Introduction

The Valentine’s Rare Egg Machine will be making a return to North America this coming Monday and with it comes two new cards along with a brand new evolution for Sonia.

Sadly, this event feels like it is aging worse and worse due to the bottom rarity cards being neglected/receiving meaningless buffs. With that being said, it is the best opportunity to acquire a Gemstone Princess should you be lacking burst actives that scale with specific awakenings. While this type of active has merits, it is somewhat on the decline due to higher and higher multipliers often being sufficient for most content.

With that being said, this is a skip-able event unless one enjoys the artwork or strongly desires a Gemstone Princess due to the lackluster 5-star cards who will heavily dominate your rolls.

Video commentary

—video coming soon—

Overview

Valentine’s REM – Feb 7, 2020
Pros	Cons
High chance for a Gemstone Cute/festive cards	Poor 5* cards No Weapon Assist Not much value Little love for bottom rarity cards

Valentine’s REM – Feb 7, 2020
9 Star base
8 Star base
7 Star base
6 Star base
5 Star base

Valentine’s REM Rankings – Feb 7, 2020
S
A
B
C
D

Order within each tier is random and not reflective of ranking.

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

Limit Breaking

Limit Breaking is the process of leveling a card beyond level 99. This will unlock more weighted stats along with the potential to receive Super Awakenings. These additional awakenings can add significant power, but only function in solo mode.

Any card that can qualify for Limit Breaking will have their level displayed in blue and feeding a Super Snow Globe will push them beyond the level 99 cap.

You can read more about Super Awakenings HERE.

Monster Exchange

The Monster Exchange System has mostly eliminated the need to roll in most events as players can simply trade in for a card of their choice. This is often done during lackluster events to avoid spending Stones on poor bottom rarity cards or to snipe a specific card if luck is not on your side.

Weapon Assists

Weapon Assists are a special evolution for select cards that will be used exclusively as inherits. This form retains the same base stats as the original form, but will also transfer over all awakenings on the Weapon Assist card and this occurs if the Awoken Assist  is present.

My approach to Collab rolling

Rolling any Rare Egg Machine is a gamble and it becomes a matter of maximizing your rate of returns in an event.

This translates into rolling when the bottom rarity has high value as those will be the most common cards. Furthermore, I may utilize the Monster Exchange system to acquire the higher rarity cards if they will significantly advance my progress. As such, I tend to look most closely at the common cards to determine if it is worth rolling in.

This is just my own personal approach and everyone has different goals/motivations so take this section with a grain of salt.

9 Star base

Valentine’s Ideal – S

Active: For 3 turns, 3x RCV; Remove all awoken skill binds; Unlock all orbs; Change all orbs to Fire, Water, Wood, Light, Dark, and Heal orbs (15 -> 15 turn cooldown)

Leader Skill: [No skyfall] 2x all stats for Balanced and Dragon type; 9x ATK and reduce damage taken by 25% when matching 4 or more colors; increase combo by 2 when matching 4 or more colors [4/324/4/43.75%]

Awakenings:  
Super Awakenings:  
Typing: Dragon / Balance
Available Killers:        
Weighted Stats (Limit Break): 1206 (1568)
HP 4555 (5922) / ATK 2295 (2984) / RCV 875 (1138)
Weapon Assist:

Pros	Cons
Unconditional 4x HP/RCV for Balance & Dragon 43.75% Damage Reduction with 4 colours 324x ATK with 4 or more colours High personal damage Bonus combos negate No Skyfall clause Skill Charge Powerful active Overwrites RCV debuffs Full Awoken Bind clear	Rainbow leaders face more difficulties Reliant on a Damage Void solution

Rainbow teams will always face a certain degree of push-back in becoming a top tier team as they all face the same innate weakness compared to mono colour teams: a less clean way to deal with Void spawns along with potentially less damage concentration.

Presently speaking, Damage Void spawns are common affairs with numerous being present in higher level content and the most efficient method for dealing with them is a VDP through a 3×3 Box. This can be achieved via most orb changers and while Valentine’s Ideal only requires 4/5 colours, it is still risky along with the need to usually Follow Up Attack alongside. This can create problems for Rainbow teams but thankfully, GungHo now releases cards with Void Damage Void actives.

These actives cancel out the Void mechanic for X number of turns and are pretty much mandatory for Rainbow teams to succeed. I feel this is a poor design overall as the idea of creating a problem and then releasing a direct counter via an active limits options and is “not fun.” As such, Rainbow teams somewhat require this type of active to succeed.

