Awoken Shiva is the hottest fire lead in the game and was the reason fire teams are viable in the current meta. Fire teams were historically row-based  and the row playstyle was limiting due to the heavy reliance on fire-orb makers, the orb manipulation required to create a horizontal line of 6, and the lack of time extends available. Those factors pushed rows out of the meta and the game became more fixated around two-prong attacks (TPA)  .   are much easier to match and require less orbs to deal damage. This also allows you to create more off-colour combos, and each match adds an additional 25% damage.  has a similar feel and playstyle to Awoken Bastet  in that they are both combo-based leaders who utilize  .  ‘s active skill has been buffed in his awoken form, but it is still a bit lackluster as you bring two into the descend, and it is slightly redundant to have two cards with a damage enhancing active.

Pros: 

• Combo-based leader skill that focuses on only one colour
• Orb troll is very low due to no real restrictions (can even match jammer and poison orbs)
• Any red card can be a sub
• Balances out fire team’s low recovery with a 2.25x recovery boost
• Fire teams naturally have high base attack and strong health pools
• Active skills are not required to trigger maximum damage multiplier
• Easy to play and can be used for mindless speed farming
• Red/red typing reduces the chances of being bound
• Subs can be bound and do not affect leader skill activation
• Has one skill bind resist  awakening and thus easier to achieve 100% immunity
• Awakening materials are easier to obtain as only one descend boss and an evolved Pheonix who can even drop from the pal machine
• Fire teams feel powerful (the sound and animations)

Cons:

• Vulnerable to binds. This is becoming a more relevant issue with unbindable leaders becoming more common and dungeons having more preemptive binds
• Weak against blue bosses
• Ideal team building is quite REM heavy as there are virtually no farmable red  monsters
• Damage multiplier is “low” compared to the top-tier leads available

Overall,  is a fantastic lead and is capable of clearing nearly every descend. The playstyle is less stressful to play compared to rainbow teams as you only need to focus on a single colour. When deciding on a sub roster to bring into a descend, you should try to bring a mixture of offensive and utility-based actives. In addition, it is always wise to strive for 100%  through 3 sub monster awakenings (as  already has one).

The following video should give some insight as how to play  in Izanami Descended:

 

The broad categories of subs to bring and their respective actives are as follows:

	SUB
Single orb changers:
Offensive double orb:
Damage Enhance:
Defensive double orb:
Full board changer:
Bind Clearing:
Damage Mitigation:
Delays:
Gravity:
Skill lock Resist :

You never want to fill your sub pool with only offensive orb changers because you cannot use all of them at the same time because there would be too many red orbs and you would be unable to generate  or 6+ combos. Therefore, you need to find a balance that can be offensive and defensive. It is worth noting that  ‘s active enhances heart orbs, and this can be used to significantly increase your healing for that turn.

Single, fast orb changers: These subs provide rapid access to fire orbs and should be ready on turn 1 in case of a bad starting board. You should liberally use their actives as they will be recharged quickly and I like to bring one on my  team.

