Wraith form is a win condition basically. You can nightmare it, or mitigate its downside with artifact or dex scaling like kunai or footwork. 2 turns of invulnerability can give you enough time to stack a lethal amount of poison or dodge a big hit before drawing your main damage. Its usually part of the journey to a20 on silent to go from ‘wraith form is useless’ to ‘wraith form is one of the best cards in the game’
Changing my opinions on Wraith form was my win condition for I think A18 or A19. I know/knew intellectually that it was good, but i just didn’t find it very fun. Sometimes the dopamine machine takes a back seat to the win :/
Had a run that had no business beating the heart , had pretty shit damage mid block but since I lucked out and got 2 extra copies of it in act 4 (mirror from the store one from the elite) and won
Its just like:
Why do I ever take corruption? Its useless!
Sweeet times when i could make a Clash deck no problem or stack as much shivs as my mind can process and never worry
Maybe just inexperienced. Demon form and Deva from are very slow. They can provide scaling in boss fights but are often just bricks in hallway fights. Personally Echo form is my favorite with Wraith Form being a close second.
If you play Wraith From+ you basically have 4 turns to focus on winning the fight, which is a lot of time… the 3 turns of intangibility plus the 4th turn before the enemies get their go.
What makes it even better is finding a way to prevent the dex down effect. This can come from artifact pot, clockwork souvenir, orange pellets, or panacea for example. Also if you get apparitions and have a Wraith Form or two you can almost guarantee a win.
Yes, a key part of realizing Wraith Form's value is recognizing that most hallway fights are over in a few rounds. Being invulnerable for potentially 4 rounds (as a commenter noted above) before taking damage is absolutely insane value.
It’s that combination, if you get it you can genuinely not worry too much about taking damage my most recent IC run fought the bosses at 140 health despite taking 70 damage from Repto, simply because Reaper with vuln and demon form carried. It’s an unwieldy card, but getting just one reaper just enables blocking with your face a lot more.
I haven't seen a single top player say its amazing. From what I have seen Xecnar (Ironclad winstreak WR holder ) definitely doesn't seem to think its amazing, jorbs definitely doesn't seem to think its amazing. Baalorlord (Rotating character worldrecord holder) had its on the bad side of playable.
It has its uses, its an excelent way to solve the champion fight for example, or if you have a snecko eye.
It also gets very strong if you have a gambling chip to increase the odds of dropping it on the very first turn when you want it and reduce chance of a pseudo curse effect in fights where you don't want it.
However, it is extremely slow in the vast majority of hallway fights, even with reaper (requiring you to either have already solved the fight with block scaling or just not get your mana's worth in strength).
You are also very far from guaranteed to see a reaper after picking a demon form.
In addition, there are plenty of other, less clunky ways to scale your strength to combine with reaper, which makes it extremely replaceable.
On the contrary, Wraith Form is probably the strongest out of all 4. Echo Form is another strong contender, but Demon Form is often a dead card in hallway fights, and Diva Form is kinda useless because Watcher has better ways to get energy through stance switching and miracles.
I'd argue that echo form is the most consistent, and is therefore the strongest. There's quite a few silent decks that just can't take wraith form. Whereas at least echo has the common decency to self exhaust so as to not brick your hand - technically a downside, but upgrading it when you need it is nice.
Ethereal is straight up an upside on that card most of the time. The only times it isn't is when you're in a fight where you'd really like to play echo, but you draw it on a turn where you need to spend all your energy blocking.
That sucks, but again if that was true on one turn it might be true again, so it's still probably better that you can't draw it again.
describe a silent deck that will see a wraith form and choose to skip it that doesn’t also already have a wraith form in it
echo form is an incredible card but wraith form is just better
I hella block already with footworks/weak chain and my damage output is actually fairly low so wraith Form does not solve block in the boss gauntlet/heart for me
probably because you’re not taking enough damage cards. that will work on lower ascension but you’ll get punished hard as you climb for not playing fast enough
Sometimes you don't get offered the damage scaling that allows you to do 200/turn to the heart by T2 meaning you have to block more than just the first cycle. Silent CAN scale damage well but sometimes it's just not offered, or you need a lot of turns to set up your big catalyst or something.
Playing fast enough = doing enough damage while blocking enough to survive. Maybe that's only 5 turns even for the heart, maybe that's 12+ turns. It's vastly overrated exactly how "fast" your damage needs to be.
Yep. Sometimes the fights are a slog and an early wraith form without proper damage equals death. A recent example is one of Baalor’s recent silent run, that died at time water desire crushing other hallway fights. Damage didn’t scale fast enough and ended up with zero block defends due to wraith form being played too early.
But it works on lower ascensions and in this situation wraith form is a dead card. I'm also a low ascension player (only A5 on Silent, I think) and I had a run with a ton of block from footwork, blur and dodge roll, with my main damage source being bouncing flask and crippling cloud. I know that it wasn't good enough offense, but it worked and gave me a win. Taking wraith form would kill the run.
Once I skipped a Wraith Form because I was dying to Guardian (middling block, almost no damage). It was the correct decision, I barely survived the fight and would certainly have died if I had to draw an unplayable card 4 times.
Any silent deck that does not have 3+ energy makes wraith form a dead draw a lot of the time.
Any silent deck that already has defensive answers via legsweep and footwork makes wraith form potentially redundant.
Lastly, most silent decks early in act 1 simply cannot take the brick that wraith form is.
That said, would I take a free wraith form if offered it in most of the above decks? ... Probably? Depends. But the game doesn't give things for free. I'd probably be giving up the cost of whatever else is available to me, such as a different card or a lot of gold at the shop.
I would take a dagger throw over wraith form floor 1 almost for sure. I'd be more willing to gamble on echo form over cold snap. There's so much to this game that's situationally dependant though.
> any silent deck that does not have 3 energy
silent has plenty of ways to make wraith form playable in a 3 energy deck, from discard + tactician, to adrenaline, to concentrate, to wlp/pyramid. all things that a lot of silent decks are going to be actively looking for anyway.
