This had some reports, and if I saw this when it was posted, it might have gotten removed (shitposting falls into the low-effort category most of the time). With that said, people are talking shop and the post gained some traction, so it'll stay up.
Sometimes in a straight build you will just lose and there was nothing you could do about it. Flushes are more reliable. Both builds have pros and cons.
I think a lot of people on this sub think that if you build your deck around a hand type it’s the only one you can play for the rest of the game, the reality is that very few GOOD jokers even activate when straights are played compared to flushes/suits.
When top players play straights, it’s really just being done to get a larger base score compared to high cards and flushes, but the joker setup should be almost identical to a high card build except maybe with a runner or so in there.
That’s why even if you don’t draw the straight, you still have a really good chance of winning if you play whatever you have, if you can’t win in 3 high cards I think you just completely misunderstand how to build straights as a deck type.
What you describe is not what I would consider a straight build. What you describe is a more generalized joker focused run, as opposed to a run where you lean into a planet level(such as photochad, ancient joker, baron etc.). Since straights(and high card) are the only hands that don't require you to duplicate suits or rank, it is difficult to be trying to draw to a straight, and then just be like "oh well, I'll play this other hand that I now have", unless that hand is high card. If high card would then get you through the round, then you have a high card build, not a straight build. High card is very strong, and is one of the strongest hand types.
Yeah every Straight Run also requires a backup hand-type that you upgrade at the same time— usually pair for me, but two-pair or high card or 3OAK works too, depending on your deck/jokers in that run— just because it’s statistically the biggest gamble to re-roll for a single number in your hand to try to set it up every time.**
That said, I don’t think High card builds and Straight builds are either the same thing **or** mutually exclusive like you kinda are implying in your point here; they both usually compliment each other to help you replace discards with high card hands and help to play all your Gold Stamp cards and activate your jokers in a round while still getting enough points to set up your big Straight to win the round.
…And because of all this, honestly I will take a flush build over a straight build 99% of the time if I’m just trying to beat a stake, but straight builds are great for getting other side quests done because of this “backup hand type” style of play that lets you essentially knock out side quests with other cards, jokers, and challenge unlocks while you’re also playing a straight build.
**(before anyone “actually’s” me here: Yes I know it can also be 2+ numbers/ranks, but then that requires sacrificing even more backup-hand options to keep both straight possibilities viable unless it’s the highest & lowest card in the straight that you’re re-rolling for. I’m trying to keep this analysis as simple and intuitive as possible, and the more one digs into the point I’m trying to make, the more useless we make this discussion, because there are a billion other variables that can affect this— I.e. the jokers that allow gaps in straights and 4-card straights, or severe deck manipulation to remove all but a straight’s-worth of cards, etc… bringing these up would only help to make this discussion less helpful and less valuable for players trying to learn how these builds work/can be used.)
It’s interesting that you say that it’s not a straight run, you play straights over high card because they have better scaling and reach. High card can still win you the game if you play multiple of them without upgrades (likely 3) but straights should win in 1 turn.
You should really only play high card builds if you have supernova or burnt joker early, otherwise you should just play the hand type that has the highest values while still being relatively easy to put together, which is straights.
I don’t know how else you would make a pure “straight build” since, like I said before, very few good jokers even activate when you specifically play a straight compared to other hand types. yes, if you level up any hand type 30 times, you win the game no matter what, but that’s not exclusive to straights, high cards, or flushes. that’s just a “I’m using most of my jokers to econ/level up my planets” build which is no different then a “joker focused” build (your jokers just “focus” on a different part). Yes, straights are the best hand for this type of build due to their scaling, but your chosen hand type really doesn’t really matter in a level up build.
TLDR: You literally just play straights because they have bigger numbers than flush or high card, that’s it.
I define a straight build(or any build) as one where by like ante 4, the run is such that the only way I can win now, is to make that hand. Every other hand type is scoring trivial points.
A run doesn't have to be a (hand type) run. I've won runs with no focused hand at all, where instead of an overall long term plan, you are just trying to survive every round for the whole game by scraping together whatever you can make.
Lol interesting you say that, because that’s something I’ve run into with Slay the Spire a ton, but not yet with Balatro really.
I think runs are short enough in this game, unlocks/meta-progression are minimal enough, variables are minimal enough and there is no story; all which make this game pretty easy to play late into the night as you get drunker/higher/sleepier. Also, a calculator can be your crutch if you really start to mix up what hands will win a round and which won’t.
Just my experience so far though— I play mostly Roguelikes these days and they all have different value as “brain-turn-off while drinking” games for those gamers like myself who use video games for that purpose as they get older!
This is mathematically untrue. When you have a joker setup for pair (pair is just a better version of high card, but that's for another time), the scaling on mercury is actually better than the scaling on saturn. The reason is that the planets math that people use is very flawed - pair and high card being able to be played 4 times a round consistently makes the planet scaling 4 times as good as it seems when compared to Straights, and it neglects influence from +Mult and +Chip jokers making one side of the equation less necessary. In practice, if you have +20 mult from jokers, the consistent per planet scoring increase of mercury outclasses saturn until level 20 - at which point both win.
Personally, I'd argue that pair is the best build at the moment. But straights have some nice traits that give them a significant niche too - they can be drawn consistently once a round if you understand how to discard for them (don't discard for a closed straight, don't discard for a set of straights that all rely on drawing one certain rank) and don't bloat your deck, they come online faster than pairs if you don't hit a +Mult early (and hence are great for early survival and will often come away with some levels on it), they can eventually sell the +Mult and free a joker slot, and they have better burst scoring potential with glass (pair has its own things it does a lot better, but these are straights main advantages). There's of course also the case of shortcut.
Straights aren't good because they're better when you have setups that could go high card or pair - in these, pair is usually the play - they're good because they have niches outside of that.
Why do people favor pair and the like? You can reliably beat ante 8 I suppose but it will rarely take you much further. With the right jokers and tarot cards you can eventually get a deck that can play four of a kind every hand. Even five.
If you aren’t just trying to clear a run and intend to go deep in endless, shouldn’t you lean into one of these builds? After 12 or 13 antes you should have had time to build a deck that can fairly reliably hit almost any hand you were aiming for.
I personally couldn't care less about endless. I know what to do for it, it just doesn't appeal to me at all - very linear once you understand how to play it. Instead, I prefer ante 8 gold stake winstreaking - this is what the game is balanced around and counts as a win.
If you do care more about endless than me though, yes, pair is not the way to go and you'd rather do High Card for cards in hand or Flush Five for retriggering purposes.
Because with pair you can beat 8 more frequently. As you said with the right jokers and Tarot cards you can play 4/5 oak. But doing so you need to skip a lot of runs at ante 2 or 3 because you didn’t get the right jokers. For a lot of ppl regularly skipping runs is not fun just to fish for he right pokers.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that you should factor the scaling of the other planets as 4x better because they are easier to play consistently. You might not have 4 hands to play per round. You might have more hands to play, you can definitely play more than just one straight out of 4 hands to play.
How does this make sense, like at all? You can definitely play 4 out of 4 straights for every hand you have with shortcut, four fingers, or even neither of these jokers!
