| [Discuss/YamakCross] An update to the (water) cross leads situation (1 year after the summer planar mega rant) Posted: 24 Aug 2021 09:47 AM PDT Before starting : → I will make no mention in this post of non cross lead pairings. My opinion on this matter hasn't changed a ton, and I personally still dislike them. If they work for you that's great, more power to you, and even more so lately with the continuous addition of strong leaders who can hit cap on command ! → I will make no mention in this post of heart cross leaders, as they have nothing in common with color crosses, besides the" +" shape. → Unless specifically mentioned, if I talk about a cross lead, it is implied to be paired with themselves, and in 7x6 most of the times. → Because I can't shut up about color crosses doesn't mean I'm great at playing that. I clear stuff, and I'm probably better at this playstyle than the average player, but don't assume things about my level because \you would be surprised* :tyrralul:* ----- Aight, exactly one year ago I posted a mega rant about the state of color cross leads in 2020 PAD, and the many issues I had with how this playstyle was approached by GH devs. The release of Summer Planar was some sort of "last trigger" and had me write this wall of rants because I needed to let things go. Don't bother (re-)reading the entire thing. It's extremely long, I'm being very negative, it's probably annoying to read, and it was annoying to write (albeit very cathartic 😌). This was not a fun post for anyone, and even today it's not worth it to go back to reading the dang thing. Let me just remind you of the key points I made. In summer 2020, prior to Summer Planar's release : - Color cross leads were lacking in numbers, with only a handful being released each year, and while color cross leads weren't released, the devs kept releasing content. Most color cross released were also at a non relevant level of potency -even in cross leads standard- when they were not straight up garbage (think Amakozumi or the traffic light dragon thingy).
- Color cross leads had outdated LS design, with LS that look like they were made from several years before, but with crosses. This had to be compensated with intricate team building, big player skill, and -for higher challenges- excellent planning and flawless execution, even under hazard pressure. And that's when it was even possible. There were content simply not realistically working with crosses. Back then there wasn't a single x2 all stats relevant color cross lead, period, making color cross leads extremely hard to run in high challenges, and just way too much effort compared to any other playstyle (besides "can't match X or less", this one is awful lately too).
- They also had important durability issues, with either "tanky" cross leads who have trouble healing (HP mult but no RCV mult) or unkillable cross leads as long as they are not one-shot (RCV mult but no HP mult). You would think no RCV LS shouldn't be a problem with healing sticks, but 1/ we didn't have the crazy good healers we have now 2/ a healing slot is a slot taken in place of something else, which is a layer of team building difficulty color crosses could do without. As for shields, if a color cross lead had one, it was either a tiny 25% shield but with proper access to 7x6 (Nemain, Kenshin, Rokks, Kirei Kotomine), or a good 50% shield with mediocre access to 7x6 (Paimon, REvo Seraph Lucifer).
- Water had a total of 0 (zero) relevant cross lead in NA. Best ones were still Sitri and base Kyori. Look them up in a database like Ilmina.com or TsubakiBot if you want to understand the issue with water cross leads. Wedding Rushana is technically water too, yes.
- Color cross leads were being kinda sabotaged by the devs. Revo Seraph Lucifer had potential and got demoted from his color crosses status when he got his Super Revo. Base Kyôri was the first and only color cross lead with auto FUA, and it's an equip with virtually no awakening, and very low stats. Monocolor as well. Mega Paimon (as well as Revo Seraph Lucifer) has been begging for an appropriate 7x6 pairing for years, but alas, nothing.
I also made little mention of these in the post (it was actually too long for reddit omegalul), but it remains important matters to me. - No cross awakening meant it was 100% all the time super detrimental to run crosses in non-fixed teams rankings, period (and thus I was probably the only madman doing it).
- Damage Void was everywhere in dungeons, and color crosses sucked at dealing with that. VDP box + sufficient crosses was a very hard to perform/very easy to fail resource sink in 7x6, and FUA makes it very annoying to say the least. Double crosses + VDP in 6x5 was straight up 100% irrelevant : only a very small handful of cross leads could even do it, and (pixel) Nemain was the only one who would deal non potato damage doing that. Essentially, Triple Cross VDP FUA was a problem in 2021 PAD and needed to become less required as it didn't work well in modern content.
