Introduction
With the release of the Xiu Min 
, North American players now have a total of ten, 300,000 Monster Point cards to choose from. The first six are relatively well-known and how they fit in the current meta. However, The Four Gentlemen are still relatively new and many players are wondering who is best the best to purchase. As such, I wish to compare and contrast Xiang Mei 
, Xin Hua 
, You Yu 
, and Xiu Min . This article will not go into extensive depth of each card and I encourage you to read my previous postings dedicated to each of them if you require team building, latent, and inheritance advice:
Four Gentlemen at a glance
Each of the Four Gentlemen feature a single attribute, mono-typing, a killer awakening, and an incredible scaling multiplier.
Four Gentlemen Stats |
|
Xiang Mei
|
Xin Hua
|
|
Healer Active Skill: Leader Skill: 2.25x HP / 81x ATK Healer types |
Balance Active Skill: Leader Skill: 126.56x ATK / 2.25x RCV Balance types |
You Yu
|
Xiu Min
|
|
Attacker Active Skill: Leader Skill: |
Physical Active Skill: Leader Skill: |
Four Gentlemen Pros |
|
Xiang Mei
|
Xin Hua
|
|
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You Yu
|
Xiu Min
|
|
|
Four Gentlemen Cons |
|
Xiang Mei
|
Xin Hua
|
|
|
You Yu
|
Xiu Min
|
|
|
Team building
Xiang Mei and Xin Hua are both restricted to Healer and Balance types respectively and this makes it challenging to form an ideal team. Furthermore, they both require several duplicates of themselves to form a more efficient system team and this is an expensive investment for the average player. On the other hand, You Yu and Xiu Min have no type restrictions tied to their leader skill; however, their actives (which are often overwritten through skill inheritance) grants bonus damage to their respective typings. The following table is meant to help illustrate who forms their key sub core along with other options. Naturally, you should build your team to counter the various dungeon mechanics and utilize Skill Inheritance as needed.
If you are missing numerous high tier subs or the non-MP card listed for Xiang Mei or Xin Hua, it may be best to rethink your purchase.
Inheritance Advice
Skill Inheritance is a tool to help you counter the various dungeon mechanics you encounter or to allow you to use certain subs for their favourable awakenings/typings. What you decide to inherit is ultimately based on your needs. The following chart lists the generic utility based inheritance, Damage enhancement, board changers, and orb changers are used based on your current team’s needs. I strongly encourage you to read my Advanced Strategies post for more information.
| Inheritance Options | |
| True Damage / Poison |
      |
| Damage mitigation |
       |
| Delay |           |
Four Gentlemen Inheritance Advice |
|
Xiang Mei
|
Xin Hua
|
Xiang Mei’s ideal team utilizes two additional Xiang Mei as subs along with Gadius and Uriel. This gives you limited options for flexibility and you must utilize Skill Inheritance to fill in the numerous gaps on your team. General consensus is to inherit a true damage card, Saria  board changer, delay, and damage enhance/damage mitigation as needed. Otherwise, you can inherit more fire/heart orb changers. |
Xin Hua is another team that is horribly reliant on using dupes of herself to populate her team. However, Xin Hua is able to produce both dark and heart orbs which are crucial to her leader skill. In addition, the haste component helps cycle your spells and creates more of a system. As such, you should be trying to not inherit actives on her and instead rely on using the D/F Lucifer  as your base. |
You Yu
|
Xiu Min
|
You Yu has perheps the least helpful active of the Four Gentlemen and he is almost always used as a base for Skill Inheritance as a three-water orb spawner with 1.5x ATK for attackers is underwhelming. Due to his relatively orb-hungry nature, many players will inherit Awoken Hermes  or Scheat  due to their double orb change and skyfall buff. |
Xiu Min is in an awkward place for skill inheritance. Due to their 0 base RCV, stalling can be problematic. Furthermore, their 10-turn base cooldown is somewhat long and could prove challenging outside of coop. However, producing 6 new light orbs can be beneficial when used in conjunction with other orb/board changers. |
Playstyle and comments
All of the Four Gentlemen feature a spectacular scaling damage multiplier that allows for adequate damage control and amazing burst potential. However, raw power is not the only measurement of a team’s viability: they have to be able to deal with various dungeon mechanics and overcome dangerous abilities.
Four Gentlemen Playstyle & Comments |
|
Xiang Mei
|
Xin Hua
|
Xiang Mei forms a 2.25x HP / 81x ATK fire row  healer team. As a general rule, healers have wonderful RCV but poor health pools with average attack. However, Xiang Mei is able to bolster your health while providing one of the highest base recovery values in the game. This allows her idea team to easily stall out dangerous mechanics with an added benefit of heart orb generation with haste.
