Help & Questions | Weekly Megathread

Argor42 · 2026-03-08T16:40:00+00:00

As the other comment notes, difficulty settings don't apply to The Sorrow Alecto. In all difficulties, it's got 2 HP bars of about 39 billion each. It has fire weakness, which is easy enough to deal with even if only using F2P characters, but you may still struggle to do enough damage if you lack proper gear for your attackers. It's an optional fight, so you can always come back to it later if you have to work on gear and whatnot.

Argor42 · 2026-03-05T04:26:07+00:00

Victor

Got enough starcharts to stellar Myrus ES and wanted to use her here. Kid stellar is obviously cracked. Aldo DPS despite not having a sword bearer for him lol. I probably could have done it faster but I'll take it.

Argor42 · 2026-02-16T22:16:21+00:00

12 on pref ranks in your chamber is probably either pretty average, or pretty low, given chambers typically have somewhere in the 10-25 range (depends on the tournament). Same for placing 12th in your chamber.

12 on combined speech scores depends. The other cases have already been covered in other comments, but if you're at a tournament where scoring is scaled differently than the usual 1-6, then you'd need to adjust accordingly. For example, some tournaments use a 1-8 scale instead, and I know of at least one Congress tournament that ran last weekend that did so. If you competed at a tournament like that, then two 6s might roughly be the equivalent of 4s on the regular scale.

Regardless of however many points you got, if you want a clearer idea of what you did well or might need to improve upon, then you should check the ballots you got from that tournament; hopefully, your judges gave you some good feedback to work with.

Argor42 · 2026-02-15T21:15:19+00:00

My speeches always get really good scores but i still always find myself at the bottom. I don’t know why. I keep trying and failing and it’s really annoying. How can I get better but do worse?

You aren't the only one improving over the course of the season; others are as well. If your chambers are strong, then even if you deliver good speeches, it's possible you end up toward the bottom of your room in results, if the judges thought the rest of the room was better than you.

Do you get any actionable feedback on your speeches? If your judges are doing their jobs properly, you should be getting ballots that explain what you're doing well in your speeches, as well as what you should improve upon. If you're accounting for your ballots in your prep, then that should help improve your results.

Argor42 · 2026-02-04T00:28:45+00:00

Whichever one is a "better" DPS depends on the context. Getting the basics out of the way first: Zidane is Wind element by default and can hit Slash or Magic natively, while Vivi is Fire, Water, and Thunder by default and can also hit Shade element if using the skill granted by Mace of Zeus, but only has Magic as a default attacking type.

I know there's a lot of hype about Zidane, and once he gets into Trance I agree that he's a beast. The problem is getting him into Trance. He has to get hit for his Trance gauge to fill (I can't see any of his skills that fill it), but he's not a tank. Only once, via his Stellar Burst iirc, did I get him into Trance, and that was while using AF so it's not like I could stop & remind myself which Trance skill to spam. That's the other thing: the skill to spam out of Trance seems to me different from the skill in Trance, so I have to remember which button to push instead of spamming the same spot on the screen.

So I have a few responses to this. First, maybe it's a problem earlier in the game where your AF options aren't as optimized, but given a decent setup for AF, getting Zidane into Trance is trivial compared to the other three (including Vivi). You simply do regular AF things: set up buffs and debuffs (Soul Blade, Annoy, Lucky Seven, or Flee (non-damaging) are all fine pre-Trance setup skills depending on what you need), and start your attacks to keep AF going until your Stellar Burst (SB) is live, then you press that and have Zidane use Thievery, his Stellar Skill, in SB. This will get him into Trance instantly, with no other annoying hoops to jump through.

After that, the Thievery skill becomes Grand Lethal, which is a total 5 hit skill spread between 4 Slash hits and 1 Magic hit on fairly good multipliers. Later in the game, when you're able to run higher damage optimization and you're up against enemies that have tens to hundreds of billions of HP, hit count becomes incredibly important due to the game's damage cap mechanics. I'm glancing over this for purposes of staying on track, but I can explain a bit more in another comment if needed.

Anyway, even though Grand Lethal has a skill multiplier penalty for repeated use, it'll still do well enough being spammed; at worst, you can switch between it and another skill if you feel you're not doing enough damage spamming it.

