I dont understand. with the plasma deck, the whole point is that your chip:mult ratio doesnt matter. in both examples the ratio is still 1:1 for plasma deck right? so why would having a 6:1 ratio of chips to mult matter at all?
I think he is explaining that the scaling of the blinds is steeper than the expected or intuitive value of the Plasma Deck's effect. So your chip to mult ratio needs to exceed the number provided to give you a good enough square to be on par with the traditional scaling of blinds.
Having played a lot of Plasma Deck, this is very useful insight. You often use chips early but they do not scale as much as X Mult, so you run into some treacherous rounds while you try to transition into useful triggers of X Mult, flat mult is pretty bad for the Plasma Deck so you need to find rare and uncommons with good synergy to really stretch your legs into Endless. In all successful endless runs I've had and seen, you need zero flat mult jokers and zero chip jokers, hand upgrades are all you need to set your bases to be ready to X Mult.
You're correct in the sense that the ratio doesn't matter as it's the square, but it does matter in the sense of how much better your chips or mult need to be in an efficient place to stay ahead of the increased blind scaling.
However, I may be misunderstanding.
You got it. It's the counter intuitive nature of thinking "Whatever I build helps, because plasma balances it" when if you build a balanced deck you'll be doing worse than a traditional deck and would be better not playing plasma. And while you can say "But I'm not playing a traditional deck, why should I care?", you should care because that's effectively the score the game is balanced around and you are behind the curve and can at a glance see your deck is being sub-optimal.
Understanding that the danger threshold is when your chips:mult get below a 5.8, in essence you're playing against blinds more difficult than the game balance is meant for, has helped inform me on if I should be greedy with my re-rolls to get better jokers for the next blind or not as I can better realize if my build will be strong enough while transitioning.
with plasma you don't need xmult at all, and you're much better off going all-in on +chips cards and ignoring mult/xmult
it's not that mult is bad with plasma but considering that chips and mult provide the exact same value and +chips bonuses from jokers and card upgrades, you should only take mult near the beginning and give it up for +chips any chance you get. I imagine this is why op is struggling with plasma, since I've found it to be the easiest deck to win with
Plasma just allows you to be greedier with your jokers and focus on one thing. So it's early game chips, X Mult mid game (which can be setup with some base mult), but late game it should be hand trigger with X Mults (usually) and then the plasma gives you some extra room since your hand will be like 200 x 1.0e9 or something like that. Which is well above the ratio described here.
The transition is the killer because the scaling is so aggressive and then mid game is your weakest point with flat multi and x Mult.
It’s only useful in comparing when plasma is outperforming a regular deck, which only occurs above this ratio. As far as guiding your decisions, it shouldn’t at all. Just max chips + mult
It should guide your decisions, if you focus both at once you'll be having a harder time to win. You can, but it's basically self imposed hard mode. And if you're swapping from chips to mult, which I find necessary on high stakes or if you want to go past Ante 8, then it's important to know when your deck is at its weakest to maybe push a shop harder and lose some interest to get enough joker or hand support.
Plasma is absurdly strong, don't get me wrong, it can win quite easily on lower stakes, but I think it's helpful to analyze why and when it is strong. It's strong *because* focusing chips is an easy way to get a big number and stay about the 5.8 ratio. If you focus chips and flat, or even x2 mult and keep them roughly even, you're playing sub-optimally and would have performed better / gotten further with any other deck in the game
what benefit at all does going for mult have in a plasma deck? You can get all the scaling you need from +chips jokers/upgrades to win, and should ignore mult completely imo because chips provide the exact same benefit but get much higher numbers
Depends on your luck getting good chip jokers, as well as what stake you play. Higher stakes make chip only more difficult to win, especially Ante 8 can be out of your reach. You can totally win going chip only, although if you want to go endless mode, multiplier is the only way to go. I've beaten Ante 23 with plasma deck focusing on multiplier, wouldn't have even gotten close with chips.
I rarely have a run with 1000+ chips. Maybe bad luck, maybe I'm not leaning into them enough. But even 1000 chips isn't enough to beat Ante 8 reliably on higher stakes.
depends on blind requirement but if you consider the best case for chip jokers at like 500, 250 x 250 = 62 500 ... So you need some sauce around Ante 6 or 7 to prep for boss and then endless, but the real advantage of the deck is using ante 1-5 to generate a lot of economy and deck manipulation so you can catapult into whatever good trigger or x Mult arrives.
You can definitely win Ante 8 with just the chip jokers and such, but endless will not be possible without some prep for the switch. Ideally you can get your crazy x Mult triggers online before then or hold some jokers that work with a combo.
