Silent is fine for hard mode, you continue to rush and not think about your choices. Silent runs well with defense heavy cards, and you can still take poison cards even when it's not a focus. 1k cuts, fumes, caltrops, footwork. Cards with defend and attack are money, skipping dash was a mistake, grabbing garbage like back stab was dumb Defend and glare at them while they die. Take your own advice and slow your god damn roll. You have had winning decks that you trashed with bloat and impatience. You keep making the same mistakes and don't learn from them. Also stop taking needless damage for the sake of speed. Can't believe a grown ass man like me is getting tilted by another grown ass man play video games ... I was literally yelling at my iPad. Look what you turn me into!
It's easy to get frustrated when you hear him not only tilting but actually whining (a grown ass man) because he's getting wrecked in StS. It's more frustrating when it's because this man simply refuses to defend, but will still sob and moan about every point of damage he takes after the first few useless hits.
I think the thing for me is, NL is sort of going quickly to the silent is bad in hard mode when he still knows he is not great at the game. I wont say the two are balance and I have only played a few times compared to NL, but it starting to feel like NL is making excuse a bit for not making progress. I think on some level he knows that the ironclad healing ability is psuedo carrying him past his mistakes. It just makes me sad because I have had success with the silents a bit.
Idk why he has "race" so ingrained in his head. How about slowing down and thinking about your turns more rather than mindlessly playing cards and misplaying so often lol.
JordanRA watch the first StS stream on twitch. First turn of the first fight he played defend, defend, strike. Chat literally EXPLODED with "slowplay!" as a joke of course. The next time or three he did it a few assholes kept at it (like 1-3) and now he actually thinks people hate seeing him defend. That was 60+ episodes ago. That handful of a couple people traumatized him into sweating, his hands shaking and nervous chuckles everytime he plays a defensive card, followed with a rambling "excuse" for doing it...to justify such "terrible" play. As a result, he plays as aggressively as possible, and like every other video he MUST get it done as fast as possible, to churn out one more video a week, rather than having quality content. It's why less than 20% of his viewers from the original few videos are still watching. He's garbage and doesn't want to improve, so now people watch Wanderbots and Rhapsody. His channel hasn't exactly grown since around 2016. There's a reason for that.
Bro you can ping Lagavulin on turn 1 and not wake him up so long as the damage doesn't go past the shield. Which means you could have totally played well laid plans there.
How many times do you suppose NL has been expressly told that killing the cleric before the Knight leads to the Knight being more aggressive? He's still super surprised when it happens!
It also just doesnt make sense on a pure numbers perspective to go for the cleric, he is going to get shielded for more hp than the Knight has so is just faster to go for the Knight anyway.
Mario Parnass It has very much sense since cleric buffs and heals both herself and knight plus with knights shielding the battle could last much longer if you dont kill her first.
It is definetily always better to kill the centurion first, the centurion only shields the mystic, never himself, which means that unless you can kill the mystic in like two turns, you will have to do total of more damage to kill her than to kill the centurion, not to mention that the once you kill the centurion the mystic is basically free kill since she barely ever attacks.
And i also think the knight might be easier to kill first. If remember correctly, his shield bears more protection than the heal, which makes the fight longer?
I agree that the Silent runs can be tougher (they require more patience and attention) but they also have a much much higher ceiling than basically any Ironclad build. You have a play style that you can’t break away from that is fine as the Ironclad and useable as the Silent in standard runs. But when things get tougher, mistakes are magnified, and sloppy play is more punished the Silent has to start playing a different style than the Ironclad. She doesn’t heal after every fight and rarely has the damage output the same way that the ironclad does. Instead, use her poison, use her blocking, use her draws and discards, etc. She has strengths that the Ironclad can’t match if you play to them
What is this? He says that Thousand Cuts is too expensive, picks a Prepared for no reason, skips Lantern and Infinite Blades for Apotheosis and does not take the second Cloak and Dagger when the entire deck identity is built around playing as many cards as possible. After 80+ recorded episodes nonetheless.
Falling for Prepared still hurts more than it should. He's actually never thought about the mechanics of discarding two cards and drawing only one. He's got it in his cracked shell that it's simply free draw.
I will say that I think prepared is a bit of a trap card because when you first see it you go "ooo free cycle" because you forget the card is used up and those a -1 draw for cycle. It can be good in decks with a ton of draw that just want to play and discard things. But when you see the -1 draw, prepared is a really niche card IMHO.
Prepared is good with thousand cuts because (and the many other powers and relics silent has that do damage from playing x cards or x skills, or even discarding cards), you can do infinite turns with decks with prepared, although you also need some other cards for it that nl never takes, like Concentrate, Acrobatics, Tactician, and Reflex. The best silent deck I ever had was like that, killed awakened one on turn 1 with 999 block at end of turn with like 8 or something turns of blur stacked up, and almost all of the damage was just from one Panache+.
