Implications of the Isis HP Buff on the Ra Dragon Arena Latent Setup

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With the 8.6.1 update and the wave of awoken uevo buffs, Isis also got a pretty nice boost: +200 HP and +30 RCV. While stat buffs like these are usually inconsequential, any small amount of HP gains could have significant impact on the Ra Dragon Arena latent setup. Just running some rough numbers here’s the impact the change can have on the dacho latent setup (11 dark, 4 wood, 3 light, 1 fire, 1 water, 10 HP):

  • If you keep the 10 HP latents, you can drop 1 wood and 1 light latent.
  • If you keep the resist latent setup, you can drop 4 HP latents. This means you and your friend can safely add skill delay resists to their Ra Dragons without having to overwrite any resist latents. Of course, friends that still have 5 HP latents are still compatible.

As usual, I’m not 100% confident in my math, so do the calculations yourself to double check or wait for another source to confirm it (hopefully someone out of JP that can confirm it in-game). But if this is true, then this makes it really easy to incorporate skill delay resists into builds that existed before the latent was released.

25 thoughts on “Implications of the Isis HP Buff on the Ra Dragon Arena Latent Setup”

  2. What are your thoughts on Parvarti and lakshmis significant leader skill buff? Do you think it changes their arena viability?

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    • More damage and an easier activation is great and increases Arena consistency, but I don’t know how much it actually changes in the big picture. Damage only solves part of the issue for those teams. Lakshmi is still bindable and Parvati still lacks a SBR. I’d imagine we’ll be seeing both of them back on the Game8 list soon, though.

      I’d say Lakshmi’s +700 HP is as big if not a bigger buff than the leader skill.

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    • As the resident Lakshmi enthusiast, I can share my opinion on her. I have a bit of a long-winded discussion of key threats over on the Lakshmi guide on the forums, but I’ll keep it brief here. The increased multiplier gives her about 50% more damage, which is significant, and the 1400 HP doesn’t really help tanking anything that she couldn’t before, but it does give a little wiggle room, especially if talking about latents. She used to be able to tank DQ Hera with 30 latents and a high HP team, now that same team only needs 25, and several lower HP teams can now tank her, including the “ideal” team of AKarin/Amberjack/Andro/Gabriel. (If my math is correct)

      Quickie list of top 5 (?) arena threats and solutions:
      Kali: Can now more easily do enough damage without a boosting active.

      Parvati: Easy to chip away, easy to save hearts, burst at ~40%.

      Meimei: Possibly Lakshmi’s biggest threat. Use as few actives as possible, but may require a full board combo for 3 rows.

      Sophdet (the damage absorbing Egyptian?): Low damage isn’t really an issue with base 6.25x attack.

      Floor 19: Yes, every single boss on floor 19 is a top 5 threat in their own right. You’ll want to go into floor 20 with your full board combo ready, so that means you can’t use your coup de gras on 19. Which is problematic, as these guys are VERY hard to stall on. Short of Kali and Meimei, this ENTIRE FLOOR is the biggest stumbling block for Lakshmi. A few thoughts on each boss, in order of hardest to easiest to survive:

      Beelzebub pretty much requires using your full board right off the bat, and then hits you for a LOT of damage each turn (37K every other turn, 26K with 30 latents.), which you need to fully heal until you can get your changer back up. If you hit him below half… you’re probably dead. Not necessarily a GG, but certainly very close.

      Athena will kill you if you don’t have at least 28.6K HP, I know it says 30% chance, but how lucky do you feel? Don’t hit her below half, or she heals. (I don’t recall if she heals back to full as green. If she does, GG.16M HP without a full board combo… XD)

      Hera IS is a bit of a problem if you hit her below 75% before going for the kill since she binds random cards. Hit her below 50% for a bad time… Hit her below 30% for an even worse time… Basically, it’s in your best interests to one shot her from aove 75%, or at LEAST above 50% if you’re feeling lucky.

      Hera UR is a pain to stall on, but nowhere near as bad as Athena or Beelzebub. The trick is, you hit her below 50% on turn 1, and you get a free second turn… assuming you can get through her combo shield that is.

      DQ Hera is actually the easiest one… if you have the latents for her preemptive. With full latents, her other hits are laughable. Just… try not to hit her below half, as that’s gonna be a bad time…

      A quick thought: Lakshmi can output a lot of damage very easily, and she can also stall pretty well. The trick is, she can’t generally output millions of damage without an active. As such, the biggest problem for Lakshmi doing the Arena is planning ahead where it’s OK to stall for skills. Because of how RNG the arena is, you’ll need to be able to quickly adjust your playstyle if you encounter a bad spawn or need to use an unanticipated active.

      So in my semi-professional opinion, Lakshmi will be able to clear the arena once these buffs drop, but I don’t personally see her as an Arena farming lead.

