VS.  

You may have heard of Awoken Liu Bei, or ALB, the go-to lead for coop farming.  You might take a look at Awoken Cao Cao’s leader skill and think “Hey, it’s just a red ALB, right?”  Wrong.  There are many subtle differences that make him different than ALB.

Full Board Changes:

First off, let’s address the most glaring issue: ACC lacks a comparable Dios.  Without Dios, ALB would be nowhere near as good as he is.  You can press Dios’s active, swipe the board, and kill most things.  He brings 2 SBs, meaning just one ALB and three Dioses on both teams is enough to have Dios’s skill up turn one, leaving the last slot for a utility active if needed.  He has 1 row and 2 OEs to help with damage, and his coop boost raises the stats of almost all of your team by 1.5x.  He’s even pretty easy to get, with three easy dungeons to farm skillups in.

ACC, on the other hand, has three choices for full board changes, all for the most part inferior to Dios: Surtr, Goemon, and Beach Goemon.

While Surtr’s active is just a straight recolor of Dios’s active, his stats and awakenings are inferior to Dios by a long shot, with only 1 SB, 1 row, 1 useless TPA, and no coop boost.  His single skillup dungeon is more of a pain than any of Dios’s skillup dungeons, with all attributes required and an annoying leader swap.

The Goemons have lower ATK than Surtr, but this is usually more than compensated for by their better offensive awakenings (2 rows, and 1 OE for regular Goemon).  They still pale in comparison to Dios’s stats, however.

The Goemons have a slightly different skill than Surtr, adding an additional 200k fire nuke, in exchange for reducing your HP to 1.  As this leaves you at risk of dying to preempts, they cannot always be used.  They also require piis to skill up (barring the horrible idea of uvo’ing more Goemons).

 VS. 

One of the most prominent difficulties for ALB is SBR, as both Dios and ALB are lacking in any.  This is why Chester actually finds a use on ALB teams, as an SBR-stick.  ACC has less of an issue, as he trades one of ALB’s SBs for an SBR, giving you 40% just from the leads.

This leads to a different problem for ACC: SBs.  As ACC, Surtr, and Goemon all only have 1 SB, you can quickly run into difficulty scrounging up the usually required 15-16 SB to have Goemon and Surtr up at the start of the dungeon.  Thankfully, Beach Goemon trades an OE for an SB, giving 2 SB total, which helps alleviate the SB problem; however, he is from a seasonal REM, and thus harder to get than normal Goemon or Surtr.

So, many times you will find Tengu a necessary part of your team, as he provides 4 SB and can serve as an inherit base for utility actives.  However, the off-color sub can hurt your damage.  Therefore, Rodin and Yamato are often valuable subs, both packing many rows and 3 SB.  The former can be used as a nuke for weak floors or a poison for high defense floors, while the latter is best as an inherit base, as his active doesn’t always make enough orbs and requires actual matching. This does add to the need for specific REM cards, though, which is again a problem.

Speed, Goemon, and nukes:

Goemon’s nuke can be a blessing or a curse when it comes to speed.  As Beach Goemons are often used over Surtr for SB reasons, there will be many cases where the nuke does absolutely nothing to help, and just wastes seconds with extra animation.

However, Goemon’s nuke can also make ACC faster than ALB.  If you can nuke a weak floor to kill it, and then swipe the full fire board on the next floor to kill, you can free up an active slot and save time.  Prime examples of this include dragon seed/pengdra/baby metal dragon floors that appear in many rogues, as well as predras floors after using Anji to kill the floor before.

Though the time wasted or saved only amounts to a few seconds here or there, the time can add up in long speedfarming sessions.

As I mentioned earlier, Goemon’s active reduces your HP to 1.  In many cases this can be a bad thing, preventing you from using it freely in dungeons with preemptive damage.

However, this can be beneficial in some rare cases: HP-dependent nukes.  All of the strongest nukes in the game are HP-dependent, dealing more damage the less HP you have, with maximum damage at 1 HP.  Goemon gives you an easy way to reduce your HP enough for these nukes to be effective, sometimes letting you nuke your way through even more floors in a dungeon.

For examples of the use of these nukes, see these setups for Z8 and Nordis.

Solo and Arena:

Though he is usually regarded as a coop farming lead, ACC is still decent as a solo lead, and can even clear arena without much difficulty.  Here is a guide on using ACC solo.  It specifically focuses on arena, but much of the same teambuilding advice applies to solo-ing other dungeons.

Color:

ALB is Wood, ACC is Fire.  Though it seems trivial, this can make a big difference in some dungeons.  ALB has a much easier time with blue dungeons like Volsung and Mion, while ACC has an advantage in Fire type dungeons like Gainaut or dungeons with Wood resists like Nordis.  Dungeons with green or red absorbs will significantly slow down one while not affecting the other.

Active Skill:

ACC and ALB have very different active skills.  ALB converts dark and heart orbs to wood orbs while providing a 20% heal and 2 turn bind clear, while ACC converts water and poison orbs to fire orbs while providing a one-turn delay.  This makes ALB a stronger and more reliable orbs change in most cases, while ACC’s active can only really be reliably used on its own after either spending a turn clearing orbs or having the enemy make water or poison orbs.

However, as these are button swipe farming teams we’re talking about, usually you’d want to use these actives only if you also need their second part (though, as ALB’s orb change is decent, this applies more to ACC). In that case, ALB can be used to survive in a preempt-heavy dungeon or to provide a relatively weak bind clear, while ACC is mostly used as a counter for resolves without status shields.

Conclusion (TL;DR):

ACC, though similar to ALB, has many subtle, but important, differences.  In general, ALB is easier to build teams for, generally requiring easier farmables and fewer REM subs, but ACC can in some cases be faster with Goemon’s nuke, and is more viable for solo or arena-length dungeons.