Category Archives: Team Building Guides

Team Building for Yusuke

Introduction

Yusuke  is the newest craze to come to NA Puzzle and Dragons as he is one of the best leaders in the game along with being an amazingly powerful sub. Furthermore, he will be one of the most widely available cards due to the fact that he is available to trade in for via the Monster Exchange System (can read more about that HERE).

These factors have led us into a throwback to Dark Athena 3193 era as a large chunk of player’s friend list may now be populated by Yusuke.

This article will summarize my thoughts and rationale for building a Yusuke team; however, team building is more about countering the dungeon mechanics and somewhat removes the notion of “perfect set ups.” As such, I find it best to understand how each sub functions as well as Yusuke’s strengths and weaknesses.

Video commentary

–video coming soon–

Sample gameplay

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 Yusuke at a glance

HP: 4,035
ATK:
 1,820
RCV: 410

Active: Reduces cooldown of other skills by 1 turn. Removes lock status on orbs. Change all orbs to Water & Light orbs (13 turn CD)

Leader Skill: Light attribute cards HP x1.5, ATK x1.5, RCV x1.5. All attribute cards ATK x4 when reaching 7 combos or above. All attribute cards ATK x2.5 when reaching Light & Water combos

Awakenings: Bind Immune Bind Immune Skill Boost Skill Boost Skill Lock Resist Time Extend 45 45  Continue reading Team Building for Yusuke

Team Building for Blue Sonia

Introduction

Blue Sonia  is the first of what is presumed to be Mega Awoken evolutions for 6-star Godfest Exclusives (GFE). While most meta leaders tend to recycle the same pool of subs, Blue Sonia utlizes a completely different set of cards along with a interesting twist on Tank-oriented teams.

This article will summarize my thoughts and rationale for building a Blue Sonia team. However, team building is more about countering the dungeon mechanics and somewhat removes the notion of “perfect set ups.” As such, I find it best to understand how each sub functions as well as Blue Sonia’s strengths and weaknesses.

Video commentary

–video coming soon–

 Blue Sonia at a glance

HP: 7,080
ATK:
1,959
RCV: 0

Active: Bind Recovery for 3 turns. Removes lock status on orbs. Change all orbs to Water & Dark orbs (15 turn CD)

Leader Skill: Dragon type cards HP x1.5, ATK x1.5, RCV x1.5. Increases time limit of orb movement by 2 seconds. All attribute cards ATK x5, 25% all damage reduction when attacking with Water and Dark combos at the same time

Awakenings: Bind Immune Bind Immune Skill Lock Resist Skill Boost Skill Boost 45 45   Continue reading Team Building for Blue Sonia

Dark Athena Team Building, Discussion, and Rationale for 750,000 MP

Do not nuke your Monster Box for 750,000 MP to buy Dark Athena. She will be a permanent addition to the MP shop

Introduction

Dark Athena 3193 has been a long anticipated card that was up until this point only available in JP; however, NA/EU will finally be able to purchase her for 750,000 MP starting May 1st. This is a tremendous stepping stone as we are actually able to acquire a Radar card when PAD Radar is not available in our regions. Regardless, the question within the community will transition from is she coming to “Should I buy Dark Athena?” This is a loaded question as she does cost 750,000 MP and you should carefully weigh the pros and cons along with actually having a viable team to use her.

I did write extensively about her in a previous posting, but will create a new one based on the new cards that have been released since her debut in JP. However, there will be some overlap between the two but I have added in a much needed team building section.

Video commentary

—video goes here–

Solo Arena 3 clear

She is so forgiving I can make mistakes:

Screenshot from my first clear:

Dark Athena at a glance

Dark Athena
3193
God / Devil / Attacker
3,618 HP / 2,501 ATK / 0 RCV
862 Total
TPA TPA TPA Skill Boost Skill Boost Skill Boost Bind Immune Bind Immune

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 base ATK
  • 3 TPA TPA for burst
  • Tanky Leader Skill
  • Forms one of the best teams in PAD
  • Can quickly clear challenging content
  • Farms Arena 3
  • Flexible team building
  • Bind immune
  • Damage enhance & delay
  • Can overcome combo shields
  • No evolution required
  • Comes ready to use
  • Can use Haku(s) 
  • Can be used as a sub
  • Must match both water and dark for RCV
  • Stalling is not as practical
  • No SBR Skill Lock Resist
  • Low movement time
  • Gemstone inherit semi required
  • Costs 750,000 MP

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 TPA awakenings. Furthermore, with the introduction of the 7 combo 45 awakening, Dark Athena has even more burst potential as she can run duplicate Hakus  to great success. Continue reading Dark Athena Team Building, Discussion, and Rationale for 750,000 MP

Help! I do not have 2 Dark Kali for Ra Dragon

Introduction

Super Ultimate Ra Dragon 3265 has been released in JP and will be released in North America shortly. The delay in release can be advantageous as we have adequate time to prepare for his challenging evolution along with deciding how to team build the spiciest of all the fried chicken. I go into detail examining Ra Dragon as a whole in my previous post and I encourage you to read it in conjunction with this article HERE.

