Watcher meta largely revolves around hunting for the Rushdown infinite. It's a stupidly busted card and way easier to pull off than it should be. All you need is Rushdown, Eruption+, any 1-cost Calm card, and a way to draw your entire deck.

In act 1, you can just start removing Defends right away. Path for more shops so you can keep removing. The meme is that Watcher doesn't need to block if she always has lethal, Eruption makes her starter deck very strong already. You can afford to be picky on early card rewards, skip whatever you don't need. Note that exhaust cards and powers are often okay to take, because they won't get in the way of the infinite once you can get it.

While the odds of assembling Exodia are weirdly high, you won't always get the infinite to happen. Late act 1, recognize if your deck is falling behind and you need to actually start taking more cards. Even a non-infinite stance dance is still very strong, and Mantra is very often good in this case.

Watcher is funny in that she has a few extremely strong cards, some cards that are good on paper but she arguably doesn't need them as long as she has the busted stuff, and a lot of cards that are outright trash. A large part of learning Watcher is just learning which is which, and then you just click on the busted cards.

That sounds rather boring to be honest. But I will go and find out.

EtA (no need to double-post)
So I did the rushdown thing and yeah, it gets pretty wacky. I had 4x Flurry of Blows (comes back from discard pile when changing stands), found a relic that adds 1 mantra each turn and also had 2 cards that add mantra+block, copied Eruption+, ended up removing all defends and 2/5 strikes. Had some other stuf that I didn't particularly need but also didn't hinder.

To be fair; Defect turtling to 999 block in several turns trivializing all combat can also get quite boring. I might try Watcher more often now, after this one run I feel I have a much better understanding of her game and am now ready to dive in and try some other stuff myself to see what works and what does not.

If you don't wanna chase infinity, see how much you can get out of her scaling.

Mental fortress is the bread and butter (in part because it fits your starters). Talk to the hand can get silly with free attacks or multi-hits like tantrum. Nirvana is a lil awkward but the point is that her defensive scaling is so good because it's all conditional and therefore technically has no ceiling, unlike metallicize which is like "lmao 3 block".

There's even some super silly stuff you can do to get obscene block from wallop.

Well, if you want to read a guide, this one works well for every character:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2673443183
And for Watcher specifically, if you like turtling, Watcher has some interesting possibilities there. She's kind of like the glass cannon of the game, so you can spend several turns in a row just being patient, blocking and retaining cards, then blast an enemy in one turn when the time is right. But of course, that's just one way to play her. Rushdown infinite is another.

Originally posted by Ivydoom:

That sounds rather boring to be honest.

It is. Best to play the game in both a way that works and a way that you enjoy.

Personally, I feel Defect is by far the most fun character.

Originally posted by Ivydoom:

To be fair; Defect turtling to 999 block in several turns trivializing all combat can also get quite boring.

Lol, there's a lot more ways to play Defect than just that and claws, though.

Originally posted by Missingno.:

and a lot of cards that are outright trash.

Eh, I'd say she only has one card that's truly outright trash. The others are "underwhelming".

The guide you linked here, I happened upon it last night and read it. It has nothing to offer me as I am already quite familiar with the Spire itself. It wprks for every character because it has 0 depth in characters (it touches only a wee bit on Ironclad) and only focuses on some basics that any player should grasp after a few runs, otherwise the game is probable not their cup of tea..

Not even going to waste time taking the rest of your post seriously.

Originally posted by LHGreen:

Eh, I'd say she only has one card that's truly outright trash. The others are "underwhelming".

Pressure Points, Alpha, and Conjure Blade are all truly abysmal cards I can't see any deck ever wanting. And there are a bunch more in the next tier of cards that could occasionally have very niche use cases, but it's hard to imagine you don't just find better things to put in your deck.

Originally posted by Missingno.:

Originally posted by LHGreen:

Eh, I'd say she only has one card that's truly outright trash. The others are "underwhelming".

Pressure Points, Alpha, and Conjure Blade are all truly abysmal cards I can't see any deck ever wanting. And there are a bunch more in the next tier of cards that could occasionally have very niche use cases, but it's hard to imagine you don't just find better things to put in your deck.

Alpha does have problems, but it can be useful in slower, tankier decks. It's even more niche than the cards in the next tier you mentioned, but not as bad as Pressure Points. Conjure blade is great in decks where you have a ton of energy, deck manipulation, and maybe combo ability. There are, strictly speaking, better options, of course, but it's still pretty fun.

