Tag Archives: Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons

Skill Inheritance: Impressions and Strategies

May 24, 2016 Mantastic 120 Comments

Introduction

Skill Inheritance is finally going live in North America and is one of the most anticipated features to come to Puzzle and Dragons. The goal of this post is to help transfer my knowledge to you on how Skill Inheritance works, when to use it, and advanced strategies to get the most value from your actives. Skill inheritance (or transfer) will allow you to link two different monsters together as a means to have access to additional active skills. The base monster can be used as normal, but your linked monster (assistant) cannot be sold or used on your teams. The base monster will still retain their normal active on their regular cooldown, but will also be able to use another monster’s active at a longer cooldown (base monster’s cooldown + assistant monster’s cooldown). Furthermore, if the second skill is charged, you cannot use the your base monster’s skill. Using a skill at any time will reset both skills and must wait again to use either. This restriction can be problematic if you select a high priority monster as your base.

The following chart illustrates which active you can use and on which turn when having Awoken Isis as your base monster and Dark Kali as the assistant.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10

In this example, you will still have your regular bind clearing ability from Isis on a 3-turn cooldown, but have the option of waiting 10 turns for the board refresh (and making the bind clear unusable). This means that you can use Isis on turns 3-9, but be forced to use Dark Kali on turn 10 and above. Using an active at any time will immediately reset you back to the beginning of this cycle.

How to transfer skills

You can use any 5+ star REM (or collab REM) monster as the assistant onto a card of your choice (the base does not have to be an REM monster). In order to do so, you will require a new material called Tan. These Tan will be available through a special 50 stamina dungeon (or MP shop), but the colour you receive is random and will require you to run numerous times to acquire the correct combination. You can cancel the transfer at any time, but will not have your TAN or gold refunded. Continue reading Skill Inheritance: Impressions and Strategies →

Game Meta

Version 9.03 Major Buffs and Notable Changes

May 24, 2016 Mantastic 22 Comments

Version 9.03 is finally live and brings a tidal wave of changes and buffs to all aspects of Puzzle and Dragons. With this post, I wish to summarize the most important and notable changes that will be made. A separate article dedicated solely to Skill Inheritance is also available as I wish to focus on the other aspects coming with 9.03. This is not the complete patch notes, only the parts that I feel are meaningful.

Additional Awakenings:

Greco-Roman 1 +

The Greco-Roman 1 Pantheon is one of the oldest and was designed to tackle significantly older content that had different mechanics. They finally have been given a skill bind resist awakening to help alleviate the burden of achieving 100% immunity. This will hopefully give them more play time as their actives are situationally useful and can be subbed in as need without fear of having your skills locked.

Awoken Hino +

Awoken Hino has been a fearsome triple two-prong attack fire sub who would burn through monsters on Awoken Shiva teams. With the added skill bind resist, Hino now becomes a nearly staple sub as he now offers everything you could want on a fire sub.

Leader Skill Changes

Skuld -> 27.56x ATK

Skuld has been seeing more potential as a sub on Rukia teams, but was often neglected as a leader. However, she now gains an added component to her leader skill if you match 5 orbs with 1 enhanced (5o1e) to peak at 27.56x ATK and 4x RCV for water/wood cards. This may not be game-breaking, but gives players an option to begin using water TPA cards again such as U&Y , Nut , and Orochi .

Odins gain 1.5x ATK for clearing 4+ connected orbs

This mostly applies to Red and Blue Odin as they already feature a 1.5x HP / 2.5x ATK multiplier and this additional damage pushes them up to 3.75x ATK. This means you can use them as a pseudo replacement for Raoh and Ryune when paired with Freyr and I&I to form a 1.5x HP / 12.19x ATK / 2.5x RCV team.

Light Metatron gains unconditional multiplier

Light Metatron is now an unconditional 1.82x HP / 12.25x ATK leader for healer type monsters. She is also the butt end of numerous jokes on receiving so many micro buffs in hopes of giving her more relevance. Thankfully, this buff is valid, but she will still most likely be passed over for other options.

Light Kali becomes 56.25x ATK (36 -> 56.25)

Probably one of the most significant buffs this patch as Light Kali now achieves 56.25x ATK (up from 36x) at 6+ combos while matching Fire, Water, Light, and Dark orbs. This dramatically increases her consistency and viability as she is superior to Sakuya ‘s damage output provided you cannot achieve 8+ combos every turn. Furthermore, Light Kali has one of the most powerful actives as she guarantees an activate-able board. Continue reading Version 9.03 Major Buffs and Notable Changes →

Pantheon Analysis

Red, Blue, Green Sonia, Gadius and Typhon Analysis

May 23, 2016 Mantastic 23 Comments

Please refer to the Master List for directory to the other pantheons and their analysis.

Take a look at my Popular Leaders and their Full Sub List post for inspiration on team building ideas. If contemplating on purchasing a MP Dragon, please check out my Monster Point Dragon Purchasing Check-list Guide.

