Hinokagutsuchi

A strong triple TPA fire type card. His active is a bit lackluster given that it’s not a 100% break and only converts 1 color to fire (while breaking hearts into another color) but brings a lot of damage to a fire team like Krishna or Shiva (not that I recommend the leaders, but if you happen to run them, Hino can be effective).

 Viper Orochi

Yes. Get one. Get 5. Get 50 (if you’re cheap and lazy to keep moving inherits around). This is easily the most sought after delay in the game given his ability to be inherited, low cooldown compared to his fire counterpart, Exa Hydra (Awoken Orochi is 4 turn delay for 15 turn cooldown, Exa is 5 turn delay for 20 turns. The extra 1 turn delay is really not worthwhile.).

He makes a strong water, dragon, multi TPA card for teams like Roots, Blue Myr, Sarasvati. Easily one of the most valuable pantheon cards in the game. Is used on optimal RaDragon teams as an inherit on Isis for delay. (And frankly, most teams will have him as a delay.)

 Susano

The longest shield in the game (ignoring cards like Ninegurada). 5 turns at 50% is an incredible shield (keep in mind Awoken / Reincarnated Susano has the active changed to 3 turns, 50% shield, 1 turn haste. I keep my Susano non-awoken.) Reincarnated Susano is a solid TPA unbindable for Wood teams like Bastet, Ronove, and others. Overall a very strong card to have. He loses out to Indra for a pure shield factor EXCEPT for teams like Ronove where the 50% shield stacking on top of the heart cross shield gives just enough survivability for dungeons like Arena 3 Heradragon / Kali.

 Amaterasu

One of only a few cards that have a full hp heal + full bind clear (not awoken bind clear). She’s not a fantastic card and like Susano, the better skill is on the non-awoken version. She’s poor as a leader and poor as a sub. Not a very strong card but worth having in case the reincarnated evolution is good or if you ever need that kind of inheritable full bind clear.

 Yomi

This card just received a decently promising (but still glass cannon) Reincarnated Evolution in JP Pad. Yomi is also the bread and butter of full enhances. On top of it, he/she also overwrites time debuffs make it a very strong all-around utility that’s applicable on many teams. I personally have one on Acala just as a pseudo-spike + insurance that I hit that triple cross combo to kill. Having at least one is a great addition to a box.

That covers Japanese 1 and my thoughts on them.

 Shiva

A mediocre source of MP. (No I really am not fond of Shiva).

 Lakshmi

I’m going to say it now I’m not particularly fond of this card either. She has an identical leader skill to Parvati but is bindable and has a worse active skill. Also, just the way she triggers Vishnu is enough reason that I don’t want to run her. As a utility card / sub for a team she does a poor job.

 Parvati

This white hot booty (not really white in the reincarnated evolution) is overall a fantastic card. Great active skill, unbindable with bind clear awakening. Low cooldown heart maker + enhance. Like I mentioned earlier, I find her better as a leader compared to Lakshmi. Both have the same leader skill for their respective attributes but Parvati is unbindable and has an active skill that meshes better with the leader skill. Also she doesn’t trigger Vishnu. Parvati is often used as an enhance for ALB teams as well given her low cooldown and the fact that Dios are very reliant on OE for damage. Works great as a TPA sub for teams like Kaede (and is my top choice for the unbindable slot. Even if bind clear inherit is down, she is very effective with her low cooldown heart making active).

 Indra

One of the best inheritable shields in the game (if not the best). 3 turns at 75% (note that this is only for the non-awoken version. Awoken and Reincarnated lose the third turn for a haste). In his awoken / reincarnated form he fits well on NY Kanna teams (not that she’s a particularly effective lead) or as a potential TPA light card for Myr teams (which also doesn’t make use of his active).

 Vritra

A good button. 200x is one of the best inheritable grudge strikes (nukes) in the game. Losing mainly to Grimmjow, a collab gold egg from the Belch collab. Vritra unfortunately does not replace Grimmjow in some setups like the STTD full button or Golden Mound full button.

 GFEs

There are notably few “good” GFEs increased on this day. I consider good to be end game tier or at least used in some way in late game (whether as an inherit or lead or sub).

Sonias – have been largely replaced. Blue Sonia is occasionally used in places like Aizen, Meri while Green Sonia is used on ALB occasionally (though easily replaced by the much more common and superior Avalon Drake. Note that I say superior because of the SB).

Metatrons – MP basically.

Norns – Weak in terms of awakenings (and by that I specifically will say weak set of offensive awakenings. Skuld has 2 TPA so she’s not nearly as bad). All 3 work as inherits such as Verd being a top tier inherit for Acala and decent for Kaede. Urd being very strong for BMyr and decent for fire teams (XGrem, etc.) and Skuld also working directly as a sub for some blue teams like Sarasvati, BMyr and others. HOWEVER, she does not pair with Andromeda in the way that Urd pairs with Andromeda, reducing the possible spike ability of the active skill.

Demons – Ilm is great for furries. Zuoh is a decent dark row card. Ilm can lead or work as a sub to light row teams (such as herself / Floof).

