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Despite Slay the Spire 2 only being out for a few days, a dedicated player of the first believes one character in Mega Crit's roguelike stands above the rest. Apparently, if you want an immediate leg up in the sequel, The Silent is the way to go.
The fan in question goes by JapaneseExport, and they're a self-proclaimed top five player in the world for Slay the Spire, with over 10,000 hours clocked on the original. Those are some decent credentials for getting a quick lay of the land in Slay the Spire 2. They believe The Silent is "hands down the strongest character" right now, and their position at launch is "very worrying," going through why point-by-point on Reddit.
"The discard cards and early damage cards that Silent has are WAY too strong," JapaneseExport writes. "When I have any good damage card I can skip the large majority of my rewards and be completely fine."
The player enjoys Sly, a mechanic that forces The Silent to automatically play any card they discard, and their general approach, but balance is skewed in their direction. "The numbers need tweaking in order to incentivize other strategies to shine," JapaneseExport writes. "Every run feels like it leads me to the same thing, and the core powers from Spire 1 are still in the game that trivialize a lot of encounters."
Indeed, The Silent comes with Footwork, Well-Laid Plans and Noxious Fumes from the first, all still as useful as they were previously. Carrying over certain elements for the follow-up was expected, but it seems like they haven't been re-tuned for the current battlefield, giving them an edge over other options.
JapaneseExport calls the poison effect outright "bad," and states there's minimal punishment for you constantly "forcing blocks/infinite ideas." They provide a video with considerably more detail that culminates in a tier list for The Silent, which I'd recommend if you wish to dig in further. No doubt Mega Crit's been getting piles of feedback, but this may shoot up the list considering the source and specificity of the information.