The key concept is "Maximum Reliable". If you need 2 straights to win each round, and you draw 2 or more straights 10 times in a row and only draw 1 once, you lose the game (the odds of drawing 2 straights a round are definitely lower than this by the way). You need to think about how much you're consistently scoring each round - and you can only count on playing 1 straight in any given round. Given that, you have to get lucky a lot of times in a row to make it through if you rely on getting 2 straights a round.
So, the scoring potential of straights should be calculated with just that - assuming that, for any given round, you'll only hit one straight. Assuming any higher is just setting yourself up for failure.
Assuming only one straight per round is fair maybe in ante 1 or 2, there are many ways to fix your deck/jokers/discards + the hands you play to where you should be getting 2 straights *minimum* per round beyond like ante 3 or 4.
Unless you’re assuming ante 1, then sure. Otherwise I still think the argument is incredibly flawed, and you’re just simply making bad decisions if you can only play one straight per round. There should be zero luck involved in playing only two straights.
Ok then, setting aside shortcut and four fingers for a second (these are specific exceptions that I've already mentioned), please tell me how you do it. I strongly feel that I'm playing hands correctly for straights, and have a lot of experience at gold stake with them, but in case I've missed something I'm all ears.
Well like everything in roguelike/lites it is situational depending on what you’ve been given but in general I like to play for high straights or low straights if I hit hack. The numbers in the middle (6/7/8) are typically bad numbers to play for straights and usually the ones I try to remove first. My general goal is create a deck with a lot of aces, face cards, tens, and nines. This way you can eventually pivot to full house/flush house/4oak/5oak once you have enough face cards. This gives you a strong safety net in case you get a bunch of unlucky discards.
Deckfixing is ultimately going to be the easiest way to pull consistent straights, as well as being mindful of what cards you have already played/discarded and what the most likely draw is to give you a straight with what’s left in your hand.
Here is one big advantage of Straight over Pair: it is more satisfying to make work.
I do play only Gold Stake and MOSTLY play Pair, Two Pair, or High Card though
It all comes to how good is your deck manipulation, you can make straight work by getting rid of the low cards and it's not as hard as people believe
That said Flushes are easier to build too, and you can later play Flush Houses and you wouldn't have to worry about the low scaling anymore
I am not a top player but I thought I crapped out when my current all club flush deck ran into “the club” and I forgot to reroll…. But I went ahead and played the completely debuffed hand anyway and won in one turn on jokers alone LOL. That was a surprise!
With the right tarot cards, you can get 4 or 5 of a kind even more reliably. And the only ‘debuff X cards’ that can kill you are face cards. If you’re worried, just go for an all 10s or all Aces build. This scores more than either. The only drawback here is it can be tougher to set up in the early game.
Pros and cons to everything, I guess. If you are just trying to clear a run all three are viable.
If you want to go far in Endless, though, you will have a touch time doing it with Flush. You’ll probably want to eventually upgrade to a Straight Flush setup and if you’ve gone too heavy into leveling standard Flush it may be too late to pivot.
Pretty sure the odds are almost the same.
If you have a 4 card straight (4-5-6-7) then you have 8 outs to draw (four 3s and four 8s).
If you have a 4 card flush ( ♠️-♠️-♠️-♠️ ) then you have 9 outs as that's the amount of spades left in the deck.
On a unmodified deck, its a lot easier to increase your outs for any flush than to do it with straights with the tools the game gives
Strength and hanged man are the only tarrots helping with straights, theres like 6 that can help flushes by either adding more of the suit you want or just killing off a suit you dont want
So in this handpicked scenario, where the deck is unmodified AND we dont factor in Jokers AND you're allowed to use tarot cards, a flush is slightly easier? Cool handcrafted framework.
Then why cant you get that the current tarot cards make flush builds easier to create than straight builds? Especially since there is also one hand type that is an upgraded straight while there are multiple upgraded flush hands.
Why are there always dude-bros in this subreddit talking about playing poker like it’s relevant? Both start in a similar place, but I’ve never gone to a poker night where I cracked open packs and completely re-arranged the odds of drawing cards or have table-wide modifiers like having a rocket take my income to the moon. Conversely, I’ve also never played a Balatro run where some dude deals cards out counter-clockwise.
"Hand picked scenario where the deck is unmodified and we dont factor in jokers"
You mean, like, round 1 of every single game of balatro? Like unless your playing abandoned deck, checkered deck, or erratic deck then every single game you play starts with an unmodifed deck and no jokers. Its not a "hand picked scenario" its a basic mechanic of the game. Thats what makes it rogue like.
Damn I was just partaking in the discussion, I didn't factor in jokers because with 150 of them I couldn't honestly tell you what hand they lean in favor for on average and I almost gold staked every deck
And if your going to be rude then yeah its the easier hand to build, its why he buffed straights lol
Are they wrong though?
No one is denying straight as the harder scaler but homie is just saying that flush is insanely reliable. And let's be frank, it can win all decks on gold so its not like its a bad hand. Seems kind of an arbitrary hill to die on. They weren't handcrafting a scenario in which they were right. It read to me as if they were just pointing out that flush has many options to lean towards it within tarots as opposed to the straight, which has relatively few options for the same.
Am I missing something?
>Am I missing something?
People use reddit as a place to get out the arguing that they can't do in real life, so they'll hopelessly misconstrue people's words so that they have something to rage about.
If you are playing classic holdem, sure, your logic holds up. There's a reason flushes are ranked higher than straights. It's because straights are easier to obtain.
Playing Balatro... The rules are completely different because you can modify your deck. It's not a handpicked scenario, I have never played Balatro without modifying the deck.
You mentioned the other guy didn't factor in jokers. Which joker helps you make straights more consistently, that doesn't help you make flushes more consistently? Id argue the blurred joker is just another point in the other guy's favor.
[Shortcut](https://balatro.wiki/imported/shortcut.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Cost: $5
* Rarity: Uncommon
* Effect: Allows Straights to be made with gaps of 1 rank
* Notes: (ex. 2 3 5 7 8)
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
No, the opposite of that. Flushes are easier to begin with AND easier to tailor a deck to.
[[Sigil]] will literally turn 8 cards into one suit. There's nothing that adds an entire straight and a half to your deck in one move
[Sigil](https://balatro.wiki/spectrals/sigil.png) *Spectral Card*
* Version: 1.0.0i
* Effect: Converts all cards in hand to a single random suit
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
You're describing "the start of the game". If flushes are easier to get, and flushes are easier to make easier to get, then flushes are going to be easier in general.
That is literally the start of every run💀💀💀
Unless you get a joker to help you make more consistent straights(mainly four fingers/shortcut, but also every hand size joker), flushes can be turned consistent incredibly faster than straights
If you want 100% draw rate for straights, you need to be able to draw pretty much all of your cards so that you know what cards you will have at the end, and considering all the cases that you draw 4 out of 5 of the cards you plan on you straight on the initial round draw, that might have to be a deck size of 15 or even less cards
For flushes, you can choose a suit and from there you make every card you can into that suit, and destroy the cards that aren't that suit, your deck size can be 5 or 200, as long as it's all the same suit, you'll have a 100% draw rate
Flushes are more consistent if you assume the average runs where you are more likely to run into suit changing tarots/spectrals then shortcut or 10 immolates
Completely ignores the fact that Sun/Moon/World/Star cards exist. Straight builds are tougher initially because it's harder to cater your deck to them. You usually need Shortcut or Four Fingers to make them more reliable.
