Leads
| SS |   |
| S |          |
| A+ |                   |
| A |             |
Subs
| S |      |
| A+ |            |
| A |                       |
Game8 drops another bomb; this time it’s the promotion of Yomi Dragon to SS. I won’t pretend to understand why this change was made. After all, I didn’t truly understand how amazing Ra Dragon was until I used it. It’s easy to look at things on paper and think “wow, that’s strong”, but you don’t get a true feel for it until you actually play with it. I’m running under the assumption that they now feel Yomi Dragon has a comparable Arena clear rate to Ra Dragon rather than anything that may have changed for the team (not much lately). I have a hard time believing any team can clear the Arena as consistently as Ra Dragon, but I’ll withhold judgment until I get a chance to play with it; hopefully in a few days. I was going to be happy just buying another quality farming lead, but if it’s comparable to Ra Dragon that’s a huge bonus.
Sure seems like Okuninushi should make the sub list now.
Edit: Thinking about it a bit more, this change makes a fair bit of sense. Assuming a team of Yomi Dragon / Yomi Dragon / Haku / Okuninushi / Zeus Stratios / Yomi Dragon, the team has all the tools to clear the Arena’s hurdles (at least what I consider hurdles from the perspective of my Ra Dragon team) and plays much easier than Ra Dragon. The earlier floors are much more consistent since they require less orbs. The RCV is essentially the same and the team has three heartmakers as opposed to two. Sopdet can be cleared with TPAs and the chance for surprise skyfall activations are minimal compared to Ra Dragon. Zhou Yu, Parvati and Kagutsuchi can be handled gracefully with Okuni’s delay. Extreme King and Meimei can be pierced with Okuni’s damage enhance. DQ Hera can be tanked with near full dark resist latents. Haku takes care of Beelzebub. Zeus takes care of the Kalis. Seems pretty solid. The only real question is if the damage is consistent enough over a long dungeon; it seems like a yes, but I’d still like to run the team in person before passing final judgement. I was going to buy two for farming anyways, so it’s all upside if it’s a consistent Arena team.
Also, I know many like to dismiss the value of tier lists and I agree the information they present can be dubious, but if it wasn’t for this I wouldn’t have investigated Yomi Dragon further and continued to be content with Ra Dragon. I think using these lists as a starting place for investigation and discussion is a fine use.
Setsu's PAD Blog 
I wonder if Saria is really that much better than Apoc as a sub. TE and an extra row, yes, but lacks the SBR.
Apoc’s board has better synergy with followup orb changers (e.g. DQ), and Apoc is the superior sub on Kanna and Yuria teams.
Dunno. Maybe Apoc is just too ugly to make it to A tier.
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She really isn’t, but popularity is a thing that strongly influences tier lists and Apoc had been bad for so long.
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Apocalypse is preeeetty ugly, but Thor managed to overcome that obstacle somehow so there’s hope for him yet.
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i’ve been seeing random claims that yomidra is ~70% while looking for videos, but I can’t say I expected the SS ranking ever.
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Well this makes me preemptively makes me feel better spending 600k mp in a few days 🙂
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Any sub to replace second yomidra??
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I have seen and am going to run akechi mitsuhide. Pandora also shows up pretty often. Hypered with 30 dark resist you can still tank hera. This is my plan for arena farming, as I don’t have Isis or a 2nd dkali.
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Damn 2 Yomi Dragons.. So expensive ><. Do you think a second Haku could serve the same purpose or an Akechi?
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I’d say it’s probably, in order, Yomidra, Summer Pandora, Akechi, Normal Pandora. But you can reach the HP threshold with any of them, and they all serve basically the same purpose.
The biggest advantage of Yomidra/Pandora in the slot is you have 9 skill boosts.
The advantage of Akechi is the enhance, in case you get your dark orbs changed away.
I actually prefer Akechi for that reason, but it’s hard to argue with the raw stats on yomidra.
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Damn all this makes me feel like i wasted so much MP and resources on Ra Dragon…. He’s strong as hell, but it just seems like Yomi Dragon is that much better due to ease of activation.
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I wouldn’t consider having the strongest team in the game as a waste.
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Then you need the latents, too. I probably won’t run Yomi Dragon in the Arena until we get farmable resist latents.
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Thanks for the advice Setsu. I had forgotten about latents being farmable at some point.
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I’m going to buy the resist latents for the lead (to attract besties) but I might accept the 20% Hera death until I can farm them for the rest of the team. Ugh 25 dark resist latents….
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If we follow JP, it will take 2 months for the dark resists to rotate into the coin dungeons from whenever we first get the 5x4s. I really hope NA makes these available to us soon.
