JP Aggregate Leader List β
| 1 |
   |
| 2 |
   |
| 3 |
            |
| ❀ |
     |
Game8 and Multiplayer. Game8’s changes seem to be an attempt to get ahead of the curve by preemptively adjusting for what will likely be the biggest change in 9.1: just about all dungeons can be run in co-op. The nature of co-op significantly changes team building priorities, but the two factors that seem to have most influence over Game8’s changes are HP multipliers and SBRs, or the deprecation thereof. Since multiplayer teams combine their HP pools, HP multipliers are obviously less valuable especially if there’s no corresponding RCV multiplier to help recover from large hits and gravities. A leader’s lack of SBRs also have a diminished impact as you only need five SBRs over eight subs rather than four, making a once strict team building constraint into an afterthought. As someone that doesn’t play much multiplayer I’m not looking forward to having to factor it into my judgments. If the lists become too multiplayer-biased — which I’m hoping they won’t — I may just end this post series since it won’t be worth my time to do the analysis since I don’t care about co-op outside of farming possibilities.
JP Aggregate Leader List β Changes of Note
| Card | Notes |
|
Change: 2➞1
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. |
|
Change: 3➞2
Some may have questioned Astaroth’s high rating on the GameWith list, but with Game8 also backing it up there’s probably some amount of truth to it. In my opinion, the lack of time extends makes the team significantly worse than it seems on paper. |
|
Change: ❀➞3
Perhaps AppMedia isn’t as stupid as once thought? There’s some overlap here with DQXQ so I’ll cover that in their section. |
|
Change: Added to 3
Sephiroth always had the raw power — and was the Machine Zeus solo farmer of choice — but it was difficult to meet his type and color requirements while also reaching 100% SBR. This hasn’t changed. However, co-op play address the SBR part and with inheritance and the co-op HP boost, team composition is almost brainless now. |
New Card Holding Tank
| Card | Notes |
 |
I’m quite happy with my starter getting some love, but I’m not really sure how much staying power they’ll have. However, the amount of offensive power you get considering the ease of use and activation is pretty ridiculous. Teams like these will benefit greatly from the co-op update as HP thresholds will be less of a factor. |
 |
Despite their appearance on the Game8 list, I’m still not much of a fan of Apollo and Persephone. I’ve never denied that they’re good, but I also don’t think they’re elite. My main point of contention is that their awakenings promote a hybrid TPA- and OE-based play style, but that’s so wrong on so many levels. Pairing TPAs with a 14x multiplier results in a fairly pathetic burst output since TPAs make inefficient use of board space. One might argue that the OEs could help, and they do, but OEs scale with the amount of orbs in a given match, thus pairing them with TPAs isn’t as lucrative as with rows. Rows are generally preferred by tank teams for their higher burst potential, but these leads have none. Sure, you can run them with row subs, but you’re missing so much damage from your leaders, especially when you consider the best row leaders now have three rows. However, I’ll admit that fixating on those points was a bit shortsighted. Their actives are great, they’re basically unkillable and there’s a lot of sub flexibility. Persephone is basically the first dark team where you can run all the best killer subs — fire Haku and Machine Hera come to mind first — without being punished, so maybe there’s more than enough damage there to make up for the inefficiencies I previously mentioned. |
 |
Ranked Sites: AppMedia (S)
For all their changes, Game8 snubbed Xin Hua. I’m not sure I like Persephone all that much more, even considering the severely constrained sub pool. At least for Game8, they state that the difficulty of creating the ideal team isn’t a factor in their ratings, but it certainly seems to have affected it in this case. |
Jump to: Game8 | GameWith | GameWith Farming | AppMedia | Pad-Plus
Game8
| SS |
|
| S |
|
| A |
|
As stated previously, Game8 seems to be placing some emphasis on co-op where they once explicitly ignored it. They’re updated their ranking criteria to reflect that. One thing that bothers me, though, are the seeming inconsistencies in their ratings, but that’s always been a problem with this site. Are Game8’s musical chairs making a comeback?
