Is being part of the "Meta" worth it?

Introduction

What is "Meta"?
Meta is used when referred to the leaders, team compositions or subs that are most valuable in the game, mainly because of their ability to clear high-end content with relative ease. These are the ones to easily overcome new dungeons and maintain their viability even with power creep (explained later). They can still be relevant as leaders or subs for quite a long time, a clear example of this are Orochi and Indra, both if this two guys managed to stay as top tier subs. Orochi is relevant because of his delay, and even before his reincarnated evolution, he was still pretty powerful. He already had a 4 turn delay and 803 weighted stats, in the same manner, Indra is one of the strongest shields available on the game, with a 75% shield. They were part of the meta not as leaders, because they had low multipliers, but they were still key subs or inherits on teams such as Ra Dragon.

Advantages of being in the Meta
Being part of the meta has many advantages, some of the more notorious ones are that you should be able to clear most, if not all, of the game content. Also, seeking for co-op partners to tackle high-end content is easier, since meta teams are not only the ones that can easily clear new dungeons, but are also the ones people use the most. Being part of the meta means for example, that you can choose between entering solo, co-op or entering co-op and disconnecting (always ask your partner if it is okay before doing so) for that half stamina cost but have the time to clear for example, Arena throughout the day instead of doing it on one go. And because you have a high-tier team you can probably clear it with a pretty high success rate.
Having a meta team also means that new dungeons should not affect you too much, since you have the best of the best in terms of team composition. New mechanics should be "relatively" easy and many times people will complain about a new dungeon been "too difficult", but most of the time even janky teams can clear end game content with enough player skill and knowledge of the game.

Why is having a meta important to the game?
Having a meta is important because when a game has a meta, it is continuously changing and evolving. Lets take for example heart-cross leads, when Myr was first announced, she was an extremely powerful lead. The leader skill was incredible, for each leader it was: +2 seconds of orb movement and when matching heals on a cross formation, it will deal 7,7x damage and give you a 50% damage reduction. But when harder dungeons hit NA, she was still viable, just not as consistent or made it pretty hard to deal with some spawns. Dark Athena came to NA, many hyped her because of her ease of use and consistency, she could farm Arena 3 even without an ideal team. This caused the meta to shift away from heart cross shields to unconditional HP multipliers. Dark Athena when paired with herself gives you: 2.25x HP and 12.25x Damage multiplier, but when matching dark and water orbs you get a bonus 2x ATK and RCV, making it: 2.25x HP / 49x ATK / 4x RCV for God, Attacker and Devil types. Making her extremely tanky and could deal damage by stacking TPAs.

Summarizing, having a meta that is consistently changing is important to keep the game entertaining, making players chase for a better team to defeat more difficult dungeons. Introducing new mechanics, leader skills, or active skills can make the game less boring.When Puzzle and Dragons started for example, it was a match three orbs style of game, but then other mechanics became relevant, such as TPAs, rows, crosses and even button teams, the game becomes much more fun.

How meta can destroy a game...
We have talked about how meta helps the game develop and keeps challenging players, but it can be harmful to the game when not used correctly. In my opinion there are two main ways in which meta shifts can be harmful to the game, first when it is too slow, and on the other hand, when it comes along way too fast.

-When the meta shifts way too slowly:
When the meta doesn't change often enough, players will stick with only one play style, mainly because it is the only one which can clear high-end content. When new content isn't pushed out, players are forced to enter a loop in which they only use certain leads to clear most of the content, creating monotony. This can affect not only the quality of the gameplay, but also will cause certain percentage of the player base to leave the game. Imagine for a moment that Gungho would of wanted the game to just be a match-three type of game such as candy crush, most of the people playing it nowadays wouldn't be here. Because it wouldn't require you to develop not only your teams but your overall player skill and knowledge about the game.

-When the meta shifts way too fast:
When leaders become too powerful or dungeons become too hard for a player this becomes very frustrating. For this reason, a new dungeon that is coming out and is "hard" should come along with a new lead, team or new evos to clear it. When dungeons come out way too fast and players aren't able to clear it, they become upset and could stop playing, because the feeling of been stuck on certain dungeon and not being able to clear it even with the best team in the game at the moment isn't pleasant at all. On the other hand when leaders or subs that come way before they are supposed to, can cause new dungeons and mechanics way to easy, or even make them "cheesable". A clear example, in my opinion, of some cards that have broken the meta game are Fujin and the Gemstones, Fujin just nullifies all the damage absorption, making high end bosses such as Hera Dragon much easier, on the other hand, Gemstone Princesses are way too powerful of a damage boost for what we have at the moment.