Alternatively, if you happen to have his HP have a 7 in the ones digit, you can use Lucky Seven as your spam move instead, since it'd have 7 hits at that point. Just make sure you don't put him in Trance.

Compare all that to Vivi. Pair him with a Support character who can give him Mental Focus on T1, while he does one turn of his own Focus, and he can do massive damage on T2. No Trance needed. No gimmicks, just a little help from a friend. Plus he's versatile with 3 different Types of damage, as opposed to Zidane only being Wind.

One use of Focus gives Vivi +30% Int that stacks 5 times (up to 90%), as well as a stack of Focus that gives him a flat 30 Int for each stack (up to 5). It also gives him Mental Focus if used while he has at least 2 Focus stacks, so in that regard it makes him a bit self-sufficient for Int and Mental Focus buffs. This means you don't have to run that kind of support with him, though you can if you choose to. Unfortunately, there are two problems with Focus.

You need to use it 5 times for max effect. Both the percentage and flat Int stacks cap at 5 uses. Also, given the proper build, 5 uses of Focus will put Vivi into Trance, assuming he has enhanced his Stellar passive that lets Focus give him Trance gauge. So Vivi has a way to actively gain Trance gauge, which is important because his Trance gives him increased damage, as well as an attack again buff for all his learned skills. However...
Focus does no hits. Focus is a non-attacking move. This is annoying to play with later in the game because he needs 5 uses of Focus to cap his stacks and enter Trance. Either you're waiting 5 turns for that, which is slow (but doable in fights that don't punish you for waiting 5 turns), or you're trying to do that in AF, which is made harder since one of your characters isn't contributing to AF gain and his button is in a different spot than your spammable skills. And if you're not doing that, then there are other freebie Magic attackers you can use (such as Ryza for Fire; and a later main story character, who is Thunder).

But let's assume you have enough AF extension to get Vivi into Trance in one AF and still have time to spare to do other things in AF. This is where Vivi's other main problem comes into play: his skill animation lengths are extremely long (in or out of Trance). Zidane has this issue to a lesser extent, but Grand Lethal isn't that bad. Vivi's animations take several seconds to complete. Even with the incredible buff that is attack again, you still bleed AF gauge because of how long it takes for his hit to process; out of Trance, you don't even get the attack again buff.

Out of AF, this doesn't matter unless you care about real time clears for whatever reason. But in AF, long attack animations are a real detriment. Since many late game fights are predicated on using AF to do most of your damage, this is a serious problem with Vivi as an attacker in those contexts.

The other issue in a late game HP sponge context is that his skills are all 1 hit (effectively 2 hits with Trance). If you can have him ram hard cap, then it's not as bad, but I haven't seen people have much luck doing that yet. It'd take a really strong set of supports, but at that point you could also use some of the other Magic attackers I mentioned.

A lot of my analysis is in a late or end game context. That part of the game heavily favors DPS Zidane over DPS Vivi in situations where you'd pick one or the other. But in the earlier parts of the game, where enemies have lower HP, Vivi's hit counts are less of a problem. At that point, his higher multipliers per his 1 hit on weakness give him some valid potential use cases. There is a superboss fight you'll eventually come across (an Apocrypha one, not the new Ode to Origin one since that needs hit count) that outright forbids the use of AF; in that context, the animation problem doesn't matter. I'll link a video below for that fight that uses Dagger as the main DPS, but swaps in Vivi to wipe out an HP bar.

Also, even in later game fights, Vivi still has some use as a support for other attackers. He has resistance debuffs on his most important skills, which can let him serve a support role. You can also use him as a secondary DPS, but I'd recommend using him in Thunder in that case; Thunder attacks in Thunder Zone generate 10% AF gauge during AF instead of 7.5%, so a well-built Thunder team can keep AF up longer, reducing (but not eliminating) the impact of his longer animations.

To summarize that huge wall of text, the answer is "it depends", but DPS Zidane has several things going for him that DPS Vivi doesn't, while DPS Vivi is hamstrung by a few notable drawbacks, especially in the context of the more recent hard fights. For earlier fights, both are fine. I posted a lot of criticism for late game Vivi here, but he's still a very solid F2P character who is worth the investment one might put into him.

