Introduction

3-Player Coop has been released in North America, but our first taste was with an easy to clear evolution material dungeon. While this may seem a  bit lackluster, it was probably done to “test” the servers as well as giving players a more gentle transition before the real content is released.

As such, this article will be going over what you should be prioritizing in this temporary downtime.

Video commentary

–video coming soo

How does 3-Player differ?

3-Player Coop is significantly more polished than 2-Player in that there is a dedicated match-making system in place. This will enable you to randomly match with 2 strangers while preserving a solo-y feel as you use your unique own team/health bar and only share the board in between turns.

2-Player mode’s largest hurdle was finding a partner and having a sense of coordination as you need to bring synergistic teams where the main goal is to usually clear something as fast and as mindlessly as possible.

As such, 3-Player will feel completely different as you do retain most of the control along with helping foster a stronger sense of community with Puzzle and Dragons.

Below is a more elaborated explanation that was taken from my previous article HERE:

3 unique teams

3-player coop will feel almost like a solo journey as you are need to choose your team before finding other players. Thus, when playing in the Auto-Match mode, your team as well as your allies will be hidden until you enter the dungeon.

This also means that you do not have to have synergistic teams as you only control your own and when your turn is over, your team (and health bar) will be changed to the next player's.

Thus, if you are playing Anubis  and have 38k HP, this is yours and yours alone as when your turn is over, it will pass onto the next player who can have a completely different team and health bar. For example, let's say that player 2 has Dark Athena  with 60k HP  and player 3 has Kushinadahime  with 55k HP. All three of these are fantastic 3-player leads, but you will only be micromanaging your own health. As such, if the Anubis team were to take lethal damage and die, their journey comes to an end and only Dark Athena and Kushinadahime will continue while alternating turns with their own health bar.

This also means that any damage you sustain will be carried over to your next turn and does not actually impact your partner's own health bar. Furthermore, your active skills will only charge up during your turn and you do not have the benefit of shared awakenings.

All of this translates into a more solo-y feel as your own health and team is independent from your partner's and the only thing you do share in common is the board.

Sharing the board functions like 2-player coop: what ever is formed after one player takes their turn is what the next person has to work with. This also means that any skyfall buffs/debuffs do carry over and it would be ideal if you try not to remove their primary colour orbs or heal unnecessarily.

Less forgiving than 2-player coop

2-player coop has far too many benefits that include a shared health pool, shared awakenings (     ), cross-team bind clears, and half stamina cost. This could have been kept in check if GungHo had scaled dungeons accordingly, but unfortunately, solo and 2-player coop uses the exact same dungeons.

As such, dungeons are scaled between solo and 2-player: generally too challenging for solo while being on the easier side in coop.

Thankfully, 3-player removes most of these benefits (outside of stamina), disables the solo-mode badge, and has appropriately scaled dungeons for 3 different teams. This should present a more fair gameplay, but does punish certain teams/compositions.

How to build your team

The team you decide to take into 3-Player Coop must be created like a solo team would and must be as self-sufficient as possible in order to deal with a variety of spawns. This means you must have answers to binds, high damage preemptives/attacks, full SBR  coverage, and sufficient Skill Boosts  to have something ready by turn 1.

In addition, you should also try and prioritize leaders with accessible leader skills that can proc off nearly every given board. This means there will be a lower dependency on using active skills to sweep most floors.

In addition, teams that are orb hungry or those that require more coordination will have a more challenging time when playing with 2 random players. However, these mono-colour/coordination teams can be well utilized in arranged 3-player mode.

Binds

If your leader is not bind immune, you are going to have a significantly harder time when playing 3-Player Coop. This is because you must dedicate a sub/active skill to removing these. Furthermore, you are unable to rely on your allies for a recover bind  awakening as well as only being able have the binds wear off on your turn. This means a 3-turn bind will last a small eternity as you are only able to have them be cleared on your turn. This can be problematic if your allies continue pushing through the dungeon as you may advance too quickly and end up in a dangerous situation.

If your leader is bind immune, the risk of dying drops dramatically as your leader skill remains intact so you will still have access to damage and defensive multipliers.

High damage preemptives

In an ideal world, you are able to survive large preemptives without the use of an active skill. This can be either accomplished through passive damage reduction (eg. heart cross/certain leader skills), having sufficient health, or colour resist latents.

However, this can be more challenging as you do not have access to the +15% HP badge and you may have to start prioritizing subs with exceptionally high HP or use Skill Inheritance to transfer additional HP.

Full SBR  coverage

There should be no excuse for having less than 100% coverage and in theory, it is not a bad idea to even have 120% coverage. This will ensure that both you and your partner’s skills remain intact even if one of your cards are bound.

Sufficient Skill Boosts 

Having sufficient Skill Boosts is often not a priority, but it becomes even more vital in 3-Player Coop. This is because your actives only charge up on your turn. This means you can be quickly advancing through the dungeon and not actually have any inherits (or even base skills) ready.

As such, you should try and prioritize both cards with ideal base actives as well as a few Skill Boosts to have at least something ready on your first turn.

You also need to rearrange your team as needed to bring the required utility which may mean bringing a sub with a shorter base cooldown to carry the required inherit provided it cannot be used as a sub.

Reliable Leader Skill

A reliable Leader Skill constitutes something that is easily activated from most given boards. This means that leaders such as Krishna  will be less ideal as they are horribly orb hungry as well as requiring coordination/setting up to reliably activate. While this can be overcome in pre-made groups, random match-making will be disastrous as most players will not be able to hoard fire orbs for you as they jeopardize their own activation. This same logic can apply to other mono-colour leads or those that require more coordination.

As such, Kushinadahime , Dark Athena , and Anubis  are all wonderful 3-Player Coop leaders as they are self sufficient and able to reliably activate damage from given boards while being tanky enough to survive most mechanics. This is crucial to success when playing with random players through the match-making system.

Essentially any top-tier leader fulfills these requirements, but even if you are missing these teams, you can still play and clear content.

Skill Delay Resists 

Due to the fact that actives only charge up on your turn, Skill Delay Resist (SDR) latents have even more value. SDR latents will help offset the number of turns of delay you experience and will ensure you retain your active skills without worrying about your partners quickly advancing through the dungeon.

You can find my Awoken Liu Bei  coop farming set up HERE.

Using mono-colour/orb hungry teams

If your Monster Box only enables you to use a mono-colour or orb hungry team, you are not alone. This will probably be the case for many players and what you need to do is understand what they need to succeed.

In an ideal world, all 3 players are using a similar type of team to better share boards and capitalize on skyfalls etc. but if that is not the case,

If you are playing a leader that does not require maximum combos/full board activation to function, try your best to help your partner out. What this means is understanding how their team works and attempting to preserve their orbs for their turn.

Moving forward

I have in my draft folder a few articles about Powercreep and meta teams that I hope to finish in a week’s time or so which will provide more insight as to what makes something “top-tier” or “meta.”

Conclusion

More exciting 3-Player Coop dungeons should be coming soon to North America and we should be using this period of downtime to prepare our favourite/strongest team for the challenges ahead.

If you do plan on jumping into the harder dungeons with a group of random players, it is best to try your best to be as prepared as possible by following the guidelines listed above.

Who do you plan on using for 3-Player Coop?

Happy Puzzling!

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