Introduction

The latest maintenance brings with numerous updates and I wish to summarize all the major changes taking place. This update includes new evolutions and monster upgrades/buffs. If you feel I have overlooked anything in particular, please feel free to let me know in the comments below.

Video commentary

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New evolutions

New evolutions are perhaps the most exciting aspect of any update as they breathe life into aging cards along with providing players with new toys. Having goals to work towards is almost as exciting as actually acquiring the new card. Furthermore, this update includes the highly anticipated Reincarnated evolutions for the Greco-Roman 1 and some Indian 1 Gods.

If you are unfamiliar or wish to find out more information about the REM Reincarnation process, please feel free to check out my previous post HERE.

Reincarnated Greco-Roman 1

All of the Reincarnated Greco-Roman 1 Gods possess bind immunity along with passive damage reduction to various colours. This can be abused by cheese teams that run 100% resistance to a particular colour and use one of the Puppeteers    in conjunction to change the boss’s attribute.

 Reincarnated Minerva

Reincarnated Minerva gains better artwork along with a revamped leader skill. She is now capable of achieving 6x ATK for matching Fire and Light orbs along with passively reducing damage by 50% to Fire, Light, and Dark enemies. This means with dual Minerva, you effectively have 4x HP / RCV when facing those three elements. However, many players are instead pairing her with Ilm  to form a 60x ATK / 2.5x RCV team while taking 50% less damage from Fire, Light, and Dark bosses. This wonderful combination of defensive utility and offensive capabilities is invaluable and grants players the chance to clear plenty of content.

When team building Minerva/Ilm, it is slightly more advantageous to focus on fire subs as Minerva’s base active is a fire orb changer. However, you can easily go either way, especially if the dungeon is water-heavy.

With her new leadership role in mind, you should begin to plan your inherits for Minerva as her base active is lackluster. You can inherit a bind clear or orb changer as you deem fit.

Finally, Minerva regains her God typing and can make a reasonable sub on Ra Dragon  teams as you can simply inherit a new active as her base cooldown is only 5 turns and helps keep your team fully bind immune.

 Reincarnated Neptune

Reincarnated Neptune follows the same pattern of Minerva; unfortunately, he has a weaker active due to the long cooldown along with no Ilm equivalent to pair for large burst damage. Neptune is still able to form a 75% damage reduction team against water, light, and dark bosses, but his damage may be a little lacking at only 36x. This is not to say you cannot pair with a different leader, but you do not have any ideal choices.

 Reincarnated Ceres

Reincarnated Ceres may not find herself as much in the leadership role, but instead being used as a heavy stat stick for bind clearing. All reincarnated Gods have 1,000 weighted stats and despite not having many offensive awakenings, you can still use Ceres on a variety of teams. In fact, with the re-inclusion of her God typing, she can make an appearance on Ra Dragon  teams to help keep your team fully bind immune.

Reincarnated Indian 1

The reincarnated evolutions for the Indian 1 pantheon are quite exciting as they are some of the more popular leaders in Puzzle and Dragons. All of them receive significant stat boosts along with a new awakening and revamped leader skill.

 Reincarnated Shiva

Reincarnated Shiva is a formidable fire leader that is capable of forming a 49x ATK / 4x RCV TPA oriented team. He is only overshadowed by Krishna when it comes to the HP multiplier and maximum damage as rows > TPA. However, Shiva has stronger recovery along with a much easier activation requirement. In fact, your recovery with a full +297 team allows you to heal back to full health with only a single heart orb match in most cases. This allows you to run the +15% HP badge in solo mode which greatly improves your durability.

It is challenging for Krishna to hoard 9 fire orbs to unleash 45x ATK while Shiva simply needs 4 fire orbs and the ability to form 7 total combos. This greatly speeds up runs and from sample damage tests with my mom’s team, Shiva alone hits for nearly 2 million from a TPA and 7 total combos matched. This is more than enough damage for the average dungeon and results in a lower reliance on active skills.

