Rice is easily a 4/5, fits in many different archetypes, doesn't require much commitment to cook, and synergises well with more messy setups such as curries.
Gideon LaBarre but you have to look at its common competitor... potatoes, far more flexible than rice, provides a starchier blend to the meal, and you can even eat them on its own in regards to the Jacket variant
Ugh I wish people like you would stop forcing archetypes on food. Yes there are groups like vegetables and fruit, but they work, archetypes don't. It's thinking about food the wrong way.
"It's not a game where you come to the game already knowing what you're going to do" "Hey errybody today we'll be playing as the defect, and we're gonna build frost focus."
I imagine JoINrbs actually rating all the cards saying "So this one is somewhere between a 2 and a 10. Probably closer to 4 most of the time, but if you have..."
2019 Jorbs - You can't rate ingredients in a grocery store, and you can't rate cards in Slay The Spire. 2020 Jorbs - At least Slay-I Bot realizes that Defect rares are garbage.
@@undeniablySomeGuy Pasta Sauce 5 is sometimes worth it if it's already upgraded. I got a Chicken Egg at the start of my grocery run the other day and Pasta Sauce 5 was actually kind of good.
Seeing you discuss ratings out of the context of Slay the spire and more in a general sense made me realize and become more aware of why I myself often seem to disproportionately struggle to actually rate things when requested. There's so many variables, so many contexts to consider, and even in a vacuum how do I even decide where the scale starts and ends in case my 10/10 pick suddenly gets beat out by a better option in the future? Thank you for that, it's actually quite validating to get a more defined description of my rather vague issues on the matter.
Great video! I am trying to make a modded character, this view of how cards are balanced made me realize that my current card pool is severly lacking in some jobs. Thanks JoINrbs!
Hey Jorbs! I’ve been binging a lot of your RU-vid content lately to have a chill time after work, and I just wanted to mention that you’re incredibly articulate - it’s enviable! :) Thanks for the good vibes. edit to add a long ramble: Thanks for the aside of “there’s no value in not liking things” being a life lesson. It put into different words something I’ve had to learn as well in my life which was nice to hear both because it’s a pleasant sentiment and because of solidarity or whatever. Cheers!
I love Jorbs but this is such a Jorbs thing to do. "You can't say anything conclusively about anything" when someone asks him something he doesn't feel like answering or evaluating, but 10 minutes later it's "that's just a bad card". His philosophy on what one can and should say about the game changes completely on who's saying what. Can't say I'm not guilty of the same thing or that both of those insights aren't valuable, but it can be frustrating to try to pin down what he's actually saying when it directly contradicts something he's said a hundred times before.
@@benmberman Often people ask about cards in a general sense where he can't talk conclusively, but sometimes he's talking about cards in a specific case like his run which makes that card really bad in that context, thus, it's a bad card
@Jorbs , I beat ascension 10 with ironclad after watching this. I had failed like 5 times in a row before that. Thank you!! Tl;Dr - I was so excited about my deck that I accidentally took the last relic from the last non-boss chest instead of getting the shard to go fight the heart -_-;
I think that anyone who wants to get better at something knows that nuance is important, but as long as people keep that in mind then simplified systems like ratings help people just getting into the game or hobby help people wrap their minds around important concepts about the game or hobby. I guess what I'm saying is, when I first learned Slay the Spire I knew that no one card was better than the other because that's not how most games work, but I didn't know what I didn't know so latching onto a specific mindset helped me to more easily jump into a type of game I had never encountered before. So just conceptually, Nothernlion's video is probably just as important for new players as this video is. Well, I will say I agree that there is importance in making this kind of video because I admit a lot of people take ratings and just run with them forever and never really think about the deeper implications.
25:36 This is why I really like picking poision stab early in act 1. It is a good single target damage source that also works as a scaling card later in the run.
Great video! Very helpful! I have been really struggling with exactly this where I don't know when and how to ensure specific deck-needs. I would love to see example cards for these categories for the other classes as well. :)
I like whirlwind because of how it interacts with certian kinds of scaling. Obviously you pick it up if you have the X+2 relic, which turns it from all your energy in hits to a 0 energy card that hits everything twice and scales amazingly with strength if you play it at the end of your turn. It can really easily break certian fights both early and later.
I mean I get it's a joke... but cheese is literaly the only thing that actually IS good anywhere. Cheese on your bread for breakfast and lunch. Cheese-sauce on your vegetables, in your salad or on your pasta at dinner, even the dessert gets better with cheese (Cheesecake, cheese platter).
@@jaspervanheycop9722 Well it's still a 1 mana card that blocks and attack. There is a lot of relics that synergies with it, because it interact with defense, attack, exhaust and more. Might not the best thing in every situation but it's solide overall. Can't say it's bad only because of gremlin nob, or almost every non attack cards are bad in this case.
