Revo Shiva
Reincarnated Shiva: The Guide
This guy never really got much traction in NA, even when Awoken Shiva was first released. Of course, he was played a lot more than now.
For beginners, he offered an excellent way to learn about the game. Forcing people to learn how to combo beyond simple Bejeweled while retaining an incredibly high RCV multiplier to keep them safe.
For the intermediate players, he suggested consistency If you could hit 6-combo every turn, you had little problem blowing every descend out of the water for the longest time. In Co-op he was even stronger, using multiplayer HP to offset his one true weakness. There is little doubt that Awoken Shiva did Arena 1 with little problem.
Now, I’d like to bring him back into the light. Just a little. With so many cards getting their Reincarnated forms and the introduction to the Enhanced Combo (7combo) Awakening Skill, I think Shiva has a place as a lead again. Maybe he’s not cut out to do Arena 3 or Colosseum with 100% clear rate but I do not doubt with the right subs and inherits, he is fully capable.
Pros:
Combo-based leader skill that focuses on only one colour
Orb troll is very low due to no real restrictions (can even match jammer and poison orbs)
Any red card can be a sub
Balances out fire team’s low recovery with a 4x recovery boost
Fire teams naturally have high base attack
Active skills are not required to trigger maximum damage multiplier
Easy to play and can be used for mindless speed farming
Fire/Dark typing does not affect leader skill activation
Has one skill bind resist awakening and thus easier to achieve 100% immunity
Awakening materials are easier to obtain as only one descend boss and an evolved Phoenix who can even drop from the pal machine
Fire teams feel powerful (the sound and animations)
Cons:
Vulnerable to binds. This is becoming a more relevant issue with unbindable leaders becoming more common and dungeons having more preemptive binds
Weak against blue bosses
Ideal team building is quite REM heavy as there are virtually no farmable red monsters with TPA
Damage multiplier is “low” compared to the top-tier leads available
Shiva is a fantastic lead and is capable of clearing nearly every descend. The playstyle is less stressful to play compared to rainbow teams as you only need to focus on a single color. When deciding on a sub roster to bring into a descend, you should try to bring a mixture of offensive and utility-based actives. In addition, it is always wise to strive for 100% SBR through 3 sub monster awakenings (as he already has one).
You never want to fill your sub pool with only offensive orb changers because you cannot use all of them at the same time because there would be too many red orbs and you would be unable to generate TPAs or 6+ combos. Therefore, you need to find a balance that can be offensive and defensive. It is worth noting that Shiva's active enhances heart orbs, and this can be used to significantly increase your healing for that turn.
Single, fast orb changers: These subs provide rapid access to fire orbs and should be ready on turn 1 in case of a bad starting board. You should liberally use their actives as they will be recharged quickly and I like to bring one on my team.
Offensive double orb changers: These orb changers provide board condensing as they remove 2 colors and either convert them into more red or red plus another element. They tend to be slightly longer cooldown and work best on floors where you need to deal large amounts of burst damage.
Full board changers: Full board changers provide a safety panic button when the board is unfavorable for your other orb changers or it is flooded with jammer and poison orbs. I always like to bring one on my team as the safety net they provide is invaluable.
Bind Clearing: When deciding if you should bring a bind clearing sub, you must determine how dangerous the binds are. If the bind is preemptive and impossible to stall through, then of course you must bring bind removal. However, if the bind will only occur at certain health thresholds or specific turns, it may be best try and burst through the floor instead. Generally speaking, bind removal subs do not bring damage to the team and can feel like “dead-weight” if the binds can be avoided. Lastly, if your team has high recovery and the binding floor is not too dangerous, it may be advantageous to stall it out. In addition, all the following subs are bind immune and can be used to bait out specific binds to provide a free turn.
Shielding and damage mitigation: These subs provide you with the ability to reduce your damage taken and the shield carries over to the next floor provided you sweep your current boss and the subsequent floor has no preemptive ability. In addition, you can use these shields to reduce damage taken from large preemptive strikes. Lastly, it is far better to reduce damage taken compared to heart generation as shields can allow you to survive hits you could generally not live through.
Delays: Even with the advent of more bosses having status void shields, delays are still valuable as you can use them to safely bypass different floors while conserving other actives or restalling for skills. In addition, it can be a way to avoid perseverance mechanics as you can bring the boss down to 1 HP and kill on the subsequent turn without being punished by their special execution abilities.
Gravity: Gravities are starting to come back into style as they can be used to push a boss into specific health percentages and is most useful to either knock them into a favorable color or to bypass perseverance.
Shiva has a fast playstyle as you can burn through a dungeon with multiple orb changers and deliver large amounts of damage through TPAs and combos alone. However, when your team reaches max level and has a modest number of plus eggs, your recovery becomes sizeable, and you are able to stall on tough boss floors as needed. You only need 1-2 high-recovery subs to bring your team to at least 3,500+ base recovery (the amount of healing made when matching only 3 heart orbs). The main risk of stalling with Shiva is accidental red orb matches that can deal large amounts of damage and push the boss into an unfavorable health percentage. To help lower the risk, try to never match a TPA when attempting to stall as a 3-red orb match will not deal very much damage.
When planning out a board with a large number of red orbs, you need to try count in multiples of 4 (4, 8, 12) and plan your matches accordingly. You should always strive to match 6+ combos as virtually every board will at worst have 6 combos available. The ample time extend awakenings may take some practice getting used to as between the 2 leaders you by default have 6 seconds to move orbs. Take your time in planning and executing your matches as you will most likely be able to squeeze in an extra combo with the added time.
