Introduction

The New Year’s REM returns just in time for the Lunar New Year and features three new cards while also removing three silver cards. However, there will still be two silvers available along with this Collab being average at best.

With the REM Renewal and disclosed rolling rates, Collabs and Seasonal events have gained increased value due to GungHo not wishing to showcase abysmal rates. Thus, it should be easier to roll the top prizes, but you must also be prepared for the bottom rarity fodder.

As such, the decision of whether to roll or pass should be done based upon your individual box needs, desire to roll the cute artwork, and whether or not the lower rarity cards have merit for you.

As a whole, most of the NY Event is outdated as most of the older cards did not receive any buffs and were already mediocre last year.

Video commentary

—video coming soon—

Overview

Cards appear in no particular order within each tier.

New Year REM – February 10, 2018
8 Star base
7 Star base
6 Star base
5 Star base
4 Star base

New Year REM Rankings – February 10, 2018
S
A
B
C
D

Regardless of card’s ranking, you should always keep it if it is your very first time acquiring them

S

The best of the best. These cards compromise a best in slot role on top tier teams. They are largely irreplaceable and tend to offer something unique that cannot be easily replicated. This mostly exists to showcase the jump in power between the rest of the cards available.

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A

All of the cards in this tier bring tremendous value to a variety of teams as either leaders, subs, or inherits that are challenging to mimic elsewhere. For example, Green Odin  remains one of the strongest bind clears and only card that can remove 5 turns of awoken skill binds (outside of Odin Dragon ). It may not be paramount to your success, but is well worth owning overall.

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B

This category indicates cards that have value, but are not as widely used/irreplaceable as the above tier(s). While they may make your life easier and still bring an additional layer of power to your team, they are far from necessary. With that being said, some of these cards could hold the key to your own teams as everyone has different tools to work with.

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C

Cards in the question mark category tend to be those that are a luxury and are often not widely used for the average player. With that being said, they may bring niche value to your monster box or provide an additional option to use. A great example of this is Red Odin  who is a premiere button farming option, but with the addition of Red Tamazo , players at least have a “farmable” poison inherit along with the future implementation of Descend inherits.

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D

This category indicates the bottom of the Puzzle and Dragons barrel. These cards tend to have almost minimal value as they simply do not fit in the current meta and are badly in need of a buff or new evolution to give them viability. With that being said, you should still keep them as they technically have the most potential for improvement.

Cards at a glance

8 Star Base

 NY Yomi – A

New Year’s Yomi has received a new evolution that grants them additional stats, a higher scaling damage multiplier, and an extra 7 Combo  awakening. All of these help put her on par with other high rarity Collab cards and enables them to function as a powerful sub or leader.

As a leader, NY Yomi is able to form a 144x ATK / 43.75% damage reduction team when matching 5o1e and 6+ combos. This combination has reasonable consistency, but a large aspect is the semi unconditional damage reduction. You only need to hit 6 or more combos to receive the damage reduction which means you can more easily stall through problematic floors while waiting for 5 light orbs. However, this type of leader skill is not able to keep abreast with other options.

As a sub, NY Yomi can almost be compared against Yuna  as both are light-based double 7 Combo, Time Extend cards. However, Yomi has one less Time Extend and a much weaker active skill. Thus, you could still use them, but it will almost feel like a watered down version.

 NY Amaterasu – C

New Year’s Amaterasu has received a sizable buff since the last inception of the NY Event. She has gained a revamped leader skill along with more powerful awakenings to hopefully make her feel more like an 8-star card, but sadly falls short.

Her Leader Skill was buffed to 81x ATK for Healers when your health is full. This can be nice for easier content, but once preemptives come into play, it can quickly fall apart. Granted you do have a self healing active along with free autohealing from your Leader Skill, the 9x ATK when <99% HP is middling.

However, Amaterasu can fulfill a niche sub role as she has full bind immunity, double Skill Boost (from super awakening), double SBR , Devil Killer , and team RCV boost . This can hold merit in Devil heavy dungeons, but will be underwhelming overall.

NY Amaterasu is also available for 300,000 Monster Points but i strongly advise against purchasing her.

 NY Kanna – C

New Year’s Kanna suffers from the same drawbacks of REM Kanna : the low viability of TPA  and lackluster active skill.