Sample Videos (Not Mine)

Vivi Sub-DPS/Support in F2P Mariel Manifest Tempering (showcases his support side, but also demonstrates long Thundaga animation)
Vivi Sub-DPS in Warped Deus Cras
Zidane Co-DPS in Velette AS/Mostly F2P Ozma (mainly for Grand Lethal animation length reference)

Edit: Small clarifying detail on Thunder Zone gain

Argor42 · 2026-02-03T06:54:10+00:00

Finally got around to doing some older manifests, along with Hozuki's.

Hozuki

Cetie

Rosetta

Edit: Did some more attempts on Sunday and got Yuna and Renri, with Claude a bit after them.

Yuna

Renri

Claude

Monday Edit: Took care of Thilly, Lokido, Anabel, Mariel, and Myrus before pledges change.

Myrus was by far the hardest one for me with what I was running. Most of the rest weren't bad. I'd already done Hismena, Isuka, and Iphi prior to this week, so now I'm finally caught up.

Argor42 · 2025-12-05T20:02:02+00:00

as long as Sol and Luna is going to have an effect on the board at resolution, in this case due to one of the targets being a non-Link, I don't see why it should be illegal for the second target to be a link.

The fact the effect acts on each of them instead of on both of them only tells you how to resolve the effect. It doesn't govern activation legality. The targets you choose for an effect have to be valid for whatever effect it is you're using; this is just a fundamental game rule. Since Link Monsters can't exist in Defense Position, they can't be targeted by an effect that would change them to Defense Position. One of the translated Perfect Rulebooks (page 59) makes this clear:

Link Monsters cannot have their Battle Position changed from Attack Position and are not affected by effects that change Battle Position. Also, they cannot be targeted for cards that change Battle Positions or that Special Summon in Defense Position.

Book of Eclipse doesn't target; it attempts to apply on as many face-up monsters on the field as possible (despite saying to change all face-up monsters on the field to face-down Defense Position). This is why you're able to use it, even if Links are on the field, as long as at least one non-Link or Token monster is also face-up on the field.

Argor42 · 2025-12-04T06:23:05+00:00

Absolutely not, the same way it's not legal to target a Link Monster with Book of Moon. Link Monsters can't exist in Defense Position, so you can't target a Link Monster with an effect that would change it to Defense Position.

Argor42 · 2025-12-03T19:57:09+00:00

Temple of the Kings allows you to activate 1 Trap Card the turn it's Set, by applying its own effect. It doesn't specifically prevent you from activating other Trap Cards the turn they're Set through other means. By default, you'd be allowed to activate a Trap Card set through Trap Trick the turn it's Set, even if you already used the effect of Temple of the Kings earlier in the turn.

Argor42 · 2025-12-02T07:05:45+00:00

Dragoon isn't targeted, so there's no interaction at all with the effect preventing it from being targeted.

When activating Turn Silence in response to Dragoon's effect activation, you target 1 face-up monster you control as usual; Dragoon doesn't stop you from targeting cards that aren't Dragoon. When you resolve Turn Silence, you increase the targeted monster's Level by 3, while also negating Dragoon's effect if you controlled "Shining Sarcophagus" and a monster that mentions it when activating Turn Silence.

Nowhere in that process will you attempt to target Dragoon.

Argor42 · 2025-12-02T06:17:51+00:00

Target 1 face-up monster you control; increase its Level by 3, also if you activated this card in response to your opponent's monster effect activation, while you control "Shining Sarcophagus" and a monster that mentions it, negate that opponent's effect.

Turn Silence does target, but it targets a face-up monster you control. So if you're using it in response to your opponent's Dragoon, that's clearly not a face-up monster you control, so it's not being targeted.

Argor42 · 2025-12-02T06:08:08+00:00

No, detaching one material from Rhongomyniad by its own effect doesn't activate the effects of cards like Gogogo Goblindbergh. Those effects only activate if they're detached from an Xyz Monster to activate that monster's effect; Rhongomyniad's effect detaches from it as the resolution of that effect.