•  Red Valkyrie kind of has it all: 5-turn orb changer, 2  awakenings, very high base recovery, and extremely pretty. The recovery is exceptionally powerful because of  ‘s leader skill;  ‘s 656 base recover is multiplied by 2.25x. This allows your team to have fantastic healing potential with minimal plus eggs, and  should be a staple sub if you are fortunate to own her. The only drawbacks are a lack of a  awakening, lower base HP, and the occasions where it is problematic to break your heart orbs into fire.
•  Chiyome is essentially a weaker form of  . Both share a 5-turn single orb changer, but  has significantly worse awakenings and stats.  does have one  and a situational 40% resistance-dark awakening  . However,  is still a valuable sub to own, and she is a relatively common pull from the REM. I prefer  ‘s active over  because there have been times when I do not wish to break my heart orbs as I need to heal AND kill the floor at the same time. In addition,  can combo with the full board change of Awoken Leilan  if she produced a terrible board.
•  Awoken Minerva is another 5-turn orb changer with 8 (albeit mostly worthless) awakenings. The jammer resist  awakenings provide a 40% chance to resist but are only situationally worthwhile. One niche role the bind immunity can play is safely absorbing dragon-type binds (devil also binds  so not as ideal) though this is uncommon.  has relatively balanced stats and is still a viable option as a fast 5-turn orb changer.
•  Tsubaki is kind of a short cooldown orb changer, but her active is a bit longer at 7 turns, so I am not quite sure where to place them. Her active randomly generates 3 red and 3 light orbs from non-red and non-light orbs and provides 1 turn of haste. As such, the active is interesting as it will produce 2 more combos and can be safely stacked with another orb changer as it will not overflow the board. Awakenings are average at best, but  is at least worth mentioning as the active is unique.
•  Belial is another option for a single orb changer, but the counterattack ability built into the active is only useful in very niche situations. I am only mentioning him because he can have uses if you are able to skill him up. However, at this time, it is near impossible to do so in North America, and you would probably be better off using a different sub as 17 turns is far too long for a single orb changer. Lastly, the awakenings have very little synergy with  as the three  go to waste.
•  Gigas the Great is okay at best. He is a farmable monster and has one of the highest weighted stats in the game.  has the same active as  , but his negative recovery brings down his viability. Red teams already suffer from a lack of recovery, and  pulls the team down further. You would require either very high RCU subs or heavy plus egg investment in order to compensate for the lack of recovery, but at that point,   may not be viable. His active also removes hearts, and his  is his best out of 3 awakening. However, if you are in need of a giant stat stick,  can add sizeable bulk.
•  The red mystic knight, Homura is another farmable orb changer for  teams. Unlike  ,  has more evenly distributed stats but they are very low at only 617 weighted. He converts blue to red on a 5-turn cooldown and possesses a  awakening.  would be a more ideal sub to fill the fast orb changer compared to  as he brings 389 recovery and does not remove heart orbs with his active.
•  Guan Yu is an unbindable heart and poison to red orb changer on a 6-turn cooldown. He also provides 1,000 auto heal and the situationally useful poison conversion may prove to be a lifesaver. Overall, his awakenings are non-synergetic and may not be able to successfully run due to no  or  awakening.
•  Cao Cao is quite the powerhouse  sub as he offers 2  , double  , and a  . One turn of delay should be sufficient with the damage output possible and is mostly just added insurance or a way to overcome a boss with perseverance. The active also converts blue to red orbs as an added bonus.  also has amazingly high base attack value and will allow for very high bursts of damage when matching several  combos. The only downside is 27 base recovery, so you will either need to be heavily plus egged or have other high recovery subs to compensate.   During my early days of PAD, I was quite reliant on using Echidna  as a staple sub and sometimes miss the safety offered through her active. As such, I would love to have a  on my  team and will remain patient every godfest.

Offensive double orb changers: These orb changers provide board condensing as they remove 2 colours and either convert them into more red or red plus another element. They tend to be slightly longer cooldown and work best on floors where you need to deal large amounts of burst damage.

•  Awoken Hinokagutsuchi is the most offensive and scary red card you can find for your  team. With high base attack and a staggering 3  ,  will burn away the competition! The low recovery is slightly compensated with a 500 auto-heal  awakening. The active transforms blue into red and heart into dark orbs. This creates a net result of 1/3 red, 1/3 dark, 1/6 green, and 1/6 light orbs on the board and makes it very easy to create 6+ combos along with multiple red  . The active is more favourable compared to Ares  because it does not make too many red orbs. Over-flooding the board with red orbs can result in under 6 combos and fewer  . The one major drawback for  is a lack of  , so your other 3 subs will need to have at least one each to achieve 100% immunity.
•  Ares is a weaker alternative to  for an offensive double orb changer. As mentioned above,  suffers from creating too many red orbs with his active as, statistically, half the board will become red. This can prevent you making the 6 combos required for maximum damage from  ‘s leader skill.  ‘s three  awakenings go essentially unused, and he only possesses one  . His main saving grace is a  awakening that allows for more sub flexibility in reaching 100% immunity. I own and use an  on my Fantastic account and find him awkward to use. I have to be very careful using his active and try to not have more than 12 red orbs after activation as it becomes difficult to break them up efficiently. He is still very powerful, but I would pick  over  for less red orb flooding and 2 more  .
•  Prometheus is essentially a weaker  as his active changes 2 orbs into red, but he has much worse awakenings, stats, and skill-up potential. He comes from the relatively useless PADZ Collab series and will have no place on an end-game  team.   may simply be used during the early phases until better options become available.
•  Christmas Liu Bei is a rare pull from the 2015 Christmas REM and is at least worth mentioning to those who are fortunate enough to pull him. With an amazing 3  awakenings,  will passively hit like a truck. However, he suffers from the same active pitfall of  in that converting dark and hearts to red may overflow your board with red orbs and prevent adequate comboing or TPA matches. Lastly, a lack of  puts constraints on team building and these 2 shortcomings may make you overlook him as a permanent sub slot.
•  Dino Rider is another viable sub as he brings 2  awakenings along with the valuable enhanced heart orb  awakening. HIs active produces the net effect of changing hearts to red and this can be problematic as you may want to heal and deal damage in the same turn. Furthermore, his low base stats and a lack of  may make  hard to use as an endgame sub. Thankfully, we will in the future have access to a much easier skill up as he is currently very challenging to max skill at the moment.

