Introduction
Two new 6-star Godfest Exclusives are coming to North America and both push Powercreep to a new level. Every game requires a certain element of Powercreep to keep things interesting, but it should advance at a steady march, not by giant leaps and bounds. While Raijin 
is unique and powerful in her own right, she is at least not overwhelming in what she does unlike Fujin 
.
I liken Fujin’s level of Powercreep to that of a Gemstone Princess (far too powerful in their own right) and dearly hope it does not set a presedence for future dungeon spawns. With that being said, once you own a Fujin, your PAD life will never be the same again.
GFE Tier List – March 15/2017 |
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** Not in NA yet |
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Video commentary
—video goes here—
Fujin
Fujin
God / Attacker
3,418 HP / 1,885 ATK / 130 RCV
762 Total
Active Skill:
Ignore enemy damage absorb effects for 1 turn (does not include combo shield, attribute absorb, and damage void)
1 turn haste
19 turn Cooldown
Leader Skill:
3x ATK for Attackers. 2.5x ATK & 25% damage reduction with 6 combos
56.25x ATK / 43.75% Damage Reduction
| Pros | Cons |
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Impressions
Firstly, I personally feel that Fujin is a card that should not have been released. This is because she advances powercreep too fast and essentially negates one of the most challenging/frustrating boss mechanics. From now on, any boss with a damage absorb effect will be trivial for people who own Fujin while those who don’t may struggle if they release harder content.
Fujin negates damage absorbs which occur when you deal too much damage or hit above a specific threshold. Presently, the most notable spawns are Sopdet, Parvati, Vishnu, and Hera Dragon which all require a certain degree of finesse and planning to overcome. While I do feel that Parvati is a well designed encounter, she should not appear in Arena due to the fact that she is not actually challenging and simply slows down your clears. The other 3 are meaningful and add another dimension to your team building phase while being somewhat terrifying to encounter.
Removing the threat of these encounters will certainly improve clear times and consistency as you can simply one shot them without fear as most teams are now capable of achieving a high level of burst damage.
I felt that the Gemstone Princesses were a bad idea as they provide far too much burst, but you cannot go back once you actually own one. The same will hold true for Fujin to the point where the two of these will become somewhat staples on end game teams. While they do technically expand the roster of viable teams for tackling Arena 3, it does not really add that much diversification due to the fact that it is the same two actives being key to success.
My main fear/concern is that there will become a dependency on owning Fujin in the future for tackling challenging content as no one card should hold this much power. We also get to look forward to future cards having a combo shield, attribute absorb, and damage void negation active. On the bright side, players can use the skill up material for Fujin for cheesing Hera Dragon Descended.
Raijin
God / Attacker
3,685 HP / 1,933 ATK / 23 RCV
763 Total
Active Skill:
Remove locked orbs
8 turn Cooldown
Leader Skill:
3x ATK for Attackers. 3.5x ATK & 25% damage reduction when matching 4 of Fire, Water, Wood, Light, or Dark match
110.25x ATK / 43.75% Damage Reduction
| Pros | Cons |
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Impressions
While Fujin is probably too strong overall, Raijin is well designed and is also able to be used on a variety of teams. Dark Kali 
boards are always going to be powerful and popular due to the prevalence of Ra Dragon 
and his continued supremacy as one of the best or the best leader in the game.
Being able to remove locked orbs a wonderfully powerful mechanic as board refreshes such as Keiji 
are unreliable from a board changer persepctive. Raijin will ensure you always have at least 3 of each element for full activation and provides you with another way to deal with locked orbs and Ilsix. While the first instinct is to inherit Raijin, many players may find themselves wanting to use her as a sub for the Ra Dragon teams. While this is quite potent for the most part, it is a minor step down from the “ideal” team due to the fact that Raijin is vulnerable to binds and breaks up the bind immune theme. However, the rest of the awakenings and active skill have tremendous value overall and is probably the closest thing to a Dark Kali replacement.
Ilsix is still a terrifying spawn and teams use a variety of methods to overcome his frenzy zone of water, hearts, and locked jammers. While Raijin is naturally the best solution for Ra Dragon teams, other leaders could use the unlocking component and a subsequent orb/board changer.
While this is a new/unique mechanic, it is not as game breaking as Fujin as this simply makes your life a bit easier as you can remove awkward locked orbs (especially 1 or 2 locked poison/jammer). Perhaps in the future there will be a higher dependency on this mechanic, but board refreshes do accomplish this in a similar manner. Furthermore, Raijin can be replaced by the upcoming Three Kingdom Series 2 cards who also remove locked orbs.