- 7x6 swap was very hard to perform, with very few amounts of inheritable lead swap AS.
Then there was the Summer Planar situation, but tbh it was an issue with me to begin with, and they didn't do anything regarding that so I'll just ignore that for this post. For the record I'm still not over it, but I might as well never be over it at this point :9 (Best Girl Planar deserved better) Aight. The point of this post would be to make an (exhaustive ?) update on the status of color crosses compared to last year. Last year's post was awful because I was very upset, but this time things are going very well. Long story short : since then, good things have regularly been happenning to color crosses, and this is very encouraging. This playstyle remains quite a mess and still more effort than most other playstyles, for less of a reward I would say since damage has virtually become a non issue to meta teams too. But color crosses also have been improved a fuck ton, and it seems like they're still actively working at making the playstyle genuinely better (a scaling color cross lead has cleared Shura 3, how hype is that ?!). Put it simply, last year it felt like that they didn't want color crosses to be anything but a niche, and today that feeling has completely \vanished\**, which is a hell of a relief. ----- Regarding the few main points right here, what has changed ? Practically everything ! Keep in mind that everything I'll mention right here happened *in the past 12 months !* (and most of it after update 19.0 back in february/march-ish IIRC) - Color cross leads are still not super numerous, but a lot of new ones have been added to the game in the past 12 months : counting JP releases 16 color cross leads were released/revealed and only 1 (one) of them *might* be JP only, so that's twice as much as last year (12 previous months had 8 color cross leads released in NA). A good part of these are fine -in color cross lead standard- at best, and a bunch are actually good, which is very nice. Also multiple older color cross lead have received (very) notable buffs : Verdandi, Karin Kanzuki, Aoi Shikigami, Kirei Kotomine, Planar, Enoch, Nees, and maybe a few more I'm forgetting, have all received buffs. We'll come back to these later, but for a few of them their buff is game changer, and while they might not be relevant for 2021 PAD highest challenge content, they are for slightly older content they simply weren't valid for before, or modern descends. That kinda helps with addressing the issue of the low amount of color cross leads. Which is good. These buffs are welcome.
- LS design for color cross leads is improving a lot. They tried experimenting with +1 combo per cross in october 2020 with Mega Paimon, and seeing how many color cross leads received this treatment they must be happy with how it works, so that's very positive. Heck they even introduced non-scaling color crosses with REvo Yashamaru and Phyllis ; they are cross leads with crosses not tied to damage (LS damage does not scale with the amount of crosses => non scaling crosses), but who gets +2/+3 combo per cross instead ! That last bit is very interesting as it kinda implies that they're willing to experiment with cross LS not tied to damage !
- Durability is improving a lot as well ; these past 3-4 months saw the release of multiple durable color cross leads, even in meta standards, which is positively surprising, considering how things were last year ! We now have :
- Phyllis with x3.6 eHP (x13 eHP mirrored !!), including a 50% shield, a.k.a probably the best color cross lead right now. She's one of these new non-scaling cross leads, she's really good and beats Shura 3 :>
- Water Fagan ! * gasp * A water cross lead ! And ! It's rainbow crosses !!! Finally ! Also comes with built in x6.25 eHP worth of pure shielding. His scaling is interesting at x2 per cross but x10 base damage ; in other circumstances I would frown and claim x2 per cross is bad and whatnot, but how can I argue when he actually beats Shura 3 lmao.
- Dark Albrecht, with x2.8 HP (x7.84 HP mirrored), without shield sadly. I haven't seen result with him yet (because I didn't look for results), but he's probably very capable still.
- Verdandi, who received a massive buff, with x2.5 HP mult for x6.25 HP mirrored. Team building is wonky as you kinda want to focus on fire subs to get the HP mult but oh well, she remains hella functionnal still.