Why players want to be part of it?
Most players want to be part of the "meta" because the ability to tackle high-end content means you are up-to-date with power creep (explained below). This means that as soon as a new dungeon arrives, they are able to clear it, making their way to the top of the food chain. Having top tier waifus and husbandos can open you better teams to come along, such as Haku, she wasn't used much before her reincarnated evolution, but as soon as she hit, she was the number one waifu in Puzzle and Dragons. Also been part of the meta makes you feel part of the community, by giving advice to newer players and plan strategies with more veteran players.

Some things to take in account before thinking a lead is on the "meta"
-Survivability: Been able to tank huge blows from your enemies and quickly heal from it are fundamental to any team that could be considered "consistent". This makes it so much easier to stall for your skills or inherits.
-Damage control: Been able to deal massive amounts of damage is a must for almost any team nowadays, but what differentiates a "glass cannon" (high damage output but low survivability and damage control) from a good leader with good damage output, is the ability to control exactly how much damage you want to deal. This mainly is important to deal with certain spawns that have damage absorption or nullification. People have found many ways to do this, for example scaling multipliers with combos, so minimizing the possibility of skyfall matches by orb management. Also the 7 combo awakening, using it to deal more or less damage when hitting or not 7 combos. Stacking TPAs and rows is also used and such are leaders that need an skill activation for the full multiplier.
-Dealing with different mechanics: Many teams can deal decent amounts of damage and survive large hits struggle to deal with other mechanics, such as combo shields, blinding moves, binds, poisons and bombs. A clear example of this was Myr, she was a heart-cross, row oriented leader. She was on the top for quite a time, but many people had to struggle with combo shields, not only because a cross makes it more difficult to make combos but rows count as 1 combos when you could have 2 combos. This caused many problems when facing certain dungeon spawns.
-Flexibility: Leaders such as Ra Dragon and Dark Athena are great leaders, this can clear the vast majority of the game content, but their sub pools are restricted, for example, you need Dark Kalis for Ra Dragon and Hakus for Dark Athena in order for them to be successful, obviously they can still work without them but it is ideal to have them on your team. On the other hand, leaders such as Meridionalis or Kushinadahime have more flexible sub pools, making team building more flexible, in consequence, players have more subs to choose from based on their boxes.
-Ease of use: Easier to use leaders are not only more appealing to new players but more consistent for the majority of the players. Taking as an example Anubis, the real doge is a high risk-high reward-high skill play style kind of leader. He requires 8 or more combos on his reincarnated evolution to make any damage, excluding the damage boost he gains when using an skill. This 8 combos are extremely hard to get for new players and even for some more experienced ones. On the other hand Dark Athena for example requires you to just match water and dark, dealing less lethal amounts of damage but enough to swipe most floors.
-Efficiency: Using your team that can swipe out Arena 1 in 5 minutes with lucky spawns or your team that clears it 9/10 times is a tough question to ask yourself. This is why you are better off just having a team that can do both, having a high success rate and clearing the dungeon on a decent amount of time are essential to farm dungeons such as Arena 3, this is why for example, Dark Athena is used for, she is able to deal with most spawns easily and can survive most of the live threatening hits.

Power creep

Power creep is the consistent increase on difficulty of the game, pushing players to search for better teams. This is seen on Puzzle and Dragons as when Gungho announces a new high-end dungeon or a new lead that can clear most of the game content. Power creep introduces new mechanics to the game, and such, players need to figure out how to deal with them, not only make their teams better but player skill and knowledge of the game.

Over-investing on a team/card
Over investing is when you put way too much effort on a card or team which doesn't really deserve it, and by deserve I refer to the value of it. Doing an over-investment on a card that will not exponentially improve your ability to clear new dungeons or make your team more consistent isn't really helping you much. Let's say, you are better off investing on a mid-tier lead for which you have the ideal team instead of a high-tier leader for which you don't have any subs for. So you need to be critical and use your latents, plus eggs, inherits, tamadras and other good stuff on the cards that will be more beneficial to you.