Krishna is still the superior choice for fire, but Shiva is a close second. His TPA oriented combo playstyle will provide a unique challenge and is capable of easily burning through dungeons with only 4 fire orbs. Stacking enough Two Prongs along with an enhance would deal lethal damage to end game bosses. Finally, Shiva will be even stronger in coop as you can easily achieve 40k+ HP and thus survive any reasonable attack.

 Reincarnated Lakshmi

Reincarnated Lakshmi is the newest 100x leader to arrive in Puzzle and Dragons. In addition to her revamped leader skill, she gained a second skill boost  and this dramatically helps her solo play value as you can now comfortably have actives ready by turn one. Taking a closer look at her leader skill, Lakshmi still possess the augmented RCV bonus along with scaling ATK for linked heart orbs. In order to achieve 100x ATK, you have to link a total of 8 heart orbs. This can be problematic in terms of spacial arrangement as you ideally want to match a row of water alongside for maximum efficiency.

However, you may be able to get away with a connect 6 heart match for 56.25x and that should be sufficient for most content outside of the boss floors. Thus, Lakshmi remains a stable “tank” team that lacks an HP multiplier. Thankfully, due to the naturally high HP of many water cards, you can easily break 30k without the 15% badge. With the badge (or coop) you should be able to survive any reasonable attack and the 4x RCV means you can always return to full health with ease.

The main downsides of using Lakshmi as a leader include a vulnerability to binds, a non-offensive active (that is usually inherited over), and the orb hungry nature of her leader skill.

 Reincarnated Parvati

Reincarnated Parvati is essentially the wood equivalent to Lakshmi as they share the same style of leader skill. Parvati is able to cap out at 100x ATK for 8 linked heart orbs along with boasting a passive 4x RCV. However, Parvati is a much safer leader to run as she is bind immune and gains the highly desired recover bind  awakening. This translates into one less mechanic you need to deal with along with bolstering her sub potential. As a leader, Parvati will play a more TPA oriented playstyle as her dual two prongs along with vast sub pool can achieve large damage with fewer orbs. In addition, Parvati’s active skill works as both an enhance and heart orb generation and is largely superior to Lakshmi’s in every way. Unfortunately, she still lacks a Skill Bind Resist making it hard to achieve 100% SBR without running someone like Freyja  or Perseus .

Stepping outside of a leadership role, Parvati becomes one of the most desired medium bind clearing options available. Her offensive awakenings paired with her heart generation, bind immunity, and bind recovery allow her to fulfill many roles while her short 5-turn cooldown encourages skill inheritance.

Aside from the intuitive mono-wood sub role, Reincarnated Parvati is one of the strongest options for the new Ra Dragon  if you are lacking the ideal team. This is because Parvati is bind immune while having dual two prongs and having a short base cooldown. Granted her active skill prevents full activation, it can be easily inherited over or used as an emergency heal.

Farmable evolution

Alongside the numerous REM cards, there was a surprising new farmable option hidden within this update.

 Ishtar

Ishtar’s new evolution provides Awoken Liu Bei  teams with a farmable Dragon Killer . Granted there is Machine Athena , but Ishtar is far easier to acquire/awaken along with having only 35 team cost. This means Ishtar will level up significantly faster in Rogue Descends along with having a normal (not late bloomer) experience curve providing a much smoother stat gain. Ishtar also boasts 821 weighted stats along with dual TPA and Skill Boosts. Lastly, the 100% defense void allows for a Balboa  replacement for dealing with PreDRAs.

Split GFE evolutions

The current trend for Godfest Exclusives tends to be around creating a stronger leader and sub form. Both have their merits and who you choose to use will be based on your individual box requirements and I will do my best to outline the pros and cons of both options

  Kanna

Kanna has been a largely neglected 6-star GFE as she never had a team she could efficiently fit on. However, with her split evolution, she now has viability in both forms.

