Puzzle & Dragons 8: puzzle & Interventions

[Academia]

@Fax: For team building, I look at synergy between actives and the leadership abilities. Personally, I dont really like combo leaders combined with a attribute matching leaders. Combo lead with Combo leads work better. Its just that sometimes their actives arent all that great.

When I started building teams I didnt look at forums or PDX like Kauai. I just did my own thing. Trial and error on Lava Tube. Eventually you will see a generic pattern=

"At least one turn of major spike damage, an active that will save you for at least one turn (delay/shield), 1 to 3 orb troll insurance policy." (Now you can go look at the teams on PDX and you will see these reoccuring elements pop up in teams.)

You will also find out that when running combo teams, you're optimal is at 2 to 3 attribute on your team. Why? Because there exists actives that whole board shifts! Hence , allowing you to do massive combos. It also gives you 2 useless orb sets that you can build your "orb troll insurance policy on". Same principle as putting subs on a kirin team that eliminates dark and heal orbs. Its just with combo leaders, you have to artificially induce the restriction based on the subs you pick. Why is self restriction good? It gives you more efficiency and less distractions.

With that said, I know you started with Leilan and then switched to Bastet when you got her. So wouldnt it make sense to build around that?

Bastet/Leilan/Echidna/Choice sub (Shynee for spike? Hell maybe Zues for gravity? Or sandy? Its w/e.)/Choice sub (Valk once you get it? More Zues gravity?)/Bastet or Kushi.

Limit the team to three colors so leilan active gives you that one turn spike. Echidna delay for suvival as well as damage. Shynee or gravity with leilan for boss spike (Yes, I see gravity as a spike - sometimes even a 2x doesnt match it). Valk or verche or apollo or artemis to get rid of the none used orbs… Pavarti for more defwnse if you have her. hell of you get good enough, with combo needs you dont even need to use soft orb changers. See how the first two subs basically met the BASICS of a solid team. Then the rest are just what you want, but try to keep their actives relative to the dungeon or team synergy. Then you get into the whole awakening synergy. Think of it as a funnel. Start wide and narrow it down. You will be alright.

If you read all that, you can now see why BSonia is such a bad sub for Bastet, her active weakens the spike. Provides no other utility. Stats? Those stats can be rivaled and does not justify one whole sub slot.

SuiS is probably the only person that throws me completely off guard with some of her team builds lol. Her meeting the "minimal" benchmark is so so unique. Its amazing.

If anyone anyone can add to this or discredit this, I like to hear them. Healthy disgussions always fun =P.

Aca

[SiuiS]

SuiS is probably the only person that throws me completely off guard with some of her team builds lol. Her meeting the "minimal" benchmark is so so unique. Its amazing.

If anyone anyone can add to this or discredit this, I like to hear them. Healthy disgussions always fun =P.

Aca

Anyone can grab Ra, five appropriately colored gods and go to town. How many of you can say you pushed yourself to your absolutely limit and won because, eg, Angelion?

[Academia]

Anyone can grab Ra, five appropriately colored gods and go to town. How many of you can say you pushed yourself to your absolutely limit and won because, eg, Angelion?

For real..... let alone the awakenings on angelion.... I almost face palmed when I saw that mentioned. Lol good times SuiS.

[SiuiS]

Y'all could all just pitch in a few hundred dollars collectively and load me up with stones. I'll empty all the chaff from my monster box and go to town in the next godfest, so I have the rem count necessary to compete whitcha.

Till then, I'm succeeding through ingenuity, which I find to de valuable.

[Academia]

Y'all could all just pitch in a few hundred dollars collectively and load me up with stones. I'll empty all the chaff from my monster box and go to town in the next godfest, so I have the rem count necessary to compete whitcha.

Till then, I'm succeeding through ingenuity, which I find to de valuable.

Or I can just give you an acct? What you say? Lol

[Fax Celestis]

Well, healer Bastet team stomped through Joan of Arc master effortlessly. I'll try Legend when my stam refills.

[Erloas]

I actually find the team you built for yourself to be more synergistic then Erloas's, although the double damage reduction probably isn't needed.

To be fair I designed that team months ago when the options and team costs were a lot different.

I'm not sure I want to bother with any of the skill ups out of this collab. Having to farm it so much just to get the evo material for other parts just doesn't seem worth the effort. I also don't actually use Baal nor the gryps rider.