Game8 Changes of Note
| Card | Notes |
|
Change: Removed from A
This is the change that upsets me the most. It feels like whoever was in charge of these changes has never actually played both Astaroth and Raoh at the highest level. Astaroth has attributes that make her better — namely bind immunity and generally better RCV — but Raoh also has plenty of advantages, namely a better sub pool and more time extends. If they’re going to give Raoh the boot, I’m fine with that, but to do so while also upgrading Astaroth seems asinine. |
|
Change: Removed from A
I also find this change somewhat questionable. I always preferred Saria-Thor, but I never thought there was enough distinction to rate them differently. |
Jump to: Game8 | GameWith | GameWith Farming | AppMedia | Pad-Plus
GameWith
| SS |
|
| S |
|
| A |
|
| B |
|
Jump to: Game8 | GameWith | GameWith Farming | AppMedia | Pad-Plus
GameWith Farming
| S |
    |
| A |
   |
| B |
     |
Jump to: Game8 | GameWith | GameWith Farming | AppMedia | Pad-Plus
AppMedia
| SS |
|
| S+ |
|
| S |
|
| S- |
      |
Jump to: Game8 | GameWith | GameWith Farming | AppMedia | Pad-Plus
Pad-Plus
| 1 |
|
2 |
|
3 |
|
4 |
|
5 |
|
| 6 |
|
7 |
|
8 |
 |
9 |
|
10 |
|
| 11 |
|
12 |
|
13 |
 |
14 |
|
15 |
|
RIP Rukia.
For details on the aggregation method or each Japanese site used, refer to this page (link someday).
Setsu's PAD Blog 
Raoh / Astaroth confused me too. I have both and after playing around with her a bit Astaroth has been collecting dust. She’s incredibly orb hungry compared to Raoh. It might not seem like much, but having his ATK boost start at 4 orbs makes it so much easier to conserve actives or just quickly hammer through the early floors of dungeons.. I’m past 3500 RCV now with my Raoh team so while I can’t mindlessly stall the way I can with a Norse/Dragonbound or Blonia team I’m not sweating taking a big hit either.
LikeLike
I agree with you on multiplayer. It’s really annoying how hard they’re pushing it – it includes every single dungeon, for half stamina, with free monster points. I’m sure that Arena 3 is going to be designed around it and will probably be nearly impossible solo, especially with the radar dragons as bosses.
Basically they released mutliplayer, players collectively said “meh, I don’t want to”, and GungHo said “We’re going to MAKE you want to, no matter how little you like it”.
LikeLike
THIS exactly. It doesn’t help that it’s ridiculously hard to find other players to play multi with because Gungho doesn’t know how to matchmake games.
LikeLike
Honestly, like if they made match making something like picking a friend leader, then sure, great w.e, but the other part that drives me bonkers is more or less we MUST be playing at the same time… problem is, most of the time we arent -.-. PAD is inherently NOT a good multiplayer game… pushing it is both irritating and asinine.
LikeLike
I totally agree. I like firing PAD up at my convenience; I don’t want to have to also consider someone else’s.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly. Even the new “find a friend room” feature is slow and clunky. They also really need a “go again” button so we don’t have to go through the trouble of making a new room.
If they ever do matchmaking, they really need to make it so your stamina is only consumed upon successfully clearing the dungeon so you don’t rage if you get paired with a troll, an incompetent or someone that just accidentally dropped their orb. This can obviously be abused for clearing harder content, but it’ll be hard to get people to commit even half stamina if they don’t know what they’re getting on the other end.
LikeLike
I think there’s two reasons GungHo is pushing multiplayer. The first is they see the success other mobile games have had with it and felt like they also needed to capitalize on it. The other is that PAD is losing momentum so they’re desperate to do anything to retain players. One of PAD’s biggest weaknesses is the lack of social integration so I think this is a last ditch effort to address that.
But like you said, it feels forced into a game that wasn’t originally designed to support such a thing.
