No More Permanent Focus: What the StS2 Orb Rework Actually Changed
If you mained the Defect in the original game, your hands already know the plan: stack Focus, sit behind Frost, let orbs out-value the fight. Delete that plan. StS2 removed permanent Focus stacking entirely, and the site's common mistakes list calls it out by name alongside no boss relics and no Dead Branch as the trap of playing like it is StS1. The Defect database entry says it plainly: permanent Focus stacking is gone, replaced by active channel and evoke play. Orbs are no longer an investment portfolio you build once and collect on forever. They are actions you take, on a rhythm, every turn.
What survived the rework is Defragment, and it is instructive to look at what it became. One cost, a Power, gain 1 Focus, 2 upgraded, and the card text notes that after the StS2 Focus rework this is the only stable Focus source, now a rare, and every orb deck wants it. Read the rarity shift as a design statement. Focus used to be a resource you accumulated casually from commons. Now it is a scarce, build-defining pickup you take on sight and upgrade on sight; the beginner FAQ literally uses Defragment as its example of a card that doubles when upgraded and is worth the campfire.
The consequence for how you play is bigger than one card. With no permanent scaling layer, the value in the class moved from ramping stats to sequencing plays: which orb you channel, when you evoke, and how many cards you can spend setting up versus surviving. Compile Driver drawing a card per different orb type rewards deliberately mixing your board instead of stacking one orb type into infinity. Dualcast evoking your rightmost orb twice turns orb order into an actual decision rather than trivia. Fights are won by tempo lines now: Ball Lightning on curve, Frost when the intent bar shows a big hit, Dark banked for the turn you can spend a Dualcast on it.
The second headline in the database entry is that the 0 cost Claw archetype returns and kills faster than anything else. That is not flavor copy: the build page describes it as the fastest kills in the game, an A tier archetype whose whole plan is spending zero energy per card. So the modern Defect is two decks wearing one coat: a tempo orb machine that mixes channel and evoke, and a 0 cost aggro deck that barely needs orbs at all. This guide covers both, plus the Frost plan for long fights, written against the v0.111 beta balance pass of Early Access.
Cracked Core and the First Five Floors: What to Pick Before Your Engine Exists
Your starter relic does work from floor one: Cracked Core channels 1 Lightning at the start of every combat. That is free chip damage in every normal fight of the run, and early Act 1 normals die to chip plus a couple of plays. Your basics are Zap, 1 cost, channel 1 Lightning, and Dualcast, 1 cost, evoke your rightmost orb twice, and together with the relic they form a functional if unexciting floor 1 to 5 kit. Seventy-five starting HP, fourth character in the unlock chain, opens when you start a run as the Necrobinder.
Act 1 is a damage check, not an orb check. Look at the numbers you have to race: Nibbit at 42 to 46 HP with a fixed loop of a 12 damage ram, a 6 damage swipe, and a Hiss for +2 Strength, and Mawler at 72 HP opening 4 claws for 2 each into a 14 damage Tear with a one time roar for 3 Vulnerable. Pure Frost answers die to that clock, and the classic new-player loss is drafting defensively out of fear and then losing a nine turn damage race at 15 HP per turn of leakage.
The commons that fix this are the two you should be happiest to see. Ball Lightning, 1 cost, deal 7 damage, 10 upgraded, and channel 1 Lightning, is damage now plus tempo later. Cold Snap, 1 cost, deal 6, 9 upgraded, and channel 1 Frost, is the same deal on the defensive axis. Both are correct first picks on almost every Act 1 reward screen because they convert the card into something this turn and an orb for the next one, which is exactly the channel plus evoke rhythm the rework is built around.
Elites decide your card budget. Bygone Effigy at 127 HP cycles asleep and awake, and the sleep phase is your free setup window: channel Frost, play your Defragment if you were lucky, and hold Block for the wake-up turn. Byrdonis at 91 HP alternates Dive and Peck for steady mid damage, a fight where Weak or a Frost cushion shortens the bleed. Since v0.101, floor 6 no longer spawns elites, so the early floors are for cash and commons; the standard plan is two or three damage plays in the deck by floor 6, then look at the elite pool and pick a path with a rest site before the first one.
Shop rule, same as every character but worth repeating: removing a starter Strike or Defend is usually the best gold sink, per the site FAQ, and it applies double here. Both of this class's real engines, orbs and Claw, live or die on how often you draw the cards that matter, and nothing buys draw quality like a smaller deck. If the shop also offers a rare, weigh it against two removals before you spend.
