Just because you have 300,000 MP, it does not mean you MUST buy a card now. Plan it out and wait if lacking any ideal option
Introduction
As part of the large event extravaganza in NA and EU, we will be receiving 390,000 Monster Points over the next few months. For many players, this will their first time passing the 300,000 mark which is required to purchase a card and many will be eager to take the plunge. Conversely, this additional 390,000 may put some players dangerously close to the cap of 999,999 (why is there a cap, I do not understand) and may preemptively force some player’s hands. However, just note that the MP is stored in your mailbox so you don’t actually need to open and cap.
As such, this article will review all the MP cards available (excluding seasonals) to help you better understand their value, if your box can support them, and how they rank against each other.
Video commentary
—video goes here—
Ranking the MP cards
It is important to understand how the MP cards stack up against each other as it is my belief that these cards should dramatically improve your monster box and help you progress into the next tier of content.
The following chart ranks the MP cards against each other and takes into consideration their highest evolution and new buffs announced with the JP 5 year stream. I am also working under the presumption you have access to the ideal or as close to the ideal team as possible. Just because the card has strong potential, you need the subs to back them up as they will flop otherwise. The MP cards should also help push you further into end game content and should differ from the type of team you currently have. I will go into more detail further down explaining their uses and value.
To reiterate, this list may be subjective and you should make sure you actually have the cards to support their purchase.
MP Cards Tier List – February 20/2017 |
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Explanation and justification for each card
While a tier list is helpful for a quick reference, it is best to understand why the cards are ranked as they are.
Ra Dragon
| Pros | Cons |
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Ra Dragon is widely considered the strongest leader in the game due to his consistency, ability to build fully bind immune teams, and ample utility. However, he has one of the hardest, if not hardest team building requirements due to his demand for excessively rare cards for subs and inherits. While “ideal” teams are great templates, there is normally some wiggle room, but Ra Dragon is quite rigid if you want to enjoy the highest level of consistency.
Ra Dragon |
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While this team may have some flexibility with their inherits (such as substituting for different colour Gemstone Princesses), it is quite rigid from a sub point of view.
Dark Kalis 
ensure you have easy access to a board refresh while Isis 
provides ideal colour coverage. Kanna 
is perhaps most easily replaceable by any heavy TPA-bind immune card such as Ariel 
, but they are of course not as ideal.
Through Skill Inheritance (with future access to inheritable farmable cards) and many reincarnated cards, you are able to help create a replacement card for one of these subs. In an ideal world, they should be bind immune and possess a relatively short cooldown. Some examples include Reincarnated Anubis 
and Parvati 
. Naturally these are not as ideal and if you find yourself constantly making substitutions to the listed subs, Ra Dragon may not be the best card for you.
If you wish to read my initial review of Ra Dragon, you can find it HERE.
Dark Athena
| Pros | Cons |
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Dark Athena should be coming to North America soon and will cost 750,000 Monster Points. While this may seem like an outrageous amount, you have to remember that we are receiving 390k for free along with easy access to MP through Rogue Descends. However, this does not change the fact that she is 2.5x the cost of all the other options, but in all honesty, she is worth it.
While Ra Dragon may be able to form what is considered the strongest team, Dark Athena is no push over. While she may not be as consistent as Ra Dragon, she is far easier to activate and team build.
A great chunk of Puzzle and Dragons revolves around repeatedly playing the same dungeon over and over again and it becomes paramount to maximize your efficiency when doing so. While Ra Dragon is able to clear any dungeon, he does so at the cost of slower clears and a mentally taxing activation requirement.
By comparison, Dark Athena is able to breeze through content with a single dark TPA and water combo. In addition, her team building simply revolves around dark TPA cards and one double SBR 
card in solo mode.
Strong subs
Notable inherits
In all honesty, you could probably use most dark cards provided they have beneficial active skills even if they lack TPA.
One thing minor downside to Dark Athena when pushing end game content is the somewhat reliance on a large burst active, most notably a Gemstone Princess. However, this is not a limiting factor and not everyone is interested in continuously farming Arena 3.
Overall, I would say Dark Athena has the most gentle team building requirements and comes ready to use. You do not have to go through the complicated evolution tree like the other MP Dragons and will have an immediate benefit for your box.
You can read my full review of her HERE.
Yomi Dragon
| Pros | Cons |
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Yomi Dragon received a less spectacular evolution than Ra Dragon, but she is still a force to be reckoned with. She is able to achieve 81x ATK / 4x RCV for God types when forming a 5o1e match. 81x damage for a single combo is incredible from a speed point of view. This will allow you to quickly mow through content and still retain the capacity to deal lethal burst damage when required.
