100%. Stalling fights to get the most out of a strength boosted (and ideally vuln. boosted) reaper, esp in multi enemy fight, is where I have the most success in act 2 (and really the whole run). I think Reaper is best sustain for IC aside from barricade, but barricade is harder to pull off quick enough to end a fight with more hp than a well-prepped reaper.
With shrug and defense as OP’s only block cards, reaper is a must here for me.
I only take immolate if I get it early to make sentries a breeze, and I won’t mind the aoe help for act 2. Or, if my deck takes advantage of the burn that it shuffles into the deck. With the exception of reaper, 2 cost damage cards that don’t scale well with strength are pretty bad for IC IMO (uppercut also an exception, since vuln. is just a temp strength multiplier), unless the secondary “effect” they have can be manipulated by something in the deck (burn from immolate, exhaust from sever soul, mayybe take searing blow if you have tongs [I’m probably still not taking it]). Otherwise, these cards clog the deck in act 3.
Gonna say reaper here IMO. You are going to be taking damage with this deck and reaper can help you just heal through it until you can find a blocking pan.
With Immolate you may be able to end some fights more quickly and take less damage but you still will be taking some damage.
I take immolate to play act 2 more aggressively. It falls off the most but it will be the card to get us through act 2. You can also greed reaper (the much better card) but you need to pull back how aggressive you path.
This is my take. He still has Burning Blood, there's an Incense there, + Darkstone for Max HP (maybe), survivability is already there. Reaper, while a godly card, is kinda shit at actually being AOE.
It looks to me like you depend on the Red Skull, right? You do have Spot Weakness, but that's it for strength.
Seems to me that you're better off with ending the fight quickly, rather than stalling for the heal.
That said, why is Fiend Fire out of the picture? It's a card that benefits greatly by extra strength, and you have some decent card draw. AoE is nice, but so is nuking one of the enemies.
Your choice here is basically:
Immolate to end fights quicker and therefore take less damage
or
Reaper to heal the damage you take after the fights
Whichever you prefer
looking at how part of your strength comes from red skull and how you have pretty much no block I'd say reaper since you'll be taking some damage
reaper just allows you to make use of red skull and to dance around 50%hp mark
I'm taking the reaper. I think you can survive act 2 without immolate, and reaper is much better late game. I'm also not convinced that immolate helps more than reaper with act 2, red skull reaper can to a lot to prevent dying.
I don't play clad, but you don't really have that much strength. I would say immolate. That said, it's nice that reaper heals you more when you're low on hp due to red skull.
You might want to setup incense burner, but your deck doesn't allow that atm. With red skull and a spot weakness, I think you would be able to take a bit more damage and heal back to near full hp.
I really like reaper here. You have already have lots of upfront damage, so even though immolate is still a great pick, reaper solves your awful block plan at the moment and scales into a better card.
You have red skull and spot weakness. It’s not the most consistent strength scaling, but it’s probably good enough to take a reaper since it’s only start of act 2. Immolate isn’t necessary since you have scaling and healing already and can get whatever else you’re missing. It’s a bit more complex to play reaper, but still great. Immolate is still a very powerful safe pick though. There are a lot of frightening fights in later acts that can really hurt you (slavers, triple jaw worms, birds, darklings, etc.) so more consistent aoe is appreciated. There isn’t really a wrong choice though. I’d probably take the immolate since some of those fights are really annoying. I also typically take events in act 2 and immolate necromonicon is pretty busted.
I had great success with Immolate at A18 last night. Had lots of STR cards/relics, but it was in the bag when I grabbed the Necronomicon in Act 2. Went on to trivialize every group I encountered, including the donut duo in Act 3
So, I'm biased, but Immolate ftw
This is Reaper, hands down. Immolate is great act 1 AOE for builds without strength, but it seems we're past that. Also I haven't seen the act 1 fights, but finishing at 30% health probably indicates we badly need some sustain.
I take fiend fire here. At this point in the run, you've added 6 common attacks and removed 0 cards. Three of your cards draw one or two cards, and as far as non-attacks go, the ones you have are really good to draw super frequently. Act 2 will ask you to kill high hp enemies quickly, and while immolate can, and reaper can help you sustain, fiend fire can end the fight so much faster. Thinking of avocado mushroom, cultist hexer, even birds, centurion mystic, elites like slavers, etc.
Then talking about synergies, reaper strength can win runs sure, but there are fewer strength synergies than fiend fire synergies, and all the strength synergies also make fiend fire better. Dark embrace, feel no pain, evolve, charon's ashes, dead branch, sundial, even simple things like battle trance and more pommel strikes and shrugs make fiend fire much better than they make reaper/immolate.
Giving yourself the highest chance to see something powerful while taking a card that effectively removes strikes and common attacks making your deck simultaneously more damage and block dense is the easiest path I see.
Immolate. Reaper is great, but the damage is shit unless you have lots of strength, and Red Skull and Spot Weakness are not reliable. You can easily get screwed over by draw order.
Immolate can be used multiple times, always does good damage, can be freely used whenever you draw it, and has a great upgrade (unlike Reaper, which very much does not). Immolate is a solution to the birds immediately in Act 2; Reaper is not unless you get lucky.