Klaital1 I still think that Prepared is worse than Backflip and definitely worse than Acrobatics, even in a Thousand Cuts deck. Even though Prepared costs 0, it is still -1 in hand size, which makes you play less cards overall. Backflip is +1 and Acrobatics is +1 or +2 when upgraded. Also, your example of having relics with "play x cards", the only one it works with is Letter Opener since Kunai, Shuriken and Ornamental Fan all need you to play Attacks, not just cards. I agree, in a discard synergy deck Prepared does work, but also already have Dagger Throw, Acrobatics (again) and Concentration for discard. Overall I think that Prepared has its place, but only in a discard synergy deck and ONLY upgraded. It still doesn't change my opinion that Northernlion hasn't improved really, even after over 80 episodes.
You have a bit too one dimensional view on prepared, it is a tradeoff, you sacrifice card quantity for card quality since it lets you filter through the strikes and defends and what not in your deck to get to the cards you want, like acrobatics and concentrate.
I'm glad every time he gives his opinion on the balance of the game, he gives the caveat that he has no clue what is or isn't balanced. Mostly because he has absolutely no idea what is or isn't balanced.
After watching NL for like the last 5 years I've realized that the long he plays any given game, the more impatient & distracted he gets and the more he merely focuses on commentary. Just look at his KSP campaigns.
faisal saif discard bullet time, keep noxious fumes+, play noxious fumes AND flying knee. I'm too lazy to calculate how much extra damage he would have dealt
Talks about the deck being too thick to use apotheosis successfully. Continues to buy/select good new cards despite overall unnecessariness. Buys molten egg despite having apotheosis and having too many cards already to benefit adding new attack cards. Doesn't spend money thinning deck at the shop. Ends this comment with a fart
You're probably up to date with his current play... Has he worked out Silent doesn't have health gain, and starts with 12.5% less health yet, and he should ALWAYS prevent any preventable damage with defenses before he even looks at damage cards?
I once managed to get 3000 cuts in my defensive deck. Need I say it was a cakewalk, doing 6 dmg to all enemies while defending? A thousand cuts is probably the strongest card in the arsenal of the silent, with noxious fumes and cloak as the main contenders.
It's hard not to. The crash and burn looks super good. Look at the dislikes, and falling views.... It's like I said some 30 episodes ago, but was ignored. Now, suddenly everyone is sick of watching this man stumble blindly and dumbly through a children's card game.
But WHY do you choose to take 5 damage on the first room? You would have killed him in the exact same amount of turns if you hadn't chosen to take 5 damage. You have it within you to choose not to take 5 damage, I believe in you.
And yet he would have had enough block and damage to kill the enemy without taking damage that combat. Sure, that line of reasoning makes sense if he's inexperienced, but he's played 87 runs. He should know how to win combats without taking damage.
He's played MANY more than 87 runs. The streams, the NLSS runs, the off camera runs. He's well over 100 at the time of recording. The fact remains he assigns no value to blocking and thinks it's embarrassing (still, after all this time that ONE dude in chat on the first stream yelling "SLOWPLAY" everytime he blocked traumatized him). He also assigns little value to HP and thinks campfires are there for resting.
To be fair, if you play Ironclad HP is nothing more than a resource at best and a suggestion at worst. On the Silent though, you should look at least a bit after your HP
This deck actually could have been really good I just think nl fundamentally doesn't understand how decks like this work. Get a shit ton of block and debuffs, slowly chip away the enemy, don't even worry about doing damage with attacks, in a deck like this, that's secondary.
The Silent, from my experience, is a bit harder on ascension than Ironclad. She's far more defensively oriented, which means you'll struggle against enemies that get progressively stronger over the course of the fight. There are a few key cards that I look for early on to enable a faster deck. If you get terror early, then you can start to build an attack oriented deck. Otherwise, your best bet is to pick up a few poison cards and build more defensively. Weakness is also super important. Upgrading neutralize is a must unless you pick up another weakness card (leg sweep, crippling poison, sucker punch). Also don't pick random rare card for your opening choice with the whale, a lot of Silent rare cards are really bad early on. The Silent's strengths shine mostly later on after you've developed an archetype, and the struggle is surviving until you reach that point.
Agreed 100%, I think using weakness with the Silent is extremely important. Stuff like Leg Sweep, Sucker Punch, Heel Hook are great for dishing out damage or just getting a lot of block while keeping the enemies weakened. He criminally undervalues an upgraded Neutralize (two turns of weakness and damage for ZERO ENERGY). You can even add in Noxious Fumes to progressively damage enemies, but while going for more defensive cards. I think his main issue is that he just takes too many cards and ends up not getting to the most value quick enough.
A thousand cuts dealt like 76 damage against Hexaghost (or something like that, i lost count) Also, slice and that 0 energy block 4 card would have been great in your deck.