LikeLike
“For all their changes, Game8 snubbed Xin Hua. I’m not sure I like Persephone all that much more, even considering the severely constrained sub pool. At least for Game8, they state that the difficulty of creating the ideal team isn’t a factor in their ratings, but it certainly seems to have affected it in this case.”
Well, she has to HAVE an ideal team to actually MAKE an ideal team… 😛 Jokes aside, They’ll make Akechi’s Uvo Balanced type, and he’ll pair with Typhon to mirror Gadius/Uriel, PLUS sparkles, and Plum will suddenly be viable. Until that point though, I don’t personally think that she’s all that good… Plus, I’m still waiting for that HP multiplier to get added… XD
As for Astaroth vs Raoh, someone on the forums who has played both mentioned that Asty teams have pretty high natural HP since you tend to run healers, and Raoh teams are mostly attacker, and have poor RCV. I play neither team, but that might be a possible reason? RCV doesn’t increase like HP does in co-op, does it?
“I also find this change somewhat questionable. I always preferred Saria-Thor, but I never thought there was enough distinction to rate them differently.”
Agreed, however having both NepTuna and Bonia in the same tier, the two best blue leads, perhaps they felt that I&I/Ryune wasn’t as good as them… though I’d FIERCELY argue the opposite. 😀
LikeLike
4x Xin Hua, Typhon and fire Lucifer. With inheritance it seems like a pretty solid team to me. I was a doubter at first, but all the videos I’ve seen have convinced me otherwise. Not saying she’s elite-level or should even make the list, but she’s at least as good as anything Persephone can field.
Yes, Astaroth has higher RCV and also benefits from Michael’s auto-heals (I already covered her healing in my Arena 1 analysis for her), but that’s not enough for her to be at S while Raoh isn’t even on the list. No, you don’t share RCV in co-op.
LikeLike
I think the bind immunity is a much bigger boon for a leader like astaroth than it usually gets credit for, the fact that Raoh(s) getting bound costs you a pile of health is a really big deal, astaroth doesn’t have to worry about losing a giant chunk of help to a random bind.
That being said, Raoh is very strong and certainly deserves a place on the list, though I do feel he’s inferior to astaroth by a fair margin, if only for being bindable. Also, awoken Artemis is one heck of a boon for Astaroth.
I’m always pretty sad when I look at AppMedia’s list, feels like they are playing a different game than I see/play.
LikeLike
Am I the only one that feels app media has the best list. By giving a s+, s, and s- ranking to a medium size pool, it feels more like like a general outline to reference for the average to above average player.
“Hey all of these are very playable but a few can clear a little more content.” I’ve always felt tier list in any game need to be more flexible in understanding player base. Not everyone is going to have the perfect teams and their tiers just seems to address a more open end approach having every style of team present. Except hard tpa. Rip tpa based teams. Atleast it makes a good secondary effect
LikeLike
I don’t understand your problem. Each list clearly lays out their exact criteria which is to find the best of the best; the teams that can clear the current endgame most consistently. While everyone has problems with the minutiae, I generally believe they’re doing their best to do just that and they generally succeed. If you’re looking for some other information, then you need to find a different resource. It’s as simple as that. Each site has ratings that extend down to every leader in the game, so why not use that instead of the tier list?
Inclusive tier lists mean nothing in PAD, anyways. Just about every pantheon or GFE card is a viable leader and it’s meaningless to sort the rabble into tiers or try to make some sense of their order since in the end they all have approximately the same potential.
AppMedia is clearly the worst tier list. While it might be closest to what you envision a tier list to be, it’s easily the least consistent and has the most obvious errors.
LikeLike
hello setsu,
what do you think of having supergirl as Awoken DQXQ subs ? Is it worth to aim for her during DC Collab ? I have 70 stones… (2 yolo luck gave me green arrow and wonder woman…) should I just skip DC and wait for PCGF ?
LikeLike
No, she’s fine on the team, but definitely not worth rolling for.
LikeLike
DQXQ generally wants to take advantage of rows which Supergirl doesn’t support in both her active and awakenings. No additional color coverage also hurts.
LikeLike