Conclusion
GungHo continues the trend of releasing amazing 6-star Godfest Exclusives while somewhat neglecting the other tiers of rarity. While Raijin is powerful, Fujin will become the new prize for everyone pushing end game content as they can be used on any team and trivializes many challenging spawns.
Let me know what you think about Fujin and Raijin.
Happy Puzzling!
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Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons 
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that having ideal assists is entirely mandatory for end-game content. The Radar Dragons are virtually impossible unless you can plan ahead with specific inherits to avoid outright losing to HeraDra. Nearly every dungeon guide these days requires Raphael, Indra, or Orochi. I’ve started taking one look at these guides before moving on and assuming the dungeon is unwinnable for me.
There’s still plenty of content left for me to clear, but I can see that content wall quickly approaching. I just wish GungHo would stop designing otherwise unwinnable encounters that require specific inherits. Still, I know there are plenty of players that prefer it this way.
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It has become a game of acquiring the right base and then the proper assist for success. Unfortunately, the pool of ideal assists is quite limited and that is a problem. While Raphael is more for speed farming (as opposed to A3), Indra and Orochi tend to be relative staples on most teams.
Indra’s shield is simply the best and provides the most protection vs Hera Dragon as a Susano cannot keep most teams alive beyond the second hit. For A3, Orochi is mostly a safety net and pretty much a direct counter to Vishnu. Vishnu is more manageable with bind immune leaders/teams, but Orochi makes it so much easier.
Amusingly, the only team that did not require those inherits was Myr and I probably have ~100 A3 clears with her
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Great review as usual.
I would only point out that most of your concern with Fujin is that it will precipitate a wave of newer, harder bosses that are only able to be beat using him. It feels like this is the immediate fear whenever a new mechanic is released despite the fact that it has simply never been the case.
GungHo is quite wise in realizing that while monster power is not capped, player skill, for the most part, is. Instead of an invitation to create stupidly hard content that will only appeal to small segment of the player base, powercreep can be looked a way for players to continue to progress through harder content without getting any better at the game. Not everyone has the skill to play Anubis or RaDra but still likes to beat content. You may disagree philosophically as to whether or not that is a good thing, but it keeps players playing. Imagine how many people would quit if there was a point in the game where if you weren’t skilled enough, there was no way to pass regardless of your team. People would quit. A lot of people.
The fact that powercreep also keeps players engaged and keeps them chasing 6* gfes, and though that keeps GungHo in business, means everybody wins.
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Well the problem with Fujin is twofold: too big of an advance in powercreep and probably no workable alternative outside of using their skill up mat. Perhaps if they stop making absorb bosses fujin will die off, but unless A3 becomes pointless to farm, it will become somewhat of a staple inherit
The most recent large spike in powercreep was heart crosses as they somewhat trivialized much of the current content at the time. However, they are falling out due to being orb hungry/difficulty hitting combos and is partially why you see very few Colosseum clears with them.
As for opening up new content, it will certainly enable more players to tackle dungeons, but we already had viable counters to all the troublesome spawns, now it is simply a push 1 button to win scenario. In addition, we have even more teams available for A3 and this is partially from gemstones who enable any team to burst crazy high, but at least had some skill components involved
With Fujin, A3 teams will run 1 shield if they cannot survive a Noah <90% hit, no delay (as vishnu is no longer an issue), and usually 2 Fujin in coop. This kills diversification and even team building knowledge/puzzling skills.
I do understand the need for a company to make money, but this feels like a big cash grab technique overall and is too much an easy solution for most players
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You have a pretty negative view of the power creep here, but honestly it’s pretty par for the course, given how long Arena 3 has been out for. Certainly in NA, only the top players have access to reliable clears of it, so getting more players in there is a good deal. It’s time for A3 to become more reliable to farm, as we move into the new phase of content that -requires- killer latents to reliably beat.
I’ll also call out that the absorb shield is one of the worst mechanics in the game, due to it punishing the “typical” behaviors players are trained to do (build a powerful team), and being so easy for RNG to completely end what should be a fine run (turning skyfalls being a big eff you instead of a jackpot success). Resolves and damage nulls have proven to be a much more elegant solution. A way to negate absorbs for lucky/whale players could simply be received as a quality of life improvement… I’ve had runs I had no right losing on end due to absorbs, and I’m looking forward to ways around it.