So this was posted over the weekend:
*Update2 - Persephone, Parvati, and Izanagi are being considered to be tweaked again in the second wave of balance.

And I know at least here there were complaints about Parvati loosing the auto-heal so maybe that is back.


I didn't realize the war dragon was done yesterday, I think I was missing the easiest level or two to get the stone, oh well.

Wondering if my S-rank team can do Tower of Jewels... it shouldn't be too bad but a pair of Carbuncles often ends up tricky, they hit hard and on a short timer for a 200k S-rank...

[obryn]

*Update2 - Persephone, Parvati, and Izanagi are being considered to be tweaked again in the second wave of balance.

Oh good. I have a max-skill Persephone I'm barely using, and an Izanagi I've literally never used.

[137beth]

So I tried Hera-Ur (legend) with my Ronia team.
First wave: I wanted to stall on the green one after killing the blue one. It went will, until a skyfall of five adjacent red orbs caused a mass attack which brought the green ogre below 50% health, which caused him to one-shot me.
I'm about to rank up, so I could try it again, but I don't think I will. I'll do the collab instead.

[Klaatu B. Nikto]

Playing the golden one armed dragon and get....

Dino rider +1.

Well, it was a gold egg at least.

[obryn]

Playing the golden one armed dragon and get....

Dino rider +1.

Well, it was a gold egg at least.

Riders are now awesome, desirable subs.

Wow, how things have changed.

[Erloas]

So I think the world is telling me not to play today. I've lost way too much stamina to stupid things so far.

Last *have to kill* round of Holy Dragon Knight and I only have 2 of 2 different colors so I can't finish her off. Then I do another attempt later and somehow manage to leave the White Baron at probably 10 hps and he kills me. Then with the tablet on Mystic Stone Dragons (working on clearing them) I have a 1/3 timer on the carbuncles, and then get 2 rounds in a row where I can't possibly activate Karin and die.

[Klaatu B. Nikto]

Riders are now awesome, desirable subs.

Wow, how things have changed.

It's my 3rd Rider (Gryps, Beast and now Dino). What leaders tho? My likely leaders to benefit are my Chinese girls Haku (Beast) and Leilan (Dino). But Gryps is sort of odd man out other than adding Yellow to a Haku team or Purple to Leilan.

I could roll again and I'm tempted to (15 more stones) but I think I've learned when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. But some sage advice still holds:

"Every PADer knows
That the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away
And knowin' what to keep
'Cause every hand's a winner
And every hand's a loser"

YMMV since my starting diety wasn't the best (Hino Kagutsuchi) but I got tired of redoing the training dungeons.

[Fax Celestis]

So I think the world is telling me not to play today. I've lost way too much stamina to stupid things so far.

Last *have to kill* round of Holy Dragon Knight and I only have 2 of 2 different colors so I can't finish her off. Then I do another attempt later and somehow manage to leave the White Baron at probably 10 hps and he kills me. Then with the tablet on Mystic Stone Dragons (working on clearing them) I have a 1/3 timer on the carbuncles, and then get 2 rounds in a row where I can't possibly activate Karin and die.

Same here. Tried legend on Joan, got a first round of a cyclops and a dub-topalit, which was survivable. Round two was three sync'd cyclopes on a two-count, and all my orbs spread out too much to get mass attacks. -_-;;

[137beth]

Changed my mind. After beating the sky dragon's domain normal dungeon, I tried hera-ur descended. This time, I had spectacularly terrible luck: I spent 7 turns trying to kill the blue ogre on the first floor with my Ronia team, and scarcly any dark or fire orbs dropped. Waste of 50 stamina.
I might try it again tonight, or I might just chug through Hera and two heroes.

[Beacon of Chaos]

So, I'm barely playing PaD anymore, but these new goddesses seem pretty awesome. I'm loving the time motif going on.

Spoiler

Show

[Academia]

Riders are now awesome, desirable subs.

Wow, how things have changed.

For real... riders... lol the double TPA just give them mad damage... Guess what! The CD for the meteor dragon series is now down to 8 turns at max level lol. They used to be at 15 for max... 8 turn orb shift aint too bad lawl.