- GH Sandalphon, the very first color cross lead (sadly monocolor) with both a HP mult and a 25% shield, so that was a good start.
- So there are these, as well as several older scaling cross leads who received buffs to reach x4 eHP mirrored, like Karin Kanzuki and Wedding Rushana with x2 HP, and Kirei Kotomine and Nees with 50% shield. There's also REvo Rushana, farmable, with her weird x2.1 HP thingy. These guys might not be very relevant anymore (Phyllis, Alrbrecht, Fagan and in a lesser extent Sandalphon are redefining "cross leads standard" as we speak tbh), but can still perform well in content from last year (which they couldn't really do before) and modern descends. Nice.
- Water crosses are finally a thing !!!! Kinda, since we're talking about Water Fagan RAI here, and he's rainbow, but still, it's valid. It counts. He's the Gray Fullbuster we couldn't get, but *better*. The meme is dead, water can finally run color crosses now. Thx YamaP, we appreciate it. Besides this fine dude though, we have Wedding Rushana (who isn't really relevant anyways), and that's it. They released Ninjala Jane which is nowhere near relevant, and straight up bad for 7x6 since the average experienced cross player probably cannot run crosses in 7x6 with only 10 secs of move time (and then add hazards and enemy pressure). Pixel Nemain cannot match water crosses and is therefore not a water cross lead. Pixel Sitri is monocolor and restricted to pixels so I cannot picture her as being relevant. But yeah, water Fagan is the real deal.
- As for the sabotage... I'll keep calling it that way as long as it looks like it to me. This year I only noted one real case of sabotage, and it was Super Revo Acala. Essentially they did the Super Revo Seraph Lucifer thingy again, removing color crosses from her LS, instead of improving it to a SRevo level (for the record I was actually ready to quit PAD after this, if not for the "hey, Street Fight Collab rerun soon" announcement, and well we know how it ended :>). But that's it. Nothing else. It was super sad though because Acala was an emblematic cross lead, and taking crosses away from her kinda removes a big part of her identity, which is sad. Heck, they did that literally on the same stream they introduced the first few cards with the cross awakening, including Verdandi, which could have been designed as a sub/pairing for Srevo Acala, had she kept her crosses. But alas. It felt kinda wrong.
- I'll quickly mention Mega Fujin and Raijin, but they were cross leads only in 1 form (and tbh that kinda came out of nowhere (I love it though, Wd/x Fujin was the one card I went all out with color crosses for in the first place 3 years ago)) so that doesn't really count.
- We could argue about wether Gilles Legato losing his crosses with his Revo is sabotage or not, but tbh I don't want to fight over this. My opinion on the topic is that it *could* have been not a problem to let him keep color crosses if he wasn't one of the most garbage cross lead to begin with. On the contrary I believe it would have been nice to give such a challenging prize a unique cross LS (good shield ? auto fua ? you name it), instead of removing them and replacing them with a super generic LS that nobody who can beat Alt Shura 2 will ever run anyways :9 Big wasted opportunity if you ask me. Just my 2 cents. Feel free to disagree, I'm over this, especially since they did \exactly that* with Albrecht and Fagan and* I love it :>
- Then there's D/F Planar (vanilla version) and her "eh" buff. She was glass cannon with RCV boost, and got buffed with the last iteration of Heroine REM to make her... glass cannon with more damage and more RCV boost. So essentially she went from irrelevant to irrelevant and that is sad. Makes you forget she's a high prize in this REM lul. If at least it was a buff to her cross scaling this would have been very interesting (x4 per cross and bicolor ?? count me in), but nah it was her base mult. This poor buff was super intentional because the devs know very well what makes literally *any* lead work in modern PAD, and it is very much *not being glass cannon\. It's funny to me how they can make leads with x16 eHP mirrored (including a ton of shielding) with c+ and auto-fua, but also look at a glass cannon nobody plays and say *"Hmmm, this card which already has massive damage and good RCV needs more damage and more RCV". Heroine REM next iteration is probably in a long while and I doubt Planar can receive a new buff significant enough to make her relevant again ; by then she will probably need at least 65%/70% shield (or equivalent in HP) to be relevant and I absolutely don't believe in it (if enemy damage doesn't skyrocket by then (it will) that would make her one of the best cross leads in the game tbh with such scaling, shield, c+ and a RCV boost on top of it). In other words, my best girl Planar looks beyond salvation. And that is hella sad. She remains best girl in my heart.
