Post by vakhir on Jun 28, 2015 4:20:13 GMT -8
Akhamamir (we're gonna call him Amir, it's become the accepted nickname) is going from 20% to 30% dmg scaling per debuff on his 3rd skill, which is his big burst ability. The PVP meta is also going to shift (especially higher up) away from auto Veromos inclusions. People are already panicking about Vero, and he'll be easier to focus down as a first or second target. He'll still be on ADs, just won't be as much of an auto pick anymore. I have a zergier AD since I don't have the 4th piece of a sufficient tanky one atm, and I still use him on it, he's just so useful. Veromos existing is really, really bad for Amir, almost worse than fire mons (especially when it's just a singleton), so this is a big buff.
The meta also isn't quite as fire heavy as it used to be. People with Pernas still use it, people will basically always use a Kumar if they have one, Chloe will be on a lot (though she's not a turn 1 gank fear), and so on, but people have been laying a lot of Lushen traps in higher Conq and Guardian to try to curb all the people farming with 2 of them.
Thing is, a fire-heavy defense will just get attacked with a different line-up or ignored, you won't screw someone over and win. If I'm farming in Conq 3 as a Guardian player, I have enough sense not to try to double Lushen a team with Kumar and Perna on it. I'd come nowhere close to winning even if they went afk for 2 turns to give me a head start. People are using non-fire mons with nemesis, especially with big heals and/or ATB like Praha, Bella, Ariel, and interrupting the oneshot attempts. These teams are a lot more susceptible to wind in a lineup as opposed to everyone just trying to use Arnolds months ago.
When I was starting, Arnold was the shit of the AD meta. You don't see him that much now, or hear him brought up as much in chat if you watch it stream past, and I don't remember the last time I lost to one. The people with him on their ADs will eventually get rid of him, he's much better when controlled manually. Can operate as a fairly rare fire tank (go find one that does anything but be a giant wall like Tantra, they're pretty rare) and burst anything he wants on demand, that's fine. The AI can't do that properly.
See a lot of tanky teams, especially, like Vero/Bella/#2healer/Arnold, and it just... can't kill if you're tanky yourself or at least have a wind tank for Arnold. Vero/Darion/healer/Arnold is a bit better, if Darion breaks and procs and Arnold happens to be next, you are in real, real, real danger of the person that got broken - probably your Veromos or Jubelle or whoever is tanking the breaks - to get killed. Jubelle is in real deep shit considering his crit suppression does nothing about extortion, and he has pretty dinky base HP in exchange for higher base defense. I go in with basically a mirror (Vero/Bella/Chasun + either Hwa or Kaz, any fire or water DPS is fine) and run all over them, they're some of my absolute safest matches. Again, Amir buff.
With all that in mind, I think one of the new hotnesses for easy PVP wins - bear in mind, this has to avoid immunity like the absolute plague - is going to be something like spd-based Tyron / spd-based Galleon / Amir / Bernard or Verdehile. Don't worry, these are examples, you don't need all the mons listed. If you don't have Galleon - though it seems like new monsters have an increased chance of dropping, I've seen some pirates in the guild - then more like Tyron/Megan/Amir/
, with the last mon having an AE defbreak. Unfortunately, there isn't that much AE defbreak. Fire and Water Brownie Magicians do it. A violent Orion could be perfect here - you can AE def break and then, if violent procs, use Harmless Prank to add more debuffs. Also, we're due for a Brownie Magician HoH. I'm not sure if they want to give everyone Draco, and we just had a water HoH, but at least for skill-ups, we'll have one soon enough.
Speed is really important for this, you want to hit before a turn passes or the one-turn CC from Tyron is gone. It's helping you stabilize to survive a round in case someone jukes your damage, but more relevantly, it's really buffing Amir's crush. If we assume a team is slow enough you can get this opening, Bernard gives you all the first turns, Tyron's freeze (and - if you're lucky - a despair stun as well) will be at least 1 debuff, Galleon adds def break (more damage and adds a second debuff, so double the fun), Amir then takes his atk buff from Galleon, leaps into the air, and one-shots the entire enemy team.
With the other team, Megan ATBs and atk buffs, Tyron freezes, Orion or Draco def breaks, and then smash time. Assuming your Tyron is built for all-around use, he's probably going have some more choice runes and be faster than the brownies or pirate, but if he somehow isn't, that's a bit better, as you can have break up when the freeze lands, but you're probably going to be killing from full anyway so it's moot. You also run a higher risk of pushing their attack bars up from nemesis runes, so it's probably safer if it's a pure cc/tank Tyron, and he's more useful for ToA like that anyway.