NL, don't give up, you can complete ascension as the Silent. You just have to accept you NEED to play fully defensively. You can't afford to get hit for 5 so lightly like you did on the first fight for example.
That's standard even non-ascention Silent mechanics, so... nope he still hasn't worked it out of course. You'd have thought him having no card option (at all) or starting relic ability to gain health, and 12.5% LOWER HP would have clued him in that he should use defensive cards first and block all possible damage before even looking to see if he can do any damage at all this turn, but nope.... Heck, he still says Dodge and Roll is bad. For the same cost of a Defend, he gets a defend that blocks just 1 less point of damage... and gives you a free defend next turn. Also, since it does its effect twice, it LITTERALLY benefits from dexterity twice, so hey... its not like any other card out there thats similar and he keeps saying is amazing. - cough - Heavy blade, Twin strike - cough -.
Roger Excell those are attacking cards though, defending is super embarrassing. Besides, he can't add, so it's easier for him to just ignore incoming damage altogether.
Nl.. keeping card in this run has no downside. It has a pretty good upside seeing as you have bullet time in the deck and the extra cards would be free in that case.
Others have said it too, but you've gotta shake up your playstyle. This is, by the way, why I don't usually like these deckbuilder games too...because I have the same affliction. I love having cards, and I love having options, and I always want to stuff my decks full of awesome. That's not how you win these things though. A deck that has like one really awesome thing in it that you can just do over and over and always count on being able to do again will beat a deck packed with lots of awesome things that you can't count on having access to at any given moment.
Sigh.. I think you should stick to ironclad for a lot longer.. You rush your turns too much and i don't think you know how silents deck plays properly. She is baller if you do it right. Unstoppable. Way too thick a deck dude.
the more combo focused the deck the smaller the deck to make it work. you have never made a combo deck egg with your second floor 20+ card decks. this deck had *31* cards! 31! i don't believe my decks have ever gotten that thick
This is not necessarily an absolute rule. There are many cards you can take into combo focused decks as much as you want. (E.g. Flash of steel, escape plan etc.) Also stacking things like Cloak and Dagger + is not bad if you should be lucky enough to come across Kunai/Shuriken/Thousand cuts etc.
yes but those are not the cards he stacks and prioritizes which makes your version of a 30+ card deck which is full of 0 cost draw cards technically smaller than it would seem while egg has an actual deck of about 30 cards in floor 2. we can only hope he realizes and gets better for it, im not trying to shame anyone but point because everyone has room to learn. even i do... like how to hit my shift key sometimes
DarkTailsTheFox The entire game is not for him. Just have him go back to Binding of Isaac where he only needs to run in circles and roughly aim in the general direction
14:53 He’s done it. He played prepared BEFORE thousand cuts. Thousand cuts-prepared-daggerspray would’ve left one alive but who know what could happen when you prepared first. Oh well at least it’s not that bad
That's just it though, he thinks he's playing optimally. He's been told over and over again that Dagger cards are trash, but he gets at least one copy of each EVERY GAME. He can't actually learn anything at this point, he has to stumble on it over and over until he actually notices all by himself.
somewhat around 17:00 These are the seemingly small mistakes he makes every couple turns, which actually have a major impact on the winrate and therefore prevent him from succeeding in the ascension-mode. He played well laid plans, had the neutralize i hands and knew, since he fought this big wheel boss about 20 times already, that his next attack hits like firetruck. 10/10 should have kept the neutralize for the next turn
NL you know that the lagavulin does not wake up until you deal damage to it through defense right? Meaning that even though 1000 cuts what active it made sense to play well laid plans, since it wouldnt wake it up.
I mean, it's right there in the top right corner. The patch from 02-07-2018 is literally the one that introduced the rule "In the 3 x Sentry elite combat, all of the sentries will no longer attack at once.". Let's just assume he recorded this the day the patch came therefore he wasn't familiar with this change. Having said that, judging from his past, it's more believable it was simply an innocent misplay.
Igor Lourenço mate, do you think I've memorized the patch notes of each beta release? That seems a bit excessive. Good on you for checking, now we know that the day he recorded this their attack routines changed. I'm certain he didn't read them.
If NL actually took longer than 3 seconds average per turn, he wouldn't be making a misplay every other turn. Idk why he treats every run like a speedrun, we dont mind a split episode as long as your plays are well thought out.
That's just it though, he thinks faster is better and that people would rather watch him shovel more garbage plays around rather than improve. It's why there's essentially no one watching these anymore, compared to the 200k+ views his first several vids got. People left when they saw he was terrible and not improving. Now everyone watches Rhapsody and Wanderbots.
