Watcher is simultaneously my worst character and the character I’ve progressed the farthest with.

Upgrade Eruption, get a Rushdown and either Inner Peace or Fear No Evil, and trim your deck down as small as possible. Then just do an infinite combo in every fight. A Scrawl, a second Rushdown, or a Runic Pyramid helps with setting up the infinite combo, and a Mental Fortress is crucial for spikers and the Heart.

That’s gotten me to A20 which is farther than I’ve gotten with any other character. But I literally don’t know how else to play her. I either get the right cards early on and win or I don’t get offered those cards and quickly lose.

On A0 stance dancing is not as important I would say – it becomes the go-to when hitting higher ascensions, and if you want to beat the heart. I won A20 with all kinds of decks, even very off Meta (had a deck once that was like 5 wheel kicks and 6 Just Lucky’s lol)

Focus on card removes and damage, keep your deck small, remove defends early. Make it a challenge to beat enemies in the least amount of turns (with a bit of luck you can beat most fights in act 1 in turn 1 or turn 2 – if you’re very lucky even bosses at times!)

Often you just need 1 Mental Fortress or Talk to the Hand to block effectively!

Watcher is a pretty cool character because you usually just need 1 of everything to get very far.

• Damage: 1 Blasphemy, or 1 Indignation, or 1 Crush Joints; combined with 1 or more Flurries, or 1 Tantrum, or 1 Sands of Time; even Brilliance does 12 dmg for 1 energy, which is a lot and can be A good pick in act 1 even if you don’t go for a Mantra build
• AoE: 1 Conclude, or 1 Consecrate edit: or 1 Bowling Bash (is not AoE but still counts here I would say)
• Card Draw: 1 Rushdown, or 1 Inner Peace, or 1 Empty Mind
• Block: 1 Mental Fortress, or 1 Talk To The Hand for Mid and Late Game; 1 Decieve Reality, or 1 Wallop for early and mid
• Momentum: 1 Omniscience, or 1 Scrawl, or 1 Vault
• Scaling: 1 Fasting, or 1 Alpha, or 1 Lesson Learned, or 1 Meditate-Establishment combo

I’ve beaten A20 with all characters (A20 heart with ironclad) except watcher. She’s still on A15 or something. Don’t know why but she still haven’t “clicked” for me and I just don’t enjoy playing her as much, even though people on the slay the spire subreddit kept saying she’s the easiest one to play.

I did beat the heart wirh her on A0 a while back with some really messy scry deck.

Edit: I think you either have to lean into the stance changing, scrying or like a calm+pressure points kinda build. There’s also apparently a pretty easy infinite you can do with her, but I’ve never tried that myself as it involves specific cards and removing basically everything else.

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For me, I can never seem to get the combos to minimize the deck, so I go for the stance switches. Even though I have played this the least, I still do better with Watcher than Defect.

I have thousands of hours across devices, and Watcher is still by far my hardest character to play. She can be extremely broken given the right combos, though. Here’s some general, rambling advice:

Wrath builds really want a lot of resources to exit Wrath (as I’m sure you noticed). All of the Empty cards help a ton, especially because they’re also just solid cards, but Fear No Evil is great to have 2-ish of in a 20 card deck. Definitely take a Tantrum if you have any strength artifacts, too. Rushdown also helps a lot more than seems intuitive (to me, at least); it’s also the basis of my favorite infinite in the game. Intermittent Wrath decks also really like Follow-Up and Wallop, and Conclude can sweep the first act a lot of the time, but that gets risky later.

Scry-with-block is pretty consistent, especially if you can get some Weave in there. I never take Just Lucky unless I’m building a Weave deck. (Most 0 cost cards are really traps, even though Claw is Law).

Divinity is pretty good, but requires upgraded Worship and probably also Devotion to luck into it. Wheel Kick is pretty good generally, but really helps out a Divinity deck to push your damage that turn.

By far my favorite Watcher card is Like Water, though. Passive block just for being in Calm is insane, especially if you have 2-3 in the deck. Easily worth playing early against The Awakened even with the strength buff. I will often get rid of any Wrath cards in my deck if I get enough Like Water and just sit in Calm the whole time.

I will say you should probably always skip Pressure Points. I love the mechanic, but because it’s the only card that interacts with it, you need like 3-4 upgraded copies to make it work at all, and that’s just too inconvenient to get.

In general, I think Watcher is way more situational with her card picks than other characters (except maybe Silent, but that’s very specific builds). Because of that, you really have to lean into the first handful of uncommons and rares you pick up. If you’re inconsistent with an archetype, lean more heavily on block, since you’ll be relying on burst Wrath damage. Protect is your best friend with a varied deck, and it and Perseverance can bail you out of a lot of bad situations. If you’re running a block-heavy deck, you can also get a ton of use out of Signature Move; Divinity/Signature Move is probably my favorite thing to have happen in the entire game (except maybe Nightmare/Catalyst).

Take all that with a grain of salt, though; I’m mostly a Silent and Defect enjoyer, and I struggle a bit with both Watcher and Ironclad (relatively), so my takes are probably a bit biased.