it's interesting how much the 'meta' of the game changes with literally no balance updates for years. We're in a perfect spot where people are getting a good idea of 'optimal' play after so much trial and error, then STS 2 will come out soon and make all of it feel new again before it has the chance to get stale

Hope claw is S+

Appreciation for Tara for gassing up the channel. I literally only started watching since last Tuesday thanks to the algorithm bridging me from Rarran, and I've only picked up the game as early as last week and I was so excited when I saw you have tierlist videos but I wondered how accurate they are after 2/3 years past.

Now we need the relics tier list updated.

Maybe, redo relics as well? Would be interesting to see if your views changed here. Edit: Wait, you said "ALL card tierlists". Where are the colorless cards at?

Frost, you know what I want to see now? An ascension 25 Heart kill run with Corrupt the Spire + Humility + Infinite Spire ... on your choice of base character ... ... where you start with Singing Bowl and replace your starting deck with one of each A-tier and two of each S-tier card from each character and colorless. Super Prismatic Shard, optional. The challenge: you must take a duplicate card when offered or +2 MaxHP when not, and cannot remove any cards from your A-tier and S-tier starting deck unless hard-required by events. Special: Black cards from Corrupt the Spire, Infinite Spire and card selection from shops are at your discretion, buy as you wish, but you can't remove any you bought afterward.

I lowkey would put you in S in being cool tierlist

22:07 _Get in f*ing A-tier Buddy!_ proceeds to put it in S.

Its crazy how perspective and playstyle can change in this game. For years, when playing the defect I always shied away from using plasma, every time I tried it it never worked out. A few weeks ago, I was just goofing around and when starting my run I decided to choose the lose my starting relic option, and I ended up getting Snecko Eye. I luckily got a Meteor Strike a couple floors in and had the realization that with everything costing 3 or less, Plasma would be busted on this run. Multiple Meteor Strikes, Hyper Beams, All for Ones (because Snecko Eye makes anything potentially cost 0), Skims, Recursions, Fusions, getting the Nuclear Battery. It was crazy how my card options just kept giving me exactly what I needed that run. It was the easiest Defect run I've ever had, and the most satisfying way I've ever played the Defect, just continuously bashing with high damage attacks and getting more and more energy. If only I had the top I could've easily gone infinite, but alas. I think about that run and how crazy it is that after years I can still get those lightbulb moments, where things I may not have liked or understood, suddenly I can see their potential

@26:50 Judgement deserves to be higher, IMO. tl;dr is that it basically carries you through the first half of the game and doesn't entirely fall off until the very end of the game-even if it's a dead draw by the end of act 3, it gives you so much benefit along the way that if I see it in the first half the game I'm basically always taking it. If you get it in early act 1 or whatever, it absolutely carries you through the entirety of act 1 (basically everything that isn't an elite dies to upgraded judgement) and helps a ton with early act 2 (bypasses both the bird gimmick and the spheric guardians defense, killing both immediately, works great against Gremlin Leader, looters and muggers both have barely over 40 health so you only need to hit them a couple times before you can kill them, etc.) It does, admittedly, start to fall off in late act 2, but even in act 3, it's not worthless. You're probably not gonna win if you're relying on it much at that point, but it can still help out against Reptomancer's summons and handle spikers, and if you're doing a slower blasphemy deck or whatever, it can help getting minor enemies down before you can pop off. It can help a lot with both the Collector and the Automaton, pairing very nicely with just a tiny bit of AOE to kill the minions (plus, being a rare card, it's inherently fodder for Bonfire Spirits and Automaton's minions, both of which are minor but nice), and even for the act 3 boss, it can sometimes be handy for the awoken one's cultists. It's certainly not a top choice by then, but my point is that it doesn't become dead weight for a very long time and it saves you so much health in the early game that it'll let you upgrade more, take otherwise riskier plays, and generally avoid taking other temporary holdover cards much longer. I put it solidly in high B-tier.

Thanks for this, Frost! I'm on my A20 climb (got to A18 a couple of days ago) and reference those videos fairly often. Super helpful! Edit: We did it gang. Beat the A20 act 3 bosses with ironclad and got the achievement. Stumbled at the heart (lack of scaling), but I'll be back. Now time to get Silent, Defect, and Watcher up to A20 too.

