We’re finally back with the Slay the Spire series, getting to the end with the fourth and final character: The Watcher.

Once more, it’s been a while since I last talked about StS – but if you want a refresher, go ahead and check out the relevant posts for the Ironclad, the Silent, and the Defect.

The Watcher

The blind ascetic, master of the divine stances. You know the drill – I assume you’ve unlocked all her cards, and that you’re reasonably familiar with the mechanics of the game. As I mentioned in the previous post for the Defect, as we move away from the “starting” characters, there is more and more fuzziness when it comes to discrete archetypes, and the Watcher is at the far end of that. The Defect could be separated in orb-focused and attack-focused (even though there were hybrid builds as well), but the Watcher usually has the same win condition: enter Wrath to boost your damage, and attack. However, there’s still quite a bit of nuance. As Wrath also deals 1 damage to you every turn, you need to be careful, so it really helps if you have teammates that can assist you with blocking; if you play solo, however, you need to invest in sufficient defenses.

Now, let’s get into the “archetypes”. I’ll say it again – your main archetype is just go into Wrath and deal your damage. The variations are just what you do beside that (if anything – when we play in a group of 4, the Watcher is usually just going ham on purely damage). The only case where there’s a bit of variation is when you rely more on big attacks with Retain, but even then, Wrath is just a good bonus to have.

All-Around Good Cards

Not an archetype, but all of these cards are good regardless of your build. You don’t have to get them, especially if your deck is already getting large, but especially early on, they’re solid.

Attacks

Cut Through Fate is probably the flagbearer for this sort of category. Damage and card draw for 1 energy is already a bargain, but the scry on top is just the best – you never really feel bad taking it. Even very late in the game, unless you’ve trimmed down your deck aggressively, this can still find a place since it allows you to dig 4 cards deep. Just Lucky seems a bit similar, but the 0 energy cost and the unreliability pushes it more towards a cheap damage dealer in Wrath for me, though it can be useful in almost every circumstance – the question is more whether you want it to clog up your deck, or if there’s something better you can pick to specialise when it’s offered to you. Finally, both Consecrate and Conclude are great options in the early floors, but depending on your build, they might not translate into something that stands out later on.

Skills

Most skills can fit in any deck. The ones for stance switching are a bit of an exception, because you might not want all of them, but we’ll get into it in the relevant paragraphs later. However, you have some pretty decent ones otherwise. Protect is a solid defensive pick with extra utility – Retain lets you keep it for emergencies as long as you want, and targeting other players is a big upside. Perseverance also fits the same criteria – in many cases, it’s even better, because it stays in your pocket and it only costs 1 energy, but if you topdeck it, it doesn’t feel as good to miss out on the extra block. Third eye is another good defensive card, and I’ve come to appreciate Scry a lot the more I play. Prostrate is another solid pick; essentially costs 0 energy, or lets you bank a Miracle for another turn if you’ve got nothing better to do. Not groundbreaking, but it helps. Finally, however, it’s one of my favourite cards, Pray. Card draw plus miracles, this is essentially an Adrenaline – and the downside of being unable to draw more cards is easily mitigated, as most of the time you don’t really care. Don’t sleep on this one.

Now for the rares. The Watcher has some of the most explosive, always-pick-these rares in the game, as well as some solid picks – but also a couple of… not meh, but very situational ones as well, so we’ve got lots to say. First up, Blasphemy. The Watcher relies purely on attacks for damage – no poison or orbs that need skills, so whichever way you go, this can be used. And it can be used in 2 ways – first, as a finisher, of course, dealing massive damage, but second as more of an opener. Consider this – you start with Blasphemy and a decent hand on the first turn. Some decent block and a good attack. Would you mind playing this hand every turn? Not really – Use blasphemy, exhaust the rest of your deck (including all these Strikes and Defends) and you’re guaranteed a good turn constantly. Be careful though, because if you overestimate your cards and find out they can’t cut it halfway through the fight, well, you’re all out of luck and you’ve only got yourself to blame.

Deus Ex Machina is a bit less of a power hit. 3 Miracles for 0 sounds good, but unless you’ve got stuff to do with the extra energy, do you really need it? Or rather, do you need it over the other 2 picks in a rare reward? Especially considering there are common and uncommon alternatives (worse, sure, but they exist). Moving on, Judgement is perhaps the weakest skill here – useless against bosses, and while it can one-shot several normal enemies and minions, it will almost never be better than an attack in a decently optimized deck – not with enough consistency for it to matter. But perhaps I’m being too harsh, admittedly I haven’t experimented with it much.

