Contents
Pet Guide
- Meet Axel, the wetland-dwelling, bubble-controlling axolotl.
- Boasting improved damage dispersion and health recovery.
- Introduced in 2020, Axel maintains its status as the most powerful pet in 2024.
Axel’s strengths and Team Building Theory
- Axel’s prowess lies in enveloping the team in foam, distributing damage effectively for both offense and defense. This not only prevents a devastating blow from turning the tide of battle but also provides the team with a speed advantage in skill activation.
- Its strength is such that even if you attach your team pet to Axel without much consideration, you can still engage in battles to a significant extent.
- At its core, Axel is used to transfer damage from the vanguard to the backline. This shields the vanguard while allowing the backline to accelerate their gauges with manageable damage.
- Axel proves valuable against attacks targeting the rear guard directly, like those from K’arkh, by dispersing damage and preventing individual destruction.
- The amount of health remaining when Axel’s skill activates determines the distribution of damage, enabling successful protection of a dying ally while still triggering the skill. This is particularly effective in manual operations.
- Team composition based on damage distribution facilitates the protection of underdeveloped heroes. For instance, having Martha with high health on the team allows her to absorb more damage, making her effective against threats like Ishmael.
- Axel serves as a potent counter to Osh’s meteors, especially when manually triggered with precise timing to protect a dying hero, surpassing the effectiveness of automatic activation.
- When paired with a healer with full recovery, such as Martha, Axel can nullify damage and capitalize on the acceleration benefits. This enables the team to function as if it were actively drawing energy, even if the opponent lacks an energy dispenser.
- Damage dispersion can be effectively utilized to trigger skills that require damage to be taken. This is particularly advantageous for heroes like Lian, synergizing well with Axel combos and proving beneficial for heroes such as Yasmine and Isaac.
- Axel’s healing support skill is robust, and when synergized effectively with a healer, it can swiftly rebuild the team.
- The damage reduction provided by the Patron skill is exceptionally powerful, significantly enhancing the survivability of underdeveloped heroes. This potency is particularly pronounced when applied to front-line heroes like Amira and Albanor, forming a formidable combination with Aidan. While resembling Khorus‘ Barrier skill in function, Axel’s skill surpasses it in usability and effectiveness.
Disadvantages of Axel
- Only physical and magical damage can be dispersed, leaving him defenseless against pure damage attacks from heroes like Yasmine, Iris, Heidi, Maya, etc.
- Damage dispersal proves ineffective against a barrage of general attacks in a fistfight, making it less effective against teams with saturated firepower, such as Aurora + Magic Penetration Buff.
- The damage spread from the first skill caps at about 700,000 damage, immediately saturating when dealing with high firepower DPS. In scenarios with heroes like Amira + Nebula, this pattern becomes almost useless.
- Axel doesn’t reduce damage; it merely disperses it, making its effectiveness dependent on the total health of all five heroes. This issue often arises in battles against Ishmael. If team members are chosen based on chemistry alone, the rear guard receiving damage dispersion can be killed instantly in a barrage of attacks.
- Damage dispersion conflicts with frequency-based defense skills. Attempting to use heroes like Astrid and Lucas or Polaris as a set wastes these heroes’ defense skills and leads to easy defeats.
- If the opponent uses Vex‘s Patron effect, Axel’s damage will disperse, including the debuff, effectively amplifying the opponent’s skill effect by a factor of 5.
- Despite having a healing support skill, Axel lacks a direct healing skill. Therefore, unless organized with a healer, the second skill is practically ineffective.
- The second skill is a healing support that activates on a single ally. Consequently, if it doesn’t align with the logic of who the healer is targeting, the skill becomes virtually ineffective.
- If the team pet skill is the only means to protect an underdeveloped hero, it is prone to timing problems and lacks power. While Patron skills work well, some heroes cannot be patroned at all.
- Patron skills can reduce instant death damage to as little as 50% of maximum health, but they can be penetrated by the accelerator. For instance, facing a net-damage hero like Keira or Sebastian results in x2 instant death damage on a single hit, even if the Patron skill is active.
- Unlike Oliver, Axel lacks recovery skills, barriers, and a direct means to address the health loss of the entire team. He can only control who he deals damage to. This aspect is easily overlooked by novices transitioning from Oliver.
- Axel’s overwhelming strength can result in the mass production of players who fail to grasp these shortcomings and don’t learn how to effectively use their pets, adopting a simplistic “Axel for the time being” strategy.
Penetrates Axel
The aim is challenging, but when it happens, it happens.
Other
T.B.D.
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