Event Type: Trial
The Unit: Swordmaster Gloria
Number of Maps: 10
Signature Unit Star Requirement: 5, max at 27
Monster Group: Goblin (warg riders pretty tanky), Wolves, Orthrus, Elder Demon, Yurina, Gloria etc.
Notable Monsters: Orthrus, 2-headed dog that deals magic damage, moderately tanky with pretty decent HP and solid MR, can wipe out frontlines if not taken out quickly. Elder Demon hits for 5000 damage, enough said.
Strategy: In most cases you will want both burst and sustained physical damage, and lots of them. Kiting the Elder Demon is essential for one of the G tier maps. Damage regulation might be required for the other G tier when 2 Elder Demons patrol the lane, though are not required to be killed. Weather defects apply on the snow map so having units that can reduce weather duration is going to help as well.
Team Foundation: Single blockers and physical ranged units are all in the package. Valkyries/Princesses and Archers are just a few of the units needed to ensure smooth run in this event, especially the second G tier map. The use of soldiers might be limited for this event considering the layout as well the strategy you plan to use. Notably, units like Necromancer + Puppeteer + Witch combo are particularly deadly against the Elder Demon, though getting the necessary UP will be another challenge. Feng Shui Master is also a good addition for the snow map.

Unit Analysis:

Gloria is the second Cosmic Trinity Swordmaster after Sandra and resembles Earth, with the last of the Cosmic Trinity Swordmasters being Raven that resembles Man and will only be available via Premium Summon. Like Sandra, Gloria has a unique skill that deals instant area damage around her. Unlike Sandra’s skill that does true damage, Gloria’s skill focuses on amplification to ground monsters more than her initial multiplier, granting 3 times more damage to ground monsters hit by her skill as well as a temporary stun animation. This means that Gloria can apply a short stun and a maximum of 5.4x damage to enemies hit at max skill, hitting about 3.6k damage without factoring enemy defenses. (Math might be wrong, let me know if it is)

Gloria is usually compared to Sandra in terms of free Platinum Swordmasters which I find it relatively hard to do given how different their functions are despite being the same plug-and-play, “game-changing skill but garbage otherwise” type of class. Gloria’s use is generally considered wider than Sandra due to the variety of ground monsters in the game compared to the flying ones, and thus Gloria is capable of dealing with most types of rushes since these are mostly spearheaded by weak monsters in packs, given how Gloria’s skill is also capable of hitting flying units.

Looking at other comparison however, I personally don’t think Gloria has an obvious advantage over Sandra; I would say that Sandra is actually going to be better in the long run, considering how both units are moving forward at the moment. The recent introduction of Swordmaster Skill AW gave Sandra a huge air boost at the cost of lower overall multiplier, but the boost effectively pushed her damage to 7.5x on flying units, which means that Sandra is now in a good spot of dealing with a lot of the tankier flying units such as the airborne crystals in Magic City and mosquitoes to name a couple. Gloria’s Skill AW effectively took away her unique advantage in skill cooldown in exchange for being tankier. The problem with this is the boost only appeals in specific scenario such as a grind approach with a single block and strong healer sustain with emphasis on single block, since the sort of survivability she gains from Skill AW can be replicated by other units such as Lolonee for example.

If there is one thing Gloria is extremely good at, it is to snipe annoying monsters with low attack intervals, such as the dark elf mages and the usual black goblin archers, plus her AOE radius is something most players will be familiar with so the ease of use is definitely an appeal. Otherwise I feel that the overall weaknesses of Swordmasters still exists on Gloria, plus the way things are headed for her right now she most likely will not be getting the same treatment as Sandra which is unfortunately a shame. Ultimately it is the case of playstyle, but in practicality Sandra will be seen in more compositions than Gloria going forward.

Conclusion:

Gloria is a trial event unit, so she is kind of given as you reap SCs from the event maps. The event itself is going to be more challenging than Sandra’s in terms of timing the Elder Demons’ patrol route, but the overall demands on unit growth will be more forgiving compared to Paula’s.

Note:
Its that time again.

The 2nd Anniversary for VP Games playing on Nutaku is coming up soon enough. As per tradition, I will be doing the annual Q&A as well as progression update and if time approves, a sneak peak on an account I am given the opportunity to try out on DMM. You can mail me your questions at vpgamesaigis@gmail.com, depending on the nature of the question I will try and answer those in due time. Hope to hear from you soon.

Event Type: Farm
The Unit: Vampire Hunter Fran
Number of Maps: 6
Signature Unit Drop Maps: 1-5
Monster Group: Goblin, Undead, Wolves, Bats, Fran etc.
Notable Monsters: Green Goblin (weak, but comes with paralysis that can be achieved with 6 consecutive hits from multiple source, can cause leaks if not dealt appropriately in a rush scenario)
Strategy: AOE physical damage to deal with the goblins, decent tanks to deal with vampire paralysis and Fran, high heal ceiling for grind approach.
Team Foundation: Liana or AW Healers will provide big bonuses against paralysis as well as patching shortcomings if you have no strong tanks. Artillery can do quite a lot here with the tight lanes in most maps meaning easy herding of monsters for maximum splash damage coverage. Pick physical DPS over Magic as the more annoying monsters come with MR. Vampire Hunter can be used against the undead as well.