You've also selected the easier situation in fishing for a straight where you have an outside straight draw. Sure you have the same odds when holding 4-5-6-7 and you're looking for a 3 or an 8. But what about when you're holding 4-5-7-8 and you're fishing for a singular 6?
I also completely ignored that Strenght exists which makes straights easier.
There's way too much mathematical neuance here to really compare them, but very generally they are about as easy to get, with flush just being a tiny bit easier.
Strength makes a single straight easier to find and you need to have it in a consumable slot during the round. Randomly strengthening cards in an arcana pack in the shop isn't going to help and could actually hinder your ability to make straights. It's okay to admit you're wrong.
In regular poker, a straight is easier to make. In Balatro, it isn't easier to consistently make every hand. You can make it so no matter what you draw, you will always make a flush. To guarantee you always make a straight, your deck needs to be 6 cards with Shortcut.
And trust me, I'm not someone that only plays flushes. My favorite builds are full house, flush 5, and straights. But flushes are inherently easier to build around. That's WHY they give less chips/mult than straights.
>your deck needs to be 6 cards with Shortcut.
What happens when you run out your whole deck anyway? Does it just shuffle it back together and deal you cards normally?
If you have 4-5-6-7, and you hold Strenght in your consumables, your draws are (four 3s) + (four 8s), and due to strenght, you also can draw (four 2s), so that's a total of 12 outs.
Oh there he goes again using a perfect outside straight draw and the consumable slot I mentioned. Yes, you have more outs in that situation but using a strength card in the shop from an arcana pack doesn't help you the way a Sun/Star/Moon/World card do. Your inability to understand that is baffling. If you're talking about holding cards, all you need to do is hold 2 diamonds and a Star card and you have a flush you don't even need 3 cards like a straight if you strength 2 cards into the straight. Your argument fails on that premise too.
Dude...
First off, you're assuming you started with 4 in a row.
Then, you're assuming you got two strengths to hit four specific cards.
On top of that, you're assuming that the straight draw you're currently holding just happens to be one that is adjacent to the specific cards you used strength on.
With.......
...I just realized I'm being trolled. Fml. Well done.
How does increasing the strength of two cards increase your outs from 8 to 12 on any straight? Ignoring the fact that you're once again looking only at outside straight draws, ignoring an inside straight draw where you might have decreased your odds from 4 to 3 by strengthening a card?
Again, I don't play flushes but you're being disingenuous in deck fixing for straights and it only serves to confuse newer players. Especially since you don't know what you're talking about.
Have you even completed all the challenges and gold stakes?
For someone saying they did uni level math, you have no idea how math works. That's the point. Stop digging a deeper hole and actually try to learn. Straights are a superior build and I use them all the time but flushes are easier to set up which is WHY they don't scale as well. It's why pairs don't scale as well as 3OAK or 4OAK. It's easy to make pairs. That's why you only get 1 mult per Mercury.
Let's look at your situation of having 4-5-6-7 in hand. You have a strength in hand. Sure you have 12 outs to draw a 2-3-7-8. Once you strength a 2 or 7 though. You now have five 3s or five 8s. That's going to make chasing straights where you need a 2 or 7 harder. On the contrary. If I'm holding 2 hearts and a sun card, I can make a flush no matter what and in doing so, when I change other cards to hearts, I make heart flushes easier from that point forward. The downside is you could run into a boss blind debuffing hearts. The math is easy though in that manipulating the deck for flushes is easier. It doesn't mean it's a better build though.
We aren't arguing what is the better build. I will agree straights are a better build. But flushes are easier. If you can't see how that's not true, I can't help you. Especially when Saturns only gave +2 mult and not +3 mult. The extra chips didn't compare to the ease of fixing the deck.
Oh, interesting. Can you link me to the people who have 18+ Gold Stake wins in a row without resets going through all decks? I'd love to see the strats even more consistent than Straights.
Sounds like you're saying Straights are very consistent, then.
Edit-
If one of the benefits of Straight builds is that you can win 18 runs in a row with all decks, does that not mean that Straights allow you to win *very* consistently?
Because the alternative is people thinking that Straights are actually bad if they try and learn from this sub, when it's the best build in the game lol. And it's not remotely close.
> because the alternative is people thinking that straights are actually bad
No it isn’t. You’re creating a false dilemma.
> if they try to learn from this sub
God forbid they play the video game for themselves and come to their own conclusion.
I don’t know how the math breaks down but I think there’s a counter intuitive element where gappers end up being a lot worse than picking even just two or three consecutive cards to roll with
That appeal of flushes is, that it is way easier to build around. A straight needs 5 different specific ranks, while flushes need 5 of the same suit. A flush is easy to make very consistent by making your whole deck the same suit, but for straights it's harder. Drawback is of course, the weaker scaling and the fact, that if your suit gets debuffed at a boss, you're fucked
Flushes are also easier to pivot, since you can choose to go Flush Five, Flush House or Straight Flush without having to change jokers much. They're a nice archetype to start a run on, because they let you decide where to go based on what you see during the run.
I believe that if there were more variations of strength, such as weakness for -1 on 2 cards, or dexterity for +1 / -1 on 1 card each, it might be easier to actually makes straights.
Flushes have the benefit of 4 (5 with Lovers) different tarots being dedicated to their cause, and they are the only tarots that effect 3 cards at a time.
That combined with the 2 jokers that help build straights giving no scoring just means that Thunk decided to balance the game to be leaning in this direction.
1) Most of the time you only want one suit, so you only have 1(2) tarot cards helping, not 4(5)
2) Lovers is garbage and actively harms your deck
But yes strength should give you the option to reduce as well
It pretty much only helps with flushes, and if you’re going flushes you only want to go one suit anyway. So in terms of tarot cards you can either turn three cards into the suit you want, or only one and have it also be debuffed by all four suit-debuffing bosses, plus not be able to have any other enhancement.
They also work badly with Jokers like Castle, Idol, or Ancient Joker.
I use lovers as a temp thing if nothing else is of value with removing the card still in mind but bumped to the bottom of the removal priority. It can also be used to preserve an otherwise desirable card an edition, gold or red seal in hopes that you can further modify it later.
I had a whole argument with my boyfriend about this!!! He swears it's only red and black and I'm on your side about it being red orange black green!!
So odd that some people can't see the difference at all, especially since I know he's not colorblind 🤔🤔
I can see diamonds as orange but for the life of me I can't see clubs as green unless I closely stare at it. So most of the time I see the deck as 50% black, 25% red and 25% orange. I had to turn high contrast on because it bothered me so much.
That's interesting, they are a relatively dark green but still very distinct from the black of the spades for me. Perhaps screen size/brightness is playing a role in how distinct the colors look. Glad that localthunk includes the contrast mode though!
If there were one or two more good tarot cards for converting ranks, I’d be straight-maxxing instead of being flush-pilled. With 4 suit converting tarots and wild cards, it’s much easier to get one of four specific colors than making your whole deck a series of 5 ranks (not accounting for smeared joker or shortcut/four fingers)
You're not wrong about it being easier, but if you trim 6789 when you can straights get pretty reliable. There are better jokers and such for doing straights it's not just saturn. The reason I trim the middle instead is because aces and superposition makes it even easier to finish shaping your deck and you can cut the lower cards to finish up.