Keep in mind all of the following monsters qualify for Skill Inheritance so do not be too hasty in selling dupes.

The Sonias are reknown as the pioneers of bicolour board changers and forming high recovery teams. Due to the nature of their active, they tend to excel on row based teams as you are almost certain to have two unique rows of your primary colour and have the potential to unleash explosive burst damage. On the other hand, Gadius and Typhon have a more utility based active that can generate heart orbs and can be comboed with other orb changers for critical damage. Unfortuantely, only Blue Sonia and Gadius see action in the current meta and the others will remain placeholders for more ideal cards.

Sonias, Gadius, & Typhon
jjjjjjjjMonsterjjjjjjjjj	Notes
Red Sonia Dragon / Devil —- All 12 turn CD	Red Sonia (aka Ronia) was once the most popular leader in Puzzle and Dragons as she could be successfully paired with Lu Bu to form a 1.35x HP / 9x ATK / 2.5x RCV devil team that was capable of clearing all the content PAD had to offer. Then came the rise of rainbow teams and numerous shifts in the meta to find Red Sonia outclassed by other tank leads who grant a larger health and attack multiplier. Furthermore, Red Sonia is off colour when paired with Lu Bu and this hurts your overall damage in the long run. Don’t get me wrong, Red Sonia is still powerful and capable of clearing all the early/mid game content and even has a chance at some harder dungeons, but you will eventually gain better options. She will mostly be used to help you acquire the materials needed for your various awoken evolutions. Sonia has now been buffed to 3.75x ATK (thus Lu Bu plus Sonia is now 11.25x), but this probably not enough to tackle high end content. Team building Red Sonia is quite straight forward as you have numerous options for devils from both a farmable and REM point of view and your teams may look similar to Awoken Pandora . As a sub, Red Sonia has potential on Raoh as he utilizes fire rows and devils. Otherwise, she can make appearances on other mono fire teams and on dark based devil teams as her active does generate numerous dark orbs. Overall, Red Sonia is a useful roll and will be an asset for those starting out as she makes the game quite easy.
Blue Sonia Dragon / Physical —- All 12 turn CD	Blue Sonia (aka Blonia) has gone through various waves of popularity since her release as her main diminishing factor was a shallow sub pool. However, her ultimate evolution proved to be a splashing success as she is able to utilize physical and dragon subs along with an increasing her attack multiplier to 14.06x. You also benefit from 6.25x RCV which means you can essentially heal back to full health from minimal heart matching and combos. Furthermore, Blue Sonia has an incredible amount of base HP (5,780 at max level) and her teams will surpass 30k health with proper investment. You should also use your HP Latent Tamadras on her as they will yield a significant amount of bonus health. Blue Sonia teams are essentially a tank team that has the highest recovery multiplier and are somewhat immortal provided you can survive each attack. This is further amplified in coop where your naturally high health is further augmented and your sky-high recovery (my team has ~18k from a single heart orb match) allows for easy stalling. If you wish to check out some of my gameplay in coop with Blue Sonia, refer to my previous post in challenge dungeons or Mythic Plus Scarlet. Viable sub options for her team include, but not limited to I&I , Ryune , Blue Odin , Andromeda , B/L Hermes , Karin , Orochi , and Mori . Blonia teams are capable of clearing almost all the content in Puzzle and Dragons and she is starting to regain popularity as players realize her potential. Looking at Blonia as a sub, she can find a home on I&I / Ryune as a massive HP stick and powerful board changer. She is less effective on other mono water teams due to no god typing or heart generation, but can still be used in a pinch. Overall, Blue Sonia is a fantastic monster to own and I hope she continues to gain popularity as a leader. Do not sell for 50k Monster Points. Sidenote, I am in love with her art as she combines the colour blue, dragons, and a pretty girl.
