Introduction
The latest patch for Puzzle and Dragons has introduced us to the new Assist Evolution mechanic. This mechanic enables your assisting card to not only provide their active skill, but to also grant additional awakenings. As a result, monsters are now able to surpass 9 awakenings. The current roster of Assist Evolutions is small for the mean time, but future options can spice up your team building options.
Just be aware that once a monster achieves Assist Evolution status it cannot be reversed so choose wisely.
Video commentary
—video coming soon–
How to determine if you should make an Assist Evolution
The most important question to ask yourself before committing to an Assist evolution is to determine if it is your only copy of the card and how likely are you to use them as a sub/leader. This is important as the process cannot be reversed and you do not want to waste your resources and base card.
Points to consider when determining if you plan to use the card as a sub is mostly if they have valuable Killer awakenings. For the most part, subs are chosen for their awakenings and correct typing/base stats. This is because with Skill Inheritance, base actives are less important as they can be overwritten. Thus, the most potentially powerful awakening a card could have is Killers, especially if they have 2 or more (Killers mostly apply to more niche farming situations or Ch10’s etc.).
Based on this, the Ninja series (
) all come with 2 Killer awakenings along with a 5 turn base cooldown. While their weighted stats are on the low side, the double Killers can enable them to be used in specific dungeons for more efficient clears. As a result, I would strongly caution against using your only Ninja as an Assist Evolution.
Leaving Assist Evolutions unskilled
For the most part, it is advantageous to have your cards skill up as it enables you to use your actives much faster. On the other hand, it is also common practice to use non-skill up cards as pseudo-SDR buffers as they can better absorb a large skill delay.
However, some of the Assist Evolution cards have average active skills. Thus, you may not actually want them to charge up and override your base card. Using the example provided via the official FB page, Yog 
inherited Valkyrie’s active skill:
Valkyrie has a terrible active skill compared to the mighty Yog and it would be a horrible waste if it were to be overwritten. Thus, you may be better off with an unskilled Assist Evolution.
By being unskilled, you will still provide the extra awakenings, stats if on-colour, and you lower the chance of having base active becoming unusable.
When to use Assist Evolutions
Assist evolutions enable a card to break past 9 awakenings which can provide additional versatility to your monsters. However, you should make sure you can make use of the new awakenings as they sometimes come with cards that have poor actives. As a result, you need to determine if you can make use of the potential extra power and whether or not you should keep your card unskilled.
Another point i want to draw attention to is the stat-boosting awakenings 
. These have histroically been underwhelming for the most part, but have steadily grown in power over time through variuos buffs. As a result, they can potentially grant enough extra stats to survive key encounters.
Finally, if your team is desperate for additional SBR 
coverage, the Assist Evolution of Sumire provides you with one (+20% coverage). This can help lessen team building constraints and better focus on using the cards you want to.
If you had to pick one
If I had to pick one Assist Evolution to make for the average player, it would be Green Odin 
. This is because Green Odin is already a commonly used Inherit for his bind and awoken bind clearing. Thus, the 4 additional awakenings you can provide any character can make a modest difference overall due to the 1,600 auto heal and HP awakening.
Conclusion
The new Assist Evolution is an exciting new mechanic that enables you to break beyond 9 awakenings. While the current available Assist Evolutions feel situational, they can still provide interesting utility when when optimally used.
Let me know what you think about this new mechanic and where do you plan to use it.
Happy Puzzling!
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Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons 
Are there any that you’re using? I haven’t pulled the trigger on any yet, as they’re not make or break for anything.
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Green Odin is one of the stronger options as he is a common inherit already. SBR is nice from Sumire but not really needed as much overall
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I put green Odin on my Odin dragon. My team will now do just over 10,000 auto heal per turn. Sucks that latent awakenings don’t carry over.
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I noticed that some of the assist evolutions provide rows as well. I was thinking of using those to add row awakenings on a row based team to hit the ideal number of row awakenings (was it 8?). This leaves the rest of the party slots free for more supportive awakening cards. But then again, row is out of meta so I am not sure how applicable this will be.
