App to create Puzzle and Dragons teams. Contribute to naisho/pad-team-builder development by creating an account on GitHub.

• Puzzle And Dragons Team Optimizer

Updated 2017-05-23 - Mid Game Draft

Updated 2017-05-21 - Initial Draft

Team building is one of my favourite parts of PAD. A good team can make the game much more enjoyable allowing you to progress further. I highly encourage everyone to experiment with different teams and combinations but here my general guidelines throughout the different stages of your pad journey. The guide is for solo gaming only and is not focused on any specific teams and should be applicable regardless of current meta. Refer to other guides for leader specific team building as well as co-op recommendations.

The guide is broken down into four sections: early, mid, late and end game:

• Early - Up to but not including King of Gods

• Mid - All normals and technicals up to but not including Legendary Mountain Path and Medium Descends

• Late - Up to Arena 1

• End - Arena 3

Before we begin, download padguide app and bookmark the following links:

• Learn about assists and skill inheritance: https://mantasticpad.com/category/skill-inheritance/

• JP tier lists and ideal teams: https://setsupad.wordpress.com/

You've just started the game and have a very limited number of REM monsters. The goal of the team should be:

• Clear content consistently

• Maximize team stats while keeping within team costs

• Low to medium skill requirement

Picking the right leader can make the early game substantially easier. A good leader should have these qualities:

• 3x or higher ATK multiplier

• Require 4 or less orbs of a single color

• Access to a large sub pool (Provides a ATK multiplier to multiple colors and/or subtypes)

Avoid leaders with the following traits:

• Skill activation (Skills have long cooldowns until they're levelled so you're damage will be very low most of the time)

• Poison or jammers activation (Very few monsters produce these and dungeons will not have these mechanics yet)

• More than 6 combos activation (Most players will have difficulty doing this consistently)

• Enhanced orb activation (you need to awaken your monsters with Tamadras to get enhanced orbs. Most of the time these awakenings

Let's look at a few examples:

• Haku has a higher ATK multiplier but is restricted to dark, blue and red activation - this is very difficult to achieve consistently every floor

• Kush maybe a top tier leader but only in her reincarnated form - her base form is very difficult to use compared to the other 2

• Sherias would be top choice: he does 3x ATK on matching 3 colors, there is no restrictions in color or sub type

• Both Saria and Tsubaki have higher ATK multipliers when all conditions are met

• However skill activation and enhance orb matching is difficult to achieve consistently in the early game

• Satsuki gives the best base multiplier and has a wide coverage of subs - dragons and gods are very common in the game

• The other two could be better leaders once you've transitioned to the mid game

Early game doesn't have any mechanics to deal with and monsters generally have low HP. A good leader with dungeon drops should get you through this stage. However, its still good to do the following:

• Stick as many REM cards as you can fit due to team costs that matches the leaderskill. REM have significantly better stats and its good to invest in these monsters for the future.

• If the leaderskill is not specific to 1 attribute then make sure you have rainbow coverage with subs - this will maximize your ability to damage every turn

• Fill any non-REM slot with dungeon drops - make sure to match the leaderskill. No need to chase after any specific drops, use what drops naturally

• Save any tamadras you find until the mid-game where you choose a more permanent team

• Look up monster costs in padguide before you evolve

Let's look at an example:

• Metatron is a great leader with 3.5x ATK multiplier that applies to all healers

• Looking at your REM, you slot in Riding Hood and Carat who are also healers

• You should then fill the other slots with a dark and red healer to give you rainbow coverage such as [ Green Carbuncle ] [ Purple Carbuncle ]

• There is no need to fill the team with light healers only

You've clear a lot of the normals and technicals and have a modest 15-20 REM monsters. You can now build a more focused team. The goal of the team should be:

• Deal more than 5M in damage in the single turn - this allows you to take on Zeus in Starlight Sanctuary

• Allow the team to stall for skills for the final floor

• Medium skill requirement

You're now at a point where a good leader can't carry you through content. You'll want to use a leader that gives you the best team inclusive of subs. However, there's a few things to keep in mind when looking at the strength of a leader:

• 4x or higher ATK multiplier for mono teams or 5x for rainbow on full activation - padguide shows this for every monsters so you don't even need to do math!

• HP and or RCV multipliers - these can help you stall during the early floors of the game to allow active skills to come up for the boss

• Shield or 'reduced damage' leaderskills can allow you to tank a boss hit so you can whittle him down

• Look at a monster's potential when evolved. Monsters can gain significantly better leader skills based on their ultimate evolutions. Use padguide to check Windows 10 internet checkers.

