Introduction

Maintenance has finally ended and with it comes numerous new changes including buffs to existing cards, new Latent skills, and buffs to P&D Pass, and more.

As a whole, new stuff is always exciting along with the future release of Ruler of Hell’s Halls-No Dupes after Kindle can successfully be updated to this version.

With that being said, I would like to go over all of the new stuff that has been released/changed since last night.

Official NA post can be found HERE.

Video commentary

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Buffs to existing cards

One of the most exciting aspects of PAD is having older cards receive meaningful buffs as it can breathe new life into a dying card. As such, it is always advisable to never sell/Monster Exchange away your last copy of any given card.

Official NA post for buffs to older cards can be found HERE.

Paimon

Paimon’s personal damage has increased due to the addition of a 7 Combo along with a significant buff to his Leader Skill. This buff will grant +1 combo per leader for each cross of Light or Dark matched which helps ensure he does overcome Combo Shields while also providing a small damage/healing boost.

I have never personally like Cross leaders, but this is a significant boost in viability as damage is never a concern.

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Dark Kali

With Super Awakenings, Dark Kali can achieve 6 Skill Boosts which is absolutely wild as she was already a solid sub to begin with. Furthermore, she gains access to Balance typing so she can be used on an even wider variety of teams such as VIdeal .

As a leader, Dark Kali boasts solid 4/576/4 multipliers but the main issue is a lack of Damage Reduction which is vital in current end game content due to large Gravities.

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Ameno

Ameno has received a significant cooldown reduction as they are now a tri colour board changer on a 7 turn cooldown. This is already fast and the 3 turns of 35% Damage Reduction is more icing on the cake.

This Damage Reduction can help tank Gravities or the Myne + Kuro combo in AA4 as the shield lasts for 3 turns as Myne’s death animation clears all 1 turn shields including Leader Skills.

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Sakuya

Sakuya has now become a viable utility sub as she has modest personal damage, a highly tuned active skill, and Super Blind .

Her active is able to provide a 20% Gravity along with a full Bind/Awoken Bind clear, 2x RCV, and 2x orb movement time on a 10 turn cooldown.

This is a nice plethora of abilities and can enable her to function as a potent Bind clearing solution and her Super Blind Resist helps open up more inheritance options.

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Minerva

Minerva can now reduce enemies DEF by 85% which has merits if playing through Training Arena 2 while also providing an orb changer.

Sadly, I feel that she lacks a viable purpose as her single Skill Boost excludes her from the potent Fire Transforming teams along with her own leadership ability being inferior to them.

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Parvati

Parvati boasts large Leader Skill multipliers but suffers from a lack of Damage Reduction, bonus combos, or Auto Follow Up. Furthermore, their play style will be heavily geared towards blobbing which in turn drastically lowers combo count.

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Toy Dragons

All of the Toy Dragons have received a similar buff as shown above. In essence, they have numerous Recover Bind awakenings which has been buffed but at the same time, I feel it will be challenging to use any of them in a meaningful way.

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Machine Zeus

Machine Zeus can gain a fourth Devil Killer via Super Awakenings which translates into 81x personal damage which should be overkill in most situations.

While one may not need to use them that often, it is always wonderful to have a Farmable solution that also has respectable base ATK.

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Linthia

I don’t feel Linthia is really used much overall and doubt her new buffs will change that much.

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 Ninegaruda

Ninegaruda can provide 9 turns of 15% Damage Reduction and +2 seconds of orb movement time but I still struggle to find a use for them as their Leader Skill is still nothing impressive.

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RBG Starter Dragons

The Fire, Water, and Wood Starter Dragons have received various and meaningless buffs to their various forms. I say meaningless because there is no more “early” game in PAD as new players can roll in a Super Godfest and have a full team of +297, max level, max awoken cards right away which invalidates the need to actually use a Starter Dragon.

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Super Player’s Choice Godfest

The Player’s Choice Godfest (PCGF) returns to North America along with the voting period occurring from December 15 until December 20th.

In the interest of not having this being lost within this article and my desire to expand this section, I will be writing a separate post tackling this event.

Official NA post can be found HERE.

New Latents

Three new Super Latents have been added into the game that will provide various effects when matching specific patterns to counter dangerous mechanics.

With that being said, I dislike how we cannot interchange/swap between Latents fused to a given card as subsequent ones will be overwritten. This either forces players to make a tough choice on which Latents to use or have dupes of the specific card to have a different set up.

Just be mindful that these Latents require 6 slots and the awakenings required to activate can come from Weapon Assists. Thus, a card without TPA could utilize the Unmatchable Orb Recovery if they have inherited a Weapon Assist with a TPA. Just note that once uninherited, this effect can no longer occur.