Green Sonia Dragon / Balance —- All 12 turn CD	Green Sonia (Gronia) received the same buffs as her prettier and stronger cousin, Blue Sonia and has an amazing 899 weighted stats. Gronia now forms a 14.06x ATK / 6.25x RCV team for both Dragons and Balance types, which should increase her sub pool potential. Unfortunately, her options are less diverse than Blonia as she has less access to rows and fewer damage enhancement options aside from Delgado who only helps balance types (and has poor stats and awakenings) and the new Jewel Princess Cameo . Cameo is a much stronger option as she enhances 1.3x based on the number of wood and dark row enhancements. This can lead to spectacular damage and she has respectable awakenings. In addition, Gronia has a healthy access to bind clearing options as she can use Odin and Ceres . However, many players do not lead with Green Sonia as her team building is quite frustrating unless you have multiple Perseus as he is your best access to wood row awakenings. Green Sonia has powerful sub potential on Sylvie Freyja teams as her powerful and diverse awakenings combined with her amazing active can help your team achieve new levels of prowess. Overall, Green Sonia still feels lacking as her leadership potential is marred by a shallow sub pool and does not seem very exciting for a 6-star godfest exclusive.
Gadius Dragon / Healer —- All + 1 turn haste 10 turn CD	Gadius has been propelled back into the spotlight with the introduction of Xiang Mei who is the first of the Four Gentlemen series 300k MP monsters. Xiang Mei has an incredibly restrictive sub pool as she can only use fire healers who do not remove heart orbs. As such, Gadius is an irreplaceable sub due to his powerful active and healer typing. Gadius can also make appearances on other mono fire teams including Awoken Shiva and Yamato due to his heart generating active and ability to combo well with numerous other monsters. However, Uriel has the greatest potential for active pairing as you will create a 50% board of fire and 50% enhanced heart orbs. Gadius can also be utilized as a pseudo bind clearer due to his bind immunity, bind recovery awakening, and active that has a chance to spawn 6+ heart orbs. This is fantastic as you do not need to sacrifice an entire sub slot to a dedicated bind clearer and have access to more firepower. Furthermore, his devil killer awakening is a powerful means to deal 3x more damage to devil type bosses. Moving away from a sub role, Gadius will become a powerful (and fun to play) leader when his leader skill is buffed to 42.25x ATK as he can capitalize upon numerous fire rows . Granted you need to sacrifice some board space for heart orbs, but his output will be tremendous and will feel like a budget/fragile Xiang Mei with a deeper sub pool. The main downsides to Gadius as a whole are a lack of both skill boost and skill bind resist awakenings. This can cause issues with having actives ready by turn 1 or achieving 100% bind immunity. These problems become less dangerous in coop as you have a partner to help provide those awakenings, but restricts using more than one per team. Overall, Gadius is mandatory if you plan on using Xiang Mei, but outside of that, he is more of a novelty/option for mono fire teams. His leadership potential is respectable, but not game breaking in today’s meta.
Typhon Dragon / Balance —- All + 1 turn haste 10 turn CD	Typhon is an often forgotten 6-star godfest exclusive as he does not have a clearly defined role in today’s meta. From a leadership perspective, he is similar to Gadius as he is heart orb reliant and can scale up to 42.25x ATK. However, without a survivability component to his leader skill, he will falter in higher end content. Regardless, he can still form an competent team due to the depth of dark subs available and the synergy they bring. Fantastic subs include, but are not limited to Yomi Dragon , Pandora , Akechi , and any other orb changer that does not remove heart orbs. By stacking numerous dark rows , you can unleash spectacular damage (just think of how hard Pandora hits at 25x). Furthermore, both your leaders are bind immune and this helps alleviate some constraints when team building. Moving away from a leadership role, you would think Typhon could be a stellar sub as his active is essentially like Haku with heart orbs (which is great) and has a healthy mixture of awakenings including the valuable recover bind . Unfortunately, Typhon has the bizarre Dragon and Balance typing which excludes him from the top tier dark teams such as Pandora , Lucifer , and Yomi Dragon . This leaves him for Awoken Yomi and Anubis who are both strong, but have issues with consistency. However, with the eventual release of Awoken Persephone , Typhon may gain more usage as he is a favourable board change for her dark / water requirements. Finally, some argue that with the release of Xin Hua , Typhon’s balance typing comes into play, but her team is even more outrageous than Xiang Mei and will probably see few players running her. It is disappointing that 6-star godfest exclusive has limited uses as a sub simply because his typing is wrong and prevents Typhon from being used on the various top tier teams. Hopefully he will either gain a third typing or a new powerful dark leader will emerge. You can still use him as a leader as his scaling multiplier allows for easier activation. But for the most part, just be patient and admire his sculpted abs.

