The Defect
Background
"Combat automaton which became self-aware. Ancient technology allows manipulation
of Orbs."
The Defect is the third playable character in Slay the Spire. Once a part of the ancient automatons, it
gained sentience and now tries to escape the Spire. Using Orbs, it is capable of harnessing the power of
elements like lightning, frost, and plasma. These elements have passive effects but can also be manually evoked.
It starts with 4 basic strikes, 4 basic defends, a Zap that channels an Orb with lightning, and a Dualcast
that evokes the next Orb twice. Its starting relic is the Cracked Core, which channels 1 lightning at the
beginning of each combat.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The Defect has more versatility than any other character. It has the Orbs, which are capable of harnessing
different elements and playstyles. Orbs have a passive effect during your turn as well as a more powerful
action when evoked, which simply means the channeled Orb was either cast by a card or by another element pushing it
out of the Orb slot it was occupying. Lightning deals consistent damage, and can be channeled easily. Frost
provides a steady supply of defense. Dark can deal high amounts of damage if left charging long enough.
Plasma grants extra energy at the start of each turn and when evoked. Defect has many useful power cards
that can boost its combat performance. It is also a master of card manipulation. Many of its cards can be used
to draw more, place discarded cards in the draw pile, and reduce the cost of others.
The Defect's main weakness is early combat. Combat often plays out much longer than other characters because
powers, Orbs, and other upscaling cards taking time to develop. Chances are, you won't get every elemental card
on turn 1, and even then, you wouldn't have enough energy to play them all. Powers are often expensive, and
their effects may not be immediately useful. This means you have to try to set up your plan while also
defending yourself in the early turns. This is especially detrimental when facing enemies that can buff themselves.
While you set up for the first few turns, your foe is rapidly increasing their power. A few Defect cards
also rely on chance, so some battles may be lost simply due to bad luck.
Strategies
Defect has multiple unique strategies that can intermix with others. Power spam, 0 cost deck, and trading focus for strength and dexterity, which makes Orbs useless, are all viable strategies. Even so, its Orb builds are the main draw of Defect, and they offer vastly different playstyles depending on the prioritized element. Focus, which is basically the strength buff for Orbs, is helpful in making each of these builds more effective.
Lightning Build
- This strategy is the most aggressive of the three main Orb builds. It prioritizes damage output using lightnings passive and evoked damage. The overall goal is to generate as many lightnings as possible for evoke damage. Cards like Zap, Ball Lightning, and Electrodynamics are required for channeling lightning. Bullseye is helpful with this build since it increases the damage the lightnings do to enemies. The grand finale of this strategy is Thunder Strike, which deals 7 base damage for every lightning that has been channeled in the current combat. Energy generator cards and other support options are viable, but not required since the goal is to do as much damage as possible.
Frost Build
- This build is similar to the Ironclad's defense build. When channeled, frost provides block at the end of your turn, giving extra block if you evoke it before then. This strategy revolves around having a consistent amount of frost, allowing you to focus on damage once set up. Unlike the lightning build, the frost strategy benefits from having more total Orb slots than what you start with. With more Orb slots comes more passive defense, as the goal of the frost build is to not evoke frost, but hold on to them. Capacitor, Inserter, and Runic Capacitor all increase your Orb slots. Cards that channel frost include Cold Snap, Glacier, and Coolheaded. Good damage options when set up include Barrage, which does more damage the more Orbs you have channeled, and Blizzard, which works similar to Thunder Strike.
Dark Build
- This build showcases the Defect's long setup time more than any other. Dark's passive effect is that it increases its potential damage when evoked. This means it is more effective the longer it is kept channeled. So it comes as no surprise that the goal of this strategy is to let a dark Orb sit for the whole combat and then unleash a massive attack. The Darkness card will be the main generator of dark Orbs, and it even triggers the passive effect of all dark Orbs already channeled. Evoking cards like Dualcast, Multi-Cast, and Recursion will give some extra power to the already charged up dark Orbs. Recursion especially is useful, as after it evokes the orb, it channels the same one. This means if you have a dark orb at 50 damage, Recursion will evoke it and then channel it back starting at 50. With this, it is possible to use the same dark Orb multiple times, abandoning the need to channel a new one and wait for it to power up.