Regardless, Valentine’s Ideal is a powerful Rainbow leader due to her impressive multipliers and her innate ability to add 4 combos with dual leaders. This counters out the No Skyfall clause and will result in significantly more combos compared to gambling with Skyfalls. This helps overcome exceptionally high combo shields as an average board of 7/8 combos turns into 11/12.

Furthermore, the unconditional 4x HP/RCV ensures easy stalling and when matching 4/5 colours, will trigger the full 324x ATK and 43.75% Damage Reduction.

As far as rainbow leaders go, Valentine’s Ideal is stacked from a multipliers perspective and this helps shore up the innate shortcomings from Rainbow teams. Furthermore, due to the opportunity to abuse Skill Charge on Valentine’s Ideal or other subs means players can easily charge up key actives throughout the dungeon such as Void Damage Voids.

Weapon Assist:  
Active: For 3 turns, 3x RCV; Remove all awoken skill binds; Unlock all orbs; Change all orbs to Fire, Water, Wood, Light, Dark, and Heal orbs (15 -> 15 turn cooldown)

Pros	Cons
Skill Boost Enhanced Heal orb Powerful active	Difficult to acquire Primarily for current/future Transform teams

Valentine’s Ideal’s Weapon Assist is a wonderful enabler for Transform teams due to the fact that it provides a single Skill Charge along with an Enhanced Heal Orb awakening. This can grant a sizable improvement in healing output when used on a high RCV card which can be valuable for Transforming teams.

Despite the fact that a Transforming leader tends to have strong multipliers, further stacking RCV can be meaningful as it can pseudo cancel out RCV debuffs. At the same time, this Weapon Assist is able to cancel out RCV debuffs and provide a full Awoken Bind clear.

While this is wonderful, it is unlikely the average player will be able to acquire this.

8 Star base

 Valentine’s Ney – A

Active: Reduce binds and awoken skill binds by 5 turns; Unlock all orbs; Change all orbs to Light, Dark, and Heal orbs (18 -> 11 turn cooldown)

Leader Skill: 4x ATK and reduce damage taken by 25% when matching Dark and Light; 4.5x ATK for Dragon type; Increase orb movement time by 3 seconds [1/324/1/43.75%]

Awakenings:         
Super Awakenings:    
Typing: Dragon/Balance
Available Killers:        
Weighted Stats (Limit Break): 999 (1299)
HP 4626 (6014) / ATK 1983 (2578) / RCV 421 (547)

Pros	Cons
Double 7 Combo  Double TPA  Void Damage Penetration  Powerful multi-purpose active Board changer Bind/Awoken Bind clear Balance typing Can use any Killer latent Strong VDP solution	Numerous high damage cards exist TPA is often wasted Most of her buff was wasted on LS

Valentine’s Ney is a returning card who I was quite happy to roll as she can function as a powerful damage and VDP solution for mono dark teams while also providing utility via her active and a valuable board changer.

Unfortunately, I feel she is somewhat stuck in between the two distinct roles subs play at this point in time: offense and defensive/utility.

Generally speaking, 7 Combos are the most common source of personal damage and essentially all teams can take advantage of it due to the nature of matching a given board. As such, it is not uncommon for cards to have triple 7 Combo (8x personal damage) along with a single VDP to solve Void spawns.

I personally prefer the archetype of on my damage cards as it provides sufficient damage with most given matches. By comparison, Valentine’s Ney is ( ) which does have a higher damage ceiling for 3×3 Boxes along with regular matching assuming a TPA is matched. From my own experience, the TPA aspect is largely ignored due to how mono colour teams often require 6 connected orbs to activate and if you have 10, you may be making a 3×3 Box instead.

In essence, Valentine’s Ney results in a 4x personal damage card with most given matches with the capacity for higher VDP damage. As a result, I find myself not using her as much as I thought I would as we simply have so many more cards to draw from who can provide higher personal damage with regular matching.

Of course this is quite nit-picky but it is also rare I can actually talk about a higher rarity card through personal experience instead of theorizing.

On a side note, Valentine’s Ney did receive a sizable buff to her Leader Skill but it is still impractical due to the low Effective HP but the additional movement time can be a solution for S-ranking dungeons if Valkyrie Ciel is getting stale.