Happy Puzzling!

Arena

[Video] Awoken Lucifer VS Arena 1 Floors 17-21

May 23, 2016 Mantastic 18 Comments

Today I took a break from plus egg farming and revisited my old friend, Arena 1. I have cleared Arena numerous times when it was a technical dungeon and have a strong understanding of how each floor works and what kind of damage is required to successfully clear. I was also fortunate my friend visited today and I was able to record on Mantastic. With their help (and more powerful laptop) the audio came out sounding quite amazing for my standards. Perhaps if they visit more often I will be able to produce higher quality videos in the future. I only began recording on floor 17 after I had finished stalling for my actives as the previous 16 floors are more straight forward (and it was also at that time I got their laptop).

All max-skilled and +297
A Lucifer	A Pandora	A Haku	A Loki	Yomi D	A Lucifer

Continue reading [Video] Awoken Lucifer VS Arena 1 Floors 17-21 →

Pantheon Analysis

Egyptian 1 Pantheon Analysis

May 22, 2016 Mantastic 5 Comments

Please refer to the Master List for directory to the other pantheons and their analysis.

Keep in mind all of the following monsters qualify for Skill Inheritance so do not be too hasty in selling dupes.

The Egyptian 1 pantheon features a diverse array of powerful monsters who both excel in leadership and new found sub potential with the advent of more challenging dungeons. Many make stellar leaders for a beginning player as they will teach you how to combo and manage your colours/orbs efficiently and transition into powerhouses with their awoken forms. Overall, a strong pantheon to roll for.

Egyptian 1
jjjjjjjjMonsterjjjjjjjjj	Notes
Horus Devil / God —- + extend time to move orbs by 2 seconds 4 turn CD	Horus is a flaming hot chicken who is jokingly referred to as KFC or other poultry puns. Jokes aside, Horus is an underrated leader who is capable of forming a 45.56x ATK / 2.25x RCV rainbow team. What makes Horus unique is the ability control his damage and recovery through active usage. Most rainbow teams do not have a built in RCV multiplier and is one of the main reasons they falter in higher tier content. Perhaps the reason why Horus is not as popular in today’s meta is due to the fact that 45.46x ATK on a rainbow team is not very game breaking (thanks Ra Dragon ) as you are unable to stack rows and may have limited access to TPA subs. In addition, Horus’s active skill is rather lacklustre and will mostly be used to trigger the additional damage component from your leader skill. On the bright side, Horus has double skill bind resist awakenings and will alleviate team building constraints when trying to achieve 100% immunity. Horus is seldom seen as a sub due to a underwhelming active as there are stronger damage enhancement options available. Overall, Horus is still a powerful leader and is capable of clearing high end content with the right investment, player skill, and luck. He is also a fantastic leader for those who are just starting out as you will be forced to improve your comboing and orb matching skills.
Isis Devil / God —- Reduce damage by 15%, 2 turn bind clear 3 turn CD	Isis is one of the most sought after cards in Puzzle and Dragons due to her incredible utility, active, skill inheritance potential, colour coverage, and beauty. It is sometimes challenging to find a sub who can cover both water and wood while being useful (others that come to mind are Sun Quan and Orochi ). However, neither of those offer the same degree of defensive utility as Isis along with a quick charging active. With an active that takes only 3 turns to recharge, Isis makes an amazing base monster for inheriting a skill. This way you can have the colour coverage and option of bind clearing along with an inherited active for only an additional 3 turns of cooldown. Isis is naturally at home on mono water teams as she offers some offensive capabilities, but perhaps her most popular use is on Ra Dragon (or other rainbow) teams. If you have a Dark Kali , your team is essentially bind immune as you your colour activation requirements will always be met. Furthermore, you can clear binds from other subs with Isis’s active. Sub potential aside, Isis makes a wonderful leader for new accounts as she will help teach you the basics of comboing along with colour management. Overall, Isis is one of the strongest and most versatile monsters available and is worth pursuing and investing in.
Bastet Devil / Balance —- Mass attack for 3 turns + 2s to move orbs 5 turn CD	Best Cat, I mean Bastet, is still a powerful lead despite what various JP tier lists report. She has not become weak, only that newer and flashier cards have been released (thinking of the next round of 300k MP cards). Granted 36x ATK may seem lacklustre, but you have to remember that wood has some fantastic sub options for a mono colour TPA teams. Outstanding subs include, but not limited to Vishnu (sometimes x2), Meimei , Sylvie , Kaede , Liu Bei , and Verdandi . With ample access to wood orb generation and enhanced skyfalls, you can unleash incredible burst damage that is capable of sweeping most high level content. Furthermore, you are able to control your damage through combos made, electing to match TPA, and active usage as a component of your leader skill is tied to using skills. The main downsides of using Bastet are no HP or RCV multiplier, a weak active, a reliance on using actives to trigger her full multipliers (think skill delays or locked actives), and a higher skill cap to use. However, with the introduction of skill inheritance, you will be able to inherit a powerful and useful active onto your two leaders. Overall, Best Cat is a wonderful leader who will have players saying mee-wow at your burst damage and cuteness potential.
Ra Devil / God —- 77,777 true damage to all enemies + 3s to move orbs 7 turn CD	Ra Ra Ra Ra Ra, Ra Ra Ra Ra. Something something P-p-poker face. Bad singing aside, Awoken Ra is still a powerhouse leader who offers 100x damage for only matching fire, water, wood, light, dark, and using an active skill. This is quite a low skill cap for 100x damage and upon his release, completely shattered the meta as he simply overpowered all the content put before him. However, with the advent of 300k MP cards and more ridiculous dungeon mechanics, Awoken Ra has lost his godly status, but is still capable of clearing end game content. As a leader, Ra is bind immune and has the ability to control his damage through active skill usage. You can deal 4x, 25x, or 100x damage and this can be useful when you need to control your output. The main factors that are hindering his supremacy is a lacklustre active, vulnerability to skill delays (as you cannot trigger 100x damage), reliance on repeated active usage to sweep floors, and not being a pretty girl. With the advent of push button farming and bosses with high defence and low HP, Ra’s active has found some more uses as it can be used to sweep these floors. On a push button team, he can be used for clearing the smaller floors and his two skill boosts will come in handy. When dealing with floors such as 10 million defence PreDRAs , the true damage nuke becomes invaluable and may be used for skill inheritance. Overall, Ra is still a great monster and should not be discredited because newer and flashing cards have been released. You also want to keep dupes for skill inheritance or push button farming.
Anubis Devil / God —- + 4 turn counterattack 8 turn CD	The one true Doge has been heralded as the king of damage output (discrediting the even more unreliable Fenrir ) at the risk of an incredibly high skill/luck cap. Awoken Anubis can achieve 400x ATK at 12 combos and only begins to generate a multiplier at 9 combos. The average board may not even allow you to create 9 combos due to uneven orb distribution and causes you to rely on skyfalls for damage as the maximum matches you can generate from a regular board is 10 combos. Furthermore, there are very few players who can consistently hit 8+ combos and even those still need to pray to RNG-esus for additional skyfalls. Building upon the reliance of skyfalls for triggering damage, you have almost no reliable way to control your damage outside of using an active and matching under 9 combos for 4x damage. However, if you are able to maximize the board on a consistent basis, you will be greatly rewarded. Looking at Anubis as a sub, he can find a home on numerous mono dark teams and his active can be quite powerful as a pseudo board refresh substitute. You generally use full board changers to remove excessive jammer or poison orbs and with his revamped active, Anubis can fulfil that role. His main drawback as a sub is an underwhelming active if you are not removing jammer or poison orbs. This is because an 8-turn cooldown for a single orb change is poor value when you could use something like Grisar who is 7 turns with haste. Furthermore, Anubis lacks any offensive awakenings and this will bring down your overall damage. Overall, Anubis is an okay card to own as his leadership potential is marred by luck/inconsistency while his sub usage is most limited to a budget jammer/poison orb removal.