Originally posted by Ivydoom:

Not even going to waste time taking the rest of your post seriously.

What the hell? What's your problem? That was all solid advice. And I said the guide was a more generalized thing. It's for helping with the fundamentals, which is good for beginners who are still struggling and having a hard time either grasping the flow or unlearning bad habits that they picked up elsewhere, and for more experienced players who just need a refresher. Like, nothing I said warranted you being such an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to me in your response.

If people are just trying to help, and you go full ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on them, you don't deserve the time and help of them or anyone else. And evidently, I'm not the only one who feels that way. I never hand out jesters to d-bags, that clown was already there when I got back here.

When's the last time you actually took either of those cards? I would honestly call Pressure Points the least bad of those three, because in the very rare case you transform into it you could consider grabbing more, but there's never a reason I would take Alpha or Conjure Blade.

Originally posted by LHGreen:

(...)

Originally posted by Ivydoom:

Not even going to waste time taking the rest of your post seriously.

What the hell? What's your problem? That was all solid advice. And I said the guide was a more generalized thing. It's for helping with the fundamentals, which is good for beginners who are still struggling and having a hard time either grasping the flow or unlearning bad habits that they picked up elsewhere, and for more experienced players who just need a refresher. Like, nothing I said warranted you being such an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to me in your response.

If people are just trying to help, and you go full ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on them, you don't deserve the time and help of them or anyone else. And evidently, I'm not the only one who feels that way. I never hand out jesters to d-bags, that clown was already there when I got back here.

That link was solid. I also explained I have no use for it. I don't mean disrespect, I can see the use for new players but if you actually read my original post you'd know I'm no beginner.

Everything below that was useless in my opinion. But sure, I have some time to waste:

+ I play this game the way I want to, nothing warranted your response there.
+ Defect is my favourite too, actually.
+ My question was about Watcher gameplay, the fact I only gave 2 simple examples of Defect builds doesn't mean those are the only ones I know.

You offered little advice, and in my opinion plenty of ridicule. Me not taking you seriously, a simple forum poster and basic gamer with next to zero meaning to you, pushed your buttons in so far you had to use swear words at me. Just shows me how right I was not to take you seriously to begin with.

I didn't mean to insult you, but I did mean to be honest.

I'm perfectly fine receiving jester, I interpret it the way I like it and I am just going to pretend someone had a good laugh at my post. Happy to make someone's day at least!

Much love and take care.

Originally posted by Missingno.:

Watcher meta largely revolves around hunting for the Rushdown infinite. It's a stupidly busted card and way easier to pull off than it should be. All you need is Rushdown, Eruption+, any 1-cost Calm card, and a way to draw your entire deck.

Rushdown meta? That`s soo 2021

Originally posted by Ivydoom:

I am having a Really hard time figuring out how to play Watcher. Then I go to the Guides-tab and all I can find are weird advertising spam things. I don't enjoy watching videos, I'm a reader and thinker and need to pause to let information sink in and this just works better with text.
So the actual question: what guide can I read to get a handle on Watcher's thing?

On a serious note, nearly all the high level stuff is in video format.

The closest thing you can get to a guide is from https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/rkooih/world_record_holders_watcher_tier_list/
Merl explaining his Rushdown semi/infinite strategy

To be sure there no confusion here. I'm the one giving you the Jester (for being obviously rude for no reason at all).

Sorry if it's was not your intention (in any case take my points)... :-)

Originally posted by Lavie:

To be sure there no confusion here. I'm the one giving you the Jester (for being obviously rude for no reason at all).

Sorry if it's was not your intention (in any case take my points)... :-)

It warms my heart you stick up for fellow posters.

As an archetype I'd say the Watcher is a Glass cannon.

All the nice cards (Rushdown, Talk to the Hand, Mental Fortress...) have already been mentioned, which work well with a stance dance deck.

Lesson Learned is a fun act 1 boss card, which allows you to end with a fully upgraded deck.

The "Empty [...]" cards that let you exit your stance are also nice to play around with.

If you have some (semi-)infinite rush down deck with flurry of blows, I recommend keeping (some of) your Flurry of blows in hand before reshuffling the deck, so you don't have to draw them again.

I appreciate the helpful answers that have been provided in this thread.
As there have been some negative vibes here (in which I had my own part) I'd like to see it buried.
Thanks and take care.