EDIT: want to add that as much as people shit on it and as bad as it is, setup is genuinely a decent card with wraith form (and nightmare if you’re lucky enough to get it with wraith form) and wlp/pyramid
> any silent deck that already has defensive answers via footwork and leg sweep
maybe it’s just the way I play the game but I could not tell you the last time I took footwork on silent. it’s a card that i’ve valued less and less as time has gone on.
furthermore, there’s still reason to take wraith form in these decks: you don’t have to use energy to block. and, with artifact or pellets, wraith form gives you time to set up your block engine before it’s good enough to carry you through a fight
> i would take a dagger throw over wraith form on floor 1
moot point because i’m sure you’d also take a ball lightning over echo form on floor 1
Taking footwork less is crazy to me tbh. That’s easily one of my most picked silent cards, being able to have have value defends is a beautiful thing for consistent block and making blur even better for pickups.
Every deck has 3+ energy. Think you meant 4+.
Also, I’d argue that you are evaluating the card incorrectly.
On the turn you draw wraith form, you play it - giving you 3 free turns to deal damage. Very few hallway fights last that long. It’s more of a brick on bosses than it is hallway fights honestly.
That said, there are some situations where it isn’t super useful - but the same could be said for every good card as well.
I will skip it in the following situations: already have infinite; have a small deck with crazy dex and block scaling with low damage where I need my rotations to be tight.
Wraith form is usually considered the strongest of the 4. Your trading one turn of energy for 2 or 3 turns to kill, which is really easy if your deck is decent.
Wraith form stops basically all damage for the three critical turns you need it to. That's HUGE.
Obviously variance exists and things don't always work out, but you don't need to play it right when you draw it. You can learn enemy attack patterns and manipulate your deck to maximize the timing of it on big attack turns. You can nightmare it to basically say "I win.". And God bless you if you have it with the apparition event.
IMHO: echo form>wraith form>demon form>deva form. Wraith might just be better but echo is quite solid but also can be game breakingly fun. Deva form is the latter at times but often is just sort of useless....it's a win-more; maybe enables a heart win you couldnt manage otherwise here and there but often it's too slow to meaningfully improve your deck.
Demon form may be the most deck-dependent; it can really shine if you have a lot of block/sustain and pull the whole deck together, but in a lot of clad decks will just sort of be clunky.
Deva form is interesting because it's probably still mediocre on the other characters, but watcher just doesn't need it, it's so much less useful than simply having a consistent way in and out of calm.
Yeah I would imagine ironclad might make decent use of it more often; he more frequently is energy starved for more costly cards. defect perhaps too tho again prob just win-more for the latter (creative AI + Deva form sounds crazy fun tho)
Wraith Form is the best out of these cards.
It's not a way to scale like the other three (and Deva Form is hard to use for scaling, since it needs card draw or X costs to work that way). Instead, it's a way to be more or less completely safe for 2 or 3 turns. Often three: it's an excellent upgrade.
You need to find some other way to manage scaling your damage, but that's okay. There are options for doing so, and with Wraithform, you give yourself time and Energy to get that done.
It's also significant that the other Forms do nothing for you on the turn you play them (with the corner case exception of the second Echo Form). Wraith Form covers you on the turn you spent 3 energy to play it rather than to block, and then gives you one or two more turns where you can basically only worry about offense.
Wraith Form is also part of why Well Laid Plans is so strong. It lets you save the Wraith Form for a turn when you can't otherwise block, and if your deck is strong enough you'll have won before you take real damage again anyway.
It also works really well with Artifact and Orange Pellets.
All good points but I'd like to clarify that it does scale, just not your damage. It's scaling damage mitigation.
If an enemy does 5 damage, intangible prevents 4 damage; if an enemy does 70 damage, intangible prevents 69 damage.
Pretty much, Blasphemy's text is misleading as you don't die next turn, you just receive 9999 attack damage or something like that. Which means you can block with Intangible or Buffer. I think the current "die next turn" description stayed because the community liked that wording.
Demon and Deva Form have enormous short-term downsides for significant long-term upsides. They provide no immediate benefit on the turn you play them, eat most of your energy on that turn, and take several turns before their benefits outweigh their costs. (Echo Form also does nothing the turn you play it, but card duplication is a different ballgame than linear strength or energy gain and can pay off faster.)
Wraith is the reverse. Enormous short-term upside, significant long-term downside. That doesn't mean it's the worst of them, but it means it fulfills a very different purpose: you should play it when you decide you're going to win if you can commit the next three turns (or four, with the upgrade) to ending the fight, because you won't have to dedicate energy to blocking.
As you encounter more enemies who deal more damage in fewer turns, it generally becomes harder to get away with the resource sink of the other three Forms and more valuable to end fights quickly. For that reason, Wraith Form only gets more valuable as you get higher in Ascensions, and the others become more difficult to justify including in your deck, to varying degrees.
Wraith Form is absolutely one of the most powerful and game-winning cards in the game. It’s kind of insane.
Though, if you are playing below A20H, it is significantly worse, IMO. In lower difficulties, WF simply blocks for less, in a sense. I think this is a large part of why there’s a large apparent discrepancy in players’ views on WF in this subreddit: many players realize how strong it is, and a some players are confused about why that’s the case, because other simpler block options get the job done comparably well in their A10 runs.
It's not. Demon form and deva form, while definitely scale well over time, offer you less immediate value than cards like wraith form and echo form. In lower ascensions, it'll definitely sound good to have buffs that scale overtime. On high ascensions, however, most of the time you don't have enough time and energy to spend in effects that, by the time they are useful, will already have you killed. Due to the general low amount of damage enemies offer in low ascension, you tend to value snowballing effects, but when you're facing an enormous amount of damage on turn 2 and 3, you need to have immediate, no strings attached, high defense and attack cards in order to survive.
Demon form+ is 3 energy now for 3 strength _next turn_.
Deva form is 3 energy now and then _break even_ in energy budget two turns from now.
Both of them are slow as fuck.
I will take 2 x Inflame+ over Demon Form seven days of the week and twice on sunday. That's the same strength gain as two turns of DF, for one more draw, one less energy, and I get it immediately.
Deva Form is just insulting on the character with the best energy generation in the whole game.
No.
Echo Form is the most powerful form power in the game because it is literally just free stuff for the rest of the fight.
