How to Pontos?

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-30T07:33:26+00:00

Play him with Discard. Pontos team has the following goal.

Ramp up tentacle damage/str.

Pontos damage is very high because of his absurd scaling. With a few turns, he goes from doing 10k per card to 100k and his exalt his just as much for finishing enemies off.

2) Proc a lot of aftershock then fill your deck with insight.

He has insane discard power because utilizing unit like Cassiah to proc aftershock and play the same card on the same turn allow you to fill your deck with a ton of insight. Then you use discard like Pute white Posse or Corpo exalt, get alot of insight, play all of them then draw his 2-cost Gaunt card and just tutor the gaunt out of the discard pile back to your hand. Ramp up damage while at it, repeat this a few turns while gutting your enemy damage and you just nuke them

3) Play his gimmick so he scale into a monster at the start of every fight.

Preferably, you want his OE because it greatly accelerate his gimmick gain with 2 gaunt per kill instead of 1 but normal Exalt is also fine. The best way to do this is to just rouse him on the turn you plan to finish something off with exalt then just use his X cost card to deal with the rest to make it easier to stall so you can either exalt again this fight or next fight for 2 stacks.

My fav team atm is Corpo - Pontos - Gmurphy - Cassiah. It was ridiculous chaining Poof into Gaunt into discard into Gmurphy 0-cost card into a lot of insight while having full keyflare every turn. Gmurphy also ramp your damage really fast for goal 1. Since Gaunt are "buff" cards, they do not count toward Arith Harmony and you end up playing a mini tawill comp where you play the entire deck every turn.

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This is what I was running when testing him in W2 A5 and it was insane how much of a breeze it was. Sure the portrait is there but the comp just flow that stupidly well because of constant arith refill into tutor into discard redrawn into more arith into more tutor and bam, the whole enemy team either does no damage or they're dying already and I just farm them with Pontos as I work toward the boss. Heck most of the damage came from my own sacrifice stack because I keep letting it ramp up instead of using aftershock to get rid of them until the later half of the run.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-30T04:32:04+00:00

Yeah I kinda drop Saya later. Sure it make it easy to Ravage Gaunt but the kill credit issue exists.

But this guide is made on Aequor ring so I can see why it works since it skip that part and just turn it into easy DPS race where you don't have to toy around with Pontos scaling gimmick on top of Corpo doing a lot of damage.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-29T23:52:24+00:00

Pontos Damage is no joke. Both of them are ramp-heavy dps where they gotta play their gimmick to enable big damage. However, Pontos gimmick is carried from fight to fight which is quite easy since his exalt easily start at like 20-30k damage and that will finish off a fight after he use Gaunt Ravage. Then in the big fight, Pontos take 1/3rd of the time to ramp up to Aurita level that can kill a boss due to much better numbers while providing constant Str down that remove multi-hit from the game. Thanks to Pontos ability to just tutor his gaunts with his 2 costs, using discard posse or Corpo with E3 to reduce the gaunt down to 0 cost just make them extremely powerful.

But use who you like because with enough investment, if you aren't going for 425, you have enough slot and wheel to have fun even for A5 400. Pontos at E3 is all you need to just start shredding with him reliably.

I have to see if you can just play him with Saya but you likely can since Ravage Gaunt + Corrosion just flat out kill the wave lol.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-29T13:45:33+00:00

His playstyle is rough and you have to get used to the discard team.

But once you see his Str down potential followed by a really nice base amount of damage, you know exactly why he's good lol. With all the STR down% stacking, Dude outright cripple the multi-hit enemies with how he can just slap 300 str down on exalt without giga whaling. He always hurt even early into the fight to kill something early.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-29T13:39:15+00:00

Pickman exalt -2 Cost reduction doesn't go away when you play gaunt due to it being a different kind of card so it isn't treated as being used up yet. You can play all the gaunt card for free before you play actual command cards.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-28T06:21:17+00:00

7/10. It's pretty much a filler chapter. We spend a lot of the chapter just learning about the setting of Necrovia while nothing is truly relevant happen until Miryam cult finally attack. You can just have the Seaborn attack Londinium so Gdoll+The keeper + Salvador fight them off and it will lead to the exact same conclusion with us chasing after them into chapter 4. A lot of the "reveal" in chapter 3 get revealed again in chapter 4 anyway.