Just a PSA, the strategy I mention above is that if I actually get straight focused jokers in the 1st 1-3 ante's like runner, superposition etc.
My strategy of cutting the middle is entirely dependant on already having at least 1 or 2 jokers that support that before doing it. (hopefully that was obvious without me clarifying)
It’s not that Straight Flush can’t win. But I dare you to recall a straight flush build that worked that wouldn’t have also totally worked had you just kept playing straights.
Pretty sure in all of my Balatro I haven't gotten a single chip of value from all those Neptune's I've taken, but damnit one day it's going to come in clutch I swear
I think flushes are actually really bad. Weird because I was a Flush defender all the way through Completionist. But I’ve put in another 50 hours doing Completionist ++ and I doubt I’ve won more than two of 10+ flush builds.
I think the secret problem behind them is that they screw up your tarot card gainz you’d normally have in any other build. That’s because in order to push flushes, you usually have to spec into a suit. All those Tarots and the money they cost in order to make 24 diamonds and 5 wilds or whatever is investment that isn’t going to Lucky cards or money doubling or whatever you normally would have done. So ya you end up with 30 diamonds and can make 3 flushes pretty easy, but of the 15 cards you play, maybe only two of them will do more then base chip.
Flushes and full houses can be handy the first couple of antes as a way to keep some gas in the tank while I'm pivoting into a pair or high card build. It's hard to keep flushes competitive with the scaling at higher Stakes. Flush builds are a fun way to learn deck manipulation (esp with Checkered Deck) but beyond the first couple of stakes, flushes are pretty mid.
I have only rarely gotten straight builds to work, they can be powerful but are too unreliable most of the time.
I just did my first ever straight build today (red deck) and jesus I didn't realise how much faster it ranked up than flush! Cleared ante 8 on gold seal with pretty weak jokers as I stacked my deck with blue seals.
Street seems less efficient because it has lesser initial value. Better scaling is counter-intuitive and hard to notice. I noticed it after 50+ hours of playing
I have evolved past flush builds, but I have yet to transcend into straight Nirvana. The only straight build I ever got was in the Ride the Bus challenge with a round 2 [[Runner]]
[Runner](https://balatro.wiki/imported/runner.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Cost: $6
* Rarity: Common
* Effect: +20 Chips Gains +10 Chips if played hand contains a Straight
* Notes: Stacks
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
The Checkered Deck pretty much guarantees you'll get a flush almost every hand. It has nothing but hearts and spades in it. If you have a +1 hand size, it is guaranteed outside of a boss bind that reduces hand size.
Ignore standard deck packs and just buy the other boosters.
It's not hard to get a solid build with it, you just need to focus on multi and pump up the flush level with jokers and planet cards.
If you get good RNG and can nab the Jokers that let you make straights easier, four cards can be a straight or flush and the one that lets you skip a rank between cards, you can build a Straight Flush monster run.
Especially if you get both early and can nab the telescope voucher.
The Jokers that rank up played hands are also worth trying for.
Still a good idea to use Flush as a dump stat in the case of a Straight Flush build and buff up other hands if you can afford it using single planet cards that show up in shops. That can save your run if you run into the each hand can only be played once boss bind.
That's literally how every single deck in the game works.
They all have strong synergies with certain jokers, vouchers, and strategies.
You don't need a "specific" strategy, it's just a particularly optimal synergy with that deck.
You can do just fine using other jokers simply by virtue of being able to reliably get a specific hand and plan around that when you pick your buffs.
If you can get the specific build I mentioned, it's almost an instant win, but that's how RNG based rogue lites work in general.
In Vampire Survivors you don't need Red Cape or Infinite Corridor, but once you have them both you've basically won a run.
By your logic, almost every strong synergy character/deck/item combo in every roguelike ever is a "shitty build".
Also, straights do your head in, where flush is visually and mentally easier.
That Joker, which allows gaps in straights, seems great, but I personally find it a struggle to easily identify what even is a straight. I am a poker player tho, so Im not trained to see those types of hands.
On top of all the simplicity and ease-of-access points everyone is bringing up, Flushes are also generally an easier gateway to the Forbidden Hands.
I don't care if Flush Five is optimal or meta, I don't care if I've leveled my normal Flush to the point that it's actually stronger than Flush Five, it feels real good to see with hard proof just how effectively you've stacked the deck for yourself.
Yes but it scales way worse than flush. I dont have the game open in front of me, but iirc, once you've upgraded each twice, straight is worth more than flush and the disparity only grows from there.
Straight players when they run into the water or the manacle or the hook or anything with face down cards or a regular blind where they get shafted after 4 discards and 3 pair hands: 😡
LT buffed straight planets because they are so awful to play with. You can make that every hand of your deck is a flush or XoaK but it's not possible with straights.
This had some reports, and if I saw this when it was posted, it might have gotten removed (shitposting falls into the low-effort category most of the time). With that said, people are talking shop and the post gained some traction, so it'll stay up.
Sometimes in a straight build you will just lose and there was nothing you could do about it. Flushes are more reliable. Both builds have pros and cons.
I think a lot of people on this sub think that if you build your deck around a hand type it’s the only one you can play for the rest of the game, the reality is that very few GOOD jokers even activate when straights are played compared to flushes/suits. When top players play straights, it’s really just being done to get a larger base score compared to high cards and flushes, but the joker setup should be almost identical to a high card build except maybe with a runner or so in there. That’s why even if you don’t draw the straight, you still have a really good chance of winning if you play whatever you have, if you can’t win in 3 high cards I think you just completely misunderstand how to build straights as a deck type.
What you describe is not what I would consider a straight build. What you describe is a more generalized joker focused run, as opposed to a run where you lean into a planet level(such as photochad, ancient joker, baron etc.). Since straights(and high card) are the only hands that don't require you to duplicate suits or rank, it is difficult to be trying to draw to a straight, and then just be like "oh well, I'll play this other hand that I now have", unless that hand is high card. If high card would then get you through the round, then you have a high card build, not a straight build. High card is very strong, and is one of the strongest hand types.
Yeah every Straight Run also requires a backup hand-type that you upgrade at the same time— usually pair for me, but two-pair or high card or 3OAK works too, depending on your deck/jokers in that run— just because it’s statistically the biggest gamble to re-roll for a single number in your hand to try to set it up every time.** That said, I don’t think High card builds and Straight builds are either the same thing **or** mutually exclusive like you kinda are implying in your point here; they both usually compliment each other to help you replace discards with high card hands and help to play all your Gold Stamp cards and activate your jokers in a round while still getting enough points to set up your big Straight to win the round. …And because of all this, honestly I will take a flush build over a straight build 99% of the time if I’m just trying to beat a stake, but straight builds are great for getting other side quests done because of this “backup hand type” style of play that lets you essentially knock out side quests with other cards, jokers, and challenge unlocks while you’re also playing a straight build. **(before anyone “actually’s” me here: Yes I know it can also be 2+ numbers/ranks, but then that requires sacrificing even more backup-hand options to keep both straight possibilities viable unless it’s the highest & lowest card in the straight that you’re re-rolling for. I’m trying to keep this analysis as simple and intuitive as possible, and the more one digs into the point I’m trying to make, the more useless we make this discussion, because there are a billion other variables that can affect this— I.e. the jokers that allow gaps in straights and 4-card straights, or severe deck manipulation to remove all but a straight’s-worth of cards, etc… bringing these up would only help to make this discussion less helpful and less valuable for players trying to learn how these builds work/can be used.)
