I’m sure everyone’s excited about the new GFE series and since everyone gets to pick one and take home, I’m going to breakdown what they excel at and what some of the things you should consider before picking the one you really need. Ultimately I will try to answer all the questions you may have about them.

So for this review I want to start by differentiating base form and evolved form because that helps figure out what the card do and then when I look at the leader skill it will be easier to pick which form to go with since they all have the same leader skill between forms. Anyways let’s start!

Valkyrie -CIEL-

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Valkyrie as a Sub

The difference between base form and evolved form Valkyrie is that evolved form has extra 500 ATK and has combo enhances instead of Devil killer and Machine Killer. Base form having Machine Killer doesn’t really bother me because she cannot stack more latent Machine killers. You will be better off finding other cards that can stack latent Machine killers if your team really needs that damage. Devil type spawns in general do not exert much threat. Even if you find issues against Devil type spawns, Light cards still provide a variety of solutions anyways. A Devil killer sub with the ability to stack latent Devil killers is incredibly powerful, but the huge competition coming from Light cards such as Pralinae combined with a lack of demand make this unlikely to be an advantage for her.

On the other hand with her evolved form, double combo enhances allow her to do considerable damage to any type of spawns. Having Dragon killer and God killer further guarantees her spot on many teams that are designed to tackle Alt. Arena. What she offers in AA is tremendous firepower against Dark Kali , and a decent amount of damage to many others . Her active skill is also incredibly powerful in Alt. Arena. The full unbind part of this active single handedly solves the bind issue coming from Hera Sowilo , though note that it doesn’t clear awoken skill bind – only the actual binds that are thrown at the leaders.

A miscellaneous note that I want to make: GungHo has somehow decided to place a killer type awakening before the common offensive awakenings. This brings up a dilemma where you leave her useless or you encounter damage controlling against certain Dragon and God types. This problem is what makes her a problematic choice for A3.

Overall she will be a powerhouse for Alt. Arena content tackling, incredibly strong active with incredible firepower targetted at the difficult spawns. She is not going to be on every single Alt. Arena team, but I’m certain there are plenty that can utilize her.

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Valkyrie as a Leader

Leader Skill: 2x HP & ATK for Healer type; Increase orb movement time by 2 seconds; 6x ATK when 4 or more combos

The base 2x HP & ATK for Healer type adds incredible resiliency to the team. With the built in 2 second movetime increase and composition being Healer, it is very easy for a Valkyrie team to stall out Awoken skill binds. The 6x ATK coming from merely 4 combo is pretty amazing, the multiplier is high and requirement is super easy. Overall just looking at her leader skill parameter 4/144/1 is plenty of damage, provides enough HP to withstand most preemptive damage normally if not without active shields.

So the form you’d choose for leading is the evolved form for the consistent 4x damage coming from the double combo enhance.

The bigger issue with her team is that you do too much damage to certain type of spawns while finding it difficult against others. This issue mainly comes from her subpool being Healers. The sub pool is quite scarce when you narrow it down to Light main attribute, you will be mostly looking at Healer/Attacker or Healer/Dragon. Dragon type are pretty great in that they are capable of carrying Healer killer latent which covers the other difficult spawns for Light teams in AA. The real issue I want to bring up is the sole threat of Hashihime . Hashihime is an incredibly difficult spawn against every team and even more so for Light or Dark teams and have a 33% chance of spawning. Valkyrie team will suffer greatly against her just because there is no way for a Valkyrie team to specialize against it. If you intend to user her as Alt. Arena leader then you definitely should come up with something, best bet is to bring a 100% shield and tank it then proceed to grind it down.

Another minor issue is with the scaling. The fact that you need to stay under 3 combo just to stay at 4x makes it incredibly hard for her team to even meet the lowest damage threshold(200k/300k) that said you aren’t really going to damage control Sopdet with the God killer intact anyways. One thing you will have to keep in mind when leading with Valkyrie is that you will have no damage control and will heavily rely on Absorb Shield null type active.

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To sum it up

Evolved Valkyrie is a very solid leader/sub for Alt. Arena. Base form is not really sought after for anything. Valkyrie teams don’t have much flexibility because of the subpool being relatively restrictive, but you can still tune your team to complete most descended dungeon without issue. In the end, you really wouldn’t desire her for anything aside from Alt. Arena, and especially not when you’re still dealing with A3.

Zeus -GIGA-

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Zeus as a Sub

Let’s just forget the evolved version ever existed alright? Actually would you care to have some time extension stick on your Light row team? Maybe, but you definitely don’t want some dead weight on your team that doesn’t contribute anything aside from extending your move time.

As a sub Zeus provides very little to the team aside from the active. Base form has awakening set that synergize better with his active, but to fully utilize Zeus as a whole you will still be looking towards making a farm team. While full board Light makers are harder to find, there are plenty of Light bicolor boards that you can find and they will have no issue getting the job done. Pairing Zeus active with random orb generator or single/double row makers will allow you to setup for VDP boards, this is a luxury that you can previously only have with Saline .

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Zeus as a Leader

Leader Skill: 4x ATK when full HP; Increase orb movement time by 2 seconds; 4x ATK & 2x RCV for Light Att.