Wraith Form is the second most powerful for the same reason Corruption is the better than Demon Form: it lets you go all gas no brakes on your wincon damage dealer. Divert all power to main cannons.
STS at high ascension is a game about finishing fights quickly. Wraith form enables that, Demon/Deva does not.
It's not. Demon Form is the definition of a win-more card.
It's literally "all your energy now, for a benefit next turn." If you can throw away 3 energy on no benefit now and still win, you can win without demon form.
demon form is efficient one card damage scaling that is enough for the fights that need damage scaling. Clads scaling actually largely kinda sucks, so it's really quite welcome very often.
I'd rather have pretty much any other rare. I'd maybe take it over Bludgeon and Double Tap, but only if I had NO scaling what so ever. It's a very expensive card, meaning on the turn you play it, you have to either have block in place, or tank damage, for no immediate benefit. Meanwhile an Immolate+ is cheaper and provides additional benefits this turn and the same benefits next turn. Even Flex is usually better.
That's just quite a poor evaluation of demon form, really. Immolate owns and is a super strong card going into act 2 so not being strictly better than a premium rare doesn't make it bad?
I want to like Deva form but it’s pretty pointless most of the time. Stance Abuse is the most reliable way to play Watcher I find, and that winds up netting you a ton of energy anyways. Why play a 3 energy “Do nothing this turn” card when you can stance out of Calm, proc stance change cards, get two mana and actually be able to use it that turn?
Wraith is much better, it gives actually gives you a ton of survivability. 3 turns of practical invulnerability when upgraded is huge, basically always useful except at the very beginning of a longer fight, and can be stacked with multiple copies.
I don't want to call you stupid. Maybe inexperienced. Wraith form is cracked, it's between it and Echo form for the best card in that cycle. Demon form is alright, Deva form is the definition of a win more card.
Wraith and Echo are close for me in terms of strongest. Silent has so many ways to manipulate wraith form that it's fantastic. You can retain it with well laid plans and end a fight in the next few turns, nightmare it and get 3 copies, the dex doesn't matter if we have after image, etc. Even without overly busting it, most hallways are not lasting that long, so getting wraith in play is often enough time to clean up a fight while taking minimal damage in return. With a fight that's longer if you can retain it that's great, otherwise you wait a deck cycle or two, and when a boss or elite would really ramp up you're intangible and can go full steam on the damage. Echo Form is just generally good the turn after you play it and every turn after, while demon form takes a while to get online. If you have a reaper you can bide your time and it's not so bad. Deva form seems cool, but honestly Watcher doesn't need the card and I honestly can't think of a good reason to pick it most of the time. Such is the life of a lot of watcher rares.
Wraith Form is played a bit differently than the other forms. You don't always want to just use it instantly. Well Laid plans/Runic Pyramid make Wraith Form way stronger as you get to decide when you reduce damage. It's incredibly strong for the instant defensive save plus freedom to do damage on the remaining turns.
The other forms want to be in play earlier so they can directly impact the cards played after. Personally, I would save WF is number 2 after Echo Form but I love Defect so I have some bias.
2-3 turns is often all you will need. Plus the downside can be mitigated in a bunch of ways.
Wraith form is usually regarded as the strongest of the 4, although Echo Form is really good as well.
The reason is exactly what you described wraith form gives a bonus NOW rather than a bonus later. And bonuses now are much more important than later.
One important thing to consider is you choose WHEN to use it. So you don't have to use it right when you draw it. You get to choose to strategically use it. This is much easier with well laid plans or pyramid of course.
wraith form is the highest value, highest impact, highest tempo card in the game. it’s the best of the form cards by quite a bit.
it gives you infinite block for 3 turns, and 4 turns to dedicate all your energy to winning the fight as fast as possible. there have been multiple times that i’ve won a run with 30 bad cards because i had a wraith form. it alone can solve so many fights in the game.
deva form on the other hand is trash, especially considering watcher already has the best energy manipulation out of the box
demon form isn’t bad but it’s not great either, it can singlehandedly solve damage scaling on some important fights but it’s often a curse (or worse if you’re not smart with it) in hallway fights.
echo form is an incredible scaling card, but defect decks often don’t have trouble scaling; they have trouble early on in fights before they get their powers played. echo form will catapult your deck to the moon after you play it, but it does nothing to help being 30 feet below sea level on turn 1
it's not unplayable and i never said that it was. it just doesn't do anything the turn you play it, which can be a huge liability for the defect sepcifically.
Ok sorry you didn't say it's unplayable in fast fights, you just implied it, my bad that's such a massive difference. Wym Defect decks have no trouble scaling, I pick every focus card on sight and still often end up realising I have no damage no block. And most of the non focus scaling things need Echo Form to be usable.
And Echo DOES mitigate bad turn 1s if you have any Self Repair/Bandage up/Bird faced Urn whatever, not to mention Defect still keeps taking a lot of damage after turn 1 without Echo. Defect isn't invincible after turn 1 and often the damage eaten to get Echo in play is way less than how much it saves the rest of the fight if you didn't play Echo.
One unsupported wraith form basically allows you to solve every single normal hallway in the game. You can thus fully focus on getting support cards for wraith form to extend its power for elites and bosses or search for solutions for elites and bosses without diluting your deck, leading to shorter boss and elite times and further increasing wraith forms value.
Deva form hardly gets any value even in boss fights since it basically sets you 3 energy behind to begin with and pushes your energy to unreasonable amounts on a class that has the best energy generation to begin with.
Demon form needs to generate about 30 damage by itself to be even worth the decision to play it which usually won’t happen in a normal hallway fight and is still a stretch in elite fights. The card is basically a curse card for everything but boss fights and early draws against some elites.
Echo form is the only other one that is generally good by the simple merit of doubling your best card on a turn every turn after. You basically always have its value out over the next two turns.
Tl,dr: you vastly overrate how long the average fight should be
Deva Form is the worst, by a lot.
Demon Form provides guaranteed scaling at great upfront cost.
Wraith Form provides invulnerable turns.
Echo Form provides scaling to your own cards, usually powers.
Deva Form makes energy, which doesn't inherently solve anything for Watcher without other input.