If you plan to go endless, it's once you've built up a nest egg and have enough chips to guarantee you beat ante 7 and 8. One of my earlier runs with plasma on a high chip difficulty I switched to the 2x multiplier from kings and it almost cost me the game, but that's the risk you have to take. I didn't go endless so in all of my runs to beat ante 8 I just keep chips (1000 chips is enough for ante 8)
This isn’t actionable in anyway that really helps. If you’re playing plasma deck, you shouldn’t be worried about your ratio at all, you should be worried about increasing the value of chips + mult.
In a run, the counterfactual of what your score would be with a different deck and blind is irrelevant. Just max chips + mult and the ratio makes no difference.
It does matter.
If you end up building a balanced style on plasma, you will be doing significantly worse than if you were playing a specific deck. You can win playing a perfectly balanced deck, sure, but it'll be significantly harder than if you instead focus on one of them rather than both evenly. And when one side gets "too" high, it's typically wasteful to raise the other as then you aren't getting advantaged by the multipliers.
Especially once you get up to gold stake, this matters a lot.
No, it really doesn’t. What the same combination of jokers and cards would do with a different deck is irrelevant advice for someone on a run with this specific deck.
On plasma, you should maximize the total of chips + mult. That’s it. No ratio has any impact on your score on that run.
That means you should lean into mult because of x mult cards, but only insofar as they raise the total of chips + mult. The ratio itself is totally unrelated and you shouldn’t care about it within-run at all. Just max chips + mult.
If in a run you score a hand of 10,000, but see the blind is 56,000, that's a good indicator that "Hey, my deck is not performing well and I need to make changes or I'll lose."
That's an actionable piece of information, right? It tells you that your deck is weaker than it needs to be and informs that you may need to lose interest in the next shop so you can build a better deck or set of jokers.
Well, on plasma, having a lower ratio provides information too. Yes, you can see your score and factor that in. Obviously no point caring about it at the moment if you're easily beating blinds, it helps inform you that you are scaling worse than the game balance is intending you to do so. You might already be strong enough, you might not, that's on you to see in a run. It also can help people realize why the same build they used to beat another run is struggling on plasma, this is why. The exact same build on plasma and non-plasma, with a ratio lower than 5:8, will have the non-plasma deck perform better, so you can shape your builds with that knowledge.
If you don't care to use this level of analysis, or don't find a need to think about the logic of why certain things work for one build and not another, that's totally fine. You don't have to care about it in a run if you don't want to.
But I find it helpful, especially for transitioning into Endless and gold-stakes difficulty.
This is just an intuitive thing that you do with plasma deck and learn quite early on. What the person above you is saying is correct. As for transitioning for gold stake difficulty, with the right jokers, you don't need to. Bull with 1000 chips easily destroys ante 8, and so does half that with blueprint. The joker which gives 300 chips gives ample breathing room to find better chip scaling or switch to mult scaling.
It's simple maths, chips + mult get averaged, and then squared. much stronger scaling function by far than any multiplier. It's why chips alone beat ante 8 even in gold stake difficulty, and why plasma is best for super duper lategame. It feels unfair that a flush can 1-tap the first boss, and that only a few chips allow so much breathing room early.
Well maybe I have much worse luck than you, but I can't manage a 100% win rate on gold stake, nor do I find bull in even half of my runs, let alone the support to then also get $500 for it.
I'm around maybe 75% win rate and have found mid game hard as several runs just *don't* have strong chip jokers early, especially with Gold Stake being really rough with your economy. Beating 500,000 stakes is difficult without luck on chip only, as it's hard to get that many chips reliably IMO.
Ah well, I just wanted to share the math behind when Plasma is weaker or stronger than a traditional deck's scaling, that's an objective fact that if you're below 5.8 multiplier you're scaling below what the game expects of you. Everything else discussed here is either subjective and not related to that. Cause yeah, having 1000 chips is strong, and above the ratio, so beyond the scope of what I wanted to share and a different discussion.
It’s better to focus on increasing one thing rather than trying to split your attention. If you are doing both chips and mult, the benefit of the decks balancing ability is not being used well.
So if I understood correctly plasma deck is an early game powerhouse and you're supposed to build a really strong economy during that window, because there is no way you can keep up the 5.8 ratio even before ante 8 I believe, unless you are trying not to get a reasonable multi amount.
I dont understand. with the plasma deck, the whole point is that your chip:mult ratio doesnt matter. in both examples the ratio is still 1:1 for plasma deck right? so why would having a 6:1 ratio of chips to mult matter at all?