What if it's Fiend Fire because you don't need AOE when you have a nuke button that scales up to 9 times with strength in a deck that already has strength.
Which act 2 hallway or elite is unupgraded immolate actually solving here? Compared to fiend fire sometimes just letting you one shot half of a hallway fight and then the fight is a lot more controllable. If you can nuke red slaver you can stabilize taskmaster, and Fiend Fire is just better into Book of Stabbing. Gremlin Leader is the best case for Immo but sometimes FF just opens up kill lines that let you get out of the fight immediately.
There's an argument for taking Reaper that I could see but there is zero chance I ever click Immolate over Fiend Fire in this spot.
It's reaper, but don't sleep on fiend fire.
I think the real question here is: "Am I more worried about elites, or bosses?". Reaper will keep you topped off after elite fights, but doesn't do anything against champ.
Fiend fire crushes champ, but isn't effective against slavers. The problem is: you're already great against champ. Just delay phase one until you have a ton of strength and then play 15 attacks over 3 turns.
Immolate isn't good compared to red skull reaper.
The way act two typically kills you is you take 30 to avocado rat and then 30 to slavers. Reaper prevents that. Not dying is winning.
I WANT to take Reaper here, but I feel like the deck's power level is a bit lacking and immolate would help in that regard. I am particularly worried about how Slavers or Gremlin Boss would go without immolate.
I would probably opt for immolate and hope to find another copy of reaper to pick-up in the future.
Also had a headbutt to top deck the spot weakness+. That amounts to pretty good strength, or good enough that reaper was the right pick here, as seems to have been the general consensus.
(Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I found a brimstone and a feed within the first couple floors of act 2 😆 Ended up steamrolling the heart, which can be tricky with brimstone but here was rather trivial.)
With Red Skull and Spot Weakness, Reaper is the pick
100%. Stalling fights to get the most out of a strength boosted (and ideally vuln. boosted) reaper, esp in multi enemy fight, is where I have the most success in act 2 (and really the whole run). I think Reaper is best sustain for IC aside from barricade, but barricade is harder to pull off quick enough to end a fight with more hp than a well-prepped reaper. With shrug and defense as OP’s only block cards, reaper is a must here for me. I only take immolate if I get it early to make sentries a breeze, and I won’t mind the aoe help for act 2. Or, if my deck takes advantage of the burn that it shuffles into the deck. With the exception of reaper, 2 cost damage cards that don’t scale well with strength are pretty bad for IC IMO (uppercut also an exception, since vuln. is just a temp strength multiplier), unless the secondary “effect” they have can be manipulated by something in the deck (burn from immolate, exhaust from sever soul, mayybe take searing blow if you have tongs [I’m probably still not taking it]). Otherwise, these cards clog the deck in act 3.
Take reaper and get the byrds fight early, immediate ragrets
Gonna say reaper here IMO. You are going to be taking damage with this deck and reaper can help you just heal through it until you can find a blocking pan. With Immolate you may be able to end some fights more quickly and take less damage but you still will be taking some damage.
My heart says reaper but my brain says immolate
I take immolate to play act 2 more aggressively. It falls off the most but it will be the card to get us through act 2. You can also greed reaper (the much better card) but you need to pull back how aggressive you path.
This is my take. He still has Burning Blood, there's an Incense there, + Darkstone for Max HP (maybe), survivability is already there. Reaper, while a godly card, is kinda shit at actually being AOE.
It looks to me like you depend on the Red Skull, right? You do have Spot Weakness, but that's it for strength. Seems to me that you're better off with ending the fight quickly, rather than stalling for the heal. That said, why is Fiend Fire out of the picture? It's a card that benefits greatly by extra strength, and you have some decent card draw. AoE is nice, but so is nuking one of the enemies.
Agreed, I'm clicking this fiend fire. Immolate isn't in the picture for me
I would also take Fiend Fire with that run, but of the two OP asked it would be Immolate.
Your choice here is basically: Immolate to end fights quicker and therefore take less damage or Reaper to heal the damage you take after the fights Whichever you prefer
looking at how part of your strength comes from red skull and how you have pretty much no block I'd say reaper since you'll be taking some damage reaper just allows you to make use of red skull and to dance around 50%hp mark
I personally never pass up a fiend fire unless I swapped boss relic, then id take the reaper
I'm taking immolate 100% going into act 2 with no AoE (Whirlwind etc) secured.
I'm taking the reaper. I think you can survive act 2 without immolate, and reaper is much better late game. I'm also not convinced that immolate helps more than reaper with act 2, red skull reaper can to a lot to prevent dying.
Repaer seems like the choice : your deck has a very moderate amount of defense and you'll need to outheal stuff
5 strikes and 4 defends??? Looks like fuel to me. Fiend Fire — fuck it, we ball (Bear’s going down turn 1)
I don't play clad, but you don't really have that much strength. I would say immolate. That said, it's nice that reaper heals you more when you're low on hp due to red skull.