@@mikaelphenix8540 It's a great card, obviously, just providing some nuance for the other guy who said it was always good. It's also bad against Time-Eater btw, forgot about that one. And yes if you have a chance to go up against the Nob adding a straight attack is usually better, also good if you happen to run into lagavullin (as it requires frontloaded damage if you want to fight it efficiently )or into sentries without good AoE...
It never really clicked for me why I made A20 ironclad decks that were great against act 1 and died at act 2. I assumed faster scaling/frontload/aoe were necessary, but didn’t think block would do much to help. Thanks for the tip!
+sub because of Homestar Runner reference ......also for the great Slay the Spire discussions, I suppose. Learning how to think about and get better at great games...clearly just a side benefit, really.
59:35 Can confirm. That's the roadblock I hit at Ascension 5 (Ironclad, The Silent) ~10 (Defect). Thanks for giving me the tools to try and get over that hump.
Realizing that building synergies comes second to ensuring a deck can perform a variety of jobs, has been the biggest driving factor of my improvement in this game lately.
I appreciate the video and it's probably super helpful, but I thought you were going to rate cards instead of give me a flashback to grade 10 history class. Hope this reaches NL because God knows he needs it and every single bit of help he can get.
This is such a valuable lesson not just for playing slay the spire but for life in general. Context is everything, and specific qualitative information is almost always more useful than quantitative. As an alleged 'artist', I always try to think about the specific ideas in any creative work, rather than make something broadly "good." The latter approach usually results in something good yet lifeless, while the former results in something fiery and interesting, if very off-putting to some. But I'd rather have 1% of people LOVE something than 99% of people think it's pretty good. It's why I find sites like rotten tomatoes and metacritic so unappealing. I've seen countless movies that had 90%+ on RT but which I thought were a total waste of time. Not to mention the swath of INCREDIBLE films which don't even get enough reviews to have a calculated consensus.
Dude, did you just say "Northern Ryan is an ..."? *lol!* I'M really up to see your own comments on that rating as I strongly disagreed with him on several cards oh and yes, it was a joke and a great episode TBH :D
I dunno about that chef analogy. If you ask a chef what his favorite ingredients are, some might tell you that the meal is what's important sure. But you might also get a chef talking about what an incredibly versatile ingredient that (whatever) is. How it could be used to make sides, deserts, and main courses. Or that it functions as a 'glue' in many meals, giving a subtle but important bit of texture to make a wide variety of meals better. There's more to Italian cuisine than tomatoes, but if you took away tomatos, you'd be causing a lot more harm than if you took away tofu. I really feel you could do this with cards. Yes, the cards are situational. But some cards fit more situations than others. Some cards are just generically good, almost regardless of circumstance. Footwork, for example. Other cards are good because they're versatile, like Exhumes ability to bring back any number of powerful cards on command (Reaper and Feed being prime choices, but you can always use an extra Disarm or Pummel as well). There's nothing wrong with a tier list prefaced by "But remember, the most important thing when choosing cards is not this list, it's your deck and your relics, and your position on the board." While I do like your lengthy explanations, I do find you seem to have an overly strong aversion to giving simple answers. It's either a ten minute long video on a single card, or nothing. Which is odd, because you still seem fine summing up every one of those videos with things like "Good in most occassions" or "Good only in specific occassions". And that's all I'd expect of a Slay the Spire tier list.
Tier list for foods not valuable? Challenge accepted: Chef. You're trapped in a nuclear bunker and you'll be there for about 5 years. You can pick 10 food ingredients to make all your meals for those 5 years, what would they be? Such a list would demonstrate the most flexible set of ingredients. It could be used by not top chefs to make great meals.
Thanks, JoINrbs. This does help. In two other card games that I enjoy (Hearthstone and Dominion), my preference is to grab cards that are superb at one role and decent at another or that are solid at two different roles. These are kind of the bread-and-butter cards. Then add a couple of interesting, powerful-in-the-right-circumstance cards and cards to support them. Seems like StS is similar in that regard. I think this helps explain why White Beast Statue isn't god tier. The naïve view is that WBS adds a zero energy, zero card resource with automatic Retain (and exhaust) every single battle. Some of the effects are powerful enough that you'd pay energy for them if they were cards in your deck even after accounting for the card loss, like explosive potion. That isn't something that you can say about many relics. But because the potions are random and there's limited space to hold on to your potions between combats, you can't depend on one to fulfill a role that your deck desperately needs.
Even though it isn't a card, I feel like it's a crime not to mention Snecko Eye for Ironclad's "Frontloaded Card Draw" problem. It's why the relic is so good with Ironclad, especially if you get it at the end of Act 1 - It plays EXACTLY to his strengths (lots of high-value high-cost cards that usually benefit from Confusion anyway) and his weakness (Card draw).
