You must play Mythical or Pyromaniac difficulty and the invade rate is around 2% so be prepared for a long ride (I around 100 clears for my first invade)
Introduction
Wit the Heroine REM coming on February 6th, most of the attention will be on collected all the pretty girls (you can read more about my review HERE). However, I want to direct your attention to the Heroine version of Grisar who is a rare invade from the event dungeon and is one of the strongest farmable cards you can acquire.
Due to the time sensitive nature of the event dungeon, I strongly encourage you to acquire her right away as it is uncertain how long it will be before she returns. it is better to have her now (and skill up at your leisure), then regretting a Grida-less box a month or two later.
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Devil Rush vs Blue Sonia & Australis/ALB
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Due to the popularity of my previous Japan Stream review, I thought I should continue this trend and pen down my thoughts on up and coming content. I enjoy writing these types of posts as it gives me a chance to condense my thoughts along with not being overly time consuming.
There was other content released (such as a modest buff to Ryune) along with small quality of life changes, but this article will focus on the new evolutions.
JP has always received content in a timely manner while NA has historically had inconsistent release dates. Thus, I cannot predict when these will be released, but a good guideline is 1-2 months. You can view this in a positive manner as we are able to prep/observe how the new changes will impact the meta.
You can read more about the JP Stream through puzzledragonx.
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New evolutions
Split Ultimate Odin Dragon
Odin Dragon has historically been somewhat of a joke in the PAD community upon his initial release due to how underwhelming he was. Granted he does make for essentially the strongest bind clear for wood teams, the 300,000 Monster Point price tag was hard to swallow and now with Reincarnated evolutions catching up in base stats, there was no real need to purchase him.
As such, “Offensive” Odin Dragon was born. Offensive may refer to his hideous artwork, but is better used to describe his now attack-oriented leader skill.
In the latest wave of PAD news coming out of JP, Dark Athena will be available from the MP shop for 750,000 Monster Points. This raises numerous questions ranging from “why such a high cost?” to “is she really that strong?” along with “will North America actually get her?” In this article, I will do my best to examine how Dark Athena could change the landscape of Puzzle and Dragons along with possible justifications for her extreme cost compared to previous MP cards.
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Dark Athena at a glance
Dark Athena God / Devil / Attacker
3,618 HP / 2,501 ATK / 0 RCV
862 Total
Active Skill:
Enhance all water & dark orbs
3 turn delay
11 turn Cooldown
Leader Skill: 1.5x HP & 3.5x ATK for God, Devil, and Attacker cards. 2x ATK & 2x RCV when matching Dark and Water orbs 2.25x HP / 49x ATK / 4x RCV
Pros
Cons
12.25 or 49x ATK
2,501 ATK
3 TPA for burst
Tanky Leader Skill
Forms one of the best teams in PAD
Can quickly clear content
Flexible team building
Bind immune
Damage enhance & delay
Can overcome combo shields
No evolution required
Comes ready to use
Must match water and dark for RCV
Stalling is not as practical
No SBR
Gemstone inherit semi required
Impressions
Dark Athena may look lackluster from a purely multiplier perspective; however, she is actually one of the strongest cards/leaders in the game. There are many factors that go into consideration when trying to determine what makes a strong leader, and Dark Athena covers almost all of them.
Dark Athena has one of the most unconditional leader skills which dramatically raises her consistency and speed when playing through both challenging and easy content. Simply having to match a single water and dark combo for 49x is trivial compared to the shenanigans other leads require. This ease of activation enables you to flood the board with dark orbs in order to better take advantage of Dark Athena’s three TPA awakenings. Continue reading Dark Athena Releasing for 750k MP→
The January 18th content update brought the release of three new Egyptian 1 Reincarnated evolutions along with a buff to the Snow Globe Noirs . However, many people are left with a feeling of disappointment as the wrong chicken received a new evolution. This review will quickly go over how the new Egyptian 1’s fit in today’s meta as they are in somewhat of an awkward place at the moment.
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Egyptian 1 background
The Egyptian 1 pantheon have all received reincarnated evolutions with the exception of Isis. This pantheon is one of the oldest in Puzzle and Dragons and for a while contained some of the strongest leaders the game had to offer. They went through a wild roller coaster ride ups and down for a few years. Presently speaking, they are in somewhat slump for a period of time now. Their main problem was the dependency on using an active skill to achieve their full multiplier which lowers their potency.