I was literally watching the Silent Tier list, and i know some of his opinions have changed on the game, so im psyched for this!

I wish he redid the whole tier list instead of trying to get through his old ones quickly

That's something I think a lot of people tend to forget when it comes to tier lists and even opinions: they change. Just because I liked the Super Mario Bros movie when I was 8 doesn't mean I like it when I'm 30-something. Our tastes evolve, and for tier lists specifically, something about a card or character we thought was pretty meaningless turns out to be really impactful. Im not going to argue that claw isn't law in fear of the clawtists, but stuff like tier lists shouldn't be taken as absolute truth, just something to use as a reference. Apologies for the long comment, just wanted to speak my mind.

reach heaven is almost always a snap pick for me as a watcher main, the amount of situations where having a reach heaven in your deck is bad are heavily outweighed by the opportunity to have access to through violence whenever you want. being able to stack multiple through violences in your hand for a pop off turn makes it perfect for calm or divinity focused decks but it also works super well in stance-swap decks too

0:13 Literally fell asleep to the tierlists multiple times now 🤣🤣🤣

happy to see some of these changes, its been a long time and its nice to hear you explain something and me go like "yeah ive noticed that too over my runs since the last time!" obv, some minor variance, but still nice

Terror is S tier. Deal 50% more attack damage for 1 mana. Not that many enemies have artifact and even if they do, there are so many cards that apply weak.

Wake up babe! New Frost Prime video we can sleep to just dropped!

Your videos got recommended in the last month or so, and I've started playing STS a lot more the last few weeks (probably related tbh). This could not have come at a better time. Well deserved $200 indeed.

Thank you so much for moving WW up. In your original video you called it a noob trap and I was like "huhhh???" But great video! It's always cool to see these updated lists

I think fission is still an A tier card when not upgraded. It’s draw and energy for orbs that can often be generated passively or might be irrelevant to the build, or possibly already active. Sure the upgrade is amazing but why should it be looked down on because it gets better? That’s the point of upgrades.

I was, literally, just wishing you did that the other day, after watching all of your "old" tier lists and imagining how much the "meta" had changed based on +2-3 years of experience with the game added on your backpack. I LOVE IT!

This was so nice to watch. You have gotten miles better at the game and it’s great seeing your tier lists reflect that.

Uhhh corruption and dark embrace are both s tier. Corruption should be ironclads best card.

Your Tier Lists really helped me when I was a beginner. Most important were your explanations why the Cards are good or bad

Thank you! Made screenshots if anyone is interested. Cannot post a link here so if anyone has a suggestion, I'd be more than willing to share. Keeping in minde the tierlists, than foergetting them and choosing before FP chooses based on current situation is a huge part of the fun

Fission hella underrated imo. IMO it’s the second best defect card (first is seek). I think that without the upgrade it’s amazing and just gets way better with the upgrade. Like worst case scenario (unupgraded and only have default lighting orb) it’s a 0 cost +1/+1 and at best it’s… well u know if u know lol has a ton of other utility and synergizes with 99% of defect builds Insta-pick and a high-priority upgrade for me

Sneaky strike is the low key goat of snecko eye runs. Playing it for 0 and getting 2 mana back feels so good

Glad to see so many of my favorite Ironclad cards, especially Bloodletting, being moved up the list. Whenever I get lucky enough to set up an infinite combo, Bloodletting is always a huge enabler

So happy bash got smote down. I was so confused as a new player a few years ago when i watched the old tier list video. Couldnt figure out how bash was anything more than c tier

The updates are nice and mostly fair. My biggest gripes are on Silent though which happens to be my favorite class at A20. Burst and nightmare can actually be too situational although very pickable in the 2nd half of the game. Definitely not S material though. Noxious fumes is decent, or even mostly good, but very slow, again nowhere close to S material and definitely never an autopick. Neutralize on S? really? no way. At A tier, sucker punch and poisoned stab are overvalued. They can be fine for an act 1 pick when you need the damage the most and are desperate, but they can probably go down a notch or two in tiers. I don't like seeing them with excellent cards such as acrobatics or backflip. Quickstrike is severely overvalued here as well, and one of the weird cards that simply don't fit Silent's plan/deckbuilding. It simply does not do enough for the class, there is so much better stuff to draft. Terror, tools of the trade, skewer, flechettes, bouncing flask, escape plan and backstab are all severely underrated here. Need to watch more baalorlord to realize how great and pickable these cards can be in A20H. Also don't sleep on bane, big amount of recent runs from jorbs and baalorlord mostly prove that it's way better than we ever realized, and very easy to get the condition of double damage, so mostly a great strike+ even with just one source of poison damage.