- Other than that, yeah, the only case of real actual sabotage is Acala. On a side note Paimon still doesn't have proper 7x6 access but oh well, is he still relevant to begin with.
- A cross awakening has finally been added ! I swear I had lost hope. It's not exactly what I wanted it to be (I wanted crazy stuff), however its impact on color crosses is absolutely massive and game changer. For example, Karin Kanzuki normally needs 4 crosses to hit cap, but 4 crosses is also a huge amount of resources (time, space, orbs), so being able to cap at 3 is super beneficial, considering how we're asked to hit cap more and more often, and sometimes under hazard pressure. Heck. Phyllis straight up doesn't work without the cross awakening, because her LS is average (x18) and thus you need to build her team for damage (unlike an actually scaling cross lead). The cross awakening allows a color cross team to be built for damage, and it's extremely good at doing that. Neato
- Monocolor crosses in particular benefit a fuck ton from the cross awake : they're vastly more limited than bicolor+ cross lead, as you can only match 2 crosses of a given color in 6x5, and "3" in 7x6 (4 is technically possible, but... you won't do it in an actual run of an actual challenging dungeon) ; so monocolor cross lead had to actually build for damage without proper damage awakenings (7c was of course very fine, 10c as well (kinda) in 7x6), which is why I never saw them as relevant (imagine going out of your way to play crosses but still not having damage :tyrralul:). But the cross awakening enables them, as it increases by a lot the base damage of *each cross matched*, making monocolor cross leads able to deal damage with less crosses. And I'm all for that.
- For some reason however it took a long while for rankings to provide a matching bonus for cross awakes. It got addressed eventually so it's all good. I can finally try hard in rankings for real.
- Damage Void is still everywhere, but we have increasingly more ways to deal with it, thanks to 1/ the regular release of new and accessible VDP active skills 2/ the cross awakening. You may or may not have seen it in my updated Karin Kanzuki Guide, but I strongly believe rainbow VDP is very nice for crosses as it is easier, less ressources heavy, more consistent, less annoying and more powerful (you can VDP ping with 2 attributes of a card instead of just one) than Triple Cross VDP FUA, while not requiring an active skill to be performed. The cross awakening makes it so that rainbow vdp can be very strong for color crosses without a single counterpart. Of course this is not enough for a lot of the modern challenging content, but it is relevant for even the latest descend bosses, as their HP pool are still somewhat under control at reasonable amounts in regards to damage cap (Irene typically dies to hitting damage twice). The reign of Triple Cross VDP FUA has ended, and I say \*good riddance\.*
- 7x6 swap is still excellent for color crosses, and crucial for this playstyle if you want to run high end challenges. Yet 7x6 swap remains to this day quite niche and restricted, as only 14 cards in the entire game can do it, and 12 for NA after everything releases (I count Macha/Mega Macha as 1 since her getting her Mega evo doesn't increase the number of options, same for Li). But 12 is several times the amount who could do it last year. They made a lot new ones this year. And that's not all : one of the reruns of GH collab introduced chibi Bradamante, Cian, and friends, which are 5 tradable inheritable lead swap cards. They just so happen to be by far the best for color cross leads in general (i.e., not in specific situation when you need a shield else you die) as they're the fastest (18 CD, same as Bonta-kun) and they provide a big 15-turns 15% skyfall buff of their color (and that is A LOT of skyfall). And here's the neat thing : GH collab comes back every once in a while, and these chibis can be traded for when they're in the rotation, unlike litteraly all the other inheritable lead swappers (none of Li, Macha, Opacho and Sousuke Sagara are tradable). So next time they're featured in GH collab you can trade for inheritable leader swappers. About time.
