Thoughts on the PCGF Voting Results (Winter 2016)

We’ve all seen this coming for a long time now and have already experienced the 6-star plague invade last time’s lineup, but, at least for me, the reality finally hit home that the PCGF will never be what it once was. Sure, there were always questionable inclusions, but this time, instead of them occurring because good information failed to trickle down to the lowest common denominator, it happened because there’s little other choice. The bulk of high-impact cards either being shifted outside of the standard REM or to 6-star GFEs leads to 11 of the 25 cards being 6-stars and I can’t really find fault in it; in a popularity contest, what else is left for people to vote for? Even though 6-stars are featured every godfest, people are still going to vote for them regardless of the impact on overall value. The way GungHo has shifted the game away from pantheons made this outcome inevitable; I mean, JP had 10/25 (and this was before the Kanna uevo) and KR also has 11/25 so it’s not like NA is some sort of anomaly.

This is still a great opportunity for veterans chasing a handful of specific cards, dupes be damned. Particularly if those cards would never be featured together otherwise. It’s also still decent for new players with few dupes as there are plenty of core team building blocks whose quality helps overcome the lack of overall value per roll, but on the other hand, variance hits harder which can be difficult for such a player to cope with. For everyone else, it’s time to shift expectations from a highly anticipated event to one that’s just another godfest and adjust their stone budgets accordingly.

Anyways, I’ll once again go over the best and worst of the voting. The over/underrated categories lost a dimension since the voting tallies are hidden, but I’ll keep them around anyways. Just remember that these are just my opinions, heavily influenced by how I personally play the game. If you disagree, I encourage you to let me know in the comments.

Thoughts on the Tentative PCGF Voting Results (Spring 2016)

Similar to last time, NA did a great job voting. Outside maybe Yomi, I wouldn’t consider any of the top votes unworthy of selection. It’s also clear that a good portion of the voters keep track of what’s happening on JP.

However, I do wish less 6-stars made it in. Using the tentative voting results, there will be eight 6-star GFEs out of the 25 featured gods (32%). There’s also speculation that Sherias and Baldin will debut — much like Saria and Ryune last time — bringing the 6-star share to about 35%. By comparison, the typical godfest has about 29-31 featured gods with about 9-10 being 6-stars (29-32%). While the 6-star percentage is similar, the PCGF is slated to have horrible rates due to having less featured gods with the same portion of 6-stars; for those that don’t know, the more featured gods there are, it actually increases the chance of landing one of them, although it doesn’t change the chances of rolling a specific card (correct me if I’m wrong if this is no longer the case, but we’ve only had two-pantheon godfests for a while now so it would be difficult to identify a change in rates). The poor rates could have been helped if fewer 6-stars were voted in. However, if NA follows suit with JP’s last PCGF — which the top 25 limit seems to indicate — the 4x rates will make this complaint moot. Let’s hope they follow through even though it isn’t our 4-year anniversary yet; if they don’t, this PCGF will be a huge letdown. Either way, though, the fewer 6-stars there are the better the rates will be, but I doubt players’ preoccupation with them will ever change despite that. Personally, the 6-stars are great since that’s all I need, but for the average player there’s more value if there’s less of them.

Anyways, I’ll once again go over the best and worst of the voting. Which was actually pretty difficult this time since I didn’t have much issue with the results and the voting was so tight. Just remember that these are just superficial opinions and I encourage you to let me know about any differences in opinion in the comments.

Jormungandr Mythical – Yuna

I cried a bit inside when I realized I wasn’t using Horus anymore.

Takeminakata Ranking Dungeon Results

Ugh, this is the cost of being both a shitter and unlucky — about 20 stones, about 17 more than it usually takes — and I didn’t even get 0.1%. Such is the cost of pride. There’s no reason to believe this won’t stand, but if it doesn’t I’ll be very, very sad. I do think being skilled means more in this dungeon than usual, but that doesn’t mean someone like me can’t brute force their way into the top 1%.

Thoughts on God Killer vs. TPA: It’s actually hard for me to weigh in on this since I got to the final floor maybe 10% of the time (of which only a fraction of those had enough dark orbs), but my superficial opinion is that for this dungeon killers are significantly better. Unless you’re lucky to get four orbs right next to each other, the extra time spent making the TPA turns out to be quite expensive both in terms of matching time and board real estate. Being able to get a significant damage boost while doing plain, three-orb matches more than makes up for the slightly lower damage multiplier (3 vs 3.375). I’d imagine Fenrir is a great sub choice for this dungeon, providing a time extend, a god killer and a TPA.

Pushing Top 1% and Luck: Even for someone like me, hitting a score over 140k with Anubis isn’t too difficult, but to push 150k or even high 140k, a reasonable amount of luck is involved. My payoff took long to arrive, but it was a huge skyfall dark TPA that pushed me to hit the damage cap and push my score over 145k. I’m not going to try my luck further as I’m just not consistent enough to capitalize on the lucky skyfalls when they do occur.

