The Defect is one of the playable characters inSlay the Spire and one of the most complex. He has a special mechanic, which is called the Orbs, and the strongest strategies in the game. However, it's hard to use them successfully in practice.
I’ve noticed thatDefectbuilds differ greatly from builds on Ironclad, Silent, or Watcher because of the Orbs mechanic. However, it gives a lot of variety in Defect’s playstyle and allows you to create interesting decks.
So, on this page, you will find everything you need to know about the Defect in Slay the Spire, as well as the best Defect strategies, builds, cards, relics, and more.
The Defect Basics
I’ve played Defect for dozens of hours, passed every level of Ascension, and I can say that Defect is the third hardest character to master, after Ironclad and Silent. The harder character is only Watcher. It is quite difficult to play Defect because of the huge number of combinations.
The Defect has many strategies that can be used: the build on Lightning Orbs, Frost Orbs, Dark Orbs, Claw Build, and the build on infinite talents. There is another strategy through the Hyperbeam card, but it is too specific and suitable only for low difficulty, so I did not add it to this guide.
To understand how to play as a Defect in Slay the Spire you need to feel the strength of the character and understand its nuances.
Defect Starting Relic
The starting relic of Defect is called Cracked Core – it allows you to start each battle with one charged sphere of lightning.This relic is great for the basic Defect build based on lightning orbs.
Unfortunately for other builds this relic is not very useful, so it seems to me that this starter relic is weaker than other characters’ base relics.
Defect Orbs and How do They Work
Orbs is a unique Defect mechanic on which the character’s gameplay is based. Initially, the character starts the game with 3 slots for orbs, but their number can be increased or decreased in the course of the game.
To increase the number of slots you can use the Capacitor talent (adds 2/3 sphere slots), as well as the Inserter relic (every 2 turns adds 2 slots for orbs) and Runic Capacitor (gives 3 extra orbs slots at the beginning of combat). If your deck is focused on a large number of orbs, these relics and talents are worth taking.
Each orb has a passive and an active effect. The first activates automatically at the end of each turn, without player action. The active effect triggers at the rightmost orb when you run out of free orb slots and add a new orb. After activation of this effect, the orb disappears.
Types of Orbs
The defect has four types of orbs in total, which can be activated by relics or cards:
- Lightning Orb: Passively deals three damage at the end of your turn. The active effect deals 8 damage.
- Frost Orb: Passively gives two blocks to the character at the end of your turn. The active effect gives Defect 5 points of block.
- Dark Orb: Passive ability increases this orb’s damage by six points at the end of the turn. Active effect deals accumulated damage to one of the opponents.
- Plasma Orb: at the beginning of your turn give 1 energy. The active effect gives you 2 energy.
What is Focus and How Does It Work?
Another unique mechanic of Defect in Slay the Spire is the focus. It increases the power of orbs by the amount of focus the Defect has. For example, if you have 2 focus, the lightning orb will passively deal 5 damage instead of 3, the frost orb will give 4 defense instead of 2, and the darkness orb will increase the damage by 8 instead of 6.
It’s very important to increase the Defect focus during the battle. You can use Biased Cognition, Defragment, Consume cards, as well as Data Disk relic (gives 1 focus at the beginning of the battle) to increase this figure.
The focus does not affect the plasma orb.
Defect Build on Lightning Orbs
Basic Cards: Thunder Strike, Electrodynamics, Ball Lightning, Static Discharge, Storm.
Lightning is the easiest of the four spheres to use. In turn, the lightning strategy is probably my favorite, and at the same time, it is not difficult to play. However, it does require a lot of rare cards for maximum effectiveness.
The idea of the lightning strategy is very simple. During the battle, you need to charge the maximum number of spheres in 4-5 turns while killing all enemies with mass attacks and blocking attacks with defense cards. If any enemy is left after that, you can end the battle with a Thunder Strike card.
It’s important to understand that you can find Thunder Strike closer to the third act, and that’s okay. You can confidently get to the third act without this card.
Cards for the Lightning Build
There are a few must-have cards for Lightning build to success at any level of the game:
- Electrodynamics: charges 2/3 of the lightning orb, as well as lightning strikes all enemies at once
- Ball Lightning: Deals 7/11 damage and charges a lightning orb
- Thunder Strike: deals 7/9 damage to a random enemy for each charged orb of lightning in combat
- Storm: Charges 1 lightning orb when you cast the power
- Static Discharge: Charges 1/2 lightning orbs when your enemies deal damage to you
Other good choices for this deck are Defragment (to increase focus) and Capacitor (to increase orb slots). You can also play a Seek card to get the necessary cards out of your deck and cast them faster.
It's alsoimportant not to forget about defense.In Slay the Spire Defect has several strong defense cards, such as:
- Boot Sequence: Gives 10/13 defense and burns (costs 0 energy)
- Charge Battery: Gives 7/10th of a shield and an extra energy point the next turn
- Auto-Shields: Gives 11/15 defense if you don’t already have any
- Genetic Algorithm: Gives 1 block. Permanently increases this card’s block count by 2/3 when played
- Leap: gives 9/12 defense
- Steam Barrier: Costs 0 energy, gives 6/8 protection and reduces this card’s defense number by 2
Useful Relics for This Build
There are several relics that are very good to get for this build:
- Torii:Whenever you would receive 5 or less unblocked Attack damage, reduce it to 1
- Ice Cream:Energy is now conserved between turns
- Data Disk:Start each combat with 1 Focus
- Gold-Plated Cables:Your rightmost Orb triggers its passive an additional time
- Mummified Hand:Whenever you play a Power, a random card in your hand costs 0 for the turn
- Emotion Chip:At the start of each turn, if you took any damage last turn, trigger the passive ability of all your Orbs
Build on Frost Orbs
Basic Cards: Chill, Coolheaded, Glacier, Cold Snap, Blizzard.
The second strongest Defect build is the Frost build. It’s not very hard, but it can be hard to deal damage to enemies since most of your cards give protection rather than damage.
The main idea of the Frost Build is to accumulate as many blocks as possible each turn while activating frost orbs at the same time. By picking up the necessary cards you can easily get 30-40 defense passively every turn, which will protect you from almost any attack. Once you’ve played enough Frost Orbs for the game, you can play a Blizzard card and end the battle. Moreover, you can also use general attack cards to defeat enemies.
Cards for the Frost Build
There’s only 1 required card in this deck, but it’s worth knowing about all the others. The following cards are great for this build:
- Blizzard: deals double/triple damage to all enemies from the number of ice spheres charged. Key card to win on high-difficulty levels
- Coolheaded: charges 1 frost orb, gives 1/2 card
- Chill: Charges 1 Frost Orb for each enemy in battle
- Glacier: Gives 9/12 block, 2 ice spheres.
- Cold Snap: deals 6/9 damage and charges 1 frost orb
Furthermore, Defragment and Capacitor cards are also good for this build, but not really necessary. You can also boost this deck with the card Loop (it activates the effect of the orb at the beginning of the turn, and thus gives you extra protection).
Useful Relics for the Frost Build
As for the relics, there are few of them that may be useful for this build:
- Frozen Core: An extremely strong relic for this build. Frozen Core replaces the starting relic, charges 1 frost orb at the beginning of combat, and adds 1 frost orb every turn if there are free orb slots.
- Insert: adds 2 orb slots every 2 turns. A great choice for this build, since charging a lot of frost orbs is not a problem for Defect.
- Gold-Plated Cables: The rightmost sphere is activated 1 more time at the end of the turn.
