Introduction

As part of the Version 11.1 patch (full review can be found HERE), new evolutions and balance changes/buffs are now live for some of your favourite monsters.

This article will highlight the strengths and benefits of each new evolution while providing advice as to which path you should pursue along with providing commentary on all the new changes on each monster

Video commentary

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New evolutions

While most awoken/reincarnated forms tend to be strict upgrades, the ones that were released today are not so clear cut. Granted they do gain either an improved active/enhanced stats/more awakenings/etc, but some of these dramatically change what the card is known for and you should exercise careful planning if you lack duplicates. I will be referring to the official FB post HERE.

Heroes

The Heroes Pantheon is one of the strongest available and they gain even more flexibility through their awoken forms. While most awoken forms are a general upgrade, the Heroes Pantheon is not as clear cut as they lose their defining feature and you should be careful as to which path you pursue as they now fulfill completely different roles.

This is because their new awoken forms push them more into a TPA role while gaining a 7 combo  awakening as opposed to their normal row-oriented evolution. However, the all of these awoken forms now have the capacity to remove jammer and poison orbs but also lose their God typing at the same time.

All the Awoken Heroes have modest leadership potential, but they are somewhat orb hungry as they require two specific colours and a heart cross to achieve their full potential.

 Yamato

Yamato’s original form is a row-powerhouse that was famous for his three Skill Boosts . This played an essential role on Yamamoto  farming while providing support overall. While the awoken form does provide similar utility as he does retain his recover bind , the loss of his unique/defining feature can be challenging to swallow. However, if you plan on using a more TPA/combo oriented team and have no interest in farming, the Awoken form is the way to go.

 Andromeda

Andromeda is a staple sub on essentially every mono-water team as she provided utility, rows, double SBR , and a beneficial active skill. While this new Awoken form does retain the recover bind, the loss of double SBR may prevent you from making the change, especially if your primary team is Meridionalis .

However, the water-TPA/combo meta is solidifying through leaders like Julie  and the future split Skuld evo so there may be merits to making the shift if most of your power lies outside of rows.

 Perseus

Perseus was famous for his double Skill Boost and SBR but trade one of each to gain dual TPA and 7 combo awakening. This can be a blessing or a burden depending on the type of team you do run, but wood TPA meta is quite solidified with Ruel  leading the charge. Awoken Perseus is a perfect fir for Ruel teams as he provides damage and heart orbs while having the mandatory Attacker typing.

For the most part, his Awoken form tends to be a powerful choice unless you are using him as a SBR option for Liu Bei  teams.

 Wukong

Wukong is sometimes a forgotten Hero card as he has stiff competition from DQXQ  as both help fulfill the light row, double orb changer role. However, Wukong’s shining feature was his 3 Skill Boosts  that helped ensure solo teams has actives ready in time along with playing a role in Machine Zeus  farming teams. While these may be niche applications, they are still worth mentioning.

However, Wukong differs from the other Hero cards as he trades two Skill Boosts and TPA for bind immunity and a revamped leader skill.

Having bind immunity paired with Recover Bind  is a potent combination, but the main focus will be on his new leader skill. Awoken Wukong will provide 64x ATK / 4x RCV for dragon types when connected 8 light orbs. This is quite restrictive and looks more impressive on paper than in application.

As such, I feel that Wukong would be better left in his current form as the three Skill Boosts tends to be more universally beneficial than a bind immune sub.

 Algedi

Algedi has a split evolution that helps to better define her role as a leader or sub. However, the Jammer meta never actually took off so having a Jammer leader is not really practical. Thus, Alegedi will have more value in her Wood/Wood form as you gain additional wood rows while avoiding a light sub attribute.

A light sub attribute can be problematic on light absorption floors and is going to be my main focus when looking at Liu Bei.

 Alcyone

Like Algedi, Alcyone has a better sub and leader form, but actually has a viable leader skill which can make choosing a bit more problematic. Alcyone’s Light/Light form is able to achieve 144x ATK with a 5o1e with 2 light combos (one of those light combos can be the 5o1e) along with a modest damage mitigation. While this can look appealing on paper, the damage mitigation is tied to actually dealing damage so you become orb hungry and lose out on the opportunity to stall. As such, it would generally be better to pursue the Light/Water form for the average player.

 Freyja

Freyja receives her Reincarnated evolution which bolsters her to 1,000 weighted stats along with removing the dark sub attribute. This is an upgrade in every aspect and should be pursued as you can use her easier on Liu Bei teams as you no longer fear dark absorbs while providing dual SBR coverage. Only hurdle is the 16 million experience to max level.

 Sun Quan

Sun Quan also received his Reincarnated evolution and once again this is an upgrade in nearly every aspect as he his leadership potential is bolstered, reaches 1,000 weighted stats, and gains a 4th TPA . Despite the fact that his base ATK value is on the lower end, his potential to achieve massive burst will be almost unrivaled with himself and Orochi   fulfilling a water TPA powerhouse. Unfortuantely, Orochi excels in maximum HP while Sun Quan is heavily skewed towards RCV.

Generally speaking, the HP will be more valuable for the average team as most compositions tend to have abundant RCV as it is more important to reach a specific health threshold.

As a leader, Sun Quan does lose his fire sub attribute (so did Hermes ) which means you may be a little hard pressed to find a potent water/fire sub outside of Gan Ning  and Summer Urd . However, if you are able to easily incorporate a fire sub attribute, you will have an incredibly hard hitting team who is durable. Unfortunately, the active skill clause will be the largest drawback as water does not have an ideal card to use for longer dungeons.