But this is the age of the devils. Pad went from CDK nuke teams, to luci/grodin grindfests, healer fanatics with valks, then rsonia.... darn thise row enhancement awakenings? Lol spike leaders were always there after efyptian gods came out.... Hell there are people now that arent happy with heartbreakers.... they used to be so so so desired as leaders and subs....

[tyckspoon]

For real... riders... lol the double TPA just give them mad damage... Guess what! The CD for the meteor dragon series is now down to 8 turns at max level lol. They used to be at 15 for max... 8 turn orb shift aint too bad lawl.

I assume you mean the rippers? That would be awesome.. except we have no way to skill them up except for self-feedings. And frankly I don't think they're good enough just on the basis of that skill to go through the headache of farming and evoing multiples of them.

(The thing where you feed an ult-evo to another ult-evo for supposedly full skillup might be worth looking into, tho, for an unusual color orb change plus skipping a dozen skillups.)

[SiuiS]

Riders are now awesome, desirable subs.

Wow, how things have changed.

I continue to lament losing Gryps. Haha.

So, I'm barely playing PaD anymore, but these new goddesses seem pretty awesome. I'm loving the time motif going on.

Spoiler

Show

Yeah, I noticed. >_<

The norms who guide fates across time are indeed interesting goddesses! There's a lot of fun rem stuff coming our way.

[Fax Celestis]

I assume you mean the rippers? That would be awesome.. except we have no way to skill them up except for self-feedings. And frankly I don't think they're good enough just on the basis of that skill to go through the headache of farming and evoing multiples of them.

At least they're farmable outside special dungeons now.

Well, the white and black ones are anyway.

[tyckspoon]

At least they're farmable outside special dungeons now.

Well, the white and black ones are anyway.

You could get them as boss drops from one of the Normal dungeon tiers, but. You know. Normal dungeon boss drop rates.

[137beth]

So I did the new Hera dungeon...and forgot to bring either a poisoner or an armor break. Fortunately I had Hera, Hades, and Hera-Is, so I eventually beat Neptune, but that last sub really should have been a machine golem or copperhead and not echidna

[SiuiS]

That's odd, 137ben. Don't you have a leader capable of punching through Neptune?

[Academia]

Eeks. Remind me to warm up before going into descents. Just lost 100 stam in hera ur. Totally my fault. Woke up from nap and went straight in. Lol slow ass reactions....

[Jasmine]

Bastet/Leilan/Echidna/Choice sub (Shynee for spike? Hell maybe Zues for gravity? Or sandy? Its w/e.)/Choice sub (Valk once you get it? More Zues gravity?)/Bastet or Kushi.

(Yes, I see gravity as a spike - sometimes even a 2x doesnt match it).

If you read all that, you can now see why BSonia is such a bad sub for Bastet, her active weakens the spike. Provides no other utility. Stats? Those stats can be rivaled and does not justify one whole sub slot.

Leilan and Bastet teams use gravity less often cause Zeus is harder to get and skill up than Hera, and the CD is 5 turns longer, but I suppose it's still an option.

And gravity IS a spike. A 'weak', 'permanent' one (for that wave), but also the only one which can be stacked with itself.

Another point on the stats. Even though it's a long term view, stats are the only thing you can modify (via plus eggs). If you want an awesome team, get monsters with awesome skills/synergy - you can shore up mediocre stats via +. This is why dragons generally aren't popular anymore - although they have awesome weighted stats, most of the time their synergy is terrible - usually they just have a breath attack that does mediocre damage, although that's slowly being changed, which is a good thing. Puzzle and Lolis or Puzzle and Devils just sounds weird.

In short, max egging a team gives 2.5 additional monsters worth of stats. Nothing you do will give your team 2.5 additional monsters worth of skills/awakenings. Pick team based on skills/awakenings first.

Anyone can grab Ra, five appropriately colored gods and go to town. How many of you can say you pushed yourself to your absolutely limit and won because, eg, Angelion?

Ra might not be as easy as you think it is...

Angelion's a good pick for many non-IAPers. She was helpful to me for Gold Keeper as well as a few S-ranks.

To be fair I designed that team months ago when the options and team costs were a lot different.
*Update2 - Persephone, Parvati, and Izanagi are being considered to be tweaked again in the second wave of balance.
And I know at least here there were complaints about Parvati loosing the auto-heal so maybe that is back.

I wasn't meaning to rag on your team building suggestions - point was for Fax to not get too stuck on old builds when new options open up. Taking advantage of every opportunity to improve your team, ya know?

