Leader Analysis: Noctis

The Chosen King, Noctis

One of my favorite cards to come out recently is Noctis. Noctis has the conditional leader skill where you cannot match less than 4 orbs, but he sports a strong base stat multiplier and a good attack multiplier. The 4 match playstyle opens up new ways to setup and cascade, and I enjoy it greatly.

SUBPOOL: While dark has a good amount of strong TPA subs, finding good utility means you would have to inherit it over your TPA subs or take a non-TPA sub to fill that utility slot. Otherwise, Noctis still does great damage and can carry damage if you do not have primo dark TPA subs.

POTENTIAL: Noctis damage is usually limited to the amount of dark TPAs you can fit onto the board with enough combos to still hit the maximum multiplier. Noctis also struggles on low damage resolves, and needs to have separate match strategies to overcome them.

EFFICIENCY: As long as there is one dark combo on the board, Noctis can deal some real damage. An average Noctis board will only have 4-5 combos, but that is strong enough if you have good subs. Very rarely do you get only 3 combos, but Noctis has strong stability to board clear and tank hits. Efficiently clearing bad orbs is also a minor issue, but you could take a skill to clear it for you.

STABILITY: Noctis is the closest to Kinnikuman that NA will get, and not having that 4x to stats really makes Noctis inferior to Kinnikuman. Still, 2.25x to stats is on par to Krishna for tankiness, and slightly weaker than 35% cross leads. Bindability can be solved by running the leader immune badge, but lack of strong utility subs makes Noctis reliant on inherits to cover his weaknesses.