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Valentine’s Sonia – A

Active: Unlock all orbs; Change all orbs to Fire and Dark orbs; Create 3 Heal orbs (18 -> 13 turn cooldown)

Leader Skill: 3.5x ATK & RCV for Physical, Dragon, and Devil type; 5x ATK and reduce damage taken by 50% when matching 6 or more connected Fire orbs [1/306.25/12.25/75%]

Awakenings:       
Super Awakenings:    
Typing: Dragon/Devil
Available Killers:   
Weighted Stats (Limit Break): 1101 (1432)
HP 5444 (7077) / ATK 2428 (3156) / RCV 214 (278)

Pros	Cons
Unique active Bicolour + 3 Hearts VDP  + Killers Strong for AA3/Colo2 Strong LS Flat 3.5x RCV 50% Damage Reduction 17.5x ATK Can form a powerful system team 4 Skill Boost Potential sub for future Fire Transform teams	Truly shines only with System Combo shields Orb movement time

Valentine’s Sonia has received one of the larger buffs for Seasonal cards due to her brand new evolution. This form grants her a stronger Leader Skill, awakenings, and weighted stats and helps solidify her place as a potent Raoh pairing.

Raoh is one of the earlier Auto Follow Up Damage leaders who is uniquely positioned to build a System. This System (consisting of 7 turn CD + Haste cards, eg. Nidhogg ) enables players to use an active every turn which in turn results in a Row for full activation, massive damage, and Auto Follow Up.

While Valentine’s Sonia does not directly contribute to the System, her Leader Skill multipliers beautifully compliment Raoh as you will now have a 2/306.25/2/50% team that can always generate sufficient Fire orbs who is also hard to kill.

While this is powerful and can trivialize most content in the game, System teams lack active skill diversity which will lead to various problems when more and more mechanics are introduced that must be corrected via an active. Furthermore, with no innate combo count booster, higher combo shields can prove to be a problem.

Finally, one last point to consider is Valentine Sonia’s 4 Skill Boosts along with her other valuable awakenings for potential future Transforming leaders if GungHo continues down this path.

7 Star base

Valentine’s Andromeda (New) – A

Active: For 1 turn, 0.25x RCV; For 1 turn, bypass att. absorb shield effects (10 -> 5 turn cooldown)

Leader Skill: 4x ATK and 2x HP for Healer and God type; 4x ATK when matching 6 or more connected Water orbs; 50000 additional damage when matching 6 or more Water orbs [4/256/1]

Awakenings:  
Super Awakenings:  
Typing: Healer / God
Available Killers:   
Weighted Stats (Limit Break): 932 (1211)
HP 3165 (4114) / ATK 1913 (2487) / RCV 698 (907)

Pros	Cons
Self RCV debuff Overwrites longer lasting debuffs Also counters Attribute Absorb Auto Follow Up Damage Triggers from 6 matched Water Viable leader pairings	Restricted to Healer & God Less ideal pairings

Valentine’s Andromeda is the second new card to be released this year and comes as a surprising leader for an Orb Skin card as she can be directly purchased.

Valentine Andromeda’s leader skill enables her to function as an Auto Follow Up Damage leader when matching 6 or more connected Water orbs for Healer and God types. For the most part, this is activation relatively easy to do along with being the dominant play style at this point in time. As such, she will fit right in but her main hurdle is building a competent team along with a favourable pairing.

Players can opt to use a non-God or Healer for an alternative pairing if they are willing to forgo the damage output on their friend but can also use Evolved Kaiba or Beach I&I as they have similar activation requirements. Furthermore, the farmable/purchasable Mut can be used as a healing solution along with a fast charging active.

In essence, this team will function like regular Follow Up Damage teams who rely on rows and the main hurdle will be combo shields unless paired with Kaiba and forming 3×3 Boxes.

I was fortunate enough to roll Kaiba and will try and see what kind of content I could clear with this team.

Orb Skin

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Valentine’s Astaroth – B

Active: Change Fire, Jammer, Poison, and Mortal Poison orbs to Wood orbs; Enhance all orbs; For 1 turn, 1.5x RCV (13 -> 7 turn cooldown)

Leader Skill: 2x ATK and reduce damage taken by 25% when matching Wood and Light; 6x ATK and reduce damage taken by 25% when matching 5 or more connected orbs [1/144/1/68.36%]

Awakenings:         
Super Awakenings:    
Typing: Healer/Devil
Available Killers:   
Weighted Stats (Limit Break): 901 (1171)
HP 3284 (4269) / ATK 1704 (2215) / RCV 694 (902)

Pros	Cons
Activates from any match 5 Large damage reduction Always have one component available Can function as a utility sub RCV buff	Low damage output in LS Average card overall

Valentine’s Astaroth was greatly improved last time around but now feels a bit stale once again due to both Wood being less dominant and receiving few buffs.

