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Frost orbs are supposedly the most consistently powerful way to win at high Ascension with the Defect, but like yourselves I've never managed to get that to work. Well, except for once or twice when the stars aligned, but you can say that about any build.
My most consistent way to victory with Defect is lightning spam. Upgrade Zap and Dualcast early (because 0 cost = good), then I go looking for Storm, Tempest, Biased Cognition, and importantly Electrodynamics to help with AoE. A Thunder Strike is nice if you can get it for finishing bosses. The rest is all defensive cards like Leap.
Another build I will try to go for is the "infinite 0 cost" build, using cards like Scrape and All For One. It's very dangerous to go for though - it's immensely powerful if you can trim your deck enough for it to work, but if you don't get the key cards your deck will collapse very quickly.
My most powerful build ever was a really weird one - I got a Hyperbeam from Neow at the start, then got the duplicator event to give myself a second one. I spent the rest of the run grinding my other cards into dust and then the deck went bonkers when I found the Necronomicon (play the first 2+ cost card you play per turn a second time for free). I had an Echo Form too if I ever needed it, bringing me up to 75 damage AoE.
Still, I definitely find the Defect to be the weakest of the 3, at least for me. Ironclad is most consistent to get a decent (but not fantastic) deck and win the game, Silent is harder to survive early but can grow significantly more powerful late game, and Defect has a pretty easy early game but is far more difficult than the other two to put together a winning deck. I feel like he relies on combos more than the other two, and if you don't get the right cards it just ain't happening.
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Also, when I got to the heart in my Silent playthrough, it mentioned I dealt 700 some-odd damage, but then it said I dealt 0 damage. What was that about?
That sounds like a bug. The first number is your score for that run. The second is your cumulative score across all successful runs. I dunno why it said 0 damage there.