Info is collected and shared for information distribution only.
This guy never really got much traction in NA, even when Awoken Shiva was first released. Of course, he was played a lot more than now.
For beginners, he offered an excellent way to learn about the game. Forcing people to learn how to combo beyond simple Bejeweled while retaining an incredibly high RCV multiplier to keep them safe.
For the intermediate players, he suggested consistency If you could hit 6-combo every turn, you had little problem blowing every descend out of the water for the longest time. In Co-op he was even stronger, using multiplayer HP to offset his one true weakness. There is little doubt that Awoken Shiva did Arena 1 with little problem.
Now, I’d like to bring him back into the light. Just a little. With so many cards getting their Reincarnated forms and the introduction to the Enhanced Combo (7combo) Awakening Skill, I think Shiva has a place as a lead again. Maybe he’s not cut out to do Arena 3 or Colosseum with 100% clear rate but I do not doubt with the right subs and inherits, he is fully capable.
Pros:
Combo-based leader skill that focuses on only one colour
Orb troll is very low due to no real restrictions (can even match jammer and poison orbs)
Any red card can be a sub
Balances out fire team’s low recovery with a 4x recovery boost
Fire teams naturally have high base attack
Active skills are not required to trigger maximum damage multiplier
Easy to play and can be used for mindless speed farming
Fire/Dark typing does not affect leader skill activation
Has one skill bind resist awakening and thus easier to achieve 100% immunity
Awakening materials are easier to obtain as only one descend boss and an evolved Phoenix who can even drop from the pal machine
Fire teams feel powerful (the sound and animations)
Cons:
Vulnerable to binds. This is becoming a more relevant issue with unbindable leaders becoming more common and dungeons having more preemptive binds
Weak against blue bosses
Ideal team building is quite REM heavy as there are virtually no farmable red monsters with TPA
Damage multiplier is “low” compared to the top-tier leads available
Shiva is a fantastic lead and is capable of clearing nearly every descend. The playstyle is less stressful to play compared to rainbow teams as you only need to focus on a single color. When deciding on a sub roster to bring into a descend, you should try to bring a mixture of offensive and utility-based actives. In addition, it is always wise to strive for 100% SBR through 3 sub monster awakenings (as he already has one).
You never want to fill your sub pool with only offensive orb changers because you cannot use all of them at the same time because there would be too many red orbs and you would be unable to generate TPAs or 6+ combos. Therefore, you need to find a balance that can be offensive and defensive. It is worth noting that Shiva's active enhances heart orbs, and this can be used to significantly increase your healing for that turn.
Single, fast orb changers: These subs provide rapid access to fire orbs and should be ready on turn 1 in case of a bad starting board. You should liberally use their actives as they will be recharged quickly and I like to bring one on my team.
Offensive double orb changers: These orb changers provide board condensing as they remove 2 colors and either convert them into more red or red plus another element. They tend to be slightly longer cooldown and work best on floors where you need to deal large amounts of burst damage.
Full board changers: Full board changers provide a safety panic button when the board is unfavorable for your other orb changers or it is flooded with jammer and poison orbs. I always like to bring one on my team as the safety net they provide is invaluable.
Bind Clearing: When deciding if you should bring a bind clearing sub, you must determine how dangerous the binds are. If the bind is preemptive and impossible to stall through, then of course you must bring bind removal. However, if the bind will only occur at certain health thresholds or specific turns, it may be best try and burst through the floor instead. Generally speaking, bind removal subs do not bring damage to the team and can feel like “dead-weight” if the binds can be avoided. Lastly, if your team has high recovery and the binding floor is not too dangerous, it may be advantageous to stall it out. In addition, all the following subs are bind immune and can be used to bait out specific binds to provide a free turn.
Shielding and damage mitigation: These subs provide you with the ability to reduce your damage taken and the shield carries over to the next floor provided you sweep your current boss and the subsequent floor has no preemptive ability. In addition, you can use these shields to reduce damage taken from large preemptive strikes. Lastly, it is far better to reduce damage taken compared to heart generation as shields can allow you to survive hits you could generally not live through.
Delays: Even with the advent of more bosses having status void shields, delays are still valuable as you can use them to safely bypass different floors while conserving other actives or restalling for skills. In addition, it can be a way to avoid perseverance mechanics as you can bring the boss down to 1 HP and kill on the subsequent turn without being punished by their special execution abilities.
Gravity: Gravities are starting to come back into style as they can be used to push a boss into specific health percentages and is most useful to either knock them into a favorable color or to bypass perseverance.
Shiva has a fast playstyle as you can burn through a dungeon with multiple orb changers and deliver large amounts of damage through TPAs and combos alone. However, when your team reaches max level and has a modest number of plus eggs, your recovery becomes sizeable, and you are able to stall on tough boss floors as needed. You only need 1-2 high-recovery subs to bring your team to at least 3,500+ base recovery (the amount of healing made when matching only 3 heart orbs). The main risk of stalling with Shiva is accidental red orb matches that can deal large amounts of damage and push the boss into an unfavorable health percentage. To help lower the risk, try to never match a TPA when attempting to stall as a 3-red orb match will not deal very much damage.
When planning out a board with a large number of red orbs, you need to try count in multiples of 4 (4, 8, 12) and plan your matches accordingly. You should always strive to match 6+ combos as virtually every board will at worst have 6 combos available. The ample time extend awakenings may take some practice getting used to as between the 2 leaders you by default have 6 seconds to move orbs. Take your time in planning and executing your matches as you will most likely be able to squeeze in an extra combo with the added time.
Info is collected and shared for information distribution only.
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