At this point in time, Valentine’s Astaroth has quite a low ATK multiplier and despite having access to reliable Damage Reduction, will not function well in this day and age.

As such, she can fulfill a utility role on mono Wood teams as she provides some team damage via Enhanced Orbs along with L Unlock  along with an RCV buff tied to an orb changer.

This type of active is starting to become more popular/valuable due to the fact that heavy RCV debuffs are more common along with them leading to executions in Colo2 if one is already preexisting.

With that being said, Valentine’s Astaroth is an average card at this point in time.

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Valentine’s Kushinadahime – C

Active: For 1 turn, reduce damage taken by 75%; For 1 turn, increase combo count by 2 (20 -> 12 turn cooldown)

Leader Skill: [No skyfall] 1.5x all stats for God type; 2x ATK when 5 or more combos up to 12x at 10 combos [2.25/324/2.25]

Awakenings:         
Super Awakenings:    
Typing: Healer/God
Available Killers:   
Weighted Stats (Limit Break): 900 (1170)
HP 3905 (5076) / ATK 1532 (1992) / RCV 610 (793)

Pros	Cons
Higher multiplier LS Synergistic active Can use subs of any colour No Skyfall Leader Skill Gives Damage Control	No Skyfalls reduces damage potential Damage control has less value Long cooldown Restricted to Gods No/low personal damage No SBR

Valentine’s Kushinadahime looks strong on paper from a multiplier point of view but will rarely hit her full potential due to the No Skyfall clause.

In the past, No Skyfalls were a strong point for teams as it gave them a form of Damage Control. Sadly, with the abundance of Fujin  style actives, FUA , and Box  awakenings players can somewhat ignore those respective mechanics and diminishes the actual need for perfect damage control. Furthermore, most teams now feature a few hard hitting subs who are required for end game content and throws away any chance of controlling your output.

These factors along with the need to pump out massive amounts of damage without actives is the main reason why Valentine’s Kushinadahime is nothing special.

A given board has 7-8 combos on average and with the No Skyfall clause, you are effectively capped at those respective multipliers. As such, you cannot get “lucky” and gain more combos along with not being able to deal higher amounts of damage without an active that adds combos.

While the 2.25x HP/RCV are reasonable defensive multiplier, her damage output will greatly vary as 7 Combos only deals 81x ATK and requires 9 (with no Skyfalls) to match most other leaders for 225x. Furthermore, Kushinadahime is restricted to God types whereas most other leaders can use any type of card.

If used as a sub, Kushinadahime is okay and while she can provide some additional healing and bulk, her lengthy active is underwhelming and prevents easier inheritance to use something of value more often.

As a whole, Valentine’s Kushinadahime can be a reasonable leader with a high skill cap, but her own lack of damage and often lower damage output will make her less desirable compared to other modern day options.

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Valentine’s Venus – C

Active: For 1 turn, 3x orb move time; For 1 turn, reduce damage taken by 10% for each Two-Pronged Attack awakening skill on the team (15 -> 10 turn cooldown)

Leader Skill: 3x ATK for Light Att.; Reduce damage taken from light, dark att. by 50%; 4x ATK when matching 4 or more colors [1/144/1/75%]

Awakenings:         
Super Awakenings:    
Typing: Healer/God
Available Killers:   
Weighted Stats (Limit Break): 921 (1197)
HP 3802 (4943) / ATK 1459 (1897) / RCV 747 (971)

Pros	Cons
Comes with an Orb Skin Unique active skill Can reach 100% Damage Reduction	Active only scales with TPA  Many teams will not receive a benefit Niche card overall

Valentine’s Venus is a unique card in that she will provide players with an additional cosmetic orb skin along with a truly unique active.

Venus’s active skill works like a Gemstone Princess in that the efficacy scales up with the number of a specific awakenings on the team. In this case she relies on TPA  to provide a stacking 10% shield. As such, a team with 10 TPA would enjoy a 100% Damage Reduction on a very short 10 turn cooldown.

While this is great in theory, the challenging part is actually using a team that has enough TPA to justify using her compared to other shielding options. As such, Valentine’s Venus will mostly be a niche inherit overall as her sub potential average overall. Furthermore, utilizing shields is less common as most teams can already survive the expected preemptives in a given dungeon.

