Light Metatron is one of the oldest godfest exclusives (GFE) along with the Odin pantheon. As with any long-lasting and content-rich game, the issue of powercreep will raise its ugly head. Powercreep occurs when older monsters become more trivialized and less capable of clearing the newer and harder content. To help combat this, Gung-Ho has been systematically going through the older pantheons and giving less popular cards an awoken evolution to propel them back into top-tier status. Re-buffing older cards is healthy for Puzzle and Dragons because  many players will have rolled a worthless god months ago and an awoken evolution breathes new life into their box. It also encourages other players to yearn for it and thus roll more heavily during a godfest. It is a win-win situation for everyone and users do not feel the constant pressure to roll for new gods all the time. With all that being said,  is still stuck in an unfavourable spot and it has only gotten worse with the advent of more exciting (and offense oriented) bind clear monsters such as   ,  ,  , and  . Furthermore, the high end game play in Puzzle and Dragons is less bind focused (partially due to many unbind-able leaders) and revolves around explosive bursts of damage.

 is capable of being a modest leader and can make a very safe farming team that can easily push 25k hp with max leveled-subs. The 3.5x multiplier combined with an HP buff to healers ensures you can tank most hits and still pump out enough damage. I can use my own Metatron team to clear every normal dungeon  with relative ease (but is less consistent on King of Gods). One weak spot I have noticed is having a team with very large amounts of health can actually get you killed. This mostly applies to large, one-turn cycle hits that prevent the two  heal actives from putting you above 50%. This will result in you having no multiplier as you can not escape being under 50% health. This is a rare situation but worth mentioning as a potential weakness.  However, as a purely farming lead, there are countless options for team building and you do not need to own a  to quickly clear easy content. With all that being said, I wish to focus this discussion on her role as a sub on high end teams that wish to push end-game content.

From a sub perspective,  brings     and being unbindable to the party. One of her shining aspects is the double  as this can ensure you have crucial actives ready by turn one, but provides no other benefit once actives are ready. Other than that, the rest of the awakenings are defensive in nature. There may be occasions in which the  can save you, but it is becoming less common to have either repeated binds or binds lasting more than 3 turns. The 500 auto heal can sometimes prove useful as it can on rare occasions allow you to survive another hit. The bind immunity can allow you to bait out water or light binds (provided she is the only water or light sub on the team) safely and thus grants one extra turn. Overall, the awakenings provide lots of survivability, but at the cost of having no offensive potential. In addition, Metatron is still missing a key  which could be partially due to the fact she is an older GFE. Missing the  can hinder team building as achieving 100% resistance (5  awakenings) is becoming more crucial and as a purely defensive sub, she should have access to at least one  considering  has two. Lastly,   lacks a  or  and thus providing no additional damage to the team. I strongly believe  needs an awakening update as she is becoming a less valuable GFE.

Thankfully, skill ups have become more readily available with  invading in Mechdragon technicals, appearing as the boss in a survey dungeon, and randomly appearing in descends. Furthermore, the addition of  granting a skill up chance further increases the chances of max skilling your  to a six-turn cooldown. The active provides a consistent access to a modest heal (6x your ‘s recovery) that scales with plus eggs, monster level, and latent awakenings. The heal can provide extra stalling potential as you can use it quite liberally provided you have max skilled her. Ever since I began dropping  from my regular descend team line up, I do miss the heal, but not enough to warrant her a sub slot.  ‘s active also provides three turns of bind clear and she herself is unbindable. This can be a life-saver when a boss binds every card on your team and you need to kill it on the next turn to avoid execution. However, the niche of being the only bind immune-bind clearer has come and gone as awoken evolutions of    ,  , and  are also bind- immune bind clearers. This is healthy for the overall state of PAD because it allows flexibility in team building and prevents the reliance on a single sub to achieve one goal. Yet, this pushes  out of a sub slot because her other weaknesses cannot be as easily overlooked. The main advantage  has over  ,  , and   are farmable, non-pii skill ups.

Light Metatron was my 4th hypermax on Mantastic and my 2nd for Fantastic, and even my mom has a hypermaxed one. I love her artwork as well as the various fan art cycling around the internet, but I yearn for a buff. Even just a single  or  will breathe fresh life into her. I still rely on using her on my Fantastic account because I have fewer 297s and it is a large stat hit to absorb for my  team. However, I have been starting to swap  out for my lowly plussed  to help hit the 100% skill bind resistance cap as well as provide an on colour sub. The biggest loss is felt in the recovery department as 1160 recovery is still amazing.

With all that being said,  is still an amazing sub for the bind clearing role and can still be utilized. She fulfills the blue and light slot on rainbow teams along with being unbindable with two  . Her stat distribution is wonderfully recovery heavy and what I am mainly yearning for is either an awakenings update or a small buff to her active spell. She just needs a little something to help her achieve top-tier status again and to help her feel like the powerful GFE she used to be. Let me know what you guys and girls think as I may have overlooked something or under-emphasized her strengths.

Happy Puzzling!