Lightning, Frost, Dark, Plasma: Which Orb Does What and When You Want It
Lightning is the default and the tempo orb. Your starter relic channels it, Zap channels it, Ball Lightning channels it while attacking, and Tempest channels a whole board of them at once. Lightning is how this class ends fights before enemy scaling comes online, and against Act 1 damage checks it is the correct answer far more often than newer players assume.
Frost is the survival orb. Cold Snap pairs it with 6 damage, and Glacier, 2 cost, gain 6 Block, 9 upgraded, and channel 2 Frost, is the core of what the database calls the Frost turtle deck. Frost is not what you want in Act 1, because block does not race a 72 HP Mawler, but from Act 2 onward it is what lets you stand in front of Tunneler's 23 damage strikes and Owl Magistrate's 33 damage Verdict without spending your whole hand on defense.
Dark is the burst orb, and the database ties it directly to Dualcast, calling that card the key to Dark orb burst turns. The pattern is bank and detonate: channel Dark early while cheaper plays handle the turn, then spend a Dualcast to evoke it twice for the spike. Dark rewards patience and planning in a way Lightning does not, which is why the Claw build page calls Dark-orb control the polar opposite of the 0 cost aggro plan.
Plasma rounds out the four as the energy orb, fitting a class whose identity line in the database is literally Orbs slash Energy. Extra energy is the least glamorous effect and the one that enables everything else: bigger Tempests, a same-turn Defragment plus Glacier that stabilizes a bad spot, or one more Claw dump.
Then there is the card that pays you for mixing: Compile Driver, 1 cost, deal 7 damage, 10 upgraded, and draw 1 card for each different orb type you have. Two orb types and it is a solid cantrip; three and it is one of the best draw commons in the game. Mixed boards used to be a compromise, something you tolerated while waiting for Focus to carry a monoculture. Post-rework, with no permanent Focus to stack, a Lightning plus Frost plus Dark board is actively good, and Compile Driver is the reward for building it. That single card explains the rework's philosophy better than any patch note: diversity of plays, not accumulation of stats.
Lightning Tempo: Ball Lightning, Tempest and the Energy Relics That Fund It
Ball Lightning is the backbone: 7 damage, 10 upgraded, plus a Lightning orb, all for 1 cost. Every copy is damage this turn and passive pressure next turn, and it is the common you are never sad to see in Act 1 or Act 3. Tempest is the ceiling for orb volume: an X cost uncommon that channels X Lightning, X plus 1 upgraded, one card, a full board of orbs per the database. Its power scales directly with your energy discipline, which makes the energy relics disproportionately good here.
Lantern, S tier on the site list, grants an additional energy on the first turn of each combat. First turn is exactly when channel plays are strongest, before enemy buffs and block fill the board. Ice Cream, consensus S tier, conserves energy between turns, which converts two modest turns into one Tempest for 3 or 4 orbs plus whatever else you held back. Ectoplasm, the Ancient, is plus 1 energy per turn at the price of never gaining gold, which suits a deck that wants to fight elites for relics rather than buy cards.
The matchups where Lightning tempo is the answer are the scaling races. Ceremonial Beast gains +2 Strength every turn and staggers below 150 HP into Ringing, where you may only play one card per turn; you want it dead or nearly dead before that phase, and a Lightning burst plan is the fastest route. Knowledge Demon, the fight the site calls the hardest boss, forces a permanent debuff choice every round, 6 damage per turn or one fewer drawn card, escalating later into card and energy caps, while healing itself and gaining permanent Strength. The strategy line is to race aggressively, and Lightning is the race.
Honest limits, because tempo has a ceiling. Vantom opens with 9 Slippery stacks making every hit deal 1 damage, and its loop puts a 25-plus swing on turn 3 and a self-buff window on turn 4; fast small hits are actively terrible into Slippery, so that fight is a strip-and-bide matchup where you remove stacks with cheap multi-hits and spend real damage on turn 4. Waterfall Giant detonates for its Steam Eruption stack count no matter what, and Weak does not reduce the blast, so tempo there means racing the stack count, not just the HP bar. Knowing which race you are actually in is the skill: HP races favor Lightning, clock races favor defense, and reading the intent row correctly is what separates a good Defect run from a dead one on floor 14.
