Deck Guides/Elemental Hall

The Elemental Hall ("EH") is nubee's latest feature, and it can be extremely rewarding (and fun) if you can reliably defeat the enemies. As a long-time player, the EH difficulty levels (especially Advanced) along with its rewards are a welcome addition. These are my tips on how to handle the challenge...

Of course we know the Elemental Halls give the element of the day (I'll call it the main element) a shield that resists the devastating Elemental Wave. In Advanced Mode, even max-stat GUR cards will be devoured by 4 or so Elemental Waves if they correspond to the main element.

So how do we approach this problem? What teams and strategies can we use? The first thought is to use our standard FAW teams, but we also have to make multiple teams-- 4 for Advanced, 3 for Intermediate, and 2 for Beginner. Not even a veteran like myself has had the foresight to hold onto so many strong cards that could make 4 reliable FAW-killer teams and keep so many useful cards based on their element (well the other problem was the lack of storage that nubee only recently addressed, but obviously it meant we had to throw out tons and tons of cards that might have been useful for EH in the past)

However, it's important to note that there are some major differences between the EH enemy unit and an FAW enemy unit that affects what type of teams will be successful.

Features of the Elemental Hall enemy units

 * The Elemental Wave can only be performed by the main AW. Of course, this encourages you to make pure-element units based on the main element, but there can be some exceptions for certain team compositions
 * Mentioned in the Help section, it's important to note that this attack cannot be blocked by any Skill Nullify ability! Chocolatier will not save your wrong-element cards from being blown to bits!
 * Archwitch Field, the annoying move that clears all buffs and debuffs in the battle, can only be performed by the main AW.
 * The sidekicks have significantly more HP (or "soldier count") than the FAW sidekicks and cannot be quickly eliminated by an unbuffed card's attacks
 * The sidekicks do not die when you defeat the main AW
 * The sidekicks seem to be assigned varying active skills such as turn skip, a single-target (critical) hit, and a group heal
 * It seems either multiple sidekicks have been assigned the attack skill nullify ability, or *all* sidekicks have it. In otherwords, as long as there is 1 sidekick remaining, there is a chance your attack skills will be blocked.
 * The FAW's Archwitch Wave is not used in battle. Why do I want to point this out? Because this difference means weak cards are more viable options in EH than against FAWs.

Strategies
1. Kill the main AW as soon as possible. This should be the main goal, because in general you need attack buffs (or an infinite-proc attack skill) to kill all of the enemies, and the main AW, although it has the most HP, can clear your buffs at any time. Once you have eliminated the AW Field threat, your buffs will remain for the rest of the battle and you can snipe off the sidekicks. Also, if you have cards that are the wrong element, you absolutely have to kill the main AW to stop the Elemental Wave.

2. Attack buffs are absolutely necessary. There is way too much HP to deal with to ignore attack buffs. If you can't get at least 1 good attack buff in every time, don't even bother with EH. Ok, maybe.. MAYBE you can use an infinite proc life-suck skill such as Megaera, Azi Dahaka, Charybdis, or even Soul Eater, and there doesn't seem to be a 100-turn limit like with regular AW and FAW, but without attack buffs, you're going to be fighting for a looooong time, win or lose. Your Jack Pot time might even expire just doing 1 battle!

2. Skill Unleash (Single), is almost a necessity for most team formations. Fortunately, nubee has gifting us this ridiculously powerful skill with good proc rates ever since the end of last year, starting with SR Sulis and then UR Redeye and UR Jean. I hope you collected a bunch of these cards, because this skill is almost necessary for EH (and extremely useful for FAW). Now if you don't have the SRs or URs, you may want to think about collecting the Rs (Seagull and Furinkazan) who have this skill, but they are huge liabilities with their low soldier counts, base stats, and infrequent proc rate (max 10%).

3. Turn-skips provide a way for mixed-element teams to survive and get their skills activated. I have often run teams composed of 2 turn-skip cards (especially ones that can skip a total of 6 turns and have a proc rate of at least 15%), and the teams are not perfect by any means, but provide a relatively high success rate.

