Defect

"Combat automaton which became self-aware. Ancient technology allows manipulation of Orbs."

The Defect is a playable character added to the beta build in Weekly Patch 22: Testing the third Character. It is an ancient automaton related to the Orb Walker that attacks foes with a high-tech arsenal, array of Powers, and elemental evocations.

The Defect has a unique mechanic, the Orbs. Using cards and Relics, The Defect Channels these elemental spheres into a set of Orb slots, activating their passive effects each turn or Evoking them for a one-time burst.

The Defect begins each run with 4 Strike, 4 Defend, 1 Zap, and 1 Dualcast.

For the Defect's full list of cards, click here.

Orbs

The Defect begins with three Orb slots and considers the rightmost Orb to be the active Orb. Channeling an Orb inserts it into the rightmost empty slot. If every slot is full, each Orb will be shifted one slot to the right, popping the active Orb out of its slot and Evoking it. If The Defect loses every Orb slot, it can't channel Orbs at all!

At the end of The Defect's turn, it uses the passive effect of each Channeled Orb, left to right. While these effects are initially weak, The Defect can increase Focus and channel additional copies to sharply increase their potency.

Evoking

Evoking an Orb shatters it and unleashes a high-powered effect. Unlike the passive effects that activate at a preset time, Evoking an Orb activates instantly. Orbs can be Evoked by Channeling too many Orbs or by cards that specify Evoking them. After Evoking an Orb, each orb to its left shifts to fill its slot.

Focus

Main article: Focus

Focus is a stat unique to The Defect that affects Orbs the same way Strength affects Attacks and Dexterity affects Block. Increasing Focus increases the magnitude of both the passive and Evoke effects of each Orb, and decreasing Focus reduces them. It is possible to reduce an Orb's effect to 0 by decreasing Focus - the Orb will still activate, but will have no effect.

Trying to Channel an Orb when you have no more Orb Slots open will result in the rightmost Orb being evoked to make room for the new orb.

Orb Types

Main article: Orb Types

The Defect can currently Channel four types of Orbs - Lightning, Frost, Dark, and Plasma. The X in each description refers to The Defect's Focus.

Strategy

The Defect's game plan almost always involves implementing a long-term plan each battle. By developing Orbs, Powers, and cards with escalating effects, The Defect sets up an insurmountable late-game position and then destroys its enemies. This is a radically different style from The Silent and The Ironclad, which tend to apply bursts of damage to take enemies out opportunistically.

As a consequence, The Defect struggles to win with a deck full of "good stuff". While it does have access to some individually strong cards, they don't present the sheer power that The Ironclad and The Silent enjoy.

The Defect also has some chance-based RNG effects, like Lightning Orbs and Creative AI . These can salvage a weak deck by generating stronger cards, but clog up synergistic builds. The class' strongly synergistic cards encourage some powerful and well-supported archetypes. Identifying and focusing on one is a key aspect of Defect strategy.

Zero Cost

The Defect has a high number of strong 0-cost cards, as well as unique supporting cards like Scrape and and efficient card-draw Skills. Drown an enemy under FTLs, Streamlines, and Beam Cells, then play All For One and do it again. It's sort of like The Silent's Shiv builds, but way more back-loaded and visually impressive.

Rebound are handy in this deck. They allow you to recycle Streamline and Claw quicker. It is even better if you can bring Scrape and back to the draw pile.

Claw

A subset of the zero-cost archetype, the Claw deck simply jams as many copies of the eponymous card as possible, adds some draw effects, and removes everything else. With multiple copies of Claw and a shuffle every few turns, the damage quickly spirals out of control. Unlike Anger the damage of the claw actually scales as it is being used and can multiply in damage better if Echo Form is used beforehand - the only downside is that there are very limited chances to earn the latter card, which is Rare.

