Overview
Reincarnated Kushinadahime is, without doubt, the strongest leader among JP’s 55 5th year anniversary evos. A leader with a high but reasonable skill cap, she’s risen through tier lists to just below the big 3 in only a couple of weeks.
Pros
- Best damage scaling / control in the game, thanks to combo scaling and no skyfall clause
- Unbindable lead + bind clear awakening
- High multiplier means low orb requirement
- Strong usage of awakenings: Enhanced Combos (7c) awakening, Guard Break, and Dragon Killer latents
Cons
- Restricted to healer types for 1.5x HP and ATK boost
- Damage can be unintuitive, experience/knowledge required
- Lower RCV than the Dark Athena – Ra Dragon – Aizen trio
Sopdet, Kagutsuchi, Hera Dragon… The most hated Arena spawns generally punish the lack of absolute damage control that most high damage leaders suffer from. While no-skyfall leads like Meridionalis and Acala have solid answers to these spawns, they suffer when on-color orb counts are low, leading to increased stalling and active skill usage. Kushinada now provides the most consistent answer to damage control hazards while maintaining high damage output in other scenarios.
Sample Team
I think detailed analysis of subs is not warranted as there may be some changes in available subs between now and when the lead is available in NA. In addition, sub selection is extremely dependent on individual boxes. For this post, I’ll focus on general awakenings and traits of a Kushinada-led team. I may reconsider in the future when she is released in NA. That said, here’s a sample team that makes good use of her unique leader skill:
Without jumping too much in-depth about the traits of this team, I’ll point out some features that aren’t immediately obvious:
- Red sub-element allows strong but balanced damage output on wood element threats such as Parvati, Vishnu, and Gaia Dragon. For the same reason, Blue Valkyrie is preferred over Red.
- Valkyrie Reine’s Guard Break awakening can activate, and is useful in long dungeons with high-defense enemies such as Arena 3, and to a lesser extent, Colosseum.
- Dual TPA + 7c awakenings allow for flexible damage output.
Sample Damage Chart
I could go into detail with case studies and board analysis in various situations, but instead I’ll let the following damage chart speak for itself. This chart assumes all monsters in the above team are max level with +99 attack, but with no same-attribute inherited skills. This chart is not exact, due to small errors from in-game rounding. The fire TPA with a single enhanced orb is a conservative estimate, as the fire orb enhance awakenings from the Hakus are likely to enhance more than half of the fire orbs.
Attack values: Haku 2590, Reine 2134, Kushi 2177
Dual leader multiplier | 2.25x | 9x | 36x | 81x | 144x |
Combo multiplier | 1.75x | 2.00x | 2.25x | 2.50x | 2.75x |
COMBOS | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
10,200 | 46,620 | 209,790 | 1,048,950 | 2,051,280 | |
+ | 15,644 | 71,514 | 321,813 | 1,609,065 | 3,146,616 |
28,680 | 131,112 | 590,004 | 2,950,020 | 5,768,928 | |
+ | 46,238 | 211,374 | 951,183 | 4,755,915 | 9,300,456 |
3,059 | 13,986 | 62,937 | 314,685 | 615,384 | |
8,604 | 39,336 | 177,015 | 885,077 | 1,730,817 | |
+ | 10,490 | 47,952 | 215,784 | 1,078,920 | 2,109,888 |
8,572 | 39,186 | 176,337 | 881,685 | 1,724,184 | |
8,402 | 38,412 | 172,854 | 864,270 | 1,690,128 | |
23,632 | 108,036 | 486,162 | 2,430,810 | 4,753,584 | |
2,520 | 11,523 | 51,856 | 259,281 | 507,038 | |
7,089 | 32,410 | 145,845 | 729,228 | 1,426,046 |
Video
The following video helps demonstrate some of the features outlined above. Note that the monsters used in the video aren’t hypermaxed, so the damage numbers won’t exactly match those in the chart.