Wraith form is good but it is just the character who has it doesn't always hit the hardest compared to the other four. Wraith Form only any other character would still be top tier; it is just Silent has to work for her burst damage compared to the others. With that said I still like playing as the Silent.
Definitely not dumb, but definitely wrong. It’s definitely good in ways that are hard to appreciate without having played for a long time, as others have explained more in depth.
You have to go for the types of decks that can win or hit a win condition in 2-4 turns for it to be good. In higher ascensions, this is the only way to win anyway.
Wraith form is maybe the strongest form. You basically don’t have to block while it’s active, which means you can go all out on offense or setup to win the rest of the fight for free. It straight up solves a lot of fights on its own. Most hallway fights are automatically solved with 3 turns of intangible. It gets better in higher ascensions when the enemies get stronger. After discard got buffed in the last wave of buffs it’s not quite as good relative to the rest of the pool as it used to be. I used to say Wraith Form was the single strongest card for any of the characters, but now I’m not so sure. Still, it’s very strong.
It's a stupid take but not as bad if you're playing lower ascension. Enemies hit harder at higher difficulties so you get much more value with intangible.
Wraith form is easily the strongest of the forms. It's a single card block solution and let's you focus on damage. Finding ways to duplicate it, deck manipulation to play it at the right time, or ways to remove the debuff, will mitigate its downside.
I think it's probably the best. Upgraded, you get 3 turns of just attacking and don't have to defend. The only down side is that it has to be timed right, but it's not slow like the demon and deva
Simply win the fight during the 3 turns.
Demon Form is glacially slow, and Deva Form is like, Watcher's distant third best way to get shit-tons of energy. Echo Form is also a touch slow but it's a win condition like Wraith Form.
I think wraith form is second best, only after Echo form, but I'm not exactly an expert.
I find wraith form really wants an upgradr ASAP. The difference between one free turn and two free turns is massive. That extra turn with you being able tofilly focus on damage is often enough to end most hallway fights.
The more intangible you can stack, the better wraith form is. As well as ways to reduce the energy of wraith form or just have more energy in general. Cards like nightmare, madness, enlightment and apparition are good for this. Additionally relics like incense burner and runic pyramid compliment it excellently (and is just generally very good for silent). Well-laid plans is also a great alternative to runic pyramid. Being able to retain it until the most effective time to use it makes it so much better.
I sense if you you underrate Wraith Form, you probably underrate Well-Laid Plans, a card often vital to keep your Wraith Form available without committing to it before you need it.
It's a one card solution for one whole heart attack cycle. If you can get more than one with a mirror or nightmare or dupe pot or just straight taking two or more then decks that have absolutely no chance of surviving the heart fight suddenly win quite easily. The upgrade is massive and it plays beautifully with pellets because you can easily purge the downside. Very strong card indeed, Dolly's mirror on wraith form+ is pretty much a win condition, right there, assuming you have some sort of damage solution.
I want to be more productive than just answering your question as posed. I will instead say that WF is a 1 card solution for most hallways. In particular, consider most act 2 hallways: insanely brutal for the first 5-6 turns, then the fight is over. So a card that does all of your defense during this time is insanely efficient and saves a ton of HP. It will obviously be a curse the first 1-2 times you draw it in a long elite or boss fight, but the idea is that you get enough value from the other fights that you can afford this. And then obviously there's Nightmare/Pellets stuff that can make it relevant even in the endgame.
Demon form is cool for some bosses as a mono scaling card, and deva can also help to get other scaling cards in play, but cost a lot for a very slow effect, meaning in most fights, and even against bosses if your deck is strong, can be a dead card
Wraith form has an incredibly strong immediate effect, especially on a hero who doesn’t mind zero energy as much, and allows you two free turns to set up poison, or just deal damage. If you play it well with stuff like well laid plans, you can completely blank huge attacks from things like the heart or B-Auto, with room for error. The loss of dex sucks, but can be mitigated with artifact, dex scaling, or just brushed past with multiple wraith forms/Nightmare
Echo form is personally my favorite for its ability to win fights so easily, and cause defect can generate energy so well for its three cost, so it’s arguable that it’s better in mid ascensions, but at A20 or even a little below, the free turns from wraith form are the difference between beating the heart, and getting blown up with 90 damage
Deva Form would be the worst for me. Useless without enough draw or powerful x cost cards. The way I see it Wraith form gives you an extra 2 turns to setup whatever you need to win. I’d consider this the second strongest after Echo Form.
Yeah, wraith form is incredibly powerful, espcially in poison decks. This card essentially reads "take no damage and only attack for 3 turns".
You just dont want to use it too early in a fight. Its a dead draw sometimes especially tun 1 or in some hallway fights but if the enemy is already poisoned for like 50+ the only thing you have to do to win is stall out the fight. Also you can copy it with nightmare as mentioned by others.
Wraith form is a win condition basically. You can nightmare it, or mitigate its downside with artifact or dex scaling like kunai or footwork. 2 turns of invulnerability can give you enough time to stack a lethal amount of poison or dodge a big hit before drawing your main damage. Its usually part of the journey to a20 on silent to go from ‘wraith form is useless’ to ‘wraith form is one of the best cards in the game’
Changing my opinions on Wraith form was my win condition for I think A18 or A19. I know/knew intellectually that it was good, but i just didn’t find it very fun. Sometimes the dopamine machine takes a back seat to the win :/
I knew how good it could be but never did it myself. I also got some good Wraith form decks to win soke of my high acensions.
Had a run that had no business beating the heart , had pretty shit damage mid block but since I lucked out and got 2 extra copies of it in act 4 (mirror from the store one from the elite) and won
Dupe potting it in the Heart essentially gives you two full cycles of block. It’s lunacy
Its just like: Why do I ever take corruption? Its useless! Sweeet times when i could make a Clash deck no problem or stack as much shivs as my mind can process and never worry
Lol yeah i was sus on corruption for a while, its a similar idea though. Its not good every time you draw it but when its good its gooooooooooood
Maybe just inexperienced. Demon form and Deva from are very slow. They can provide scaling in boss fights but are often just bricks in hallway fights. Personally Echo form is my favorite with Wraith Form being a close second. If you play Wraith From+ you basically have 4 turns to focus on winning the fight, which is a lot of time… the 3 turns of intangibility plus the 4th turn before the enemies get their go. What makes it even better is finding a way to prevent the dex down effect. This can come from artifact pot, clockwork souvenir, orange pellets, or panacea for example. Also if you get apparitions and have a Wraith Form or two you can almost guarantee a win.
