I've read all the post regarding 4x Cassandra on-spawn stacks and most of it made my brain hurt, I'm legit getting brain aneurysm from all the uninformed post and theorycrafting/assumptions. I almost thought the entire thread was a troll because I completely fail to see how it even remotely breaks the game.
Firstly, let's get this out of the way.
What does Cassandra's on-spawn do? It removes 20% of your overall ATK and stacks additively for each Cassandra you run, for a maximum of 80% ATK.
Secondly,
against what team archetype does it affect the most? Basically Rangers and Priest triggers, the remaining archetype does not utilize ATK early in the game (for e.g. Mystic + Tank) so this is a non-issue.
Thirdly, you get 80% ATK debuff,
but what do you give up? Tankiness of tank+mystic teams, an immediate offensive capability of a ranger/priest team, you run four freaking shadows that are melee and does literally nothing for the first three turns and if they don't get to hit you, plus they're relatively paper af when the debuff runs out.
Lastly, discounting ladder and bundles,
you're spending basically 70,000 gems on top of those to get FOUR Cassandra for such gimmick advantage and disadvantage exchange, it is not cost-efficient for what you spend, and it definitely isn't broken at all, if I spent the 70,000 gems on a proper tank + mystic teams instead, you'd be sure I'll have a 100% win rate controlling it, and with the reaction you guys have towards 4x Cassandra, you'd be shitting bricks at the whale tank + mystic teams.
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In any case, now that we have gotten the basic information surrounding this whole uncalled fiasco out, let's talk about how to deal with 4x Cassandra team.
Due to boredom, I am kind enough to put up a list of potential counters with proof and a little bit of mathematics in it, enjoy!
- Tank teams- Because they give zero shit about ATK for the first three turns so it is business as usual, it does not matter if you have 20% ATK debuff or 2147483647% ATK debuff, the debuff stacks isn't sufficient enough for them to centre their playstyle around this advantage. If anything, they gained an advantage because they're fighting four shadows instead of your usual line-up with archers putting immediate pressure or a tank + mystic teams with far more threatening synergistic effect between their skills.
- Archer teams with Resilience Rune- You're giving up 10% of your base ATK in exchange for 20% increase in overall ATK, that is definitely a worthy trade. When Cassandra becomes the norm in Arena like Zoey, obviously running Archer + Resilience team would be more beneficial than running say, double strike or just 20% Base ATK runes. It is also important to note that against 4x Cassandra, you'd have 100% effective ATK increase against them. A 16k Archer would lose 12.8k attack and have 3.2k attack left, with Resilience, you'd have 6.4k attack now, with critical, you'd do 9.6k damage, given sufficient trigger, you'd still be able to take out Cassandra walking into the middle tile one by one even if they are defensive-based because they are shadows with limited defensive capabilities and potentials.
This is also assuming you only have 16k, obviously a spender whale of a much lower calibre relative to a spender capable of procuring four Cassandras in a short time is able to attain a bunch of 16k archers trivially given sufficient time and investment. With power creep factor, an 18k or 20k archer team is not far from your dream within the next couple patches.
It is also important to note that you have Cybella Gunslinger being able to sleep a Cassandra with skill ready at turn 4 (3 if you're going second), so use that to your advantage.
- Priest teams with Double Resilience- Remember the above post? This is basically just archer teams but with 200% effective damage increase, from retaining 20% ATK -> 60% ATK. Self-explanatory.
- Elves-
Transforming a Rhea Glad and following up with a Cassandra Magebane basically means you rape them trivially.
Transforming a Taegan MW boosts your tempo by delaying one of them and clearing yourself of debuffs, you're ready to be triggered as well.
Tess GR is able to trigger all of them after they're transformed.
Altima HD/Pala absorbs and protects your team/returns the damage to them.
Rhea Dragoon jumps in and it's business as usual, put a Miracle rune and she will just counter-rape them, Death Rouletting her does fuck all because she is able to just shield everyone and trigger the other elves to attack when she drops to 1 HP.
Raegar Magebane does the same stuff as Taegan MW.
Emilia Inquisitor transforming and poking any of them will just cause the shadows to kill themselves.
Assuming that the players with rangers and healer triggers adapt to the threat of Cassandra, isn't that indirectly nerfing them both? Cassandra lineups are the most specific of all specific lineups and I don't think the tradeoff is worth it, to begin with. If a healer completely dumps his red attack set, he'll lose ~1.5k attack and the +20% bonus while a ranger trading losing his double strike rune trades the potential for even more triggers and loses a lot of its firepower and potential to kill every enemy lineup. A ranger with 15k attack may drop down to ~11k ATK just so it could deal with a Cassandra. 11k crits would tickle guardians and would now allow mystics to take a crit or two before dying. I think the payoff just to be ready for a Cassandra lineup is too much and I'd rather avoid a 4 Cassandra team than make my squad fare better against her and do worse versus every other relevant lineup.
The point of Cassandra is to diversify the team lineups in the top Arena from not just attrition-based tank team vs Archer/Priest teams, with the current offensive Insignia rampant, Archers are basically destroying almost every single archetype while going first. Cassandra exists to provide an alternative to deal with such heavy firepower.
Assuming in the same vein, isn't insignias indirectly buffing archer teams greatly and nerfing tank teams greatly? I don't see why Cassandra being introduced deserved such questioning. When Merlin was introduced, I don't see people questioning that tank teams got nerfed indirectly. The nature of Arena is a rock-paper-scissors game, and you will just have to do well to adapt to the change, either way when Cassandra becomes the norm in Arena like how Zoey is now, you'd just have to deal with it and use Resilience runes to make up for the effective attack returns.
If a Healer switches to Resilience rune, you don't lose 20% base ATK, you lose 10% base ATK, in exchange for 20% overall ATK increase.
Double Strike triggered attack does not enable new trigger like a probability tree as well.
A ranger with 15k ATK will not drop down to 11k ATK by switching the runes like I've mentioned above, you lose 10% base ATK and probably up to 1k ATK, which puts you at around 13k.
Before Insignias were introduced, Tank team was a counter to Archer team, Archer team was a counter to fellow archer/priest teams- normalizing at around 50% win rate depending on the coin flip.
Are you implying that archers should be able to destroy everything in the first turn and basically play a coin toss in Arena if every team they met were Archer teams? The notion Archers should be way more capable than being suppressed from your implication is more destructive to the integrity of Arena than 4x Cassandra. Cassandra is definitely a healthy addition to the Arena.