Quick Thoughts on the JP Stream 9/29/16

Since these posts seem fairly popular, I’ll continue to do them while I have time. All content will be hidden after the break. As with all quick thought posts, there’s minimal editing and I might say wrong/stupid things, so please correct me if that’s the case.

Source: PDX.

• PAD Cross Tourney – Tsubaki Buffs – Probably the card I wanted to win the least if only because more mediocre LMeta buffs would’ve been quite amusing. It’ll be interesting to see where they take her, though. Since she already has nine awakenings and her active is already quite good, any buffs would likely be for her leader skill, which is where most people would’ve wanted improvements anyways. There’s plenty of ways to speculate on the direction they’ll take, but hopefully it’s more than just an ATK multiplier adjustment.
• Dungeon Renewals – Zzz. On a kind-of-related-but-not-really note, be aware that JP now has an event where SDRs invade Special Descended Rush (the coin dungeon). This is nowhere as lucrative as the old MHera and MZeus invades, especially since most people that can farm it likely already skilled up most if not all the drops long ago, but depending on the invade rate, this could be a decent way to acquire these rare and valuable latents. I’m not sure if it’ll be better than farming PreDRA Infestation or even farming MP and buying them during a half-price event, but it’s definitely something to pay attention to.
• Buffs – As promised, there were many. I’ll go over the ones that are interesting to me.
  • Armored Knight and Gemstone Princess Damage Enhances Now Last Two Turns – Did the Gemstone Princesses really need buffs to two-turns?  They were already the damage enhance of choice and now the Norse lost one of their few edges in comparison. The Armored Knight buffs were needed, but it’s still hard to see a situation where they’ll be an optimal choice. I was initially thinking of the MP Dragons and Muse, but even then Carat would still likely be better for all of them except Neptune. I guess they really want to get people to roll for those gala exclusives (jokes on them I already rolled 😦 ).
  • Famiel and Lumiel True Damage Now Hits All Enemies – I remember a semi-recent Reddit thread lamenting the lack of more inheritable, high-damage area lasers a la Awoken Ra. This probably wasn’t exactly what they had in mind, but at least there are more options. For many, this makes two fairly useless cards at least have some utility.
  • Legendary Hero Buffs – As someone that just rolled all of these from the Director’s Carnival, I wasn’t expecting buffs anytime soon, but they are of course welcome. It’s pretty disappointing that 10 of the 30 or so buffs were spent on gala-exclusives that really didn’t need them.
  • Awoken Kagutsuchi – He now does a 64k-ish auto-attack when hypered. I don’t really think this changes anything, but as usual, I’ll leave it up to JP to figure out any shenanigans. With the advent of co-op, I’m not really expecting any farming applications from auto-attacks, though. Actually having an ATK multiplier is somewhat interesting, though, making him a potential perseverance killer. However, with the new light and dark Wisdom Kings and even Aoshi having a higher multiplier, I don’t see his leader prospects improving much.
  • Xiu Min and Xin Hua Buffs – This leaves Xiu Min at a 306.25x max ATK multiplier and Xin Hua at 1/225/4 for balanced. Seems pretty strong; I actually redid the calculations a couple times to make sure I had done them correctly. It feels like there’s going to be a lot of competition for the tier lists in the coming update and I’m not really sure who’s going to make it.
• New Cards – Water LKali and Fire Sakuya – PDX reports these being obtainable from the GungHo Collab Pal Machine. These cards obviously aren’t game changers, but they’re pretty damned nice for “free”. The Sakuya recolor looks amazing and I’ll do my best to get her should she reach NA.
• Uevos
  • Ishtar – One of the few times GungHo truly exceeded my expectations. Her active works similar to Sanosuke in what is effectively a single-target laser, but can be better, useless or anywhere in between depending on the situation. It’s still a great capability to have access to, especially in wood. Her awakenings are super-strong, giving her the ability to blow out dragons by pairing two TPAs with a dragon killer and her two skill boosts mean she can carry her weight in co-op. No, I don’t expect widespread use or anything, but I’m always thankful that solid farmable options exist so people can fill the holes on their teams until they get something better. At the very least, they’ll be left with a decent utility player for the future.
  • Kanna – I never expected splits for GFEs nor for their main element to change, but Kanna does both. Now, where’s my Satsuki?
    • Sub – Her sub form gets a fourth TPA, putting her above Scheat as far as pure TPA damage. Bind immunity is always welcome as well, putting her in line with her New Year’s form. However, as with the original evo Kanna, I’m skeptical whether a truckload of damage and not much else is enough to make her relevant, especially with the Gemstones making all other damage enhances somewhat irrelevant. Her viability will likely be contingent on how something like uevo Ra Dragon turns out.
    • Leader – A combo-conditional RCV multiplier is interesting and is generally better than an active-reliant one. However, no matter how you slice it, a 2.25/27.56/2.25 for gods and dragons isn’t very impressive. I actually redid the math a few times because I couldn’t believe it was really that low. Buffs incoming? This also likely means that Satsuki will have a light/dark leader form, something that saddens be greatly since I was hoping her uevo would give my JP alt’s predominately dark box some new life. I guess I’ll be waiting for Lumiel and Nephthys ults, or maybe revo Yomi or Haku?
  • Ilm – I recently picked up my second Ilm, in what feels like a year after my first one, and was pretty happy about it. Now I wish I had more again. I’m really, really hoping there’s no OP farming team that requires the full five.
