The Defect
The combat automaton from Slay the Spire makes its way into Rivals of Aether!
Once among the many constructs within the Spire, the Defect has since grown sentience, and utilizes its ancient technology to fight.
The Defect’s main mechanic is its manipulation of elemental orbs. By using certain attacks, the Defect can channel 4 different types of orbs into its 3 orb slots. Each one has different passive effects to enhance the Defect’s attacks and overall game plan. Orbs also have an effect when evoked, either happening when orb slots overflow, or manually by Forward Special. The orb slot highlighted in blue is the primary orb, and will be the first one to be evoked.
Forward Strong will remove all of your orbs without evoking them.
Lightning Orb
– Channeled by Up Air (Ball Lightning)
– Upon hitting an opponent, all of your lightning orbs will zap the opponent, turning your attacks into multi-hits.
– Evoking this orb will make it zap the opponent a little stronger. Can’t be evoked by up air.
Frost Orb
– Channeled by Forward Tilt (Cold Snap)
– Frost orbs will automatically evoke on frame 6 of most attacks, giving you single-use armor.
– Passively, frost orbs increase the Defect’s weight a little.
– Dualcasting this orb makes the armor persist until your next attack.
Dark Orb
– Channeled by Down Strong (Doom and Gloom)
– Will build up 2% strength the more your opponent is hit, up to a maximum of 30%.
– Evoking this orb will unleash an explosion, dealing the amount of damage built up.
Plasma Orb
– Channeled by Up Special (Meteor Strike), even if the move doesn’t hit.
– Makes your attacks faster by reducing their startup and endlag by 15% for each plasma orb, up to 45% with 3 plasma – orbs.
– Evoking the orb will let you exit freefall.
– Dualcasting the orb makes the next attack cancelable by any action on frame 6.
– Neutral Special: Barrage. Sends out each channeled orb as a projectile, with more projectiles being sent out the more orbs you have.
– Forward Special: Dualcast. It evokes the next orb twice infront of the Defect. Frost orbs and Plasma orbs have special effects.
– Up Special: Meteor Strike. This move sends a large meteor downwards, but has a slow start up and sends into freefall. The move will also channel a plasma orb, even if it doesn’t hit. Evoking a plasma orb will exit freefall.
– Down Special: Hologram. It summons a hologram that, when commanded, will perform the previous attack you used when you summoned it. The hologram cannot use orbs, and also cannot use specials other than Up Special. It will vanish upon performing its attack or upon being hit.
Overall, the Defect is a character that could be quite powerful with proper setup, but may take a while to get going. The Defect can also adapt to multiple different playstyles depending on what orbs it has currently channeled.
Slay the Spire was created by Mega Crit.