Happy Puzzling!

Pantheon Analysis

Dark & Light Kali, Eschamali, Scheat, and Australis Analysis

May 22, 2016 Mantastic 18 Comments

Please refer to the Master List for directory to the other pantheons and their analysis.

Keep in mind all of the following monsters qualify for Skill Inheritance so do not be too hasty in selling dupes.

The Kalis and Mechanical GFE are some of the most powerful and desired monsters in Puzzle and Dragons. All five posses amazing actives and unique sets of awakenings. They are some of the best cards for their respective roles and all are worthy of the Godfest Exclusive title.

Kalis & Mechanical GFE
jjjjjjjjMonsterjjjjjjjjj	Notes
Light Kali God / Healer —- All 7 turn CD	Light Kali is one of the prettiest and most desired monsters in Puzzle and Dragons. She combines style and grace along with powerful awakenings and one of the strongest actives in the game. Her leadership potential is modest and will be augmented to 56.25x with a future buff in the near future at 6 combos and fire, water, light, and dark matches. What sets her apart from other rainbow leads is her ability to create an ideal board with her active and gives you the opportunity to utilize other subs to counter the various dungeon mechanics. Light Kali’s main downside as a lead is her vulnerability to binds and even with 56.26x ATK, her damage is not that spectacular in today’s meta (but much more consistent than Awoken Sakuya if unable to achieve 8+ combos every turn). For a more detailed discussion, please read my Light Kali Team Building Guide. Leadership potential aside, Light Kali is one of the most coveted subs due to her invaluable board change. Being able to change the board every 7 turns is amazing for rainbow teams and is the safest way to prevent orb troll and premature death. Light Kali can be found on both Awoken Ra , Sakuya , and DQXQ teams for both the board refresh and fire coverage. In fact, many players will run 2 Light Kalis due to her synergistic awakenings and light as her primary attribute. Kali’s main diminishing factor is a lack of bind immunity and inability to spawn heart orbs. This prevents her from being used on Ra Dragon teams. Furthermore, there will be situations where you need to refresh the board, heal, and deal lethal damage and this cannot be done via Light Kali’s active. Overall an amazing card to own and do not sell away any dupes as she is fantastic for Skill Inheritance.
Dark Kali God / Dragon —- All 7 turn CD	Blazing Goddess of Power, Kali is one of the most coveted monsters in the game and shines brightest on rainbow teams. Her ability create at least 3 of each element and heart orbs allows for a guaranteed activation on all rainbow teams. There will be times where you need to refresh the board, heal, and deal lethal damage on the same turn, and Dark Kali allows you to do this. Furthermore, you can use her active in conjunction with another orb changer to create a more favourable board for certain rainbow teams who do not requires all 6 elements. Dark Kali has become somewhat a staple sub on Ra Dragon teams and many players run two. She provides both dark and fire coverage while providing bind immunity, skill bind resist , and recover bind awakening. Through the recover bind awakening, Dark Kali can act as a pseudo bind clearer and her active may generate 6 heart orbs. Other teams she can make an appearance are Awoken Ra , Sakuya , Sephiroth (even without ideal typing), Light Kali , and essentially any other rainbow team. The main drawbacks of Dark Kali is that she is one of the rarest monsters in PAD as she is a 6-star GFE. This can prove challenging for most players to acquire one, let alone two for your favourite rainbow team. Your best bet is to wait for a 4x GFE event and pray you get lucky.
Eschamali Machine / God —- + 4 turn skyfall 10 turn CD	GH Employee: How many should we give Eschamali ? GH Boss: Yes jjj No, the 7 dark orb enhance awakenings are not a typo and those make Eschamali one of the best dark monsters in the game. She can single handedly ensure every dark orb that appears is already enhanced and her active pushes the envelope of power creep as she combines both a double orb changer, poison/jammer removal, and enhanced skyfall on only a 10 turn cooldown. Furthermore, the enhanced skyfalls synergize perfectly with her dark orb awakenings to ensure massive additional damage. Eschamali can act as a pseudo board refresh when faced with numerous poison and jammer orbs as she will convert all of them into dark and arguably replaces Haku on mono dark teams.Due to her power and utility, Eschamali can be found on every mono dark including, but not limited to Awoken Lucifer , Yomi Dragon , Dark Metatron , Awoken Haku , and Awoken Yomi . The only mainstream team she is not used on is Awoken Pandora due to no devil typing. Even without any row enhance awakenings, Eschamli can still be used on row based teams due to diminishing returns when having 10+ row awakenings. At that point, you begin to prioritize orb enhance. Overall an incredible monster to own and will be popular for years to come. The only real fault you can find in Eschamali is that she is a new 6-star godfest exclusive and thus very rare and hard to obtain. However, if you are lucky enough to pull her, your dark box potential will sky-rocket immensely. I ~~want~~ need her….GH please.
