Who Is the Strongest and Weakest Character in Slay the Spire? I’ve Played 1,000 Hours, So Here’s My Take
The other day, a junior coworker told me,
“You’re not so much a gaming addict as… a madman,”
and I made my best Edvard Munch scream face.
This is Tegaki no Hito.
Today, I’m going to talk about who I think are the
“strongest” and “weakest” characters in Slay the Spire.
An article overflowing with middle-school syndrome. It’s fun.
First, the conclusion.
The strongest character is Watcher, and the weakest is Defect.
For reference, here are my impressions of each character:
• Ironclad: Being able to heal HP with the starting relic is godlike. Individual cards hit hard. It’s a bit difficult to build loose synergies, but there are many strong, reliable archetypes. 2nd place.
• Silent: Individual cards are weak, but almost any card can coexist with others. Easy to build loose synergies (especially discard decks). However, Act 1 elites are a bit rough. 3rd place.
• Defect: Too weak to comfortably fight elites in Act 1. Because individual cards are weak, deckbuilding heavily depends on synergy. On top of that, some card combinations cancel each other out, turning one card into a curse (e.g. Reprogram + Defragment). The starting relic, on its own, is basically just 3 damage. Weakest. I love you.
• Watcher: Double damage is cheating. Energy generation is way too easy—also cheating. Starting with 4 energy on turn one? Isn’t that illegal? Strongest.
Even during the 100-win world ranking challenge, Watcher was by far the easiest.
Defect was extremely rough until I got used to it.
Based on my recent 100-win streak with Silent, Silent felt easier than Defect.
※ To be honest, I lost several times during the Defect 100-win challenge and had to restart.
Silent lost twice. Watcher cleared it in a straight streak.
I haven’t done a 100-win streak with Ironclad yet, but once you build a Strength-scaling deck, it honestly feels impossible to lose—so I ranked it 2nd.
These are purely personal impressions, not objective facts.
But thinking about this stuff is fun, right?
The end.
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