I think he is explaining that the scaling of the blinds is steeper than the expected or intuitive value of the Plasma Deck's effect. So your chip to mult ratio needs to exceed the number provided to give you a good enough square to be on par with the traditional scaling of blinds. Having played a lot of Plasma Deck, this is very useful insight. You often use chips early but they do not scale as much as X Mult, so you run into some treacherous rounds while you try to transition into useful triggers of X Mult, flat mult is pretty bad for the Plasma Deck so you need to find rare and uncommons with good synergy to really stretch your legs into Endless. In all successful endless runs I've had and seen, you need zero flat mult jokers and zero chip jokers, hand upgrades are all you need to set your bases to be ready to X Mult. You're correct in the sense that the ratio doesn't matter as it's the square, but it does matter in the sense of how much better your chips or mult need to be in an efficient place to stay ahead of the increased blind scaling. However, I may be misunderstanding.
You got it. It's the counter intuitive nature of thinking "Whatever I build helps, because plasma balances it" when if you build a balanced deck you'll be doing worse than a traditional deck and would be better not playing plasma. And while you can say "But I'm not playing a traditional deck, why should I care?", you should care because that's effectively the score the game is balanced around and you are behind the curve and can at a glance see your deck is being sub-optimal. Understanding that the danger threshold is when your chips:mult get below a 5.8, in essence you're playing against blinds more difficult than the game balance is meant for, has helped inform me on if I should be greedy with my re-rolls to get better jokers for the next blind or not as I can better realize if my build will be strong enough while transitioning.
Thanks for explaining that so well.
Because xmult triggers before plasma triggers, so having a higher mult means your xmult gets more value.
If that's the case, and given that chips are (typically) easier to scale than mult, that just means that xmult should be avoided in plasma decks?
Xmult is pretty much required to scale late game, so you end up transitioning from chips to mult at some point. Which is what this post is about
with plasma you don't need xmult at all, and you're much better off going all-in on +chips cards and ignoring mult/xmult it's not that mult is bad with plasma but considering that chips and mult provide the exact same value and +chips bonuses from jokers and card upgrades, you should only take mult near the beginning and give it up for +chips any chance you get. I imagine this is why op is struggling with plasma, since I've found it to be the easiest deck to win with
Once you hit endless you can’t really scale on chips alone, xmult is pretty necessary
OP is talking about mid game, not endless. +chips will get you through ante 8 no problem.
I’m not OP man, I can’t say why they’re struggling lol. Maybe higher stakes? Their math is still interesting though
Gold stakes and a general desire to go to endless. Even non-endless, Ante 8 is pretty rough to win on pure chips unless you're lucky.
I believe it
I don't think general advice should be tailored to endless runs.
Plasma just allows you to be greedier with your jokers and focus on one thing. So it's early game chips, X Mult mid game (which can be setup with some base mult), but late game it should be hand trigger with X Mults (usually) and then the plasma gives you some extra room since your hand will be like 200 x 1.0e9 or something like that. Which is well above the ratio described here. The transition is the killer because the scaling is so aggressive and then mid game is your weakest point with flat multi and x Mult.
It’s only useful in comparing when plasma is outperforming a regular deck, which only occurs above this ratio. As far as guiding your decisions, it shouldn’t at all. Just max chips + mult
It should guide your decisions, if you focus both at once you'll be having a harder time to win. You can, but it's basically self imposed hard mode. And if you're swapping from chips to mult, which I find necessary on high stakes or if you want to go past Ante 8, then it's important to know when your deck is at its weakest to maybe push a shop harder and lose some interest to get enough joker or hand support. Plasma is absurdly strong, don't get me wrong, it can win quite easily on lower stakes, but I think it's helpful to analyze why and when it is strong. It's strong *because* focusing chips is an easy way to get a big number and stay about the 5.8 ratio. If you focus chips and flat, or even x2 mult and keep them roughly even, you're playing sub-optimally and would have performed better / gotten further with any other deck in the game
what benefit at all does going for mult have in a plasma deck? You can get all the scaling you need from +chips jokers/upgrades to win, and should ignore mult completely imo because chips provide the exact same benefit but get much higher numbers
Depends on your luck getting good chip jokers, as well as what stake you play. Higher stakes make chip only more difficult to win, especially Ante 8 can be out of your reach. You can totally win going chip only, although if you want to go endless mode, multiplier is the only way to go. I've beaten Ante 23 with plasma deck focusing on multiplier, wouldn't have even gotten close with chips. I rarely have a run with 1000+ chips. Maybe bad luck, maybe I'm not leaning into them enough. But even 1000 chips isn't enough to beat Ante 8 reliably on higher stakes.
please show me a run where you've gotten 20000 chips base
you don't need 20k to win ante 8. OP is talking about struggling mid run
when is the best time to transition then?
depends on blind requirement but if you consider the best case for chip jokers at like 500, 250 x 250 = 62 500 ... So you need some sauce around Ante 6 or 7 to prep for boss and then endless, but the real advantage of the deck is using ante 1-5 to generate a lot of economy and deck manipulation so you can catapult into whatever good trigger or x Mult arrives. You can definitely win Ante 8 with just the chip jokers and such, but endless will not be possible without some prep for the switch. Ideally you can get your crazy x Mult triggers online before then or hold some jokers that work with a combo.