My dude, please stop ignoring the option to swap your starting relic for a boss relic, it's a viable option that can really shape your run from the getgo. Plus it's a lot of fun and with the amount of misplays you dish out, losing once or twice to a bad roll wouldn't be that detrimental
Drawing extra cards is nice sure, but you can get some very useful relics that are much better than that and like you said, can shape your run. On the Ironclad I hesitate to give up the Burning Blood because it's just a lot better than many relics the game has to offer right now for boss relics
Watching NL misplay the Spire always has me somewhere between being greatly entertained and secondhand-tilted. What a man, truely the T H I N D E C C D A D D Y
Right path, turn left, one guaranteed combat, question marks and a shop, could've potentially got a 1hp elite there nl, I know you were looking middle turn right with the 2 combats, but we all saw the one combat ? path to elitehood. Obviously one ? was a combat, but still got there.
NL 1:50 you really should have block 2 twice. he be at 20 hp. 3 strikes kills him. if you dont have 3 strikes then you have enough block to tank the next hit without taking damage.
NL still doesn't know that Lagavulin wakes up only if you deal HP damage to it or after 3 turns. You can damage its block as much as you want and it won't wake up.
Gotta bog through all this backlog and hopefully he will finally pick up some tips from comments in later episodes. For right now, we just get misplay the spire
You really need to slow down and think about your choices if you want to beat ascension with The Silent. Racing enemies who have 4x more health than you just isn't sustainable. I know you've got to consider video length for RU-vid and all that jazz, but if a run goes long you can always split it into 2. I'm pretty sure most of us are cool with that in exchange for more thoughtful play. You need to build more defensive decks, which you seem to be revolted by the idea of. Hell, I've been hoping you'll try a Barricade/Impervious/Entrench/Body Slam style deck with Ironclad, but then you just add all the Clashes. Also, you grossly overvalue The Silent's starting relic, which is odd considering you've called Bag of Preparation "not that good" before and it does the exact same thing. It's much less important to deal 25% of an enemy's health in the first turn when you take the time to do the math on your turns and you've got the defense to go the distance. Swapping the starting relic for a random boss relic is a crap shoot, but many of them are better than snake ring.
Your love of dagger spray is one of many reasons why you can't beat ascension mode with the Silent. Seriously, it's like a basic strike against a single target, it still is not exceptional against multiple targets, and it does not scale into the late game unlike poison, wraith form, a thousand cuts, etc.
NL stop killing the healer first unless you're capable of killing the knight immediately. After the healer dies the knight will just fuck you up every turn.
He gets a hand of decent cards, draws cards to look for specific cards, then has to discard decent cards and often doesn't get what he's looking for. You aren't gaining any ground with that card often times I feel. Having two in your deck is just unnecessary.
If you think about it like playing cards it's easier to see. Without prepared you're drawing 2,3,4,5,6 of spades. You really needed the four so that's great. Five decent cards. With prepared you draw 2,3,5,6, prepared. You needed that four. Play prepared, draw the four but you need to discard. 3 is gone, so you're left with 2,4,5,6... Four cards. It's cycle, but it's not free draw like he wants to think it is. Unless you fill your deck with trash, or have a really good discard synergy it's worse than a dead card as playing it is actively detrimental. He's been told about this numerous times.
Egg says Silent is bad on ascension. Meanwhile i just beat the freaking Time Eater with a shiv deck on ascension 6 with half my health left. It was kind of atrocious by the way, probably missed 20-30 shivs because i couldn't afford to play them.
Hey Nl, i noticed that you take "Prepared" very often. I think that you don´t really understand this card very well. "Prepared" is not card-draw, because you get as much cards as you discard, but "Prepared" itself is a card that does not get replaced. (For example: If you draw 5 cards at the start of your Turn, one of them is "Prepared", you play it, draw one card, discard one card and lose "Prepared" you now only have 4 cards left.) It just let´s you re-draw other cards or enables discard-mechanics. So you should only take it when you really have a reason to play it or you will just effectively draw one less card everytime you draw it. Love you and your Content.
Can somebody tell this man to kill the centurion first in the fight with the mystic. It's not that difficult since the centurion doesn't get that strong until you kill the mystic, and the mystic does almost nothing on her own
Hey NL, I'm actually the opposite of you. I'm pretty good at Silent ascension (level10 atm) but complete garbage at Ironclad. Cant get above level 4 even if you put a gun to my head. So I'm pretty sure the problem is not balance but how you play the characters.
NL 30:24 why did you keep bullet time when you only have one card that cost energy after. BULLET TIME IS ONLY GOOD IF YOU GET A DISCOUNT (or it triggers something like a thousand cuts but that is like super edge case). I'm sorry but that mistake is terrible and the fact you didnt pick up on it is even worse. (Also if distraction is free always play it before bullet time because alot of skills have draw, like prepared, but that is more small thing)
In fairness ascension mode is hard and the silent is nowhere near as consistently strong as the other guy. Although this deck in the episode is fat as fuck.
