Summoners War R5 Advanced DPS Guide

Summoners War R5 Advanced DPS Guide by KAZUTO111

My name is KAZUTO111, and I’m back again with an updated guide for R5. If you have not read my previous guide, I’d recommend reading it here (Summoners War R5 Increasing DPS Guide) as I will not be reiterating most of the points made there.

After being asked many questions during Free Rune Removal about Raids, I decided to write another guide to help people increase their DPS. Hopefully this will give you some ideas to help prepare for next month’s Free Rune Removal. :)

So, another three months of testing have gone into Raids, and we have come to a few more conclusions about how to maximize your DPS in R5. Before we begin though, I’d like to say thank you to my entire guild for Raiding with me every day and helping me test, and especially my main Raid partner, Verity, for helping with this guide and video and, of course, being in all my Raids.

What has changed since the last guide? We’ve stabilized our teams quite a bit, to the point where we can pretty consistently Raid with anyone in under 3 minute times with 90%+ success rate, no matter how much the third contributes. Additionally, we’ve been working more on yolo triple damage dealer teams that we’ve been using to achieve sub 2 minute runs without even using branding.

Before beginning, I encourage you to watch this YouTube video that Verity made showcasing our Raid runs. The first run is with !G_Baz and shows off our safe runs, while the other three are with Corrosiv3 and they show our yolo teams, along with a time of 1:25 which to my knowledge is the fastest recorded time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf_4YHDHcvU (apologies for choppy quality!)

In this guide, I’m going to go into further detail about how to set your Raid group up successfully, the different damage dealers you can choose, the differences between four man front lines and two man frontlines, and finally how to move onto triple damage dealer teams successfully.

How to set up your Raid group

So, you decided on 6 monsters to use for Raids. Your team is set, and you decide to go into a group. But for some reason, your group can never land Defense debuff after the third jump, your guys stall out, and lose. You try again, and the same thing happens.

It pays to have flexibility with your teams. Many people think that Dias is strictly superior to Darion, but this is not true; having both runed and ready to go will pay off a lot as you start to Raid with more people. As a general rule, I look for the following as a minimum in a Raid group, but of course you can never have too many debuffs.

2 S1 Def breakers (Darion, Bella) 1 S1 Heal block (Dias, Fedora, Light Anubis) 3 Colleen 1 other S1 Attack breaker (Ardella, Light Salamander) 3 S1 Slow (Hwa, Rigel, Copper)

Although you can succeed without these, it’s what I recommend to ensure successful runs. S1 debuffers should be on as many Revenge sets as possible and preferably front line.

The other thing to be aware of are the leader skills you have available. I find that using Resistance and Crit Rate leader skills is mandatory (of course, you don’t have to use Crit Rate, but it helps a lot with runing your monsters, and most people expect it) which makes Hwa and Dias even stronger. Praha is the other good Resistance leader, and even Tesarion can work on a Vampire DPS build (more on that later).

But what about your third leader skill? There are several options.

Defense lead

Fire Panda

Fedora

Mei Hou Wang

HP lead

Xhing Zhe

Sehkmet

Speed lead

Jamire

Seara

Attack lead

Ran

Which leader skill depends on your runes on monsters. I’d recommend having at least one usable leader skill other than Resistance and Crit Rate available just in case it’s needed. Defense lead is the safest one and the standard option, with Fire Panda being fusable and Mei Hou Wang one of the strongest DPS units. HP lead is also fairly common, and Xhing Zhe is a pretty good DPS unit as well. I don’t like speed lead as much, as I don’t think either Seara or Jamire contribute as much to your team as other units, nor do I think speed lead is as useful for advanced teams since your healers are already very fast.

Finally there is attack lead, which is the one we use usually. Although it requires better runes (either faster kills or tankier front line), using attack lead speeds up runs more than any other leader skill, helps Vampire damage dealers out, and comes in the form of Ran, one of the better damage dealers for Raids who also just had an HoH. It might not work with everyone, but I’ve found that using attack lead, Verity and I can Raid with just about anyone successfully.

So those are the requirements for a successful Raid group. After that, the only thing left is to play around with how much damage you can do and still live.

Damage Dealers

There are a lot of different damage dealers you can use, and they all have pros and cons. I will briefly go over the ones that are either used a lot, or that are best, and my opinion on them.