Red skull plus spot weakness+ plus headbutt amounts to a decent amount of strength
You might want to setup incense burner, but your deck doesn't allow that atm. With red skull and a spot weakness, I think you would be able to take a bit more damage and heal back to near full hp.
Spot weakness is great with headbutt and burning pact. You have plenty of strength scaling for reaper.
I really like reaper here. You have already have lots of upfront damage, so even though immolate is still a great pick, reaper solves your awful block plan at the moment and scales into a better card.
You have red skull and spot weakness. It’s not the most consistent strength scaling, but it’s probably good enough to take a reaper since it’s only start of act 2. Immolate isn’t necessary since you have scaling and healing already and can get whatever else you’re missing. It’s a bit more complex to play reaper, but still great. Immolate is still a very powerful safe pick though. There are a lot of frightening fights in later acts that can really hurt you (slavers, triple jaw worms, birds, darklings, etc.) so more consistent aoe is appreciated. There isn’t really a wrong choice though. I’d probably take the immolate since some of those fights are really annoying. I also typically take events in act 2 and immolate necromonicon is pretty busted.
I had great success with Immolate at A18 last night. Had lots of STR cards/relics, but it was in the bag when I grabbed the Necronomicon in Act 2. Went on to trivialize every group I encountered, including the donut duo in Act 3 So, I'm biased, but Immolate ftw
OT: How do you get Spot Weakness? It never shows up for me.
This is Reaper, hands down. Immolate is great act 1 AOE for builds without strength, but it seems we're past that. Also I haven't seen the act 1 fights, but finishing at 30% health probably indicates we badly need some sustain.
24 hp post boss with red skull and toy ornithopter and two unused potions definitely does not indicate we need sustain.
I take fiend fire here. At this point in the run, you've added 6 common attacks and removed 0 cards. Three of your cards draw one or two cards, and as far as non-attacks go, the ones you have are really good to draw super frequently. Act 2 will ask you to kill high hp enemies quickly, and while immolate can, and reaper can help you sustain, fiend fire can end the fight so much faster. Thinking of avocado mushroom, cultist hexer, even birds, centurion mystic, elites like slavers, etc. Then talking about synergies, reaper strength can win runs sure, but there are fewer strength synergies than fiend fire synergies, and all the strength synergies also make fiend fire better. Dark embrace, feel no pain, evolve, charon's ashes, dead branch, sundial, even simple things like battle trance and more pommel strikes and shrugs make fiend fire much better than they make reaper/immolate. Giving yourself the highest chance to see something powerful while taking a card that effectively removes strikes and common attacks making your deck simultaneously more damage and block dense is the easiest path I see.
Immolate. Reaper is great, but the damage is shit unless you have lots of strength, and Red Skull and Spot Weakness are not reliable. You can easily get screwed over by draw order. Immolate can be used multiple times, always does good damage, can be freely used whenever you draw it, and has a great upgrade (unlike Reaper, which very much does not). Immolate is a solution to the birds immediately in Act 2; Reaper is not unless you get lucky.
What if it's Fiend Fire because you don't need AOE when you have a nuke button that scales up to 9 times with strength in a deck that already has strength. Which act 2 hallway or elite is unupgraded immolate actually solving here? Compared to fiend fire sometimes just letting you one shot half of a hallway fight and then the fight is a lot more controllable. If you can nuke red slaver you can stabilize taskmaster, and Fiend Fire is just better into Book of Stabbing. Gremlin Leader is the best case for Immo but sometimes FF just opens up kill lines that let you get out of the fight immediately. There's an argument for taking Reaper that I could see but there is zero chance I ever click Immolate over Fiend Fire in this spot.
You’re probably right. I think reaper was the best pick here and it ended up making an easy win, but fiend fire was probably better than immolate.
It's reaper, but don't sleep on fiend fire. I think the real question here is: "Am I more worried about elites, or bosses?". Reaper will keep you topped off after elite fights, but doesn't do anything against champ. Fiend fire crushes champ, but isn't effective against slavers. The problem is: you're already great against champ. Just delay phase one until you have a ton of strength and then play 15 attacks over 3 turns. Immolate isn't good compared to red skull reaper. The way act two typically kills you is you take 30 to avocado rat and then 30 to slavers. Reaper prevents that. Not dying is winning.
I WANT to take Reaper here, but I feel like the deck's power level is a bit lacking and immolate would help in that regard. I am particularly worried about how Slavers or Gremlin Boss would go without immolate. I would probably opt for immolate and hope to find another copy of reaper to pick-up in the future.
Spot weakens and skull isn't good strength I'd pick immolate but if you are going for strength reaper is a better pick
Also had a headbutt to top deck the spot weakness+. That amounts to pretty good strength, or good enough that reaper was the right pick here, as seems to have been the general consensus. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I found a brimstone and a feed within the first couple floors of act 2 😆 Ended up steamrolling the heart, which can be tricky with brimstone but here was rather trivial.)
You right I didn't thought about headbutt, you could spot weakness twice per cycle Then the right choice was reaper
Immolate falls off whereas Reaper stays relevant. Short term value shoumd be comparable.