So I want to compare Zeus -GIGA- and Zeus Verse and their role as leaders, here’s Zeus Verse’s leader skill

Leader Skill: 7.5x ATK when full HP; 2x ATK & RCV for all Att.

Briefly looking at Zeus Verse, he’s mostly used for farming and ranking and really that will be the main use for GIGA as well. The major difference between them is the Light Att. only vs All Att., the minor difference in 225x vs 256x isn’t really too huge. The extra 2 seconds coming from GIGA doesn’t really help since you don’t need it to swipe your board and you will be looking to not spend time on solving boards during rankings. What GIGA does have is a relevant active. GIGA’s active skill will reactive his leader skill, which often times you will have to substitute in for Verse.

Most of the time you will be fine with just using Verse but occasionally you will find setup that only works with GIGA mainly utilizing his active. Something I would like to point out is that swiping the full Light board will invite a higher chance of skyfall combos comparing to just simply matching 3 orbs. This is something you may want to keep in mind especially in Ranking dungeons.

An advantage that Verse have over GIGA is that GIGA is unable to utilize off color killers, for example Kiri . Most commonly with GIGA you will just be looking to generate more damage by supplementing more orbs while using a less effective killer card.

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To sum it up

GIGA will be mainly used as Ranking/Farming leader. As a sub he will fit in some farm team just fine. Base form will be the go-to for his design. His leader skill position is often replaceable by Verse but every now and then you will find builds that utilizes his unique active. It’s best to keep in mind that you will need a good variety of Light cards to fully utilize him.

Athena -NON-

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Athena as a Sub

Currently Athena sits at the 2nd place for highest ATK cards right after Ideal . Having high ATK paired with offensive awakenings makes her output some incredible damage.

The difference between base form and evolved form is 1000 HP and TPAs vs combo enhances. What I’ve always liked about TPAs is the fact that you have a very predictable damage output and the spectrum is manageable by minmaxing the rest of your team with latent killers. For Athena’s case, her ATK value is simply too high and there is no way to match other cards damage alongside her if she were to have 4 TPAs, so it’s really best to just go for the evolved form. The evolved form offers a much higher cap of damage due to combo enhances providing 2x which is greater than the 1.5x of TPA, extra 1000 HP and that your damage spectrum is actually manageable.

Athena’s base active is really generous for its CD. Generating Light and Heal orbs on top of enhancing them will give you plenty of damage and healing all at once. Of course whether or not Light orbs is relevant for you will be depending on your team building, but the enhancing all orb part will stick and always help out the rest of your team.

Athena’s high ATK will also find places to shine, for example Ideal was used as a button base for Courage cup due to the high ATK value, similarly you will be able to find a fitting home for her. Note that Athena’s base active cooldown is lower but her usefulness as leader is not as versatile as Ideal so she will not be able to fit in all the places that Ideal has been.

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Athena as a Leader

Leader Skill: 1.5x Parameters for God type; Increase orb movement time by 2 seconds; 6x ATK when matching Light and Heart

So the parameter comes out as 1.5/9/1.5, which already scares some people away, but really this is not the biggest issue with her. Athena’s leader skill parameter is fine for tackling A3 or A4, and though you will find it much more difficult against AA, it is certainly doable. One of the greater issues with her is the sub pool, strong Light God types that keep Heart orbs around aren’t exactly common, and if you resort to a Miru army you will end up with 9 second orb movement time and a collection of not-very-usable base actives. This issue mainly come up when you attempt A4 and AA, but prior to that you wouldn’t have too much trouble with her. Another thing is that, while her leader skill does boost RCV, having 0 base RCV on both leaders is still gonna weigh her down, especially with the limited subpool.

I wouldn’t say Athena is unusable as a leader but it’s pretty easy to find a more flexible leader that works better than her, but if your box somehow just support her as a leader then you will still have a pretty capable team.

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To sum it up

Athena is a very powerful sub, Evolved form outperforms base form in any aspect. As a leader the subpool weighs her down and there’re ususally better options out there.

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Which one should I pick?

So first let’s establish one thing: None of us should be looking at any of these three considering about early/mid game.

The reason for that is because if you just started you already have 10 rolls into the GodFest, if that didn’t cover your entire early/middle game then you should probably reroll first. If you’re already at mid game or perhaps late game then you’re obviously not looking at early game shenanigans.

Valkyrie

Why pick Valkyrie?

Why not Valkyrie?

Zeus

Why pick Zeus?

Why not Zeus?

Athena

Why pick Athena?

Why not Athena?

With those I’d say Zeus is a promising consideration if you have a Light box tailored towards farming, and a big no no for him if that’s not the case. Aside from that if you’re looking for a strong sub that you can apply most Light teams then you can consider Athena, but if you’re looking to tackle AA then Valkyrie would be a much better choice.

A reminder from me: The trading period for the medal doesn’t end until 1/1 11:59 JST (2/1 for NA) and there is still a part 2 of the GodFest coming so if you plan on rolling it’s best to make your final decision after you have rolled.

Art is from @ameneko_96