Frost Turtle: Glacier, Defragment and Outlasting the Act 3 Gauntlet
Glacier is the anchor: 2 cost, gain 6 Block, 9 upgraded, channel 2 Frost, and the database names it the core of the Frost turtle deck. Defragment is the multiplier: 1 Focus, doubled to 2 when upgraded, and since the rework made it the only stable Focus source, one upgraded copy is the difference between Frost holding the line and Frost politely suggesting you block. Every orb you channel gets better for the rest of the fight off a single card play, the last remaining piece of the old Focus dream compressed into one rare.
The turtle plan is for long fights, and Act 3 is where it pays. Tunneler at 87 HP bites for 13, burrows for +32 Block that never decays, then strikes from below for 23 every turn; breaking all its Block stuns it, which rewards saved burst, but the default line is block 23 a turn and grind, which is a Frost deck's dream assignment. Frog Knight at 191 HP carries 15 Plating and unleashes a one time 35 damage beetle charge below half HP, so the plan is literally to have 35 block ready on the turn you push it under. Owl Magistrate runs a fixed 4-turn loop ending in Verdict for 33 damage plus 4 Vulnerable, and its Ascend turn is your free damage window. Soul Nexus, the Act 3 elite, always opens with Soul Burn 29, so the entry fee to that fight is 29 block on turn one.
Emotion Chip is the class relic that ties the package together: if you lost HP last turn, trigger all orb passives at turn start. In a long fight where chip damage leaks through, that is a recurring bonus passive trigger, effectively doubling your orb output on alternating turns. It is one of the few relics that gets stronger the longer a fight runs, which is exactly the Frost turtle's time horizon.
Know when turtle is wrong. Knowledge Demon punishes slow decks with self-healing and permanent Strength while squeezing your turns with escalating debuff choices; against it, block-heavy builds lose the race. The Insatiable's Sandpit timer starts at 4 and zero means the run ends, with each Frantic Escape card in your deck buying one more turn, so that fight rewards spending everything immediately over building a fortress. The correct read is that Frost is your Act 2 and 3 insurance policy, drafted after your damage plan exists, never instead of it. A deck of six Frost sources and no clock stalls beautifully and then loses.
Claw Is Back: The 0 Cost Cycle That Kills Faster Than Anything Else
Claw is back and it is still 0 cost: an attack that buffs every Claw you play for the rest of the combat. The compounding is the whole card. Claw one makes Claw two bigger, which makes Claw three bigger, and within a single fight your free cards out-damage most 2 cost attacks. The build page rates the archetype A tier with difficulty 2 and calls it the fastest kills in the game, which in a roster containing the Silent's Shiv engine and a Regent finisher that spends 7 Stars for 49 AoE is a serious claim the community backs with play time.
The database lists the build core as Claw plus All for One plus FTL, with Scrape and Beam Cell named as part of the 0 cost damage cycle. Treat that as the draft template: free attacks that feed each other, retrieval that brings them back, and cheap enablers. The mechanic underneath is cycling. Every 0 cost card you play thins the turn's cost, and the engine wants a deck small enough that the pieces find each other, which makes card removal and reward discipline structurally load-bearing for this archetype specifically, not just general good advice.
Relic fits are unusually sharp. Brilliant Scarf, an Ancient, makes the 5th card you play each turn free, and its database description, a hidden engine for big-hand decks, is almost a literal description of a Claw turn, where you routinely play six or more cards. Unceasing Top draws a card whenever your hand empties during your turn, a draw engine for fast-cycling decks, again a description of this deck's resting state. Gremlin Horn refunds energy and a card on enemy deaths, converting swarm floors into more dumps. Mercury Hourglass chips 3 to all enemies at turn start while you set up.
The threat is Afflictions, and this deserves emphasis. StS2 replaced curses with Afflictions, debuffs attached to your existing cards that cannot be removed at shops. The site's relic synergy page gives thin Claw decks a specific warning: avoid Affliction-priced blessings, because a deck built on cycling five cards a turn cannot afford a single polluted draw. Practical version: when an Ancient or event offers power at Affliction cost, a Claw deck declines where a chunkier deck might shrug and pay.
One honest weakness, straight from the build page: long fights. The cycle is fast, not infinite, and the page names Dark-orb control as the polar opposite for exactly those matchups. Against Mecha Knight's 300 HP or the Knowledge Demon, know whether your run is the aggro version or has backed into the control version, and play the fight accordingly instead of hoping the compounding carries a fight it mathematically cannot.