Scheat Machine / God —- + 4 turn skyfall 10 turn CD	Holy Scheat, 5 two prong attack awakenings! Scheat is another 6-star Godfest Exlusive and offers very high base stats, incredibly powerful active, combined with insane burst potential through two prong attacks. Her active converts light, hearts, jammer, and poison orbs to water orbs as well as increasing the skyfall chance of water orbs by 15% for 4 turns on a 10 turn cooldown. She essentially combines the actives of several monsters into one and greatly eases team building strain in terms of active management. By removing jammer and poison orbs, you can save a full board active and the enhnaced skyfall mechanic can overwrite other skyfall abilities created by certain bosses. Scheat‘s base stats are powerful when matching two prong attacks, but her 653 attack falls flat when matching rows. However, she is still a great candidate for the attack latent Tamadras as a means to further augment her TPA potential. Water two prong attack teams are still not as popular as their row based cousin, and perhaps the best team fit for Scheat is Rukia . As a side note, a lack of skill bind resist can impose restrictions in team building if you wish to achieve 100% immunity. Overall, Scheat is a fun card to own, but may remain a sleeping powerhouse due to a lack of viable teams she can sub on.
Australis Machine / God —- + 4 turn skyfall 10 turn CD	Upon first inspection, I thought Australis was a girl. Maybe it was those thighs, but regardless, Australis is pushing the idea that wood row based teams are viable by bringing a walloping 5 and no other awakenings. Australis can function on is a Sylvie / Freyja as Awoken Astaroth cannot use machine or god types. Row based teams benefit heavily from large scale orb changers as you want to make at least 2 rows when trying to burst a boss down and Australis will almost guarantee 2 unique rows worth of wood orbs. Building upon that, you can also use him on Bankai Perseus teams as his double skill bind resist and diverse awakenings help make up for Australis. Stat distribution wise, he is quite evenly spread and has 780 weighted when max level. Unfortunately, you need to be careful using him as a sub because she offers no SBR , skill boosts , or time extend awakenings. This forces you to bring subs who provide these awakenings as you do not wish to become skill locked nor have to stall for too long for actives. Overall, Australis is a valuable sub for wood row teams, but will require planning to safely accommodate on teams due to a lack of diverse awakenings.

Happy Puzzling!

Coop/Multiplayer

My Perspective on Multiplayer

May 19, 2016 Mantastic 19 Comments

Multiplayer/Coop has been live in NA for a modest period of time now and has given us numerous laughs, heart aches, and frustrations. Puzzle and Dragons was originally a solo game that could be picked up and put down at will. There was less pressure to perform or match quickly and you could even put aside your device mid dungeon and come back at a later time. These features combined with the whole match orb/collect pretty girls/puzzle process medium is probably the reason many of you are playing today. For the most part, PAD has been a solo game with only some interaction between other players. Then came the introduction of Best Friends, Ranking Dungeons, and finally Mutliplayer.

Best Friends gave new meaning to virtual partnerships as it granted players access to numerous benefits and access to more leads for prolonged periods of time. A smashing success overall. On the otherhand, Ranking Dungeons have probably been met with mixed reviews. Granted these are completely optional and only award a one time, varying reward and you do not need to attempt (but should at least for the participation rewards). Introducing the game’s only PvP (player versus player) component can be frustrating, especially given the limitations of the scoring system, but again it is completely optional and does not have too big of an impact in the long run. Another bad side effect is the feeling of not being good enough as you are given a (albeit inaccurate) percentage ranking based on a poorly designed scoring system.