Dragonbounds – Gadius / Typhon are pretty useless due to quad color actives being pretty bad in most cases (very inconsistent if you’re trying to aim for a certain number of 2 orb types) with better tricolor options (higher consistency). Saria / Ryune / Sylvie are all quite strong though as inherits and Ryune has earned a spot on my BMyr team for her exceptional hybrid abilities. With the upcoming buff of SBR and some stats, Ryune is a great all around card. However, she lacks a place on any meta teams (I still consider BMyr meta but very few people who have BMyr will still need a Ryune or want a Ryune).

Dragon Callers – KANNA. KANNAAA. Highest TPA damage in the game (excluding killers / multi boosts). Satsuki also hits the 10k mark with her upcoming split UVO (out in JP already). Kaede is a crowd favorite for both a lead and sub for Ronove. However, Kaede is largely displaced for her orb hunger and bindability in favor of Myr. If Myr had never gotten her damage buff, Kaede might still have been higher tier to Myr. Sumire is pretty useless not going to lie there. She’s basically a bad BMyr that can system but very ineffectively. Tsubaki is an amazing card and finds her way on a lot of fire teams / farming teams for red in SDR farming.

Sherias – Roots is okay as a lead or an inherit for Radra teams. Sherias is basically MP. Keep in mind that Radra is infinitely stronger than Roots.

Mechdragons – Balboa is still a nice pairing with Awoken Artemis. This new Evo makes him unbindable to pair with Artemis for a 2/36/2. Otherwise you can choose the bindable, slightly better LS version of Balboa for 2/42/2. Baldin got the short end of the stick and outside of his 5 killer evo (where are you going to use that?) he’s still delegated mostly to being a poor inherit that doesn’t quite cover you for most situations.

Aten – A niche card with 9 killers. He gains 9x to 27x on most cards from his killers and has a 5 turn dkali+jammer board change. This is pretty unique and pairs well with Ronove active or on a Crusader Another team. A pretty nice card to have.

Day 2 – Three Kingdoms 1 and Indian 2

 Cao Cao

Basically a poor man’s Yamamoto. Only gets 25x for a row (compared to 100x on Yamamoto) so it makes the pairing mediocre between the two (50x for ACC x Yamamoto) but not terrible. However, ACC has no equivalent to Dios besides Goemon which also drops HP to 1 (terrible in dungeons that have pre-emptive strikes or dungeons with poison skyfall). So even if his leader skill is equivalent to a fire ALB (64x at 9 orbs) his options are mediocre at best). Besides being a leader, Awoken Cao Cao is a fairly effective red row sub. Acting both as a delay and orb maker.

 Sun Quan

A fantastic water TPA card which is unfortunate because water TPAs are not very popular outside of BMyr and maybe Sarasvati. Otherwise, he’s a fantastic inherit for almost any water team. 2 turn delay and 2x to water for 2 turns is always welcome. His active can save you in many situations being dual purpose. Also pairs with Hermes for a tank team and is “capable” of clearing Colosseum even (capable doesn’t mean consistently).

 Liu Bei

The crowd favorite for his accessibility of subs (just Dios, which is farmable). He’s a solid farming lead for those lacking Yamamoto / Meridionalis and even if you had those two, you’d need certain cards to make them effective (like row makers).

ALB can clear most content in the game outside of things like Machine Athena (at least, not effectively).

 Da Qiao and Xiao Qiao

Not quite as good of a couple as Castor and Pollux, these two do however make a good sub for Myr with a strong pairing with Apocalypse for 2/3 boards. Given Myr is still high up there in ability, this is no simple fact to overlook. DQXQ active meshes incredibly well with Myr on its on.

 Lu Poo

If you find a use for this guy let me know.

(Besides committing suicide by using his active and taking a hit after).

 Krishna

A mediocre lead. Bindable, worse than a lot of other leads but generally has an extensive sub pool and many possible play styles. Easy for newer players to get into this lead with a mishmash of fire cards. Not great for end game (still capable but strictly worse).

 Sarasvati

A 3 SB water card. Can be used on Meri teams en lieu of Blodin for those lacking Blodins. Is also a decent glass cannon water lead but with Rincarnated evolutions of older pantheons coming out she will likely be completely displaced.

 Vishnu

An absolutely amazing wood TPA card. Second highest wood TPA damage losing only to Whalethena in her G/G form, this 3 TPA 2 TE 2 SBR monster makes a fantastic inherit base / sub for any TPA wood team. Kaede, Parvati, Bastet, he works on all of them. A great card to have at least one copy of and there’s no disappointment in having two or even three (though three is really pushing it).

 Ganesha

Is the ONLY leader in the game that provides increased coins / exp making him extremely valuable. Only have 25 stamina but want to rank off a Monday dungeon? Double Ganesha leads net you well over 100k exp for 25 stam. Need coins? You can farm 200m coins in about 40 minutes of Golden Mound with Ganesha button teams. It makes things like coin farming far less tedious. I DO NOT RECOMMEND RANK FARMING.

