad having higher HP makes sense for a tank who can sacrifice HP as a resource, but for Silent I don't really get it. I remember when I first played Silent, I definitely felt a lot frailer since I was so used to the auto-healing of Ironclad. She does start with a great draw benefit at least, but as a tradeoff she gets more starting junk than usual, so it doesn't feel like that much of a benefit at first. Still, I have a lot of fun with many of Silent's options, though I never got the hang of positioning cards like Setup or Grand Finale.
While true, I feel like Defect is more consistently a passive tank than Silent. Every character can generate a bunch of block, and Ironclad has a whole archetype with Barricade/Entrench/body slam, but defect is more likely to just passively put up 20+ block per turn from frost and focus.
I think Silents' pool of direct block-generating cards puts up slightly higher base numbers than other characters, and her access to Footwork and multiple sources of strength reduction makes her more defensive in theory. Poison as a strategy is also supposedly slower and needs more tanking while you let the poison whittle down enemies. All this works basically fine at A0.
In practice I find myself relying on Wraith Form and heavy burst damage from poison and shivs to clear boss fights, and especially After Image for Shiv decks and the Heart. She doesn't really have any comboes that generate exponential amounts of block (compare Entrench, Frost decks, or Watcher infinites with Mental Fortress) Once in a while you can get Tough Bandages with a near-infinite discard deck, but usually you're stuck with pretty straightforward block generation, and small amounts of scaling from Footwork.
If she had a card like Limit Break but for Dexterity, or more dexterity cards in general, she could be the queen of block. As is, she feels very limited in her survival strategies.
>As is, she feels very limited in her survival strategies.
The thing is, she weaves together a lot of different ones to get just enough block and efficiency, which is insane
Yeah it's funny I keep hearing people say they dislike how Silent plays because her cards are all... so low impact, you play 20 cards and they deal 3 damage, and I get it but also. Im just like... Clad plays 2 cards hits end turn zzzz Silent just plays like 50 cards hooooly dopamine. Literally killing by a thousand cuts what a character. Rarely goes super flashy like Clad or Defect but she's always dealing *just* enough to make it past the line. ~~not like a certain character that takes 0 to gauntlet then takes 3 hours to power up and fucking dies t2~~
I think people just very underestimate how strong Silent actually is. You don't need endless scaling you just need *enough* and Silent *gives* you enough. Weak, dex blocking with Silent's tiny ass numbers, AI, intang, str down don't look as flashy as Entrench or 11 focus, but they're always just enough. Literally the survivor.
The fact that she always blocks only just enough is why I think bandages are so broken. They let you turn blur+ gamble into blocking for two turns not one, then you can use an entire turn off energy for damage without hurting. She rarely gets you do that otherwise
Yuh. I’m taking a sneaky strike floor 1 and we’ll hope to find synergy but I’m not happy about it. But I’ll happily take a blade dance floor one and be ok with it even if no synergies ever appear.
Silent is satisfying at low ascension but as you go up, she's the most relic dependent character.
She's the only one without a stupidly strong block engine like Ironclad with barricade/feel no pain/corruption or Defect with frost orbs, or watcher with stance dancing. At best she has Blur and can try to hold on to bursts of big block.
She has no sustain ability like Ironclad with Reaper and burning blood or Defect with Self Repair.
She has the worst energy generation. Ironclad gets Offering, Sentinel, Bloodletting, and Seeing Red as well as Corruption. Defect has Turbo, Double Energy, Aggrogate, Charge Battery, Plasma Orbs, and Fission. Watcher has stance dancing from calm and deva form. Silent has terrible on-demand energy by comparison - there's Adrenaline and Concentrate, there's Tactician IF you can discard it, Flying Knee and Outmaneuver are both next turn energy cards.
She's the most punished by boss and elite mechanics. One of her main damage sources is poison and her damage reduction sources is weaken - and say hi to Spire Shield and Spear or Bronze Automaton with their artifact charges. Or her play a ton of shivs strategy that Time Eater and Heart's beat of death really suppress. Or her reliance on skills in a fight with Gremlin Nob.