Damage enhancing: Somewhat less dependant for  teams as you already enhance red orbs with your 2 leaders. However, if your team is low on  awakenings, it may be beneficial to bring one along as it may provide the burst needed for the more tanky floors.

•  Set has been propelled back into the spotlight due to his new ultimate evolution granting him 3  awakenings. One may automatically assume he would be a dream sub for  teams, but looking beyond the awakenings, the active is a bit lackluster. The problem with actives trying to double dip to cover 2 different roles is both end up being too weak for a single active with a longer cooldown. Changing hearts to red and increasing damage by 1.5x on a 12-turn cooldown is not great value. Another problem with the double-dipping is  ‘s active may create too many red orbs if you are presumably using him versus a powerful boss. I go into more detail in a previous Post (scroll down to find his section) on my woes and frustrations with  .
•  Awoken Freyr may be live in NA at the time of this guide posting, and it is safe to presume he will be ready for action in short time.  gains 2  and double  awakenings, which increase sub pool flexibility as you will only require one more  sub to achieve 100%.   will primarily be competing with Set  for the damage enhancing role on a red-based team, and  is superior in almost every way. Both  and  increase fire attribute damage, which stacks with the enhanced orbs that  ‘s active generates, and this is another way to guarentee a one shot on a powerful boss. It becomes redundant to stack too many orb changers on a team because you are unable to use too many on one turn for a  team as you have to be able to make at least 6+ combos. Lastly, the damage carrying over to a second turn can allow you to kill the second to last floor with ease and transition into the boss with one more turn of enhanced damage. This can preserve other actives or take down a boss in 2 turns if they grant a free turn when pushed into a certain health threshold.

Defensive double orb changer: none of these subs provide any  awakenings but instead offer survivability through their awakenings and their ability to generate heart orbs. In addition, all their actives create a favourable 4-colour board, which creates easier comboing and  matches.

•  As confused as I am by Uriel‘s new artwork, he brings an amazing amount of survivability to your  team. With an incredible 606 recovery,  can single-handedly bring up your team’s healing potential. In addition,  also provides also 2,000 HP worth of healing passively every turn due to 4  awakenings, and his active enhances all heart orbs (in addition to converting purple to hearts). In terms of stalling potential,  can keep your team afloat for a long time. Granted, his 3  go to waste, but he has a  to help achieve 100% SBR.
•  Yelling Yamato‘s name out loud when comboing supposedly enhances your damage, but I have yet to prove that theory. Rambling aside,  converts green to red and purple to heart orbs on an 8-turn cooldown. He does not enhance the orbs like , but instead brings unique awakenings to your  team. With 3 skill boosts  , you can almost guarantee every active is ready by turn 1. The  adds more defensive utility, but it is his recover bind  awakening that sets him apart. You can combo his active and match 6 horizontal heart orbs to remove 3 turns of binds from other cards. Do note that  is not bind immune, and this strategy fails if he becomes bound. However, if the dungeon has no preemptive binds, or if specific monsters will be bound, you can bring  to counter if the situation arises. Otherwise, he can still be used to generate red orbs or an emergency heal. Lastly, he can potentially combo with a bad Leilan  board change to convert the green into red orbs.
•  Sanada is part of the newer Samurai God pantheon and is still missing an ultimate evolution. This automatically puts his base stats and awakenings behind other options. That withstanding,  creates enhanced red orbs from blue and converts light to hearts on an 8-turn cooldown. The red orb enhancing conserves your  active and can provide significantly more damage than a standard orb changer would provide. Unfortunately,  only offers a  and  for relevant awakenings. This can all change when he is powered up through an ultimate evolution, but for now, you will have to work with a sub who is mostly there for his active.

