Ronove Leader Guide

Ronove is one of the strongest leaders right now coming in at tier 2 on Setsupad’s list and being a personal favorite of mine for his rainbow heart cross style and speed of play.

He excels at dungeons that don’t require a lot of utility but falls behind against Myr and others on dungeons that need excessive amounts of utility such as Ultimate Arena 3.

What does Ronove do?

His Active Skill: Randomly spawn 2 Heart orbs from non Wood & Heart orbs. Change Jammer, Poison & Mortal Poison orbs to Wood orbs.

His Leader Skill: ATK x2.5 when attacking with 3 of following orb types: Fire, Water, Wood, Light & Dark. ATK x0.5 for each additional orb type, up to ATK x3 for all 4 matches. ATK x4, reduce damage taken by 35% after matching Heal orbs in a cross formation.

His awakenings:  x2   x2 

You can tell from the awakenings that they’re slim pickings. But it covers the necessities for the team.

Being a wood type card as a rainbow lead, you’ll need to cover the other attributes to be able to active. Even if Ronove’s leader skill only requires 4/5 colors for full activation, it’s always best to cover all attributes with rainbow teams to give you flexibility.

 

The “Standard” Team

 

This is the most basic team that we can make for Ronove. From here we’ll break it down and talk about inherits and alternative teams as well as what aspects make up a good Ronove team. Note that from my previous article about Ronove I did not speak too highly about this team. I use this standard setup + inherits for MOST dungeons in the game. However, it is ill suited to Arena 3 as discussed in the previous article.

 

In this case you have a basically mono-color team, Rozuel to cover the last 2 colors, 3 high damage cards, 2 orb makers and here’s the important thing to remember, all board changers guarantee 3 orbs minimum of each color. Ragnarok Dragon makes a minimum of 3 hearts and then Ronove can be used to guarantee a heart cross and at least 3 colors for 100x (though 99% of the time you’ll have orbs for 144x).

This Ronove combination can be incredibly strong and pairs with basically all DKali type boards including DKali herself (and variants like RKali and GKali).

But wait! There’s more!

There are 2 farmable rogue bosses that have DKali type boards with added garbage on them that actually suit Ronove’s active skill. Let us recall that Ronove, along with creating 2 heart orbs, will convert junk orbs to wood.

The first is Linthia who makes a DKali type board and poisons.

The second is Gainaut who makes a DKali type board, jammers and enhances fire orbs.

Linthia is generally preferred because her typing is Wood and Dark which means she slots in perfectly where Ragnarok would be for those that lack the MP to purchase him (or don’t want to invest such a big amount into this team).

However, Gainaut functions to cover Fire and Light while providing similar stats and awakenings. You’ll see later in the guide that he can also form the basis of an alternative team.

Now, one thing you should have realized by now is “my leads are bindable!” which is not a problem Ronove’s brother Gremory has.

Well, this is also where Rozuel comes in.

She has a short cooldown and is unbindable with a bind clear awakening. Meaning that she offers an effective slot to inherit a bind clear and also is able to clear other binds with a heart row when necessary. My personal favorite for an inherit here is Batman + S.Gloves.

Delay 2 turns to all enemies. Bind recovery for 2 turns.

Why is this so strong?

For starters, the cooldown is 9 turns. Recall from Echidna and others that 3 turn delays start at 10 turns. Here you get a dual-utility active that increases the range of situations where it is applicable by leaps and bounds over having an individual bind or an individual bind clear.

For an individual delay the lowest cooldown pure delay would be Orochi for inherits at 15 turns while a bind clear like GOdin would be 9 turns (the same thing).

 

GOdin’s bind clear is 5 turns which does change some things, but when you consider that most binds in Arena and other dungeons are 3 turns or less, suddenly it’s not as significant to have 5 turn clear. There ARE situations where 5 turn is very much more effective, such as UVO Tengu who has a 4-6 turn bind on turn 1 while also having a status shield himself, however, luckily for us he’s not in Arena.

 

Ronove only receives 57% shield from heart cross unlike Myr, Kaede, Byr at 75%. This makes a big difference when looking at situations like Ilsix, Vishnu, Kali and especially, Hera Dragon. This is solved by using an inherit. My personal preference is Susano (not awoken).

Susano gives you a 50% shield for 5 turns. Stacked with your Heart Cross, you get 79% shielding, just a bit higher than Myr. Furthermore, 5 turns gives you the ability to tank Hera Dragon to the last turn (before her repeated meganuke). Awoken Susano and Indra are the next best options. They provide similar coverage of damage but for less turns. Also note, 50% shield and heart cross for Ronove means that a 500% gravity will still kill you without including latents. You need 6 latents to survive a 500% grav with a 50% shield stacked on top.