4. Non-Attack skill nullifiers (did anyone keep Vitruvius?) or any-skill nullifiers (such as Chocolatier) can be useful and are very compatible with our skill-unleash teams. I would not recommend wasting a slot for cards who only block attack skills like Cpt. Bianca or amalgamated Sulis.
 * One very important thing to note is that there are some turn-skip skills that simultaneously deal damage. Try to avoid relying on these skills when dealing with sidekicks, because they count as attack skills and thus have a chance of being blocked. Because of this subtle change, even for FAW teams, I would highly recommend NOT awakening cards like Drum Major or Moira!

5. When dealing with units with sidekicks, attack buffs are more useful than attack skills. This doesn't mean attack skills are useless, but a buff-based team will generally perform better than one that relies on attack skills for dishing out the majority of damage. In Advanced difficulty, I usually end up fighting at least 1 AW who doesn't have sidekicks, so I think it's fine to make 1 team that has strong attack skills (crits are preferred), and for other teams, you may want to consider having 1 strong AOE skill to gamble on killing everything at once, but you will want this team to have a "Plan B" in case your attack skills are not getting through.

6. As I mentioned earlier, since the EH enemies don't use the FAW's AW Wave, I have found base-stat SRs matching the main element can do ok in battle; they will certainly survive better than a max-stat HUR of the wrong element. So try out your "incomplete" cards that have useful skills such as team buffs and turn-skips.

7. Team healers can be useful for specific team setups. For instance, you can be running a pure-element team matching the main element and continuously heal until your key skills are ready to use (such as 3 team buffs and a turn-skip?). This works in EH better than against FAW.

Team strategies

 * Attack buffers and skill unleash (single): this is a very successful team setup for both EH and FAW, but based on your situation, your buffer(s) may not match the main element and is suspectible to a quick death. If that's the case, it's imperative to dedicate extremely high proc rates to this team so you can quickly achieve maximum damage and take out the main AW. However, if your team matches the main element, it will be much easier to manage and you can take on 3.5 mil damage with ease. If your team needs 3-4 procs to achieve max damage AND has pieces that don't match the main element, I strongly suggest limiting this unit to battling main AWs with less than 2 million HP. For a mixed team, I would prefer it against a unit with many sidekicks, because it reduces the HP of the main AW. (more sidekicks is better)
 * 1+ turn-skip, 2+ skill unleasher (single), and 1 auto-skill ATK Up card: This is a very fun team I came up with for GUR Monkey. I would not recommend doing this with an SR like Dark Santa, because the power-up and max stats are so much worse. Against FAW, it had 2 issues-- it's pretty slow compared to other teams I have formed, and if I couldn't get the turn-skip running within a few turns, the team was susceptible to the AW Wave (If i wanted to include a skill nullify card like Choolatier, I would be relying on only 2 skill unleashers to chain the turn-skips). In EH, this team is still pretty slow to use but is very successful thanks to the lack of AW wave. If you only have Monkey/Jean/Redeye to use for this team like I do, you have a mixed deck and absolutely must get turn-skips to activate fast, so you'll want to dedicate high proc rate skill unleashers to this team. Also, don't attack with Monkey (use another card to waste turns) until you start turn-skipping, because if even 1 buff is cleared, it will take much longer to defeat all the enemies. This team with a GUR can handle the most difficult Advanced enemy with great ease! (All-purpose)


 * 2+ Attack buffs and 2+ turn-skips (supplement with skill unleash if possible): the idea is to start activating the attack buffs only when you have a turn-skip ready to go in order to prevent getting AW Fielded. I would fight the easier enemy units with this type of team, because you need to sit around and wait for all the skills to activate; as your cards start to approach death, you will have to gamble and activate whatever skills you have. Try to fight against units with less sidekicks, because they can turn-skip you and ruin the day. (1 or less sidekicks is better)
 * 1+ team healer, 2+ attack buffs, 1 turn-skip: this team's strategy is to stall by healing until enough skills are active that will let you defeat the main AW. Something like 2 +200% team buffs on a max stat GUR with a 3-turn skip will let you hit the main AW 4 times for around 500k each hit without risk of getting AW Fielded. Obviously more power is preferred... Super Iroha with a +200% team buff can hit for nearly 900k each hit... less sidekicks is better, as unpredictable turn-skips and constant crits may ruin your plan to heal and save your cards. (1 or less sidekicks is better)