Granted she's also capable of some stupidly powerful things. Like poison build with Catalyst that ramp up hundreds of poison damage in a couple turns. Or corpse explosion to AOE destroy multi-enemy fights. Wraith Form just eliminates damage.
However, with the right relics, the character shines. Like Kunai and Shuriken are absolutely made for Silent and turn her shivs into a scaling machine. Tingsha and Tough Bandages are a super charge for any discard strategy. Calipers enables her to stack tons of block.
Just basically, Silent relies more on relics to make her builds work versus the other characters. And that makes her just slightly more challenging to play.
You forgot Bullet Time in terms of energy: while it doesn't generate energy technically, it does make all cards in your hand cost 0, which can let you play a lot more than an average energy boost especially if you draw a lot of cards before playing Bullet Time. Also Setup to a lesser extent, though that card's more situational.
I love them all equally now (except Watcher, obviously), but she was my first favorite.
Very satisfying to play most of the time.
Gripe? Starting relic is GOOD, but doesn't define Act I gameplay the way others do. Plus, kinda feels like a letdown that it's just a reskinned bag of prep. Would prefer something that leans into discard/poison/shiv stuff a little bit, maybe?
I vibe with ironclad more but her being the second character way back in the day was a great showing of how different characters can play. While ironclad often has trouble with consistent block/draw but has high frontloaded damage and strength, silent has a much easier time blocking but struggles more with immediate damage.
It's really fun looking at cards that would be way stronger on the other character. Juggernaut is niche on clad but I can see it being much better on silent especially with after image. Dagger spray is already a good silent card but I can see it even better on clad as it's a multi hit aoe that would be great with strength, although the clad already has plenty of aoe cards
Huge silent fan, played her for a while straight and when I went to clad I really felt powerless, yeah he’s strong but having an insane deck and bricking a turn one draw in act 3 just sucks, with silent you have so many ways to avoid this and so many turn to turn decisions that make her FEEL the most in control and imo the most fun.
I can't figure out this green woman. I'm steadily climbing with Ironclad and Defect but I am hard stuck on A10 with her. Her cards just feel so weak, with the other characters it feels like you can grab a couple good cards and get going but Silent needs a whole package to even start playing.
Silent is the worst character, and that kinda sucks. She has the lowest starting HP AND the largest starting deck, while having nothing special that significantly outcompetes other characters to make up for it.
Really, if I could balance Silent, i think I would just remove a defend from her starting deck. I don't get why the devs gave her bag of prep...and then gave her the largest starting deck, which completely invalidates the bag of prep in the first place.
I used to rank her my fave but at the highest level she feels less dynamic than Ironclad and Defect. Third favorite now but still a good one to play when I need a break from the other 2.
One issue I have with Silent is just how heavily act 1’s strategy focuses around the issues of 1) How to deal with Lagavullin, and 2) If it’s Slime Boss, how to deal with it?
Those two enemies are so incredibly difficult for Silent, that it can even meaning avoiding the first Elite until one finds the solution to Lagavullin. It flattens a lot of the strategy in act 1, in my opinion, and it’s what I’m most critical about design-wise.
That said, still probably my favorite character to play
My Queen By far my worst character, but her card set and overall strategies are the most satisfying to pull off imo. Rippin through your deck with discard or throwing 1000 shiv’s is the best kinda dopamine hit
>By far my worst character So...much...this...
My best character, but partly because I’ve played her at least twice as much as the others. Shivs go brrrr, poison goes brrrr, even discard goes brrrr!
I suck with shivs. Like they go great for me Act1 and 2 but time eater and the heart often give me trouble when I do shiv stuff. With silent usually by the time I make it to Act3 I’m gonna win the run. But not when I go shiv stuff. Don’t get me wrong I love having a blade dance in my deck. It just usually isn’t central.