As the title implies, this post will be dedicated into discussing how Ra Dragon functions if you do not own two Dark Kalis Dark Kali (or any of her seasonal variations) as well as helping you decide if it is worthwhile to spend 300,000 MP to purchase him.

Video commentary

—video goes here—-

How Ra Dragon works

Ra Dragon is a rainbow leader who utilizes all 6 elements to deal up to 144x ATK. Furthermore, God type cards benefit from 2.25x HP / RCV and it is this added bulk that makes him powerful and relevant in an era of heart crosses. If you choose to use a non-God card, that monster will only be benefiting from a lackluster 64x ATK.

Leader Skill:
2x ATK when matching 4 elements. 3x ATK for each additional orb type. 8x with all 6 elements. 1.5x HP/ATK/RCV for God types
2.25x HP / 144x ATK / 2.25x RCV

Ra Dragon Scaling Leader Skill
# Elements 4 5 6
Multiplier 9x 56.25x 144x

As such, you should do your best to use God type cards, even if they have irrelevant actives as you can correct them with Skill Inheritance. Continue reading Help! I do not have 2 Dark Kali for Ra Dragon

Awoken Pandora Team Building and Discussion Guide

Awoken Pandora
Awoken Pandora
Dark row Bind Clear awakening Skill Boost Skill Lock Resist Time Extend Skill Boost Dark row Dark row
Green Arrow Dark
 / Light Arrow Heart + haste
9 turn CD
1.56x HP / 6.25-25x ATK / 1.56x RCV (Devil Dark row based team)
Match 4-8 connected dark orbs

Awoken Pandora Awoken Pandora is one of the most powerful leaders in Puzzle and Dragons as she combines both burst and survivability. Dark monsters have historically been the strongest colour as they have amazing synergy and a deep sub pool. Thankfully, there are a number of dark devils to draw upon and only main weakness is bind removal options. Awoken Pandora plays similarity to Awoken Lucifer Awoken Archdemon Lucifer teams in that they both share the same durable row-based playstyle. You can read my Awoken Archdemon Lucifer guide HERE. Lastly, you are able to control your damage through dark row Dark row activation as well as stacking actives to unleash some of the highest total burst damage in the game.

Pros:

  • Ability to control your damage as this is becoming more relevant with specific absorption shields that require you to hit less damage
  • Bolstered health and recovery allow for easier stalling and removes the need to bring damage mitigation
  • Leaders have a combined 6 dark row Dark row , 2 skill lock resist Skill Lock Resist , and 2 time extend Time Extend awakenings
  • Recover Bind Bind Clear awakening awakening can be powerful provided leaders are not bound
  • Spectacular burst damage potential
  • Active is an amazingly powerful tool to generate dark orbs, hearts, and haste
  • A pretty girl with flowers and a magical box

Continue reading Awoken Pandora Team Building and Discussion Guide

Awoken Lucifer Team Building and Discussion Guide

Awoken Archdemon Lucifer
Awoken Archdemon Lucifer
1.82x HP / 16.4x ATK / 1.82x RCV (God & Devil Dark row based team)
Arena 1 Strategy Guide

Awoken Archdemon Lucifer Awoken Archdemon Lucifer is one of the most powerful leaders in Puzzle and Dragons as he combines both burst and survivability along with flexible team building. Dark monsters have historically been the strongest colour as they have amazing synergy and a deep sub pool. Unlike Yomi Dragon Yomi Dragon or Awoken Pandora Awoken Pandora , Lucifer can use both God and Devil type monsters which grants him access to subs that would otherwise not fully benefit from the leader skill. Furthermore, you are able to control your damage through dark row Dark row activation as well as stacking actives to unleash some of the highest total burst damage in the game.

Pros:

  • Ability to control your damage as this is becoming more relevant with specific absorption shields that require you to hit less damage
  • Bolstered health and recovery allow for easier stalling and removes the need to bring damage mitigation
  • Leaders have a combined 6 dark row Dark row , 2 skill lock resist Skill Lock Resist , and 6 skill boost Skill Boost awakenings
  • God Killer God Killer awakening is amazingly powerful as it allows your leaders to deal 3x damage to god type bosses
  • Spectacular burst damage potential
  • Team building is quite flexible as you can use God or Devil types

Continue reading Awoken Lucifer Team Building and Discussion Guide

Popular Leaders and Their Full Sub List with Inheritance Options

I am in the process of updating this list over the next week or two and work from the top down so somethings will still be outdated/missing in the meantime.