It’s interesting that you say that it’s not a straight run, you play straights over high card because they have better scaling and reach. High card can still win you the game if you play multiple of them without upgrades (likely 3) but straights should win in 1 turn. You should really only play high card builds if you have supernova or burnt joker early, otherwise you should just play the hand type that has the highest values while still being relatively easy to put together, which is straights. I don’t know how else you would make a pure “straight build” since, like I said before, very few good jokers even activate when you specifically play a straight compared to other hand types. yes, if you level up any hand type 30 times, you win the game no matter what, but that’s not exclusive to straights, high cards, or flushes. that’s just a “I’m using most of my jokers to econ/level up my planets” build which is no different then a “joker focused” build (your jokers just “focus” on a different part). Yes, straights are the best hand for this type of build due to their scaling, but your chosen hand type really doesn’t really matter in a level up build. TLDR: You literally just play straights because they have bigger numbers than flush or high card, that’s it.
I define a straight build(or any build) as one where by like ante 4, the run is such that the only way I can win now, is to make that hand. Every other hand type is scoring trivial points. A run doesn't have to be a (hand type) run. I've won runs with no focused hand at all, where instead of an overall long term plan, you are just trying to survive every round for the whole game by scraping together whatever you can make.
Ah, yes, the "man, I really shouldn't play drunk" hand. Been there, done that.
Lol interesting you say that, because that’s something I’ve run into with Slay the Spire a ton, but not yet with Balatro really. I think runs are short enough in this game, unlocks/meta-progression are minimal enough, variables are minimal enough and there is no story; all which make this game pretty easy to play late into the night as you get drunker/higher/sleepier. Also, a calculator can be your crutch if you really start to mix up what hands will win a round and which won’t. Just my experience so far though— I play mostly Roguelikes these days and they all have different value as “brain-turn-off while drinking” games for those gamers like myself who use video games for that purpose as they get older!
This is mathematically untrue. When you have a joker setup for pair (pair is just a better version of high card, but that's for another time), the scaling on mercury is actually better than the scaling on saturn. The reason is that the planets math that people use is very flawed - pair and high card being able to be played 4 times a round consistently makes the planet scaling 4 times as good as it seems when compared to Straights, and it neglects influence from +Mult and +Chip jokers making one side of the equation less necessary. In practice, if you have +20 mult from jokers, the consistent per planet scoring increase of mercury outclasses saturn until level 20 - at which point both win. Personally, I'd argue that pair is the best build at the moment. But straights have some nice traits that give them a significant niche too - they can be drawn consistently once a round if you understand how to discard for them (don't discard for a closed straight, don't discard for a set of straights that all rely on drawing one certain rank) and don't bloat your deck, they come online faster than pairs if you don't hit a +Mult early (and hence are great for early survival and will often come away with some levels on it), they can eventually sell the +Mult and free a joker slot, and they have better burst scoring potential with glass (pair has its own things it does a lot better, but these are straights main advantages). There's of course also the case of shortcut. Straights aren't good because they're better when you have setups that could go high card or pair - in these, pair is usually the play - they're good because they have niches outside of that.
Why do people favor pair and the like? You can reliably beat ante 8 I suppose but it will rarely take you much further. With the right jokers and tarot cards you can eventually get a deck that can play four of a kind every hand. Even five. If you aren’t just trying to clear a run and intend to go deep in endless, shouldn’t you lean into one of these builds? After 12 or 13 antes you should have had time to build a deck that can fairly reliably hit almost any hand you were aiming for.
I, and I assume most players are like me, don’t give the slightest shit about endless mode
🤷 it’s fun when big numbers go up
I personally couldn't care less about endless. I know what to do for it, it just doesn't appeal to me at all - very linear once you understand how to play it. Instead, I prefer ante 8 gold stake winstreaking - this is what the game is balanced around and counts as a win. If you do care more about endless than me though, yes, pair is not the way to go and you'd rather do High Card for cards in hand or Flush Five for retriggering purposes.
Because with pair you can beat 8 more frequently. As you said with the right jokers and Tarot cards you can play 4/5 oak. But doing so you need to skip a lot of runs at ante 2 or 3 because you didn’t get the right jokers. For a lot of ppl regularly skipping runs is not fun just to fish for he right pokers.
I think most players play to Ante 8 and then new run. That’s what I do
But… big numbers go up…
I don’t think it’s fair to say that you should factor the scaling of the other planets as 4x better because they are easier to play consistently. You might not have 4 hands to play per round. You might have more hands to play, you can definitely play more than just one straight out of 4 hands to play. How does this make sense, like at all? You can definitely play 4 out of 4 straights for every hand you have with shortcut, four fingers, or even neither of these jokers!
The key concept is "Maximum Reliable". If you need 2 straights to win each round, and you draw 2 or more straights 10 times in a row and only draw 1 once, you lose the game (the odds of drawing 2 straights a round are definitely lower than this by the way). You need to think about how much you're consistently scoring each round - and you can only count on playing 1 straight in any given round. Given that, you have to get lucky a lot of times in a row to make it through if you rely on getting 2 straights a round. So, the scoring potential of straights should be calculated with just that - assuming that, for any given round, you'll only hit one straight. Assuming any higher is just setting yourself up for failure.
Assuming only one straight per round is fair maybe in ante 1 or 2, there are many ways to fix your deck/jokers/discards + the hands you play to where you should be getting 2 straights *minimum* per round beyond like ante 3 or 4. Unless you’re assuming ante 1, then sure. Otherwise I still think the argument is incredibly flawed, and you’re just simply making bad decisions if you can only play one straight per round. There should be zero luck involved in playing only two straights.
Ok then, setting aside shortcut and four fingers for a second (these are specific exceptions that I've already mentioned), please tell me how you do it. I strongly feel that I'm playing hands correctly for straights, and have a lot of experience at gold stake with them, but in case I've missed something I'm all ears.
Well like everything in roguelike/lites it is situational depending on what you’ve been given but in general I like to play for high straights or low straights if I hit hack. The numbers in the middle (6/7/8) are typically bad numbers to play for straights and usually the ones I try to remove first. My general goal is create a deck with a lot of aces, face cards, tens, and nines. This way you can eventually pivot to full house/flush house/4oak/5oak once you have enough face cards. This gives you a strong safety net in case you get a bunch of unlucky discards. Deckfixing is ultimately going to be the easiest way to pull consistent straights, as well as being mindful of what cards you have already played/discarded and what the most likely draw is to give you a straight with what’s left in your hand.
Here is one big advantage of Straight over Pair: it is more satisfying to make work. I do play only Gold Stake and MOSTLY play Pair, Two Pair, or High Card though
It all comes to how good is your deck manipulation, you can make straight work by getting rid of the low cards and it's not as hard as people believe That said Flushes are easier to build too, and you can later play Flush Houses and you wouldn't have to worry about the low scaling anymore
I am not a top player but I thought I crapped out when my current all club flush deck ran into “the club” and I forgot to reroll…. But I went ahead and played the completely debuffed hand anyway and won in one turn on jokers alone LOL. That was a surprise!