Dark Burst Turns: Dualcast, Orb Order and the Compile Driver Draw Engine
Dualcast is a basic card hiding a rare card's ceiling: 1 cost, evoke your rightmost orb twice. The database calls it the key to Dark orb burst turns, and the operational word is rightmost. Orb order is a real decision: if you channel Dark early and keep layering other orbs behind it, you can set up a board where the Dualcast finds exactly the orb you banked. Playing orbs carelessly and then Dualcasting whatever happens to sit on the right is leaving the entire payoff to chance, and it is the most common technical error in mid-skill Defect play.
The burst turn, scripted: turns one through three, handle the fight with cheap plays, Cold Snap, Ball Lightning, a block card, while channeling Dark as energy allows. When the board is set and the enemy intent shows a setup turn, or you simply have the spare energy, spend the Dualcast and cash the bank. Against elites with windup turns, Bygone Effigy waking, Owl Magistrate's Ascend, Mecha Knight's Windup, that is when the spike lands, because the turns you do not need block are the turns you can afford to spend on damage.
Compile Driver makes mixed boards tick: 7 damage, 10 upgraded, plus one card per different orb type. In a Lightning and Frost deck it is a cantrip with upside; add Dark and it is draw 3 attached to a playable attack. The database calls it the draw engine of mixed-orb decks, and post-rework that is not a niche, because with no permanent Focus monoculture to build toward, the mixed board is the default good state and Compile Driver is the reward for reaching it. One copy is fine; two copies make the deck feel like a different class.
Multi-enemy fights change the priorities. Entomancer at 145 HP summons bees all fight and the board keeps growing. Ovicopter spawns 3 eggs that hatch into larvae within a turn or two, and the tip is to pop the eggs before they hatch. Gremlin Horn, the S tier relic granting 1 energy and 1 card per enemy death, is at its best in exactly these fights, turning each kill into fuel for the next play. Decimillipede at three 40-ish HP segments is the counter-example: segments Reattach at 25 HP when one dies while others live, so AoE is a trap there and focused single target burst, Dark into one segment at a time, is the correct line.
Echo Form: The Ceiling Card and How to Protect It
Echo Form is, per the database's own words, the ceiling card of every Defect deck: a 3 cost rare Power where the first card you play each turn is played twice. It is Ethereal, meaning an unplayed copy in your hand is discarded at turn end, and the entry adds three words that should shape your whole upgrade plan: top upgrade priority. Upgrading key powers over resting is standard site advice, and no Defect card rewards a campfire more.
What it doubles is the fun part, because it doubles whatever your run does best. Tempest becomes channel X twice, which is two boards of Lightning for one card. Dualcast becomes four evokes. Defragment becomes plus 2 Focus in a single play, the old dream compressed into one card. Claw gets buffed twice, accelerating the compounding by a full turn. Even a humble Ball Lightning becomes 14 damage and two orbs. The rule of thumb: after Echo Form lands, let the doubled card be the most expensive, most game-warping thing in your hand, not the cheapest thing you happened to click first.
The Ethereal clause is the skill check. Draw Echo Form on a turn where you must spend all your energy blocking and it evaporates. Draw it with 3 energy available and it defines the fight. That tension pushes you toward two things: energy relics, Lantern on turn one, Ice Cream banking between turns, Ectoplasm's flat plus 1, and setup windows, turns where the enemy gives you space to play a card that does nothing immediately.
This game hands you those windows if you know where to look. Bygone Effigy cycles asleep and awake, and the database tip is to set up powers during sleep and hold Block for the wake-up turn. Lagavulin Matriarch starts asleep and the fight gets worse the longer it runs, so a power played during sleep is pure profit. Byrdonis alternates Dive and Peck rather than escalating, so a Peck turn with a Frost cushion can carry the Echo Form. Owl Magistrate's Ascend turn and Mecha Knight's Windup turn are mid-fight windows in Act 3. The habit to build is scanning the intent row for the turn you will spend 3 energy on a card that does nothing this turn, and then taking it without apologizing to yourself.
One sequencing note that separates good Echo Form pilots from great ones: it doubles the first card you play each turn, and it does not choose. If you reflexively open every turn with your cheapest play, you will double a Zap and waste the effect. Decide the first card of each turn before you touch anything else in your hand.
Boss and Elite Answers, Phase by Phase
Ceremonial Beast, Act 1a, 252 HP: it gains +2 Strength per turn, a pure damage race, and below 150 HP staggers into Ringing, where you may play only one card per turn. Orbs are quietly one of the best answers in the game to Ringing, because orb passives fire on their own timers rather than on card plays; Emotion Chip literally re-triggers all orb passives at turn start based on HP loss. A banked orb board keeps output flowing while you spend your single allowed card on the best thing in your hand.