 Liu Bei 

Liu Bei is another card that you may not want to full evolve just because of the light sub attribute. This is because you will instantly lose when farming if a light skyfall matches as your final hit will always heal the boss that is absorbing light. While not every dungeon has this mechanic, the future naturally remains uncertain as to what new content can be released, but you are also taking a risk with several current dungeons including Machine Hera.

Of course, the first question you need to ask yourself is do you have duplicates? If yes, you should make your first Awoken and the second Reincarnated. This will ensure you have a more universal farming leader that does not risk light skyfall deaths.

For the most part, Awoken Liu Bei has more than enough damage to sweep any content when paired with himself and the only real hurdle you may encounter (with a less than ideal team) is SDR  farming in Special Descend Rush. However, outside of SDR, Awoken Liu Bei does more than enough with his 64x.

Thus, a Reincarnated Liu Bei has an easier time for SDR farming (which is unneeded if you have Killers), but will make your life easier if you intend to do more Ganesha  pairings or have a reliable Dark Metatron  friend as she provides no skyfalls and 9x ATK for Gods when below 80%. This is marginally faster compared to Awoken Liu Bei, but will potentially restrict your potential to pair with other players as you require a less common set up.

As such, I highly recommend you keep your Liu Bei in his Awoken form as it keeps the door open for more general farming scenarios. Finally, you can keep saying ALB as RLB looks weird.

 DQXQ

Reincarnated DQXQ simply pumps up her damage output potential which was the opposite of what a 100x row leader needed. Granted having to form 4 unique elements and 8+ connected light orbs can be challenging, it would generally have more than enough damage to sweep all available content. Thus, further pushing her offensive multiplier to 256x has no real merit as what she really needed was some sort of defensive utility as a leader.

Another small, but important aspect to consider is the diminishing sub pool of light primary cards with relevant sub attributes. Many Reincarnated Gods are being converted back to Light/Light so it may be more challenging to form the teams you may have used in the past. Perhaps the higher scaling multiplier is intended to offset this but it is still something to consider.

As such, Reincarnated DQXQ will remain a fun to play glass cannon leader, but her potency as a mono-light sub has only improved due to the enhanced stats and additional light row.

Regardless, I would recommend you evolve her into her Reincarnated form.

 Dark Orpharion

Dark Orpharion is the new farmable trophy monster that requires the same 4 body parts as his light counterpart along with a new evolution material that will be released in his respective dungeon. For the most part, acquiring even a single Orpharion is out of reach for the average player as the drop rate from various descends is around 2% and  you have to collect 4 specific pieces while running the risk of duplicates. However, as a potential saving grace, you could farm Colosseum (my farming team can be found HERE) which does guarantee a random part, but unfortunately, the number of players who can successfully clear Colosseum is very low.

As such, Dark Orpharion will most likely be out of reach for most players, but if you are fortunate enough to acquire him (and several duplicates) he can form a powerful 2.25x HP / 126.6x ATK / 2.25x RCV team for machine type cards. This will deal fantastic amounts of damage while being quite tanky. Unfortunately, his damage scaling is perhaps too quick for feasible damage control while once again having a restrictive sub pool to draw from.

Buffs

     Norse Series

The Norse series is falling behind from a damage enhancing point of view, but their 1,000 weighted stats and favourable awakenings make the desirable bases to carry a better active skill. As such, the damage enhance period being boosted to three turns from two is an improvement, but will not have as much applications outside of encountering a Hephaestus Dragon (15 turn skill delay) that would reset your inherit skill.

  Wisdom Kings

The Light and Dark Wisdom Kings both received a buff to their active skill to provide 2 turns of haste instead of 1. However, they have the same problematic 2x enhancement as the Norse Gods so it is unlikely you would want to prioritize their active skills.

However, 2 turns of haste is quite rare and may have applications for specific coop farming teams.

 Lu Bu

Lu Bu has his active skill buffed to 4x ATK for Devils from 3x. While this does put him on par with Gemstone Princesses, the restrictive Devil typing and resetting your HP to 1 can be problematic. Maybe with a Reincarnated evolution will the RoBu days reemerge.

 Aten

Aten received a 1.5x orb movement time for 1 turn tagged along with his board change of fire, water, wood, light, dark, heal, and Jammers. While producing Jammers is not ideal, it can make do as a budget rainbow inherit but the time extension can be beneficial for overriding various debuffs.

Furthermore, Aten’s leader skill begins scaling at 3 colours while still achieving his 5x at 5 colours. This can allow for more wiggle room for damage control, but with his 9 Killers that really isn’t an option.

    Mechanical Series

Denebola, Acubens, and Algedi all received a +1 second to orb movement time alongside their jammer/primary colour generating active skill. Like Aten, this can be used to overcome time debuffs, but the Jammer meta never really took hold.

Granted Fenrir  and Fenrir Viz  are stronger leaders, GungHo is loathe (and with good reason) to release more REM jammer cards. This is because they have no applications on real teams and we have to turn our eyes to farmable options and there just isn’t enough currently available to really make it shine.

Conclusion

Plenty of new things to digest and play around with in Version 11.1 to hopefully keep players entertained until the next wave of 3-Player Dungeons are released.

Which changes are you most excited about and which evolution path did you pursue for the featured cards?

Happy Puzzling!

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