I love Sneaky Strike. Love having two in my deck. If you build your deck right (like with backpacks) it’s a free attack.

Berserk was left untouched even though now it gives one less vulnerable and upgraded one can be so easily played with literally 0 downside.

Surprised to see reprogram that low, I feel like that card can single-handedly carry some of my runs, especially if you can stack multiple

Is their a link to the tierlists?

holy, i literally rewatched the ironclad tierlist the other night, what a timing!! Very cool to see :>

I suggest adding this to your tierlist playlist!

thanks for the helpful content. i got this game because of your content with Rarran. The mechanic where you discard your hand every turn and reshuffle your discard pile back into your draw pile is really throwing me for a loop. I have a lot of experience with card games but this one is not intuitive to me!

11:46 "switch" shoutout to this chatter, made me lol

Interesting tier list. I tried Slay the Spire again after doing 25 hours in 2019 and I discovered I am still just as bad at the game. It's one of the games I enjoy watching really good creators playing more than I like playing it myself. The game itself is an absolute masterpiece and one of the best games ever made, from a developer standpoint.

Thanks for the shoutout Frost. ❤❤love your content!

the gift of sleep for an insomniac is the best gift a youtuber can give. take it as a compliment! Cant wait to sleep to this!

16:48 Grand Finaling is the strongest card of the game if you understand the mechanics of the game and understand how to play your deck correctly. The bottom line is that it is in teer C because many people do not understand how to play it . I can easily take the 20th level of difficulty with this particular map. Not an advertisement for the channel, but look at the Tricky channel. He made a whole separate video on the Grand Finaling

I'm a new-ish player and this is so validating bc I was SO CONFUSED by your takes when I watched your older stuff

Didn't think watching you was going to make me boot up Smash Bros. Warioware music gets me goin. GOOD LUCK BEATING BAALOR'S RECORD FROSTY, YOU GOT DISSS!

Electrodynamics should be A tier with Barricade, since only the first one you play is incredible, and then it's just a Zap+

Heel hook in D tier is a bit unusual. Heel hook isn’t for every deck but if you do any status heavy run, it’s good so it should at least be C tier. Maybe B because you sometimes depend on weak more than boosting block cards

How is Catalyst not in S tier? It's an instapick the second you have a poison card, and if you're early enough even without one considering how it synergizes with almost all of Silent's card pool. I understand his position that it's just a 'win more' card, but I find that interpretation to be quite limited.

I still do think that Signature Move is underrated. It's a solid B. It wins runs if you do take it early. On its own. That's it. And the amount of times when you draw full hand of attacks, play all of them and then finish with SM without it being an overkill is surprisingly high.

This is the first video I've seen of yours, while I prepare to sleep. The algorithm is doing its job

You had me at "like to fall asleep too"....saw u on rarren...was good.

Anger is my favorite card in the game on any character any rarity So happy to see it in a tier

7:34 the hate for Searing Blow is so great he moved it to F tier twice.

Tier list is definitely how I found you and I used them all the time! Even did some time stamping!

Just found you within the last 2 weeks. Tierlists were that reason. Thank you

A challenge where you only take cards that you put in lower tiers might be fun. Maybe if there's a mod to limit certain cards in the pool

I think it's very interesting to see how much I've improved at the game personally adjacent to Frost, I pretty much called a lot of the changes because I think on a lot of these he's absolutely right.

On the steam store page for slay the spire 2, the creators reference KZfaqrs tier lists being dog shit. I'm pretty sure they were referring to your old ones, so I'm glad you made this update lol

This tier list is how I found your content!

I will stand by perfected strike. Getting a perfected strike or two early is great as it gets to be a two cost doing 30 plus damage, and a massive perfected strike deck is how I got my first ascension 20 win.