On the other hand, Omniscience is… let’s say pretty good. It can be a finisher like Blasphemy for a big attack – less overall damage, but you don’t have to have the target in your hand. It can also be used defensively for some big blocks, or, in rare cases where you’re living the dream, you can hit a Wish and breeze through any fight. Incredibly versatile, almost always a must-pick.

Scrawl is a bit more boring by comparison, but just as powerful. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it – if card draw is king, then Scrawl is the emperor. It’s like Pot of Greed but 2.5 times better. You take this, not much more to say. Getting to something a bit less high power, it’s Spirit Shield. Honestly, this one isn’t that mindblowing. Yes, you can occasionally get huge amounts of block with this (Scrawl helps), it’s often just a Protect (without Retain and without helping allies) if it’s the first card you play each turn. Some decks use it better, and it’s not bad, but there are better options than this. Vault, however, is good. Just without any other support, it’s kind of like a Scrawl, and if you have both of them together (which has happened to me), you can draw 15 cards in one turn and pretty much set up whatever you need for the rest of the combat.

Finally, we’ve got the big boy, Wish. A greedy pick, but greed is good, and the options are all helpful. I rarely use it for block, but it’s always good to have it available as a panic button; the Strength is a massive boost, but you need to make sure you’re safe this turn since it’ll take up all your energy. Finally, the miracles are often just as good, helping you set up faster and safer. As I mentioned before, Omniscience into this is the dream – double strength, or strength+miracles is just so much fun to pull off.

Powers

The powers are a lot more specialised, especially the common and uncommon ones. But if you see them early, they can offer you a solid direction for the rest of your build. Still, that means I’ll cover them in their respective parts, rather than here. The rare powers are more generally applicable, however. Devotion is alright, though it falls into the same problem that Machine Learning had for the Defect – it takes 2 turns for it to be a net positive, so it’s a bit too slow if you don’t have a reliable way to get it out early. Omega feels bad to me, too expensive and leaves you very vulnerable the turn you play it – good for normal fights with lots of little guys I guess, but I don’t know if it’s worth it. But like with Judgement, I haven’t really played around with it, and it might actually be much better than I think.

Wrath

Here I’m talking about the purely Wrath focused, all-in aggression version of the deck. Yes, you want most of these cards regardless of what you end up building (as I’ve reiterated over and over, I’m sure it’s getting tiring for you at this point), but some cards who find themselves at home in other archetypes are just mediocre or bad in this one.

Attacks

Eruption is in your starter deck, and is your primary way of getting into Wrath for a good chunk of the early game. 90% of the time, this is also the first card you upgrade, because that 1 energy discount is massive. Besides that, Tantrum is another way to get into Wrath, so you want it as well. You NEED to get into Wrath as soon as possible, so the more cards you have for that, the more consistent your deck is, and consistency is king. Tantum has the extra advantages of being a multi-hit card, so it’s nice even if you’re already in Wrath, and it goes back on top of your draw pile, letting you play with stance switching more reliably; this also helps with defense. It might sound a bit strange, but what I mean is that if you know you can re-enter Wrath next turn, you can switch stance to Calm or Neutral to avoid the 1 damage, instead of worrying you’ll whiff your next turn because you won’t have damage.

Crush Joints is a nice utility card, but not necessary. It’s the only source of Vulnerable for the Watcher outside Indignation, so you don’t easily skip it, but you don’t feel bad if you don’t see it during a run. You’re more interested in your big damage dealers; cheap attacks with multiple hits, and thankfully, there are enough of them. Consecrate, Flying Sleeves, and Conclude are your main sources of damage, with Cut Through Fate giving you extra card draw and Wallop rounding out your defenses. Overall, you’re not hurting for options. Of course, the pinnacle is Ragnarok, which can easily deal over 25 damage with just mediocre setup.

What you’re not really looking for is the more expensive attacks with higher base damage like Windmill Strike or Signature Move, at least not when you’re going purely for Wrath. Just Lucky is often tempting, and it’s a nice utility, but not a core card.