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Powercreep is important, but it should be done in manageable steps, not giant long jump leaps. We now go from having a challenging spawn to something that is killed at the push of a button. I would liken this jump to how the heart cross meta propelled things (took months for GH to create cards stronger and there was a big lull of new challenging content until Colo).
Another problem I feel with Fujin is that there is no middle ground. The heart cross meta could have been better capped if the shield was less powerful, but you can’t really decrease the potency of Fujin
As for A3 becoming more accessible, it already has with numerous and powerful leaders emerging since its release and we have only just had Colosseum come to NA and killer latents (machine) are nice, but not mandatory.
As for content requiring Killer Latents, nothing presently needs them and in theory, Fujin enables you to use them more.
I do agree that absorbs are a frustrating mechanic, but it does force you to adjust your strategy/matching/team composition as blindly bursting things down shouldn’t be the only option
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Those are good points. Regarding content, often stuff like this comes out and then Gung Ho reveals new mechanics afterwards, so we’ll see if there’s something new around the corner.
Binary powers like this are definitely hard to balance, so this is definitely one of those pandora’s boxes that they can’t close.
I will say that sometimes I think you’re a bit jaded since you co-op with yourself all the time. For someone like me who primarily solos (and is skill capped at a pretty moderate skill level), I need every edge I can get to get more reliable results.
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GH may simply not make new encounters with damage absorbs as Colosseum didn’t have any so Arena 4/5 may follow suit. GH is also not allowed to nerf a card so it is here to stay. I would ofc be happy if I rolled one as there is no going back to the dark ways of puzzling once you have a winning button (eg. ALB)
As for the solo vs coop, that is another large and problematic issue GH has dug themselves into. They cannot design a dungeon to counter both along with the despairing stamina costs. Possible solution is making a solo-only and coop-only difficulty (no bonus stone, just beat one for clear in both) and make stamina cost the same for both modes. I have 0 motivation for solo play when I know I can play 2x more with my accounts.
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How do I force myself to adjust my strategy/matching/team composition if I get light skyfalls during Sopdet/Heradra?
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You don’t. You accept that this is an inconvenience that will lower your clear rates. You can, however, mitigate the probability by doing things like matching at the top of the board and ensuring that the orbs below are stacked in such a way that any single orb cannot cause a skyfall.
But… there is always a small chance that the RNG gods will smite you with a 10 combo, when you only matched 4. This is part of the reason that “no skyfall” leader skills are popular. They are the only way to grant perfect damage control.
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Any idea when next godfest is
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Should be this weekend.
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^
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The one thing that stands: It’s a 6* gfe. The chances of rolling are almost astronomical. If it had a skillup, that’d really change the game though… (on jp, it’s a mask of something)
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It’s going to be more available than you think though, as many people who DO roll her will inherit it on their popular leaders.
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It will probably be popular on leaders with poor base active skills (eg. Ra Dragon) and for players who don’t play in coop as you generally don’t want to bottleneck your leaders with an active you use once considering they recharge twice as fast as subs
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It will most likely be rotated through the various evo mats so you can access them for the shorter dungeons like Hera Dragon Descended
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…aaaaaaaaand since i”ll never get these I can just pretend they don’t exist in the REM at all
…*cries in bad luck and nonIAP*
Great analysis as always, thank you!
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Glad you enjoyed it and who knows, maybe you will get lucky =)
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Awesome analysis Mantastic! Nice to see a different viewpoint on power creep. I agree with your point about Fujin. I think people are just looking for an easy way to deal with challenging mechanics rather than use their skills. GungHo will be happy to assist you for your lack of skills and laziness…with a price.
This is probably a foreshadowing of more challenging monster than Sopdet, ilsix, and HeraDra with absorb and lock mechanics in the future.
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Thank you Masato!
I don’t really want to see it become buttons and puzzles but tbh, GH may actually not make any new absorb encounters and simply leave Fujin as a premiere A3 inherit. If you look at Colosseum, there are not encounters where Fujin can be used so maybe A4/5 will not actually need the absorb void.
As for locked orbs, they are mostly a nuisance at the moment and we do have numerous ways of dealing with Ilsis already
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Nice review, thanks 🙂
Smart move by GH to keep the cash flowing. Create a harder-to-obtain card with an immensly useful active. Understandable. Actually necessary to make your numbers, it’s a company after all.