Taking this into consideration, Venus feels like an outdated card will probably not ascend higher due to her older age, being a 7/9 star rarity, and being a Seasonal 5-stone card.

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6 Star base

The Valentine’s Day REM offers three 6* cards who are all reskins of Gemstone Princesses. Gemstone Princesses are able to provide an ATK multiplier based on the number of a specific awakening on your team. Just bear in mind that it only counts that specific awakening along with their upgraded/super form. For example, Carat will count Skill Boosts  as 1 and Super Skill Boosts  as two.

The Gemstone Princesses are one of the most desirable options for universal burst damage because they provide their additional multiplier for 2 turns along with not relying on attribute colour or typing. Furthermore, the two turns is valuable for longer content or when you are required to burst down two consecutive floors.

The formula for damage calculation is 1 + (0.3n) where n = the number of that specific awakening. Thus on a team with 8 Time Extends , Sheen will provide 1 +((0.3)(8)) = 3.4x ATK for two turns.

The Valentine’s Day forms provide the same active skill as their REM counterparts but have a different primary colour which can potentially open up more doors for stats being transferred over when inherited. Unfortunately, none of the Valentine’s cards come with Weapon Assists which may make it harder to justify inheriting. Furthermore, the Burst provided here may or may not be excessive and having no accompanying orb changer may be problematic.

All in all, the inclusion of Gemstone Princesses in the Valentine’s Day REM may provide some justification for rolling this event and features the highest rolling rates for these types of actives.

  Carat – A

Carat scales off Skill Boosts  and is the most universally flexible Gemstone to own as every team will have numerous Skill Boosts. This flexibility enables her to be used on a wide variety of teams and has applications in coop when one side is heavily stacking Skill Boosts (although only that player’s team’s awakenings are counted).

In essence, Carat has the capacity to be used on virtually every team due to the presence of some Skill Boosts and does not require specific cards to achieve. With that being said, I find myself using Carat/other Gemstones less and less but they are valuable to own.

 Sheen – B

Sheen scales with Time Extends  which can be the most dominant awakening on certain teams, but is less universally powerful compared to Carat as most cards own multiple Skill Boosts and some leaders now feature built in movement time instead of awakenings.

Facet – C

Facet utilizes TPA  awakenings which are less universally available as most cards tend to rely on other sources of personal damage. With that being said, certain team will find more value from Facet over other forms of burst damage. Furthermore, there is no “Super” TPA unlike Skill Boosts or Time Extends which can make it harder to have sufficient awakenings for meaningful burst.

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5 star base – D   

( )*  
SA:

* the first three awakenings change colour based on the card with Sakuya having a slightly different set up.

The 5* base cards are all comprised of the Chinese Celestials in festive/cute outfits. Each one comes with their signature board changer (even Sakuya) along with enhancing their primary colour. While the exclusion of heart orbs hurts their overall value, they may be useful for newer players. This is because a newer account may be lacking enough depth in their Monster Box and being able to easily pick up a board changer is wonderful.

Unfortunately, more veteran players will find little merit for these cards outside of cuteness. This is due to their middling awakenings combined with the fact that they only achieve around 985 weighted stats at level 110. Furthermore, these cards comprise a sizable amount of the rolling pool and will most likely result in sadness if rolled.

On the bright side, all have Fantastic art and make wonderful Box Cheerleaders.

Do I plan to roll?

Big nope.

I already own Gemstone Princesses from the Rare Egg Machine and while having more Carats may be appealing, that is not a good enough justification for rolling.

Regardless, it is still fun to dream of what could possibly be rolled from each rarity

 

My Dream Rolls
9*	8*	7*	6*	5*

The above chart are the cards I would love to acquire from each rarity if I could choose one for my Mantastic account. This is my own personal opinion based on my Monster Box, goals and whether or not I have dupes. Icons show Base form regardless if it is their strongest iteration.

Conclusion

The Valentine’s Day REM is the best time to pick up a Gemstone-style active at a reasonable rate. Unfortunately, this event still has terrible bottom rarity cards who would primarily be used as a Box Cheerleader.

For myself, I find myself using my Gemstones less and less due to stronger multipliers or finding some burst alongside another beneficial effect. Of course, this is biased as this results in me not having motivation to roll

With that in mind, if you are lacking any Gemstone, it may be worth rolling as they do have respectable rates and will help round out your Monster Box as they are the best forms of burst damage with Carat being incredibly strong.

Let me know what you think about the Valentine’s Day event and how much you plan on rolling.

Happy Puzzling!

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