Update
Notes:
Valentine’s Day came late but, boy, the new monsters don’t disappoint! Some really useful super epics here too. Let’s break them down!
Additions:
These are done in order of release with mythics, legendaries then super epics, etc…
Botan-Douji goes in at B for general, B for PvP and second form Tier 1, with excessive force and link you’re grounded Botan-Douji can tear through many enemies at rapid speed then have a blood move for anything without hold ground. Don’t be fooled by the massive defence, there is a cap, but it does make her far more awkward to kill quickly. Slayer stun looks great too for control in some scenarios. Between that and link you’re grounded she can probably do something impactful on every turn. Ultimately she’s a good link fire sweeper.
Gremoris goes in at S for general, S- for PvP and second form Tier 1, with high speed, high defence, hold ground and dreamy entrance you can guarantee some great value when this hits the field. It combos with Onigeist beautifully for sleep lock but more than anything else you want to play this mid-game to try and regain control of a battle by putting 2+ enemies to sleep at high speed. Ideally you retake control like this, grab a kill using a monster put to hold ground then get your teammates sweeping with invoke. If the enemy team can’t deal with her first they’ll be punished hard by quell. She’s a bit clunky with the damage damage dealing (you can’t deal damage without removing your control, all 160TU) and she does very poorly against protectors but quell makes her so hard to ignore in most battles and the initial impact should more than make up for any awkwardness.
Oakthulhu (s) goes in at B for general and E for PvP, with all the double target moves from Oakthulhu switched to single target this loses a lot of its power. Poison siphon is a balanced move but when that’s the main thing shiny Oak is offering until survivor it’s lacklustre compared to other monsters out there (it two-shots everything). There are still some good bits of Oak like the SS and the passives but getting a stronger AoE doesn’t make up for what is lost here. Basically use this only if you’re desperate for a shadow auto-poison monster.
Hanzowolf goes in at S- for general and A for PvP, with petrify revenge and protect teammates this is yet another powerful counter to raw that sets up your own raw. While it’s low speed, it makes up for that by being able to clone itself so the opponent cannot ignore it unless they want multiple useless rocks on the field. Alpha strike is practically impossible to use and to be honest you’ll probably never use assassinate or switch places with any impact either. What this is all about is setting up a rock lock and it does that pretty well. In PvE you can keep skipping and avoid ever killing the rocks so you can get into a loop where you always have Hanzo protecting and another next in line. It’s not guaranteed to get into that state but once you do it’s an almost guaranteed win.
Garden fairy sunflower goes in at A for general and S for PvP, with tanky stats, no killer weaknesses and a passive that punishes the opponent for killing its teammates this is super annoying to deal with. This pretty much has to be killed first unless you want to be punished hard by the moves and passive. By the looks of it, the fellow garden fairies will be able to heal it up repeatedly, both giving access to the powerful moves and making it a nightmare to kill due to hardened carapace. We’ll have to see how this works out with the other garden fairies but people are already finding it to be a powerful monster in PvP. Due to the tanking and healing I think garden fairies may be very strong in PvE too.
Mantiferno goes in at A for general and B for PvP, with piercing sweeping on humanoids and accelerate entrance this is the true waifu killer. Low speed and defence prevents it from simply obliterating them but for some PvE battles this will be incredible and, depending what the future holds, this may become an important sweeper for PvP. Man-eater deals 1000 piercing damage when not critical so can be used to pick up kills or otherwise Mantiferno uses mark for piercing kills which can additionally bypass protectors. The versatility in sweeping here is great and the SS is adding to that. Don’t get too hyped up though… it does still die very easily.
Spectrefox (s) goes in at S for general and S for PvP, with haunt, stun absorber and purify all this is single-handedly the most support potential I think we’ve ever seen on a SE. Theoretically it can protect you from sleep, poison and stun. If used in the front line it tends to protect the first half of your team, or even more, from stun due to how reliably it comes back. This is undoubtedly great stun protection for all players who don’t otherwise have good options in their collection. It also doubles as a very effective sweeper in many PvP battles. However, it does still get stunned out of play and make the battle a 4v3 so it gives up effectiveness for reliability. I’ve seen lots of players using other stun absorbers in their team behind this. DO NOT do this because you will get punished hard by stun. Either have some give turn or backstab to make things work better. In practice, in high level PvP this is not amazing because it will get stunned out of play or killed so it goes next in line then the team gets stunned.
Jocodragon goes in at S+ for general and S+ for PvP, with gravity field, stun martyr and high speed + knockback next this shuts down a bunch of strategies your opponent might be playing in PvP. Scale breaker and sendback next are a bit more situational but can be good. Betray is the big money here… guaranteed kill on an enemy then they get a Jocodragon that can’t use betray in return. This means you can fairly easily keep gravity field going on for much of the battle and if the opponent is using a stun absorber you can carefully keep them both out of play without triggering stun martyr. I think this is the more top level competitive of the two SE stun absorbers we’ve got here and with proper building around Jocodragon is very strong. It’s also brilliant in PvE where you can give the enemy team a monster they’re stuck with forever.
Atlanteon (s) goes in at S for general and S+ for PvP, with dreamy entrance and high speed + stealthy entrance + sneak attack this can kill+disable two enemies pretty quickly. Higher attack stat than the regular Atlanteon makes kinslayer one-shot everything except tanky fire monsters and sneak attack not have any trouble killing. The two link moves here are exceptionally strong for a SE, both being low TU. This looks like a top notch SE for link fire that should be very popular.