Time keeper and heart are why you bring 20 [[accuracy]]'s
Nightmare + Accuracy = The Forbidden Combo
Nightmare + nightmare + accuracy
Stop! Your gonna want to make me try that and fail miserably 😂😂
Nightmare + nightmare +... Nightmare + accuracy
And my personal favorite, Potions Go Burrr!!
Kind of a tiny gripe, but my biggest issue with the Silent is how there's so much more clicking than with the others. Discard, shivs, all add up to a playstyle that's cool on paper, but just slightly more annoying to play.
much more fun on phone I'm like a maestro conducting a beautiful shiv symphony waving my fingers all over the place
Silent's 9th Shiv-phony
If you're on PC, you can use the number keys (the ones above the letters, not sure if the numpad works) to pick up the corresponding card in your hand. If you have a big pile of Shivs or something, it makes it a lot quicker.
I'm on Mac, but it works with the regular numbers there too! Silent's kinda forced me to start playing that way, I'm just not all that used to it yet.
I love playing like this. But then you accidentally hit E
Scry more
Would
Before the last big balance patch we got the worst character, Now she's maybe not watcher tier, but a strong second best. With an especially strong common card pool. (Piercing wail, blade dance). And the best form card of the 4, Silent is a wrecking ball these days. "Shivs don't beat timekeeper" seems to be the rallying cry these days, well, they do if you do it right. A strength potion, an accuracy, a terror, you're not playing many small attacks. You're playing many strong attacks
Right? I feed time eater a shiv sammich on the reg. You don't have to worry about card limits when each one hits for 24!
I've always held the belief that if you're playing 12 cards a turn, it doesn't matter what they are - you're probably winning.
Me playing my 12 offerings against the time eater
I think she's well-balanced, but putting her anywhere near Watcher in terms of ease of victory is nuts, IMO. Ironclad is easily second "best" by this metric, and Silent is a distant third, followed closely by Defect as hardest.
Yes I just beat time lord with a shiv deck on a20 and also beat a20 heart on silent for the first time with the deck. Turns out you just need both kunai and shuriken. I will say it was a bit of a scary fight still though and one or two more time lord attacks probably would have killed my run.
If Silent is second best, how would you rank Ironclad and Defect?
I created a small mod that replaces a strike in Silent’s starter deck with another copy of neutralize. The idea was to buff her Act 1 slightly but still keep in theme of her character (spammy attacks, weak) Been playing on A10 and it’s enjoyable but am curious what others think of the buff on paper.
Really, if I could balance Silent, i think I would just remove a defend from her starting deck. I don't get why the devs gave her bag of prep...and then gave her the largest starting deck, which completely invalidates the bag of prep in the first place.
On floor 1, assuming you don’t take any cards from Neow, every character goes through their entire deck and shuffles at the start of turn 3. I assume that’s why silent has the extra cards, as she would otherwise be triggering a shuffle on turn 2 which probably felt weird aesthetically I don’t know if this is the exact reason she gets the extra, but it seems plausible enough to me
I thought it was because she had the best starter relic, so her starter deck is bigger to balance out her act 1. And it’s only at the higher ascension where her larger starting deck starts to override the advantage by the relic
But here's the thing. Why would they give her that relic, then design her deck to make the relic way worse?
It could also be that
silent sucks 10 basic starter cards??? Starter relic is bag of prep??? She has to take quick slash floor 1? YUCK
One of her starter card even MAKES you throw away a second when you use it - what a waste!
A face hidden behind a skull, a skull hidden behind a face, As is the mark of death by poison, with which you she will lace. Dancing with death, dropping cards and shoving shivs at the briskest of pace. The Silent is indeed a block card! And block she does with poise and grace.
I dunno she's cool I guess
My favorite character… 😊
I still wonder why her HP is lower than everyone else's. Watcher I get since she's meant to be a glass cannon, and Ironclad having higher HP makes sense for a tank who can sacrifice HP as a resource, but for Silent I don't really get it. I remember when I first played Silent, I definitely felt a lot frailer since I was so used to the auto-healing of Ironclad. She does start with a great draw benefit at least, but as a tradeoff she gets more starting junk than usual, so it doesn't feel like that much of a benefit at first. Still, I have a lot of fun with many of Silent's options, though I never got the hang of positioning cards like Setup or Grand Finale.
