Also, aside from what I've mentioned, I think survival might actually be too hard, later on, or at least difficulty scales strangely. The fact that your HP stays at 10 the entire game (barring Dragon Blood upgrades, which are few and far between), while the monsters' stats keep going up, means that after a certain point, most enemies can one or two-shot you. Take this example:
Viper, ATK 21, HP 51/51 (a card I saw in the displayed run, but didn't save)
Just... I can't think of any way to deal with that without the aforementioned strategies of stacking an absurd amount of Magic Shields or being able to one-shot it. I've been playing Elena mainly, but it seems like other characters (without the convenient ability to turn mana into Magic Shields) might run into an insurmountable wall after a while, where your attack is too low to one-shot most enemies (and they'll kill you if you don't). You can't simply avoid monsters altogether, for obvious reasons. I don't know what the other heros' possible ways of dealing with that might be, so explanation would be helpful if you have time. Thanks!