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We need stronger row-based teams for that to truly take off. It can be a noticeable damage boost but it is just hard for those teams to function optimally atm
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My current Halloween Nene team runs 17 row awakenings. I have two Zuoh’s that i never use. Should I make them into assist evolutions and, if so, should i do it to both of them or just 1?
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Yea, I agree. On the other hand, for newer people who don’t have the more meta leads, row teams can still clear a good amount of content. I used rows for a while but as you implied, powercreep caught up.
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used it on my 5th sumire 😛
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Finally a use for her =P
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I’m fairly excited about the resists for my Minerva cheese team.
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Soon
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Zuoh weapon on Pixel Sephiroth. ❤
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pew pew
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Sumire weapon on Meridionalis for the SBR (not a bad active either). ❤
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That is one great application for Sumire weapon; however, maybe give it to someone else as Meri has one of the stronger actives
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This type of evolution being irreversible really ruins what should be a fun and interesting mechanic. Instead of trying to figure out ways to farm more jewels of creation, I am frozen in paranoia over having “only” 3 Green Odins and 1 Sumire.
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Actually, odin’s inheritance provides 2000 auto heal per turn.
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I’m thinking Metatron on diablos, and Sumire on Zeus dios. Also, Grodin on dark Metatron or on Goemon, if u wanna piss your friends off.
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With the stat boost awakenings, do they still boost the assisting card for purposes of determining the stat boost from the assist?
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Beyond the happy bonus of Grodin who sees usage as an assist quite often, I am excited about these in 2 scenarios:
1. Adding the corresponding assist evolution to the base unit to make them even better. Ie. Fuma assist evolution on Fuma. Once done he is fully immune to jammers, gets an extra light row, more health and (unskilled) 9 turns of SDR. I think I have enough spares of the ninjas to do most of them.
2. Using the heart breaker line’s assist evolutions on 5o1E teams. Specifically for me Balthier. I don’t use any skill inherits on my guys, so basically all of my team could use one of these. My team has 3 dark and 3 green primary cards. So 6 more green OE and 6 more dark OE would buff damage nicely(along with the damage awakening). 15% Light and 15% Fire resistance would be most welcome.
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will this transfer tamadra awkenings?
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One problem with this is that you mentioned not skilling up the the inherent. I generally skill up all my “extra” unused cards when I can. As a result, cards that I would consider using are non usuable due to poor actives. A better mechanic would be to make the awoken assist seperate from the regular active assist or introduce a way to “unskill up” a card.
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The Sagepy; sometimes known as Sadpy is coming. It removes all skillups.
http://puzzledragonx.com/en/news.asp?nid=724
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The assists I can make now are either meh or I only have one of that card. Decided to do Zuoh because I have 5 of them.
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I’m doing two fire resists on Minerva cheese, one on a padz, and I think one on a Zera base sub swapping in for lifive, as that keeps things at 100, (with the two equips covering lifives two resists), and allows for 45% gravity for problematic color shifting floor, which when combined with three other ability should be able to kill the floor, given the three other nonpuppet inherits can be full board change, x5 wise dragon boost, and either enhance or a second gravity. (I suppose in theory the other three could be three true gravity, box permitting, for a button kill, though I havent pulled that many.) Burst the problem color change floor, use puppet on the next floor and reload everything. Slow, but it’s a given that if we’re whipping out puppet cheese it’s a one time grind to tell gung-ho to stuff it.
Other than that, Ronia equip on Rodin for all the rows looks droll. Might as well. My short dungeons rows team is still NepDra with Mori Mori Blonia Idunna, because that recycles Blo plus gets multiple turns of Idunna boost, but whatever.
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Wouldn’t it also be beneficial if you assist evolve a second ninja and put it on total of the first ninja, such as Hanzo with assist unskilled Hanzo, to get 100% jammer or shade resistance? 3 on first monster with the added 2 from assist. :3
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Yeah it would be a nice way to ensure 100% coverage against a specific mechanic =)
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