Post by Ranix Aurus on May 13, 2017 7:23:46 GMT
There is too much plats in this game. Listing them is one thing, choosing them is another. Just because you know all the plats doesn't mean you know which would go best in your deck. With that in mind, and celebrating the (finally) release of water plat booster Jiang Ziya, I present to you the (amateur) Guide to Elemental Deck.
Disclaimer: I do not claim this as THE best way to make your deck. Feel free to disagree and give complains / suggestions. The more opinions in discussion, the more knowledge we can amass.
What is Elemental Deck and Why Should I Care?
When Remix Guna was first released, we all know that there will be similar units for each respective elements. Water had finally gotten their platinum booster, so now all elements can build their respective elemental deck.
To elaborate: for each of the four elements, there are one platinum unit which provides bonus attack, HP, and skill chance for any same element unit in deck. The units are as follows.
These units are called booster. They all have same unique skills, which is to add 20% attack, 20% hp, and 5% skill chance increase to unit with same element type as them in deck and assist. So for example, if you put Remix Guna in your deck then all earth units will get the bonus effects. This effect is stackable, so putting Remix Guna both in your deck and as flurry assist will give total of 40% attack, 40% hp, and 10% skill chance increase. As you can see, this is big. This effect is fully stackable with passives and other unique skills as well.
As you can see just from the number, having these booster units are important, if not imperative in order to have a competitive deck. But rather than having all booster units, it is more economical to focus in one or two elements, buy their respective boosters, and get more plats of the same element to further enhance their potential (unless you're whale, if you are then you can just get everything).
This can help new players in deciding which plat they want to buy next. If you had decided to go for Earth deck, for example, then you can focus in buying Remix Guna first, followed by its core unit, and then fill the rest of your deck with Earth normal units or additional plat options. This way, you can plan your purchase in advance rather than buying blindly.
Note that this essay only deals with building strong elemental quest deck. Defense deck is an entirely different matter. But I believe that before you can build your defense deck, it is mandatory to finish building your quest deck first.
Terms
I had decided some terms for the units in the deck.
Deck Composition
To start building elemental deck means to start making your quest deck the strongest in Ishtaria. That means to have attack power so immense, no amount of defense can stop it. As such, most variation of deck will be between these two compositions.
Slice unit is chosen as combo starter mainly due to the speed of their normal attack. Slice units only hit once, while flurry units hit thrice. The difference is negligible in quest, but is a matter of life and death in UvU. Having a slice in deck also allows the option to do rush attack if the situation calls for it.
The 2S-3F composition use slice as last attacker due to slice tendency to launch units. If enemies have different weight, some will be thrown up high while the others might stay low. If flurry units attack after that happened, some attack will miss. So slice will be used last to prevent that situation.
There is no need to bring pound. There are only a few exceptions where we will need to bring pound, usually for special quests where there is no other way but to use pound-rend on the enemy. But for 99% of the situation, your core + booster combo can destroy any enemies there is, and for that 1% situation the pound from assist is more than enough. The only pound unit worth bringing would be Gilles for Fire elemental deck, albeit it is still a very situational pick.
Passives and You
Platinum unit is not everything. You also need to be aware of what passive you can afford to bring in your deck. Unless you're going a full-plat deck, you will need to choose which passive you want to have either through units in your deck or from your assists. Passives can be grouped to two main camp, offensive and defensive. The following passives will be listed based on their priority to have in a deck.
Offensive:
Defensive
You might think that cleanse would be in defensive, but actually, offensive is for any passive which facilitates faster killing. Cleanse allows us to bypass stun and other stalling debuffs, allowing us to kill faster, so it's given high priority in offensive group. Defensive group, on the other hand, is for passives which let us survive even a bit longer.
Offensive would be most preferable when you want to kill quickly, especially in questing and events like UvU and KoF. Defensive is preferable for situations where survivability is required, for example in BotB. In average, offensive passives are more preferred than defensive passive. Mainly because if you kill your enemy faster than they can kill you, you don't need to care about defense...
Finally, you don't need to have all passives, but Attack Up and Cleanse would be high priority in your list so you might do well to start finding units which can provides them.
Final Note
The specific explanation for each elements can be read below. The best course to do, if you are a new player, would be to decide which element you want to focus in. This could be a long-term commitment so make sure you decided well. In the long run you might need to add another element to your list of specialization anyway, but at first you can just focus in a single element.
This guide focus on making an end-game deck, so you don't have to follow all the units right from the start. You can substitute the units with whatever you have at the moment, while using the units mentioned in the guide as point of reference to achieve in the future. With newer units coming out each week, units in this guide might become obsolete or replaced with a better alternatives.
Any question, suggestions, and complains can be discussed by replying this thread or messaging me. Thanks for taking the time to read this (amateur) guide!
Disclaimer: I do not claim this as THE best way to make your deck. Feel free to disagree and give complains / suggestions. The more opinions in discussion, the more knowledge we can amass.
What is Elemental Deck and Why Should I Care?
When Remix Guna was first released, we all know that there will be similar units for each respective elements. Water had finally gotten their platinum booster, so now all elements can build their respective elemental deck.
To elaborate: for each of the four elements, there are one platinum unit which provides bonus attack, HP, and skill chance for any same element unit in deck. The units are as follows.