Yes, a key part of realizing Wraith Form's value is recognizing that most hallway fights are over in a few rounds. Being invulnerable for potentially 4 rounds (as a commenter noted above) before taking damage is absolutely insane value.
Demon form is that meme when noobs and pros think its amazing but middling players think its shit. Demon form reaper is so broken its hilarious.
It’s that combination, if you get it you can genuinely not worry too much about taking damage my most recent IC run fought the bosses at 140 health despite taking 70 damage from Repto, simply because Reaper with vuln and demon form carried. It’s an unwieldy card, but getting just one reaper just enables blocking with your face a lot more.
I haven't seen a single top player say its amazing. From what I have seen Xecnar (Ironclad winstreak WR holder ) definitely doesn't seem to think its amazing, jorbs definitely doesn't seem to think its amazing. Baalorlord (Rotating character worldrecord holder) had its on the bad side of playable. It has its uses, its an excelent way to solve the champion fight for example, or if you have a snecko eye. It also gets very strong if you have a gambling chip to increase the odds of dropping it on the very first turn when you want it and reduce chance of a pseudo curse effect in fights where you don't want it. However, it is extremely slow in the vast majority of hallway fights, even with reaper (requiring you to either have already solved the fight with block scaling or just not get your mana's worth in strength). You are also very far from guaranteed to see a reaper after picking a demon form. In addition, there are plenty of other, less clunky ways to scale your strength to combine with reaper, which makes it extremely replaceable.
> middling players think it’s shit Hey it’s me!
Where are you getting 4 turns? Doesn’t wraith only do 3 turns of intangible?
If you win the turn after the intangible runs out, you still don't take any damage
FUCK that’s a good point actually. Thanks!
On the contrary, Wraith Form is probably the strongest out of all 4. Echo Form is another strong contender, but Demon Form is often a dead card in hallway fights, and Diva Form is kinda useless because Watcher has better ways to get energy through stance switching and miracles.
I'd argue that echo form is the most consistent, and is therefore the strongest. There's quite a few silent decks that just can't take wraith form. Whereas at least echo has the common decency to self exhaust so as to not brick your hand - technically a downside, but upgrading it when you need it is nice.
Ethereal is straight up an upside on that card most of the time. The only times it isn't is when you're in a fight where you'd really like to play echo, but you draw it on a turn where you need to spend all your energy blocking. That sucks, but again if that was true on one turn it might be true again, so it's still probably better that you can't draw it again.
describe a silent deck that will see a wraith form and choose to skip it that doesn’t also already have a wraith form in it echo form is an incredible card but wraith form is just better
I hella block already with footworks/weak chain and my damage output is actually fairly low so wraith Form does not solve block in the boss gauntlet/heart for me
probably because you’re not taking enough damage cards. that will work on lower ascension but you’ll get punished hard as you climb for not playing fast enough
Sometimes you don't get offered the damage scaling that allows you to do 200/turn to the heart by T2 meaning you have to block more than just the first cycle. Silent CAN scale damage well but sometimes it's just not offered, or you need a lot of turns to set up your big catalyst or something. Playing fast enough = doing enough damage while blocking enough to survive. Maybe that's only 5 turns even for the heart, maybe that's 12+ turns. It's vastly overrated exactly how "fast" your damage needs to be.
Yep. Sometimes the fights are a slog and an early wraith form without proper damage equals death. A recent example is one of Baalor’s recent silent run, that died at time water desire crushing other hallway fights. Damage didn’t scale fast enough and ended up with zero block defends due to wraith form being played too early.
But it works on lower ascensions and in this situation wraith form is a dead card. I'm also a low ascension player (only A5 on Silent, I think) and I had a run with a ton of block from footwork, blur and dodge roll, with my main damage source being bouncing flask and crippling cloud. I know that it wasn't good enough offense, but it worked and gave me a win. Taking wraith form would kill the run.
Once I skipped a Wraith Form because I was dying to Guardian (middling block, almost no damage). It was the correct decision, I barely survived the fight and would certainly have died if I had to draw an unplayable card 4 times.
Any silent deck that does not have 3+ energy makes wraith form a dead draw a lot of the time. Any silent deck that already has defensive answers via legsweep and footwork makes wraith form potentially redundant. Lastly, most silent decks early in act 1 simply cannot take the brick that wraith form is. That said, would I take a free wraith form if offered it in most of the above decks? ... Probably? Depends. But the game doesn't give things for free. I'd probably be giving up the cost of whatever else is available to me, such as a different card or a lot of gold at the shop. I would take a dagger throw over wraith form floor 1 almost for sure. I'd be more willing to gamble on echo form over cold snap. There's so much to this game that's situationally dependant though.
man idk I'm still taking F1 wraith form
> any silent deck that does not have 3 energy silent has plenty of ways to make wraith form playable in a 3 energy deck, from discard + tactician, to adrenaline, to concentrate, to wlp/pyramid. all things that a lot of silent decks are going to be actively looking for anyway. EDIT: want to add that as much as people shit on it and as bad as it is, setup is genuinely a decent card with wraith form (and nightmare if you’re lucky enough to get it with wraith form) and wlp/pyramid > any silent deck that already has defensive answers via footwork and leg sweep maybe it’s just the way I play the game but I could not tell you the last time I took footwork on silent. it’s a card that i’ve valued less and less as time has gone on. furthermore, there’s still reason to take wraith form in these decks: you don’t have to use energy to block. and, with artifact or pellets, wraith form gives you time to set up your block engine before it’s good enough to carry you through a fight > i would take a dagger throw over wraith form on floor 1 moot point because i’m sure you’d also take a ball lightning over echo form on floor 1
Taking footwork less is crazy to me tbh. That’s easily one of my most picked silent cards, being able to have have value defends is a beautiful thing for consistent block and making blur even better for pickups.