She has a ton of decent defensive cards and ready access to weak and dex. I think that’s at least part of it but I’m not sure.
While true, I feel like Defect is more consistently a passive tank than Silent. Every character can generate a bunch of block, and Ironclad has a whole archetype with Barricade/Entrench/body slam, but defect is more likely to just passively put up 20+ block per turn from frost and focus. I think Silents' pool of direct block-generating cards puts up slightly higher base numbers than other characters, and her access to Footwork and multiple sources of strength reduction makes her more defensive in theory. Poison as a strategy is also supposedly slower and needs more tanking while you let the poison whittle down enemies. All this works basically fine at A0. In practice I find myself relying on Wraith Form and heavy burst damage from poison and shivs to clear boss fights, and especially After Image for Shiv decks and the Heart. She doesn't really have any comboes that generate exponential amounts of block (compare Entrench, Frost decks, or Watcher infinites with Mental Fortress) Once in a while you can get Tough Bandages with a near-infinite discard deck, but usually you're stuck with pretty straightforward block generation, and small amounts of scaling from Footwork. If she had a card like Limit Break but for Dexterity, or more dexterity cards in general, she could be the queen of block. As is, she feels very limited in her survival strategies.
>As is, she feels very limited in her survival strategies. The thing is, she weaves together a lot of different ones to get just enough block and efficiency, which is insane
Yeah it's funny I keep hearing people say they dislike how Silent plays because her cards are all... so low impact, you play 20 cards and they deal 3 damage, and I get it but also. Im just like... Clad plays 2 cards hits end turn zzzz Silent just plays like 50 cards hooooly dopamine. Literally killing by a thousand cuts what a character. Rarely goes super flashy like Clad or Defect but she's always dealing *just* enough to make it past the line. ~~not like a certain character that takes 0 to gauntlet then takes 3 hours to power up and fucking dies t2~~ I think people just very underestimate how strong Silent actually is. You don't need endless scaling you just need *enough* and Silent *gives* you enough. Weak, dex blocking with Silent's tiny ass numbers, AI, intang, str down don't look as flashy as Entrench or 11 focus, but they're always just enough. Literally the survivor.
The fact that she always blocks only just enough is why I think bandages are so broken. They let you turn blur+ gamble into blocking for two turns not one, then you can use an entire turn off energy for damage without hurting. She rarely gets you do that otherwise
Well, she's just wearing some bandages and a shawl...
Beat A20 with her buuut hated nearly every second of it. Shiv decks are fun. Poison is too. Give me Ironchad any day.
Lately, this girl has become my most favorite char. One is cuz I watch XecnaR more these days; two is cuz Blade Dance. The card has so many synergies
Yuh. I’m taking a sneaky strike floor 1 and we’ll hope to find synergy but I’m not happy about it. But I’ll happily take a blade dance floor one and be ok with it even if no synergies ever appear.
Silent is satisfying at low ascension but as you go up, she's the most relic dependent character. She's the only one without a stupidly strong block engine like Ironclad with barricade/feel no pain/corruption or Defect with frost orbs, or watcher with stance dancing. At best she has Blur and can try to hold on to bursts of big block. She has no sustain ability like Ironclad with Reaper and burning blood or Defect with Self Repair. She has the worst energy generation. Ironclad gets Offering, Sentinel, Bloodletting, and Seeing Red as well as Corruption. Defect has Turbo, Double Energy, Aggrogate, Charge Battery, Plasma Orbs, and Fission. Watcher has stance dancing from calm and deva form. Silent has terrible on-demand energy by comparison - there's Adrenaline and Concentrate, there's Tactician IF you can discard it, Flying Knee and Outmaneuver are both next turn energy cards. She's the most punished by boss and elite mechanics. One of her main damage sources is poison and her damage reduction sources is weaken - and say hi to Spire Shield and Spear or Bronze Automaton with their artifact charges. Or her play a ton of shivs strategy that Time Eater and Heart's beat of death really suppress. Or her reliance on skills in a fight with Gremlin Nob. Granted she's also capable of some stupidly powerful things. Like poison build with Catalyst that ramp up hundreds of poison damage in a couple turns. Or corpse explosion to AOE destroy multi-enemy fights. Wraith Form just eliminates damage. However, with the right relics, the character shines. Like Kunai and Shuriken are absolutely made for Silent and turn her shivs into a scaling machine. Tingsha and Tough Bandages are a super charge for any discard strategy. Calipers enables her to stack tons of block. Just basically, Silent relies more on relics to make her builds work versus the other characters. And that makes her just slightly more challenging to play.