Other shields are more than usable though, such as Indra for 3 turns.

As for spikes, Sheen is most likely the strongest for more teams but Carrot and Faucet can find spots based on the team you decide to use.

 

What makes up a Ronove team?

So I covered the utilities for a reason, so that we have a basis for building the team. If we review the standard setup: Ronove leads, spike, bind clear, DKaliesque board, shield, delay, orb changers.

Hmm, we have more than we can fit on a team now! This goes back to the dual utility actives. In coop you’ll be able to split who brings what inherits, especially with the new no-tan update for inherits (assists).

Now orb makers are vague. Kaede serves multiple purposes on this team. TE, TPA, light coverage, orb maker.

Below are some options for Kaede replacements that work fairly effectively.

 

Megane Athena: This cutie is unobtanium level to the highest degree from the PAD Academy REM. She is an 8-star roll and is the highest wood type TPA attacker in the game. Did I mention she’s unbindable? Put her on your team to cover that wood / light with a low CD active to boot.

Note: The Wood/Wood form has the highest attack in the game but in her Wood / Light form, Vishnu surpasses her. However this is not a terribly important detail for Ronove building.

 

Vishnu: After mentioning him as the second highest TPA wood damage in the game I may as well list him here. He has one advantage over Megane: he has 2 TE. Ronove teams stack quite a bit of TE to ensure they can full clear a board every turn. If you’re not full clearing the board every turn you either lack TE, lack practice, or both. His active skill is both short and effective if you need to use it before the inherit comes up. It lets you reset skyfall buffs/debuffs from mobs like Osiris in arena which can severely hinder your ability to get activatable boards back every turn. A strong downside is his wood/wood typing meaning he doesn’t cover anything on the team. If you run 2 Vishnus instead of 2 Kaedes you have to run Fire, Water, Light, and Dark in the last 2 slots. This is still possible but not fantastic. It can be done by filling the Fire/Light with Gainaut (which I mentioned earlier as a good farmable Ragnarok Dragon replacement). This leaves Water / Dark for the last slot which has several options like DMeta for decent stats, low CD and unbindable (really nice for this setup to inherit the bind clear) or Another Justice which is a bind clear by itself.

 

Parvati: Covers the same attributes as Kaede, is unbindable, 2 TPA, low CD, bind clear awakening, 1k weighted stats. Really an all-in-one wood TPA card which can make for an interesting setup if you’re missing a bind clear for the non-wood slots. Something like Kaede Parvati Ragnarok Horus. Horus can be covered by a wide array of cards now that the unbindability requirement is no longer present. Valen, Awoken Sun Quan are 2 more options that have a very strong impact for the team in the slot.

 

Awoken Susano (Revo Susano has dark sub att): 2 TPA, unbindable, 1TE and brings a good shield. While it’s not the same as having a 5 turn 50% shield, Awoken Susano at least covers you for 3 turns while bringing good awakenings and stats. He covers fire in his awoken form as well which is usually left to the last slot with cards such as Rozuel.

 

Those are the top 4 replacements I’d make for Kaede.

You’ll note that none of them produce wood AND heart orbs at the same time.

 

The Core Concepts of Ronove

Let’s recap that we generally use 2 orb generators, DKaliesque board, unbindable with bind clear as the base. Additional utility being delay, shield, spike.

Up until now I’ve been discussing the inherits and replacements for some of the cards you see in the standard team but I feel like this is still far too limited. So I went ahead and made a video of a no-wood Ronove team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXvNZdYDN6E

This is an Ultimate Arena 1 clear with both sides having no-wood attribute cards. So the first thing I want to take from this is that limiting yourself to running wood teams is not required. When I say you should have orb changers, do NOT limit yourself to wood orb makers. For the rest of this guide I will be discussing some alternative teams that meet the requirements for a Ronove team.

 

Alternatives

Standard setups are not accessible by everyone, especially not NIAPs such as myself.

