Leader Analysis: Roots

Roots has taken a large fall off the meta since the rise of heart cross. The strength of Roots is his ability to control damage while having relevant killers to help burst down more difficult floors. With the addition of Halloween Gran, Roots had a pair up partner with an HP multiplier, but it wasn't strong enough to take Roots back into the meta.

SUBPOOL: Being restricted to dragons, it leaves Roots' subpool to GFEs or farmable rogues/dungeons to supplement him with the proper utility. A proper team requires Ragnarok Dragon, which while fully "farmable", may not be an easy access option to some looking to run Roots.

POTENTIAL: Roots can deal some pretty strong damage while his killers are active, but otherwise Roots requires needs good combo and prong matches to take down those that aren't affected by his or his team's killers.

EFFICIENCY: As long as there are 4 or more colors to match, you can activate Roots. Guaranteed, you would decide if you wanted to use a board change if you needed it but otherwise you can stall out a turn and clear orbs, or do whatever kind of matching you need to properly sweep. You would need to know approximate damage to make sure you will do enough with your multiplier, but if killers are active it becomes easier. Roots himself being a board change that lets you fully activate is pretty nice.

STABILITY: Roots is pretty frail due to no hp multiplier and requires a lot of utility to make the team truly shine. Most times you should run utility subs to complement the team, but if you have a wide selection of subs to choose from this shouldn't be a problem, and inherits can be used to fix some of these problems.

Leader Analysis: Krishna

Starting a new PAD related blog to talk about the meta and a leader's placement in the meta, as well as analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a leader. I will largely be using Setsu's aggregate tier list (https://setsupad.wordpress.com/) as a basis for which leaders to analyze, but I will do them on newly announced or upcoming cards as well for first thoughts and such.

The first leader I want to analyze is what I believe to be the gatekeeper or standard of what a leader should be to be regarded as meta: Krishna. Upon Ult Krishna's release, many parallels were made to compare Krishna to Xiang Mei, as they are both fire row leads. It was pretty quickly determined that Krishna would be stronger than Xiang Mei due to his non-restrictive subpool, inclusion of guaranteed OE+, and no heart match requirement.

SUBPOOL: Krishna's leader skill only requires that you use fire cards, which means the sub pool can be literally anything fire. Krishna can be run with either TPAs or rows, but most teams will want to move towards rows to round out damage. 

POTENTIAL: Krishna's potential is limited by how many relevant row subs you can bring to the team, while maintaining a balance between utility and power subs. Consistency will always depend on your orb match skills, but Krishna can do fairly well for higher tiered content. 

EFFICIENCY: Krishna's orb efficiency is not the greatest, due to needing at least 9 fire orbs to fully activate, though 3 separate orb matches do decently. If running a TPA Krishna, 8 orbs may be sufficient to carry damage but as mentioned above, most teams will move towards being row oriented. A row + 3 match will work for most things, however, but often needs to have an active to guarantee that, or use board manipulation and stall to get those orbs, which may or may not be an option. 

STABILITY: A static multiplier to HP and RCV make Krishna extremely stable, with a slight weakness to gravities and poison, and also to being bound by god, devil or fire binds which exist pretty frequently in arena. Having a variable multiplier also helps in dealing with good control, and using a leader-immune badge or having unbindable bind clear can keep Krishna healthy in most cases.