Since all content can be beaten without the card, it unfortunately just invalidates many challenges with the card.
I don’t think that is a smart move as the content doesn’t grow quickly enough. How you can do ~100 A3 runs with Myr is astonishing, but it must bother you that it is the (almost) only worthwhile thing to do and the reward questionable after a certain amount.
I’d prefer to have new challenges while keeping the old ones, just different mechanics. More variety, not blended down soup. The challenge today is already a rather small pool of dungeons, for whales it probably just got extinct. Getting an Arena 4 with whatever mechanic adds just one thing to Colosseum. Whales have all the tools to beat it in a day.
Anyway, my point is that this card is a lucky find that probably will make PAD life more boring, not exciting. Unless one has fun bragging about how many piis were sold to limit box space.
The good thing is that it’s very rare to obtain for the majority of shrimps like me. 🙂 I’ll still be happy about the A1 clear while others gripe about how easy and boring the game has become. How long is it interesting to play a game with little challenge?
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It must be hard balancing cards for them now, Each card now needs to be tuned for people who play single player and for people who multibox multiplayer. A 19 turn cooldown a few years ago would of been dismissed by many as too long.
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The feel when you roll 3 times in JP and u get a fuujin, raijin, and baldin.
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The feel when you roll in JP 3 times and u get a fuujin, a raijin, and a baldin. 😀
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well its still good they didnt broke Fujin to much 😀 at least she cant avoid Dmg void, att. absorb and combo shield but at least i must say that Fujin is a good card for the A3 problem child’s aka. Sopdeth and such but i think somehow that raijin is sort of lackluster she has a good skill but with diao-chan she seems to lose a bit there from the turn times 😀
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Would be interested to see a farmable monster tier list at some point in the future.
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possibly =)
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While Fujin does just remove the gate of the mechanic all together, she is also allowing certain subs to be fully maxed out and useable with killers now, which was something unaware players were unknowingly punishing themselves with by activating. This would be their way of admitting that killer awakenings weren’t thought out very well as we can see lots of players opting out of using those awakening slots at all to make subs less risky vs damage mechanics. I also have a feeling that’s probably why a lot of cards with killer awokens were recently buffed in a way that moved their respective killer awokens to the final slot giving more people a chance not to use them
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That is a good point about the Killer awakenings and how you can more freely use them. Granted it does not help against void bosses (Noah, Gaia, Zeus) but having 1 card not contribute damage is far better than healing it back to full HP
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Personally, I think the absorb if over X Damage was probably among the stupidest mechanics in puzzle and dragons, so I had longed hoped it would just die in a fire. That mechanic was essentially a “you cannot run this type of team”, and trying to control damage in a game with far too much randomness (skyfalls) and point of no returns(killers). I do think having the counter to it on a 6 star GFE is a paradox: Unless you get lucky, most likely only IAP players at the end game level will consistently get her, but they don’t really need her (unless they really start pulling some crap like a dungeon with 10 mil hp and a 250k absorb) because these players probably have a depth of cards to work around such mechanics, it’s the people who only have 1 or 2 really good teams who need cards like this, but it is likely they’ll never see her.
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Hi, i just got Fujin. (I have this nice karma to roll debut cards on this game).
The thing is… Is so fun and easy to play as leader that I got excited and just plused her.
Now I realized that I only have Kaede & GZL to use as sub…*Lol* 😀
but it’s all good, I’ll find a host (probably Venus) to bring her to the myr side 😉
huge waste of eggs tho.
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I am certain you will gain more subs in time and at least plus eggs are easier to obtain. Also, congrats on your good fortune!
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Thanks for thr review. I just pulled fujin and was curious about the ability. Seems we agree. Glad i can finally clear some later content, though
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I just BFFed Mantastic and my top 3 teams are Raijin, Krishna, and Meri. You (rightfully) commented in a PAD mail message that Raijin will never be as prominently used as Krishna or Meri. And I get it. I doubt that I will see much in the way of Raijin leaders (sitting at 2 friends right now). I was going to reply back in game but I thought I would post this comment here for anyone who might pull her who is interested in running her as a leader.
I myself came to this page earlier to read your analysis and to see if there are any pointer or ideas after i pulled Raijin. The analysis is spot on with regards to overall her pros and cons. And you go into detail about the benefits of her unique Active skill; which is a big help in certain situations (like Ilsix). I thought I would address the actual play style.
Team building:
I will not delve into team building too much. Your box will dictate what attackers you can use. For reference I am using:
Raijin
Rozuel – Armoured Blue Flame Knight Nim assist
Kaede – Grodin assist
Vector Finn – DMeta assist
Ganesha – Raphael assist
Raijin
Using her:
First off, she is a lot of fun and her play style is very fast paced. Most floors do not last more than 1 turn as she is very easy to activate. Match a TPA of at least 1 colour while activating her LS and for most enemies, that over kills them. If you can clear a reasonable number of orbs(ie. At least ¾ of the board) then the chances of you getting at least 3 or 4 orbs for 4/5 colours in your skyfall is very good. So you are using very few active skills.
I was doing some endless corridors to get a feel for her and my team but I realized that a true test would be more of endish game of content. So I said ‘stamina be damned if I fail’ and jumped into Arena 1.
Arena 1 went very well. Again, most things were killed in 1 turn. Where that wasn’t the case, it was due to my own inability. For some reason, in corridors I was matching no problem. Make the stakes real with stamina usage and a Pi at the end and I keep messing up. Fortunately, the mistakes were on floors like Grisar and Neptune…so not life threatening. 1st time through and I finished in about 13 minutes. For me, that is fast. Now I know clear time is highly dependent on spawns. Had I gotten Parvati, I would have taken much longer and likely might not have won at all!
But compare this to Meri and Krishna. I spend time stalling for skills or a better board because it is feasible and necessary to stall. This does however drag out the game more. Not to mention with Krishna this delaying sometimes gets messed up by (un)lucky skyfall. That being said, I am sure that my clear ratio would be highest with Meri because she can handle any spawn.
I also think that one cool/important thing to note is that from floors 1-19 I used each of the Raijin’s AS twice(2 of those were due to my flubs) and Rozuel’s once for bind clear on Izanami(again on a flub). No other skills were used by any of the rest of my team until Kali. Which was made trivial by the fact that I could Ganesha the first big hit then unload full damage to one shot her.
So what does all of this mean? Not much really. There are tons of videos on youtube of Arena 1-3 being soloed with any number of different cards as leaders. The fact that a new 6* GFE card can do it isn’t really a shock. But I guess if you happen to pull one, don’t just throw her onto a team as an inherit. She makes a fun and fast leader if you can avoid damage absorption.
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Thank you Creed for writing such a detailed breakdown of your own experience with Raijin in A1 =)
Naturally my reviews are based off my experience with PAD, not the card itself so it is always refreshing to read about someone’s own usage with a new card
My main hope with Raijin is that this style of leader skill becomes popular moving forward and newer cards have this type of mechanic
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Interesting ideas Beverley! I suppose researchers needed to start by paying attention to &#sl20;8imp2er” things like germs or genetic problems that are easier to detect physically, but it does seem like they’re starting to take stress more seriously, doesn’t it?
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My friends and I have a wager going. We said whatever leader was pulled in the 10 stone GFE had to be your leader and whoever could clear the most content with it wins.
I pulled Raijin (and I feel pretty good about it) but I’ve been having trouble with subs… any suggestions?
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Mostly a matter of using all Attackers and having rainbow coverage
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Appreciate you 😉
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❤
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As someone who plays her a lot I will chime in now. You want as many TPAs as possible for maximum damage and time extends are helpful too. As far as coverage, you have two options. Light main attribute and get your rainbow coverage from sub attributes or get your rainbow coverage from main attributes.
I mostly elect to do main attribute coverage.
My usual team is:
Raijin
Kaede(Odin Inherit)
Rozuel(Nim inherit)
Dark Athena
Flex
Raijin
The final slot is usually something geared towards a special mechanic in the dungeon. If there is a 76% resolve, i take attacker Hathor. If there is a need for true damage i take the original ultimate evo DMetatron with a true damage inherit. She also has armour break awakening so i use her for that as well. Jize is used when under 100 damage is needed.
Other subs I frequently use:
Ganesha
Ariel (For crazy light damage)
Barbarosa(great if there are other attackers to kill)
Horus Ace(great for full board all attribute changer)
Zhuge Liang(Spike and Green/Dark coverage in 1)
Any Greco God( ie. converts 1 colour and heart to their element. Great for catering a specific coloured spike.)
Unfortunately I do not have Facet, but inheriting her onto someone would be even crazier of damage. With the above mentioned units, 14-16 TPAs is possible.
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