Xiang Mei may not be the fastest leader available, but she is one of the most consistent and safe to run. Main weaknesses are a heavy reliance on Skill Inheritance, a limited sub pool, and vulnerability to binds. |
Xin Hua shares the same restricted base sub pool and reliance one numerous duplicates are Xiang Mei. Unfortunately, Xin Hua only boosts recovery which is not that helpful by comparison. Without an augmented health pool nor access to a diverse range of subs, your teams will be hard pressed to survive various boss encounters. Granted coop can help address some of the squishiness, but haste has diminishing returns due to your partner not benefiting.
Xin Hua is heavily reliant on using her active (and her dupes) to cycle her spells to ensure there are sufficient dark and heart orbs to trigger her multiplier. She is restricted in team building and has no budget option like Uriel |
You Yu
|
Xiu Min
|
| You Yu has a relatively easy to activate 156.25x ATK multiplier and is capable of delivering spectacular amounts of damage. Furthermore, his quick scaling leader skill allows him to deal with trash floor with as little as 5 water orbs (25x ATK). This allows for both active conservation as well as speed in farming medium difficulty content. However, if you were to look up the definition of a glass cannon, you may find a picture of armpits or You Yu.
The low base cooldown on his active allows you to inherit extra utility or orb changers as you deem fit. However, your lack of durability will be his limiting factor. |
Xiu Min is glass-cannon style leader despite having the highest base health in the game. This is because he has 0 base recovery and his teams will be hard pressed to actually recover after taking damage. This makes stalling problematic as well as risky. As such, it is critical to have sufficient skill boosts  to ensure actives are ready right away. In regards to his playstyle, Xiu Min is reliant on forming numerous connected light orbs and ideally forming light rows  .
However, with the constraints of connecting 10 orbs, you will struggle to form numerous unique combos and may struggle against combo shields. |
Uses as a sub
Without any sub typing or attribute, the Four Gentlemen may struggle as a sub outside niche situations.
Four Gentlemen Playstyle & Comments |
|
Xiang Mei
|
Xin Hua
|
| Xiang Mei is a sub on her own team. In an ideal world you have herself as a leader and two as subs. All for the low price of 900,000 Monster Points. | Xin Hua is another vital sub on her own team which is a steep investment at 300k Monster Points each. However, Xin Hua will have future benefits on Gremory  teams as she revolves around using Devil and Balance subs. |
You Yu
|
Xiu Min
|
| You Yu has virtually no uses as a sub.
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj |
Xiu Min would rarely be used as a sub outside of filling out a mono light team’s roster. However, I believe only Saria Thor  could truly benefit (still better options). |
Ranking
This is just my own personal opinion and presumes you have the ideal cards for them. Outside of Xin Hua for Gremory, they have virtually no uses as a sub aside from their own teams.
-
Xiang Mei
-
You Yu
-
Xin Hua
-
Xiu Min
Xiang Mei is easily the strongest of the four as her team (albeit expensive) is incredibly stable and safe to run. You can clear virtually any dungeon in the game.
You Yu is an easy second due to his insane damage potential and ability to clear almost any dungeon, especially if there are no gimmicky mechanics that forces excessive stalling, binds, preemptives, etc.
Xin Hua is on par with Xiu Min as a leader; however, with the future release of Gremory , Xin Hua will regain some viability as her active is ideal for the dark and heart orb generation. Also helps she is prettier than Xiu Min.
Xiu Min is mostly disappointing due to their low popularity, boring playstyle, inability to heal, and awkward active due to the cooldown’s length. Coop does not correct their lack of recovery.
Conclusion
The Four Gentlemen series is an exciting set of Monster Point cards as they have helped push the boundaries of powercreep along with a diverse array of leader skills and playstyle. Hopefully Xin Hua and Xiu Min will receive buffs to their leader skills to help offset their weakness and to bring them more in line with what a 300,000 Monster Point card should be. All it takes is a small tweak to dramatically change a card or even the right sub to propel a team into end game content. I also look forward to whatever new card GungHo decides to release.
Let me know who you enjoy using or hope to one day save up for.
Happy Puzzling!
Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons 
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… Makes me so sad that Xiu Min my favorite husbando turned out to be disappointing. And not because he’s weak because he hits like a truck. Instead it’s because his hits-like-a-truck somehow got overshadowed because power creep is just that ridiculous nowadays. I mean, why buy Xiu Min for 300K MP when you can build a Miru team and Miru is (technically) free? Sure there’s a difference between 49x and 110x but Miru also has durability in the form of heart cross and costs 0 MP.
And also Awoken Liu Bei. Ever since his announcement, I feel like I’m the only person who doesn’t own a Liu Bei because I am like the only person on the forums who hasn’t been trying to max skill 2 Zeus Dios. I feel so left out 😦
*drowns sorrows by cuddling with You Yu*
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I don’t either Fox!!! I’ve been working on my A Cao Cao team as my budget option.
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I don’t own liu bei or You Yu so in not sure who to cry and hold ><
I only own a single Cao Cao so I can't coop with myself lol. Maybe my scarlet systems can be put to better use
Miru is going to be our savior for the poor rem luck people (aka me) so I'm really excited
If xiu Min gets an rcv boost, he will become amazingly strong as he could now stall out challenging floors
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I totally relate here. I saw Xiu Min as a great leader and I immediately favored him over the others, but in practice he came soft due to his lack of stability against stronger dungeons. If hes going to be a glass cannon, he should at least crush the meta in with which he was built.
I have a Liu Bei, but I couldnt care less as it seems like a lot more work than I want to put in since I put so much work into Xiu Min-Maxing. (You see what i did there?)
I have been thinking mostly about Kaede ever since Xiu Min dropped the ball for me. I’m so excited about Kaede, I want to go to sleep early.
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How many Kaede do you have oO And sadly they didn’t come out this patch /sob
Liu Bei is mostly for farming medium-medium hard content brainlessly. This is appealing to a lot of people due to the simplicity and ease of forming the team.
Let’s hope that Xiu Min gets a buff soon XD
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Hey, I was just wondering if you could help me make a team. I’m currently rank 148 but I never have anything good. I don’t know what a good team is and at rank 148 I can’t even beat the second level of monday dungeon. Thanks 😀
https://www.padherder.com/user/kevinwhowang/monsters/#31,0,31,8191,268435455,0,,0,0,0,eq,0,0,0,0,;default,0
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What have you been using to clear content thus far? From what I can see you are lacking any standout leader
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I’ve been using gadius and my izanagi. Gadius I use anything from the June Bride thing because they all change to heal orbs, and Izanagi I just use anything that has high stats for a god LOL
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Fair enough, I would suggest you try and roll in godfests that feature strong leaders to better improve your progress.
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Gadius, Sumire, Sarasvati, easy mode leaders.
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Thank you for good article.
I think, Y’shtola (2782) is also a viable sub for You Yu.
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Y’shtola is definitely viable, but not as ideal due to the poor awakenings. The active is strong, but you are better off using a better body and inheritting
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At least it’s a very clean looking armpit, yes? Could be worse!
Thanks for another helpful write-up! I finally got enough MP to purchase an MP monster last weekend, and I came right here to re-read your articles to make sure I was getting the one that fit me best.
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Yes his armpit could be worse =P
Congrats on your 300k MP! Have you managed to come to a decision as to who you wish to use?
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It’s a dubious honor, 300k MP worth of silvers and unneeded dupes. Oh my. I know (he’s?) out of style now, but I’m thinking Yomidra would work best for me. I’ve got Eschamali, Akechi, Okuni, and Castor from one of your sample teams. Plus a spare Akechi, bankai Panda, Luci and a Lumiel who would all fit right in.
I’ve got Ra and I’m somewhat clumsy when using him as a lead. Plus I don’t have a DKali, so I didn’t even really consider Radra. You Yu was on my maybe list until I happened to roll Sarasvati (after reading your article that compared the two). The others, I just didn’t have the right cards for. Trying to be smart about this. I’ve even taken notes.
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Yomi Dragon is a she =P
Well I am glad you take notes as it is a big decision to make! One thing you should consider about Yomi Dragon is her power on Awoken Lucifer teams as a sub. She provides amazing utility and a reliable bind clear. In addition, your prospective team is formidible and the nice thing about Yomi D is that she is a JIll of all traits and one of the best dark subs available. She is also the only MP card I own
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I disagree with only one thing really. I personally purchased 2 XM and I run
XM/XM/Gadius/Uriel/Uriel/XM
A pretty close online friend of mine went the even more expensive route as your guide shows and runs the team with 3 XM (4 with friend.)
After playing quite a bit of coop with him he commented on how useful the second uriel is, and is actually pretty sad that he went the full 900k MP route especially since he ends up running a uriel type skill on his third xm anyway, inherited. He switches it around a lot but after doing a lot of testing – both of us are convinced you don’t need to buy three XM and two is easily 95% as effective if you have two uriel as well. And the utility with two uriel and 3 XM total even surpasses the 4 XM total and one uriel team when you really need both heart and red on the board.
Bottom line is don’t spend 900k mp if you don’t have to, and the only time you even should is if you don’t have 2 uriel and are VERY heavy IAP. And let’s be honest, if you are heavy IAP and can spend 900k MP you probably have two uriel
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The main benefit of having 3XM is that you are able to form a system in solo. You have sufficient haste to cycle your active and it is very safe to stall. It will not be as fast, but it is safer in the long run.
What kind of content are you playing? If you are trying to push the hardest content, the 3XM does make a modest difference.