L/L Kanna  gains an astounding 4th TPA awakening and is capable of dealing incredible burst damage along with becoming bind immune. Her best fit is on the future Ra Dragon  team as she fulfils the slot that used to be occupied by Indra. Kanna is the best option aside from two Dark Kali  and Isis  as she provides the most damage from TPA matches while retaining bind immunity. Her active skill is better replaced with a Gemstone Princess inherit as that will allow your team to achieve amazing damage.

On the other hand, D/L Kanna  fulfills a completely different role as she can play a sub on various dark teams, but is also capable of forming a modest 2.25x HP / 27.56x ATK / 2.25x RCV Dragon and God type team. This team may not be top tier, but has significantly more durability compared to the older tank teams like Lucifer . I feel this leader skill does not provide enough value compared to newer tank teams such as Krishna . However, some players may find value with using D/L Kanna and the future Yomi Dragon as a farming team that has durability and modest damage output.

  Ilm

Ilm has surprise, surprise, turned out to be a pretty girl in disguise. This makes sense as we are playing Puzzle and Waifus, but I still did not see it coming. Regardless, Ilm has two viable evolution paths that push her into either a more leader or sub oriented role.

Leader Ilm  is capable of forming a 100x ATK / 6.25x RCV team when matching fire and light orbs. However, many players are now pairing Ilm with the Reincarnated Minerva to form a 60x ATK / 2.5x RCV team while taking 50% less damage from Fire, Light, and Dark bosses. This provides a more well rounded team as you sacrifice some damage to achieve safety and stronger resistance to gravity based attacks. A 60x row team is still capable of dealing lethal damage and I strongly encourage this pairing if you own Ilm. You can choose to either focus on light or fire subs, but may find a bit more value with fire (outside water dungeons) as Minerva does produce fire orbs with her base active

On the other hand, sub Ilm  trades their sub type and leader skill to gain more weighted stats and stronger awakenings. Boasting 3 rows and two TPA, sub Ilm is a powerful mono light sub. She may find a sub spot on the newly buffed Xiu Min  teams or Tifa .

Leader skill changes

The changes to these leader skills grants new viability to these cards and grants some of them niche applications.

 Tsubaki

Tsubaki has gained the physical typing along with +500 HP. However, their largest improvement comes with the 2.25x RCV when matching fire and light orbs. This enables the normally fragile team to achieve some form of healing and allows you to opt for the +15% HP badge.

 Awoken Hinokagutsuchi

Awoken Hino is now able to deal 3x ATK when attacking with Fire and Dark orbs along with his 30x ATK hit after matching orbs. This allows him to have more functions as a resolve killer and may be best paired with Reincarnated Shiva for these purposes.

 Awoken Anubis

Awoken Anubis is now able to deal 2.5x ATK after using a skill. This simply enables him to deal even more outrageous damage and is mostly a transitional leader skill until his reincarnated form.

 Xiu Min

Xiu Min gains a dramatic increase to his attack multiplier as you now gain 2.5x ATK for two light combos along with up to 7x with numerous linked light orbs. This translates into 17.5x ATK by himself and makes him an even more appealing option for pairing with Tifa  as you are able to form a 87.5x ATK / 5x RCV team on a 7×6 board. That will allow you to deal more than enough damage and is a much stronger pairing than dual Xiu Mins.

Drawing courtesy of Pancaaake

 Xin Hua

Xiu Hua received a smaller buff compared to Xiu Min and lacks a Tifa pairing to make her viable as a leader. She is able to hit even harder and recover 4x RCV, but she is too difficult to team build effectively.

 Trailokayvijaya

The fire Wisdom King has received their leader skill buff that enables them to achieve a 2.25x HP / 196x ATK / 49x RCV team that has to hit 9 combos and cannot use skyfalls. Cool.