- Earth: Guna (Remix)
- Fire: Meru
- Null: Ruprecht
- Water: Jiang Ziya
These units are called booster. They all have same unique skills, which is to add 20% attack, 20% hp, and 5% skill chance increase to unit with same element type as them in deck and assist. So for example, if you put Remix Guna in your deck then all earth units will get the bonus effects. This effect is stackable, so putting Remix Guna both in your deck and as flurry assist will give total of 40% attack, 40% hp, and 10% skill chance increase. As you can see, this is big. This effect is fully stackable with passives and other unique skills as well.
As you can see just from the number, having these booster units are important, if not imperative in order to have a competitive deck. But rather than having all booster units, it is more economical to focus in one or two elements, buy their respective boosters, and get more plats of the same element to further enhance their potential (unless you're whale, if you are then you can just get everything).
This can help new players in deciding which plat they want to buy next. If you had decided to go for Earth deck, for example, then you can focus in buying Remix Guna first, followed by its core unit, and then fill the rest of your deck with Earth normal units or additional plat options. This way, you can plan your purchase in advance rather than buying blindly.
Note that this essay only deals with building strong elemental quest deck. Defense deck is an entirely different matter. But I believe that before you can build your defense deck, it is mandatory to finish building your quest deck first.
Terms
I had decided some terms for the units in the deck.
- Core is the main plat damage dealer in your deck, the one unit which will most likely deal the killing blow. This is the unit you want to enhance the most with your booster effects, so it's usually the best platinum unit for their respective elements. Usually core would be the first purchase in your planned deck due to their versatility for any type of events.
- Booster is the plat units explained above. They function to strengthen the core and other units in the deck. Booster is the second purchase for your deck, after you bought/pulled the core. Booster units by themselves are not too strong, although they can do as stopgap solution for a while until you can procure your core.
- Options are plat units which is not a necessity in the deck. They serves to strengthen your deck, but you can do without them. You don't have to get all or even any the options. Pick the one you want based on your play style and economic situation.
- Normal are non-plat units. They mostly serves as passive skill carriers, providing buff / debuff and additional bonus from their abilities. Normal units can also serve as damage dealer since most of them have active skills.
- Combo Starter are units who start the attack. Since the first attack can never proc active skill, these units tend to be selected due to their passives and/or unique skills and not for their active skill. These units are almost always slice units, although there are exceptions.
Deck Composition
To start building elemental deck means to start making your quest deck the strongest in Ishtaria. That means to have attack power so immense, no amount of defense can stop it. As such, most variation of deck will be between these two compositions.
- 1S-4F (SFFFF) : 1 slice as combo starter followed by 4 flurries
- 2S-3F (SFFFS) : 1 slice as combo starter followed by 3 flurries and finished by 1 slice
Slice unit is chosen as combo starter mainly due to the speed of their normal attack. Slice units only hit once, while flurry units hit thrice. The difference is negligible in quest, but is a matter of life and death in UvU. Having a slice in deck also allows the option to do rush attack if the situation calls for it.
The 2S-3F composition use slice as last attacker due to slice tendency to launch units. If enemies have different weight, some will be thrown up high while the others might stay low. If flurry units attack after that happened, some attack will miss. So slice will be used last to prevent that situation.
There is no need to bring pound. There are only a few exceptions where we will need to bring pound, usually for special quests where there is no other way but to use pound-rend on the enemy. But for 99% of the situation, your core + booster combo can destroy any enemies there is, and for that 1% situation the pound from assist is more than enough. The only pound unit worth bringing would be Gilles for Fire elemental deck, albeit it is still a very situational pick.
Passives and You
Platinum unit is not everything. You also need to be aware of what passive you can afford to bring in your deck. Unless you're going a full-plat deck, you will need to choose which passive you want to have either through units in your deck or from your assists. Passives can be grouped to two main camp, offensive and defensive. The following passives will be listed based on their priority to have in a deck.
Offensive:
- Attack Up
- Cleanse (heal status)
- HP Down
- Defense Down
- Increase Skill Chance
- Charge Burst Gauge
- Reduce Abilities Turns
Defensive
- Heal Over Time
- Defense Up
- HP Up
- Heal
- Reduce Skill Chance
You might think that cleanse would be in defensive, but actually, offensive is for any passive which facilitates faster killing. Cleanse allows us to bypass stun and other stalling debuffs, allowing us to kill faster, so it's given high priority in offensive group. Defensive group, on the other hand, is for passives which let us survive even a bit longer.
Offensive would be most preferable when you want to kill quickly, especially in questing and events like UvU and KoF. Defensive is preferable for situations where survivability is required, for example in BotB. In average, offensive passives are more preferred than defensive passive. Mainly because if you kill your enemy faster than they can kill you, you don't need to care about defense...
Finally, you don't need to have all passives, but Attack Up and Cleanse would be high priority in your list so you might do well to start finding units which can provides them.
Final Note
The specific explanation for each elements can be read below. The best course to do, if you are a new player, would be to decide which element you want to focus in. This could be a long-term commitment so make sure you decided well. In the long run you might need to add another element to your list of specialization anyway, but at first you can just focus in a single element.
This guide focus on making an end-game deck, so you don't have to follow all the units right from the start. You can substitute the units with whatever you have at the moment, while using the units mentioned in the guide as point of reference to achieve in the future. With newer units coming out each week, units in this guide might become obsolete or replaced with a better alternatives.
Any question, suggestions, and complains can be discussed by replying this thread or messaging me. Thanks for taking the time to read this (amateur) guide!