Unit Analysis:

Fran is the first event Vampire Hunter that still sticks to most of the DPS builds with attack affection bonus and attack multiplier built into her skill. Vampire Hunters generally lack high base attacks to compensate for their 2-3 projectile attacks, meaning any base attack stat bonus will scale their usefulness more in terms of them dealing with monsters that are relatively tankier on the defense department.

When comparing Fran with other known Platinum Vampire Hunters in the market she does seems weaker overall due to how busted Elizabeth’s DPS is at the moment as well as lacking the heal utility which Rumaria possess (not yet available on Nutaku). Fran’s skill levels can also impact her output by quite a bit, especially with the double skill duration difference; she gains 2-3 seconds of enhanced DPS for every skill level improvement. At every 3 levels she gain a .1 multiplier so it would be fair to keep her skill threshold at 3,6 or 9 depending on how much you plan to invest on her.

Fran’s weaknesses are also pretty glaring; lack of meaningful AW passive is her biggest problem as well as the unnecessary defense/HP double buff that sort of tipped her balancing out of the scale. At this stage old players would have realized that developers of Aigis don’t really consider competitive advantages when it comes to unit balancing; if a ranged unit has tons of HP/defense it is considered highly impactful and these units will have to compensate on DPS in most cases, which is unbelievably stupid from a game balancing perspective. This means that unlike Imelia, Fran won’t make use of the HP/defense multiplier as much especially the latter, although it does provide her a bit of survivability against splash damage. It is highly probable that Fran have lost a bit of damage due to this as seen from how her AW passive and skill AW changes are being tweaked. 20MR again is only going to do so much against splash damage, and Fran would have gotten so much better with an offensive or buff passives.

Overall, Fran will be around as an upgrade to Khuri, but that’s all she is for now until better burst units arrive where she will gradually phase out. For free players however the investment isn’t all too bad, considering the maps that drop her does provide good silver fodders as well (witch, rogue).

Conclusion:

Old event, nothing too hard that the veterans can’t handle now. Fran can be pretty overwhelming against a weaker composition, so new players will want to balance things out in terms of investment. For the record I have never used Fran on DMM since the Swordmaster events, so it is safe to say that she isn’t that integral even for a free player in most cases and would only serve most of the times as secondary DPS or auxiliary purposes.

Event Type: Trial
The Unit: Bishop Paula
Number of Maps: 10
Total Stars: 30 (Maxed Paula requires 27 stars)
Monster Group: Undead, Goblin etc.
Notable Monster: Demon King and his 2 Shadows (2200-2640 range, melee to ranged at less than 50% HP, increased attack speed)
Strategy: Paralysis (Eden), extremely delicate kiting on Demon King’s HP to prevent ranged attacks, distributing lightning rod tasks when against Liches and Pharaohs, particularly the latter due to berserk mechanics.
Team Foundation: Very strong healers (multiple), lightning rods ie. Angels, Valkyries (High HP value), Bandits etc. Mages, Witches to be used widely especially against the Demon King.

Unit Analysis:
If you find yourself using Noel at her fullest extent as the replacement for the very few good Mages you have, then Paula is going to thrill you a lot. Paula’s quality and relevance sort of justified the difficulty of this event; The Maze of the Demon King is generally agreed as the first difficult trial in the post-AW era mostly due to the high amount of damage your units are forced to tank.

Paula as a Bishop herself is already a pretty decent team player. Bishops have relatively comparable attack values to that of a Mage, but outranges them which is a pretty big advantage on ranged DPS nukes. Paula brings this higher with affection bonus that boosts attacks as well as a pretty neat skill; she has both an attack and range multiplier which is always good to have on a ranged unit, particularly the attack boost. Paula’s skill duration is a bit of a double-edged sword so activating her skill in-between can be great or disastrous and is pretty dependent on how players use her.

What makes Paula so exciting is that in a period of new characters coming out from the developers’ yard this is a solid unit that does not exhibit too many weaknesses that will render her useless. Paula is a unit that can replace most Mage roles at any given day, continuously gain both base and increased attack values on each growth stage, with very little drawbacks. Her skill when used properly is incredible as the higher attack value means she absolutely flies when providing heal to the team although you will want to consider her range when deciding to use her as a replacement healer. This is definitely a unit worth the time and resources to build up in the long run as a hybrid that not only will shine in most Mage-heavy maps but Domination as well given her multirole capabilities.

Conclusion:
Hard event, but totally worth it with Paula living up to expectations of a hybrid Mage/Healer.

Extra:
This is the first time a new format is used to accommodate work schedule changes on my end. It isn’t perfect, ie. lower research quality and all, but things will improve along the way once I find a working rhythm.