Knowledge Demon, Act 2, 321-plus HP, the hardest boss in the game per the site: every round forces a permanent debuff choice, 6 damage per turn or one fewer drawn card, later escalating into card-play and energy caps, on top of self-healing and permanent Strength gain. The strategy line is to race aggressively and punish its multi-hit turns with retaliation effects. For Defect, racing means Lightning and Claw, and the drawn-card debuff makes Compile Driver and draw relics more valuable than usual, because the fight attacks your hand size directly.
Kaiser Crab, Act 2, 209 plus 199: you are Surrounded, so hits from the claw at your back deal 50 percent more, and the Rocket claw's 31 damage Laser is the lethal move, with the survivor claw gaining Strength and a large Block bonus when its partner dies. Focus the Rocket claw, kill both within a turn or two of each other, and prefer damage that does not care about facing.
Test Subject C10, Act 3, 100/200/300 across phases: phase one punishes skills with +2 Strength, so lean on attacks, and the kit obliges with Ball Lightning, Cold Snap, Compile Driver and Claw. Phase two shoves Wounds for unblocked damage, so tighten block discipline. Phase three alternates Intangible, so strike only on vulnerable turns. The database tip says scaling powers win, which for this class means Defragment and Echo Form paid for during the earlier phases.
The Queen, Act 3, around 400 HP plus a 199 guard: kill the Torch Head Amalgam first or she Enrages into an Execution loop, turn 2 slams 99 stacks of Weak, Vulnerable and Frail where Artifact is the answer, and her Chains bind the first cards you draw each turn, allowing only one Bound card per turn while mid-turn draw stays unrestricted. A deck that plays few large cards, an Echo Form doubled Tempest, a big Dualcast, barely notices the restriction; a deck of many small plays feels it every turn. Elite respect in Act 3: Mecha Knight at 300 HP with 3 Artifact and a fixed 4-turn loop ending in 35 damage Heavy Cleave is called the deadliest elite in the game, and the database says undercooked decks should skip it.
Relic Priority and the Three Ways Defect Runs Die
The shortlist, in rough priority order. Energy: Lantern, plus 1 energy on the first turn, S tier; Ice Cream, energy conserved between turns, S tier and the highest ceiling; Ectoplasm, plus 1 per turn if you can live without gold. Consistency: Bag of Preparation draws 2 extra on turn one, which is where Defect hands are weakest; Gambling Chip sculpts every opening hand; Snecko Eye, the Ancient the community rates at a 93.8 percent win rate despite only a 13.1 percent pick rate, draws 2 extra per turn at the cost of starting each combat Confused, and orb decks tolerate cost chaos better than most.
Class-specific: Emotion Chip, the Defect rare that triggers all orb passives at turn start when you lost HP last turn, is a recurring passive doubling in long fights. Rarity spikes: Arcane Scroll grants a random rare card, which on this class is a lottery ticket on Defragment or Echo Form; Yummy Cookie upgrades 4 cards on pickup, and the community takes it at a 69.9 percent rate in Ancient trios; Astrolabe transforms and upgrades 3 cards, an instant deck-quality fix for a thin Claw deck that drew some bad early picks.
Sustain and defense: Pantograph heals 25 at the start of boss combats, Sai grants 7 Block per turn, Anchor 10 at combat start, Beating Remnant caps HP loss at 20 per turn for high Ascension, Lizard Tail revives you once per run at half max HP. Gremlin Horn and Mercury Hourglass do the work in swarm fights, energy and cards per kill plus 3 damage to all enemies at turn start respectively.
Now the three recurring losses, so you can check yourself mid-run. First, drafting Frost before damage and dying to the Act 1 race. The fix is brutal simplicity: take Ball Lightning and Cold Snap early, because they are good in every version of the deck, aggro, turtle, or mixed. Second, channeling without evoking. Orb passives are fine, but the spikes live in evokes, and a board full of banked orbs with no Dualcast to cash them is a museum, not an engine. If three fights in a row end with a full orb board and unused evoke potential, the draft has drifted.
Third, playing the StS1 ramp plan: waiting for Focus to accumulate while the game's fights were balanced around the rework. Defragment is a rare now. Treat every copy as build-defining, upgrade it when the campfire offers, and stop expecting the class to carry you on stats it no longer has. Version anchor for everything above: v0.111 beta, Early Access, August balance pass, with the v0.108 end of turn resolution change already baked into current fight behavior.