TPA awakenings used to reign supreme but were quickly outclassed by 7 Combo  awakenings. This is because it is far easier to match orbs in a 3-connected pattern along with a higher combo count benefiting all members. Each additional combo matched adds 25% more potency whereas TPA only truly helps the possessing card (there is a slight damage boost for that element, but off-colour cards receive no perk). Furthermore, you may have to sacrifice a combo to connect 4 orbs (think of a board with 6 Light orbs).

As a result, TPA-oriented cards have been largely replaced and NY Kanna is no exception. One could argue that her future Super Awakenings adds merit, but it does not remedy her heavy TPA nature which does not synergize well with the combo meta. Furthermore, her active skill is one of the worst in the game due to the tiny 2x boost and long cooldown.

 NY Kamimusubi (New) – A

The REM Kamimusubi  is known for her prowess as a leader due to the explosive damage along with being one the rare dark cards with Follow Up Attack . However, her New Year form trades a regular Follow Up Attack for a Super Bonus Attack .

Super Bonus Attack enables the owning card to deal 2 True Damage when matching a 3×3 square of heal orbs. This does accomplish the same net result of killing a Resolve spawn, but is far more cumbersome to form.

The idea behind Super Bonus Attack is that it enables row-based teams to be able to deal with Resolve spawns while still forming a horizontal line of orbs. However, row teams are becoming lackluster due to their orb hungry nature, a lack of potent leaders, and most end game dungeons featuring a large combo shield. Thus, the Super Bonus Attack will often feel like a downgrade as most teams rely on combos to deal damage and sacrificing 9 orbs severely cuts down on your combo potential.

Resolve killing aside, NY Kamimusubi is able to lead a 306.25x ATK / 43.75% damage reduction team when above 80% and matching Fire and Light orbs. This is the same multiplier her REM cousin has but enables you to utilize a different set of subs. This can be advantageous depending on your monster box. Furthermore, the two Fire Rows  can help propel your damage (which have synergy with Super Bonus Attack).

Despite the bonus damage from the Fire rows, you should be able to sweep a given floor with vanilla matches of 3. As such, the rows feel nice, but are largely unneeded at this point in time.

With that being said, NY Kami is able to fulfill a powerful role as a bind clearing Fire sub through her active skill. This has modest synergy with her Super Bonus Attack as you are able to form 6 heart orbs on demand (which can help you make a column of hearts) but is not enough for a 3×3 box.

I can see the logic behind building NY Kamimusubi’s kit, but it does not work out in practice due to the lackluster performance of rows overall. Taking all of this into consideration, she is still strong, but weaker than her REM counterpart due to the lack of the regular Follow Up Attack.

7 Star Base

NY Horus – B

New Year’s Horus was not meaningful during the last NY event and will only gain merit when the +297 Super Awakening is released.

NY Horus is a rainbow-based 5o1e leader with only a 125.56x ATK multiplier and no defensive traits. Both Rainbow and 5o1e teams struggle overall and with no HP/RCV/Damage Reduction multipliers, you will struggle to clear challenging content. This is further compounded by his lackluster active skill.

With all that being said, when the Super Awakenings that are unlocked by fusing a +297 come to NA, NY Horus will be able to gain the Super Skill boost to bring his total up to 4 during solo mode.

NY Yamato – B

The REM Yamato  is valued for their three Skill Boosts  and reasonably short active for Fire farming teams. However, with the introduction of numerous other cards, his own value has been on the decline. As such, NY Yamato needs to find a niche he can fill well.

NY Yamato coems with only 2 Skill Boosts but also possesses a Coop Boost  and Dragon Killer  awakening. This enables them to gain 50% more stats in coop (has 750 weighted stats) and 3x damage to Dragon spawns. While this may seem appealing, he is not surpassing other options. If you require Dragon Killers, you tend to use Tsubaki  (and even with the +297 bonus awakening, i would probably still use Tsubaki to save +297s) and the Coop Boost may help make them a better button base, but Shotel has much higher ATK by comparison.

Taking all of this into account, NY Yamato is still useful, but does not excel in any particular area.

 NY Khepri (New) – C

NY Khepri is an interesting card to be released as she comes with utility focused awakenings and the ability to boost your team’s HP by 10%. However, without any offensive awakenings and a middling active skill, it is hard to justify her usage.

Being able to add 2 combos for 1 turn can be meaningful against spawns where you need to form several patterns (eg. Box and FUA) but you ideally want to have a beneficial secondary effect.

