Introduction

The PAD Special Event Ranking Dungeon begins on Monday and features a generous 7% Crown along with 20% receiving a Rainbow Event Medal .

This event looks quite exciting overall as it features the return of heavily weighted matching bonuses which will force players to adjust their play style. While this is a non-fixed team event, the 7% threshold combined with the potential for several different approaches should make it an enjoyable tournament overall.

The JP cutoffs were as follows:

Crown: 138,208
Rainbow Event Medal: 116,006

Video commentary

—video coming soon—

145,408 run

—

Score breakdown

In Ranking Dungeons, players are scored based on the following:

• Each Combo is worth 5,000 points
• Each second remaining is worth 500 points
• Hitting 40 Million damage is 10,000 points
• Each active used to kill a floor (no combo made) is -5,000 points
• Matching Bonuses
  • Activate specific awakenings to trigger varying bonus points
  • 
    • Some tournaments will increase the point value for certain awakenings

Special Matching Bonus

Matching Bonus occurs when specific matches are made and are tend to be underwhelming overall. Thankfully, some tournaments will heavily weight certain patterns that will force players to adjust their strategies in order to optimize their scores.

For the PAD Special Event Tournament, the following changes will occur:

• Light Row  x10 = 2,000 Points
• TPA  x15 = 750 Points
• Guard Break  x 2 = 800 Points
• 7×6 boards = -20,000 Points

These changes heavily favour Light rows as one can squeeze in 3 per board for an additional 6,000 Points. Furthermore, each TPA formed will yield 750 Points and should be prioritized second. Finally, matching all 5 colours will grant an additional 800 Points and should only will mostly occur by luck if abusing bicolour boards.

Armed with this knowledge, it is best to bring cards with TPA in the colours you plan on using Bicolours as it will grant collateral points if facing less ideally distributed orbs.

A Light row is still worth more points compared to 2 TPA (also takes up less space) so this should still be your priority.

The -20,000 Points for a 7×6 board combined with the fact that you cannot gain an extra Light row (still maxed out at 3 rows) greatly discourages this approach.

Dungeon breakdown

The PAD Special Event Tournament is 8 floors long which means that actives used on Floor 1 have the possibility of being available again for the boss. Furthermore, Floor 3 provides a tri-elemental board (with Light) which means we only effectively need to deal with 7 floors. As such, it is possible to use an active every floor.

A full Dungeon breakdown can be found HERE.

An abbreviated version that lists notable mechanics is shown below. Just note that not all information is present

PAD Special Event Tournament
Floor	Notes
1	Locked Light skyfalls Preemptively changes board to all 5 colours + Hearts Randonly Bind 1 card
2	Spawn 3 Poisons
3	Resolve Generates Wood/Light/Heart board 1,351 preemptive
4	Skill Bind
5	8 Combo shield (make rows and pray for skyfall or regular combo)
6	6 Combo shield Lock Fire & Wood
7	Lock all orbs
8	Resolve Top row to Dark Bottom row to Hearts 7,740 preemptive 26 Million HP

Do note that there two damaging preemptives which makes it less ideal to run 100% HP sensitive teams.

Teams to use

Leaders

Due to the fact that this dungeon features 2 resolves and Light Rows are favoured, using FUA  becomes impractical and the best approach becomes using Light Vaj  paired ideally with Yog . This enables one to ignore Resolve spawns as Light Vaj has built in follow up damage while both leaders activate from 2 Light Combos.

While Yog can be any high damaging leader or match-5 card, it is hard to replace Light Vaj. Thankfully, players only need one of these two as they can pair with a friend for the other leader.

Subs

As with most Ranking Dungeons, the most popular subs tend to be Skill Boost  cards in order to have all important actives ready in time and the PAD Special Event Tournament is no exception.

In addition to this, in order to maximize one’s potential, it is best to try and incorporate Guard Break (with full colour coverage) and TPA on as many cards as possible. For the most part, this is less important but will give the highest edge as it enables the most additional points. With that being said, even just having TPA in your primary bicolour boards will add additional points.

Due to the 8-floor nature of this Ranking, it is possible to have an active used early on charge back up in time to be used again. The best type of active for this is a Heart/Dark to Light orb changer as the final floor creates a row of Heart and Dark orbs as a preemptive.

This is best covered by Apollo  as he only requires 1 turn of haste to be ready again for the 8th floor. Conversely, using single orb changers like the farmable Valkyrie/Elia also work.

Inherits

The best way to generate Light orbs is from bi colour board changers that ideally do not have secondary animations unless they are required (eg. Orb Unlock or Haste).

Animation-less examples include, but not limited to Avalon Drake, Ilm, and Sheena.

Putting it all together

The following is a hypothetical team that will have strong success in the PAD Special Event Tournament.

PAD Special Event Tournament – SB Badge
Card
SA
Inherit		Bind	Light Row
Latent

The above team showcases a team that has sufficient Skill Boosts to have all actives ready in time, a single Haste to ensure Apollo comes up for the Boss, two Board unlocks to counter Locked Orbs, and bi colours as remaining actives.

Amusingly, there are no Light Rows  on the team so one has to actually inherit them onto Avalon Drake. This can come in the form of the farmable Nameless Sword or Rathios .

In addition to this, all colours have TPA and can trigger Guard Break to help add additional points.

The inherited no animation bicolours can be whatever you have available while the Bind inherit simply add consistency as it helps dodge Floor 1’s Bind.

Physical Killer Latents  help ensure Damage Cap is met on Floor 8.

Regardless of how close you can replicate this team, the most important thing is Light Rows with everything else being a secondary priority.

What I plan to use

Due to the fact that I do not own Yog or Light Vaj, I will have to improvise with Xiu Min  I acquired from a previous Ranking Dungeon.

PAD Special Event Tournament – Bind Immune Badge
Card
SA
Inherit		Physical Killer
Latent

I only have a Reincarnated Apollo so the Avalon Drake with a Weld inherit covers Wood and TPA in the rare case I actually trigger Guard Break.

I am running two Hastes in order to use the Bind Immune Badge to help mitigate luck on Floor 1.

I lack a Bind Immune inherit so I chose to inherit a Physical Killer inherit on Apollo to help damage cap as there is nothing better to use.

Conclusion

The PAD Special Event Tournament comes with a 7% Crown and 20% Rainbow Event Medal. The emphasis on Light Rows will present players with an interesting play style as it will be more difficult to Crown otherwise.

Let me know what you plan on using for this Ranking Tournament in the comments below along with your score/percentage.

Happy Puzzling!

Mantastic Social Media
Facebook	Twitter	YouTube
Twitch	Discord	Patreon

If you enjoy my content, please consider turning off AdBlocker for this website =)