• Access to large sub pool (especially REM in your box)

Avoid leaders with the following traits:

• Awoken or reincarnated evolutions. At this stage of the game, you'll have difficulty getting the materials to evolve them to these levels. Stick with their ultimate evolutions when analyzing leader strength.

• Poison or jammers activation (Very few monsters produce these and dungeons will not have these mechanics yet)

• Skill use only activation (Need a base multiplier to kill trash mobs)

• More than 6 combos activation (Most players will have difficulty doing this consistently)

• Enhanced orb activation if you don't have access to any tamadras

Let's look at an example:

Let's assume you have a really small box and you only have 4 monsters:

The first step is taking a look at the leader skill potential of each of these monsters. Let's go to padguide and lookup their evolutions:

Notice, I haven't looked up Astaroth/Pandora's awaken or reincarnated forms. Let's compare these leaders:

• I've ranked them in order of potential

• The next step isn't to build a team around Pollux as you need to see which leader+sub combination is best

You have access to more REM but for the most part the box will push you into a specific direction. Your team should be focused on:

• A single color unless you're running a rainbow activation team. This will give you a bigger burst potential as all your subs will be attacking. You will need to stall more each turn prior because you may not have the right orbs every turn

• If you don't have enough on color subs, then use a sub with a matching sub attribute

• If you're running a rainbow leader such as [ Yellow-Horned Demon Princess, Raijin ] [ Blazing Goddess of Power, Kali ] [ Sacred Dragon Princess, Da Qiao ] [ Blazing Deity Falcon, Horus ] then you'll still want to have subs with the same main attribute and use sub attributes to meet the rest of the color requirements

• Look for actives skills that give you a kill board or condition (for example if you run rainbow then a board changer that gives you all color orbs would be great) that match your leaderskill

• Try to have 1 board changer and 1 orb changer

• Active skills that don't break your leaderskill

• Hitting 5M burst (you can test in endless corridor) - if not then fit a monster with burst shield or delay into your team. If you need a delay use [ Crimson Lotus Mistress, Echidna ] . Don't worry if Echidna doesn't match your leader skill as the 3 extra turns will make up for the loss in damage

• Maximize the use of your REM, if you have extra slots then fill them up with useful farmables: https://www.reddit.com/r/PuzzleAndDragons/wiki/guides/commonsubs

Additional tips:

• Start with the color with the most REM or Rainbow leader with 5x or higher ATK multiplier - generally this is your best team

• Assess subs based off UUVO or UVO evolutions, same concept as the leader

• Continue to look at how to improve your team with new REM pulls, sometimes this may give you an option to a new and better team

• Use the filter function to identify how many subs match that leaderskill

• Don't buy MP monsters, you'll get more value buying one once you move to the late or end game

• Use tamadras to increase your damage and consistency:

Special Note on Heart Cross Leaders:

• Heart cross leaders provide an ATK multiplier along with a damage shield when you match 5 hearts in a cross formation

• The multiplier remains as long as you sweep the floor and there's no pre-emptive attack on the next stage - you can look for the def/shield icon in the left of your health bar to see if your multiplier is still active

• The ATK multiplier is not attribute specific so you can run a rainbow team as well

• Worth prioritising if you have at least 1 matching heart orb changers or board changers (other than your leader and friend) even if you can't build a mono team around it as the shield allows you to tank boss hits and whittle him down

Let's look at a couple example boxes - I took these from Reddit requests.

Example 1 - [Box] (http://imgur.com/a/976vX)

1. Identify dark as the largest REM pool and Xmas Kali as the strongest rainbow leader

2. Identify a list of Kali subs by filtering on God and Dragons:

• Kali needs full color + heal to activate, lets remove subs that don't create this board: Pandora, Sheena, Sonia, Umisachi. We can remove Lu Bu as well as his active only helps devils

• Kali provides red and dark coverage, now I need to cover green, blue and light

• Even with rainbow, its better to focus more on a single color. Let's try to build a red focused team:

• There's no red monsters that give green coverage nor any green monsters that give red coverage so Muse would be the best choice. Muse's active skill also matches the team as opposed to Umisachi

• The last slot can be any sub based on player preference: Sonia (just for more red subs), Orochi (for delay), Keiji (Active to potentially create a Kali board) or Metatron (shield)

3. Let's access the strength of the dark leaders:

• Other monsters not listed as they don't meet the recommended 4x ATK multiplier

• Metatron has the best ATK multiplier and stats boosts but is restricted to a single sub type and has a more tricky activation requirement

• Pandora is very flexible but only provides an ATK multiplier

• Sheena and Lu Bu both are more restricted with similar multipliers

Let's look at all of the dark god subs to see if we can build a Metatron team:

• Looks like we don't have any choices in subs as there's no other dark gods - again try to build a mono team if possible

• Looking at active skills, Hades and Izanami don't contribute much while Pandora is an on-element orb change. The real prize is Lu Bu's active skill that allow's the team HP to drop to meet Metatron's leaderskill requirement

The Metatron team is a bit lacking on orb changers, let's see if Pandora is better.