      I have a friend who’s big on Parvati, so I’ll be sure to ask them for their thoughts, I’ll get back to you on that one.

      TLDR: Lakshmi can BEAT arena, but she probably shouldn’t FARM arena. (Unless I’m wrong. And I’d be OK with being wrong!)

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  3. If you keep the resist latent setup, you can drop 4 HP latents. which means you can add 4 Skill delay latents. but doesnt that mean you can add 4 skill delay latents to your team rather than just your ra dragon? If we are talking about mp cost wise, then of course no ty, but since resist latents are now farmable, you can reallocate your resistances to your ra dragon and add Skill delay to your subs. Since the only relevant skill delays are Dkali (0-1), Hinokagutsuchi (0-4), and technically sphinx (2) (thoth, you can stall out). id put hp/Dark/dark/Skill Delay/wood(or light, im not sure which ones you put on your dkali first) on ra dragon, and then put a skill delay on both d kalis and isis. This way, your d kalis will never get skill delayed by Dkali (boss) and isis shield will always be up every 3 turns

    (tbh, i dont have ra drag, so i dont know how useful isis shield is)

    Your thoughts, Setsu?

    However, now that i think about it, I guess for the sake of only targeting kagutsuchi (because you can use ra drag to give your other skills 2 turns= 2 skill delay latents per monster), and because you can usually stall on d kali, and the sake of saving latents, hp/4 skill delay on ra drag is fine.

    btw, Sorry for long comment.

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    • I don’t understand what you want thoughts on. You could always put skill delay resists on your subs, you can just put more on now that you have an extra 200 HP to work with. One of the major points of dacho’s setup is to be compatible with the highest number of Ra Dragon friends and that’s accomplished by putting the cheapest latents on him (the other is to have the subs be as useful as possible on other teams). Now you can add skill delays to the old build at no cost outside the MP to buy them. For those that don’t want to overwrite latents they don’t have to since the skill delay resists aren’t that useful on the team, but they can still benefit from friends that do decide to do it.

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      • Ah, my bad. What i meant is that i want thoughts on is which is more ideal for running arena (with the dacho’s setup – 4 hp latents+ 4 skill delay latents) taking in account the isis buff: 4 Skill delay latents across the team or 4 on ra dragon?

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        • What I was saying was there’s no practical difference since you still can put skill delay resists on your subs as well (there’s at least 1 or 2 slots you can play with), but now you can just put more. Dacho’s setup is preferred from a friend aspect because more people adopted it for the reasons I listed. So it’s up to you if you want to be rogue or want more usable friends. In my opinion worrying about skill delay resists isn’t worth too much thought since they aren’t that great on the team anyways.

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  5. Even before the Isis HP buff, dacho made a video of swapping out his own ra-d latent’s from HPx5 to HPx2, Skill Delayx2 and 1 wood resist. Indra was rainbow latents. With this setup, you can pair with any other ra-d friend with HPx5 and still pass all the HP checks, and your friend can use the your lead provided they have rainbow latents on Indra..

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  6. Dacho’s chart said that the 10 HP latent set up only requires 27 latents total with 3 being optional. Does the math you did for this latent set up disregard those 3 latent set up or does it only work for the latent set up you mentioned? (11,4,3,1,1,10)

    Meaning, can I drop the 4 HPs only if my latent set up is 11 dark, 4 wood, 3 light, 1 fire, 1 wood, 10 HP?

    or can I still have those 3 optional latents and the only required ones are 10 dark, 4 wood, 3 light, 3 non required optional?

    I have a feeling that the fire and water latents don’t really matter but what about that dark. Does the 10 dark vs 11 dark matter?

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    • It looks like you’ll need the 11th dark resist (the one that was once optional). The wood and light resists are the same (4 and 3) and the 1 fire and 1 water were always optional. I can’t stress enough that you should do the math yourself before committing any latents.

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  8. Necroing this thread a bit.

    With the full resist setup (6 Wood, 5 Light, 13 Dark), that was only 24 slots anyways. So I still need to do the math but I think you’re freed even more?

    So do you have any new thoughts on optimizing given resist latents are farmable and this +200hp buff? Would you reallocate and optimize for minimizing slots and what would that be like?

    Thanks!

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    • I don’t think resist latents being farmable should have any bearing on your setup. The only real reason to conserve slots is for skill delay resists which you have to buy anyways. I’d be more worried about having a setup that’s compatible with the Arena 2 team (Orochi instead of Isis) and whatever your friends are running. However, I don’t plan on farming Arena 2 — at least not with the current teams we have — so I’m not going to put the effort into thinking of Ra Dragon resists anymore.

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      • Side note, I went through your calc and I think in your formula, it should be HP-HPBuffer, not HP+HPBuffer.

        It’s easiest to see if you increase that to say 1000, and it says you need less latents. But unless there was a hit that took you to exactly 1 or 0, right on the edge, then this calculation wouldn’t matter.

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