A clear example of over investing on a team/card: When Xiang Mei first came out, she was incredibly powerful, the team required healers and it gave an unconditional 2.25x HP and a maximum of 81x as damage multiplier. Making her extremely powerful compared to the meta at the moment. She was able to clear Arena with more consistency that most other teams, but as soon as other leads and new evos came, she quickly felt out of the meta. Her play style was soon boring and slow although she was still powerful. But then power creep came, and now she is just a card with an incredible artwork. What makes this example specially sad was that she costed 300 000 MP and not only that, but the ideal team for her required multiple copies of herself, making some purchase her even 3 times, for a total of 900 000 MP. This was a great investment, and she didn't stood her ground on the meta for more than a couple of months.

Over-hyping
Every now and then we can see a new lead or mechanic that is almost game breaking, this creates a lot of hype, specially on NA, since we get those new monsters a while after JP gets them. This can cause over hyping, when players want to try out something new but Gungho takes their time to push it out to the NA server, this causes people to make useless investments. Lets say, when a new leader arrives over to NA and has the potential to be the new meta, players start watching Japanese Youtubers or streamers use them, maybe it has a new play style, mechanics or is insanely powerful, whatever is the case, many players on NA will purchase (in case of MP monsters) or whale (putting a decent amount of money) for them. This isn't the most intelligent decision, since you may not have the subs or inherits require to clear the dungeons you expected too. This ends up with a valuable monster collecting dust on your box.

An actual thing NA is better at than JP?

NA players usually complain about the differences there are between the Japanese and north american versions of the game, such as that JP has exclusive collaborations and that new evos for monsters take too long to arrive to NA, also the Japanese community seems to be heard out more than the NA one.
But one thing that in my opinion is an advantage for NA over JP is that we get to know new leads, evos, buffs, dungeons and many other stuff such as awakenings and mechanics before it arrives to NA. This lets us get ready for them, not only in the way that we can acquire the evo materials before hand, but also plan out our teams, save up plus eggs and Tamadras. Overall, NA players have a longer time to think about upcoming content and decide if it is worth it to invest in it or not. This is why we, NA players should be much more prepared than Japanese players in the way we approach new content, based on the Japanese players experience we can discard or invest on a card or team.

Tips

Why you shouldn't care about it
They are many reasons why you shouldn't care about been part of the meta. First because sooner or later, all leads will fall down from the meta. And remember, not been in the meta doesn't mean a lead or team isn't viable. Many leads can clear end game content, just not as fast or consistent as meta teams. Also, new dungeons, mechanics, monsters and etc may come out. But that doesn't make other leads or teams less powerful, just that others are more powerful, they can still clear the content they could before the new monsters came out. Take for example Myr, even thought she isn't on the meta nowadays, she can still clear Arena 1, 2 and even 3 with the correct team setup. It might not be the best option, but it is still doable.

Consistency vs Speed or even better, Efficiency
Consistency: High clear rate percentage.
Speed: Low time invested to clear the dungeon.
Efficiency: Good proportion between those two.
You should always look up to be efficient, you are better of clearing Arena with a team that take you 10 minutes 7/10 times, than using a team that could do it on 5 minutes but is super inconsistent or a team that can clear it 9/10 times, but takes 30 minutes. You should always search for the most effective way to approach a dungeon, check the Puzzle and Dragons database or maybe Padguide, look up the dungeon and prepare your team with the appropriate subs and inherits to counter each spawns. It will definitely make your life easier.

Finding your own way of playing
The last tip I have for you is that you enjoy the game, don't let the meta or anyone tell you what lead to use. Just run whatever you feel like, find what you like to play, maybe it is high combo based teams like Anubis, or heart cross leads such as Kaede, Maybe rows or TPAs based teams, or even run Plessie-bean on Arena, summarizing, just do what you want to do, run what you want, whenever your want and over all those things, enjoy the game!

Conclusion

Been part of the meta itself isn't that important as long as you enjoy the game. But it is important to remember it is helpful, so players are kept pushing their limits, so there is no monotony regarding teams or dungeons. So the game can progress and develop itself. But on the other hand, having it too slow or to quick can ruin the game, at the end of the day meta is there to change, and we are the ones to decide if we keep up with it or not.

~David 07 (340,095,359)