Hopefully Parvati gets some upgrades, although she's doesn't really need any. All the other Indian1 1.0s got boosts though, so maybe...Tacking on an extra +time or skillbindresist instead of replacing autoheal would make me really happy.

Oh good. I have a max-skill Persephone I'm barely using, and an Izanagi I've literally never used.

Izanagi makes a very fast farm team with Athena, if you're into that sort of thing. You can literally go through 9 waves with 1 combo each, activate verche and 2 combo the boss of anything T5 and below.

Changed my mind. After beating the sky dragon's domain normal dungeon, I tried hera-ur descended. This time, I had spectacularly terrible luck: I spent 7 turns trying to kill the blue ogre on the first floor with my Ronia team, and scarcly any dark or fire orbs dropped. Waste of 50 stamina.
I might try it again tonight, or I might just chug through Hera and two heroes.

Huh, do you have a vampire?

I assume you mean the rippers? That would be awesome.. except we have no way to skill them up except for self-feedings. And frankly I don't think they're good enough just on the basis of that skill to go through the headache of farming and evoing multiples of them.

(The thing where you feed an ult-evo to another ult-evo for supposedly full skillup might be worth looking into, tho, for an unusual color orb change plus skipping a dozen skillups.)

If I read it right, ult evo skillup means guaranteed 100% chance of getting 1 skillup, not max skill. Otherwise 5 mil exp for 15 levels of gravity is way too cheap - 5 mil is about 900 stam of supers, and that would only get you 23 heras - not even 1/3 of what you would expect to need. That skillup method is probably more suitable to those that change skills upon ult evo (Heraur, Beelz, Minerva, Neptune, Ceres, PirateZaerog) or other rare REM stuff that has no skillup fodder (2turndelay batman)

At least they're farmable outside special dungeons now.

Well, the white and black ones are anyway.

Like tyck says, they drop from T6, which are actually reasonable to farm (rank, eggs, exp all about equal to T5). Most people just don't farm them regularly because the bosses don't fall over when you pee on them. Personally I've gotten at least 1 of each, with 4 reds and 17 whites (red got extra farm when I was farming dubrubies for dupe echi/gigas for awakening, light gets tons of extra from duptopa hunting for baby tama)

Edit: dubrubies not dubtopas oops

Edit2: Funny picture of the day

[Fax Celestis]

Oh, sure. But the drop rate in skydragon dungeons is like 40% for the starter/ripper dragons. It's crazy.

[Otravyat]

Edit2: Funny picture of the day

My mind is no longer functioning.

[Academia]

Just evoed my hello kitty... hopefully it wasnt a bad idea. Lol the kitty will fill theblast slot on my wukong team. And i think the 100% skill up fonder for light will have to go to her in the future.

So I noticed that Raphael is getting buffed in awakenings! Two row enhancements for light! And a skill boost. With that said, Im probably going to use Raphael instead of Baal for Wu Team. Which means I dont really have to hunt down 40+ more waffleman! Thanks god.

Wu/Raphael/Fuma/Apollo/Hello Kitty or Valk or Baal or Thor/Wu (5 to 6 row enhancement on a 16x team with a whole board shift) Drools*

Fuma and Apollo is max skilled. Raphael I can grind Sky Prison np. Baal... we'll see where his skill up goes.

_______
So I need to decide which team to awaken next. WuKong team stated above or my genbu team. Suggestions?

Genbu/Astaroth/Pavarti/CuChu/Fyreja/Genbu (7 row enhancement with 3 whole board shifts.)

.....

Wu team completes some of the awakening for my "for fun" god team and healer team. Wu team itself is stronger though and able to farm descents with ease. (11 - 15 tamandras needed)

Genbu team completes much of the awakening for my future Kushi team and more end game oriented being able to pair with anubis. (19 tamandras needed)

Aca

[Fax Celestis]

I would go with Genbu, and maybe think about pulling someone for Cauchemar when he goes live.

[Red Fel]

Gah. Finally got the last of those dragon orbs from the collab dungeon (things just were not dropping). Is it just me, or do these guys seem totally not worth it?

Also, I did that Holy Beasts dungeon, and got... Jewel of Light. Really? Heck am I supposed to do with this? Ah, well, at least they drop from Pal.

Time to get back to stone-farming.