The 4x RCV enables you to easily stall out and dangerous floor and your limiting factor will be a lack of HP. While this problem is partially addressed in coop (will enable you to tank Arena 3 DQ Hera preemptive), it does place constraints on your potential in solo mode as you will have to dedicate a slot to damage mitigation.
While Yomi Dragon is able to lead a powerful team, she can also act as a stellar sub on virtually any mono dark team. With massive weighted stats, beneficial active, and utility-oriented awakening, she can provide bulk and a medium bind clear due to her recover bind 
, bind immunity, and heart generating active.
While her team building is quite flexible and can utilize essentially any dark God, there are three stand out options who will generally comprise 3/4 sub slots in most cases. You can refer to them as the holy trinity:
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The enhanced orb clause for damage can be problematic if your dark orbs are removed or none are present can be dangerous as orb changers will not correct this. In addition, your two leaders only provide 2 enhanced orb awakenings and this can lead to a somewhat dependency on using Eschamali 
.
Overall, I would say she has the most flexibility for the MP cards due to her leadership and sub potential.
Odin Dragon
| Pros | Cons |
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Odin Dragon was once the bottom of the MP barrel prior to his new evolution. However, he has been transformed into both a viable leader and a reasonable sub.
Sometimes dubbed the “Offensive” Odin Dragon due to his capacity achieve 1,838x ATK with 3 colour crosses. In addition to his formidable output, you will actually benefit from 20,940 autoheal from dual +297 leaders. This is an incredible amount of healing every single turn and is a pleasant twist on a defensive multiplier. The autohealing does allow you to sustain yourself without the presence of heart orbs (which allows for the usage of heart breakers), but may struggle if you are required to heal massive amount of HP every turn (mostly applies in coop when your HP pool is above 40k).
With a scaling 1,838x ATK, you will be able to control your damage output along with having the capacity to pierce through the 10 million defense PreDRAs 
. This greatly alleviates team building constraints as you no longer require a poison/true damage or a damage enhancing active. Thus, you can further dedicate your actives to either more orb changer or damage mitigation.
Your subs can either comprise wood or light cards and it is mostly a manner of deciding who are your best options while prioritizing enhanced orb awakenings and beneficial orb changers.
However, Odin Dragon is not without faults as he lacks an HP multiplier and will be vulnerable large attacks and has a somewhat dependency on damage mitigation for navigating challenging content. In addition, you will naturally have a lower combo count due to the dependency on multiple crosses. Furthermore, the base active skill is lackluster when used on dual leaders due to the fact that you would rarely need that much bind clearing along with a lengthy cooldown that can be challenging to inherit over.
In tangent to his active skill, Odin Dragon’s value is somewhat diminished by the existence of Green Odin 
as they both fulfill the bind clear/awoken bind clear role. This is complicated further by the fact that you can inherit Green Odin whereas you must use Odin Dragon as a sub. This is fine for mono wood teams, but may become challenging on other colour teams.
Ragnarok Dragon
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Ragnarok Dragon is still a powerful option despite the fact that he is not a leader. Thus, his relevancy is heavily dependent on the viability of the leaders subs for as his kit is quite powerful.
Presently speaking, the full board change that produces all 5 colours and heart orbs is the most desirable, but it is a shame that Ragnarok Dragon cannot be perfectly used on Ra Dragon due to the lack of God typing.
Thus, Ragnarok Dragon has the most value on Ronove 
, Machine Athena 
, and Sherias Roots 
teams. Now, none of these are at the top of the meta, but Ragnarok acts as one of their best subs. While he may not appear to make sense on a Machine Athena team, he is actually quite a powerful tool to quickly farm content due to his Killers.
However, those Killer awakenings become problematic for anything above Arena 1 as it will lead to impossible damage control and have to be left unused for Ronove teams. This is a frustrating aspect as you are limiting him to Ronove teams who are beginning to decline. Granted this can change with a future evolution, but GungHo has a tenancy to not love anything below a 6-star GFE so don’t hold your breath.
Shiva Dragon
| Pros | Cons |
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I was somewhat on the fence about putting Shiva Dragon in the one check tier, but he is a step up from below cards and is the most highly ranked card that is not bind immune. It is amazing just how important bind immunity is when evaluating a card’s value and is a major downside to Shiva Dragon.