If you plan to go endless, it's once you've built up a nest egg and have enough chips to guarantee you beat ante 7 and 8. One of my earlier runs with plasma on a high chip difficulty I switched to the 2x multiplier from kings and it almost cost me the game, but that's the risk you have to take. I didn't go endless so in all of my runs to beat ante 8 I just keep chips (1000 chips is enough for ante 8)
This isn’t actionable in anyway that really helps. If you’re playing plasma deck, you shouldn’t be worried about your ratio at all, you should be worried about increasing the value of chips + mult. In a run, the counterfactual of what your score would be with a different deck and blind is irrelevant. Just max chips + mult and the ratio makes no difference.
It does matter. If you end up building a balanced style on plasma, you will be doing significantly worse than if you were playing a specific deck. You can win playing a perfectly balanced deck, sure, but it'll be significantly harder than if you instead focus on one of them rather than both evenly. And when one side gets "too" high, it's typically wasteful to raise the other as then you aren't getting advantaged by the multipliers. Especially once you get up to gold stake, this matters a lot.
No, it really doesn’t. What the same combination of jokers and cards would do with a different deck is irrelevant advice for someone on a run with this specific deck. On plasma, you should maximize the total of chips + mult. That’s it. No ratio has any impact on your score on that run. That means you should lean into mult because of x mult cards, but only insofar as they raise the total of chips + mult. The ratio itself is totally unrelated and you shouldn’t care about it within-run at all. Just max chips + mult.
If in a run you score a hand of 10,000, but see the blind is 56,000, that's a good indicator that "Hey, my deck is not performing well and I need to make changes or I'll lose." That's an actionable piece of information, right? It tells you that your deck is weaker than it needs to be and informs that you may need to lose interest in the next shop so you can build a better deck or set of jokers. Well, on plasma, having a lower ratio provides information too. Yes, you can see your score and factor that in. Obviously no point caring about it at the moment if you're easily beating blinds, it helps inform you that you are scaling worse than the game balance is intending you to do so. You might already be strong enough, you might not, that's on you to see in a run. It also can help people realize why the same build they used to beat another run is struggling on plasma, this is why. The exact same build on plasma and non-plasma, with a ratio lower than 5:8, will have the non-plasma deck perform better, so you can shape your builds with that knowledge. If you don't care to use this level of analysis, or don't find a need to think about the logic of why certain things work for one build and not another, that's totally fine. You don't have to care about it in a run if you don't want to. But I find it helpful, especially for transitioning into Endless and gold-stakes difficulty.
This is just an intuitive thing that you do with plasma deck and learn quite early on. What the person above you is saying is correct. As for transitioning for gold stake difficulty, with the right jokers, you don't need to. Bull with 1000 chips easily destroys ante 8, and so does half that with blueprint. The joker which gives 300 chips gives ample breathing room to find better chip scaling or switch to mult scaling. It's simple maths, chips + mult get averaged, and then squared. much stronger scaling function by far than any multiplier. It's why chips alone beat ante 8 even in gold stake difficulty, and why plasma is best for super duper lategame. It feels unfair that a flush can 1-tap the first boss, and that only a few chips allow so much breathing room early.
Well maybe I have much worse luck than you, but I can't manage a 100% win rate on gold stake, nor do I find bull in even half of my runs, let alone the support to then also get $500 for it. I'm around maybe 75% win rate and have found mid game hard as several runs just *don't* have strong chip jokers early, especially with Gold Stake being really rough with your economy. Beating 500,000 stakes is difficult without luck on chip only, as it's hard to get that many chips reliably IMO. Ah well, I just wanted to share the math behind when Plasma is weaker or stronger than a traditional deck's scaling, that's an objective fact that if you're below 5.8 multiplier you're scaling below what the game expects of you. Everything else discussed here is either subjective and not related to that. Cause yeah, having 1000 chips is strong, and above the ratio, so beyond the scope of what I wanted to share and a different discussion.
It’s better to focus on increasing one thing rather than trying to split your attention. If you are doing both chips and mult, the benefit of the decks balancing ability is not being used well.
So if I understood correctly plasma deck is an early game powerhouse and you're supposed to build a really strong economy during that window, because there is no way you can keep up the 5.8 ratio even before ante 8 I believe, unless you are trying not to get a reasonable multi amount.