Consistent Damage Dealers

Consistent damage dealers don’t have a big third skill nuke, and rely on higher damage with the first skill, or low cooldown second skills. Consistent damage dealers are better for drawn out runs (2:30+ times).

Hwa: The best damage dealer in the game for Raids. If you have her, she should be on your team. She brings so much safety and reliability to your team, along with S1 slow and good damage.

Ardella: Ardella is one of the best damage dealers in the game for Raids: S1 attack break, very high S1 damage, built in +25% Crit Rate passive… the only thing that holds Ardella back is her very poor base stats, specifically in HP and Defense. This means that she has a pretty high rune requirement, even on Vampire.

Mei Hou Wang: Good damage, easy to front line, and has a nice passive. The leader skill is also nice and lets you Raid with anyone just about anyone since Def lead is more universal than any other leader skill.

Lagmaron/Taor: Weak S1 but strong S2 with a low CD, these do pretty average damage compared to the number of turns they take. Good base stats make them easier to rune, but with all the turns they take and the damage on S1, I would rather use another damage dealer.

Theomars: Not terrible, however lacks anything special other than 24% CR lead. However, Theo is generally runed Violent, which is not ideal for Raids. Although a very well runed Theo works well, he isn’t nearly as efficient as other damage dealers.

Perna: Contrary to popular belief, Perna is not an amazing damage dealer. Relatively low damage on S1 means he isn’t going to be doing the highest damage, and low base Defense means he’ll be harder to use in the front line. Additionally, Perna is also usually runed Violent, which makes his rune set not ideal for Raids. His one saving grace is that his passive has a heal, which makes transitioning to riskier teams easier with Perna since he is also a healer.

Burst Damage Dealers

Burst damage dealers do a lot of damage with their third skill, but lower damage with first skill usually. These are more suited for speed runs (sub 2 minutes), where you’re trying to jam as much damage in the least amount of time as possible.

Ran: Ran is another strong damage dealer, and carries with her the rare attack lead, which is a potential third leader skill for your group. Skill 3 can do a lot of damage and reduces attack bar significantly, which helps complement Hwa’s attack bar reduction.

Xiao Lin/Liu Mei/Fei: The Kung Fu Girls are VERY good now for R5 with the recent buffs. S1 Def break is crucial, and the third skill nukes do a lot of damage as well. All three of these are very effective, and the other two are pretty good too, although Water/Light/Dark are best.

Bethony: Bethony might be the best damage dealer for R5. Ignore Defense RNG with the same first skill as Ardella give her by far the highest potential damage of anything, as well as having good debuffs. Definitely use her if you have her.

Brandia: Brandia has become very good in Raids after her recent buff as well. Instead of removing debuffs, which always ruined her before, she now simply does a massive nuke. With tanky Vampire runes on HP/CD/ATK she easily hits for 50k with her third skill. If built for pure DPS, she could do 100k+. With good stats and S1 Def break and S2 attack debuff, Brandia is one of the best burst DPS monsters.

Argen: Argen is another strong DPS monster, with a strong nuke in S3 and attack debuff and slow in S2. I have not used or seen Argen used enough to pass judgement, but he is a solid monster and worth trying out if you want to experiment.

Stella: Stella is a relatively common unit. She has Def break in S1 (although unreliable) and has Branding as well which is pretty good. However, she has fairly low damage compared to other damage dealers like Kung Fu Girls, scales on speed which means you’d want to build her fast (which isn’t ideal because she takes more turns) and the Branding is too inconsistent to be worth it.

Seara: Seara is a monster that received a lot of hype early on in Raids because of how much she could carry a group’s DPS all by herself. She can still do that. In a slower raid group, Seara is possibly the best damage dealer, because the bombs will stick longer on the boss and they will have a chance to blow up. However, once you get faster teams, her bombs start to be cleansed more and more, and she does less and less damage. Combined with the lessening usefulness of speed lead and crit lead becoming more common, Seara finds herself relegated to being a poor DPS unit for advanced R5 teams.

Branding

Since there have been a lot of questions about this, I decided to write a short segment on my opinion on Branding and why I don’t mention it anywhere else in this guide.