If you don't have Tyron, you can trade a bit of the control (part of that hopeful second turn if necessary) for Baretta. You don't have the luxury of locking that first enemy turn, but double dots will buff Amir even more (and some mons will be triple debuffed if a Despair goes off). If you have Galleon and Bernard but no Baretta or Tyron (p.s. please fuse Baretta, he's amazing), or assume a team is slow, you also could do Bernard lead, Galleon, Amir, and anyone that applies at least 1 debuff (preferably 2+ if you can help it). Extra points if they are able to be on Despair so you're throwing more effects up. Maybe you built Hemos or Thrain for ToA hard, which means you went for max accuracy, some survival (.. I guess, though you can only survive like 1 hit maybe even as a 6 star once you're high enough), and the rest into speed, so their double dot would work acceptably. If you went violent - preferable, since plague can't despair proc - then especially on Thrain, that's killer, can follow up with a Doomsday.
That team will hit harder with a Bernard lead, but going in without a spd lead in addition to your ATB/spd buffer is very ballsy, and probably not optimal. Brownies need you to go first, and while Galleon doesn't care on paper, anyone that takes their turn (CC'd or not) can violent, and their violent nerf will do nothing to stop violent from being the ideal on most mons when on ADs. It's bad for Galleon too. In a lot of cases, 2 turn and 1 turn debuffs are the same length in PVP, and that won't change that much even with Vero less common. Enemy gets 1 turn, that might be it for you.
The most you can do to be safe is speed match the brownie, pirate, or whoever is breaking with Amir. We are already assuming you aren't praying you outspd Chloe or she lasers, her base spd is too high. You are not beating Chloe. As long as it isn't an immunity buff or someone that can oneshot your side, enemy sneaking a turn does not kill your run so long as the break and smash happen together. The 2 turn debuffs instead of 1 turns will increase your odds of keeping debuffs up, but bare minimum you'll have the def break before smashing. If you could have gone first with a spd lead, then Bernard's dmg lead is practically nixed. I think it's applied later in calcs, so it's a better 30% than adding another debuff for Amir's smash, but you lose out on a chunk of it, and risk the enemy team hijinks when they take turns.
Also, if their speeds are matched, make sure Amir is *AFTER* them in the lineup. Even if he's only 1 or 2 spd slower, with tower and spd lead buffs factored in, they could round to the same spd. If the debuffer is ahead of Amir in the lineup, they'll go first. Just shove Amir into the 4th spot to be safe. I do this with my Shannon in GB10, she's too close to my Lushen, so if I put him first, he'll amp before the AI buffs.
I still find a huge fault with the fact he needs *15* devilmons to max his skills. If you're lucky, I think you could very happily stop after maxing Mach Crush's damage, and completely unskilled it's just a 25% boost, may not matter depending on the comps you're bombing. Also, the CD wouldn't matter, not for this. It would for ToA, or GB10, but not for zerging. You're likely killing on the first turn or not at all. He would definitely want to be rage/blade atk/cd/atk for this type of ganking if at all possible, though an overall usage Amir could be quite good as spd/cd/atk on despair runes, and if you weren't able to go first reliably, then spd/cd/atk on rage might have to be a compromise. I'd rather try to snag some spd subs and hope the ATB from Bernard/Megan is enough.
If one had maxed skills and I wanted to PVE with it, I would probably prefer Violent. Once Vero goes from 30 to 60% on his stomp and goes from 4 to 3 turns, violent procs so you can do it more often feel better than having occasional extra RNG from despairs to me. I had my Vero on despair initially and his CC alone feels better on Violent, to say nothing of his proc pressure in PVP or his rapid cleansing. You do have two AEs on Amir, but Violent also means a DPS boost, whereas it's just the extra RNG CC on Despair. Even in ToA I'd take the Violent if I had access, you should have room for 1 hybrid cc/dps. I often bring Vero just for his stomping. If you used it in PVP with those PVE runes, then you lose the rage portion of damage, but it may be enough without it, and I'd take a Violent so he could do a second AE instead of a 25% chance of stunning a survivor.
I mentioned it before, but I'll say it again - immunity absolutely kills this. You could not ever attack Chloe, Velajuel, or any other immunity buffer. At least you'd likely outspeed Velajuel, but Chloe will be the devil. Additionally, will runes kill this (unless you somehow survive turn 1), and there is absolutely no way to know if they're there. It's pretty rare to see more than 1 monster with them (and the ones I see most often are the immunity buffers themselves, or healers that don't have a second healer/rezzer with them), so it isn't quite as crippling. If you see quad will runes, assume the position. The immunity weakness is not that big a deal as an AO for farming - this is for fast wings, and every single opponent won't have this, especially at a rating you feel comfortable farming. The higher you go, the more common immunity is, but you won't find 10 teams with it on a list, and you can just refresh for fast games instead of slower games where you may or may not pull off a list clear.