Introduction

Due to the ever changing dynamic of team building through Skill Inheritance, team building has either become more flexible or more rigid. It becomes more flexible due to the fact that you can use almost any card as a sub and fill in the blanks via inheritance. However, this does eventually lead to a more rigid team building experience as you will end up using similar powerful bases and supplementing with appropriate assists.

As such, I have been trying to determine how I can have this list reflect both aspects of team building. Listing subs that fulfill specific roles is helpful, but may become misleading once you begin to acquire more cards to play around with. Thus, I will try my best to list higher tier subs along with other options and include a massive inheritance chart at the beginning you can use to fill in the gaps.

When deciding which leader and team you want to invest in, you ideally want to find a balance between a deep and diverse sub pool combined with a love for their playstyle that suits your personality and matching skills. Even leaders who are not popular in the meta are capable of clearing high end content provided you have a synergetic team and passion for their gameplay.

Furthermore, you should try to balance the subs/actives you bring to ensure a healthy mixture of quick orb changers, damage enhancing, and defensive utility. When trying to determine if you require a bind clearing sub, you must take into account how dangerous the bind is and whether you can stall through it or avoid it. If you are able to avoid the bind by bursting through the boss before they are able to attack, it may be best to do so as bind clearing subs tend to bring little to the party aside from their active. Lastly, leaders with higher multipliers are more reliant on consistency and survivability over offensive actives as the sheer strength of their leader skill can sweep most floors.

If you wish to read about how I approach tackling a dungeon and subsequently how I build my team, please read my previous article HERE.

Video commentary

—video goes here—

Popular leaders sorted by category

When trying to find a particular leader in this post, it is best to use the ctrl + F (search) feature. Otherwise, the leaders are colour sorted in no particular order. Due to the sheer size of this ever growing list, I may have trimmed out lesser leaders and simply put their names alongside other cards that are similar to them (eg. placing other rainbow leaders alongside Ra if similar).

I am not including the button farming coop teams.

Style Leader
Rainbow: 3265 Awoken DQXQ Sakuya 2982 3273 3272 Kali Lightning
Combo
Based: 
3241 3384 2983 3385 Rukai Kuchiki
5 orbs, 1 enhanced:
(5o,1e)
3266 You Yu Awoken Yomi Ult Tsubaki
Tank teams:  3068 3305 3238 Awoken Pandora Awoken Archdemon Lucifer Raoh
I&I + Ryune
Saria + Thor
Sylvie + Awoken Freyja
Raoh + Freyr
Heart orbs
required:
3242 3243 Typhon Gadius Xiang Mei
Multiple combos
of specific colour:
Z8 3069 3070
 Row Based: 3276 3263 dtron 3391 3235 Blue Sonia Xiu Min
 Speed farming: 3262 3266 3193
Colour Cross 3359 3264 2991 3202
Heart Cross:  Ult Sumire Ult Kaede Ronove Gremory Miru Beach Myr

If you feel I left out your favourite team, leave a reply in the comments below and I shall add in accordingly. For a list of 5×4 leads, feel free to check out my other guide HERE.

If you wish to read a more detailed analysis of all the REM pantheon monsters, please refer to my Master List Breakdown. If you are considering to purchase a Monster Point card, please read my Tier List HERE.

Skill Inheritance

Skill Inheritance has become a vital part of the Puzzle and Dragons meta as it allows you to utilize desirable active skills from cards that would not be ideal to run as subs. This also enables you to better customize your team to your liking and address any dangerous mechanic the dungeon can throw at you. I encourage you to read my revamped Skill Inheritance Guide to better understand all the changes that have been made and how to better utilize this mechanic.

Below is for the most part, a full overview of the various inheritance options you can use sorted by categories. For full board changers, you can utilize off-colour inherits provided they generate your desired element. However, if possible, you should try to use same attribute inherit and base to take advantage of the stat transfer feature.