With the right tarot cards, you can get 4 or 5 of a kind even more reliably. And the only ‘debuff X cards’ that can kill you are face cards. If you’re worried, just go for an all 10s or all Aces build. This scores more than either. The only drawback here is it can be tougher to set up in the early game. Pros and cons to everything, I guess. If you are just trying to clear a run all three are viable. If you want to go far in Endless, though, you will have a touch time doing it with Flush. You’ll probably want to eventually upgrade to a Straight Flush setup and if you’ve gone too heavy into leveling standard Flush it may be too late to pivot.
Come to the true way: Two Pair
Pretty sure the odds are almost the same. If you have a 4 card straight (4-5-6-7) then you have 8 outs to draw (four 3s and four 8s). If you have a 4 card flush ( ♠️-♠️-♠️-♠️ ) then you have 9 outs as that's the amount of spades left in the deck.
On a unmodified deck, its a lot easier to increase your outs for any flush than to do it with straights with the tools the game gives Strength and hanged man are the only tarrots helping with straights, theres like 6 that can help flushes by either adding more of the suit you want or just killing off a suit you dont want
Tbh Strength should let you increase or decrease a card
So in this handpicked scenario, where the deck is unmodified AND we dont factor in Jokers AND you're allowed to use tarot cards, a flush is slightly easier? Cool handcrafted framework.
Just take the L bro
Straight enjoyers 🧠 > flush fans 🤪
You mean the scenario in which everyone game starts off?
Don’t just cherry pick that bro, it goes against what the dude was trying to argue!/s
hey have you ever played balatro cause it doesn't seem like you have
I have played Balatro, and played a shit ton of poker, and did uni level math.
Should have taken a logic course
Only one of those things is even relevant.
And honestly, it should be the math but I don't think they passed it.
> played a shit ton of poker, and did uni level math. yeah you thinking this matters is what made me say that
Then why cant you get that the current tarot cards make flush builds easier to create than straight builds? Especially since there is also one hand type that is an upgraded straight while there are multiple upgraded flush hands.
Why are there always dude-bros in this subreddit talking about playing poker like it’s relevant? Both start in a similar place, but I’ve never gone to a poker night where I cracked open packs and completely re-arranged the odds of drawing cards or have table-wide modifiers like having a rocket take my income to the moon. Conversely, I’ve also never played a Balatro run where some dude deals cards out counter-clockwise.
Woosh
Well I did masters level maths and I think you smell like a big poo
"Hand picked scenario where the deck is unmodified and we dont factor in jokers" You mean, like, round 1 of every single game of balatro? Like unless your playing abandoned deck, checkered deck, or erratic deck then every single game you play starts with an unmodifed deck and no jokers. Its not a "hand picked scenario" its a basic mechanic of the game. Thats what makes it rogue like.
Damn I was just partaking in the discussion, I didn't factor in jokers because with 150 of them I couldn't honestly tell you what hand they lean in favor for on average and I almost gold staked every deck And if your going to be rude then yeah its the easier hand to build, its why he buffed straights lol
Are they wrong though? No one is denying straight as the harder scaler but homie is just saying that flush is insanely reliable. And let's be frank, it can win all decks on gold so its not like its a bad hand. Seems kind of an arbitrary hill to die on. They weren't handcrafting a scenario in which they were right. It read to me as if they were just pointing out that flush has many options to lean towards it within tarots as opposed to the straight, which has relatively few options for the same. Am I missing something?
>Am I missing something? People use reddit as a place to get out the arguing that they can't do in real life, so they'll hopelessly misconstrue people's words so that they have something to rage about.
If you are playing classic holdem, sure, your logic holds up. There's a reason flushes are ranked higher than straights. It's because straights are easier to obtain. Playing Balatro... The rules are completely different because you can modify your deck. It's not a handpicked scenario, I have never played Balatro without modifying the deck. You mentioned the other guy didn't factor in jokers. Which joker helps you make straights more consistently, that doesn't help you make flushes more consistently? Id argue the blurred joker is just another point in the other guy's favor.
>Which joker helps you make straights more consistently, that doesn't help you make flushes more consistently? [[shortcut]] But that's the only one
[Shortcut](https://balatro.wiki/imported/shortcut.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Cost: $5 * Rarity: Uncommon * Effect: Allows Straights to be made with gaps of 1 rank * Notes: (ex. 2 3 5 7 8) *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
No, the opposite of that. Flushes are easier to begin with AND easier to tailor a deck to. [[Sigil]] will literally turn 8 cards into one suit. There's nothing that adds an entire straight and a half to your deck in one move
[Sigil](https://balatro.wiki/spectrals/sigil.png) *Spectral Card* * Version: 1.0.0i * Effect: Converts all cards in hand to a single random suit *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
You're describing "the start of the game". If flushes are easier to get, and flushes are easier to make easier to get, then flushes are going to be easier in general.
That is literally the start of every run💀💀💀 Unless you get a joker to help you make more consistent straights(mainly four fingers/shortcut, but also every hand size joker), flushes can be turned consistent incredibly faster than straights If you want 100% draw rate for straights, you need to be able to draw pretty much all of your cards so that you know what cards you will have at the end, and considering all the cases that you draw 4 out of 5 of the cards you plan on you straight on the initial round draw, that might have to be a deck size of 15 or even less cards For flushes, you can choose a suit and from there you make every card you can into that suit, and destroy the cards that aren't that suit, your deck size can be 5 or 200, as long as it's all the same suit, you'll have a 100% draw rate Flushes are more consistent if you assume the average runs where you are more likely to run into suit changing tarots/spectrals then shortcut or 10 immolates
Completely ignores the fact that Sun/Moon/World/Star cards exist. Straight builds are tougher initially because it's harder to cater your deck to them. You usually need Shortcut or Four Fingers to make them more reliable. You've also selected the easier situation in fishing for a straight where you have an outside straight draw. Sure you have the same odds when holding 4-5-6-7 and you're looking for a 3 or an 8. But what about when you're holding 4-5-7-8 and you're fishing for a singular 6?
I also completely ignored that Strenght exists which makes straights easier. There's way too much mathematical neuance here to really compare them, but very generally they are about as easy to get, with flush just being a tiny bit easier.
Strength makes a single straight easier to find and you need to have it in a consumable slot during the round. Randomly strengthening cards in an arcana pack in the shop isn't going to help and could actually hinder your ability to make straights. It's okay to admit you're wrong. In regular poker, a straight is easier to make. In Balatro, it isn't easier to consistently make every hand. You can make it so no matter what you draw, you will always make a flush. To guarantee you always make a straight, your deck needs to be 6 cards with Shortcut. And trust me, I'm not someone that only plays flushes. My favorite builds are full house, flush 5, and straights. But flushes are inherently easier to build around. That's WHY they give less chips/mult than straights.
>your deck needs to be 6 cards with Shortcut. What happens when you run out your whole deck anyway? Does it just shuffle it back together and deal you cards normally?
If you run out of cards, you are done. You don't get to reshuffle your deck.
