It took us by surprise the first time Magazine ALL★STAR Collab dropped into PAD. This collab was the first to introduce units with multiple combo enhance, color absorb shield null active and an inheritable full awoken unbind. It was indeed a very powerful collab upon release, and as time goes the lack of weighted stat on these cards start to show up and that’s how they become less popular, but let’s look at the buff and lineup addition and see if it was able to save the collab!

6★

Ippo

As a leader

If you think about the flat leader skill multiplier it’s actually pretty close to Fio or Clea (1.5x stat with 25% shield adds up to effectively 2x) with a greater offensive multiplier(100x vs 56.25x) but the trade off being that you lose the built in 2 second movetime. The reason why built in movetime was so great was because in scenario where you have to stall out awoken skill binds it will help greatly and for our favorite spawn Lakshmi it will basically ensure a clear. In Ippo’s case most awoken skill binds can still be stalled out just fine since the 2x HP is unconditional which really outshine the Sonias, so unless Ippo is bound your team should have no problem. In cases where your leader might be taking a bind after awoken skill bind like Sowilo in AA you can use both leader skill and take care of the awoken skill bind duration just fine. Ippo’s RCV activation go along really well with heart oe mechanic, running Hestia or Mel will easily top you off on HP with just heart TPA alongside some combo. For Alt. Arena, Ippo team has powerful subs such as Enra , Napoleon and No.6 that brings a huge amount of offensive power to make up for the mediocre multiplier of 100x. For A3 he’s definitely capable but you’ll always have problems against Vishnu and HeraDra since the scaling just won’t hit into the right numbers, so you most likely will be looking to bring more than just 1 absorb shield null active in the team. Overall he’s a very strong leader definitely capable of clearing all existing dungeons due to his great stalling power.

As a sub

TE x3 and Combo Enhance x2 along with a short cooldown active to inherit over makes him a very good sub for most red teams. He’s great for most content until you really need to push damage for certain typing. His base active alone will not able to take care of Sowilo mechanics so you will still need to find other ways around it.

Chinmi

As a leader

Chinmi is a mess to assess, the multiplier coming only out of combo count gives him a lot of flexibility but the shield requiring 5 color comes around and limit his teambuilding. The leader skill parameter looks decent on paper but it’s so difficult to use him to the full potential. Some people suggest running Diablos with him which gives you 1/119/1 with 62.5% shield, and since 7×6 board makes it more consistent for him it’s actually a pretty valid pairing. Overall not a very well designed leader as his multiplier caps out at 9 combo and needing 5 color for the shield just makes him very awkward to use.

As a sub

Chinmi is your generic Combo Enhance x2 sub, but with bad typing, bad weighted stat and bad active skill. If he’s all you got you’d probably still run him, but he gets outclassed easily by similar light cards that have Combo Enhance x2.

Gash Bell

As a leader

The 1.5x parameter will allow Gash to stall decently for actives since his leader skill does require active usage. Without the active part his multiplier will drop to a mere 36x which is unusable for the most part. He’s a decent leader for short dungeons and him having a short cd active also help if you want to cycle through it, but running him through a long dungeon like Arena will be painful since you’ll either have to stall a lot for actives or you will have to rely on a system which can get destroyed by HephDra ‘s massive delay.

As a sub

Not an outstanding sub. He has balance typing and will decently on row teams but there are no leaders that can utilize him or need him.

Natsu

As a lead

Natsu is a pretty decently lead for content up to about A3. Natsu provides enough firepower up to A3 but start having problems for content beyond that. His teambuilding is pretty flexible since he can go with any of the offensive awakenings and still do perfectly fine however his subpool is not exactly large which can cripple his value as a leader.

As a sub

Natsu provides a good amount of damage himself with Combo Enhance x2 but Fire Orb Enhance x4 probably provides a whole lot more to the team, the amount of damage those enhanced orb may provide will depend on the rest of your team but it’s roughly a 20% boost in total damage. His active is not exactly useful since there’re not many meaningful red absorbs that you really need to bypass but at least it still give you 5 red orbs which can synergize with his L attack from SA.

Meliodas

As a leader

Meliodas as a leader has always had problem with how little HP he has, the buff this time did address it with Team HP from SA. His old teammate Haku and Dark Athena have also received buffs in HP via limit break. The extra TE he received also helps greatly since pairing with himself you will get 2 of them and you can instead take HP badge rather than TE badge. The buff in leader skill multiplier alongside limit break and super awakening allows him to be more consistent with old content and even able to do A4 consistently. Overall still a decent leader but nowhere near his old glory days where everyone will be running him.

As a sub

He’s a very strong sub more so in AA since he can take Delay active skill works wonder in AA. His super awakening allows him to have FUA which will make teambuilding more flexible for you, if you already have another FUA card on the team then Team HP can also help greatly. The damage he’s able to provide with alongside Combo Enhance x2 on top of his high attack really solidify his spot as a strong sub.

Sakura

As a lead

So a heart cross leaves you at 9x with 75% shield, heart cross with another heal combo will have 144x and 75% shield, now that looks a bit better but it’s 8 heal orbs total and if you have 6 heal orbs then she can put you at 49x without shield. Overall just too orb hungry to be usable, and her active doesn’t help with that at all, so she’s in fact a pretty bad leader.