ACTIVE MONSTER
Gravity Sakuya Awoken Hades Hathor Chibi Hera
Damage
reduction
3387 Indra Kush Valen 3071 Raphael dtron Isis Cursed Dragon

Shaitan
 Undine Sylph Genie Thanatos
Full board
changers
Rainbow:
Dark Kali Sherias Roots 3416 Lightning 3354 3394 3107 Kali Sherias
jjj
Bi-colour:
3103 3235 Red Sonia Blue Sonia Green Sonia Avalon Drake 3274 3284 Christmas Sonia

Tri-element with hearts:
Uevo Apoc Ryune Saria Sylvie UrdSkuld ult evo Verd mitsuaria-evo
3283 Cecil

Tri-element with no hearts:
Awoken Leilan Awoken Karin MeiMei Haku Zuoh 3277

Other:
Famiel Typhon Gadius Lumiel
True damage
/ poison
3239 Awoken Archdemon Lucifer rodin 3273 Cerebrus Rider Chibi Lilith Lumiel Famiel Sherias Roots 3274 Lightning 3162
Damage
enhance
Silk Carat Cameo Facet Sheen

Freyr I&I Thor Awoken Freyja Awoken Loki Nim Muse Delgado arcline
Creuse Awoken Yomi Izanagi Oku Nephthys Set Durga Lu Bu Kanna 3361
Delay 3386 2985 A Cao Cao 2918 A Sun Quan Zeta Hydra ForestBahn Wee Jas Green wee jas
Kenpachi Sagirinokami
Bind clearing Ame Amate Awoken Ceres Sakuya Metatron Green Odin Isis Fire Dragon Knight Water Dragon Knight
Earth Dragon Knight Shining Dragon Knight Shadow Dragon Knight Guan Yu Red Guan Yu Red Riding Hood Snow White Thumbelina Sleeping Beauty

Popular leaders and the sub list: Continue reading Popular Leaders and Their Full Sub List with Inheritance Options

Awoken Idunn & Idunna and Ryune Team Building and Discussion Guide

Awoken Iduann&Iduanna (I&I)  I&I paired with Returning-Claw Blue Dragonbound, Ryune Ryune forms a powerful 2x HP / 14.06x ATK / 2.5x RCV tank team that is capable of clearing end game content. Mono-colour tank teams have made a resurgence in popularity because they are capable of absorbing massive attacks and thus not need to bring any form of damage mitigation, able to recover large amount of health due to the 2.5x recovery multiplier, and ability to deal lethal damage by stacking row enhance Water Row awakenings along with built in damage enhancement from I&I . You will not see the spectacularly high numbers every turn that rainbow teams can produce, but instead are able to consciously control your damage as you are active reliant for damage output. Do note that just because your starting multiplier is only 14.06x, you can still burst like other high end leads because you are able to stack a single colour for damage along with specific actives and awakenings.

Lastly, I would like to thank Qrr for his screenshots and insight on their playstyle and mastery. Feel free to add his hypermaxed I&I .

Qrr Friend

Pros:

Saria & Awoken Thor Team Building and Discussion

Introduction

Saria Saria paired with Awoken Thor Thor forms the powerful 2x HP / 14.06x ATK / 2.5x RCV tank team that is capable of clearing end game content. Mono-colour tank teams have made a resurgence in popularity because they are capable of absorbing massive attacks and thus not need to bring any form of damage mitigation, able to recover large amount of health due to the 2.5x recovery multiplier, and able to deal lethal damage by stacking row enhance Light Row awakenings along with built in damage enhancement. You will not see the spectacularly high numbers every turn that rainbow teams can produce, but instead are able to consciously control your damage as you are active reliant for damage output. Do note that just because your starting multiplier is only 14.06x, you can still burst like other high end leads because you are able to stack a single colour for damage along with specific actives and awakenings.

In addition, I would like to thank everyone who contributed their insights as well as screenshots for this guide. Even if your image was not featured, I still took note of your team roster and dungeon clearing capacity. So once again thank you to all my fellow Puzzle and Dragoners.

Continue reading Saria & Awoken Thor Team Building and Discussion

Light Kali Team Building and Discussion Guide

Light Kali Kali is one of the most well rounded monsters in the game as she can fulfil both a top tier sub role and an amazing leader role. 36x damage is still significant and should be enough damage to clear nearly all the content available. In addition, she has one of the best active skills and excels when compared to other high end leads who usually have lackluster actives. Kali ‘s playstyle revolves around two prong attacks TPA along with matching red, blue, yellow, and purple orbs. Triggering 6+ matches grants the full 36x damage and should therefore plan your moves carefully. The full board change active lowers the chance of orb troll (although you can be given a board with only 3 light orbs) which is the leading cause of death for rainbow teams. All of her awakenings are relevant and synergetic to her playstyle and the only real fault to be found is that 36x is somewhat considered “low” with the advent of awoken cards and MP Dragons. Continue reading Light Kali Team Building and Discussion Guide