I'm waiting on the patch to see before I do any runing or 6'ing, but this extra boost for PVE and the meta shift in PVP may be just enough to make Amir go from the disappointment Ifrit to the most-used. I don't think I would use Tessarion outside of PVP except for rare HoHs or maybe ToA floors depending on how bosses are coded (IIRC, he cannot oblivion things like the Veromos boss, but I don't have one to confirm), and Theomars is a sturdy single-target with his new passive buff but I want AE for ToA and he could just as easily be Sigmarus in DB10, and Sig is probably better there. That's 2 mostly PVP or PVP-only mons, albeit good ones. Tessarion is particular has a unique effect.
Amir, though, now has potential to get used in PVP as an AE one-shotter, including use as the single DPS on teams whose AI won't hit wind reliably, which I've actually been seeing more often and getting to bring Lushen instead of Kaz or Hwa in a tank team. He'll also be significantly buffed in ToA/GB10 where debuffs run rampant. If you have 5-10 debuffs up, that 10% more becomes 50-100% more, that's a lot. It seems like a significant shift in stance from a small buff on paper, but I was reading about his numbers as of the current patch because he was the Ifrit I got first, and people that went ahead and 6'd him and properly runed him, including attempting all sorts of combinations, were just... not pleased. Not bad, but not good enough, not for all those skill-ups, all that work getting ifrits, not for having to have debuffs to do enough to matter, and his AE damage wasn't strong enough to kill, which means everyone just picks themselves back up, especially on Nemesis runes, where you just filled everyone's bars. Now, though, he might actually kill.
I'll laugh if he goes from being a joke to being so common people all start shoving will runes on everything and immunity shows up on 100% of teams to quit being farmed. All it will take is one video with attainable runes (like, 6 stars with okay subs but not godly rolls) one-shot overkilling a team in conq 3 or guardian. It's pretty rare NOT to see immunity by then, from what I've seen of peoples' lists at that super high level, but immunity is less common as you drop, so for the majority of players, it could be open season.
... 15 devilmons, though, are you serious...
(PSA - at the very least, wait for the patch, and wait for people that already 6'd and skilled him up to see if this is enough. People already made the investment once, they will be testing him the second the patch hits, I guarantee it. In the meantime, turn that frown upside-down if he was your first - or also second - Ifrit, he's probably getting a lot more viable.)
The meta also isn't quite as fire heavy as it used to be. People with Pernas still use it, people will basically always use a Kumar if they have one, Chloe will be on a lot (though she's not a turn 1 gank fear), and so on, but people have been laying a lot of Lushen traps in higher Conq and Guardian to try to curb all the people farming with 2 of them.
Thing is, a fire-heavy defense will just get attacked with a different line-up or ignored, you won't screw someone over and win. If I'm farming in Conq 3 as a Guardian player, I have enough sense not to try to double Lushen a team with Kumar and Perna on it. I'd come nowhere close to winning even if they went afk for 2 turns to give me a head start. People are using non-fire mons with nemesis, especially with big heals and/or ATB like Praha, Bella, Ariel, and interrupting the oneshot attempts. These teams are a lot more susceptible to wind in a lineup as opposed to everyone just trying to use Arnolds months ago.
When I was starting, Arnold was the shit of the AD meta. You don't see him that much now, or hear him brought up as much in chat if you watch it stream past, and I don't remember the last time I lost to one. The people with him on their ADs will eventually get rid of him, he's much better when controlled manually. Can operate as a fairly rare fire tank (go find one that does anything but be a giant wall like Tantra, they're pretty rare) and burst anything he wants on demand, that's fine. The AI can't do that properly.
See a lot of tanky teams, especially, like Vero/Bella/#2healer/Arnold, and it just... can't kill if you're tanky yourself or at least have a wind tank for Arnold. Vero/Darion/healer/Arnold is a bit better, if Darion breaks and procs and Arnold happens to be next, you are in real, real, real danger of the person that got broken - probably your Veromos or Jubelle or whoever is tanking the breaks - to get killed. Jubelle is in real deep shit considering his crit suppression does nothing about extortion, and he has pretty dinky base HP in exchange for higher base defense. I go in with basically a mirror (Vero/Bella/Chasun + either Hwa or Kaz, any fire or water DPS is fine) and run all over them, they're some of my absolute safest matches. Again, Amir buff.
