Gadius is receiving his new ultimate evolution and will be putting the Dragons back into Puzzle and Dragons with two menacing heads and abs so chiselled you would cut your hand rubbing along its surface. GungHo has been hit or miss with some Godfest Exclusives (GFE) and Light Metatron  being the unfortunate poster girl for underwhelming 5-star GFE. Hopefully they turn things around for our newest beefcake member.

Gadius
Dragon & Healer
3063 / 1204 / 753
    
New:   

AS: All       + haste
10 turn CD

LS: 6.5x ATK with 2+ Heal combos
42.25x ATK ( and heart orb reliant)

Typing and Awakenings

At first, the healer typing had no relevance to the current meta (aside from a fire monster having high RCV) and still has no practical purpose. However, with the introduction of a new set of MP Dragons, Gadius  becomes an irreplaceable sub on Xiang Mei  teams due to the lack of fire / healer type cards. From an awakenings perspective,  is fantastic as he now has bind immunity to go along with his bind recovery  awakening and heart generating active. However, he is still missing a Skill Bind Resist  awakening which is a massive downside in today’s meta. Granted we do have access to more monsters who have 2x  , but if you plan to use Gadius as a lead, you would be hard pressed to achieve 100% immunity. Not having 100% immunity can be managed with tankier teams that have augmented health pools and recovery values, but Gadius has neither. Finally, the new Devil Killer  awakening provides 3x damage versus devil type bosses and will greatly aide in burst damage.

Leader Skill Potential

Gadius’s role as a sub is less clearly defined on most fire teams outside of Xiang Mei  and I wish to focus on his leadership potential. Currently, the top tier leaders have some sort of augmentation to their HP and RCV values. This reduces the dependency of shielding/damage mitigation actives as well as giving you the opportunity to stall for actives on floors that would otherwise be impossible. Unfortunately,  has neither benefit and must rely on his explosive damage to clear dungeons. 42.25x ATK may not sound as impressive on paper with the advent of more 100x leads, but Gadius is able to stack multiple  awakenings to produce an amazing amount of firepower. Furthermore, this allows you to control your damage which is invaluable versus floors with low value damage absorption shields. The only downside I can foresee is trying to heal large amounts as if you trigger 2+ separate heart combos, you will cause 42.25x damage and must pray for no fire orb matches alongside. Perhaps to combat this you need to link all your heart orbs together as to not trigger your full multiplier. Lastly, with his new bind immunity, you can always have access to your multiplier as well as heart generating active and the ability to form a horizontal row of hearts to unbind all your subs.

Team Building:

This following chart should help give you some idea on basic team building and subs you have at your disposal.

SUB
Single orb changers:
Double orb changers:
Orb/damage enhance:
Full board changers:
Bind clearing:
Damage mitigation:
Gravity:
Delay:
Niche:
Orb changer combos:	+    +   +    +
Skill lock Resist :
Sample teams:

Conclusion

Gadius  is most certainly worthy of the GFE title with the new evolution granting him bind immunity and 42.25x ATK. However, he is in desperate need of a  awakening as it may prove near impossible to stall out the required turns without any HP or RCV multiplier. I own a Gadius on Mantastic and look forward to at least tinkering around with him as the playstyle is more novel and easier to use than Typhon  (requires 6 connect heart orbs). Even if not using as a leader,  can make a pseudo bind clearer provided you already have 6 heart orbs or are fortunate enough with his active to generate 6+ heal orbs.