Branding is GOOD, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s extra damage. If you have a monster with Branding, it isn’t a bad idea to use it, and Cadiz is probably one of the best monsters for Raids in the game because he’s the only consistent Branding.

But that’s the thing. Cadiz is the ONLY consistent Branding monster. That means that the other Branding monsters are not consistent with their Branding because it’s on a skill with a cooldown. This means that a lot of the time they won’t even be able to apply Branding, especially when you get faster and faster runs.

For this reason, and from my observations, Branding monsters other than Cadiz are not really worth it when you could use something that does more damage by itself. That being said, monsters like Light Anubis, Stella, Hellea, etc. are viable, however I do not think they are ideal because of the inconsistent nature of their Brands leading to the boss cleansing the debuff off as soon as he gets it.

Frontline: How many and why?

This is a question I got asked a lot when I first started doing it: “Why do you do four monsters in front?…It isn’t exactly easy to make four monsters able to frontline. You need 1500 Defense and 25k HP on everything and that’s simply not feasible!”

The answer, put simply, is that you can ignore those front line stats by using 4 monsters in front. The requirements for frontline lessen significantly, and even the HP/Def needed for backline are lower as well. I have no proof for this other than my own observations as to the survival of my team – I move my Ardella and Mihyang backline, and all of a sudden my Hwa and Ran start dying noticeably more often.

As an example, I will list the HP and Defense of my front line monsters here. Note that all my buildings are maxed.

Frontline

• Darion: 38113 HP, 991 Defense (3x Revenge, HP/CR/HP)
• Lisa: 25702 HP, 1328 Defense (Violent/Guard, SPD/Def/Res)
• Colleen: 32463 HP, 1164 Defense (Guard/Guard/Rev, SPD/HP/HP)
• Ardella: 20174 HP, 956 Defense (Vampire/Blade, ATK/CD/ATK)

Optional front (switchable depending on team)

• Dias: 22052 HP, 1239 def, 155 speed (Vamp/Revenge, ATK/CR/ATK)
• Laggy: 22750 HP, 874 def, 220 speed (Vamp/blade, SPD/CD/ATK)

These are just my most common front line. I also have a Dias on Vampire ATK CR ATK and a Vamp Lagmaron on SPD CD ATK that I use sometimes to front line as well.

So, in short, the reason you want to use 4 man front is to lower the tanky stats necessary to survive in R5 for everything except the two monsters you’re moving to the front line. If you can manage a 4 man front, I’ve noticed that your team will get a lot more consistent no matter how many damage dealers you use.

Yolo Teams (3 damage dealers)

In my previous guide, I said that a standard Raid team is composed of 2 healers, 1 cleanser, 0-2 utility, and 1-3 damage dealers. For most of this guide I’ve been assuming you are using 2 damage dealers and 1 utility monster such as Darion or Dias, which is the standard team. However, I am now going to talk about how you can move towards cutting out either a healer or utility monster for another damage dealer.

First of all, why and why not. The reason you’d want to do this is to get faster times of course, which is why you’re reading this guide in the first place. The reason why not is because you need very good runes (especially if you’re only using one healer) and a yolo team like this does not Raid effectively with everyone. You need a specific party where everyone does good damage and has the right debuffs and leader skills to make everything work. However, once you do get this dream party together, you’re looking at very consistent runs at 2:30 or less, and even approaching sub 2 minute times.

So, how do you get to the point where you can make teams like this?

First step: 4 man frontline. While possible, it is very difficult to use 3 damage dealers with just a 2 man front line, because of the stats necessary on those damage dealers.

Second step: Fast healers! My Colleen is +141 and my Mihyang is +131. My healers are fast so they can constantly heal up my team. Even when I only use Colleen, she is fast enough to provide support for my team as well.

Third step: Make sure your damage dealers have debuffs. The biggest problem people run into with these runs is that because they drop their utility monsters, they lack the necessary debuffs. For this reason, attackers with S1 heal block and Def break are invaluable for these speed runs.

Final step: Have a designated “Safe team” which is able to carry one (or two) heads in the middle in case someone wipes. This can drastically improve success rate, although extremely advanced team comps don’t need this because they kill fast enough that someone will be able to kill.

And that’s about it! Thanks for reading and hope this guide and video helped. Again, I’d like to thank my guild, and especially Corrosiv3 and Verity for helping out with the guide.