Now we have the Multiplayer feature which has a diverse array of emotions from players of all progression and skill levels. Upon Coop’s initial release, I wrote a nice little post on my initial impressions if you care to take a look. However, after about two months of largely playing with myself, I have a much stronger opinion formulated on multiplayer. As a disclaimer, my alt account, Fantastic, is nearing rank 500 and is quite developed and I am able to form a very powerful Blue Sonia team between my two accounts. This allows me to excessively play with myself as I always have a partner who is ready to go. Continue reading My Perspective on Multiplayer →

Godfest

Player’s Choice Godfest and You

May 18, 2016 Mantastic 15 Comments

Introduction

Player’s Choice Godfest (PCGF) has been announced for North America and the polls are open from 5/18 – 5/22. Each player can vote only once and there is no way to cancel or change your choice once submitted, so please choose carefully. There is lots of different advice or strategies floating around as to how you should spend your vote and I want to provide some clarification:

Vote for what can benefit you the most. Just because Dark Kali is a dream sub for some people, does not mean you should be voting for her if it cannot benefit you.
Think about what is being released in the next month and how that may influence your team line up. For instance, Xiang Mei should go live soon and if you plan on using her, voting for Gadius and Uriel would be wise.
Sometimes, the bottom voted gods are only separated by a thin margin of votes and holding off on voting until the final day can help swing the tide in your favour.
You ideally want to have as many favourable gods featured and if your first choice is already winning by a landslide, vote for something else as this will help ensure your second choice gets in
6 star Godfest Exclusives have very low rates and if your primary goal is acquiring these, it would be best to wait until a 4x GFE event
Please vote HERE before Sunday, May 22

PCGF vs 4x GFE

This will be a common question on many player’s minds as these two event are arguably the best time to roll the REM. Before I go into more detail, take a look at the voting results of a 1,000+ pulls from the previous PCGF:

Granted this is a small sample size, but the rates of the coveted 6 star GFE are distressingly low. You can read more about the previous PCGF in my other post HERE.

Which Godfest to roll?
	PCGF	4x GFE
Frequency	2 times per year	Random
Benefits who?	New accounts/less developed boxes Great way to fill in the numerous gaps in your monster box Those who are not chasing MP or 6* GFE	Veteran players Focus is MP and 6* GFE Those with very developed monster boxes

Conclusion

Keeping those points in mind, it is up to you to determine where to spend your hard earned stones. If you are missing numerous featured gods in the PCGF, this may be your time to shine and acquire numerous gods to round out your roster. Player’s Choice Godfests are ideal for the vast majority of the PAD population and is an exciting time of the year and hopefully the 25 voted gods are powerful and relevant so please be careful when voting.

I will also have an in-depth post covering the 25 featured gods once the results have been released. That post will have the same insight and information contained in my regular godfest analysis and will help you determine how to better use your new pulls.

Happy Puzzling!

Ranking Dungeons

10MM Ranking Tournament Strategies

May 16, 2016 Mantastic 26 Comments

Quick! Everyone grab your Shiva Dragons for a top 1% ranking and shiny hat. Wait…Awoken Horus , what are you doing here? Welcome to the 10 Million Downloads Ranking Tournament that features a pre-set rainbow team that somewhat evens the playing field as everyone is forced to use the same team. As such, there will be no theory crafting component, but instead I will do a brief run down of the dungeon and my strategies used to achieve a high score. All players should complete this ranking dungeon due to the ease due to the floors not attacking and having a full hypermaxed team. Lastly, you have a chance at acquiring a spirit jewel or an evolved Fagan and a hefty amount of rank experience.

Ranking dungeon scoring criteria

In these ranking dungeons, we are scored based on 3 criteria:

Average combos made: 5,000 points per combo
Time Remaining: 500 points per second remaining
Maximum damage: up to 10,000 points if you hit 40 million.

With these in mind, you want to plan/match as quickly as possible to score higher while sweeping every floor. A higher amount of combos will be favourable and needed to burst through several of the floors.

Your team at a glance

Each member of your team is max level, +297 and max skilled.

Awoken Horus (Leader)

Enhance fire orbs & +2s orb movement
4 turn CD

16x ATK – 4 colours
20.25x ATK – 5 colours
1.5x ATK using an active
45.56x ATK – 5 colours + active

Subs
Antares 2,418 ATK	Alreshca 1,948 ATK	Spica 1,980 ATK	Castor 2,575 ATK
1 turn haste 7 turn CD	1 turn haste 7 turn CD	1 turn haste 7 turn CD	1 turn haste 7 turn CD

With Awoken Horus as your leader, you must be able to consistently match 4 different colours (ideally 5) to trigger your damage multiplier. Furthermore, using an active grants a significant damage boost and I will go into detail after the dungeon introduction as to where you should be using your actives. Your strongest element is fire because both Horus and Antares sharing the fire element. Dark is your second strongest due to the sub colour from Horus and the high attack on Castor. You can utilize fire and dark TPA for even more damage. Lastly, each of your subs convert the useless heart orbs into a usable colour while providing 1 turn of haste.

