Oni Summoning Sorceress is a farm event where signature units are dropped directly from maps at a certain drop rate for players to Cost Reduce and Skill Upgrade. At this point players should be aware that assuming similar JP event patterns this is when farm events start to spike; there will be numerous of them following through this period.

The Unit: Priestess Shiho

Shiho is a Platinum Priestess(Priestess is used for clarity, could differ in actual translation) where she functions similarly to Bishops except that they run the witch/healer combination instead of a mage/healer one. Shiho doesn’t have exceptional stats that outclass either witch or healers of the same rarity; her strength lies in her hybrid nature. While not being able to contribute in terms of DPS, Shiho overcomes weaknesses of healers in terms of Cost and witches in terms of range. The idea of a witch/healer hybrid also provides advantages in maps that do not contain too many ranged slots. Her use is mostly as a supportive DPS/healer that provides assistance to other heavy DPS ranged units like archers in dealing with tough monsters. Due to her shorter range than healers her deployment has to be closer to the front, thus putting her in a slightly risky situation when dealing with heavy damage ranged enemies.

Shiho is also a skill dependent unit, especially when you are counting on her reliability to perform her duties as a healer. Her skill has pretty solid cooldowns allowing repeated activation in short intervals, or simply to pull through clutch situations.

In summary, Shiho’s use should be fixed as a hybrid healer/witch that works well in close combat situations. She won’t be a major unit, but as the game progresses hybrid units like priestess and shaman will always have their place in strategies. Also, Shiho is a hybrid thus is not inclusive to “witches only” mods. Pretty sure she is not deployable in War of Magic.

Map Preview:

Going into the 5 maps for this event, you will be fighting a bunch of goblins, Black armors, wolves, Shiho and well, demons or what the wiki is calling now as cyclops (I prefer demons due to the figurative use of the Japanese word, or ogre).

Early maps are pretty easy to run; so long you have a set of decent range units and high HP blockers they should not pose too much of a problem. It is a different story though for map 4 and 5, particularly Map 5 where there is very little room for errors especially if you are running silver/gold units. The fact that the new demons hit really hard especially for pre-level 100 prince players you are better off preparing a ton of high HP blocker units or simply go for range and slow to kite them, which is a better option since their movement speed is considerably slower. This is the main reason why witch/archer combination is extremely strong for this event. Also because there is a considerably lower chance of your units requiring healing due to the heavy reliance of ranged units as well as less ranged enemies your dependence of multiple healers are unlikely for two reasons; lacking of melee units and ranged enemies mean less targets to heal, while for most of the harder maps there is just not enough ranged slots for you to deploy that many healers without sacrificing too much DPS output. In most cases unless your units aren’t trained to a desirable level one CC healer backed with a considerable DPS output is all you need to pull through the event.

Team Preparation:

Ranged units are mandatory here, so archers/witches/mages are all important damage source for your setup. In any case you also want a healthy pool of melee blockers despite the fact that you aren’t deploying too many healers or them not dealing too much DPS; strategic blocking is a key to success for this event since it is harder to control targets the ranged units will attack thus trying to keep the number of targets at a manageable level within their attack range will greatly help in focus fire and target selection to prevent leaking monsters.

Your team will probably run like this:

1. Healers: 1 CC healer should be fine. It is not an easy task to run the last map with 2 non-CC healers unless you run specific compositions that provide alternative reliable damage output.
2. Witches: Go all out on this. CCed, at least 2 of these are vital. Also important to have them at 100% affection. You will need them for War of Magic and as a replacement for one of the witches that got restricted anyway.
3. Archers: Daniela, Soma, Spica are all good. CCed.
4. Mages: 2 Mages are ideal, 1 mage is probably going to work fine. Again CCed.
5. Bandits: These are useful for their high HP serving as fodders and dealing enough damage to the demons. CC or not isn’t too big of a factor although having extra HP is always better to last more hits.
6. Heavy Infantry: Extremely important since there are quite a number of rushes in this event. At least have 2.
7. Valkyries: I find these units doing extremely well in map 5, simply due to the fact that the map is actually a UP tight map despite not many noticing it. Having 1 is good enough, although 2 allows more room for errors during play.
8. Soldier: Katie as usual.

Other notable units: For one, Black Karma shines in this event. If you have one she can greatly boost your chances in map 5 during the final rush phase with the black demon being the strongest enemy for this event. She helps by absorbing damage as well as freeing your healer to concentrate healing in other lanes since monsters spawn from multiple directions. Bishops can also work wonders, while the fact that there is a shortage of ranged slots mean that ranged units that take melee slots like Ninjas are also viable. Vampire hunters can take over some archer duties especially when dealing with the demons since they move slow enough for the hunters’ range to be effective.

Other Important Stuff:

1)Crystal Spending
Shiho is a skill dependent unit, and while she does have revival histories if you are planning to go all in with crystals then max CR/SU is your best bet, although like Maribel her spike is at skill level 4. You won’t find her too useful without the healing multiplier and fast cooldown since she suffers a shorter range, and her cost is also an important factor particularly when you can get a max CR healer with on par DPS at about 17. Then again Shiho is one of those useful farm event units that will still find a place from time to time even after Kagura’s release, so this is a unit worth spending if you have the extra tank.

2)Drop Farming
Oni is one of those events that boost a great drop distribution. Most of the silver drops are extremely useful for CC purposes from the get go; archers and soldiers are considered among the highest consumed CC fodders in the game. Demon crystals are also considered great drops, while the flowers are probably not as useful. Despite that, considering Shiho’s value this is a pretty solid event for both new and old players alike.