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I recently bought into the ShivaDra hype after teaming with him to farm Sandalphon, but from what I’ve been reading lately, YomiDra is still a fast farming lead, and is way better at clearing the Arena, so maybe I should buy him instead. I don’t have an Okuninushi, unfortunately, but maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll make it into PCGF.
https://www.padherder.com/user/alphafirestar/
Pretty sure my ShivaDra team is much stronger, but YomiDra/Haku/Akechi/???/Stratios might still work…
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It’s a tough decision for sure. I’d lean toward Yomi Dragon, though, since having an Arena team is an important part of the game now. Here’s hoping you land an Okuni soon.
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Yeah, that’s a very good point. Buying Shiva Dragon was only a recent thought – I was initially planning on spending my MP on a Ra Dragon if I could land at least one DKali during 4x GFE so that I could work on an Arena team, but that didn’t happen. Rolling an Okuni (or making do without) is a lot more reasonable than hoping for two DKalis, Isis, and then needing to learn to play Ra Dragon on top of every thing else!
(*knock on wood so that I don’t jinx my chances of ever rolling Okuni now*)
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Quick thoughts: You have a very solid Shiva dragon team in Ares/Ares/Urd/RValk, or slot in a god type CaoCao if you don’t need a board change.
You have a near ideal shiva dragon team in Andro/Andro/Hermes/Mori. Awoken Karin is also an option if that’s how you want to roll.
Your Yomidra team is also near-ideal. Okuni is a pretty great card for yomidra on all counts, but you have other great options in a second Haku, or Pandora, either of which is great.
Now, one factor you didn’t mention: IAP or no? Based on you box, I’m guessing you did at some point, or maybe still do. If you stone heavily for stamina to farm duneons very quickly, nobody beats shivagon. If not, Yomidra IS pretty fast at farming, just not as fast as shivagon. On the flipside, shivagon has less fun in the arena than Yomidra.
All in all, if you were to choose between Shivagon and Yomidra, I’d say it comes down to this question: Super fast farming, or access to arena? I’d personally lean towards Yomidra in your situation as it’s better to focus on the endgame before focusing on farming IMO.
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Wow, never thought I’d use god-type Cao Cao, but maybe it’s time to skill up a third one :O I’ve been using Ares/Urd/RValk/RG Cao Cao – just because he’s hypered, and having the delay is nice, but I suppose going RD makes more sense.
If I were to make a Neptune Dragon team, I’d probably go with Karin over Mori, just because she’s so cute, but double haste seems pretty great. I never even thought about building a Nep team though! Interesting to learn that I have a great team for him, haha.
I assume people use A Haku for Yomidra, even though she doesn’t get his God LS buff? For now I’m planning on keeping one A Haku and one D/D, just in case I ever need the rows/god/devil typing.
I do IAP – it varies month to month, but I spend a pack-ish each month. Trying to cut back, or at least cut back on how much I roll the REM, but so far my efforts haven’t been very successful… I am trying to at least transfer over to using stones for stamina more than on gambling, though! Although now I suddenly really want an Okuninushi….aah!
If Yomidra is able to still farm fairly quickly, AND will let me start clearing the arena and collecting piis from it, it seems like it is better to focus on him (her? it?) first, so I think that’s the way I’ll go. Thanks for all the input! (Yomidra is also slightly less ugly than Shivadra, so that’s another point..)
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Awoken Haku is God/Healer.
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Hah, for some reason I was positive she was Dragon/Healer! Whoops ^^:
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Oh yeah, crappy Shinrabansho silver Ark is not the worst substitute for Okuni. You lose the delay which is one of the main selling points, but you get a damage boost, a skill bind resist and enough dark resist awakenings to severely cut down how many dark latents you need to buy.
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Oh interesting! I never thought I’d really use him, haha. Kinda regret not fully skilling him last time his dungeon was around now…
I also realized that I have D/W Batman as well, but that I never added him to my Padherder, so he could also work as the damage boost. Batman’s stats are better, and maybe the awakenings are “generally” better? Cutting back on the number of dark latents I’d need to buy is a really nice point in Ark’s favor though, wow! If we get the extra awakening that Japan has, that’s a ton of damage saved.
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Ark has the advantage of being a god, though. It’s just a shame that his cooldown is so prohibitive.
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Oh yeah, that helps too. Ark it is then! (But let’s be honest, I’m just going to roll for Okuni the next time he comes around)
It would be nice to have a home for Batman eventually though 😛
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I have seen some clears using Ark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkayEkzyEC8 for example.Still has okuninushi though, which seems odd.
