Talk:Manipulate the Flow of Elements/@comment-1469209-20160612012052

After... SEVERAL team iterations, I finally landed on a team that... I never thought I could really consider for this SM. Started with Artemis and Poseidon teams for achievements, neither compositions came out unscathed, dropping diamonds SOMEWHERE from something stupid happening. Still cleared all the achievements though with these teams, and other people have used similar teams below so if you want a guide, look there.

Artemis + Septem, Nekomata, Gemini, Alma + Artemis

Poseidon + Skogul, Mu-Yue, Baal, Cass + Poseidon

The team I eventually stumbled into trying after--MANY failed or diamond-required runs either of being not suited or me messing up, this team has consistently cleared it. It also covers all the things you need to clear the SM with as much ease as this ridiculous SM allows.

Aether + PR Cass, VR Daji, Stolas, Qionqi + Aether Amulet DC, any rune-filtering craft works. "Glittering Rejuvenation Amulet" is what I use and its quite safe. 1* -50% to all enemies 2* 100% hp healed. And its an Amulet so its easier to filter runes. You need as many people in your corner for this SM, and a good DC is a place to start. Not necessary to have this one, just have one you know how to use.

You NEED all cards to be all maxed or at least close to max level and max CD. This SM is literally just CD management and burst preparation, nearly everything else is cake in comparison to that.

B1) Kill guard on the right in at least 2 turns. Aether gives you the unfortunate too-much or not-enough kind of bursting power, so you really have to be careful with this stage. Once killed, you will have BARELY enough HP to take 2 hits from the guard on the right. If you're successful and you've stalled this much, by the time you've taken 2 hits and the guard is CD 1 once more, Cass will be online and you need to activate her that turn. Kill the guard and you're on to the next battle.

B2) You have 3 turns to kill it, but with a regular Aether spin and Cass on it will melt no problem... but that IS the problem. We want to stall at least 4 more turns somehow before battle 6. This is A place to do it, but its a spooky place. Hitting any weathered runes will kill you, and you can tempt this fate twice before putting Ra out of his misery. I've become comfortable enough with this to run it to the final round possible, but again... its spooky, not the spookiest thing you'll have to deal with though, just something that you can die stupidly to (like me.) Kill bird whenever you want to just keep in mind the need to stall.

B3a) Kill first HP bar asap, its pretty scary but a small step in the grander scheme of this SM. You have 2 turns to take it down, and I suggest you NOT use both turns here, but try and kill it in the first turn and then stall 1 turn or grind one turn on the 2nd HP bar. Ra doesn't really help you setup the board for this first HP bar, so its you and the luck of the gods. This is why I don't want to do this SM with a Yog team, because you can't effect drop rates. Basically MH just will choose whether or not you'll be able to clear this battle or not.

B3b) Attack Trojan + foul play. So nice to see you again, how long has it been? Every SM since Sirius, ah my memory just isn't what it used to be old friend. If you killed that nasty quint shield from the first HP bar in 1 go, you have a bit of wiggle room to flaunt your magnificent 1 HP in front of this duo. Keep in mind your Cass CD, she is integral to success in this SM. On that thread one could purposefully not burst it in one turn and take 2 turns. Its spooky, but every round helps. Just have to believe in your spins and stay true to whatever skills got you this far. Note you want to keep Qionqi, but you could use Aether here if you feel you need it. Her CD management works out nicely, mostly because you have 2 of her and its the lowest of the team. On par with Cass out of the gate.

B4) This is what the first battle should've been but MH likes making us squirm. At least they shoehorned in another place to potentially stall CDs, just be mindful of Aether's magical ability to blow things up. You don't have Circe so you can do 3 combos of light and dark or light and water to take care of the fire guard without spilling over to the earth guard. If you do it successfully you should have 4 turns to stall vs the earth guard, killing it on the 4th round and progressing.

