Bleach REM Review 2017 – Break what ain’t broke

Collab REMs have been very strong lately. With Edward being the most recent (deserved) whale bait in NA with Monster Hunter having been close as well providing Amatsus and Diablos to a lot of new owners, collabs have amazing potential. Will the new Bleach REM hold up? Or will the updates to Bleach not be significant enough to make it any more relevant than Voltron (outside of Grimmjows of course!).
Buffs usually go live the Thursday or Friday before the REM which will be simultaneously launched with JP on April 9th like King of Fighters was!

I wasn’t writing guides the last time Bleach came around. In fact, this site went up about a month after the last Bleach release. That’s a long time (Nov 2016 if you don’t know when this site opened ).
Let’s start with the new shiny 6 star.

— 6 Stars cards —

The 3rd Espada, Nelliel Tu Odelschwa joins the 6 star lineup as the only new addition to the already lengthy, strong and powerful lineup in the Bleach REM (woops, spoilers for the rest of the article!) and upon first glance, she seems incredibly powerful while also being reminiscent of Gronia’s new animated art… hmm. I wonder why.
AS: Nel Shower: Changes all orbs to Wood and Heal orbs. Full recovers HP and bind status (including awoken).
Wow, take a step back and appreciate that active. Like a mix of Yog (6 star GFE) and Kyo (6 star King of Fighters Collab), we get another bicolor with hearts and this time it’s for Wood. The active trades 3 turns for full bind and HP recovery over Yog’s 4 turn bind recovery and 40% HP restore. Whether this CD increase will hurt is to be determined. It definitely means more time between uses which can be detrimental in dungeons like Alt Arena where every turn can count in the later floors. That being said, the addition of awaken bind clear means that it can somewhat replace the purpose of Odindra. However, that leaves the game of whether you want to use the board when you need the board, or save it for when you need an awoken bind clear. So I don’t see it replacing Odindra for AA teams but the board already is really great given the new Kaede in JP.
LS: Cero Doble: 1.5x HP to Devil, 1.5x ATK and RCV for Wood. Reduce damage and ATK increases with 6+ combos, up to 9x.
While the scaling and shielding is unknown, this sounds like a powerful leader skill. Let’s take a look at Kaede’s new leader skill:
【No Skyfall Combos】25% reduced damage, 2.5x ATK when 2+ Wood combos; 10x ATK if board is left with less than 6 orbs after matching.
The end result is a 625x lead with about 44% shielding. Converting the shield to effective HP, you would get about 1.78/625/1.78 multipliers.
Assuming a Nel team hits all the requirements, she would be at 1.5x to all stats, 9x for combos and we’ll assume 25% shielding because I can’t imagine it being higher on a lead that provides stats. This would bring her to 2.25/182.25/2.25 with about 44% shielding, same as Kaede. Converting the shield to effective HP, we get a whopping 4/182.25/4 multiplier lead! This trades a lot of Kaede’s damage for tankiness. We don’t know how many combos it takes to reach 9x but it’s likely to be 9 combos. This requirement would synergize well with her active skill providing consistent 9c boards. We could possibly be seeing pairings of Nel and Kaede (except Kaede doesn’t fit the Devil type requirement herself). We would probably see Nel pairing with herself or with Diablos who is infact a Devil typing and who’s 7×6 board would easily allow for whatever combo requirements she would need (unless OG Kush level).
Awakenings:         
TRIPLE 7C! UNBINDABLE! VOID VOID BOX! That’s quite the lineup of awakenings. The first note is that there’s only 1SB, 2 OE which is a bit wasted on a team unless you bring 3 more, no TE and no SBR. It seems that Gungho was kind of smart in not giving her SBR / TE / more SB to avoid her being the end all Wood sub / lead with a very strong leaderskill and active. This means that this card as a sub will likely slot in for extreme firepower and defense penetration. I can see already how strong this would be in a pairing with Diablos.
Rating: Sub [SS] / Lead [SS] / Assist [S]
Overall an incredibly strong card that fits the reputation of Bleach being extremely OP in PAD. Similar to Yusuke from the recent YYH collab in JP (which probably won’t make it to NA) but maybe a touch stronger.

Ichigo

Ichigo gets a buff but will it make him relevant?
The Final Getsugatensho, Ichigo Kurosaki form of Ichigo has a leader skill change. The old:
1.5x HP & ATK for Dark Att., but no skyfall combos; 4x ATK when clearing 6 connected Dark Orbs, max to 7x (8+ Orbs)
and the new:
1.5x to all stats for Dark Att., but no skyfall combos; 5x ATK when clearing 5 connected Dark Orbs, max to 9x (9+ Orbs)
Ichigo’s upgrade provides much needed RCV to the Dark row lead which subs are notorious for being low RCV (Devil types). The increase to 9x for 9 orbs brings him to 2.25/182.25/2.25 status for making a 9 match of Darks. I do think this change will help a lot, mostly because boxes are a thing now and they are 9 orbs. Similar to Ameno, Ichigo now scales to 9 for those situations when you want to make a box. Box awakening is becoming more and more important in the current meta. This upgraded leaderskill can make better use of cards like Pixel Rugal or Valentines Ney since it’s hard to row and box at the same time. The no skyfall clause also means he could be used in farming. The better scaling means that on a single row he is now 9x, not too far behind HNene at 15x (okay that’s a bit far). However, with his no skyfall we can protect ourselves just that bit more when pairing with HNene, especially if you don’t need the extra multi.
Rating: Sub [C] / Lead [A] / Assist [D]