That doesn't make 7x6 swap suddenly widely available and common, but the amount of players who can perform lead swap has probably skyrocketted since this that rerun of GH collab a while ago. And I do not need to tell you just how crucial 7x6 is to color crosses. And these are exclusively things that happened in the past 12 months ! I don't think so much stuff has ever happened to color crosses since the introduction of color crosses. There's still stuff to improve with color crosses, but 1/ I don't know if that's what they want 2/ these past 12 months have been extremely encouraging on that regard 3/ it doesn't look like they're done just yet (a new one was announced @ JP yesterday). Let's just hope they keep their momentum ! ----- Aight, what are the good relevant cross leads in 2021 ? Depends if we're talking "old" or "new" color cross lead standard, because the release of Phyllis, Dark Albrecht, Water Fagan, Revo Yashamaru and GH Sandalphon make me think color cross lead standard is changing, and it doesn't look like they're done working on color crosses just yet. - If you think in new color crosses standard, that would mostly be Phyllis, Water Fagan and Dark Albrecht. These bad boys are still not at the x16 eHP levels of durability (which is strange considering modern x16 eHP teams hit damage cap consistently now), but they're getting closer, and are very capable thanks to it. Revo Yashamaru probably belongs here as well and is very capable, although vastly less than Phyllis (which he's closest to). Some may think Verdandi also belongs here, but I would argue against it simply because her team building is so weird : you ideally want specifically wood/fire subs, which limits a ton your sub pool, but you can extend it by running fire subs rather than wood subs, because wood subs won't get the HP boost. But then your fire subs are half off-color (so they deal less damage) and they don't have the damage boost from Verd's LS for wood subs (so they deal even less damage).
- If we're thinking in old color crosses standard the lead pool increases by a good amount. You can add Verdandi to the list, as well as Wedding Rushana, my boy Aoi Shikigami and my girl Karin Kanzuki, who all have at least x3 damage scaling and x4+ HP mirrored (no shield), but also GH Sandalphon and Kirei Kotomine with their shields. Sousuke Sagara is probably still very much up there as well, although team building is difficult with Attacker restriction. I'm not sure whether Paimon still counts as relevant since his shield is unreliable. Nees also do not deal a ton of damage and still doesn't have an actual set of awakes (come on, it's 2021, that's another meme that needs to die) nor an optimal 7x6 pairing, so I'm not exactly sure about her too.
To be honest, I think we should push the crosses standard further ; x4 eHP mirrored is enough for Shura1 as well as extreme annihilation descends, but that's probably it. I think we should agree that color cross lead standard is what Phyllis, Water Fagan, Dark Albrecht, Revo Yasha, and maybe GH Sandalphon are displaying. As much as I love Karin Kanzuki, I think "relevant" doesn't really suit her anymore in 2021 PAD. And for the record, here are a few cross leads who missed the "relevant in old color cross lead standard" cut despite receiving notable buffs/evos : - Pixel Nemain has fine potential, but pixel restriction in team building is bad.
- Pixel Sitri, same, also she's monocolor, which doesn't help.
- Allatu is relevant as a 7x6 board provider, but not really as a lead as she lacks the durability in LS to justify running her in modern challenging dungeons. I'm very looking forward to her future evos. Please YamaP I'm begging you don't sabotage her.
- Best Girl Planar has exactly the damage and +combos of Mega Paimon, without the thing that used to make Mega Paimon so good : his durability. Her personal HP remains off the charts, but as a lead she's just not good. She packs a hard punch though.
- Enoch would have been relevant-ish with a base ATK mult. Even just x2. She works well in 7x6 thanks to her high x3.5 scaling, but in 6x5 she just doesn't have the damage because you always need 3 crosses. Still good for a farmable, and works well with Paimon.
- Toragon... can probably beat stuff when paired with the super durable leads like Gileon (and in 7x6 of course), but there are likely limits.