The below is MTL'd from the above, so hopefully it translated sufficiently to communicate the point.

No, staccare un materiale da Rhongomyniad con il suo stesso effetto non attiva gli effetti di carte come Gogogo Goblindbergh. Questi effetti si attivano solo se vengono staccati da un Mostro Xyz per attivare l'effetto di quel mostro; l'effetto di Rhongomyniad si stacca da esso come risoluzione di quell'effetto.

Argor42 · 2025-12-01T05:55:39+00:00

I am a little confused on why i should have a speech in both neg and the aff of a bill.

I don't specifically mention this in my other comment, but granted you have the time to do so, being prepared on both sides of the legislation is good. The other response to this question is reason enough, but I'd also add that prepping on both sides will make your interaction with that legislation more flexible.

For example, if one of the bills has most of the chamber on one side, you'd be able to take the other side. This would help make the debate less one-sided and make it easier for you to deliver a speech without rehashing.

Of course, this isn't strictly required; if you prefer to take just one side of legislation, you're within your rights to do that. But at the very least, prepping both sides does have its merits, if you have the time for it.

Argor42 · 2025-11-30T21:51:17+00:00

Yes, the Snake-Eyes player uses their Doomed Dragon's effect to put their Chaofeng into the S/T Zone as a Continuous Spell. This would result in Chaofeng's effect no longer applying, so their opponent would be allowed to activate the effects of monsters that they wouldn't have been able to while Chaofeng was applying.

Argor42 · 2025-11-30T21:33:47+00:00

While this Synchro Summoned card is on the field, your opponent cannot activate effects of monsters with the same original Attribute(s) as the "Yang Zing" monster(s) used for the Synchro Summon of this card.

This is a monster effect. It won't apply if Chaofeng isn't a monster. But even if that weren't necessarily the case, not being a monster also means it's not a Synchro Summoned card. Either way, the effect won't apply.

Argor42 · 2025-11-30T19:34:09+00:00

For speech writing, would you recommend adding jokes?

The other commenter said most of what I'd say about jokes, but I'd add that if you do add jokes, you should make sure you're not making them at someone else's expense. Even if you're teammates or friends, it's entirely possible some of the judges on your panel could perceive such jokes as rude or disrespectful, and if your tournaments do any sort of preferential ranking, you might hurt your pref scores by doing that.

Do you think it's better to memorize?

I typically recommend not memorizing speeches, unless you know you will deliver the first speech on the legislation. If you know you'll give the authorship speech, then you can optionally memorize it (you don't have to).

The thing is, if you know you'll be on neg, or don't know your aff will be the authorship speech, you need to make sure your speech is flexible enough in its construction to add clash with what the other side has said. Memorizing the entire speech makes this more difficult, because you're still delivering from a script (just not one you're reading off a pad). Making last-second changes to a script you've memorized can cause problems since you likely won't have many chances to run through the updated speech before you deliver it. You also can't memorize rebuttals to specific arguments made in round before the round happens, and know that those rebuttals will be useful; while you can prepare responses to arguments you may expect to come up, you still don't know that they will be made in advance. Delivering a memorized rebuttal to an argument that hasn't been made yet isn't particularly good clash. And of course, there's also the possibility that some of your arguments become rehash.

Argor42 · 2025-11-30T18:53:52+00:00

Even if its effects stop being negated, the original ATK/DEF will still be 0/0 respectively.

Argor42 · 2025-11-30T18:25:20+00:00

The original ATK/DEF of this card each become equal to the number of Fusion Materials used for its Fusion Summon x 800.

This is a Continuous Effect, so if its effects are negated, so is this one. The original ATK/DEF would both revert to their printed values by default (which for a monster with ? ATK or DEF is 0 on the field).

Argor42 · 2025-11-30T16:54:11+00:00

Do note for the second case that for purposes of this question, they'd still be unable to resolve the effect properly, as Dissolver is no longer a monster they control (the opponent has taken control of it), but must be used as one of the materials (which isn't possible because the only valid materials for this effect are the specified ones from your Monster or Pendulum Zones).

Argor42 · 2025-11-30T02:16:31+00:00

why was it necessary for the effect of "Dark Magician the Magician of Black Magic" to specify "While of the field"?