Dungeon at a glance

The dungeon consists of 6 floors that will not attack you and simply stare at your while you play.

Floor	Hp/defence	Active to use
1	1,225,486 / 376
2	1,225,486 / 376
3	188,889/977,778
4	1,225,486 / 376
5	4,031,042 / 376
6	4,968,040 / 653

With the exception of Meimei on floor 3, all floors simply have a specific amount of health you need to nuke down. Meimei has nearly 1 million defence, and you must use Antares to generate more fire orbs (they will be enhanced due to the countless awakenings on the team) and you simply need to match your 5 colours and fire TPA to pierce through. The rest of the floors are require an active of some sort to proc your additional damage, but try to use Spica on floor 2 to generate enough wood orbs to deal with the water based Karin. Horus used on floor 1 will be ready again for the boss.

Do note that the actives listed per floor are simply a guideline, you may have to deviate if things do not go according to plan, but it helps to have a template to autopilot off of.

Strategy

The strategy is quite straightforward due to a lack of dungeon mechanics and is mostly a test of your rainbow matching skills. If you can follow the active usage chart above, you should be able to sweep every floor without too much difficulty. The key to scoring high is being able to plan and execute your matches quickly. You only have access to 2 time extend awakenings which may feel frustrating and requires you to be precise in your matching.

Video

My top 1.8% ranking play through that has some room for improvement but should at least give some inspiration for achieving a high score. There is no voice-over as there is not much to say and mostly consists of me rambling to myself or swearing. Upon reflection, I should have dropped the orb sooner on the first few floors to save a few extra seconds.

Conclusion

Maybe I will get a hat this time, but it is going to require a modest amount of RNG to score higher as the max damage is where a large portion of your points can come from. Perhaps if I can save Antares for a later floor, I may be able to burst higher, but will still require more runs to do so.

Happy Puzzling!

Collab REM Reviews

[Updated] Final Fantasty REM Review and Analysis

May 16, 2016 Mantastic 157 Comments

Introduction

The Final Fantasy Collab is one of the most popular and powerful collaborations available in Puzzle and Dragons. The various cards feature unique actives along with powerful leadership potential. Furthermore, GungHo has significantly buffed many of these cards to keep them relevant in today’s meta along with introducing new characters.

This post will cover all the changes that have been implemented for November, 2016 along with my thoughts and commentary for each of the monsters.

On a different note, all players above rank 50 will gain a free roll in the Final Fantasy Collab and you may get lucky.

Rolls overview

Final Fantasy REM Overview
6 Star Rolls
5 Star Rolls
4 Star Rolls
MP Shop
Gift

Note about Skill Inheritance

Any card that comes out of a Collab REM or REM that can achieve at least a 5-star form is able to be used as an assistant for Skill Inheritance. This means all the Final Fantasy cards can be used as assistants and you should think twice before vendoring any of them. For more information about Skill Inheritance, feel free to check out my guide HERE.

Video commentary

—video goes here—-

6 Star Rolls

The following monsters are both the rarest and most powerful cards available from the Final Fantasy REM. However, each day of the Final Fantasy Collab will feature one 6-star having a higher than normal roll rate on a rotating basis:

28/11 (Mon): Tifa

29/11 (Tue): Noctis

30/11 (Wed): Cloud

1/12 (Thurs): Cecil

2/12 (Fri): Yuna

3/12 (Sat): Sephiroth

4/12 (Sun): Lightning

5/12 (Mon): Tifa

6/12 (Tue): Noctis

7/12 (Wed): Cloud

8/12 (Thurs): Cecil

9/12 (Fri): Yuna

10/12 (Sat): Sephiroth

11/12 (Sun): Lightning

Continue reading [Updated] Final Fantasty REM Review and Analysis →

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Introduction

How to transfer skills

Additional Awakenings:

Greco-Roman 1 +

Awoken Hino +

Leader Skill Changes

Skuld -> 27.56x ATK

Odins gain 1.5x ATK for clearing 4+ connected orbs

Light Metatron gains unconditional multiplier

Light Kali becomes 56.25x ATK (36 -> 56.25)

Sonias, Gadius, & Typhon

Egyptian 1

Kalis & Mechanical GFE

Introduction

PCGF vs 4x GFE

Conclusion

Ranking dungeon scoring criteria

Your team at a glance

Dungeon at a glance

Strategy

Video

Conclusion

Introduction

Rolls overview

Final Fantasy REM Overview

Note about Skill Inheritance

Video commentary

6 Star Rolls

Puzzling those Dragons