Regardless, Shiva Dragon does make a formidable farming leader, especially in Arena 1. While you can make a case against purchasing a MP Dragon for farming a somewhat accessible dungeon, Shiva Dragon can do this in a very fast manner.
Due to the unconditional 39x ATK, Shiva Dragon is able to blitz quickly through the 21 floors without really having to slow down or use actives provided you have at least 4 fire orbs each turn. These fast clears will lead to easy rank ups for lower players along with an unlimited stockpile of Py.
While Shiva Dragon does clear content quickly, he is still eclipsed by Awoken Liu Bei 
style farming for shorter content. Creating a full board of wood orbs and then swiping will always be faster. This is not to say that Shiva Dragon is a poor leader for these dungeons, he is just not as fast as something that is relatively accessible (you also have alternative pairing for ALB).
In addition to all of this, Shiva Dragon has the potential to excel in longer ranking dungeons as you can easily kill a floor with a single TPA match.
One thing I wish to point out is the somewhat inaccessibility in evolving Shiva Dragon due to the Hephaestus Dragon requirement. Generally speaking, Hephaestus Dragon is one of the harder encounters and is not available through any of the current One Shot Challenges.
Neptune Dragon
| Pros | Cons |
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On paper, Neptune Dragon looks formidable from a multiplier point of view. Unfortunately, he has two glaring weaknesses: a vulnerability to bind and unbelievably orb hungry leader skill. This is further complicated by a base active skill that is excessively long and underwhelming in most scenarios.
All of this together makes him feel cumbersome as you are forced to link 18 water orbs for 100x damage and will only enjoy a measly 16x for a single row of 6. This will lead to a very low combo count when attempting to deal lethal damage and while you do have an amazing amount of water rows, you still deal lower damage due to having only a few combos.
While Neptune Dragon is capable of clearing Arena 3 (with favourable spawns) and other end game content, he does not excel at it. You can favourably compare him to Krishna 
in that both are tank oriented leaders, but Krishna requires half the orbs for full activation and can squeeze in multiple rows more easily. Being compared to a 5-star pantheon card is not ideal for a 300k MP card.
Xiu Min
| Pros | Cons |
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Xiu Min has regained viability due to the release of Tifa and now a more favourable pairing due to the 7×6 board and RCV component. This will allow you to still deal wonderful burst damage, but also be able to heal up and stall more easily.
However, if you have the subs to support Xiu Min, you are almost always better of playing Myr 
and spending your 300k elsewhere.
Xin Hua (Plum)
| Pros | Cons |
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Xin Hua has gained a resurgence in popularity among the Gremory users as she has a wonderfully synergistic active along with desirable stats and awakenings. For the most part, this makes her one of the best options; however, the extent of her usage/viability outside of Gremory is rather lackluster due to her balance typing and inability to be included on most high end teams.
I would only purchase if you have a high functioning Gremory team.
Xiang Mei
| Pros | Cons |
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Oh how the mighty have fallen. For a period of time, Xiang Mei was considered a top tier leader as she was released at the same time as Skill Inheritance and was able to form an incredibly stable Arena 1 team with duplicates of herself. The duplicates were essential to overcoming the healer restriction along with providing haste to cycle your active skills.
Unfortunately, her innate durability is no longer impressive due to the heart cross meta and more tanky teams that have gentler activation requirements. This is further complicated by the lack of viable subs and the somewhat reliance on using duplicate Xiang Mei’s for success. The ideal team required 3 and thus a total of 900k MP. For 750k you can purchase Dark Athena who is better in every way possible.
Overall, Xiang Mei is not worth purchasing or pursuing. Perhaps this will change with a future buff/evolution.
You Yu
| Pros | Cons |
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Like Xiang Mei, You Yu was once a more desirable card to own but has since fallen pretty hard due to powercreep and the low viability of a glass cannon leader. Being able to deal massive amount of damage is nice (and is probably not that high compared to other current options), but you need to be able to actually recover and heal up afterwards.
Presently speaking, we have an abundant supply of glass cannon leaders and while You Yu has modest damage with 8 water orbs, you are better off saving your MP for someone else.
Conclusion
The goal of this post was to present all the non-seasonal MP cards available and help provide you with some direction when making your next purchase.
I will try my best to keep this post updated moving forward to reflect changes as new buffs or evolutions are announced.
Let me know what you think about this tier list and who do you plan to purchase with our upcoming 390,000 Monster Points?
Happy Puzzling!
Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons 
I need help in my decision, I already have Odindrag.
Is Radrag still the best leader option?
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