Apollo follows the trend of the Greco-Roman pantheon by having multiple evolution paths that strongly reward players for keeping duplicates. Each form of Apollo offers different benefits and I wish to explore each in further detail to help you decide who is best for your monster box and teams. If you missed my Hermes comparison, please refer to my previous post HERE.
At a glance
Awoken Apollo 
Awoken Apollo is the newest evolution into the Greco-Roman family and offers fantastic weighted stats, a powerful active, and outrageous artwork that combines a fierce wolf, dainty flowers, and a freaking unicorn horn. He has the most flexibility of any evolution and can be used on essentially every mono light team. What sets him apart from his other evolutions is the enhanced skyfall active. This can be used to override other colour debuffs put in place from bosses (will not stop jammer or poison) and is a way to add significant damage through his enhanced light orb 
awakenings. Awoken Apollo’s dual two prong attack 
awakenings combined with his high base attack allows him to spike for very high values. Unfortunately, many players were hoping for him to be row based as that would have more synergy with Saira 
/ Thor 
and Awoken DQXQ 
, but GungHo decided to make our lives tougher by giving us almost everything we wanted.
Two prong attack enables Apollo to make a fantastic rainbow sub for Awoken Sakuya 
. Sakuya is reliant on her high base multiplier and greatly benefits from the skyfall buff. Although you must exercise caution in case you create too many light orbs and become unable to efficiently separate combos. You can always use him like Elia 
and combo off Light Kali’s 
board refresh. On Awoken DQXQ’s team, Awoken Apollo shines bright as he covers the wood attribute and offers a means to flood the board with light orbs to trigger her 100x damage. Granted he does not offer any rows, but your team should be dealing an outrageous amount of damage and his other awakenings offer a wide range of utility and safety. For more reading about Awoken DQXQ, check out my previous posting HERE. Apollo’s other evolutions can also be subs on these two teams, but are less effective as they do not bring the skyfall buff or as powerful awakenings and would mostly be used for colour coverage (although wood is the hardest to cover). Using Awoken Apollo on Saira / Thor teams is up to your discretion as he does not offer any rows and the enhanced orbs are not as powerful as you are more orb changer reliant and converting orbs will not guarantee an enhanced status.
As a leader, Awoken Apollo forms a 2.25x HP / 14x ATK / 2.25x RCV team that is capable of surviving large attacks while being able to recover from them. How viable will this team be compared to Saria/Thor remains to be seen as a 14x team without row enhance 
awakenings may fail to deliver lethal damage. Granted both leaders have a fantastic active and will be benefiting from the skyfall active for at least 50% of the time (more if your subs have haste). I do not forsee him being a game breaking lead, but may be proven wrong in the future.
L/B Apollo 
L/B Apollo has offensive based awakenings by offering two row enhances and two TPA . This gives him flexibility when using on various teams and his large base attack enables him to easily pierce through high defence monsters. Unfortunately, his biggest drawback is a lack of skill lock 
resist and may place constraints on sub selection if you wish to achieve 100% immunity. However, if you can build around his shortcomings, he is the most offensive oriented of the three evolutions on row based teams. One of the main benefits of using him over Awoken Apollo is the easier to acquire evolution materials along with easy access to skill ups. Lastly, his attacker typing allows him to be used on Superman 
teams who are also row based.
L/R Apollo 
L/R Apollo was once a highly desired Sakuya sub upon his initial release for his fire coverage. However, time has not been kind to the oldest of the Apollos and even with the awakenings buff, his viability is quite low. With only a single Two Prong Attack and Devil Killer 
awakening for offensive potential, you may feel he is lacking contribution on higher end teams. Granted the newly bestowed skill lock resist awakening eases team building, you are almost always better off using Awoken Apollo. If you are in desperate need of fire coverage on rainbow teams, L/R may be helpful until you find a stronger replacement and can convert him into one of his other evolution forms.
Conclusion
All the Apollos have very high base recovery and the enhanced heart orb 
awakenings further increase your healing potential. In addition, those enhanced orb retained their plused status when converted into light obs. This makes Apollo a desired sub on numerous teams ranging from mono light to rainbow and type specific.
Awoken Apollo is the strongest in most situations and offers the most uses and flexibility compared to his other evolution paths. He will be your first choice on teams that are not strictly row based as his awakenings grant him a healthy balance of offensive and defensive capabilities. When using row based teams, your decision becomes a bit harder to make as L/B offers 2 row awakenings and you can find subs to cover his lack of skill lock resist . Ultimately, the decision remains up to you along with the ease in acquiring his evolution materials and skill up fodder.
Even if you want Awoken Apollo, do not convert unless you are able to re-max skill him if he was already before in his other forms. His additional power will be greatly offset if he is not max skilled and it is better to exercise patience and wait.
Let me know which path you choose to follow.
Happy Puzzling!
Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons 
L/B Apollo lists Saria’s icon as a lead but is spelled as Ryune instead. You also mentioned him as a sub for Superman teams due to Physical typing instead of Attacker typing(he fits either way).
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Well spotted and thank you for telling me =)
Fixed then accordingly
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how much row is enough row in a thoria team ?
my thoria team have a total of 15 row in it. is it worth it to lose 2 rows so that apollo can fit better in awoken sakuya ?
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Copy pasting from myself:
Each Light row awakening adds 10% damage
Every matched combo adds 25% more damage
However, a connected 6 match deals 1.75x your base attack value while 2 separate combos is 2x base attack
Thus you need 4.2 Light rows to “break even” (instead of matching 2 unique sets of 3 dark orbs)
Thus your team with 15 is way way way above the required threshold to break even. I would safely say the conversion to Awoken Apollo is safe to do and will provide added utility for your team
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