Active skill reliance places constraints on your clear potential as you have to either stall for actives or simply sacrifice a team slot for a quick charging ability. You are able to work around this in short dungeons or through coop in order to guarantee an active skill every turn but may struggle in dungeons with non-fixed spawns as it is harder to plan around.
Reincarnated Horus Devil / God / Attacker
3,875 HP / 2,164 ATK / 630 RCV
1,000 Total
Active Skill:
Enhance all fire orbs
+2s to orb movement time for 1 turn
4 turn Cooldown
Leader Skill: 4x ATK with 4 colours. 5x ATK with 5. 2x ATK & RCV when active skill is used 100x ATK / 4x RCV
Pros
Cons
Flexible Leader Skill
1,000 weighted stats
100x ATK
Short cooldown can inherit easily
Double SBR
Cover Fire & Water
Can use orb changers
Active skill reliant for damage
RCV is tied active skill
Damage is okay
Wrong chicken
Impressions
Reincarnated Horus has always traded a higher damage multiplier for greater consistency. This worked well when he was first released as there were fewer options to choose from along with most of the content not requiring amazingly high multipliers. However, in today’s meta, it is just not worthwhile as we now have access to board refreshes and time extends. Thus, the safety net is no longer required and is actually hurting his potential overall.
A 100x rainbow leader is perhaps average nowadays. Unfortunately, being average is not really good enough as you ideally want to have a card who excels in one particular aspect. Furthermore, having a large percentage of your multiplier tied to the usage of an active skill truly kills Horus’s potential. Without an active skill, you will only be able to achieve 25x ATK along with 1x RCV. If his RCV component was passively built into his leader skill, he could at least stall. Sadly, if you want to heal, you must also use an active and run the risk of killing the floor as well.
With all that being said, Horus has some merits, most notably his potential to act as a sub on various teams. His base cooldown is only 4 turns and allows you to easily inherit something over top along with covering the awkward Fire and Water elements. Furthermore, he has dual Skill Bind Resistance which can greatly ease team building constraints in solo mode. Finally, his dual TPA and massive base attack will allow Horus to achieve amazing burst damage.
Reincarnated Bastet Devil / God / Balance
4,760 HP / 1,757 ATK / 519 RCV
1,000 Total
Active Skill:
Mass attack for 3 turns
+2s to orb movement time for 1 turn
5 turn Cooldown
Leader Skill: 3x ATK with 5 combos. Scales up to 5x with 9 combos. 2.5x ATKwhen active skill is used 156.25x ATK
Pros
Cons
Scaling Leader Skill
1,000 weighted stats
156.25x ATK
Short cooldown can inherit easily
Flexible team building
Cute
Active skill reliant for damage
25x at 9 combos is weak
Damage is okay
Base active is weak
Impressions
Reincarnated Bastet is a massive improvement to her Awoken form as it significantly boosts her maximum damage from her previous 36x. In addition, you have a higher combo threshold for additional damage (7->9) along with a stronger multiplier when using an active skill. This further cements Bastet as a glass cannon leader as she still has no defensive multiplier component.
Like Horus, Bastet can only offer up to 25x ATK without an active skill and will make it challenging to use her efficiently in content that requires a large amount of damage repeatedly. However, when using an active skill, you are able to deal lethal damage as you can efficiently stack TPA awakenings. Granted you do lose out on your maximum damage multiplier, but if your team has enough TPA, the lower combo count can be justified. In fact, 7 combos (which is a realistic amount) will result in 100x ATK and that should be sufficient for most content as she is leading a mono wood team.
When compared to Acetet , Reincarnated Bastet wins out from a maximum multiplier point of view along without running the risk of flooding the board with wood and compromising combos. However, Acetet is superior from a combo perspective if no active skill is used. Acetet can achieve up to 64x ATK and gains her additional multiplier from matching 3 wood combos. This wood combo clause will usually result in an active skill being used, but will force you to bring more orb changers by comparison.
Reincarnated Bastet is better able to load up on utility-based actives as you do not require numerous wood orbs and can simply rely on the higher base multiplier and a TPA match. Another thing to consider is the risk of using God Killer on Acetet which could lead to the inability to kill certain absorb bosses (most notably Sopdet). Finally, Reincarnated Bastet has a shorter cooldown along with higher weighted stats.