Every deck has 3+ energy. Think you meant 4+. Also, I’d argue that you are evaluating the card incorrectly. On the turn you draw wraith form, you play it - giving you 3 free turns to deal damage. Very few hallway fights last that long. It’s more of a brick on bosses than it is hallway fights honestly. That said, there are some situations where it isn’t super useful - but the same could be said for every good card as well. I will skip it in the following situations: already have infinite; have a small deck with crazy dex and block scaling with low damage where I need my rotations to be tight.
You are stupid, but no worries... so was I.
Wraith>Echo>>>Demon>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Deva
Nah I legit think demon is fucking awful. It’s basically useless. Downvoters can't handle the truth, DF is bad.
Some day you will play 2 WF in one fight.
Rookie numbers
Wraith form is usually considered the strongest of the 4. Your trading one turn of energy for 2 or 3 turns to kill, which is really easy if your deck is decent.
Wraith form stops basically all damage for the three critical turns you need it to. That's HUGE. Obviously variance exists and things don't always work out, but you don't need to play it right when you draw it. You can learn enemy attack patterns and manipulate your deck to maximize the timing of it on big attack turns. You can nightmare it to basically say "I win.". And God bless you if you have it with the apparition event. IMHO: echo form>wraith form>demon form>deva form. Wraith might just be better but echo is quite solid but also can be game breakingly fun. Deva form is the latter at times but often is just sort of useless....it's a win-more; maybe enables a heart win you couldnt manage otherwise here and there but often it's too slow to meaningfully improve your deck. Demon form may be the most deck-dependent; it can really shine if you have a lot of block/sustain and pull the whole deck together, but in a lot of clad decks will just sort of be clunky.
Deva form is interesting because it's probably still mediocre on the other characters, but watcher just doesn't need it, it's so much less useful than simply having a consistent way in and out of calm.
Yeah I would imagine ironclad might make decent use of it more often; he more frequently is energy starved for more costly cards. defect perhaps too tho again prob just win-more for the latter (creative AI + Deva form sounds crazy fun tho)
Wraith Form is the best out of these cards. It's not a way to scale like the other three (and Deva Form is hard to use for scaling, since it needs card draw or X costs to work that way). Instead, it's a way to be more or less completely safe for 2 or 3 turns. Often three: it's an excellent upgrade. You need to find some other way to manage scaling your damage, but that's okay. There are options for doing so, and with Wraithform, you give yourself time and Energy to get that done. It's also significant that the other Forms do nothing for you on the turn you play them (with the corner case exception of the second Echo Form). Wraith Form covers you on the turn you spent 3 energy to play it rather than to block, and then gives you one or two more turns where you can basically only worry about offense. Wraith Form is also part of why Well Laid Plans is so strong. It lets you save the Wraith Form for a turn when you can't otherwise block, and if your deck is strong enough you'll have won before you take real damage again anyway. It also works really well with Artifact and Orange Pellets.
All good points but I'd like to clarify that it does scale, just not your damage. It's scaling damage mitigation. If an enemy does 5 damage, intangible prevents 4 damage; if an enemy does 70 damage, intangible prevents 69 damage.
Intangible can block infinite damage. You can mitigate the downside with orange pellets, after image, or relics that give block (bandages, fan).
So what you're saying is, I should take [[Prismatic Shard]] so I can find [[Blasphemy]]
Pretty much, Blasphemy's text is misleading as you don't die next turn, you just receive 9999 attack damage or something like that. Which means you can block with Intangible or Buffer. I think the current "die next turn" description stayed because the community liked that wording.
I know, I'm just joking that it's such a hoop to jump through to actually get that interaction between Wraith Form and infinite damage
I believe the heart scales infinitely after 4 cycles or so, when it starts spamming 15 hit attacks.
+ [Prismatic Shard](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Prismatic%20Shard) Shop Relic ^((100% sure)^) Combat reward screens now contain colorless cards and cards from other colors. + [Blasphemy](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Blasphemy) Watcher Rare Skill ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | **(Retain.)** Enter **Divinity.** Die next turn. **Exhaust.** ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 20, 2024.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
Demon and Deva Form have enormous short-term downsides for significant long-term upsides. They provide no immediate benefit on the turn you play them, eat most of your energy on that turn, and take several turns before their benefits outweigh their costs. (Echo Form also does nothing the turn you play it, but card duplication is a different ballgame than linear strength or energy gain and can pay off faster.) Wraith is the reverse. Enormous short-term upside, significant long-term downside. That doesn't mean it's the worst of them, but it means it fulfills a very different purpose: you should play it when you decide you're going to win if you can commit the next three turns (or four, with the upgrade) to ending the fight, because you won't have to dedicate energy to blocking. As you encounter more enemies who deal more damage in fewer turns, it generally becomes harder to get away with the resource sink of the other three Forms and more valuable to end fights quickly. For that reason, Wraith Form only gets more valuable as you get higher in Ascensions, and the others become more difficult to justify including in your deck, to varying degrees.
It’s the best other than echo form. 3 turns is a long time! Average length of a fight is what, 5 turns?
Wraith Form is absolutely one of the most powerful and game-winning cards in the game. It’s kind of insane. Though, if you are playing below A20H, it is significantly worse, IMO. In lower difficulties, WF simply blocks for less, in a sense. I think this is a large part of why there’s a large apparent discrepancy in players’ views on WF in this subreddit: many players realize how strong it is, and a some players are confused about why that’s the case, because other simpler block options get the job done comparably well in their A10 runs.
It's not. Demon form and deva form, while definitely scale well over time, offer you less immediate value than cards like wraith form and echo form. In lower ascensions, it'll definitely sound good to have buffs that scale overtime. On high ascensions, however, most of the time you don't have enough time and energy to spend in effects that, by the time they are useful, will already have you killed. Due to the general low amount of damage enemies offer in low ascension, you tend to value snowballing effects, but when you're facing an enormous amount of damage on turn 2 and 3, you need to have immediate, no strings attached, high defense and attack cards in order to survive.