Rukia

After seeing Ichigo get a split last time, I was hoping maybe for a split evo to the old favorite. They buffed the values of her leaderskill and added awakenings.
      NEW:  
Interesting they added unbindable versus 7c as has been the fad lately with cards. However, it helps her leader potential ever so slightly (so it helps that the leader skill itself got buffed).
The new one is:
Water attribute cards ATK x3, RCV x3. ATK x2 at 4 combos. ATK x1 for each additional combo, up to ATK x8 at 10 combos.

This brings her to a whopping 1/576/9 lead. Though I’m curious if this is enough to face off against Anubis’ 1/900/2.25 since his is only when an active is used which is a big weight on a team. Rukia provides essentially an extra active slot over Anubis. She’s also on-color with Amatsu who is a huge HP stick. This could help for this shieldless, HPless leader.
Rating: Sub [D] / Lead [A] / Assist [D]
Well, outside of leader potential now for glass cannon style, she’s not that great. But she might end up giving Anubis a run for his money.

Yamamoto (Flaming Grandpa)

Yamamoto didn’t change. He’s still one of the best farming leads even in 2018 and he was only released last Bleach collab (which is a year and a half ago now…) so it’s understandable that he didn’t get anything.
Rating: Sub [C] / Lead [A] / Assist [B]
I left him as an A rating for his continued strength in farming. However, with Glavenus Hunter and Zeus Verse having come out since his original release, he’s no longer the end all of farming. However, Glav Hunter can’t make effective use of Sado (another card from this collab).

Aizen

I held my breath as I was searching for an Aizen buff. For those that don’t know, Aizen was a massive powercreep on his release with his cross style leaderskill with strong 36x unconditional between both leads. A single cross with some combos is enough to kill Kali and he could still be used to this day if easier leads hadn’t come out. Alas, there was no buff to Aizen. So similar to Yamamoto who was released at the same time, neither god a buff. I’m okay with that, he had his time in the spotlight for many months.
Rating: Sub [C] / Lead [B] / Assist [C]

— Other cards —

I’m going to skip over a lot of this because most of it is crap and nothing got a buff unfortunately. I’ll pick out the ones that aren’t absolute shit and could find use on teams.

Sado

Sado didn’t get a buff but I have to discuss this extremely powerful active skill.
Change top-most row & bottom-most row into Fire orbs.
At a 13 turn cooldown, this is an amazing active and synergizes very well with Yamamoto. In the past it’s been highly relevant to use Sado and save one of the rows. With a single active, you can clear 2 floors with Yamamoto. That’s extremely strong and can still be used today. The only unfortunate thing is this is very susceptible to locks. But base form MGoe can help fix this in specific cases.
Rating: Sub [D] / Lead [D] / Assist [S]

Grimmjow

Otherwise known as King of Buttons, Grimmjow was the premier button for button setups and is still relied on to this day.
Deal Light damage to all enemies based on player’s HP %. ATK x50 at 100% HP up to ATK x250 at 1 HP. Affected by enemy element and defense.If you’ve followed my button builds, you’d know that Grimmjow gets himself involved often. His far lower CD compared to Nergi Hunter and Brachydios can make it easier to incorporate in builds. The multiattack compared to Brachydios means that Grimmjow is the highest damaging light multiattack, and potentially the highest total since Nergi Hunter is not consistent (sub dependent).
Rating: Sub [D] / Lead [D] / Assist [S]

Toshiro

Like Sado for Water, Toshiro is an inheritable FULL WATER BOARD which provides a lot of flexibility to water farm teams. Blodin is a low cooldown with 4SB, unbindable and rows. Meri with a bunch of Blodins does a LOT of damage. Toshiro is still used in optimal farm teams in 2018. However, there are other Water boards (just no inheritable).
Rating: Sub [D] / Lead [D] / Assist [A]

Urahara

I considered not including this in my review just because I have 4 and personally have never used a single one. Though I know people want to meme with him. He’s a 4 turn wood row maker. That means you could run something like Tardis / Urahara x4 / Tardis and have an active every turn and a guaranteed row. His awakenings are nice for a pseudosystem, at least his active will be up.
Rating: Sub [C] / Lead [D] / Assist [D]

Conclusion

Overall, the changes to the REM do benefit the old Rukia and Ichigo as well as add in another really strong collab exclusive card. JP has Yusuke which is absolutely broken and is actually quite similar to Nel but for Light. Either way, cheers.

Hopefully this helped and you’re not too disappointed to find out this is an April Fools Joke. Feel free to stop by the Puzzles and Kupo Carry Server for PAD discussions, help, coop and of course carries by clicking the banner below!