The State of the Spire
Patch v0.102.0 landed on April 2, 2026, and the most consequential line in the notes had nothing to do with cards. Ascension 6's "Gloom" modifier, which cut the number of rest sites, is gone. In its place: Inflation. entity:merchant card removal now starts at 100 gold and climbs 50 gold per additional removal. That one change reshuffled which archetypes pay a real cost at higher Ascensions and which ones barely notice.
This snapshot reflects community consensus as of v0.102.0. There is no public win-rate solver for STS2 yet; no equivalent of SpireBot exists for this game at this stage of early access. Every ranking here comes from high-Ascension play reports and aggregated tier lists across egamersworld, mobalytics, nat1gaming, and slashskill. Treat these as informed community estimates, not empirical results.
Character Power Ranking
entity:defect sits at the top of nearly every current list, and the reasoning is consistent: the character runs four viable archetypes (Frost Tank, Dark Nuker, entity:synchronize Mix, Plasma Engine) and none of them collapse when one key card doesn't appear. Frost Tank is the safest floor in the game. Dark Nuker has the highest boss-kill ceiling of any single archetype. entity:synchronize rewards skill without punishing you for failing to assemble it perfectly on turn one. Inflation hits entity:defect less than smaller-deck characters because most entity:defect builds want 20-25 cards anyway.
entity:silent ranks just below entity:defect, and v0.102.0 gave her a genuine third identity. Shiv and Poison builds both existed in STS1; the Sly Discard archetype is new to STS2. Pack Sly-tagged cards, stack discard triggers, and watch cascading free auto-plays chain through a turn. The three-archetype spread means entity:silent adapts to almost any Act 1 reward pool. The consistent knock is fragility: entity:silent runs lean on HP and any mistake in a boss fight costs more than it does for entity:defect or entity:ironclad.
entity:ironclad lands at high tier, not top. Strength scaling is still the character's best build. entity:demon-form into entity:limit-break, backed by multi-hit attacks like Whirlwind and Sword Boomerang, produces the game's most straightforward damage ceiling. But Inflation hits Strength harder than most archetypes: the build wants a lean deck, and paying 100 gold for the first removal and 150 for the second changes how many cuts you can afford at A6+. entity:burning-blood still covers the HP cost of aggressive self-damage lines, and the Block / Body Slam build is a more consistent alternative that Inflation doesn't punish as heavily.
entity:necrobinder sits mid-tier on average lists but the placement hides a large skill gap. Experienced players clear high Ascension with Doom Execute and Soul Engine builds. New players find her the hardest character to keep alive: lowest base HP, Osty requires protection, and entity:bound-phylactery plus entity:bodyguard are effectively mandatory expenses before the damage engine starts. The v0.102.0 entity:borrowed-time redesign changed it to a 1-cost card that briefly raises card costs while giving a burst of energy, which improved her tempo in specific lines.
entity:regent ranks mid on every list, and the honest reason is age. entity:ironclad, entity:silent, and entity:defect have been balanced across multiple STS1 seasons. entity:regent's Star Battery and Forge Blade archetypes are newer and the card pool shows it; some reward curves feel unfinished next to the returning characters. The Star resource mechanic is interesting enough that multiple sources flag this character as the one most likely to move up once Mega Crit has more patches at her.
Top Archetypes Right Now
Frost Tank Defect is the most played high-Ascension build in the game at the moment. entity:cold-snap, Glacier, and entity:defragment form the core: channel Frost orbs every turn, stack Focus to make each orb generate more block, and absorb damage that would kill most other decks outright. The signature card is Glacier, which channels two Frost orbs in one play and gives the build its block-per-energy ceiling. With enough Focus and orb slots, you spend turns doing almost nothing offensively while the Frost passive generates 12 to 20 block per turn. Bosses run out of relevant damage before you run out of resources.
Sly Discard entity:silent is the archetype that v0.102.0 makes newly viable at scale. The engine requires entity:tingsha or entity:tough-bandages to convert discards into damage or block, a cluster of Sly-tagged cards, and enough discard enablers (entity:survivor, Acrobatics) to chain triggers. A well-assembled turn plays two or three cards from hand, discards two to four, and each discard fires an auto-play, which discards again, which fires again. The defining challenge is Act 1 setup: if you don't see multiple Sly cards in the first two act rewards, the build doesn't come together. When it does, it cycles faster than any other entity:silent build.
Strength entity:ironclad remains the character's highest-ceiling line despite the Inflation pressure. entity:demon-form resolves the core tension by building Strength without buying deck space; entity:limit-break doubles whatever you've accumulated. Whirlwind at 5 Strength hits for over 10 per hit across 4 to 5 hits per energy. Inflation squeezes the budget for early card removal, so the practical adjustment is committing to fewer cuts and accepting 2 to 3 starter cards staying in the deck longer. The ceiling doesn't change. The path to it costs more gold.
Universal Power Cards
entity:paper-phrog is the most discussed relic in the current meta. Its effect turns a 50% damage bonus from Vulnerable into a 75% bonus. Any deck that can apply Vulnerable reliably, entity:ironclad's Bash being the clearest example, gets a 25-percentage-point damage spike on every attack for the rest of the run. No other single relic slot pays back that much raw damage across that many fights.
entity:ice-cream removes the worst tempo leak in the game: unspent energy at end of turn. Decks that play entity:ice-cream hold extra energy for explosive multi-card turns rather than burning suboptimal cards to avoid waste. This matters most on turns where your key payoff card is at the bottom of your hand and you're choosing between drawing or passing energy.
entity:pantograph heals you to your maximum HP at the start of boss fights. That means any chip damage accumulated during Act 3 elite encounters disappears before the boss pull. For characters without a combat healing relic (everyone except entity:ironclad), entity:pantograph is the best anti-fragility relic in the game.
entity:tungsten-rod caps the damage any single hit can deal to you at 5. This matters specifically on high-damage single hits that would otherwise kill or cripple mid-combo turns. It pairs well with entity:necrobinder's Doom Engine, where you need to survive exactly one boss attack while Doom ticks down.
entity:mummified-hand makes a random card in your hand free to play after you use a Power card. At its worst this occasionally free-plays an unimportant card. At its best it converts a Power-heavy setup turn into a turn that also fires your most expensive attack.
Patch Volatility
The v0.100.0 patch (March 19) closed several infinite-loop combos, most notably the Ironclad Hellraiser Infinite, which had produced unlimited-damage turns via a loop that played itself off copies in the draw pile. Community reception was poor enough that v0.101.0 (March 26) reversed some of those changes. v0.102.0 added Inflation and the Badges system six days later. Three meaningful patches in two weeks is the pace this early access is running at.
The practical consequence: any tier list published before April 2, 2026 may not account for Inflation. Check the patch version tag on any resource you read. The Inflation change is specifically relevant for deck-thinning archetypes at A6+. If a tier list still shows Strength Ironclad as unqualified top-tier without noting the card removal cost change, it was written against an older state of the game.
Expect another patch cycle within two to three weeks of this writing.
What to Play for Your Next Run
If you want a high floor with room to learn the systems, Defect Frost Tank absorbs a lot of mistakes. Channel Frost from turn one and take entity:defragment every time you see it.
If you want fast, aggressive runs, Silent Shiv into entity:accuracy is still the quickest way to end Act 3 boss fights.
If you want the highest ceiling the game currently has, entity:necrobinder Doom Execute rewards deep knowledge of when to apply Doom, when to hold back, and how to build a defensive shell that survives exactly one incoming boss attack. No other build asks as much and pays back as much when it clicks.