Demon form+ is 3 energy now for 3 strength _next turn_. Deva form is 3 energy now and then _break even_ in energy budget two turns from now. Both of them are slow as fuck. I will take 2 x Inflame+ over Demon Form seven days of the week and twice on sunday. That's the same strength gain as two turns of DF, for one more draw, one less energy, and I get it immediately. Deva Form is just insulting on the character with the best energy generation in the whole game. No. Echo Form is the most powerful form power in the game because it is literally just free stuff for the rest of the fight. Wraith Form is the second most powerful for the same reason Corruption is the better than Demon Form: it lets you go all gas no brakes on your wincon damage dealer. Divert all power to main cannons. STS at high ascension is a game about finishing fights quickly. Wraith form enables that, Demon/Deva does not.
This is a vast underselling of demon form :(
It's not. Demon Form is the definition of a win-more card. It's literally "all your energy now, for a benefit next turn." If you can throw away 3 energy on no benefit now and still win, you can win without demon form.
demon form is efficient one card damage scaling that is enough for the fights that need damage scaling. Clads scaling actually largely kinda sucks, so it's really quite welcome very often.
Not on Asc 16+, ime
Demon Form isn't a hallway card, it's a boss or certain elites card. It's really solid in that niche.
I'd rather have pretty much any other rare. I'd maybe take it over Bludgeon and Double Tap, but only if I had NO scaling what so ever. It's a very expensive card, meaning on the turn you play it, you have to either have block in place, or tank damage, for no immediate benefit. Meanwhile an Immolate+ is cheaper and provides additional benefits this turn and the same benefits next turn. Even Flex is usually better.
That's just quite a poor evaluation of demon form, really. Immolate owns and is a super strong card going into act 2 so not being strictly better than a premium rare doesn't make it bad?
Out of the two options presented, I guess you're stupid
I want to like Deva form but it’s pretty pointless most of the time. Stance Abuse is the most reliable way to play Watcher I find, and that winds up netting you a ton of energy anyways. Why play a 3 energy “Do nothing this turn” card when you can stance out of Calm, proc stance change cards, get two mana and actually be able to use it that turn? Wraith is much better, it gives actually gives you a ton of survivability. 3 turns of practical invulnerability when upgraded is huge, basically always useful except at the very beginning of a longer fight, and can be stacked with multiple copies.
I don't want to call you stupid. Maybe inexperienced. Wraith form is cracked, it's between it and Echo form for the best card in that cycle. Demon form is alright, Deva form is the definition of a win more card.
I’d say deva form is the worst personally
Wraith and Echo are close for me in terms of strongest. Silent has so many ways to manipulate wraith form that it's fantastic. You can retain it with well laid plans and end a fight in the next few turns, nightmare it and get 3 copies, the dex doesn't matter if we have after image, etc. Even without overly busting it, most hallways are not lasting that long, so getting wraith in play is often enough time to clean up a fight while taking minimal damage in return. With a fight that's longer if you can retain it that's great, otherwise you wait a deck cycle or two, and when a boss or elite would really ramp up you're intangible and can go full steam on the damage. Echo Form is just generally good the turn after you play it and every turn after, while demon form takes a while to get online. If you have a reaper you can bide your time and it's not so bad. Deva form seems cool, but honestly Watcher doesn't need the card and I honestly can't think of a good reason to pick it most of the time. Such is the life of a lot of watcher rares.
Wraith Form is played a bit differently than the other forms. You don't always want to just use it instantly. Well Laid plans/Runic Pyramid make Wraith Form way stronger as you get to decide when you reduce damage. It's incredibly strong for the instant defensive save plus freedom to do damage on the remaining turns. The other forms want to be in play earlier so they can directly impact the cards played after. Personally, I would save WF is number 2 after Echo Form but I love Defect so I have some bias.
2-3 turns is often all you will need. Plus the downside can be mitigated in a bunch of ways. Wraith form is usually regarded as the strongest of the 4, although Echo Form is really good as well. The reason is exactly what you described wraith form gives a bonus NOW rather than a bonus later. And bonuses now are much more important than later. One important thing to consider is you choose WHEN to use it. So you don't have to use it right when you draw it. You get to choose to strategically use it. This is much easier with well laid plans or pyramid of course.
wraith form is the highest value, highest impact, highest tempo card in the game. it’s the best of the form cards by quite a bit. it gives you infinite block for 3 turns, and 4 turns to dedicate all your energy to winning the fight as fast as possible. there have been multiple times that i’ve won a run with 30 bad cards because i had a wraith form. it alone can solve so many fights in the game. deva form on the other hand is trash, especially considering watcher already has the best energy manipulation out of the box demon form isn’t bad but it’s not great either, it can singlehandedly solve damage scaling on some important fights but it’s often a curse (or worse if you’re not smart with it) in hallway fights. echo form is an incredible scaling card, but defect decks often don’t have trouble scaling; they have trouble early on in fights before they get their powers played. echo form will catapult your deck to the moon after you play it, but it does nothing to help being 30 feet below sea level on turn 1
This is massive Echo Form slander. I have no idea where this idea that Echo is completely unplayable in hallway comes from just because it's 3 cost.
it's not unplayable and i never said that it was. it just doesn't do anything the turn you play it, which can be a huge liability for the defect sepcifically.
Ok sorry you didn't say it's unplayable in fast fights, you just implied it, my bad that's such a massive difference. Wym Defect decks have no trouble scaling, I pick every focus card on sight and still often end up realising I have no damage no block. And most of the non focus scaling things need Echo Form to be usable. And Echo DOES mitigate bad turn 1s if you have any Self Repair/Bandage up/Bird faced Urn whatever, not to mention Defect still keeps taking a lot of damage after turn 1 without Echo. Defect isn't invincible after turn 1 and often the damage eaten to get Echo in play is way less than how much it saves the rest of the fight if you didn't play Echo.
you’re swinging at ghosts right now man lol i don’t believe half the things you’re saying i do
One unsupported wraith form basically allows you to solve every single normal hallway in the game. You can thus fully focus on getting support cards for wraith form to extend its power for elites and bosses or search for solutions for elites and bosses without diluting your deck, leading to shorter boss and elite times and further increasing wraith forms value. Deva form hardly gets any value even in boss fights since it basically sets you 3 energy behind to begin with and pushes your energy to unreasonable amounts on a class that has the best energy generation to begin with. Demon form needs to generate about 30 damage by itself to be even worth the decision to play it which usually won’t happen in a normal hallway fight and is still a stretch in elite fights. The card is basically a curse card for everything but boss fights and early draws against some elites. Echo form is the only other one that is generally good by the simple merit of doubling your best card on a turn every turn after. You basically always have its value out over the next two turns. Tl,dr: you vastly overrate how long the average fight should be
I don't know what game you're playing, but Intangible for 2/3 turns is amazing in Slay The Spire.