Reincarnated Anubis Devil / God / Balance
5,048 HP / 1,450 ATK / 618 RCV
1,001 Total
Active Skill:
4 turns counterattack
8 turn Cooldown
Leader Skill: 5x ATK with 9 combos. 10x with 11 combos. 3x ATK when active skill is used 900x ATK
Pros
Cons
Has some damage control
1,001 weighted stats
900x ATK
Unbindable with
Active removes hazards
Niche counterattack
One true God
Inconsistent activation
Skyfall/praying required
No defensive multiplier
Active has a long cooldown
Impressions
Reincarnated Anubis is a significant improvement to his Awoken form as you only require 11 combos for maximum damage along with active skill usage and 9 combo damage being improved. This somewhat lowers the risk involved along with providing some form of damage control as you can activate 9x damage with an active skill.
A 6×5 board can provide at most 10 combos with a perfect distribution. Unfortunately, the more likely scenario is a board with 7-8 combos and after matching perfectly, praying for adequate skyfalls is required. This playstyle is incredibly risky along with inconsistent as there will be many times where the skyfalls are not in your favour.
Reincarnated Anubis brings up to 30x ATK by himself and has some potential to pair with 7×6 leaders even if they have lower damage multipliers. Unfortunately, the best option currently is to use Aten .
Shifting away from a leadership role, Reincarnated Anubis has strong potential on mono dark teams due to his bind immunity and recover bind awakening. This enables Anubis to clear 3 turns of binds with a single row of hearts. This would be more helpful if he had a heart generating active, but you can always inherit something over top his own active.
Finally, looking at Anubis’s active skill, it has a reasonably long cooldown for the benefits it provides. Most single orb changer plus hazard removal is pinned at 7 turns along with a turn of haste. Thus, you are trading haste and an additional turn for the occasionally useful counterattack. Counterattack has most applications against resolve bosses that have a 1% attack you can survive. This will enable you to instantly kill the boss as their ability will hit you and then have the counterattack hit and kill them. Perhaps the best example of this is against Zeus & Hera as their damage goes out before the healing component.
Snow Globe Noir Buffs
Snow Globe Noirs have been buffed to provide 3 million off-colour experience instead of the original 2. Hooray.
Conclusion
The new Egyptian 1 evolutions are nice, but not necessarily game breaking. They do add another dimension to leadership potential, but many players are probably disappointed by no Ra Dragon as he is one of the most anticipated evolutions to be released.
With 2017 in full swing, you should make it your New Years Resolution to acquire all the beneficial farmable monsters in Puzzle and Dragons. What will be most helpful will vary from box to box, but you should at least pursue most/all of the listed cards because they are always available and have varying degrees of value.If you feel I have missed anything out, please let me know in the comments below.
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Overview
These are who I consider to be the most vital farmable monsters moving forward into 2017 for Puzzle and Dragons in no particular order:
Rogue descends bosses
Rogue Descends are the purple/pink dungeons that have a leveling up mechanic. This means your monsters start at level 1 and gain experience as you progress through the dungeon based on their team cost. These tend to be challenging dungeons with the bosses having difficult evolution paths and a lengthy skill up process; however, they have varying degrees of usage and have become easier to acquire due to stronger teams/leaders.
Gainaut
Gainut has the beneficial coop boost along with a full board changer that creates fire, water, wood, light, dark, hearts, and Jammer orbs. This has many applications on rainbow teams, but has the most value on Ronove teams. Gainut covers two awkward colours along with an active that creates a wood heavy and heart crossable board when used in conjunction Ronove’s short cooldown active.
Scarlet
Scarlet once made powerful system team due to her fire generating active and haste component. Presently, she is able to act as a stand-in sub on virtually any mono-fire team as she provides beneficial awakenings along with the same helpful active that can help correct a poor board changer or cycle through other abilities.
Aten is the newest six-star Godfest Exclusive to be released and comes with an overwhelming 8 killer awakenings. Aten is not a viable leader and his main role will be as a situational sub that can deal amazing burst damage against virtually any boss.
I have played and cleared an excessive amount of Arena 3 with Myr since her release and have begun to branch out and experiment with other leaders. In all honesty, many leaders are capable of clearing Arena 3, but require ideal spawns and a certain degree of luck. My fully invested Myr team has probably around 95% clear rate and the losses are either caused by extreme RNG or human error (full team breakdown for Myr can be found HERE). By comparison, my Krishna team has 70-75% win rate and I have around 10-12 clears presently. For myself, I am not going for the one Hail-Mary clear as many things have to line up in order to work. Thus, my goal is always trying to improve my consistency and minimizing the losses when possible.
This article will share the team I use for Krishna, explain my inheritance set up, latents, composition choices, and Arena 3 specific strategies. If you wish to read my Krishna team building guide and full analysis, please refer to my previous post HERE.