 Kundali

Kundali is now able to achieve 100x ATK when forming 4 water combos without skyfalls. He still has a modest damage mitigation multiplier, but is largely outclassed by Sarasvati  as she ramps up faster and hits significantly harder.

 Acala

Acala has finally received her buff to enable her to trigger damage from either wood or fire crosses. This greatly reduces the orb hungry nature as she is able to achieve 182x ATK more easily. In addition, this also means she can hit 1,640x ATK with three colour crosses which is simply outrageous and enables her to easily pierce through PreDRAs.

Active skill changes

Active skill changes are quite exciting as they grant monsters more viability as either subs or inherits.

 Awoken Hades

Awoken Hades now provides 5 turns of +5 seconds to orb movement time instead of 1. This occurs alongside his 25% gravity and is a little silly, but it may have some value outside of overriding time debuffs.

 Awoken Yomi

Awoken Yomi follows a similar buff to Hades, except (s)he only provides 3 turns of additional movement time instead of 5. This seems strange considering Yomi had the original Change the World Active.

 Light Zhuge Liang

Light Zhuge Liang now heals twice as much (20x his RCV) and provides two turns of bind and awakenings bind clear. This is fantastic as it provides you with another inherit option outside of Green Odin . Unfortunately, it does not remove the 5 required to overcome Linthia’s bind.

     Armoured Knights

The Armoured Knights now provide 2 turns of their 2.5x damage enhancement. This makes them the largely superior choice compared to the Norse Gods provided your team is all the same typing. However, even the Armour Knights are a second rate choice when compared to the Gemstone Princesses.

     Gemstone Princesses

The Gemstone Princesses are hands-down the best enhancing option available as they now provide 2 turns of their incredible burst. You will for the most part be using them as inherits as a way to upgrade an existing sub and you can calculate their formula based upon 1 + (0.3*n) where n equals the number of awakenings. Only Silk  differs in that she is 1 + (0.15*n).

SILK	CARAT	CAMEO	FACET	SHEEN
1.15x	1 .3x	1.3x	1.3x	1.3x

  Famiel & Lumiel

Famiel and Lumiel are now able to provide 100,000 true damage to all enemies (instead of 1) alongside their orb changer. This enables them to become a viable option on push-button teams. However, Awoken Ra  is still a stronger choice as he has an additional skill boost and one less turn on his cooldown.

 Napoleon

Napoleon now provides 5 instead of 3 fire orbs generated alongside of his 35% damage reduction shield. This is a modest improvement, but he still struggles to find an ideal home outside of Tsubaki . You have to be careful of accidentally overriding your light orbs with his active. Thankfully, with the ample haste, you can easily use a Tsubaki to correct it. In addition, you should have nearly full uptime on your damage mitigation buff and this is beautiful when combined with Tsubaki’s improved RCV.

 Barbarossa

Barbarossa is now able to produce 6 water orbs alongside his single turn of delay. This provides water with another viable delay option as the generated orbs can be used to deal damage at the same time. Granted the delay is only for one turn, but that may be all you need for various resolve bosses.

 Robin Hood

Robin Hood is now able to generate 6 instead of 3 wood orbs at random along with gaining a 1 turn reduction on their active skill cooldown. This provides more viability alongside their 1.5x ATK to wood types for 3 turns.

 Yang Guifei

Yang Guifei had her active skill reduced from 9 to 7 turns. This makes her a more desirable option for push button teams as her board changes of Fire, Water, Wood, and Light orbs is lackluster until Sakuya  regains viability.

 Nobunaga

Nobunaga had his bind clearing capabilities buffed from 2 to 3 turns. This is quite a significant boost and helps solidify his position as a strong bind clearing sub or inherit.

Conclusion

The latest maintenance came with numerous changes to older cards as they have been revitalized through new evolutions and buffs. It is starting to become challenging to keep up with all the new content on my end, but this is Fantastic as PAD continues to grow and expand.

What changes are you most excited about?

Happy Puzzling!