This guide will help you on building a Valentine deck with both power and fun.
Before We Begin: Why Do I Want To Use Valentine?
I know that to many of you, Valentine has always been a meme, a joke, even a clown. People would say things like "+2 power to a single die is far weaker than +1 power to 3 dice" or "the more dice you have, the more you benefit from power" and etc. Now I'm not saying that your idea on utilizing the power boost with more dice is wrong. True, its benefit is obvious against enemies with average attack rolls that you can easily out roll. For a long time, I believed in these too.
However, the introduction of Red Mist and Purple Tears has changed my mind. When the guests get more power boosts than we do, and out roll us instead, things begin to get tedious for unlucky players, such as myself.
Then it occurs to me: why don't we create a situation, in which we can win all the clashes we choose to engage in, and take damage to the unblocked attacks? This leads to the more extreme thoughts: what if we heavy blow the opponent in the first hit, then take the remaining hits? At the end of the day we still deal more damage to the opponent than they deal to us.
With that in mind, I scrapped my original team and quickly built Valentine Smoke Red Mist and Valentine Smoke Hubert, both of which are great damage dealers. VSRM is especially good at obliterating the enemy team when you have some smoke stack and the enemies are "almost" staggered (in my case, i would say around 25 is a good to go as long as their stagger resist don't endure slash).
This week's update (1.0.3.7) brings the magical Purple Tears who can shift among 4 decks, which is a very good toolbox in my opinion. And I have my last Valentine in spare so lets go.
Step 1: Set Up Passives
The blank passive is because I used a appearance change mod to make Dexter more cute. The passive's effects are the same as your PT's.
The passives I picked for VSPT are quite obvious. You clearly need Valentine's Singular Strike or else this wouldn't be called a Valentine deck. Now to maximize your damage output, both smoke related passives are also required. With these passives, you will be able to deal crazy damage in slash stance/ stagger damage in Blunt stance.
The interesting choice here is Keeping in Stride. This passive is actually a better Health Hauler in my opinion. You can switch to defense stance whenever you find yourself in great need of health or you're simply overwhelmed and want to rest.
Step 2: Bring Me My Guns (I Mean Katana)
This stance is the main damage dealer stance.
Smoke on self good. Smoke on enemy also good. Damage boost more good. Vapour very good.
Class and Respect is just straight up better Clean Up. Remember that since all your cards get +4 power at least, Class and Respect is a 8-12. This can practically out roll most 2 costs your enemies throw at you.
Burning Flash is just here to counter some stupid XAX cards. Two 6-10s is more powerful than even some 3 costs, effectively reducing incoming damage. And did I mention that the first die always gets the Singular Strike bonus whether or not you replicate the die?
As you probably would have guessed, after you get Mimicry on this floor you're invincible. Invincible. Dealing 100+ damage and heal as much is pretty easy even if you're only hitting a slash normal enemy. Better pair her with Nicolai for more damage.
Also, Bloodthirst and Smile with enough smoke is an easy board wipe.
Although the stance itself can run pretty smoothly, there are times where you want to play a high cost combo such as double Vapour into Burning Flash. After this you might find yourself in lack of light. This is when we shift to other stances.
Step 3: Recreation (with Snack)
This stance is mainly about recovering Hp and gaining emotion from clashes.
Serpentine Barrier basically reads: restore 9 hp and counter 3 pages. Which is too effective to only use one. The even better news is that if a page is filled with counter dice, it returns to your hand after use. This means that if we play this with Smoking Pipe we don't lose hand count. Keeping hand count up is vital to PT as she carries her hand count over to other stances when shifting. I put in Sturdy Defense for some easy card draw. As for Energy Shield...
Step 4: Supercharge (Not Overcharge)
And there was light.
Graze the Grass grants both light and charge. Most importantly, it's a 0 cost, meaning if you shift into this stance with no light you can immediately play 2 Graze the Grasses and a Single-Point Stab.
If your light count is 1 or higher, Guidance of Gears is here to help you maintain smoke stack. Gale Kick makes the 2 long scenes less boring as you can parry with it, instead of doing one-sided weak attacks.
Like I just mentioned, you keep hand count when shifting stances, meaning Single-Point Stab is a 0-cost draw 2 pages if you play 1, or you can play 2 to draw 3. It also guarantees that you draw an light restore next scene. And actually its rolls are sometimes insane.
If you switch into pierce stance with 3 speed dice, you can restore 5 light (enter and exit costs counted) and lose 2 hand count, probably not losing much smoke, and ready to strike again in slash stance. However, if you find yourself lack of smoke or pages in hand and your E.G.O isn't ready yet, switch to Blunt stance.
Step 5: Harmony (and Wisdom In Fists)
What a surprise, we're actually going to use all the charges we gain from other stances! Who would have thought about that?
Seriously, I think this stance is very self explanatory. You either Inhale Smoke into Slash stance Smile board Sweep, or come in and draw a lot bunch of pages to help you out in your other stances.
Bonus Clips
A "struggle" against the supposed-to-be hard Rhinos from R Corp. 2. Since they have a sturdy block lead and heavy blunt attacks to follow up.
Lowell in this picture is actually my VS Hubert lol. Unsurprisingly, Onslaught kills all.
Source: https://gameplay.tips/guides/9255-library-of-ruina.html
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