Full board changers: Full board changers provide a safety panic button when the board is unfavourable for your other orb changers or it is flooded with jammer and poison orbs. I always like to bring one on my team as the safety net they provide is invaluable.

•  Awoken Leilan has legs to die for and powerful stats, awakenings, and active to boot. Aside from her 2  , every other awakening brings value to the team. The board refresh can be max skilled to 9 turns and also provides 1 turn of haste upon activation. The haste may seem appealing, but  teams generally run very little haste and thus are unable to fully abuse/benefit from it.  ‘s active will not removed locked orbs and is still prone to orb troll as you can have very little red (statistically, you should have 10 red every time). The major downside to  is a lack of  , and with her active, you are unable to heal unless a lucky skyfall occurs.
•  Urd also offers a full board change but also creates heart orbs. She shares the same 9-turn cooldown as  but without the haste benefit.  Even without the haste,  is superior because you can simultaneously deal damage and heal.  also has a  and a  awakening and will contribute damage when triggering 4 connected red orbs. Her base recovery is also quite high along with her overall weighted stats. I value  as superior to  simply because of the heart orb generation, and Leilan’s 1 turn of haste is not as worthwhile considering you most likely do not run any other haste actives. In addition, Urd still has room to grow as she has yet to receive an ultimate evolution. Even if it is a few extra awakenings, it could propel  to even greater potential as she is already the best board changer available to  teams.
•  Red Sonia is another option for a full board changer but is weaker than  or  due to a weaker (and longer to recharge) active, non-synergetic awakenings (most notably no  ), and not as well distributed stats. Even though  has very high attack value, the lack of  fails to capitalize upon this, and she will deal mediocre damage. Her active is problematic to use because it can create too many red or purple orbs and thus fail to either form 6+ combos, many  , or both. In addition, her active takes 12 turns to fully charge and can place constraints on less developed teams. Lastly,  does provide a  awakening which may prove to be a life saver; however,  is able to be bound and does not provide any heart generation through her active.
•  King Mastering has a full board reshuffle as he can remove locked orbs as his active will make a new board to fall down. This also means his active can trigger skyfalls, and if a match is made, all other skill cooldowns are reduced by 1 turn.  base stats are very high, and his active is easy to skill up. He probably sees very little play time because of a lack of awakenings. It is unfortunate that a somewhat challenging to make farmable monster has only 2 awakenings. If he were to receive an awakening buff, he may become more commonplace to those who do not own the REM monsters listed above.
•  Verdandi does count as a board refresh and her red subtype means she will at least contribute her modest recovery and some damage through a single  . Her  ,  , and  also provide valuable utility, but her active is her shining feature as she will spawn both red and heart orbs. This can allow you to heal along with dealing critical damage to a boss on the same turn.

Bind Clearing: When deciding if you should bring a bind clearing sub, you must determine how dangerous the binds are. If the bind is preemptive and impossible to stall through, then of course you must bring bind removal. However, if the bind will only occur at certain health thresholds or specific turns, it may be best try and burst through the floor instead. Generally speaking, bind removal subs do not bring damage to the team and can feel like “dead-weight” if the binds can be avoided. Lastly, if your team has high recovery and the binding floor is not too dangerous, it may be advantageous to stall it out. In addition, all the following subs are bind immune and can be used to bait out specific binds to provide a free turn.