Lightning DoT

The Lightning Orb damage-over-time build tries to Channel many Lightning Orbs, boost Focus, and hold the fort with Block-granting Skills while the Lightning Orbs' passive wears down the opponents. Loop speeds up the process, and Fission can Evoke the accumulated Orbs to finish off the weakened enemies. Biased Cognition's extreme Focus gain takes this build to the next level.

Lightning Evoke

This build tries to Evoke as many Lightning Orbs as possible, beating enemies down eight damage at a time. Unlike other Orb builds, smaller is better - one Orb slot is optimal to facilitate Evoking. Thunder Strike, Tempest, and Lock-On are this deck's premier finishers, dumping huge volumes of damage onto the enemy.

Frost Turtle

The Frost deck Channels as many of the eponymous Orbs as possible to into an unbreakable wall of free Block. Once the shields are up, The Defect can devote every Energy to damage. This archetype is supported by Blizzard and Glacier, and relies heavily on Focus and Orb slot buffs.

Barrage excels in this slot-oriented deck. If you have the File:Frozen Core.pngFrozen Core relic, it would fill your orb slots with Frost orbs. This would help you quicken the weak early game.

Dark

The Defect can make the most of the tricky Dark Orb by defending for a few turns while it charges, then using Multi-Cast, Dualcast, or Recursion to Evoke it multiple times. This archetype isn't as well-supported as the others, but the satisfaction of Evoking a 54-damage Dark Orb three times (or more!) makes it worthwhile.

Greed

The Defect has better access to Energy sources than other classes, and there's no better way to leverage them than a Meteor Strike, Aggregate and TURBO, and stockpile with Charge Battery. Dump your Energy into expensive bombs like Meteor Strike, Sunder and Tempest, draw cards with Skim and fling them at enemies, or make a good old-fashioned Unceasing Top wombo-combo. When you have 7 Energy, anything is possible.

Powers Matter

The Ironclad likes Attacks, The Silent loves Skills, and The Defect completes the cycle with its affinity for Powers. Grab some Force Fields, drop an Amplify or Echo Form, stack up some powerful effects, and bury the opposition under your cumulative advantage. The Bird-Faced Urn is the perfect Relic to recover life lost while setting up. Refine the deck by using Powers to fill the roles of Attacks and Skills - consider Static Discharge and Storm your damage-dealers, Buffer and Self Repair your Blockers. The Powers deck's win condition depends on the particular Powers you acquire. Most builds will stack up Orbs, but some use Attacks and others simply lean on Creative AI and let the Powers do the work. The Mummified Hand can become really useful with a power deck.

RNGesus, Take the Wheel!

Chaos randomly channels an orb for one cost, including Plasma, normally a two cost. Upgrade Chaos and pair it with defragment and draw cards and hope to envoke enough Plasma and Frost orbs to survive the next round.

Tempo

This aggressive archetype deploys efficient cards with debilitating drawbacks, and attempts to end the battle before the consequences arrive. TURBO and Steam Barrier provide cheap resources, and Hyperbeam or Biased Cognition bring big damage, and each incurs a significant long-term cost. If The Defect can slam the door before the Statuses overwhelm it, the player enjoys a quick, decisive victory that doesn't give enemies much time to deal damage.

Barrage

This deck centres around the three major cards of Barrage, Capacitor and Defragment if you want to get more value off of your orbs. The point of this deck is to acquire as many orbs as possible using cards such as Glacier and Chaos and then unloading a ton of damage using Barrage. Other cards that are useful are Trip or Beam Cell, to do maximum damage with Barrage and also Hologram or Seek, to find Barrage more consistently.

Unlocks 

The Defect itself is unlocked by completing a run with The Silent.

Unlock Number	Prizes Unlocked
1st	Rebound, Equilibrium, Echo Form
2nd	TURBO, Sunder, Meteor Strike
3rd	Hyperbeam, Recycle, Core Surge
4th	Gold-Plated Cables, Turnip, Runic Capacitor
5th	Data Disk, Symbiotic Virus, Emotion Chip