I do not own XM, but I talk to a lot of players who do own the full 3XM team and they are in unison that it is the strongest team albeit slower
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I have solod arena 2 and have beaten anything else in the game with xm accept for arena 3 or meus solo. Arena 3 is quite easy with xm although I am rarely able to find someone to play it with.
We can agree to disagree as the extra 300k mp simply isn’t worth it. Maybe people you have talked to want to justify the extra 300k mp purchased. There is nothing in the game xm can beat with the extra xm than without. Meus is an issue solo because of the no recovery aspect but an extra xm doesn’t change that. Anything else I have cleared personally.
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I should further clarify that I agree that 3 XM purchased for 4 total on the team, is a tiny bit better. However. The main reason the system becomes nearly irrelevant, actually more so for the most difficult content solo, is because you have inherited skills on nearly the whole team, if not the whole team. So you are often forced to stall anyway. Stalling is absolutely necessary for XM regardless, and honestly I have absolutely no problem stalling with the team I have assembled. Maybe its easier with three but I certainly don’t get that sense at all. Your two Uriels and your gadius make hearts. IF you have to use a skill you have to use it any way, and stall further to get some back up.
As an example, for all of the rogue dungeons which XM excels at, you need to have a true damage inherited for the PreDra floor. Nearly every player who uses XM is using an Awoken Ra for this and nearly always on the second XM (or third in your example), so you aren’t using that XM until the PreDra floor anyway. IF you have to use it to get out of trouble and stall for it to get back up, you are going to have to do that regardless and should honestly rarely find yourself in that position. You are almost always finding the right floor and just stalling, which XM makes very very easy BTW, you are rarely in trouble. If you are in trouble then you are on a floor where you can’t stall any way.
I would further argue that the cost of that extra 3rd XM has hugely diminished returns. Buying three of them is not only unnecessary for completing the most difficult content, but is also a waste for anyone outside of the biggest whales. I simply feel like you have grouped XM together with Plum making it seem like you actually NEED multiples of these to be successful. XM is not like that at all. You can get bye with her with just a single XM if you have Gadius, two Uriel and a great fit for the last spot. Best would be Valen or that Kiriko another. Two of them purchased gives a huge boost, the third only a very minor one.
Alternate view from me any way
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Those are all very good points and I have been thinking a lot on them today and asked a few of my more IAP friendly friends and their perspectives of owning 3 XM.
In essence, you are correct a dual XM team can clear the same content as 3 XM; however, optimal teams aren’t built so that they can simply clear the content, but are intended to clear it as consistently and efficiently as possible. Saying that you can clear the same content with a different team doesn’t prove that the optimal team isn’t worth it, because that isn’t the reason behind its existence. For example, you can claim that a Ra Dragon team which uses god ichigo instead of dkali #2 can clear arenas/mzeus, but that doesn’t mean the people rolling for a second dkali are wasting their resources because the radra dkali x2 team is just objectively more consistent than ichigo, regardless of any personal experience.
The benefits of a third XM over Uriel are small, but do begin to add up once you have everything penta-maxed and need a little bit more of an edge:
– Highest base stats of a non-coop (mzeus, mhera) monster, almost 200 higher than uriel
– Extra skill boost preferred over irrelevant autoheal awakenings
– Killer awakening “future-proofs” (always a concern when chasing meta)
– Completes the system, guaranteeing an active every turn
– Shorter cooldown with haste
XM (like many other leaders) can farm Rogue Descends which are somewhat below her potential. XM’s real power is her Arena consistency (And Annihilation tier) and that is usually the main goal of players who purchase XM, not Rogues. With 21-24 floors, the SI actives will become more valuable as you will be using actives multiple times throughout the dungeon and haste hastens the process (and lowers the risk)
So someone could potentially clear a dungeon with 2 XM, but they would always be running at 95% rather than 100%. is the main point I want to get across =)
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The link on Ryune when you click valuable subs under You Yu is wrong.
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Strange. sometimes wordpress jumbles my links. Thanks for pointing it out =)
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Xiu min my husbando 😥
And xin hua my waifu 😥
I will not buy either one since my sub pool doesn’t work for any of them. Lol. 😥
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They are really niche atm. Best to save your MP for something you have more use for!
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i have over 550 mp which do you thing i should buy or on which MP dragon i should invest i think zeus radar dragon is better than the ra dragon well i only ask and for info i have allready YY xD only on your opinion dont mind my box i only just asking
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Unless you have a clear spot/role any current MP card can fill, I would simply wait for the next tier to be released. Powercreep is starting to come heavily into play with heart crosses and who knows what is in store for us next
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see i will to save them and dont use them for tamadras xD
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Never use for Tamadras!!! ahhhhhhh
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Could Min is now the hardest hitting of all of them due to the buff to his active. He is also one of the easiest to activate. Shouldn’t this put him higher up on the list?
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