Skills

Crescendo is an obvious candidate here, and a quick upgrade as well. It’s everything you want: switch into Wrath, 0 cost, retain, and it even draws you a card – and it’s a common. You pretty much always pick this. Indignation is a bit more debatable. It does put you into Wrath, but if you use it for that role it’s obviously much worse than Crescendo or ever Eruption – but it’s the only source of Vulnerable besides the aforementioned Crush Joints. I think it really depends on how many other players there are and what characters they play. If you’re solo, it’s a lot more tempting – but if you have an Ironclad with you, it suddenly looks a bit superfluous. Swivel is an honorary mention for some extra damage – but it only really shines if you have Ragnarok in hand, otherwise it’s too expensive to really properly take advantage of. Finally, Wreath of Flames is pretty good, even if you only cast it for 1 – it just stacks nicely with all your other cards.

The other skills you’re looking for are the ones I already mentioned in the all-rounders – special mention to Blasphemy which gets extra good in this type of build.

Powers

Powers are pretty straightforward here. You desperately want Simmering Fury – more than perhaps anything else, because the damage boost is just too good. Battle Hymn is also great, as it also helps you get past enemies that don’t like getting attacked (for example spikers). Rushdown, on the other hand, actually is more debatable. Yes, it looks great of course, but if you run the type of build that enters Wrath and then never leaves it, it can often be unreliable and even useless.

Stance Switching

Stance switching still depends on Wrath for damage, but usually trades better (much better, really) defenses for a lower damage ceiling.

Attacks

All the attacks that were good in Wrath are also good here, with the addition of Fear no Evil for the extra option to get into calm. Empty Fist is also quite good, not necessarily on its own but it supports a couple of other cards – namely, Flurry of Blows, which is a core part of the archetype. Sash Whip is good if you’re playing solo, because it’s the only source of Weak you have, but otherwise you can leave that to your allies.

Skills

Same thing – what was good in Wrath is also good here, with the addition of Empty Body and Empty Mind. Tranquility and especially Inner Peace are also important, though Halt is less so, since you won’t be in Wrath as reliably and you’ll have extra energy from leaving Calm to play more expensive blocks. That energy can also be used more efficiently for Wreath of Flames for a much better strength payout than on pure Wrath builds, which can bridge the gap in terms of damage potential. And finally, Pray remains a good card regardless.

Powers

Powers are a bit of an issue here, because there’s a lot of them that are appealing, but you can fall into a trap of spending 2 or 3 turns doing nothing but setting them up and falling behind. Mental Fortress is the big one here – if you have it, you can just focus more on attacking and drawing cards and let it take care of defenses. Like Water can have a similar role, but it feels weaker – though ending your turn in Calm is often the best choice, both for not getting the damage from Wrath and for setting up +2 energy for next turn when you exit. Study has the same requirement (on the start of your turn, but if you end turn in Calm you start it as well), but for a much bigger upside – drawing cards lets you draw into your tools for more switching, and thus more stuff to do. And speaking of card draw, Rushdown really shines here as well, since you’ll probably trigger it every turn. Overall, I think you can skip Like Water, and I’d generally prefer Rushdown over Study if given the choice.

Miracles

This is a more unique build, and it really requires you to get a specific rare card early on to build around. You can always get some miracle-generating cards in other archetypes to get some extra energy, but here you really need them – the issue however is that you don’t have much to spend the miracles on.

Attacks

There is only one attack you really really want, and it’s Brilliance – obviously. 15 damage for 1 energy is pretty good, but you can only have 1 copy of it in your deck – thus, you want all the card draw you can get to quickly get it back once you use it. This means Cut Through Fate is almost mandatory as well. The other alternative that can push you into this direction is Reach heaven, which is uncommon but has similar damage – it can get up to 12 instead of 15, but it has the upside of dealing a little bit of damage even with 0 miracles. Of course, Talk to the Hand is the other prime candidate. The issue (if it can be called that) is that Brilliance is a multi-hit attack – as such, it benefits from strength and Wrath a lot, so even if you get the dream Miracle build, it’s still even better to invest in the standard Wrath stuff as well, and use Brilliance as just another source of damage like Conclude, rather than the centerpiece of your deck. Keep in mind however that Reach Heaven is NOT a multi-hit, but a flat damage increase per miracle.

Skills

If, however, you want to stay purely in the Miracle territorry, you have some interesting options. This is the best fit for Blasphemy, as it’ll wipe out the rest of your deck and let you play full-power Brilliance over and over. You also need ways to generate Miracles – Collect, Pray, Worship, and Deus Ex Machina all work for this, though you only need a couple of them; no need to flood your deck with cards that you won’t be able to use. Prostrate is also nice, but it only gives 1 Miracle; it’s more of a block card, but still good to have. Make sure you have at least one repeatable source of Miracle though, as only Pray and Prostrate don’t exhaust and you don’t want to run out.