----- Alright, that's it for the stuff that has been done. I didn't really mention it but with the introduction of the cross awake earlier this year a good bunch of cards have at least 1 (at this pace we might reach 100 cross awake cards by the end of the year ?), including equips, which are being released pretty fast (some of these are quite accessible too). We also have cross awakes sticks already with cards like Rudra, Filo, Exodia, and the mind boggingly good Narcis and Phyllis. Neato. So yeah, this has definitely been a very good year for color crosses. I was very enthusiastic at the idea they were finally creating a cross awakening, because that kinda implied they would look at the color cross playstyle, and judging from all the nice things that have happened, I was right to be excited for this. HOWEVER I really hope they don't loose their momentum, because a lot can still be done (on top of what's been done already) to improve color crosses. We're kinda at a point where running crosses isn't \detrimental* anymore, which is amazing, but at the same time they're in this weird spot where non color cross meta teams easily achieve the damage of color crosses on demand, without having to deal with the (decreasing) caveats of color crosses. In other words, color crosses are kinda loosing their "main selling point". On one hand we have the extremely potent meta leads which are durable, strong and with access to auto-fua, and on the other we have *\most** scaling cross leads, unable to run shura2 and beyond because they die. Also no auto-fua. Both of these archetypes also hit damage cap on command like it's nothing by the way, so that's weird. Color crosses used to justify the difficulty to run them with the damage they were able to output compared to other teams, but that doesn't apply anymore. I hope this will be addressed eventually. There are a few other boxes I hope we will check eventually to improve color crosses : - Keep the durable color cross leads coming. Just keep at it. Don't let that momentum fade out. It's great so far. I love it.
- Auto-fua. Aight. I know I've said a lot before that auto-fua wasn't the top priority in terms of things color cross leads needed, but a lot of these "higher priority issues" (i.e. not dying, essentially) are being addressed as we speak, so I think the next realistic new thing for color crosses could be this. It would be quite strong for color crosses, since FUA puts a hard limit to the amount of crosses you can match, but I don't think that's a reason to be so shy about it. It is a true truth that with each new dungeon released, auto-fua is more and more desirable. FUA with crosses is not hard per se, but FUA implies a couple annoying things when used in combination with crosses (all of this assumes 7x6), which will be addressed by auto-fua :
- FUA takes time to match, which eats the precious move time you need to match crosses
- Crosses + FUA makes it very hard to pass combo shields if your lead doesn't have +combo built in LS, and that \*requires\ 7x6 swap* as no natural 7x6 cross lead have such LS yet. I'm talking about these annoying 9+ combo shields we see more and more frequently. Point is, the base Kyôri meme has no right to still be a thing. It's 2021 è_é
- More cards with the cross awake. It looks like they don't plan on stopping releasing these, which is good. Keep them coming. I still believe rainbow VDP is very good for color crosses, thanks to the cross awakening, so keep these coming. Also, equips. Yes. Lots. Delicious.
- More 7x6 cross leads. You might not have noticed it, but Phyllis is actually only the 4th 7x6 color cross lead in the game. They made 3 in about a year (Allatu, Wedding Rushana, Karin Kanzuki), then completely stopped for a very long while, and finally made a 4th one in the name of Phyllis (she's non scaling so she plays and build differently than scaling cross leads), and that's it. We're at 4. We could use some more. It's not an urgent matter.
- Make Nees good, cowards è_é The joke was funny for a while, give her proper awakes, boost her LS to x3 scaling and maybe slap a slight HP boost in there, and boom, relevant. Also Kenshin (although this looks unlikely I heard).
- Damage cap is still too low. To quote Erika from Discord, the one thing scaling color crosses have going for them is that "theoretically their damage is off the charts. Which is fine. Except the charts don't let you". The super damage cap latent is an-ok start, let's just hope we go beyond that soon. Color crosses made sense a few years ago when they traded all of their numerous downsides and issues for this consistent access to extremely high damage. Heck, it's more and more required anyways, and more and more teams can achieve that, with less and less effort and more and more consistency, while also being unlikable and having auto fua. Crosses were special for being able to activate their LS multiple times, but this isn't very relevant anymore when meta leads achieve the same damage while activating their full LS once. I hope this weird status will change eventually. There are many ways around this. It can be LS. It can ba awakes. It can be AS. Maybe something else. I would be leaning more towards LS (as crazy as it sounds), because otherwise you would open uncapped damage to other leads, which would defeat the purpose of doing something to crosses specifically.
