Preparing for Endgame: Arena

Many can consider Arena to be the endgame of PAD. After enough time, Arena has changed to become the standard of leader strength, worthy endgame farming content, and dank lead clears. Arena is largely a test of your skills as a whole, as well as an indicator of what strengths and weaknesses your team has. The more often you run Arena, the better you become aware of how strong your team can be, and what to look forward to when rolling for new cards or for considering inherits.

If you are looking for a leader, refer to an earlier article on how to choose your leader and what to build off of it here. Else, lets start.

First things first: you will want to be very consistent with your leader activation. You will want to consistently hit your strong multiplier when dealing with the later floors in arena, and not hitting your full multiplier means that some bosses can be left in a danger zone, and make the run very difficult to proceed. A lot of Arena can be OSOBOS, depending on your team, but consistency with dealing with your board can help a lot. 

Second, you want to prepare your team as best as you can in order as followed: max level, fully awoken, max skill level, +297, supporting inherits, and then latents. Arena can be cleared without latents and inherits, these newer mechanics just make team building easier and content more approachable.

Third, you want to read up on the dungeon itself to know what to expect. Like any dungeon planning, knowing what is next to crucial to whether you need to stall or put yourself in an acceptable position to move on. Floors may have multiple spawns, so you want to be prepared for any spawn and have the proper means to deal with them.

Fourth, you want to have three important utilities on the team: a shield(if you have no HP multiplier or heart cross), a full board change or way to deal with poison, and a bind clear to help out against certain spawns, which I will go over later. A delay is preferable, but not entirely necessary.

Fifth, you need to know how much damage your team does. Going into endless and testing it for yourself is the best way, for you will want to know exact combos and matches you need for under 200k and under 300k, as well as how high your damage is to make sure you can one shot floors or over burst defense. Knowing your damage is good for a couple of resolve floors as well, so you can safely hit under them without taking danger zone hits. 

Last, you will want to deal with Kali in some manner, whether it be shielding the first hit so the defense shield is down, or having a burst to push Kali past the 65% threshold. 

WHAT SKILLS/CARDS TO CONSIDER FOR ARENA

As mentioned above, you want to bring relevant utility to deal with the potential loss mechanics. You will want a bind clear to deal with Tamadras on floor 6, which can often bar a lot of teams due to high troll chance. After this floor binds are uncommon, but can often happen on floors where you do not one shot the floor.

If your team does not have an HP multiplier or effective health equivalent, you will want to invest in a shield for safety. Floor 19 features DQ Hera, which preempts for 38910 damage, which kills most teams naturally. Shielding the first hit of Kali is also an option, and a strong enough shield can help you survive in danger zone hits. Shielding preemptively for the next floor is kind of what you want to not die instantly.

And the counters

If inheriting the shield anything should work. Just math the amount of hp you need after shielding to know you are safe. 

And often an added luxury for teams, delay helps a lot to give you extra turns to stall or to bypass Kagutsuchi's resolve on floor 15 or Zaerog's absorb on floor 18. Quality delays are hard to find, so I recommend saving any cards with delay for inherits.

Cao cao is also an option for fire centric team, but these are generally the more common ones to use on a wider variety of teams.

Putting Kali to under 65% on the first turn is a must, unless you know you can tank the first hit. Aside from carrying a gravity on the team, an adequate burst usually helps a lot to getting Kali there, or even opening up a one shot option through the shield.

Big tips to remember, you want a board change in case of Beelzebub for floor 19 and your shield moving into floor 19 in case of DQ Hera. Aside from floor 19 needing a proper counter and Kali needing damage, the rest of Arena is your skills against the mechanics (except Sopdet and Parvati).

Knowing your team and its limits will affect your clear, and failing the first couple of times is normal. Running Arena with progression is often preferred, so it is better not to run Arena just to "try" it and prepare yourself instead. Refer to a guide for numbers and such, and good luck!