Conclusion:

Coming into this event confirmation I am actually quite taken by surprise, albeit a pleasant one. There is the concern that Shiho will not be able to arrive to EN since her visual depiction is pretty lolicon but since it is confirmed having a loli-like unit is a bonus. As for the event itself, Shiho is a decent farm event unit that is worth having in the long run, especially considering event units in the near future that are mostly going to be benchwarmers she isn’t too shabby at all. Definitely worth putting the effort into this one.

Soldiers are low cost multiblockers that serve as core to many strategies due to their unique skillsets. This puts them as effective anti-rush units capable for deployment in many Unit Point (UP) tight situations as well as providing the bridge for smooth transition from early game to mid game with their reinforcement skills.

The priorities of this unit class should be focused on their skill. Naturally Call for Reinforcement skill puts this unit as the number 1 choice in UP tight maps especially those that spawns many high defense units because most magic damage casters and specialized blockers like Heavy Infantry (HA) will cost more than 15CC for deployment. In terms of the strength of soldiers, they are capable to handle general rush units like goblins/wolves, although slightly stronger ones like ogres will require a healer’s attention for them to last. Nevertheless, soldiers are the lowest UP cost unit that can block multiple units so their UP cost management is also important.

By looking at the priorities and their base stats it is not hard to come up with the conclusion that any soldier whose reinforcement skill gets augmented after CC/Awakening is well worth it to do so. This means that Julian/Katie/Aria are all worthy of CC, while Jerome also falls in this category because of the base stat he gains after CC turns him to a pretty solid blocker that is on par with a non-CC Silver HA with a much lower UP cost.

You want to use solid reinforcement skill soldiers early like Katie to get the skill cooldown rolling from the get go. They are usually placed just before the exit point of a map for extra protection until enough UP is generated for them to retreat. Silver soldiers are used in a slightly different way; because one soldier with Reinforcement Skill 2/3 is usually enough to generate the UP for transitions, the extra UP from Reinforcement 1 is seen as a bonus instead of a necessity in most scenarios, thus they are mostly used as parachute drops to immediately make a blocking impact on rush groups, either to delay the speed of the rush or to specifically block key enemies from reaching an area where they could cause trouble.

Iron/Bronze:

These soldiers do not come with CC advantages and their levels are capped at 30/40 respectively. What makes iron/bronze soldiers among the ones that are extensively trained is that they are the only multiblockers that can reach 4UP. They are extremely useful in certain maps like Spirit Rescue H, where they are required to make an instant impact by blocking multiple wolf rushes to delay their movement. However, most of these bronze buddies will be taken off once Spirit Rescue X is introduced, as there won’t be as many maps around that they are seen as irreplaceable then.

Silver:

In comparison between Crave and Phylis it is a matter of strategic or stat advantage. Crave works better against rushes due to his higher attack and HP, while Phylis works better strategically due to her skill and defense. In terms of CC, both are not recommended to be CCed unless they are at least -2 CR before CC; Soldiers are better valued with low cost if their skills do not augment after CC since you generally want soldiers to maintain a UP cost at below 10 for Silvers. You generally want to run them as temporary rush blockers so their up time will not be long before they are withdrawn, thus high stats will not matter so much here. Also, having a CC soldier will mean that the multiblock counter is now 3 instead of 2 which can strain a silver soldier as the bonus stats from CC might not warrant that extra 1 unit block; they might be taking too much damage to last long enough. Once awakening is introduced to the game Silver soldiers can be CCed as awakening materials for quite a number of useful units.

Gold:

Gold Soldiers are CC materials for many reasons. The most important reason of all is the skill augmentation giving a bonus of 5 UP per skill activation after CC. What differs Katie/Aria/Julian are mostly on post-awakening use as well as their base stat. At min-max scenario Katie’s lack of a slight bit of attack means that she cannot kill certain units with the same number of hits compared to Aria/Julian, which is an issue in severe rush scenarios. The use between Aria, Katie and Julian is mostly dependent on the severity of UP drought in a map rather than the bonus they give especially after awakening; despite the three soldiers designed in pro-defensive, pro-offensive and balanced stat respectively chances are high that only one will be used in most scenarios unless its a non-UP regeneration map modifier where UP will not be generated throughout the duration of the game. In terms of choices Katie is the minimum go-to while max CR Aria is probably the best among the three, while Julian is mostly used in male only maps.

Platinum:

Jerome is the only Platinum soldier available in EN so far, and he does live up to expectations. He is pretty self explanatory: Great stat for a soldier, with affection giving Atk/Def bonuses, great HP at soldier level and tier 3 reinforcement skill before CC which is huge. Post awakening he gives an initial +2 UP for just being in the team at the start of the game which is going to help in a lot of extremely tight maps like War of Magic. Being one of the very few Platinum male unit Jerome is the number one UP generator in EN at the moment.

Extra Notes:

1)Rosalie – I didn’t write about this soldier primarily because Crisis isn’t here yet when this work is being written and I am not thinking of changing the original writeup to accommodate for her so I will just talk about her here. Rosalie is one of the least useful soldiers right now; her low HP and cancerous Mind Eye are the two big limiting factors of her effective use in most maps. No reinforcement skill = no strategic advantage, low HP = can’t stay in combat for long, can’t stay in combat for long = no skill activation due to long cooldowns on Mind Eye, hence almost 0 skill effectiveness. Unless Mind Eye gets a huge buff I don’t see any units with the skill being viable in the long run, Akane included. Crave and Phylis are simply the better replacement in any given day, and since 2015 I have only used her once in JP; during a Gold Rush event where the Fairy only mod is in place.