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Why 70-75% win rate
There are many factors that contribute to a loss in Arena 3 and things you cannot control include poor skyfalls (think Sopdet) and unfavourable spawns. Unfavourable spawns can either kill you or leads to wasted actives and a death on a later floor. Bolstering your team with latents, inherits, and optimal sub choices can reduce the danger of certain floors, but certain teams will be unable to counter various Radar Dragons. If my Krishna team was fully invested like my Myr team, my win rate would probably go up by another 5%.
For Krishna, you are unable to kill Hera Dragon without severely compromising your team composition (running multiple shields) and some difficulty hitting 2 million damage as the scaling is a little awkward with all the enhanced orbs. I simply view Hera Dragon as a loss as I do not wish to undermine my chances against other encounters. Thus, you are able to only win 80% of the time if everything else goes perfectly. Continue reading Krishna in Arena 3→
This article was composed by one of my long term readers and Twitch Mod as both a means to share his love for Xiu Min along with helping ease the workload for content creation. I personally have no experience playing Xiu Min and having a perspective from someone who regularly plays the team is invaluable.
I have left the article unedited to better preserve their voice and thoughts. Kaz will also try his best to reply to comments and questions.
Introduction
Hello I’m Mantastic and Fanta.. wait , no I’m not. Hi there I’m Kaz272 you may know me from Mantastic’s twitch stream where I am a Mod or the PAD subreddit or from PAD itself where I’ve been known as Dad?, Jeb!, 耶稣会打死你, and 秀敏(◍•ᴗ•◍)❤。When I wrote this, I have been playing pad about 233 days and have cleared up to Arena 1 using my Myr team. Continue reading Xiu Min Buffs – Discussion by Kaz272→
The latest maintenance brings with numerous updates and I wish to summarize all the major changes taking place. This update includes new evolutions and monster upgrades/buffs. If you feel I have overlooked anything in particular, please feel free to let me know in the comments below.
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New evolutions
New evolutions are perhaps the most exciting aspect of any update as they breathe life into aging cards along with providing players with new toys. Having goals to work towards is almost as exciting as actually acquiring the new card. Furthermore, this update includes the highly anticipated Reincarnated evolutions for the Greco-Roman 1 and some Indian 1 Gods.
If you are unfamiliar or wish to find out more information about the REM Reincarnation process, please feel free to check out my previous post HERE.
Reincarnated Greco-Roman 1
All of the Reincarnated Greco-Roman 1 Gods possess bind immunity along with passive damage reduction to various colours. This can be abused by cheese teams that run 100% resistance to a particular colour and use one of the Puppeteers in conjunction to change the boss’s attribute.
Reincarnated Minerva
Reincarnated Minerva gains better artwork along with a revamped leader skill. She is now capable of achieving 6x ATK for matching Fire and Light orbs along with passively reducing damage by 50% to Fire, Light, and Dark enemies. This means with dual Minerva, you effectively have 4x HP / RCV when facing those three elements. However, many players are instead pairing her with Ilm to form a 60x ATK / 2.5x RCV team while taking 50% less damage from Fire, Light, and Dark bosses. This wonderful combination of defensive utility and offensive capabilities is invaluable and grants players the chance to clear plenty of content.
When team building Minerva/Ilm, it is slightly more advantageous to focus on fire subs as Minerva’s base active is a fire orb changer. However, you can easily go either way, especially if the dungeon is water-heavy.
With her new leadership role in mind, you should begin to plan your inherits for Minerva as her base active is lackluster. You can inherit a bind clear or orb changer as you deem fit.
The Wisdom Kings are the newest pantheon to be released in Puzzle and Dragons. None of these monsters have an ultimate evolution and to help compensate for the anticipated Powercreep, they have received additional awakenings along with a unique kit to keep them interesting (they should have new evolutions in the distant future). All of the Wisdom Kings provide something new and valuable that helps add dimension to your monster box.
As a forewarning, any defensive multiplier is lost if your leader is bound. Conversely, the multiplayer bonus provides 50% more stats to these cards which helps bring them more inline with Reincarnated/Awoken evolutions as their base stats are around 700.
![[PSA] Please Farm a Psychopomp Princess of Oblivion, Grida](https://mantasticpad.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/heroine-grisar-f.jpg?w=640&h=372&crop=1)
who is a rare invade from the event dungeon and is one of the strongest farmable cards you can acquire.
![[Review] January 18 Content Update – New Evolutions & Snow Globe Noir Buff](https://mantasticpad.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/capture2.png?w=672&h=357&crop=1)
Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons 