Introduction

Myr  has been live in NA/EU for many months now and took the PAD meta by storm. Not only was she the most powerful farmable monster released to date (from a leadership perspective), she was also capable of clearing all of the current content with relative ease. Her debut granted her an effective 4x HP / 49x ATK / 4x RCV that was later buffed to 59x ATK from a later JP stream has set the bar incredibly high in what it takes to become an end game leader as she combined both offensive and defensive capabilities.

While Myr was a blessing for a large portion of the Puzzle and Dragons population, she was also met with harsh criticism as she somewhat invalidated many polished/well developed teams overnight. While it is a frustrating experience to see months of hard work swept aside due to giant leaps in Powercreep, we have to remember that two new and unique aspects occurred at the same time: the heart cross meta and an actually viable farmable card.

What I hope to accomplish with this article is both a review of Myr’s history and current situation along with my hopes for farmable cards moving forward.

Video commentary

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Myr’s debut

Prior to Myr’s release, the heart cross mechanic did exist; however, it was far less powerful than its present incarnation as it did not carry forward on a sweep to protect against preemptives along with having a very low multiplier. This left what few leaders largely unforgotten and it was only with the release of Myr and ultimate evolutions for Kaede  and Sumire  that heart crosses actually became relevant.

This trio was able to deal both deal wonderful damage and have a shield that carried over upon killing a floor. While Kaede and Myr quickly climbed up to the top of the Meta, Sumire was left some what floundering behind as she had the most awkward activation of the three along with the lowest effective damage output due to the fact that you could only efficiently stack orb enhances  for damage.

Thus, the trio was trimmed down to two. Kaede has a horribly REM-heavy team building requirements as in an ideal world, you had to own three of them and that is nearly impossible for the average player as Kaede is a rare 6-star GFE (I still own 0 on Mantastic). While the ideal Kaede team was able to happily dance through current content, the fact that she was essentially out of reach for nearly everyone, her popularity was restricted to a lucky few.

As such, Myr became the new go-to girl as not only was she farmable, but she also has flexible team building options that could go for either TPA  or rows  to deal damage.

Therefore, Myr is both a child of the new (and overpowering) heart cross meta as well as being an accessible and easy to team build farmable card.

Myr’s popularity

Taking into account that Myr was incredibly powerful and farmable, it was no surprise that she became the chosen leader for the majority of the Puzzle and Dragons population. It now became a goal to acquire, skill up, and develop a Myr team provided you had modest light subs to support her.

While this is Fantastic as there is now a tangible goal for newer players, it has proven frustrating for more veteran puzzlers as it somewhat became a matter of using Myr for end game content as virtually no other leader could compete with her ease and access.

This certainly created a bottleneck of leaders used as it was primarily Myr for hard content and Awoken Liu Bei  for button farming which is pretty depressing considering just how many different cards are in Puzzle and Dragons.

As such, I feel a large portion of this problem was overpowering heart cross leaders as it took GungHo months to both create stronger cards and hard enough content to stifle their progress (you can read more about that HERE).

The decline of Myr

All things considered, Myr has had a long reign at the top of the Puzzle and Dragons meta and it is only natural that a changing of the guards will occur. The two main hindrances that plague Myr is her inability to feasibly deal with combo shields (easier with a TPA build, but horribly challenging with the more common row build) and somewhat orb hungry nature of her leader skill that inevitably lengthens her clear times.

A heart cross naturally requires 5 heart orbs for activation along with your primary element for actual offense with 6 or 7 resulting in 1-2 dead orbs. Depending on your build and dungeon requirements, the number of offensive orbs can vary. Naturally this will always occupy a fixed amount of space and if you are row-based, you may struggle to hit 6+ combos. While this is not too problematic in most content, newer dungeons like Colosseum feature numerous 7-8 combo shields and is one of the main reasons why there are fewer heart cross clears.

In addition to combo shield hurdles, you also have to manage two different orbs and it becomes challenging to always have both available every single turn without active skill usage. While using an active skill is acceptable in shorter content, it becomes problematic in longer dungeons and as most leaders are measured against their capabilities to clear Arena 3, you must be frugal with their usage after the first half of the dungeon.

Being able to clear repeated floors without an active skill is ideal as not only does it improve consistency, it also shortens stalling and thus hastening clear times. While clear times are not important for your first time, it becomes vital when you are forced to play a dungeon over and over again. As such, Myr is a slow but safe leader to use.

While the safety aspect is desirable, we now have access to many other safe and consistent leaders who can boast significantly faster clear times. As such, those players (myself included) tend to gravitate to those teams as it saves time and mental stamina.

All of this is not to say that Myr is incapable, she is simply less popular due to the less intuitive playstyle and longer clear times. She is still perfectly able to farm Arena 3 and lower difficulty dungeons and is probably going to be well worth pursuing for newer players for a long time to come.

Was Myr a bad idea?

Myr herself was actually one of the best ideas/cards released in a long time as it gave all players access to end game content if they had the patience and perseverance to farm her. What was not a good idea was how overpowering heart crosses were and how they invalidated most of the previous meta teams through their unprecedented ability to deal damage and survive incoming attacks.

You have to remember that two separate things occurred with Myr’s release: heart crosses and a farmable end game leader and these should be viewed as separate entities when evaluating whether or not this was a good idea.

My hopes for future farmable cards

Myr has set the bar for what I hope the next farmable cards will be as she was something worth pursuing as a primary goal, instead of something that is nice to have, but not really needed.

I feel that GungHo has reigned in the potency of farmable cards since Myr, but they should continue developing them in greater quantities.

Myr was essentially only worthwhile if you owned a respectable light box and still does require REM cards for success. However, outside of Zaerog Infinity , Tengu  and Zeus Dios , no other farmable cards are THAT important to prioritize.

In an ideal world, we have farmable cards that are potent in all colours to at least provide goals for all Monster Boxes and while there may be hesitations for releasing a powerful leader, it can certainly have drawbacks:

Make it challenging to acquire/invest in

At the time of her debut, Myr’s dungeon was quite challenging to clear as it presented numerous mechanics that forced players to stall and dance around which both increases the difficulty and chances for error. As such, make the next one equally challenging for players taking into account the current meta.

GungHo could even restrict the teams that could be brought in or even exclude multiplayer (while halving the stamina cost) to prevent easy cheesing and providing a certain level of gatekeeping for players to acquire the new card.

Conversely, you could make it similar to Orpharion  in design as he is incredibly difficult to evolve.

Make it hard to use/slower

As stated above, speed and ease of matching is the deciding factor when comparing two end game leaders who are comparable in terms of consistency. Thus, make the next farmable card challenging to use, but rewarding if you are able to achieve their multiplier.

That challenging aspect will naturally lengthen clear times along with more possibilities for failure if that skill cap cannot be met.

Require REM cards as subs

A fully farmable team is a nice concept, but will never become a reality and every leader demands a certain or large degree of REM support to function.

Make it a guy

We play this game mostly partially for the pretty girls. This way it will not detract from your already owned Waifus.

Conclusion

Myr was a good idea in that GungHo released a viable farmable leaders and the fact that she was part of the heart cross meta diminished her overall appeal. Perhaps GungHo underestimated the potency of heart crosses and by releasing the two together has them second-guessing their next farmable release.

I am well aware that the goal of any company is to make money, but you need to continue to create incentives to play the game, not just roll. I have been tinkering around with other mobile games, and those have a much faster premium currency generation compared to PAD that rewards players for excessively playing beyond the login bonus. As such, PAD needs to create more incentives to grind and farm dungeons in order to help fill out your monster box and teams.

Viable farmable monsters are crucial to a game’s continued success as they help provide goals for players which in turn keeps them playing longer. The actual gameplay progression of PAD is not very clear-cut as it is a little vague in which directions players should be going.

What do you think of Myr and the future of farmable monsters.

Happy Puzzling!

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