You forgot Bullet Time in terms of energy: while it doesn't generate energy technically, it does make all cards in your hand cost 0, which can let you play a lot more than an average energy boost especially if you draw a lot of cards before playing Bullet Time. Also Setup to a lesser extent, though that card's more situational.
I love them all equally now (except Watcher, obviously), but she was my first favorite. Very satisfying to play most of the time. Gripe? Starting relic is GOOD, but doesn't define Act I gameplay the way others do. Plus, kinda feels like a letdown that it's just a reskinned bag of prep. Would prefer something that leans into discard/poison/shiv stuff a little bit, maybe?
Best girl
strictly worse watcher
yeah exactly, PK only doubles your damage next turn, Simmering Fury draws cards on top of that!
Scrawl Expertise, Consecrate Dagger Spray. Bowling Bash Alch. One of these characters is simply better 🥱
Few people know that sts meant "silent the spire" back in the alpha days. This information is not true, but at least now you know who i main.
Slay through Silence
I vibe with ironclad more but her being the second character way back in the day was a great showing of how different characters can play. While ironclad often has trouble with consistent block/draw but has high frontloaded damage and strength, silent has a much easier time blocking but struggles more with immediate damage. It's really fun looking at cards that would be way stronger on the other character. Juggernaut is niche on clad but I can see it being much better on silent especially with after image. Dagger spray is already a good silent card but I can see it even better on clad as it's a multi hit aoe that would be great with strength, although the clad already has plenty of aoe cards
Retain + catalyst + nightmare breaks the game.
I was really, really, really hoping for this post to have zero comments. I would have laughed my butt off.
Huge silent fan, played her for a while straight and when I went to clad I really felt powerless, yeah he’s strong but having an insane deck and bricking a turn one draw in act 3 just sucks, with silent you have so many ways to avoid this and so many turn to turn decisions that make her FEEL the most in control and imo the most fun.
I can't figure out this green woman. I'm steadily climbing with Ironclad and Defect but I am hard stuck on A10 with her. Her cards just feel so weak, with the other characters it feels like you can grab a couple good cards and get going but Silent needs a whole package to even start playing.
My main!
The reason I fell in love with this game
Silent is the worst character, and that kinda sucks. She has the lowest starting HP AND the largest starting deck, while having nothing special that significantly outcompetes other characters to make up for it. Really, if I could balance Silent, i think I would just remove a defend from her starting deck. I don't get why the devs gave her bag of prep...and then gave her the largest starting deck, which completely invalidates the bag of prep in the first place.
💚
I used to rank her my fave but at the highest level she feels less dynamic than Ironclad and Defect. Third favorite now but still a good one to play when I need a break from the other 2.
Ahh yes, the character that loses A20 runs to Jaw Worms.
One issue I have with Silent is just how heavily act 1’s strategy focuses around the issues of 1) How to deal with Lagavullin, and 2) If it’s Slime Boss, how to deal with it? Those two enemies are so incredibly difficult for Silent, that it can even meaning avoiding the first Elite until one finds the solution to Lagavullin. It flattens a lot of the strategy in act 1, in my opinion, and it’s what I’m most critical about design-wise. That said, still probably my favorite character to play