Consider Capping Your Time Extends: If you’re really looking to min-max and, like me, aren’t disciplined and/or aware enough to drop your orb optimally then giving yourself a hard cap by lowering the amount of time extends could be a good option. I cut one time extend from my team and didn’t really notice a huge difference in hitting my Anubis activation. Sure, there were times where the extra half-second would’ve allowed me to activate where I otherwise wouldn’t have, but on the other extreme the lower cap could have “trained” me to drop my orb, saving me up to 2.5 seconds or 1,250 points. Any number of points are huge when you’re trying to break into the top 1%.

Latent Resist Farming – Thoth & Sopdet 5×4 – Yomi Dragon

I decided to take a short break from 10x Goemon to do some latent farming. Thanks to JP YouTubers, this is the most efficient farming team I found. Here’s how I planned the floors:

1. The only floor you can use DValk and not stall later, so use her if you need her. Healing is not necessary.
2. Healing is not necessary here. Use a Yomi Dragon if needed to sweep.
3. You need to heal here for the 5th floor preemptive. Use a Yomi Dragon if needed. Try to save two dark orbs if possible.
4. Lucifer. In the case of an invade on 1-3, I prefer saving him for Ra since the DEF requirement is lower on the Tama (600k vs 900k).
5. Hopefully you have enough orbs to activate after Lucifer.
6. Check that your DValk is up first, then DKali→DValk→Nephthys. This guarantees a match-five activation and five total combos to get past Sopdet’s shield.

The run usually goes much smoother, but this is the only invade I was able to record.

Not sure if there are any decent substitutes. DKali is a hard requirement for an easy floor six. I love my Cerberus Rider, but Lucifer is necessary here because his god killer allows you to clear the 5th floor with only a single dark row consistently. You could run another heartbreaker over DValk, but most of the options have some combination of being non-god, having a longer cooldown or changing another orb type. Finally, I guess you could run DMeta over Nephthys, but I never tested it.

Linthia Mythical Plus Solo Clear

It seems like every new enemy mechanic they reveal makes me want to puke. What’s next, new awakenings/latents for resisting skill/awakening disabling? Not to mention PreDras are the worst thing ever. Jesus Christ.

Thoughts on the Game8 JP Tier List 2/3/16

Leads

Changes from 2/1: Awoken Pandora A+→S

SS
S
A+
A

Subs

Changes from 2/1: None.

SS
S
A+

The Game8 list

It’s times like these that I want to stop these Game8 posts. I don’t know what’s worse: that they would misevaluate Pandora at A+ or that they’d so easily retract their original opinion and move her to S.

To clarify, whether they’re right or wrong with this change is irrelevant because, yes, opinions are opinions. What I want from any source is a certain level of assurance that their opinion is well researched and reflects their best effort was put forth to develop said opinion. Releasing an opinion the same day of a card’s release then revising it a couple days later does not inspire confidence in their opinion. It smells of them making a knee-jerk opinion then following it up with another one. What actually happened here is irrelevant because not only will we never know, it’s the appearances that matter because it affects how I perceive all of their opinions. Game8 has had a dubious reputation for a while now, but something like this particularly disappoints me. Who’s to say that this new grade was well researched? Who’s to say any of their opinions are well researched? Well, this may just be me making a mountain out of a molehill, but these Game8 posts have been questionable for a while so I’ll take any excuse to end them.

Anyone have some suggestions for other tier lists? I’ve been kinda following GameWith and they seem okay, but they don’t seem to update very often. I know there were some other sites, but I never bookmarked them. I guess in the end they’re all basically the same.

Thoughts on the Game8 JP Tier List 2/1/16

Leads

Changes from 1/27: Awoken Pandora debuts at A+

SS
S
A+
A

Subs

Changes from 1/27: None. Cao Cao still not appearing at A+, removing him until they add him back (if ever). 2/2: Pandora added to A+

SS
S
A+

The Game8 list

It’s no surprise that Pandora made the leader list, especially since she appears to be similar to Lucifer at first glance, but the real question is why is she ranked lower than him?

It also appears that they aren’t going to make any drastic changes regarding Arena 2. Which is fine, but considering they used to stress the endgame so much it seems a bit strange. It should be interesting to see how skill transfer affects their list.

Thoughts on the Game8 JP Tier List 1/27/16

Leads

Changes from 1/13: Some fire dude added to A

SS
S
A+
A

Subs

Changes from 1/13: Cao Cao S→A+ (allegedly), Sanada Yukimura added to S, Eschamali added to S, Akechi Mitsuhide added to S

SS
S
A+

The Game8 list

Doesn’t look like they made any Arena 2-related changes, which is a bit disappointing.

Descended Challenge 6 Teams – Spica Kills Everything Edition

Dungeon	Team	Reward

Nothing was particularly difficult outside of Yamato Rush being Yamato Rush. Maybe the most surprising thing was Zeus Dios’s preemptive not getting resisted; I had gotten so used to taking reduced damage from everything that I forgot that Spica doesn’t cover wood.

I’ve been considering trying for a Spica Arena clear and one thing that running all these dungeons made me realize a few potential weaknesses for the team. The most obvious are bind as losing either Spica basically kills the team. For the Arena, the team will really have to play like a standard tank team. Two sub slots are automatically taken up by Freyja and Courage anyways which already limits consecutive burst. The few YouTube clears I’ve seen also dedicate a slot to Odin Dragon, limiting damage potential even further.

Everything in this collection of dungeons are either short, the monsters have low HP or both.