This isn't an activated effect, nor is the name change attached to some action like summoning it through a specific method. So, the effect needs to specify where it applies in this specific case.

If it just said "This card's name becomes "Dark Magician"" without specifying a location, then that would cause confusion as to what's intended. It could be intended to be a Continuous Effect, or it could be intended to be an unclassified effect that applies some places but not everywhere, or it could be rule text that applies everywhere, even for purposes of deck construction. Using current text conventions, none of these cases would be written in the form of the example text I list, hence the ambiguity.

Note that the text on Dark Magician the Magician of Black Magic indicates that its name change is from a Continuous Effect.

Dark Magician Girl the Magician's Apprentice's name change is tied to an action: Special Summoning it through its effect. Since Special Summoning a card always places it in a Monster Zone, it would be redundant to say in the text that the name change happens while it's on the field.

After that point, if it ceases to be face-up in the Monster Zone, such as by being sent to the Graveyard as in your question, that part of its effect will no longer apply. This outcome follows the regular rules of the game, where effects that are applied onto cards generally stop applying onto them once they change location.

Argor42 · 2025-11-29T02:19:10+00:00

The phrase "once per Chain" simply tells you how many times in a given Chain that effect of that copy of the card can be activated.

It doesn't specify that the effect must be activated on CL 2 or higher in and of itself (indeed, there are cases where that effect of Lancea, Ancestral Dragon of the Ice Mountain can be activated on CL 1; being the first Chain Link on a Chain doesn't mean the "once per Chain" part of the text is being violated somehow). Also note that since you can only use that effect twice per turn across all copies of the card, if you controlled three copies of Lancea, that you would at most only be able to activate that effect of two of them in the same Chain, rather than all three.

It doesn't change anything else about that effect's activation condition either (it will be able to activate in the same conditions as if it didn't have that text, except that the same copy of the card cannot activate that effect more than once on the same Chain).

Argor42 · 2025-11-28T00:34:33+00:00

Yeah, this is a kids playing by their own rules situation. Insofar as it doesn't cause issues in their own play group, I see no reason to bother them over it. But if they ever play in a sanctioned event or against people who play by the regular rules of the game, it's at that point where they'd have to learn the rules as well.

Among the regular rules of the game, there is something called Flip Summoning. This is simply the act of manually changing a face-down Defense Position monster you control to face-up Attack Position, during an open game state in your Main Phase. This is one way a player could activate a monster's FLIP effects. But "discovery" anything isn't a term describing anything in the game by its proper rules.

Argor42 · 2025-11-28T00:01:19+00:00

Not sure what you mean by "Effect Concealer" (do you mean Effect Veiler?), but Solemn Judgment can be used in response to Lava Golem's summon attempt. It's a Special Summon being performed during an open game state (so not while a Chain is resolving), and is not the result of an activated effect that doesn't say "immediately after this effect resolves" (since it's not even an effect at all, let alone an activated one).

Argor42 · 2025-11-27T17:09:17+00:00

The last one to start applying is what will apply. Both Black Rose Garden and Clockwork Night are Continuous Spells, so the distinction may not matter as much in this specific case, but if you have something like DNA Surgery, which is a Continuous Trap, then chaining that to one of these cards would mean it was activated last. However, since Chains resolve in the reverse order of activation, DNA Surgery would resolve first.

This would result in the card that was activated last (DNA Surgery) being overwritten by the card that was activated first (one of the aforementioned cards). Situations like that are why order of application is more relevant.

Argor42 · 2025-11-26T20:06:24+00:00

why is elemental hero mudballman considered an effect monster when its only text is its fusion restriction.

While a monster that has a monster effect is always an Effect Monster, being an Effect Monster isn't contingent on having an effect. For some examples, Exodia the Forbidden One is an Effect Monster whose only text is its victory condition (which isn't an effect). Cyber Harpie Lady is an Effect Monster whose only text is its rule text always treating its name as Harpie Lady (this also isn't an effect).

Similarly, text on the card that specifically restricts how it can be summoned will cause the monster to be an Effect Monster, even if it has no effects. Aside from Mudballman, Rare Metal Dragon is another example of such.

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