Unmatchable Orb Recovery

The Unmatchable Orb Recovery Latent can only be used by cards with TPA awakenings and only triggers when matching two successful TPAs (match 4’s) from the same attribute.

Doing so will reduce the Unable to Match Orb Effect by 1 turn for each TPA on the owning card and can only trigger once per turn per card.

Thus, a card with 3 TPA awakenings can clear 3 turns of Unmatchable Orbs if two 4-matches of the same attribute are formed.

This greatly expands the viability of TPA-oriented cards as they can now be used to remove small amounts of Unable to Match Orb effects without an active skill.

With that being said, I feel that this is a highly specific niche and competes with the more universally beneficial VDP Latent that is often used on heavy TPA cards for Rainbow teams (eg. Raijin and Astalos ).

Roulette Orb Recovery

The Roulette Orb Recovery Super Latent can only be used by cards with the Recover Bind awakening. Once fused to an appropriate monster, this Latent will remove 1 turn of Roulette/Spinners per Recover Bind awakening on the owning card when matching a row of Heart orbs. This will occur once per monster with the appropriate awakenings/Latents.

This offers an interesting approach to dealing with Spinners as we now have another non-active skill solution outside of timing the rotations.

While I personally dislike Spinners, I feel that this Latent will not truly be needed in most situations as timing the Spinners to cheese out specific orbs is meaningful along with the opportunity cost of using this as opposed to a Jammer or Poison Surge.

Damage Absorption Piercer

The Damage Absorb Piercer will only function on cards with the Combo Orb awakening and triggers when matching 10-12 orbs at the same time.

Doing so with the Damage Absorption Piercer Latent will enable the owning card to completely ignore the Damage Absorption mechanic.

The main problem I can foresee with this Latent is how only the owning card benefits which in turn means the order in which damage is dealt is important. Damage is dealt left to right, top to bottom which means your leader will hit with their primary attribute and then sub 1’s primary attribute, etc.

Thus, your friend’s leader sub attribute will be the final hit which could exceed the Damage Absorb threshold and heal the opposing spawn. As such, this Latent will become problematic it will most likely need to be used on mono colour teams with it being most helpful on your final sub or friend’s leader which in turn semi invalidates the viability to use it on your own cards if your friend has a sub attribute.

New P&D Pass perks

The P&D Pass is a monthly subscription that can be purchased with real life money. This is by no means mandatory to purchase (I have not done so outside the free trial during the debut) but is the most efficient money to Magic Stone ratio available and if you are going to IAP (In App Purchase) for PAD, the P&D Pass if the best approach. More reading can be found HERE.

Regardless, P&D Pass owners will now have unlimited access to the All Days Dungeon and Descend Series for solo play. These dungeons will not award a first time clear Magic Stone bonus but will enable players to always have access to Skill Up opportunities or for acquiring the evolution Gems at any time.

Full list of available dungeons can be found HERE.

Awoken Skill buffs

Both the Skill Voice and Recover Bind awakenings have received buffs:

The +10% stats from Skill Voice may look nice at first glance but is quite inferior to the Team HP  / RCV as it only boosts the owning card’s stats whereas the Team awakenings provide a much larger stat bonus as it applies to every single card.

On the other hand, Recover Bind has now become quite valuable as it can be used even through Awoken Skill Binds. This means that encountering Fuma in AA2 is far less dangerous as you can simply match a row of Hearts to unbind your leaders (through the Awoken Bind) and then heal up to tank Fuma’s damage as you will now benefit from your Leader Skill.

Improved Monster Box Search Filter

One of the largest downsides to PAD is having so many cards and being unable to find a specific type of card that has certain awakenings, typing, colour, active skill, etc.

For myself, I use Ilmina.com‘s Fuzzy/Advanced search feature but we will now have a more sophisticated method of in-game searching. This is because we can now filter for specific awakenings, typing, and attribute with a Perfect Match option which will only show cards that have every single metric searched for.

This ability will only be unlocked by turning on Custom Filter. This is done via [Others] -> [Options] -> [System] and I highly recommend this is done as it is much easier to search for specific cards in game.

Conclusion

Updates are always an exciting time as new content and buffs to older cards help keep PAD feeling fresh and exciting. For myself, I am looking forward to using the newly buffed Dark Kali across an even wider range of Rainbow teams along with the revamped Monster Box filter features.

Let me know in the comments  below which aspects of this update are the most exciting to yourself.

Happy Puzzling!

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