I loved sleeping to this at 1 pm. Wasn't even tired

The intro describes me perfectly haha, found ur content via your teir lists and have stayed for the S teir content 👌

Watched this today, beat A11 of Ironclad and A5 of Silent because of the knowledge I gained. Just a couple of reward picks different and some tighter play really makes runs feel different and fun

Any chance to get some links to the updated tier lists please? Can't read the screen well enough

YESS!! Hope he does the grey cards and relics!

Just scrolling through KZfaq to find something to fall asleep to. Getting called out by frost immediately

I just started getting back into this game and figured I'd start my first run in a couple of days while I watched it and this video made me pick Blood for Blood and holy shit this card is cracked.

The description for Reprogram at 26:10 and around there is for a card that looks at the discard pile and discards any of them (a Watcher card, I think). I would have thought Reprogram would rank higher regardless, but I don't know if he's ranking based on what Reprogram does or what it says.

This man knows we sleep to his videos. I'm here just to sleep while watching, goodnight

This is the one video I have been waiting for. Thank you Frost!

I got baited by the old tier list to constantly try and make pressure points work..

He should really do a tierlist of all question mark encounters or something similar!

sooo when's the relics and colourless cards getting updated as well?

6:40 Searing Blow is just bad for Heart. If you get it floor 1-5 and haven't locked yourself out of the necessary campfires, you're usually set for the non-heart A20 run if you play around it. Yes, incredibly situational, if you get it even just before the first boss it sucks, but I always think it's way overhated. Like goodbye Time Eater if my hand just deals 260 damage per turn with 4 played cards.

my brother is sleeping on thousand cuts. it's like an aoe choke that you don't have to play multiple times and bypasses artifact. and also, choke is hard to combo cards with, because on the turn you play it you are left with one energy. so unless you draw it with an adrenaline or blade dance, it's barely more than a strike. another thing: the two card spam decks that silent has access to are both single target focused and struggle with aoe. so why would you prefer another single target card over the aoe variant. the only fights where i would prefer choke over thousand cuts are chosen, time eater and the heart. there are better ways to solve these fights than choke.

time for a colorless tier list now

I love the part where you explained why Bash went from S to D tier.

Do you have a photo of the full teir list for reference?

Well this is awkward.... got fed this as i was laying in bed to go to bed.....

Terror is S tier. 1 mana -1/3 of the ennemy HP is insane. (yeah artifact, silent has plenty of way to remove them). doesn't synergise with poison, ok. but definitly higher than B tier Interesting to see how the perception of a card move in our mind, right?^^

I don't think exhume is anywhere close to S tier, it's a very situational card that often requires an upgrade too, since you have to pay the price of the card and the card you're getting back. I'd place it high B or low A

Is there a place these new lists can be viewed?

I've been hoping you'd do a new Tier list for so long

I'll make an argument for Envenom to be A tier or high B tier at the very least: The Silent lacks strength scaling besides Accuracy that only works with shivs. Envenom works with all attack cards, with the Silent having a lot of multi-hit attacks, making it one of the few ways to scale damage for the Silent besides relics like Shuriken. It's similar to an Inflame and honestly the Silent having access to an actual Inflame would be pretty strong.

I do think that frost has a tendency to underate things that have rng, and overrate draw, but even with that everything is mostly where it goes, maybe 1 tier above/below where it usually should be

I don't care what the government tells me, if the first battle drops me a claw then it's a claw run baby

I've been using a lot of sneaky strike and it's nice to be validated.

Been thinking about this for a while! This is cooool.

juggernaut should be b tier, it's really powerful but only once your decks is exactly a certain way

Alpha and Pressure points would be so good on the silent imo. Watcher is just too good for them

Sneaky strike apology segment better than most youtuber apologies

I’ve been waiting for this

Andrew needs raise for this music. Excellent choice

I think Riddle with holes isn't F Tier any longer. Envenom was buffed and more important the Akabeko relic makes it an increadibly powerfull opener. Of course lagavulin makes it almost useless in act one but still better than f tier.

0:11 I get called out as I just opened this video right before bed.

I don’t agree on fission. Most Defect runs are going to naturally focus (lol) on orbs. When I see a fission, I immediately take it and upgrade it as soon as I can. It’s just so insane when upgraded, I never pass it up and it always slaps. It’s easy S-tier (im a 500+ hour defect enjoyer)

frost doing a youtuber apology for sneaky strike was not on my 2024 bingo card

Dude just turning into Tim The Fatman