•  Ame no Uzume has been pushed back into the spotlight with her new Red / Blue as a dedicated bind-immune, bind clearer for  teams.  also has high recovery and 1,000 auto heal to ensure your team can safely heal from large attacks. Her active clears 4-turns of bind status along with enhancing your recovery by 1.5x for 4 turns. This boost to recovery can be used to stall out a problematic floor with relative ease as a triggered heal orb match will restore massive amounts of health. Unfortunately,  provides little in offensive capabilities, but will be mandatory in bind heavy dungeons.
•  Rozuel is another reliable bind clearer due to her bind immunity. Her active (albeit hard to skill up) converts light to heal and can be matched horizontally to clear 3 turns of binds through her awakenings. This will result in the binds being cleared, but it is not instantaneous like  and can still result in your death if the wrong thing is already bound. Her ultimate evolution will become available at some point and her triple  awakenings will help compensate for an otherwise defensive sub. Will  be more viable than  all depends on how dangerous the binds are and when they need to be cleared along with overall damage output needed. However, I do award her bonus points for being very cute and having great artwork.
•  Amaterasu in her Light/Red form provides bind clearing (albeit challenging to skill up and somewhat overkill in removing all binds) but can be used as her red subtype allows her to benefit from your leader skill. In addition, she provides  to remove binds with a row of hearts. Her damage output may be low, but her high recovery and single  somewhat compensate.

Shielding and damage mitigation: These subs provide you with the ability to reduce your damage taken and the shield carries over to the next floor provided you sweep your current boss and the subsequent floor has no preemptive ability. In addition, you can use these shields to reduce damage taken from large preemptive strikes. Lastly, it is far better to reduce damage taken compared to heart generation as shields can allow you to survive hits you could generally not live through.

•  Phoenix Rider, Valen is hands down the best shielding monster for  . Unfortunately,  is a relatively new REM addition and does not have any skill-up material available in NA. Regardless, he is a worthy candidate for your Flampy and when max skilled, provides 30% damage reduction for 4 turns on a 6-turn cooldown. The uptime duration of the shield is also extended when you kill a floor and the following one has no preemptive. This retains the remaining shield duration, but  ‘s active goes down by 1 turn. Awakenings-wise,  provides 2  and a  , making him an ideal fit for  . The only downside of this otherwise amazing card is low weighted stats though to be fair, once you start acquiring more plus eggs, the weighted stats become less meaningful. In addition,  does not possess an ultimate evolution, so there is room to grow.
•  Awoken Susano is another shield option as the red subtyping benefits from  ‘s leader skill. With 2  ,  has nearly as much damage output as a non  monster. This helps prevent an extreme loss of damage when using  an off-colour sub. In terms of other awakenings, the bind immunity ensures you can either bait out wood binds or to safely shield yourself during a dangerous phase. The weighted stats are quite high, and the double  helps other actives come up faster.
•  Dark Izanami is the best farmable shielding option in the game and, thankfully, her red subtype allows her to benefit from  ‘s leader skill. The giant health pool combined with a passive 1,500 auto heal provides some survivability. Furthermore, a 35% damage reduction shield on a 6-turn cooldown provides quick and reliable shielding. She is my only viable shielding option for my  team, and I initially relied on her giant health pool to survive moderately large hits without a shield. Her only major downside (aside from being dark primary colour is a lack of  )Everyone should have one in their box and it is worth the effort to skill up. On a separate note, here is my Izanami Descend Guide if you want more insight into the descend.

Delays: Even with the advent of more bosses having status void shields, delays are still valuable as you can use them to safely bypass different floors while conserving other actives or restalling for skills. In addition, it can be a way to avoid perseverance mechanics as you can bring the boss down to 1 HP and kill on the subsequent turn without being punished by their special execution abilities.

•  Cao Cao is quite the powerhouse  sub as he offers 2  , double  , and a  . One turn of delay should be sufficient with the damage output possible and is mostly just added insurance or a way to overcome a boss with perseverance. The active also converts blue to red orbs as an added bonus.  also has amazingly high base attack value and will allow for very high bursts of damage when matching several  combos. The only downside is 27 base recovery, so you will either need to be heavily plus egged or have other high recovery subs to compensate.   During my early days of PAD, I was quite reliant on using Echidna  as a staple sub and sometimes miss the safety offered through her active. As such, I would love to have a  on my  team and will remain patient every godfest.
•  Echidna was once a top-tier sub and was found on nearly every team. Sadly, she has been hit hard by powercreep and the meta of status shield galore on nearly every dangerous boss. Regardless, she will most likely be a stable sub initially due to her being farmable and having amazingly high base recovery. In addition, 3 turns of delay is an almost guarantee for that floor and can be used on non-bosses to conserve other actives. Of course, she suffers from having no relevant awakenings, horrible health, and just okay attack. For a more in-depth reason as to why  is good, check out my previous post Here.