• Access to 2 orb changers (Pandora and Pandora friend) and a board change (Sheena)

• Lu Bu's active applies to Pandora, Jize, Hades

• Metatron and Izanami can provide shield

The team would look like:

Puzzle And Dragons Team Optimizer

• Last spot can be Jize or Hades depending on preference. Hades is generally preferred as his active is more useful

4. At the end, Metatron would be your best bet:

• Kali provides comparable damage but rainbow leaders need more orb changers to be effective - team only has 1 with Kali. Also activating her leaderskill consistently requires a high level of skill

• Pandora looks more consistent due to the better sub pool but she has to do 10 orbs so do full activation. For trash mobs, you'll need a minimum of 6 orbs for 4x ATK multiplier. Metatron still does 9x damage with 3 dark orbs

In most cases its better to pair your leader with an identical friend for best synergy. However this is not always the case, especially in the mid game. This can also compensate for a low multiplier on your own leader.

1. You can pair a leader with its Reincarnated or Awoken form for better overall damage. For example:

2. You can pair leaders that provide HP multipliers with one that provide RCV multiplier for better balance. For example:

3. You can pair with leaders with larger multipliers that cover the same sub types. However, this may further restrict your sub choices. For example:

4. If you have a leaderskill that provides a 7x6 board, you'll want to pair with a different leader that gives you a higher multiplier together. The pairings are a lot more restricted, so here's a list for reference:

5. Post on reddit to look for friends if the right pairing doesn't show up naturally.

6. If you rely on a specific leader to get you through content, its worth using your best friend at this point

Millions of mobile gamers around the globe have played GungHo Online's role-playing hybrid Puzzle & Dragons, but how many are playing it right? We asked the developer for some tips and tricks to help survive the game's unique brand of match-three madness.

Puzzle & Dragons starts off easy — collect colorful creatures, take them into dungeons, play Bejeweled to kill things. But this is no Bejeweled, there's more to creature control than simply collection, and those monsters won't be pushovers for long. Here are five pieces of wisdom to help you excel, direct from the fine folks at developer GungHo Online.

1. Embrace the Freedom!

Most match-3 games have you sliding colorful shapes around one space at a time. It’s difficult for new players to break this habit, but they will have to in order to get the most out of Puzzle & Dragons. So grab that Orb and put it wherever you want.

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2. Don’t go for the quick and easy move - take your time.

The enemy isn’t going anywhere. There is no time limit, but once you grab an Orb and move it, a turn will go by. You’ve only got so many turns before the enemy hits back. Think about what you want to do and go for it. Here’s an example:

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3. Make some Friends!

Whenever you enter a Dungeon, you have the option to bring along a Helper Monster. If you bring a Friend, you can take full advantage of their Monster’s Leader Skill. If you bring a User, you won’t get to use their Leader Skill. Although, when you complete the Dungeon, you’ll have the chance to invite them to be your Friend.

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4. Bring the right Leader to the right Dungeon.

Leader Skills drastically affect your Dungeon crawling success. Build your teams and plan your Leaders based on the challenges faced in each Dungeon. If you have two Monsters who can reduce Fire damage in a Fire Dungeon, you’ll be un-scorchable!

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Here are some popular Leader/Helper combinations:

Healer + Damage Reducer: Great for most early Dungeons

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*Some Healers can recover HP with ANY Orb match - with enough damage reduction, it becomes impossible to die!

Double Damage Reduction: Particularly helpful in mono-elemental Dungeons

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Quadruple HP+RCV: A “turtle” team with tons of HP and the power to heal up quickly

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*Leader skill doubles HP/RCV and if you bring another, the effects stack

Spike Damage: For advanced players - these teams can do a lot of damage and rely heavily on skill

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5. Every Monster has its use, even if it’s fodder!

You may notice some Monsters are labeled Enhance Material and some Evo Material. With perhaps one exception (Keeper of Rainbow) these Monsters aren’t meant for your team - they are meant to Power Up your team!

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Pengdra: Level up and Evolve these little guys for some massive EXP!

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Metal/Jewel Dragons: The smaller ones can help Evolve Pengdra, and the bigger ones are the most efficient ways to obtain EXP!

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Think you've got better advice? Feel free to fill the comment section with your own tips and tricks for taking on Puzzle & Dragons.