- That, or if they want color crosses to not be special anymore (it's fine) then make them not special anymore and give them auto-fua :9 But we have to choose. Right now crosses are both limited by damage cap and not treated like other playstyles with the super high durability and auto fua. This could change in a matter of weeks or even days though, as I said it doesn't look like the devs are done looking at color crosses just yet (they announced a new one yesterday). I'm just emphasizing this weird status as it is now.
- More transforming cross leads. Phyllis is a very interesting start, but a start still. This is not urgent. She freakin beats the hardest dungeon in the game. It's more like something I would like to see, since we have so many transforming cards in PAD now. These are usually very strong (our meta is dominated by transforming cards, and it's been the case for a very long while), so this could be exciting. It could be non top tier color cross leads btw. No urge though. I just want to see a transforming scaling cross lead.
- This is quite a stretch to say the least, but while I'm at it let's just throw this rock and see if it ever sticks. A way to make crosses special again would be to give them something else per cross. You see where I'm going : shield per cross. Yes, you read that right. Put these forks away, let me explain, it might not look like it but there is a \very simple* way to balance it. Hear me out : *shield per cross, but it doesn't provide LS damage. Look. The hard limit is 6 crosses in 7x6 (before skyfall), so the devs \know** how many can be matched at any time, which enables balance (you ain't getting a 7th cross skyfall at a relevant moment ever). Aight. Here's the strat : let's make it so a cross lead gets damage out of light and dark crosses (x3 per light/dark cross for example), and shielding per fire/water/wood cross (15% per cross for example). Or vice versa. This has a few big implications :
- For crosses to benefit from this, building rainbow is \*mandatory\* (can't match a cross of a color you don't have in team), which puts a constraint, and could reduce abuse.
- With 6 being the absolute max amount of crosses you can make in 7x6 before skyfall (5 if you don't learn to cascade), this cross lead would *ALWAYS be trading shielding for damage*, and vice versa, at all times, no exceptions. Unlike modern meta leads, such a cross lead won't be able to get a big shield and big damage at the same time, without using an active skill. For example, if we look at x3 ATK per light/dark cross and 15% shield per RGB cross ; with mirrored leads, at 3 light/dark crosses and 3 fire/water/wood crosses you get x729 ATK and about x2.65 eHP worth of shield if my math is correct. But if you decide to unleash more damage at 4 light/dark crosses and 2 fire/water/wood crosses, you get x6561 ATK but much less shielding with about x1.9 eHP only. So this flexible shielding will always come with a tradeoff, and balances itself out, even with slightly overturned shielding or damage.
- This certainly won't be free, as it'll require players to learn the advanced ways of cascading crosses, because without cascading the max amount of crosses you can match in 7x6 before skyfall is actually 5. Which means that even if it's overtuned, it's restricted to very dedicated players who are willing to go through the trouble of learning that, and thus any potential abuse would be limited to these players anyways.
- Orb generation could be a challenge because different colors provide different effects on LS ; not having your shield color when you need can be a death sentence, as well as not having your damage color when you're about to eat an avoidable execute.
- Spinners exist and will \need\** to be addressed in team building because spinners + solves of 4+ crosses are just... incompatible xD (except in that 99secs fixed move time dungeon, that was super funny tbh).
- Because you'll be matching 5-6 crosses all the time, healing is going to be a problem, period, so that's another is a constraint which might reduce abuse as well.