Gravity: Gravities are starting to come back into style as they can be used to push a boss into specific health percentages and is most useful to either knock them into a favourable colour or to by pass perseverance.

•  The red Christmas Hera deserves special attention because gravities are somewhat coming back into style with newer bosses possessing either giant health pools or the perseverance ability. An instant 30% nuke can safely drop a boss into a killable health percentage and bypassing certain mechanics.  ‘s stat distribution is modest at 746 and has easily obtainable skill up material. I would not bring her onto my  unless she was near max-skill or I could not otherwise bypass a certain boss mechanic.

After playing rainbow-based teams for nearly 1.5 years, it was quite refreshing to switch to a mono-colour team as the thinking / stress required is much lower. I discuss the pros and cons of rainbow teams in a different Posting and understand how a mono-colour team can easily concentrate their damage while only focusing on their own respective colour.  has a fast playstyle as you can burn through a dungeon with multiple orb changers and deliver large amounts of damage through  and combos alone. However, when your team reaches max level and has a modest number of plus eggs, your recovery becomes sizeable, and you are able to stall on tough boss floors as needed. You only need 1-2 high-recovery subs to bring your team to at least 3,500+ base recovery (the amount of healing made when matching only 3 heart orbs). The main risk of stalling with  is accidental red orb matches that can deal large amounts of damage and push the boss into an unfavourable health percentage. To help lower the risk, try to never match a  when attempting to stall as a 3-red orb match will not deal very much damage.

When planning out a board with a large number of red orbs, you need to try count in multiples of 4 (4, 8, 12) and plan your  matches accordingly. You should always strive to match 6+ combos as virtually every board will at worst have 6 combos available. The ample time extend  awakenings may take some practice getting used to as between the 2 leaders you by default have 6 seconds to move orbs. Take your time in planning and executing your matches as you will most likely be able to squeeze in an extra combo with the added time.

When building your  team,  you need to take into consideration the dungeon mechanics and do your best to counter them. I always like to bring a 5-turn orb changer, a board refresh, another red orb generator, and a shield, bind clear, or heart maker as needed. It is ideal to come as close to 100% skill bind resist as possible, especially if your team is under leveled and stalling is hard to do. In addition, always take your teams into Endless Corridors to test your damage and healing output along with maximum health. When testing damage, take a screenshot to refer to later and keep mental tabs of how many  matches, red orbs, and total combos formed. This is important as you may wish to conserve actives on a certain floor, but still need to deal lethal damage to the boss.

I recently pulled a Hino  on Fantastic, but I am somewhat upset at myself for feeding 224 pluses to Ares  . As discussed above, both fulfill a similar role on your  team, and I would/should swap out  as  is superior in every aspect with the exception of possessing a  awakening. I should have placed my pluses on Leilan  as she may only be swapped out for  Urd  , but having both the board refreshes may prove invaluable as you statistically get 10 red orbs upon activation. It is hard to list a “dream team” for any leader, but there are more ideal subs to strive towards overall. In an ideal world, I would love to build the following teams:

•       Phoenix Rider for when I need to survive any large hits along with having 100% SBR
•       Hino can be swapped in for extra damage but using Red Valkyrie and him results in 80% SBR
•       For bind-heavy dungeons
•     Most burst-heavy team with every sub having 2 or more  awakenings

When trying to decide if  (or  )warrants a sub slot, determine if the binds are preemptives or a result of pushing a boss into a certain health percentage. If the binds are avoidable through killing that floor, bring an offensive orb changer instead.  brings no damage to the team and will bring down the overall output for the other floors. As such, try to burst down the bind floors instead. In addition,  does not have god typing and will not become bound in many descends. You can use this to bait out the bind on a sub who has the god typing as  does not require any of his subs to be unbound to deal damage. You can still trigger your full multiplier if only your lead and friend remain unbound. However, you lose your recovery bonus when one of your  becomes bound, and this can cause you to fall behind in healing and subsequently die a few turns later. I abused the lack of god typing in Izanami Descended during the boss floor to gain an extra turn when she bound my  and  .

Hope you found this insightful and a useful guide when building your very own fiery god of destruction! Best of luck and happy puzzling =) Also in search of more Awoken Shiva friends for both my Fantastic and my mom’s account! Yes, I am aware she is a higher rank than Fantastic….