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I’ll watch the video in a bit, but he’s using Ark in place of Zeus Stratios, and swapping Akechi/Ark to other monsters makes the team weaker to Athena and Light Zeus.
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Wow. Some things went well in the run, but they made it look easy. Like, if you have the whole team assembled, you only need average matching skills to make it work. And the run didn’t even take that long. I don’t know about SS tier, but Yomidra is a lot better than I thought.
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shivadragon is generally better 5×4, he’s still good in no-awokens (where yomidra doesn’t work, because you need enhanced orbs). Shivadra is still a better farming lead in general, since he can kill trash floors easily with just 3 or 4 red orbs.
That being said, if you want to farm arena, and have a good farming lead, but can only afford 1, I’d say yomidra is a better buy.
If you have “The” Radra team, I wouldn’t be sad about buying/latenting out that team. It’s still exceptional and can deal with all the threats. I don’t, so I’ll be latent-ing out Yomidra.
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Wholeheartedly agree with using lists as a jumping off point for discussion. It’s unfortunate to see all the bickering that they cause on certain other PAD sites. Also, nice to see YomiD upped to SS as I hope that means more people will run with one as it’s the one I plan on getting :).
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Fun fact Setsu, game 8 changed their definition of SS. Now it’s just: “(Sランクを超えるモンスター。闘技場、チャレ10などの超高難易度を比較的安定して攻略できる2体を選出)”
Or: “Able to clear C10 and the Arena with relative stability.”
Which is good. without posting detailed breakdown of successes and failures, 80% might as well have been BS. I think people get too hyped up over percents though. Like, the forums are freaking out about whether yomidra is SS because she’s 80% or because they changed the definition of SS, and I’m just kicking back and enjoying the show.
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That’s interesting. Here’s hoping they have an exit strategy for their SS tier. I can totally see them adding SSS and SSSS as the power creep advances instead of just moving everything a tier down when there’s enough leaders in the SS tier.
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I think “Relative Stability” is a reasonable exit strategy. If enough things reach arena consistency I expect we’ll see SS go away, and/or some other harder dungeon (which is a scary thought) become the new “bar” for SS.
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I think I’m going to buy a YomiDragon – I’ve got Okuni, Akechi, and 2 Pandora – but I don’t have any Haku. Any ideas on potential substitutes for her? Might just have to try to roll for one >.<
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I’d try to roll for the haku, you need a board change for Beelzbub, and none of them are close to haku. Thankfully we’re on chinese spirits on sunday 😀
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The only other dark-gods that have board changers are DKali, HKali and Lumiel, not exactly the greatest of replacements. There’s really no substitute for Haku.
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Hi Setsu,
You mentioned that you planned on buying two Yomidras even before this announcement. I was wondering why that was? Does the third Yomidra create a loop of some kind?
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No, but it makes the team a lot more consistent. I just didn’t imagine this kind of consistency.
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So what is the optimal latent spread for the 2x yomidra team? What would the spread be if one were to sub in akechi for the second yomidra?
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Just stack dark latents until you can survive the DQ Hera preemptive. You should have enough HP with Akechi.
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If you run YomiDra, Akechi, Haku, okuni, Zeus, Yomidra. you need the full 30 dark resist.
If you run Yomidra, Yomidra, Haku, Okuni, Zeus, Yomidra, you gain about 1000 health, which frees up 2 latent slots, I’d suggest water resist (for Hera-is, Abosolute Zero) and (when it comes out) Skill Delay Resist on a yomidra, to guard against Dkali locking out all your heartmakers.
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How important is Okuninushi and the second YomiDra for the YomiDra team? I’ve sort of been half assing my way through PAD but I’m finally looking for a team to go for gold on. I have a bunch of teams that I feel are almost optimized but not quite there. I did the math and I can make enough monster points to get 1 MP Dragon without hurting my collection too bad (2 if I gut most of my stuff but I wouldn’t really be interested in that). Any advice on what direction I should go and what I should prioritize rolling for?
https://www.padherder.com/user/BillionStorm/monsters
I’m hyper maxing Awoken Shiva first because I’ve had a hard case of team ADD and decided I need to just +297 something already. Probably should have went for Awoken Yomi but don’t really want to turn back now that I’m so far on Shiva.
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I don’t think Okuni is critical for Yomi Dragon unless you’re thinking of taking it into the Arena. There are good alternatives for the second Yomi Dragon, too.
You have solid Shiva and Yomi teams. It’s hard to say which is better, but I personally would go with Yomi, especially since it can transition into a good Yomi Dragon team. I think at this point you just need to identify which things you want most and target them when you can get the most secondary value. You probably want an Urd for Shiva, but I don’t think you need much for Yomi.
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