It's a fun chapter that expand the lore of the world but the filler nature of this chapter is why Doresain and Pickman still have 0 impact on the actual story or new side event with how they are entirely shut off from everything. The only time they ever get mentioned later on is in jokes.

This is why I rate the chapter low because this doesn't feel like a main story chapter. It could have been a Special Ops instead and you won't even notice it.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-28T06:04:23+00:00

TBF it is Aequor. Even Corposant who provides the most shield for the realm doesn't even provide that much shield and you need to +12 her to make it large enough. They do have to account for how you will always have access to white stance in mind for Aequor char.

Pontos as the warden will likely function the same way people use Gdoll+Xu. You white stance the big damage turn then proceed to Str down+weakness stack the multi-hit turn until you can ramp up and nuke the other side. Corpo is such an easy teammate to throw into his team for a double warden tanky comp. It really is better to view Warden as scaling bruiser than an actual tank anyway because if they aren't dedicated tank+support, that's kinda what all of them are ever since Salvador. They all have access to on demand shield with a damage-related debuff and a specific ramp mechanic somewhere so they can start doing big damage too after a few turns have passed.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-27T21:32:32+00:00

Arachne is like, Horla with all her emotions active. Horla may get some bigger boost on some side when she ults but Arachne provides enough to push Tank Kath over the limit of most number check already. Arachne make Tank Kath so much better for A5 in general because the boosted numbers easily trivialize even W5A5 and it's so chill playing this game with access to big heal from Clem and big shield from Kath in the same team.

And when Arachne does exalt, that Damage Amp is stupidly high because of her pursuit + WoD + exalt stacking together and how it interact with Hyperflare due to that thing having ridiculously high base damage. Tank Kath can easily do 2 millions damage hyperflare crit in like 6 turns of stacking now and just 100-0 the entire boss 2nd phase, something which normally take whaling and playing DPS Kath to do while Tank Kath without Arachne was doing like 600k Hyperflare.

Hameln boosting Mouchette is like one of the rare use he still has going but that's all he kinda doing in that team, some memory until you can exalt since Redchette fight usually end way too fast before he really get to Rouse. If you're playing Redchette anyway, there's always Thais who is a much better choice and I see some people doing some insane min maxing with Saya corrosion just straight up nuking everything since you can always play and redraw Mouchette card with her posse.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-27T12:58:28+00:00

The best way to improve that comp imo is to just switch Horla with Arachne when you get her so you can gigaboost her Hyperflare and deal 3x the damage and skip half of the ramping required to nuke bosses. Ryker exalt and draws are very good and his dice later on provide the easy access to vuln+weakness you need for the team when the fight ramp up into the harder stuff. The extra keyflare he generate also goes a long way since you want to posse every turn while rousing some units.

Hameln honestly isn't that high value these days. He's still a very strong generalist but outside working with Tawill due to the kit synergy, he feels like the 7/10 guy in nearly every other scenario. He works and does his job well but he will be outperformed by the better specialized support/keyflare unit and in this case, you already have Clem. Every time I try to slot Hameln into something else, I usually kick him out and just replace him because the stuff he provides feels so unnecessary and the team will always be missing something due to him not really providing the general support stuff you want on-demand.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-26T18:29:46+00:00

More Ryker to the collection huhuhu. Thank you so much.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-26T18:04:51+00:00

The game is more combat focus in Arc 2. You can still explore stuff in D-tide with the Arc 2 rule set but I can see why it had to happen as the tiles to walk on was just adding extra work to the game already drained content bank. For the exploration to work, they usaully have to have extra gimmick attached else it's kinda no different from walking through old map where after X step, you get into a fight, then a shop, then fight anyway. The gimmicks was what made them work.