Gentleowl goes in at D for general and A for PvP, with a waifu support move and silly artwork this is clearly intended as a meme monster. This is decent support if you’ve got a few waifu around it in the team, being decent defence and 70TU give turn. Without waifu this counters sleep nicely or every 130TU can make something easy to kill. I don’t think that will be viable at all in stronger teams so this is primarily waifu support which is fairly niche.
Romanoid goes in notable monsters for PvP. 6 cost is a little steep for a special rock and may not seem worth it at first. However, what this monster ultimately does is protect your team from sleep. In the last 6-9 months we’ve seen a huge rise in the counters to sleep as well as more powerful sleep monsters (shiny Atlanteon above is a perfect example). Romanoid is a nice cheap tool to help protect any team that might be weak to sleep and could be a good Lemon counter for those players who want that.
Movements:
Mainly some shifting down of mythics and legendaries in the PvP tier lists. I’ve separated out the things moving up in this update to highlight them with a bit more focus.
Things moving up:
Aethereon moves from D → A in PvP, far better as very reliable stun protection than I gave it credit for (I normally give these a boost but I almost completely focused on its slightly lacklustre moveset). Slamming this in the front half of your team creates a big hurdle for your opponent to overcome if they want to stun you and the support it offers you until double drain survivor is perfectly fine.
Nagandia moves from E → A in general and F → A in PvP, this has had buff after buff and has now become incredibly strong. What kept this low for me was the low damage on wrecking ball but turns out this secretly got a 1.5x damage buff in an update so it now easily one-shots everything. 100TU petrify is very strong, especially with raw, and the decent speed with stealth+shield on entrance makes the low defence not an issue at all. Daunt+ or petrify as well as the option to remove a teammate with 50TU protector conversion (which also charges petrify) is seriously good flexibility. I expect to see this a lot more in mid-games and not simply as a FL combo enabler.
Rocolossus moves from S- → S in general
Pandamonium moves from A → S in general, while it requires being poisoned to do the sleep lock it’s exceptionally powerful to spam exhausting sleep and the tanky body with no killer weaknesses works very well in PvE. It can even stun enemies immune to sleep.
Regalion moves from A → S in PvP
Motordragon moves from B → A in PvP, mainly to do with the secret skill. Otherwise you’re better off using Tinker, Voodoom or building around Lunartic.
Prismpaw moves from C → B in PvP, really not too bad due to the good speed and damage that one-shots mythics. Especially nice with Polaboss.
Terragar moves from C → A in PvP, great in FL to set up other monsters, protect you from OoO and deal decent damage at pretty high speed.
Tinkerclaus moves from C → B in PvP
Cyclozar (s) moves from D → B in PvP, atrocious without targets but 160TU piercing sweeping is pretty decent and it can remove itself if needed.
Vinegazer moves from B → S in general, very good went built around fully even if it’s not as good as Purpie and more complicated to use.
Chamilizard moves from S- → S in PvP, an excellent link earth sweeper with 100TU piercing practically guaranteed one-shot. Knocked down to S only because it has a link requirement and needs extra rocks from teammates.
Flutterdrake lotus moves from A → S- in PvP
Mythics going down:
Satomi moves from S → S- in PvP
Voidress moves from S- → C in PvP, eclipse is great but we’ve got a bunch of options for backstab now that are less restricted by their moveset. She also gets countered super hard by repulse.
Harleking moves from A → B in PvP, great in the end-game but can be a little clunky if the opponent is in control at the time.
Lilithia moves from A → D in PvP, time will tell but I think too often you’ll be stuck without an impactful move to use.
Onyxia moves from A → B in PvP, dies too easily.
Tyrfina moves from A → C in PvP, slightly clunky and with one kill doesn’t one-shot other mythics.
Dragulus moves from B → C in PvP, a lack of targets makes this suffer and the 1-kill bloodthirst is not quite reliable enough for high level play.
Ankara moves from S- → B in general and C → D in PvP
Persephia moves from C → E in PvP, unfortunately way too clunky and relies on having a kill too much considering throw next is not the most powerful.
Legendaries going down:
Revenarchion moves from S+ → S in general, it’s S+ when used with revival strategies but otherwise simply very good.
Atlantyrant moves from B → C in general and A → B in PvP, the damage is just slightly too low to one-shot without both targets being poisoned.
Centaureon moves from B → C in general
Ultimadragon moves from B → C in general
Midasdragon moves from C → D in general
Noxdragon moves from C → D in general and C → D in PvP
Dolphreeze moves from S+ → S in PvP, against some teams it can be a little lacklustre.
Geomagnus moves from S+ → S in PvP, a number of good backstab options now and it isn’t quite as fast and reliable to get going as it needs to be for S+.
Cyclozar moves from S → A in PvP, with things shifting more towards monsters not having killer weaknesses or having high enough defence that killer moves don’t one-shot I think this is trending towards A tier.
Nulltron moves from S → S- in PvP
Stratustrike moves from S → A in PvP, while exceptionally powerful when built around correctly, it’s a tricky one to play with and my quote of “anything X or above can perform as S+ when used in the right team” should be applied more strictly here.
Lunartic moves from S- → A in PvP, similar to Stratu above, it’s a little more challenging to build around and play with than other monsters.
Tagosenshi moves from S- → A in PvP
Terrordragon moves from A → B in PvP
Ankoudragon moves from B → C in PvP
Emeraldont moves from C → D in PvP
Cryokaizer/Sanctallion move from D → E in PvP
Lavaronix (s) moves from E → F in PvP
Super epics going down:
Bitterbeast moves from S → S- in PvP
Abyssoldier Feryvast moves from S- → A in general
Alphagear moves from S- → A in general
Zephyrox moves from S- → A in general
Abyssoldier Hill moves from S- → B in PvP
Flutterdrake daffodil moves from S- → A in PvP