    • Sub – Apparently Ilm is a grill, at least in this form. There really isn’t much to say here. The added awakenings are obviously amazing, but outside farming and maybe ranking dungeons, where will she see play?
    • Leader – So is this one female as well? Or was Ilm always female and I just assumed it was male? Upon further inspection, the original art did also feature a fairly slight waistline. Anyways, Ilm is apparently now a 1/100/6.25 leader. The element match restriction is still there, but the combo requirement barely seems like one since you’re making at least three combos to attack anyways. That’s also Sonia-level RCV, but assuming Ilm isn’t an endgame lead, it could easily go to waste.
• Revos – Just want to say, those stat boosts… wow! 1,000 weighted stats are no joke. In addition, aside from Kushinadahime, all the cards with over 900 weighted have no sub-element, but these do. The re-addition of god type is quite relevant as well with the MP Dragon uevos on the horizon (assuming they’ll still be god-based).
  • Greco-Romans – Largely unimpressed, especially considering the 16 million EXP it’ll take to max level them again, but I guess the added stats are still worth it. 50% resistances to three of five elements including dark is respectable, but is largely a joke compared to the heart-crosses even if it is a passive bonus. A bump up to 36x ATK could mean they see niche leader play against specific dungeons, much like they did in the past, but for the most part they simply can’t compete with the meta. Perhaps the most unfortunate thing is that they still have the same terrible awakenings. Resisting all elements for 50% would overboard and would be a horrible game design choice, but I feel like that’s the kind of power they’d need to compete with the heart-cross, especially at a 36x ATK multiplier.
    • Minerva – I remember thinking she was an amazing sub when she was first released, being a quick orb changer with so much upside compared to the Ninjas. It’s funny how the tables have turned. Having three, maybe four of your awakenings be useless — with jammer resists being actively bad against something like Ilsix — and no killers to pick up the slack is a huge downside. She does have like 50% more weighted stats than Chiyome, but she’s disappointing nonetheless. However, with Krishna, now revo Shiva and in the future Shiva Dragon, there’s definitely a world where she’ll see play.
    • Neptune – I don’t think Neptune will ever be relevant and the Gemstone buffs only further cement his obscurity.
    • Ceres – If it weren’t for the substantial revo stat boost, I feel like Ceres Ana would still be the automatic choice. I’m a fan of bind recovery awakenings so revo Ceres is appealing in that respect, but it’s hard to deny the damage that her Ana version can bring. I think most will still choose to go with Ana, but the ability to farm Awoken Ceres skill ups, from the PEM in particular, will make her more appealing to those short on Woodpys. I’m still a huge fan of her art, even if I do prefer the original coloring more.
  • Indian 1 – Unlike the Greco-Romans, the Indian 1 changes are pretty impressive. Despite being old, their awokens are still relevant leaders thanks to several rounds of buffs. These revos basically double those multipliers and should go a long ways towards revitalizing their use.
    • Shiva – Now 1/49/4, up from 1/27.56/2.25. Shiva, along with Bastet, always had inferior ATK multipliers compared to their contemporaries, but the fact that you could easily stack main-element matches meant that they always did more damage than the pure multipliers would imply. I actually like him compared to Kaede. Obviously he’s nowhere near her level, but hear me out. Kaede also does more than enough damage at 49x, in large part to her triple TPAs. Shiva only has two TPAs, but his +800 point base ATK advantage helps make up for that. Kaede has an effective 4x RCV with her heart-cross and Shiva also has 4x RCV. Of course, he’s missing the 4x effective HP and his active is much worse, but having two of your three multipliers compare favorably to the best leader in the game has to be worth something. Perhaps a better comparison would’ve been Krishna, but I thought it’d be more compelling to compare him to Kaede :^). I believe he could crack the tier lists again, but it’s so crowded at the top that he might slip through the cracks. Using Game8 as an example, if Krishna is AA, I could easily see Shiva at A.
    • Lakshmi – Now 1/100/4, up from 1/56.25/2.25. In my opinion, if we’re talking about just one, singular awakening, another skill boost is the best she could’ve gotten. All of water’s water+heart orb changers (except Y’shtola) only come with one so this is a great help in having actives ready early in the dungeon. Any offensive awakening would’ve been nice, too, but you can get those from said subs. The light sub-element isn’t great against the various absorb shields, but is a small complaint in the big picture. She should be an easy addition to the JP tier lists.
    • Parvati – Now 1/100/4, up from 1/56.25/2.25. Having shed most of her old problems since her initial release, Parvati is looking well positioned and for the most part should be on the same level as Lakshmi as a lead. The bind recovery awakening might not be the most exciting, but it makes her so much better overall. Being able to clear binds on top of her orb-enhancing, heartmaking active means she can fulfill so many roles just from a single card, as a leader and especially as a sub.
• MP Dragons – Those evo mats… I guess I slightly regret not farming the Radar Dragons. It’s a tall order for NA, though. Arena 3 is far from trivial and the Radars don’t drop all that frequently from what I gather. It makes me wonder if they’ll make them a one-time dungeon at some point since it’s unlikely we’ll ever get PAD Radar here. In any case, GungHo can ill afford to mess these up considering all the work you’ll have to put into making them. I don’t know if they’ll signify the coming of the next power leap, but they’ve got to at least be competitive with Kaede or what’s the point? To be honest, I’d rather have seen a new MP card series altogether, but I guess this will do.
  • Odin Dragon – Will he finally be relevant?