As a sub

She provides basically nothing as a sub, not even an bind clear awakening, the only case you’d run her on your team is for the active for either shield or awoken skill unbind.

As an inherit

The active skill is the only part that really shines in her design, full awoken skill unbind takes care of numerous problems in AA and even if you don’t encounter any awoken skill bind the 75% shield effect will still allow you to tank a turn on either Metatron or Kali . The flexibility she offers will greatly help in any AA teambuilding.

Pai

As a leader

The buff this time around giving her SBR makes her a lot more usable as a leader. 2.25/144/1 overall is pretty good and the multiplier scaling is also pretty decent for A3(8x at 4 heal orb, 10x at 5 heal orb, 12x at 6 heal orb). Her teambuilding is fairly flexible as well since you can use any of the offensive awakenings and there’s no type restriction. The lack of RCV starts to hurt for content after A3 but prior to that she does everything just fine.

As a sub

Her latent killer selection is really bad due to typing, that aside she will still provide FUA from SA and provides a lot of unbind in her design. Overall not a bad sub but nothing outstanding.

Tsukumo Mutsu

As a leader

He used to be one of the most popular leader to farm Colo with when there was no FUA since his leader skill basically nullifies resolve. Do note that if the spawn has defense higher than 237,300(assuming lv110 and +99 attack) the bonus damage from leader skill will do 0 damage. That said he’s still a decent leader when there’re a lot of resolve mechanics in a dungeon and he can also make clearing challenge mode that much easier with the additional damage part. Overall more of a niche leader than a practical one due to lack of multiplier.

As a sub

Overall a decent and flexible sub since he’s a balanced type with combo enhance x2 that means he can output a good amount of damage to any of the typing you want to build towards. The active he has also works for most teams and the 2x ATK for Light att. do make up for the lack of light orbs it may produce, it’s flexible but most often will want to inherit something better. If your team can utilize guard break then I’d definitely get that since it helps against high defense spawns in AA such as Hashihime or Deightros . Aside from that his SA options aren’t really that outstanding.

Sidetnote

He’s often known as 99 as well because his name 九十九 literally means 99

5★

Ichiro Miyata

He’s my favorite card from this collab, his entire design basically says that you can kill spawns with preemptive gravity by just doing nothing. That said I just want to highlight that the counterattack active can continue work off preemptive, it will only go away when you get your turn again. A practical use case can be found here.

Xu Fang

I kind of find it hard to think he’s any useful since we already have Sanosuke , yes they do different stuff but Sanosuke will also ping and Xu Fang requires another active to do the same thing so it makes me think that he’s just not that useful overall, but you can still work things around if you don’t have Sanosuke.

Bargo & Sherry

The only part to highlight is that the skyfall rate on his active is 25% and not 15%, aside from that he’s pretty useless.

Lucy

The only time I used her was in Zeus +297 since I had no orb unlock at that time and there are tons of other options in orb unlock that have less cooldown. Regular 5 color board isn’t really desired anywhere so she’s pretty useless unless you just want the unlock.

Elizabeth

I guess you can cheese some dark only dungeon pairing with Hades but overall she’s pretty useless and sometimes we just have to face the fact that not all cards get to be used.

Syaoran

He came out earlier than Camael, so I guess I have to say Camael is the better copy rather than Syaoran is the worse copy. The cooldown is 2 turn shorter but most of the time cooldown isn’t the problem and having 2 turn burst rather than 1 turn is a lot more flexible, that said in rare cases where the 2 turn cooldown matters and you do need the burst then he’s still usable.

Yakumo Fujii

So I guess one day where we want to farm a dungeon with a lot of Dragon or Devil type he will be useful for leaders that have high multiplier while using Kiri , Mito or Shazel , but there are already a lot of builds that farm Norse Rush just fine so I guess he’s not really gonna make anything happen. That aside he can be used on Kamimusubi killing board setup where you use Barbara into Yakumo then Akechi .

Maiko Ryuzoji

The really outstanding part of her design is just the dark resists, she will mostly be put on teams just to tank DQH preemptive but aside from that she doesn’t really do much.

MP Store

Mamoru Takamura

So here’s how his active works:

With all that put into consideration he’s a good buy if you don’t have Nergi hunter or Grimmjow button teams. Something that I want to mention is that Green Odin equip will be a great inherit on him since it adds a lot of HP with its HP enhancing awakenings.

Erza

If you don’t have a Fire farming lead and want one, she’s on sale for just 100,000 MP. Anyways jokes aside most people look at her 0.5x HP and go “she’s unusable” but honestly in farm builds you will see every preemptive coming so if you end up dying you probably want to reread dungeon info and redo your build. Her 100x is still good for a good amount of dungeons, her selling point is really the the low cooldown on her active which is usually good enough for most spawns except sometimes hiccup happens. That said I probably would not buy her since there’re other farmable farming leads that can do everything she already can.

Conclusion

Overall the Diamonds are pretty strong but the Golds aren’t really worthwhile and they are what you will get mostly. Diamond-wise, trade for Sakura if you really like running AA, Ippo strikes me as an excellent leader and Meliodas as a decent sub whereas the rest aren’t so oustanding. That said it’s probably a good idea to skip out on this REM.

For the MP cards I’d definitely get 4 Mamoru since they are relatively cheap and versatile for button farming, but if button farming isn’t your thing then definitely skip out.