The Best Builds, Cards, And Relics For The Defect In Slay The Spire 2

Once you have unlocked the final character in Slay the Spire 2, you’ll meet The Defect. This is an already familiar figure from fans of the first game, and it’s making a comeback in the sequel. The Defect fights using unique balls with special effects called Orbs, and you can create useful synergies with them and specific cards.

In this guide, we will go over everything you need to know when it comes to The Defect’s best strategies, what cards you should look for, and what the best relics are that you could find. Let’s learn the best builds for The Defect in Slay the Spire 2.

The Best Defect Builds

While you can create multiple builds with The Defect, and there’s a popular one that involves Status cards and seems to have unfulfilled potential, we are going to focus on two builds in this guide: the Claw Build and the Orbs Build.

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The Orbs Build

The Defect has the ability to channel Orbs above himself. These Orbs have both a Passive and an Evoke effect. While the former triggers at the end of each of your turns, the latter needs to be activated by using a card with Evoke or by channeling a new Orb when you have no more spaces.

You start with three spaces for your Orbs, but the idea of this build is to expand your repertoire. To do so, you need to get the card Capacitator, which adds two more slots (three if upgraded). This will let you build your Orbs army and have multiple buffs and/or pokes.

As there are a handful of types of Orbs, you can move your Orb builds in different directions (think of them as sub-builds), but we recommend using Lightning. Many cheap cards (Zap, Ball Lightning, Lightning Rod) let you channel Lightning Orbs, and then there are Tesla Coil and Voltaic.

Voltaic lets you channel Lightning Orbs as many times as you have channeled during the current combat. At first, this might not be that helpful, since you probably don’t have many Lightning cards. Plus, it has Exhaust, so you use it once, and that’s done.

However, as you build your deck with many Lightning cards and you upgrade Voltaic (it removes Exhaust), you’ll be able to channel dozens of Orbs, evoking all the ones you already have and some more.

Tesla Coil comes into play when you already have many Lightning Orbs. It lets you trigger all your Lightning Orbs to one selected target, and if you have used Capacitator and any card that adds Focus (increases the number of your Orbs), you’re going to make that enemy hurt really badly.

Best Cards For The Orbs Build

You have a couple of cards, such as Defragment and Hotfix, that give you Focus, which will increase the damage you do with your Lightning. Before using Voltaic or Tesla Coil, you can use these cards to buff your Orbs and deal even more damage.

While we haven’t included them in our core list, you can of course have cards that channel Orbs of other elements. For example, Cold Snap lets you channel one Frost, which will add Block after you finish your turn. Shadow Shield will channel one Dark Orb and give you 11 Block.

If you have noticed a downside in this build so far, it is that it doesn’t have too much Block power, so we need to compensate there. Additionally, if you play against creatures that don’t let you play many cards in a row, you might be in trouble.

Best Relics For The Orbs Build

The bad part of these relics is that you’ll have to unlock all of them by playing with this character. But once you do, you’ll be able to trigger your Passives multiple times with the last two, and the build we explain goes a little too well with Metronome.

The Claw Build

As you can imagine from the name, the Claw Build will focus on using Claw, a 0-cost card that deals three damage to one enemy and increases the damage of every Claw card (including itself) in your deck.

While the initial damage might seem marginal at first, what we are interested in is the second part. The idea of this build is to have as many Claw cards as possible, and then have cards that let you play them multiple times in a single turn.

For example, if you get All for One, and you have already discarded some Claws, you can use the former and get the latter for free, ready to continue dealing damage to the enemy.

The Defect has more 0-cost cards that deal damage, like Go For The Eyes, which also adds 1 Weak, and FTL, which lets you draw 1 card if you played fewer than three cards in the current turn.

Best Cards For The Claw Build

As previously explained, pick up as many Claw copies as you can, and start increasing their damage as soon as possible. Then, you should build your deck to help said Claws reach your hand.

For example, Hologram lets you put a card from your Discard Pile. Your Claw with the highest damage is the easy pick. You can also use All for One if you already have a couple of Claw copies or other 0-cost cards in your Discard Pile.

We added two Powers in the build that can be used together. Echo Form is the least important one, but it lets you play any card twice (it does cost 3 energy, though). Feral, on the other hand, lets you play a 0-card twice, so this is our preferred one. And if you have both Powers together, you’ll be able to play a 0-card three times in a single turn.

Best Reclics For The Claw Build

Pretty self-explanatory, but every relic that gives you a positive effect after playing multiple cards will be welcome here. With the synergies that we already explained, you’ll be playing multiple cards per turn, so you’ll activate these relics without a doubt.

Power Cell is a rarer relic, and it will be difficult to get it in every run, but once you do, you’ll already start each fight with the chance of grabbing Claw and start boosting your attack.

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