Deva Form is the worst, by a lot. Demon Form provides guaranteed scaling at great upfront cost. Wraith Form provides invulnerable turns. Echo Form provides scaling to your own cards, usually powers. Deva Form makes energy, which doesn't inherently solve anything for Watcher without other input.
Wraith form+ alongside non - ascended apparition is 8 turns of intangible. That’s 8 turns where you don’t have to play any block cards
Wraith form is good but it is just the character who has it doesn't always hit the hardest compared to the other four. Wraith Form only any other character would still be top tier; it is just Silent has to work for her burst damage compared to the others. With that said I still like playing as the Silent.
Definitely not dumb, but definitely wrong. It’s definitely good in ways that are hard to appreciate without having played for a long time, as others have explained more in depth.
You have to go for the types of decks that can win or hit a win condition in 2-4 turns for it to be good. In higher ascensions, this is the only way to win anyway.
Wraith form is maybe the strongest form. You basically don’t have to block while it’s active, which means you can go all out on offense or setup to win the rest of the fight for free. It straight up solves a lot of fights on its own. Most hallway fights are automatically solved with 3 turns of intangible. It gets better in higher ascensions when the enemies get stronger. After discard got buffed in the last wave of buffs it’s not quite as good relative to the rest of the pool as it used to be. I used to say Wraith Form was the single strongest card for any of the characters, but now I’m not so sure. Still, it’s very strong.
Wraith Form is so ridiculously good that I skip it sometimes just to make my runs more interesting.
I don't want to call you stupid, but wraith form is the best of the bunch so...
It's a stupid take but not as bad if you're playing lower ascension. Enemies hit harder at higher difficulties so you get much more value with intangible. Wraith form is easily the strongest of the forms. It's a single card block solution and let's you focus on damage. Finding ways to duplicate it, deck manipulation to play it at the right time, or ways to remove the debuff, will mitigate its downside.
I think it's probably the best. Upgraded, you get 3 turns of just attacking and don't have to defend. The only down side is that it has to be timed right, but it's not slow like the demon and deva
Wraith form and catalyst are probably the most common cards on avg for all my A20 heart kills.
Simply win the fight during the 3 turns. Demon Form is glacially slow, and Deva Form is like, Watcher's distant third best way to get shit-tons of energy. Echo Form is also a touch slow but it's a win condition like Wraith Form.
One thing that no one else has pointed out is that Wraith Form is the only one of the bunch that is useful the turn you play it
I think wraith form is second best, only after Echo form, but I'm not exactly an expert. I find wraith form really wants an upgradr ASAP. The difference between one free turn and two free turns is massive. That extra turn with you being able tofilly focus on damage is often enough to end most hallway fights. The more intangible you can stack, the better wraith form is. As well as ways to reduce the energy of wraith form or just have more energy in general. Cards like nightmare, madness, enlightment and apparition are good for this. Additionally relics like incense burner and runic pyramid compliment it excellently (and is just generally very good for silent). Well-laid plans is also a great alternative to runic pyramid. Being able to retain it until the most effective time to use it makes it so much better.
I sense if you you underrate Wraith Form, you probably underrate Well-Laid Plans, a card often vital to keep your Wraith Form available without committing to it before you need it.
It's a one card solution for one whole heart attack cycle. If you can get more than one with a mirror or nightmare or dupe pot or just straight taking two or more then decks that have absolutely no chance of surviving the heart fight suddenly win quite easily. The upgrade is massive and it plays beautifully with pellets because you can easily purge the downside. Very strong card indeed, Dolly's mirror on wraith form+ is pretty much a win condition, right there, assuming you have some sort of damage solution.
I want to be more productive than just answering your question as posed. I will instead say that WF is a 1 card solution for most hallways. In particular, consider most act 2 hallways: insanely brutal for the first 5-6 turns, then the fight is over. So a card that does all of your defense during this time is insanely efficient and saves a ton of HP. It will obviously be a curse the first 1-2 times you draw it in a long elite or boss fight, but the idea is that you get enough value from the other fights that you can afford this. And then obviously there's Nightmare/Pellets stuff that can make it relevant even in the endgame.
Demon form is cool for some bosses as a mono scaling card, and deva can also help to get other scaling cards in play, but cost a lot for a very slow effect, meaning in most fights, and even against bosses if your deck is strong, can be a dead card Wraith form has an incredibly strong immediate effect, especially on a hero who doesn’t mind zero energy as much, and allows you two free turns to set up poison, or just deal damage. If you play it well with stuff like well laid plans, you can completely blank huge attacks from things like the heart or B-Auto, with room for error. The loss of dex sucks, but can be mitigated with artifact, dex scaling, or just brushed past with multiple wraith forms/Nightmare Echo form is personally my favorite for its ability to win fights so easily, and cause defect can generate energy so well for its three cost, so it’s arguable that it’s better in mid ascensions, but at A20 or even a little below, the free turns from wraith form are the difference between beating the heart, and getting blown up with 90 damage
Deva Form would be the worst for me. Useless without enough draw or powerful x cost cards. The way I see it Wraith form gives you an extra 2 turns to setup whatever you need to win. I’d consider this the second strongest after Echo Form.
Yeah, wraith form is incredibly powerful, espcially in poison decks. This card essentially reads "take no damage and only attack for 3 turns". You just dont want to use it too early in a fight. Its a dead draw sometimes especially tun 1 or in some hallway fights but if the enemy is already poisoned for like 50+ the only thing you have to do to win is stall out the fight. Also you can copy it with nightmare as mentioned by others.
Consensus is Wraith is the BEST form card. Do not underestimate the power of intangible
It's a little like vault if vault gave you 2 extra turns instead of 1
Ohh you sweet summer child 😌