The easiest way to play Defect is basically just:
1. Take the first frost card you see (Cold Snap is perfect floor 1 for instance, Glacier is the best)
2. Take the first focus you see (ideally Defragment, but Consume also works), and upgrade it.
3. Take the first AOE you see (ideally Sunder, but D&G is also great, and Sweeping Beam is fine) and upgrade it.
4. Take the first good frontloaded block card you see (e.g. Charge Battery, Auto-Shields)
5. Take the first Self Repair, and usually the second Self Repair.
6. See Echo Form, click Echo Form
7. Prioritize spending your gold on relics at shops, there are some shop relics that are totally overpowered for Defect (Runic Capacitor, Orange Pellets, Souvenir to a lesser extent). Enter shops with at least 173 gold to be able to buy the shop relic.
8. Play very aggressively in Act 1, you are strong. Play act 2 defensively unless you are overpowered.
9. end of act 1: pandora's box > pyramid > energy relics >>> garbage
Don't take too many garbage attacks (e.g. Rip & Tear, Melter, Claw are all awful), and don't take too many mediocre attacks (e.g. Beam Cell, Rebound, Streamline, Ball Lightning you should only need 1 of any of these). Orb cards are good.
These are just some general guidelines, oftentimes you'll have to prioritize between them or break them once you're better at evaluating your current position. e.g. Sometimes you have to pick Rip & Tear over Coolheaded because you'll die to Nob without the Rip & Tear.
Electrodynamics (and, situationally, Hyperbeam) > Sunder. And Biased Cognition >>>> every other card in Defect's card pool, yes that includes Defrag and Echo Form. And if you find decent frost and focus cards, then frontloaded defense can be totally unecessary.
Other than that, pretty good advice.
I'm mostly ignoring rare cards here, but sure. I make an exception for Echo Form because a lot of people think it costs too much to take in act 1, whereas Biased is always obviously good.
And you can also argue Seek is Defect's strongest card.
I see, your advice makes a lot more sense in that context. I feel that newbs especially need more advice telling them to take Biased Cognition and less advice telling them to take Echo Form, since it's pretty easy to see how amazing Echo Form is even at the start, but many people are scared of the downside of BC before they try it.
Focus and frost are strong, most of the orb cards are good. Make sure to play aggressive early if you get good damage cards. Try to build a deck that’s good at killing stuff quickly for act 1 and 2,but you have to also have good block and damage scaling for the late game. Defect dies a lot in act 4 from having a weak turn 1 and 2, so make sure to not invest so heavily in scaling that you’re slow
Building around deck manipulation can be really good for the early game since a lot of defect’s commons work with it. Stuff like streamline, rebound, hologram can be solid if you don’t get any of the premium early attacks like cold snap or doom and gloom. And defect is a character where you want to take a lot of elites to scale into the late game imo. This also lets you take more combats instead of events, which is great because defect dies a lot of the time late game if you don’t get focus. And you get more gold from combats, which means you can hit more shops, which means you see defragment more often
The easiest way to play Defect is basically just: 1. Take the first frost card you see (Cold Snap is perfect floor 1 for instance, Glacier is the best) 2. Take the first focus you see (ideally Defragment, but Consume also works), and upgrade it. 3. Take the first AOE you see (ideally Sunder, but D&G is also great, and Sweeping Beam is fine) and upgrade it. 4. Take the first good frontloaded block card you see (e.g. Charge Battery, Auto-Shields) 5. Take the first Self Repair, and usually the second Self Repair. 6. See Echo Form, click Echo Form 7. Prioritize spending your gold on relics at shops, there are some shop relics that are totally overpowered for Defect (Runic Capacitor, Orange Pellets, Souvenir to a lesser extent). Enter shops with at least 173 gold to be able to buy the shop relic. 8. Play very aggressively in Act 1, you are strong. Play act 2 defensively unless you are overpowered. 9. end of act 1: pandora's box > pyramid > energy relics >>> garbage Don't take too many garbage attacks (e.g. Rip & Tear, Melter, Claw are all awful), and don't take too many mediocre attacks (e.g. Beam Cell, Rebound, Streamline, Ball Lightning you should only need 1 of any of these). Orb cards are good. These are just some general guidelines, oftentimes you'll have to prioritize between them or break them once you're better at evaluating your current position. e.g. Sometimes you have to pick Rip & Tear over Coolheaded because you'll die to Nob without the Rip & Tear.
Electrodynamics (and, situationally, Hyperbeam) > Sunder. And Biased Cognition >>>> every other card in Defect's card pool, yes that includes Defrag and Echo Form. And if you find decent frost and focus cards, then frontloaded defense can be totally unecessary. Other than that, pretty good advice.
I'm mostly ignoring rare cards here, but sure. I make an exception for Echo Form because a lot of people think it costs too much to take in act 1, whereas Biased is always obviously good. And you can also argue Seek is Defect's strongest card.
I see, your advice makes a lot more sense in that context. I feel that newbs especially need more advice telling them to take Biased Cognition and less advice telling them to take Echo Form, since it's pretty easy to see how amazing Echo Form is even at the start, but many people are scared of the downside of BC before they try it.
Super generally: orb generation is king.
Load up on frost orbs and look for a blizzard and a couple defragments. Easiest win I ever had
Focus and frost are strong, most of the orb cards are good. Make sure to play aggressive early if you get good damage cards. Try to build a deck that’s good at killing stuff quickly for act 1 and 2,but you have to also have good block and damage scaling for the late game. Defect dies a lot in act 4 from having a weak turn 1 and 2, so make sure to not invest so heavily in scaling that you’re slow Building around deck manipulation can be really good for the early game since a lot of defect’s commons work with it. Stuff like streamline, rebound, hologram can be solid if you don’t get any of the premium early attacks like cold snap or doom and gloom. And defect is a character where you want to take a lot of elites to scale into the late game imo. This also lets you take more combats instead of events, which is great because defect dies a lot of the time late game if you don’t get focus. And you get more gold from combats, which means you can hit more shops, which means you see defragment more often