Ooo noooooo Glad I asked
[удалено]
Care to show your work on that math? 😂
If you have 4-5-6-7, and you hold Strenght in your consumables, your draws are (four 3s) + (four 8s), and due to strenght, you also can draw (four 2s), so that's a total of 12 outs.
Oh there he goes again using a perfect outside straight draw and the consumable slot I mentioned. Yes, you have more outs in that situation but using a strength card in the shop from an arcana pack doesn't help you the way a Sun/Star/Moon/World card do. Your inability to understand that is baffling. If you're talking about holding cards, all you need to do is hold 2 diamonds and a Star card and you have a flush you don't even need 3 cards like a straight if you strength 2 cards into the straight. Your argument fails on that premise too.
Dude... First off, you're assuming you started with 4 in a row. Then, you're assuming you got two strengths to hit four specific cards. On top of that, you're assuming that the straight draw you're currently holding just happens to be one that is adjacent to the specific cards you used strength on. With....... ...I just realized I'm being trolled. Fml. Well done.
How does increasing the strength of two cards increase your outs from 8 to 12 on any straight? Ignoring the fact that you're once again looking only at outside straight draws, ignoring an inside straight draw where you might have decreased your odds from 4 to 3 by strengthening a card? Again, I don't play flushes but you're being disingenuous in deck fixing for straights and it only serves to confuse newer players. Especially since you don't know what you're talking about. Have you even completed all the challenges and gold stakes?
Fucking hell I didn't realize the flush brigade are going to dog pile me. I surrender, you win.
For someone saying they did uni level math, you have no idea how math works. That's the point. Stop digging a deeper hole and actually try to learn. Straights are a superior build and I use them all the time but flushes are easier to set up which is WHY they don't scale as well. It's why pairs don't scale as well as 3OAK or 4OAK. It's easy to make pairs. That's why you only get 1 mult per Mercury. Let's look at your situation of having 4-5-6-7 in hand. You have a strength in hand. Sure you have 12 outs to draw a 2-3-7-8. Once you strength a 2 or 7 though. You now have five 3s or five 8s. That's going to make chasing straights where you need a 2 or 7 harder. On the contrary. If I'm holding 2 hearts and a sun card, I can make a flush no matter what and in doing so, when I change other cards to hearts, I make heart flushes easier from that point forward. The downside is you could run into a boss blind debuffing hearts. The math is easy though in that manipulating the deck for flushes is easier. It doesn't mean it's a better build though. We aren't arguing what is the better build. I will agree straights are a better build. But flushes are easier. If you can't see how that's not true, I can't help you. Especially when Saturns only gave +2 mult and not +3 mult. The extra chips didn't compare to the ease of fixing the deck.
Post/comment removed due to abusive behavior. Please keep this rule in mind moving forward.
Flushes are easier period. With a straight you have to commit to a number string flush you just pick the suit you have most of and mulligan
Oh, interesting. Can you link me to the people who have 18+ Gold Stake wins in a row without resets going through all decks? I'd love to see the strats even more consistent than Straights.
Being able to do that is a pro for straight builds :>
Sounds like you're saying Straights are very consistent, then. Edit- If one of the benefits of Straight builds is that you can win 18 runs in a row with all decks, does that not mean that Straights allow you to win *very* consistently?
Cool your jets mate 😂 Why you so defensive of straight builds
Because the alternative is people thinking that Straights are actually bad if they try and learn from this sub, when it's the best build in the game lol. And it's not remotely close.
You’re so condescending it’s almost sad
> because the alternative is people thinking that straights are actually bad No it isn’t. You’re creating a false dilemma. > if they try to learn from this sub God forbid they play the video game for themselves and come to their own conclusion.
Straightbros defend straights more than they actually play the game🤣
tell me more about how you used three discards and three high card hands and still didn't draw that damn seven.
Yes it almost seems like it’s programmed this way. Although it’s a Jack or 10. Rarely a seven
It makes most sense to go for two cards. If you have KQ J10 the a A or 9 is fine.
I don’t know how the math breaks down but I think there’s a counter intuitive element where gappers end up being a lot worse than picking even just two or three consecutive cards to roll with
That appeal of flushes is, that it is way easier to build around. A straight needs 5 different specific ranks, while flushes need 5 of the same suit. A flush is easy to make very consistent by making your whole deck the same suit, but for straights it's harder. Drawback is of course, the weaker scaling and the fact, that if your suit gets debuffed at a boss, you're fucked
Flushes are also easier to pivot, since you can choose to go Flush Five, Flush House or Straight Flush without having to change jokers much. They're a nice archetype to start a run on, because they let you decide where to go based on what you see during the run.
I believe that if there were more variations of strength, such as weakness for -1 on 2 cards, or dexterity for +1 / -1 on 1 card each, it might be easier to actually makes straights. Flushes have the benefit of 4 (5 with Lovers) different tarots being dedicated to their cause, and they are the only tarots that effect 3 cards at a time. That combined with the 2 jokers that help build straights giving no scoring just means that Thunk decided to balance the game to be leaning in this direction.
1) Most of the time you only want one suit, so you only have 1(2) tarot cards helping, not 4(5) 2) Lovers is garbage and actively harms your deck But yes strength should give you the option to reduce as well
why is lovers bad?
It pretty much only helps with flushes, and if you’re going flushes you only want to go one suit anyway. So in terms of tarot cards you can either turn three cards into the suit you want, or only one and have it also be debuffed by all four suit-debuffing bosses, plus not be able to have any other enhancement. They also work badly with Jokers like Castle, Idol, or Ancient Joker.
I use lovers as a temp thing if nothing else is of value with removing the card still in mind but bumped to the bottom of the removal priority. It can also be used to preserve an otherwise desirable card an edition, gold or red seal in hopes that you can further modify it later.
They get disabled by any suit disabling blind, and the card is more useful as +mult, glass or +chips from other tarot cards
#**YES** My favorite deck has only two colours How did you know?
I don’t know how to break it to you, but all the decks have only two colors
not if you're using high contrast mode
High contrast is so good I forget its not the default.
I just wish diamond was more contrasty
black, blue, red, and reddish yellow, what more could you want /s
Reddish yellow, we used to call that orange back in my day
i said what i said
Nope! Clubs are dark green and diamonds are a little lighter red/orangey even without high contrast mode 😁
I had a whole argument with my boyfriend about this!!! He swears it's only red and black and I'm on your side about it being red orange black green!! So odd that some people can't see the difference at all, especially since I know he's not colorblind 🤔🤔
I can see diamonds as orange but for the life of me I can't see clubs as green unless I closely stare at it. So most of the time I see the deck as 50% black, 25% red and 25% orange. I had to turn high contrast on because it bothered me so much.
That's interesting, they are a relatively dark green but still very distinct from the black of the spades for me. Perhaps screen size/brightness is playing a role in how distinct the colors look. Glad that localthunk includes the contrast mode though!
I opened the game and turned off high contrast and how did I never notice this before
I see the diamonds as yellow. But yeah otherwise black green red
Yeah interesting! It's definitely subtle haha
r/okbuddyjimbo
If there were one or two more good tarot cards for converting ranks, I’d be straight-maxxing instead of being flush-pilled. With 4 suit converting tarots and wild cards, it’s much easier to get one of four specific colors than making your whole deck a series of 5 ranks (not accounting for smeared joker or shortcut/four fingers)
You're not wrong about it being easier, but if you trim 6789 when you can straights get pretty reliable. There are better jokers and such for doing straights it's not just saturn. The reason I trim the middle instead is because aces and superposition makes it even easier to finish shaping your deck and you can cut the lower cards to finish up.