Morrigu  is able to add 3 combos for 1 turn, but the lack of an extra benefit means you are most likely using another active skill anyway. Thus, something like unawoken Oichi or Nene is generally the superior choice due to the +2 combos and tri-elemental board.

Taking these points into account, NY Khepri has a lackluster active skill because her additional benefit is extra movement time. While bonus movement time is universally beneficial, we tend to already have more than enough Time Extends to optimally solve a board.

Overall, NY Khepri is not achieving anything new or better than what we already have.

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6 Star base

 NY Leilan – C

The Chinese Celestials were once renown for their impressive board changer and overall power compared to other options. Unfortunately, their prowess has declined due to the availability of tri-elemental board changers that also produce heart orbs.

For the most part, it almost always better to generate a board with heart orbs as it enables you to simultaneously heal and deal damage. As a result, non-heart generating board changers have become less potent and NY Leilan is no exception.

NY Leilan has the non-awoken Leilan board changer and will only produce a board of Fire, Wood, and Light orbs with no collateral benefit. This coupled with her middling awakenings and low base stats make it tough to justify her usage.

This situation is not unusual for older Collab/Seasonal cards as they continue to fall steadily behind due to Powercreep.

 NY Ame No Uzume (New) – B

NY Ame no Uzume is a new 6-star card for the NY REM and comes with the rare double Coop Boost  awakenings. These awakenings provide a massive boost to her stats during coop and the main usage for these types of cards is as a button base.

Inheriting Brachydios  onto NY Ame no Uzume will not only transfer stats, but enables her to deal massive amounts of damage at the push of a button. This has applications for efficient farming practices when you only need to eliminate a 1,600,000 HP or so spawn but has little applications beyond this.

However, the main hurdle to using NY Ame no Uzuem efficiently is rolling 2 rare Collab cards which is out of reach for the average player.

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5 Star Base

NY Spica – B

New Year’s Spica returns to PAD in a world where 5o1e leaders have been winding down. Her main claim to fame was the ability to spawn columns of Light and Wood orbs to help speed through content such as Arena 1. While this still works, it is a somewhat niche application for Spica and does require 4 to complete the haste System.

Outside of this, it will be challenging to use NY Spica efficiently.

NY Mitsuki – D

New Year Mitsuki was sometimes used as a sub on Xiang Mei  teams but I cannot remember the last time someone used Xiang Mei to clear current content. As a result, Mitsuki has lost nearly all her value and her only saving grace is the lone Machine Killer ; however, with such abysmal stats, it is hard to even justify running her as a sub.

Hanzo – C

Hanzo may be a insta-locked pick in Overwatch, but you would rarely find yourself using NY Hanzo in PAD. This is because he has become quite dated due to his age and lack of buffs.

His main selling point before was the Dragon Killer  and unique orb changer, but with other options now available, NY Hanzo will struggle to find a usage.

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4 Star Base

Several 4-star cards have been removed but 2 still remain.

NY Jeanne d’Arc – D

Of all the 4-stars to keep in the NY Collab, I cannot fathom why GungHo would keep Jeanne d’Shit. Even 2 years ago she was utterly horrible and is still terrible today. I think I may have said she was the worst Collab/Seasonal card before and with the recent Renewal that removed most Silvers, this is probably more true than ever.

If there was an F ranking she would be in there for both usability and looks.

Horrible.

 NY Tengu – B

On the flipside to Jean d’Crap is NY Tengu who is one of the stronger Silver cards in the game. While he shares the same structure as the Farmable version , NY Tengu is still valuable. This is because he has a different sub attribute which both avoids dark binds and excels in no Dupes dungeons. Furthermore, he comes ready to use which can be an advantage for less developed boxes or those who do not wish to farm the various evolution materials.

While he may not be flashy, having 4 Skill Boosts  is still meaningful and is at least a reasonable consolation prize.

Conclusion

The New Year’s Seasonal REM feels lackluster after experiencing Monster Hunter and Dragon Bound & Dragon Caller events. While Tengu is a reasonable card for the bottom rarity, there is just not enough value anywhere else to justify rolling in.

Furthermore, we should be gaining the Valentine’s REM in the next 2-3 months which features a game changing Ney as the top prize.

Let me know what you think about the New Year’s event in the comments below and whether or not your intend on rolling.

Happy Puzzling!

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