Powers

You know how you can be sure you won’t run out of Miracles though? That’s right, with Deva Form. Not much to say here – it’s obviously the best fit, though as I mentioned earlier you might be tempted to grab some thing like Devotion (which is better here than usual) or even stuff like Simmering Fury or Study, if you can support them with enough stance cards.

Retain

This is perhaps the archetype that relies on stances the least. However, its cards are a bit more expensive, so dipping into Miracles or getting some way to get in and out of Calm may be a good idea.

Attacks

You’ve got 2 big hits here – Sands of Time, and Windmill Strike. The issue however is that they don’t really scale very well into the late game. Sands of Time can reasonably get to 12, 15 damage perhaps, but Wrath can reach that easier, and Windmill Strike is a big chunk early on but 7 damage gets less and less impressive as you climb floors – especially considering it needs to sit in your hand a turn.

Skills

Perseverance is obviously good here, but the other standout is Meditate – returning cards from discard back to the hand is great to bypass the limitation I just mentioned, of having to wait a turn; your targets are most likely going to be Windmill Strike, Sands of Time, and Perseverence, which already have Retain but you don’t really care about missing that tiny bonus. Spirit Shield is quite better than usual with Retain, since you consistenly have more cards in hand left over from your previous turn.

Powers

Establishment, of course, playing your cards for free is great. Absent that, Deva Form is good as well. I’d consider (not very enthusiastically, and only if i already had Establishment or Deva Form already) Omega as well, since it gives some much-needed AoE damage.

Miscellaneous

There are 2 not quite archetypes, but more like mechanics i’d like to mention. The first is Scry, and specifically the scry powers: Foresight and Nirvana. I’m not very impressed with them, because there’s not many sources of scry to begin with, and those aren’t enough to justify diluting your deck with them. You’ve got Cut Through Fate, and Third Eye, and Just Lucky which only counts for half of a scry card. And what’s your payoff? 2, maybe 4 block, and some extra damage from Weave if you manage to discard it. Sure, the block is very good for being “free”, but how do you deal damage? With any of the other archetypes, but then adding scry stuff just makes it harder for them to get going.

The second is more of a meme, which I haven’t managed to get working, but I really want to see some time – and it’s Conjure Blade. It might actually work decently with some Miracles to get a high enough X, but I’d love to try for a fun custom game where you start with Conjure Blade, Apotheosis, and Strike Dummy and see where that gets you.

Relics

Now that we’ve talked about cards, let’s look at some relics as well. Since you rely mostly on attacks, anything that gives strength is good, and if you’re going Wrath double (or triply) so. That means Akabeko, Mutagen, Vajra, and Red Skull. In particular, for that last one, a fun little interaction is that if you use Omniscience, you shuffle your library after – which activates it much earlier than usual if you get lucky enough. Same goes for Blasphemy.

Ninja Scroll also synergises well with Wrath, Runic Pyramid is an excellent bonus for Retain decks, and Golden Eye is still pretty bad and you wouldn’t want to build a Scry deck around it regradles, sorry.

Other than that, card draw is of course always nice, but defensive relics are excellent to save you from the Wrath damage. Orichalcum in particular neutralizes it, but you might also consider things like Centenial Puzzle and Self-Forming Clay, turning that 1 damage ping from Wrath into an occasional upside, as long as you can maintain your health.

As for boss relics, you don’t really need the extra energy ones since Miracles can work in a similar capacity. Wrist Blade can be decent with stuff like Consecrate and Flurry of Blows, but it can also be a welcome damage bonus in a Retain deck if you have the discount from Establishment.

Final Thoughts

The Watcher is fun because she’s usually pretty aggressive, and I love it when she teams up with a Silent – one stays defensive and spams weaks and blocks, the other sets up Wrath and blows up everything. But she can also have some rough games where she can’t get a good deck off the ground and stalls in the midgame. However, I still really like the feeling of going back and forth between stances, as it feels like a very “active” game with her.

I might be done with the characters (not really, I’m considering going back and updating the previous posts), but I’m not done with Slay the Spire; next time, I want to go over some more fun stuff: challenges, achievements, and in particular infinite combos. But until then, let me know what’s your favourite way to play the Watcher!