My A3 Setup

P1: Ronove (Sheen) / Kaede / Kaede (Sheen) / DKali (Lightning) / BMeta (Orochi)

P2: Ronove / Kaede / Kaede (Susano) / DKali (Lightning) / BMeta (Orochi)

This is a pretty simple setup that runs off the standard team base, changes DKali for the Ragnarok Dragon which has killers (not something you want to run in A3). This frees up some requirements on the fourth sub since DKali covers fire. The obvious choice would have been Isis since she’s very effective for the slot but I found that on heavy hitters, even with Ronove shield, the RCV just doesn’t cut it so I swapped to Beach Metatron for her bikini 1413 RCV when penta-maxed. This severely hurts your HP as well so this should be a strong consideration. However, in coop this is less of an issue. An interesting twist which hasn’t been explored much is running Courage instead of BMeta on P1. This covers water which is the last attribute needed and makes Hephatitis Dragon significantly easier. The Kalis can be the scariest part for Ronove because without a shield, you’re dead with the heart cross or not at <5% or >65% HP. If you don’t get Hephatitis Dragon then the puppet can always be used on Kali for an additional damage (and also won’t have to deal with half damage against the fire attribute under 50%).

Fujin

With Fujin and Uruka being released in JP, we know that it’s just an eventuality that we’ll get damage absorb nulls. Should you run them? Where would you slot them?

If you recall from my article Beaking down the Hivemind, there are a lot of places where running killers can impact you severely with the main instances being Sopdet, Parvati (however you won’t have any killers against Parvati unless you choose to bring Mito for some reason), Vishnu, and Heradragon.

Fujin and Uruka effectively nullify ALL of these threats to Ronove.

Ignores enemy damage absorb effects for 1 turn (does not include combo shield, attribute absorb, and damage void). Reduces cooldown of other skills by 1 turn. 19 turns at Max Skill.

*I won’t cover Uruka since her skill falls under the same purpose.

We can already see how this deals with those 4 spawns that I mentioned (Parvati doesn’t really need it, but the other 4 do). With the introduction of absorb nulling, we can not drop both Orochis and replace them with Fujins. This involves a slight risk / roadblock with Hino in UA3, but with some planning you can take him down without using a skill. This is generally slower than just delaying him and one shotting, but for the quality of life that Fujin brings for Sopdet and co., it’s worth it.

Just how important is Fujin?

Well I brought up the Hivemind team because now we can effectively run it in arena. Yes, that’s right, bring the Ragnarok Dragon, bring the Rozuel, because we’re smashing right through Sopdet, Vishnu, and Heradragon. This allows us to gain extra damage against almost all the spawns in arena while having less danger because of Fujin.

 

Mono-Wood, No Whale

Running mono-wood on Ronove requires you to have full color coverage on the sub attributes for the 4 subs. This restricts you from cards like Vishnu since they don’t contribute to the coverage. I’ve added restrictions that there are no 6 star or higher rolls.

Ronove / Revo Parvati / Crusader Another / Awoken Freyja / Awoken Susano

This has 1 rare farmable and the rest are pantheon cards (with Ronove as the only GFE).

Of course some improvements can be made to this. Ragnarok Dragon over Freyja, Robin Hood in place of Susano (not really an upgrade, more of a side-grade to gain the SBR). Crusader Another is pretty unique as being one of a very few set of Wood / Water type cards and his active is also synergistic with the team, though, it overlaps with Ronove a lot. In the end it’s not a terrible active and gives you options if you have jammers. The reason I use Freyja over Linthia in this case (which would be the obvious answer) is for the 2 SBR since Parvati and Susano both lack SBR and therefore would leave you with 80% SBR solo if running Linthia.

 

Mono Dark

Here the basis lies in Yomidra / DKali for the core of the team and finished with DMeta or Okuni (Dark / Water for coverage). DKali covers fire, Yomidra covers light, Oku or DMeta for the last slot cover water and have utility. Overall a very basic setup that runs exactly like the standard team just with dark instead of wood. However, the offensive awakenings are much weaker on this setup.

Ronove / Yomidra / Yomidra / DKali / Okuni

The second Yomidra can be replaced by a dark TPA card like Hinomitsuha, another Okuni (although stacking his actives isn’t effective), Zweihander and others. The team is a lot more strict and not much variation is possible for the sake of efficacy. Because it also revolves around having Yomidra and DKali, it’s not a great build for most but is still an option.

 

Mono Fire

Remember that part where I said there would be a team centered around Gainaut? This is it. Gainaut covers light, has a strong active (since it also enhances) as well as matching awakenings including multiboost. His 3 OE pair very well with his enhanced fire on active. Running 2 Gainaut can be extremely effective. This provides 6 OE and an effective 940 weighted stats per Gainaut. The active however does not leave great boards if you’re pairing with Ronove active for fire orbs. One option to fix this is to inherit Dantalion to Ronove instead so that you can generate fires and hearts to fix the board if you do not get enough hearts on activation of Gainaut. Statistically, most boards generated will not be activatable without a fix. For this reason I will actually recommend against 2 Gainauts.