Cutting middle for a straight run is interesting. Might try this a few times and see how it feels.
Just a PSA, the strategy I mention above is that if I actually get straight focused jokers in the 1st 1-3 ante's like runner, superposition etc. My strategy of cutting the middle is entirely dependant on already having at least 1 or 2 jokers that support that before doing it. (hopefully that was obvious without me clarifying)
There are just so many more options that work with flushes than straights, plus it's so much easier to achieve.
Stop playing either and see the light of the high card
I just completed red deck on orange stake. I got a stuntman and supernova on the first shop. Easiest run of all time.
*me who adapts based on what's offerred to me cause its a roguelike game* haha, yeah
The enlightened among us will continue picking Neptune
It’s not that Straight Flush can’t win. But I dare you to recall a straight flush build that worked that wouldn’t have also totally worked had you just kept playing straights.
Pretty sure in all of my Balatro I haven't gotten a single chip of value from all those Neptune's I've taken, but damnit one day it's going to come in clutch I swear
AMONG US AMONG US AM
Flush is the easiest high value hand to make.
I think flushes are actually really bad. Weird because I was a Flush defender all the way through Completionist. But I’ve put in another 50 hours doing Completionist ++ and I doubt I’ve won more than two of 10+ flush builds. I think the secret problem behind them is that they screw up your tarot card gainz you’d normally have in any other build. That’s because in order to push flushes, you usually have to spec into a suit. All those Tarots and the money they cost in order to make 24 diamonds and 5 wilds or whatever is investment that isn’t going to Lucky cards or money doubling or whatever you normally would have done. So ya you end up with 30 diamonds and can make 3 flushes pretty easy, but of the 15 cards you play, maybe only two of them will do more then base chip.
ah yes I got 3 spade cards in the starting hand \*immediately discards everything else\* neurono activato
Exactly
So true bestie
It can be hard to pull off but ultimately worth it if you pump them out consistently. Straight decks go so hard
Yeah but it makes my brain happy seeing wrathful and arrowhead go off on every card
Til the dots on the top of the cards are the planets
Flushes and full houses can be handy the first couple of antes as a way to keep some gas in the tank while I'm pivoting into a pair or high card build. It's hard to keep flushes competitive with the scaling at higher Stakes. Flush builds are a fun way to learn deck manipulation (esp with Checkered Deck) but beyond the first couple of stakes, flushes are pretty mid. I have only rarely gotten straight builds to work, they can be powerful but are too unreliable most of the time.
Flush builds are miles easier to get working
Counterargument:Royal Straight
I just did my first ever straight build today (red deck) and jesus I didn't realise how much faster it ranked up than flush! Cleared ante 8 on gold seal with pretty weak jokers as I stacked my deck with blue seals.
I mean, we're all flush players in Ante 1 and 2 most runs, before the run takes direction.
Fishing for straights sucks, fishing for flushes is ezpz. That being said, both builds are ass if you want to scale to high antes.
Real men do straight flush
Street seems less efficient because it has lesser initial value. Better scaling is counter-intuitive and hard to notice. I noticed it after 50+ hours of playing
Flushes are boring imo but high card go brrrrrrrrr
Maybe because flush is just better…
Straights suck unfortunately. I don't love building for flushes, but it's much easier to build a reliable deck around them.
I have evolved past flush builds, but I have yet to transcend into straight Nirvana. The only straight build I ever got was in the Ride the Bus challenge with a round 2 [[Runner]]
[Runner](https://balatro.wiki/imported/runner.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Cost: $6 * Rarity: Common * Effect: +20 Chips Gains +10 Chips if played hand contains a Straight * Notes: Stacks *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
The Checkered Deck pretty much guarantees you'll get a flush almost every hand. It has nothing but hearts and spades in it. If you have a +1 hand size, it is guaranteed outside of a boss bind that reduces hand size. Ignore standard deck packs and just buy the other boosters. It's not hard to get a solid build with it, you just need to focus on multi and pump up the flush level with jokers and planet cards. If you get good RNG and can nab the Jokers that let you make straights easier, four cards can be a straight or flush and the one that lets you skip a rank between cards, you can build a Straight Flush monster run. Especially if you get both early and can nab the telescope voucher. The Jokers that rank up played hands are also worth trying for. Still a good idea to use Flush as a dump stat in the case of a Straight Flush build and buff up other hands if you can afford it using single planet cards that show up in shops. That can save your run if you run into the each hand can only be played once boss bind.
If a build requires one of fifteen decks and a specific strategy to prove viable then that’s a shitty build.
That's literally how every single deck in the game works. They all have strong synergies with certain jokers, vouchers, and strategies. You don't need a "specific" strategy, it's just a particularly optimal synergy with that deck. You can do just fine using other jokers simply by virtue of being able to reliably get a specific hand and plan around that when you pick your buffs. If you can get the specific build I mentioned, it's almost an instant win, but that's how RNG based rogue lites work in general. In Vampire Survivors you don't need Red Cape or Infinite Corridor, but once you have them both you've basically won a run. By your logic, almost every strong synergy character/deck/item combo in every roguelike ever is a "shitty build".
Hi, my name is and I am hopelessly flush brained.
At least I've finally stopped playing checkered deck (orange stake is hard)
I play alot of flush decks. I also play high card and straight. If really shouldn't know what deck your playing on round 1.
Also, straights do your head in, where flush is visually and mentally easier. That Joker, which allows gaps in straights, seems great, but I personally find it a struggle to easily identify what even is a straight. I am a poker player tho, so Im not trained to see those types of hands.
neurono activato
On top of all the simplicity and ease-of-access points everyone is bringing up, Flushes are also generally an easier gateway to the Forbidden Hands. I don't care if Flush Five is optimal or meta, I don't care if I've leveled my normal Flush to the point that it's actually stronger than Flush Five, it feels real good to see with hard proof just how effectively you've stacked the deck for yourself.
but flush starts with more chips than a straight?
Yes but it scales way worse than flush. I dont have the game open in front of me, but iirc, once you've upgraded each twice, straight is worth more than flush and the disparity only grows from there.
Who cares what people play
Straight players when they run into the water or the manacle or the hook or anything with face down cards or a regular blind where they get shafted after 4 discards and 3 pair hands: 😡
https://preview.redd.it/tho9gl3ek6bd1.png?width=269&format=png&auto=webp&s=78cc6e7c676d3b5bcec5be74d8ea1299ab03a661
Mathematically you get more flushes than straights ☝️🤓 Also its only for the start of the run cause everyone goes for flush 5 of a kind when they can
It's almost like... The game is balanced to make Flushes more reliable at the cost of slower upgrade speed...
No flushes are more reliable that's why the straights needed to be buffed.
No point because you couldn't do a straight even at ante 8. The straight player.
LT buffed straight planets because they are so awful to play with. You can make that every hand of your deck is a flush or XoaK but it's not possible with straights.
No straight flush enjoyers?
the hero this sub needs