Kushinada in the Future
Despite the apparent ease with which she deals with our current high-end farming dungeon, Arena 3, I suspect that she’ll be able to fall out of the meta abruptly when harder content hits. The delicate mix of HP, RCV, and ATK in her team is reminiscent of the old Yomigon A1 teams. She isn’t challenged too much by the current set of dungeons, however, and any new dungeons will take a while to reach us, so I’ll be investing in this team and ready to play when it hits NA.
Why is blue Valkyrie preferred over green Valkyrie ?
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color coverage
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you need rainbow color match to activate the guard break awakening
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Thanks. That is crucial
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Wouldn’t red Valk also work?
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Red valk would work but as stated in the article the sub red attribute damage from haku is fantastic for dealing with damage absorbs. Putting a main attribute red card on the team would ruin that option.
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Not so much ruined as not as good. You should put RValk in sub slot 1 so the absorb triggers at the start. BValk is still ideal, of course, but not everyone is a fatass whale.
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Any alternative to blue valk?
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Guard break is a rather dungeon-dependent awakening. Going for more damage can sometimes works: Shinra Bansho collab’s Asmodeus, Reincarnated Haku, and the other colored Valkyries can do ok as well. For dungeons where tanking heavy hits becomes a problem, a more defensive build featuring Michael or Odindra might be a better answer than the offense that Valk provides.
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If I have 3 Hakus but no BValk, do you think the last slot should go to DValk, GValk, or RValk?
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tfw you only have one haku
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nice work!
Haku strikes again as for the sub of the year as of now.
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What if you only have two hakus and two blue valks?
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What are the latents set up for this team?
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For A3?
Solo: double dragon killer on all Hakus
Co-op: single drag killer on all Hakus, or double drag killer on all Hakus
Remaining latent slots are less impactful but elemental resists, SDR, and other killers can work well.
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Between 4Hakus and 3Hakus+new Lmeta which is better for A3? Between having guard break but lost 1 healer team member or no guard breaker at all. I don’t have neither red nor blue valc.
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New Lmeta isn’t healer, she’s attacked God.
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Attacker god*
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That’s why I am choosing between non healer guard breaker or 4th Haku. Which is better for last slot A3 team.
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If you have a laser inherit (preferably lightning, famiel, or lumiel) to cover predra floor, you can stomp through the other high-def floors with tpas and high combos. Guard break is by no means necessary.
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Minor nitpick: it would be nice if the team comp pictures had links to the PADX pages for the corresponding monsters, or at least mouseover text with the name of the monster. In this case, it was easy enough to figure out, but in the future, there may be more obscure subs that people won’t be familiar with.
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Thanks, updated
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does that damage chart include the 1.5x damage from dragon killers?
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It includes the 7c2x awakening, but no latent awakenings.
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I believe Revo Kushi is now sharing the top tier with DAthena as of recent update
These leads might be strong in their own right theoretically, but I have a suspicion that they’re actually very specific and overall ineffective leads without Revo Haku. Revo Haku is probably the single greatest thing to ever hit the subpool since DKali or maybe Kanna
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As a hardcore Kushinada-Fan it is very pleasing to see her at the top of the Meta. As someone who owns to hakus it’s even better. I’m thinking about running RevoYomi as a non-healer sub, since the 4 Time extends will raise the damage enhance from sheen so much more.
Hopefully they’ll introduce some good wood healers soon, so a full wood team can be posssible too!
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Only have two haku, what would be a good replacement for a third? I plan to mostly use her for A3.
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Asmodeus, Dark valk are good.
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This article is well written. good job l. looking forward to more of your work in the future
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What if i don’t have any haku? replacements? i have a blue valk
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Jar Jar, I mean Haku is the key to this
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Is there a consensus on Skill Inheritance for this team? I don’t like all the subs being bind-able w/o at least a heartmaker for a manual clear, but is that a worthy inherit for Kushi (who’s active seems super useful now)?
Also can you think of anything other than unbindability or board-change w/ heart that would make for a better sub than haku (on a future revo release as she is clearly top tier now)?
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Full team or sub binds are not too common, so I’d advise against it for most dungeons. This is especially true in co-op, where you can have one player carry the team until a stalling floor. Possible higher tier subs might also have killer awakenings.
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