Ganesha also is an unbindable double TPA double SBR card giving him some niche uses such as for RaDragon or Myr.

 Durga

Double TPA, Double SBR similar to Ganesha. However, she’s not unbindable but if you really wanted to you could use her and become unblindable (however useful that is).

She’s largely prized for her double SBR, dark/water coverage for teams like Dark Athena (not that Dark Athena is even in North America).

Now that all the pantheon cards of day 2 have been covered, onto the GFEs.

 GFEs

Odins – All three of these guys suddenly find themselves in the meta for different purposes after mostly being delegated as useless / MP (besides Rodin who was used as a button). Grodin is a useful bind clear inherit to remove awoken bind. Blodin is an amazing sub for Meri. Rodin is all around a great button as well as his new split uvo makes him an effective red row sub.

Kalis – LKali is basically MP at this point but damn is DKali amazing. DKali is the bread and butter of most rainbow teams having all around good awakenings, stats and a low cooldown active to use with rainbow leads. Essentially required on Radragon (teams without DKali usually suffer from having to inherit, say, Roots on something, heavily increasing the cooldown).

Dragon Callers – Covered above in Day 1 analysis. I’d just like to point out that due to optimal Radra being 2 DKalis and 1 Kanna, having both on the same day is absolutely amazing.

Steel Star – All 3 make great inherits. Scheat with her upcoming buff will join the 10k damage club for TPA cards (however she is greatly lacking in utility awakenings making her lackluster compared to ASQ and others IMO. Still an amazing active skill). And rounding off this series is Eschamali which has been a long time favorite for dark teams and a white whale of mine. Though I’m NIAP so I can’t be upset that I’m missing any cards at all. All 3 of these have 4 turn skyfall buffs included in their double orb changers making them fantastic cards (though don’t fit with heart cross teams).

Fenrirs – lul

Sherias – Covered above in Day 1.

Mechdragons – Covered above in Day 1.

Demons of Hell – This is a very new series and arguably has some decent cards. Dandelion is getting buffed to include a shield value (25%) for matching 2 heart combos. However I still don’t think that fixes his inherent issue that he’s extremely hard to play but he’s not really a glass cannon anymore. Sitri is a nice inherit / sub for water teams since her active is pretty effective. She’s basically the only board fix to Skuld and in situations like farming Ace where a prempt could be either fire, water, or wood orb generation, her active is solid for guaranteeing that you’ll be able to have the orbs from the prempt as water. Very effective in generating water orbs in no-rcv situations. Ronove, a classic for me. He reinvigorated my love of PAD after the game grew stale of playing the same easy-mode Myr day in and day out. Ronove requires some skill to play and is fairly lenient on subs (but still relatively strict on how he should be built outside of the fact that for most dungeons you don’t even need subs).

(Ana Descended – Mythical)

He’s still a very strong lead, can output a lot of damage and stands to benefit greatly from Fujin to deal with the spawns that plagued him the most in Arena 3. (Fujin is an upcoming GFE).

Continuing this series, we have Poomon which is basically a light type Kaede / Sumire. While at first glance this would seem like it would be effective for Myr, in reality it becomes painful because your Myr team will overhit Parvati even with just a cross and 3 light orb combo. His OE does add damage when considering the possibility of a Saria into LAkechi spike (collab only) but Myr leads already cover 6 OE, meaning all skyfall are enhanced guaranteed.

The cross-dresser Gremory is the last from this series. With upcoming buffs Gremory stands to be an interesting leader but will still fall short given that systems are ineffective in Arena 3 (you will need utility for the most part which means leaving actives to charge. Gremory leader skill is based on active use so this hurts).

Finally, we have Aten again. Covered in Day 1.

In my opinion, I feel the pantheon cards on day 1 are significantly stronger, having a mix of end game and optimal utility inherits. Getting your first Orochi or Indra can really be game changing (mostly Orochi) however the GFE lineup is quite lackluster for this day. The only ones that really stand out to me are Saria (5 star), Ilm (6 star) and Kanna (6 star).

Day 2 has Kanna, Dkali, Steel Stars, and the Odins (mostly all 6 stars) which really can enhance a box. I’m sure players that are missing DKali and Kanna are staring at this GFE lineup while grinding out some more stones in time for the godfest.

There’s one more note I left out, this is also Gala of Tides meaning you have the chance of rolling Carat, easily the most versatile of the gemstone princesses. Gives the largest spike on farming teams like Meridionalis, ALB, Yamamoto while also being highly effective on most standard clearing teams, adding one more to the pot of sweet pulls.

I for one would love to get lucky and pull one for my NIAP box so I may spend a few of my saved stones on this Godfest myself.

I would just like to mention regarding Fujin and the new Three Kingdoms 2 (all of which are good cards, especially Fujin), they were highly speculated to come out for this godfest given how long ago they were released in Japan (end of December) with most content being roughly 2 months apart. Given the strength of Fujin there might be some value in saving stones for the 3K2 release with Fujin.