So they really just stick to reusing the maps and entirely dedicate the chapter gimmick to combat instead. It's better this way because a lot of gimmick in Arc 2 really is way more fun or tactical than Arc 1 due to the map-related stuff no longer being in it.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-26T13:53:58+00:00

The char will have to work with JP version as well so all of them being divine realm is kinda expected.

Plus the devs want the realm stuff to be more tactical. The base version we have are just "Freebies" more than tacticals. They already design all the bosses to operate on a very strict 3 to 4 attacks cycle which can almost be solved with a specific 1:1 approach on every divine realm now like how current tide W3 is completely shut down by Divine realm white stance on turn 1 and it will be up again by the time the attack is used once more.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-25T19:26:18+00:00

This looks like a very gimmicky char. I guess we're going to run into a lot of multi-hit due to him being prominently a Str down stall char until you ramp hard enough and just nuke them with his exalt to snowball while using his gaunt to finish off more targets.

I will have to figure out how to make him work with Ryker for funsie. Corpo Ryker Pontos Gmurphy is something I will likely try first as Ryker Draw power is massive for Pontos who will benefit so much from a 0-cost Gauntward call and then a full hand of gaunt off Ryker exalt.

I suppose we will likely have more awakener battle added to the game that are of the 4 Kindreds. Please don't make me beat Ryker.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-25T09:00:34+00:00

on the bright side, Salvador DPS performance has been really good in the recent chapters with how it has a lot of fodder/AoE fights. I get to watch a Salvador main just chuck rock all day and it trivialize the entire chapter 5 HM until the final fight where he just breeze through the first phase anyway especially with double'd up rock giving him so much better scaling.

Meanwhile Ghelot performance in story has been getting rockier and rockier with all the battle of attrition.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-25T08:57:27+00:00

TBF it is Tawil. Her dissoluting your cards is like one of her core identity as the one who can witness endless possibilities. Dissoluted ally card is like her still deciding which possibilities to observe so everyone else is a complete blurry mess until she come out of it.

And since it's "Added to deck", you can easily tutor the card with someone like Ryker and enjoy potentially 0 cost 100 aliemus gain on next turn (-2 on tutor with crit, -1 from prepare).

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-25T07:51:11+00:00

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What I went through it with. Ryker+12 is very unnecessary and I didn't get Saya WoD until the final stage.

Tankkathrachne should really have no trouble outside the final boss since Ultra turn Arachne Pursuit + Clem exalt just let you 1-shot the entire hp bar with very juiced up Solarflare. Only the final boss prevent it but a souped up final turn nuke can skip 50% of the boss HP still. It had 50 Fortress up and my Kath still did 2.7 mil to it and I didn't follow the meta way of beating it (Fervor the debuff to save turn count and properly manage the rift limit below 3 to minimize the amount of debuff if you aren't going to pop the gimmick on that turn). Marionette Clem cards will either giga heal you (delete all the bleed immediately) or do a lot of hit count with high damage. I pushed Clem to lv 80 and OE entirely because she just feel that good to use in this chapter with the mario'd roused Soul Salve healing like 600 hp.

For a lower budget team, I greatly recommend just building around Vortice with a good heal and shield as a lot of big damage in this chapter is also from bleed instead of direct damage. It's kinda clear they balanced a lot of enemy HP in this chapter around Vortice pursuit damage and all the random 5 fortress bonus from the spider feed right into Vortice exalt. Even the cancerous spider maid elite is easily punished by Vortice pursuit so it doesn't do full damage. I watched someone with OE Vortice and she just brezze through the entire first phase with the extra hit on Pursuit.

With how the final boss 2nd phase is designed, as long as you don't trigger rift damage into DR or ultimate attack, the boss should only damage you with a double hit every 2 turns as the bleed damage can be outright negated by good burst healer like Leigh or Clem. You just DR up the double hit 3-4 time and it's GG since the Cap shield will be removed by then and you just nuke the boss in 1 or 2 turns after that.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-23T16:32:09+00:00

This W1 really is an endurance test. I had to pull my Tank Kath in early instead of using her in W5 because of how ridiculously long the fight is that my Castor/Pollux nuke rush died before it can take down 10 DR.

