PAD Mechanics: Order of Attacking

Order of attacking is very important in PAD when taking into consideration absorbs like Machine Hera, Metal Dragons, Noahdragon.

The order of attacks go from left to right, Main-Attribute then Sub-Attribute. In the above example, we have three attributes on the team, Water, Light, and Dark. When matching these attributes, Lucifer will attack first, then Lilith, then Persephone, and so on. After DAthena has attacked with her main attribute, then sub attributes will attack starting with Lucifer’s Water attribute, Lilith‘s Light attribute, and so on.

Why is this important?

When facing enemies with Attribute Absorb, order of attacks can change whether an enemy survives or if an absorption can be nullified or covered by other attributes.

For instance, if an enemy has Water absorb, no matter how much damage your Dark attributes will do, if you matched Water as well then the final sub attribute on Dark Athena will hit last, and the enemy will be healed. This does mean that damage can only bring an enemy to zero health (not negative), and that an absorb will add to the remaining health, even if it’s 0. On the flip side, the monster cannot be over 100% HP. So if the monster is absorbing Dark and you’re using the team you see above, it will simply stay at 100% HP and then the sub-attributes of the team will begin to hit, starting with Lucifer, and damage from there.

In addition, you can use the order of attacks to ignore some attribute absorption. In the above example, Lilith has a Light sub-attribute. If we are against an enemy that has Light absorb, she has the potential to heal it. However, Hades and Persephone with their Dark sub-attributes will attack after Lilith, so any healing that Lilith has done can be offset by the Dark sub-attribute of Hades and Persephone.

How can we use this information?

Since order of attacks is fixed, we can build our team in such a manner to block certain enemy absorbs. If we continue to use our example above, since DAthena will always end our string of attacks, it can be generally safe to keep all Water sub-attributes to the right, since any Water attack on a Water absorb will heal the enemy anyways. As mentioned above, Lilith is placed so that any Light absorb healing can be offset by Dark or Water attribute attacks.

We can also use this information to plan the placing of high spike damage subs, such as those with triple 7c (like Ideal) or double killers (like Tsubaki). For example, if we are focusing on damage control, if our hard hitting sub is on the left and we “accidentally” do too much damage, the rest of your subs are still able to deal damage after as long as they don’t overhit as well!

With this knowledge, sub placement can affect your dungeon clears, so think wisely where you want to place a certain sub on the team, and not just throw everything on the team.

Hopefully this helped and 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!