However, for such a lead to even function, 7x6, auto-fua and combo+ per cross are going to be mandatory. As I said earlier, in 7x6 FUA prevents you from matching more than 4 crosses, which will work very badly with this kind of weird LS (unless it's super overturned, and thus, abusable (← bad)), hence the auto-fua. And since essentially you'll be matching 5-6 crosses all the time (either to deal damage or receive protection, or both), you'll almost never go beyond 8 combos before skyfall, making modern combo shields straight up impossible. Hence the c+ per cross. This whole thing is a big stretch, don't take it too seriously. It's just that I find it interesting. There are way more urgent matters to address than this fancy thingy. I would be thrilled to play that if it was ever released though. For the record this wasn't my idea, /u/Moxhi/ and /u/RainBuckets8/ came up with it, I just adjusted the design as it felt off to me. I would say REvo Yashamaru and Phyllis with their non scaling crosses makes me think we might witness such a LS... eventually. That would be a new experiment with crosses (just like Paimon c+ per cross back then). (because I found it interesting, I simulated the shielding for various amounts of crosses and % per cross. Keep in mind, with the LS I proposed here a shielding cross doesn't add damage) (For the record, with proper LS design (= adequate damage and shield scaling) I would break my nIAP oath to get my hands on duplicates of these, take note, devs) Of course shield per cross would be thrilling, but I would also be super interested in healing per cross (x5 team RCV (instant, so before damage and before regular healing) per cross matched for example). Could be nice to reduce the need for a healer stick, as well as countering RCV debuffs (i.e. more room for other stuff in the team, hurray !). I also think awoken bind clear per cross was interesting, and in general, debuff cleanse per cross is an idea I like a lot. Idk, maybe toy with that a bit more. ----- All in all, the important point I want to highlight in this post is this : the devs are actively looking again at the color crosses playstyle, and it's a treat so far. They're pondering their options to see what can be done with color crosses in 2021 PAD and that is \very good*. Color crosses are still a somewhat not super popular playstyle (rightfully so), but *huge improvements have been made to take them out of the niche status, and people are actually picking it up spontaneously ! Nice ! Also Phyllis is actually freaking meta omfg can you believe this xD We have an actual meta color cross lead, another one not really meta but who beats Shura 3 still, and also a pile of trash and "used to be relevant" leads, which is a hell of a wide spectrum of lead potency. Of course there's a universe of places to be between "niche" and "meta", but the place they want for color crosses is blurry to me. This is also likely due to the fact they're still working on color crosses, and maybe things will be clearer when they're "done" with it. Essentially they're actively working on color crosses, and that is good. I'm not saying that color crosses are good now, but rather that the fact they're getting a ton better is very good. Color crosses have been in dire need of attention for upgrades and updates in regards to modern content, and we're getting just that with practically every other update or batch of content. Some people were saying a while ago that the devs had trouble working on color crosses because this playstyle didn't fit well with modern PAD or whatnot, and I'm glad they were mostly wrong because the truth is they can make it work just fine if they try, and we're witnessing that right now. Kudos to them :> To be frank, I might put a facade but I don't have the energy anymore to do shenanigans like that incredibly stressful (and equally thrilling) run of AA2 with Karin Kanzuki 2 years ago. It used to be that I loved the thrill of figuring a strategy out to run a very hard dungeon against all odds, and that's still very true, but "very hard dungeon" has become hella difficult, and keeping doing that all the time is exhausting and I have much less time for PAD. So yes, keep them good leads coming so that I can run content :') (in the meanwhile I'm not done with playing my girl Karin Kanzuki) (yes, I did pull Phyllis, twice) (but tbh I have my eyes more on Fagan than anyone else atm) ----- So that's it ! An (exhaustive ?) update on the state of color crosses, 1 year after losing it over Summer Planar xD There's been a lot of great improvements, so many nice things have happened since version 19.0, but I also believe a lot can still be done to improve color crosses. Point is, I have regained faith. Props to the devs for making me enjoy PAD again, after being this close to quit again :> That was my update on the status of color crosses. Dunno if I'll do another one next year. Thanks for attending my TED talk ~ (now YamaP if you could improve the "can't match X or less" playstyle that would be incredible) (also 5o1e pretty please) submitted by /u/Yamakyu [link] [comments] |
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