With all that in mind, I think one of the new hotnesses for easy PVP wins - bear in mind, this has to avoid immunity like the absolute plague - is going to be something like spd-based Tyron / spd-based Galleon / Amir / Bernard or Verdehile. Don't worry, these are examples, you don't need all the mons listed. If you don't have Galleon - though it seems like new monsters have an increased chance of dropping, I've seen some pirates in the guild - then more like Tyron/Megan/Amir/
, with the last mon having an AE defbreak. Unfortunately, there isn't that much AE defbreak. Fire and Water Brownie Magicians do it. A violent Orion could be perfect here - you can AE def break and then, if violent procs, use Harmless Prank to add more debuffs. Also, we're due for a Brownie Magician HoH. I'm not sure if they want to give everyone Draco, and we just had a water HoH, but at least for skill-ups, we'll have one soon enough. Speed is really important for this, you want to hit before a turn passes or the one-turn CC from Tyron is gone. It's helping you stabilize to survive a round in case someone jukes your damage, but more relevantly, it's really buffing Amir's crush. If we assume a team is slow enough you can get this opening, Bernard gives you all the first turns, Tyron's freeze (and - if you're lucky - a despair stun as well) will be at least 1 debuff, Galleon adds def break (more damage and adds a second debuff, so double the fun), Amir then takes his atk buff from Galleon, leaps into the air, and one-shots the entire enemy team.
With the other team, Megan ATBs and atk buffs, Tyron freezes, Orion or Draco def breaks, and then smash time. Assuming your Tyron is built for all-around use, he's probably going have some more choice runes and be faster than the brownies or pirate, but if he somehow isn't, that's a bit better, as you can have break up when the freeze lands, but you're probably going to be killing from full anyway so it's moot. You also run a higher risk of pushing their attack bars up from nemesis runes, so it's probably safer if it's a pure cc/tank Tyron, and he's more useful for ToA like that anyway.
If you don't have Tyron, you can trade a bit of the control (part of that hopeful second turn if necessary) for Baretta. You don't have the luxury of locking that first enemy turn, but double dots will buff Amir even more (and some mons will be triple debuffed if a Despair goes off). If you have Galleon and Bernard but no Baretta or Tyron (p.s. please fuse Baretta, he's amazing), or assume a team is slow, you also could do Bernard lead, Galleon, Amir, and anyone that applies at least 1 debuff (preferably 2+ if you can help it). Extra points if they are able to be on Despair so you're throwing more effects up. Maybe you built Hemos or Thrain for ToA hard, which means you went for max accuracy, some survival (.. I guess, though you can only survive like 1 hit maybe even as a 6 star once you're high enough), and the rest into speed, so their double dot would work acceptably. If you went violent - preferable, since plague can't despair proc - then especially on Thrain, that's killer, can follow up with a Doomsday.
That team will hit harder with a Bernard lead, but going in without a spd lead in addition to your ATB/spd buffer is very ballsy, and probably not optimal. Brownies need you to go first, and while Galleon doesn't care on paper, anyone that takes their turn (CC'd or not) can violent, and their violent nerf will do nothing to stop violent from being the ideal on most mons when on ADs. It's bad for Galleon too. In a lot of cases, 2 turn and 1 turn debuffs are the same length in PVP, and that won't change that much even with Vero less common. Enemy gets 1 turn, that might be it for you.
The most you can do to be safe is speed match the brownie, pirate, or whoever is breaking with Amir. We are already assuming you aren't praying you outspd Chloe or she lasers, her base spd is too high. You are not beating Chloe. As long as it isn't an immunity buff or someone that can oneshot your side, enemy sneaking a turn does not kill your run so long as the break and smash happen together. The 2 turn debuffs instead of 1 turns will increase your odds of keeping debuffs up, but bare minimum you'll have the def break before smashing. If you could have gone first with a spd lead, then Bernard's dmg lead is practically nixed. I think it's applied later in calcs, so it's a better 30% than adding another debuff for Amir's smash, but you lose out on a chunk of it, and risk the enemy team hijinks when they take turns.
Also, if their speeds are matched, make sure Amir is *AFTER* them in the lineup. Even if he's only 1 or 2 spd slower, with tower and spd lead buffs factored in, they could round to the same spd. If the debuffer is ahead of Amir in the lineup, they'll go first. Just shove Amir into the 4th spot to be safe. I do this with my Shannon in GB10, she's too close to my Lushen, so if I put him first, he'll amp before the AI buffs.