To cover water we have our prime Rozuel, otherwise we also have Horus and Valen as options. Rozuel, like her role in the standard setup, will act as an unbindable base for inheriting a bind clear to your otherwise fully bindable team.

Lastly we need an orb changer as well as dark coverage. My recommendation is Scarlet as her cooldown is low, does not break many orbs, farmable and covers dark. Other options being Baldin which serves as the spike for the team, an additional shield and has god killer which can be strong in some cases, or Shiva for some TE and TPAs. You wouldn’t run 2 Shivas or Baldins so the last slot could still be an orb changer, Scarlet, Dantalion. Dantalion brings nice OE to the team with a very synergistic active to the purpose of the team.

Ronove / Gainaut / Baldin / Rozuel / Dantalion

 

Mono Light

Run Myr.

Mono Water

Ryn BMyr.

“But I don’t have BMyr!”

Run Myr paired with BMyr.

This may seem crude for the last two mono attribute possibilities but the simple matter is that they both lack DKaliesque boards (save for Roots for light) and generally if you have the specific subs for running a good mono team for these attributes on Ronove you should likely have a more effective team leading Myr / BMyr.

 

Random Thrown Together Ronove

Ronove / Sumire / Acala / Lucifer / RRH

Not much to explain here about these picks. I picked them for being random but still bringing some function to the team. RRH for the bind clear, Ronoves will generate hearts. Sumire for the hearts + waters + TE + haste. Lucifer can button EKMD in Arena 1 and has god killer (really really bad for Sopdet though). However it is still A1 capable. This is just to show you that random teams can still get you through most content.

 

Heroine-only subs (visiting the potential for Heroine cards on Ronove)

Ronove / Navi / Kuvia / Ilmina (Carat) / Grida (Mel)

So I had a challenge for myself, to beat arena with this team and the video of me cooping this run with Padragnarok is here:

Now let me explain all the subs and why I chose them out of the pile of Heroine cards available.

First off is that you’ll notice that only 2 of the cards have SBR from the series (and Grida, the farmable rare invade). This means you’ll really have to bring some stacked SBR from the subs and for better or for worse, Navi basically just stole the SBR from all the other cards. So Navi is pretty much guaranteed in the team otherwise there’s no way I’d get enough SBR. Navi however doesn’t produce any hearts. She has an LKali type active (all 5 colors). So I decided to pair the active with Mel. Navi into Mel just about guarantees activation for Ronove. Here’s the statistical breakdown:

81.7% change for a 5-color board

17.9% chance for a 4-color board

0.394% chance for a 3-color board

0.000415% chance for a 2-color board

Ronove activates 144x on 4 or 5 color and 100x on 3 color board which is already unlikely to happen. So I went ahead and put Navi with the expectation to put Mel after. Navi covers my water and light attribute.

Continuing on, I looked at what kind of dark coverage I could bring. There are only 4 from the REM that have dark and those are: Elgenubi (breaks hearts), Barbara (bicolor), Sheena (bicolor as well), Romia (tricolor). That wasn’t going to work. I decided to use Grida for this purpose. She brings a solid 2 TPA on a low-ish cooldown (7 turns). That covers my dark. In hindsight I could easily have run Elgenubi and inherited my Mel over that but then I’d be incredibly fire-focused and would have some trouble with water spawns later on (which really only would be Hera-Is).

I knew I wanted to add Ilmina because she’s fluffy. Can’t really argue with fluffy + bragging rights. Also, she has 2 TE and killers against almost every spawn in Arena (including Sopdet for better or for worse). Having a slight fire focus with Ilmina I wanted to include Kuvia for her TPA damage. Kuvia’s active skill does NOT break hearts, making it one of the only dual color changers to not break hearts (another being Sitri). Kuvia also has another fun aspect, she increases heart skyfall significantly for 2 turns. This played a big role in places like Hino where my team got bound and I had to stall 2 turns. Luckily I had the skyfall buff up to have enough hearts to stall the bind out. Using her active means you can still activate 100x on Ronove.

So if you were following along, I settled on Navi, Grida, Ilmina, Kuvia.

I had to put Mel somewhere to actually pair with Navi so I put it on Grida who was chosen as a suitable dark base.

But what about the other Heroine cards, do they have a place on Ronove?

In my opinion, outside of Kuvia and Mel, none of them really should have a place on Ronove teams. That being said, Ronove is so flexible with what you can bring and is not reliant whatsoever on actives that you could bring a bunch of heart breakers and still clear arena if you really wanted to.

Mito, while being wood/light (something a lot of people lose from not having Kaede), her double devil killers mean you can never deal with Parvati, at least not while matching wood orbs.

 

Conclusion

I hope to see more Ronove users around!