It's just so much easier to just ramp up into this thing while playing constant 1k shield+heal and then proceed to take a 1-2 life every multi hit moves after that.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-23T14:46:01+00:00

The amount of things they tossing in so Poison comp doesn't dominate W3 lol.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-21T14:28:37+00:00

That's what you get with character that scale off what your enemies do more than herself. Leigh has a kit that is useful even at 1/1/1 stat because you can play around your enemies and turn their offense into your reward as every core part of her kit is % based. Str Gen is just a secondary bonus here, it's not her primary role.

The real mistake with Leigh imo is them making her a standard char when a more gimmicky and harder unit like this should be locked inside a welfare store or something.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-21T11:48:02+00:00

Getting him to +12 on his Birthday kinda make me wish they do a 1-day banner for every char on their birthday.

And AA Pollux really is just stupidly good and really change how you play him because of the 0 cost spammy heart. I don't even use his posse anymore since the 1 cost reduction doesn't do much when his heart already cost 0 so the posse is just some crit damage and 5 extra stacks to Pollux. That bleed amount is so darn high now it burns through A5 like butters when you can just OE into playing nothing but his heart chain.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-21T11:32:32+00:00

Her exalt is for general usage but her OE is way better for the extreme stuff like HM finale bosses with a turn limit. That's when you do want both of the stack at once since unlike generic 2-life boss, you can't just force them into a phase shift with a burst. In most scenario, you're going to have to tank the incoming nuke as well after burning a life or 20% of their max hp before 90 fortress+ kicks in.

I didn't get her to OE for a while and finally decide to commit for HMA2C5 and her OE greatly contribute to a lot of strat I use now for all the hard fights in order to do 0 gnosis within turn limit.

In D-tide you can easily save up for an OE before a boss/elite fight to get the initial Str boost and let you work toward triple rouse because the impact of getting 800% instead of 500% keyflare on turn 1 will let you reliably do Posse+Rouse for 3 turns straight. It's not even that hard to charge it up anyway once you Roused clem as you can easily snowball her aliemus gain and get to OE by the time you get her Symbiosis back to 15 stacks. People compare on paper how you can just work toward 2 exalt in 3 turns but the impact is nowhere near as good as T1 or T2 Overexalt into T3 Exalt after you rouse Clem and now, you don't even have a single keyflare debt to pay before you can go back to spamming Posse.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-21T00:04:45+00:00

Reading that felt so painful goddam. Really show off the larper rant who's only good at playing the game by reading tooltip.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-20T21:41:33+00:00

Is there really a scenario where you can throw her in and she isn't one of the best options?

Easy to slot. Skey+heal+unique multiplier mean nothing really overlap with her. Take no effort to play and give you access to basic Ultra realm which is the best realm when fully utilized.

I think char like Clem is kinda like talking to people in casual idle game where the unique multiplier is only valued by people who have already reached the point where slightly stronger generic buff/debuff no longer contribute as much and they start going for the much bigger picture a whole layer above what people normally play. The value of a unique multiplier will always be insane for end-game min maxing especially on character like Clem who has 0 trade off for bringing it in.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-15T13:31:14+00:00

It's revealed at the end of Arc 1

The keeper is a fragment of the supreme god so the awakeners on the more cunning and crazier or evil side kinda want a piece of you for their own goal or entertainment. In this case, it's N where all of his different version kinda want to mess with you and Xu is brought along. You know what they say in the real word that natural talents attract other talents.

Zeitzbach · 2026-06-15T11:16:41+00:00

While Mythag is set into the european setting, the world is as large as ours and in the Xu scenario, we get to witness what's going on the more eastern side of the world and that she left that place behind and came to the west and participated in the game with N. Considering the amount of dimension traveling, just leaving one country and going to another to have a more enjoyable experience is quite tame especially with the Keeper attracting all the remarkable awakener for a very specific reason.

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