I still find a huge fault with the fact he needs *15* devilmons to max his skills. If you're lucky, I think you could very happily stop after maxing Mach Crush's damage, and completely unskilled it's just a 25% boost, may not matter depending on the comps you're bombing. Also, the CD wouldn't matter, not for this. It would for ToA, or GB10, but not for zerging. You're likely killing on the first turn or not at all. He would definitely want to be rage/blade atk/cd/atk for this type of ganking if at all possible, though an overall usage Amir could be quite good as spd/cd/atk on despair runes, and if you weren't able to go first reliably, then spd/cd/atk on rage might have to be a compromise. I'd rather try to snag some spd subs and hope the ATB from Bernard/Megan is enough.
If one had maxed skills and I wanted to PVE with it, I would probably prefer Violent. Once Vero goes from 30 to 60% on his stomp and goes from 4 to 3 turns, violent procs so you can do it more often feel better than having occasional extra RNG from despairs to me. I had my Vero on despair initially and his CC alone feels better on Violent, to say nothing of his proc pressure in PVP or his rapid cleansing. You do have two AEs on Amir, but Violent also means a DPS boost, whereas it's just the extra RNG CC on Despair. Even in ToA I'd take the Violent if I had access, you should have room for 1 hybrid cc/dps. I often bring Vero just for his stomping. If you used it in PVP with those PVE runes, then you lose the rage portion of damage, but it may be enough without it, and I'd take a Violent so he could do a second AE instead of a 25% chance of stunning a survivor.
I mentioned it before, but I'll say it again - immunity absolutely kills this. You could not ever attack Chloe, Velajuel, or any other immunity buffer. At least you'd likely outspeed Velajuel, but Chloe will be the devil. Additionally, will runes kill this (unless you somehow survive turn 1), and there is absolutely no way to know if they're there. It's pretty rare to see more than 1 monster with them (and the ones I see most often are the immunity buffers themselves, or healers that don't have a second healer/rezzer with them), so it isn't quite as crippling. If you see quad will runes, assume the position. The immunity weakness is not that big a deal as an AO for farming - this is for fast wings, and every single opponent won't have this, especially at a rating you feel comfortable farming. The higher you go, the more common immunity is, but you won't find 10 teams with it on a list, and you can just refresh for fast games instead of slower games where you may or may not pull off a list clear.
I'm waiting on the patch to see before I do any runing or 6'ing, but this extra boost for PVE and the meta shift in PVP may be just enough to make Amir go from the disappointment Ifrit to the most-used. I don't think I would use Tessarion outside of PVP except for rare HoHs or maybe ToA floors depending on how bosses are coded (IIRC, he cannot oblivion things like the Veromos boss, but I don't have one to confirm), and Theomars is a sturdy single-target with his new passive buff but I want AE for ToA and he could just as easily be Sigmarus in DB10, and Sig is probably better there. That's 2 mostly PVP or PVP-only mons, albeit good ones. Tessarion is particular has a unique effect.
Amir, though, now has potential to get used in PVP as an AE one-shotter, including use as the single DPS on teams whose AI won't hit wind reliably, which I've actually been seeing more often and getting to bring Lushen instead of Kaz or Hwa in a tank team. He'll also be significantly buffed in ToA/GB10 where debuffs run rampant. If you have 5-10 debuffs up, that 10% more becomes 50-100% more, that's a lot. It seems like a significant shift in stance from a small buff on paper, but I was reading about his numbers as of the current patch because he was the Ifrit I got first, and people that went ahead and 6'd him and properly runed him, including attempting all sorts of combinations, were just... not pleased. Not bad, but not good enough, not for all those skill-ups, all that work getting ifrits, not for having to have debuffs to do enough to matter, and his AE damage wasn't strong enough to kill, which means everyone just picks themselves back up, especially on Nemesis runes, where you just filled everyone's bars. Now, though, he might actually kill.
I'll laugh if he goes from being a joke to being so common people all start shoving will runes on everything and immunity shows up on 100% of teams to quit being farmed. All it will take is one video with attainable runes (like, 6 stars with okay subs but not godly rolls) one-shot overkilling a team in conq 3 or guardian. It's pretty rare NOT to see immunity by then, from what I've seen of peoples' lists at that super high level, but immunity is less common as you drop, so for the majority of players, it could be open season.
... 15 devilmons, though, are you serious...
(PSA - at the very least, wait for the patch, and wait for people that already 6'd and skilled him up to see if this is enough. People already made the investment once, they will be testing him the second the patch hits, I guarantee it. In the meantime, turn that frown upside-down if he was your first - or also second - Ifrit, he's probably getting a lot more viable.)