B5) You have 2 turns and only 1 earth card plotting nefariously against you (yes this and battle 9 were both major reasons why some of my previous team compositions were less than formulaic to counter this SM. Lookin at you LHY + LYR teams) Turn off Cass, and use Qionqi. Because we have 1 of all attributes in the team, he will turn every attribute into enchanted variants. So if for some reason one of your question runes was enchanted in a previous turn, there shouldn't be any on the board. Qionqi + 2 turns to kill this Freyja shouldn't be a problem, most good boards can kill her in 1 turn, and by this point you should have Cass coming online again immediately or by the next turn. Adjust your damage to compensate for this for your case. The next battle is also somewhat of a doozy. Requiring equal combos of light and dark to be dissolved in the first set. You can try and set up the board, but you shouldn't have to. The first HP bar is small compared to most of the things in this SM, so no ridiculous burst is necessary, just the required 3 of each minimum.

B6a) Here is why you turned your Cass off. It doesn't HURT to have her nulled by this duo, because the CD isn't rudely reset alongside the effect. You either need to have stalled 8 full turns to get her online normally by the reset, or 4 turns if you plan on disabling Cass yourself by Freyja, then turning her back on for this battle. Either way just Cass doesn't help, the board needs to be something you can work with. If not then rip the run and you can take the hit in a blaze of glory because MH simply did not WILL you to clear this SM. If you do have the required light and dark runestones on the board, fashion a good spin and pray. There is confusion over this skill (myself included for quite some time) and allow me to elaborate on it a little. In the first set of dissolved runes (before runes drop from above and form more combos,) you must dissolve an equal amount of both light AND dark (not one or the other or neither, must be BOTH) combos of runestones. The amounts of runestones don't matter, just the combos. 2 combos of light and 2 of dark. 1 of light and 1 of dark etc. Nothing else about the spin matters, you can do as many dark and light combos collectively as you want, so long as the ones in the first set are in equal amounts. Anyway most boards can kill this guy without worry, especially with the requirement of light and dark, so your Aethers and Daji, both of which have among the highest attacks in the team, should chunk this bad boy and girl without the need of actives. If you feel you need it for the board, don't hesitate to use Aether, just have one for the second HP bar, its pretty important for safety.

B6b) You know, MH, one of my fantasies was encountering all the WONDERFUL enemy skills in the final boss battle of the 8th seal but without any of the hassle of getting the regalia. Thank you SO much for copying so much of that absolutely DELIGHTFUL combination of enemy skills into such an easy to challenge battle. Ok enough of this contrived sarcasm for flavor, about this HP bar: There's a lot of it and you will die because you should be at 1 HP. Even at full HP (if you have full HP here you are a god or a hacker or are going to die to Namtar) the double attack will smack you down, so the only option is to beat the enemy back in one punc- I mean one turn. Aether has been silently mowing down enemies with her active ready just for this battle! Pop her and do entirely too much damage, but feel secure that you didn't die on this battle. In all seriousness you should actually HAVE to use Aether and once you do it'll be completely over kill since there are no rune-spinning restrictions. W/e this game is balanced for the people that spend money on it, we get it, and completely unreasonable for those who don't. Take out this sailor-moon lookin chump and prepare for the next battle.

B7) Remember how there was all that talk about managing cooldowns and all that? Well the first half of the SM was all in preparation for Luna. The second half of managing cooldowns starts right now. Turn off Cass, and do a spin, and do your DC and filter WATER RUNESTONES. The purpose is to then use Stolas to 1-shot Namtar and be oblivious to how horrible this single miniboss could be. You can be fancy about it and save 2 heart runestone from being dissolved, and then dissolve a huge clump of hearts so that you get 1 enchanted to match the other 2, so you can remove hearts from the board. You can also somehow not create enchanted runestones, or create exactly 3 enchanted runestones from groups of 5 or more. Good luck with that, its not important but it helps not having worthless runestones when you have to spin 9 combos in a turn. Oh right that's still coming up isn't it. Yeah this SM managed to make a 9 combo shield and a quint shield just seem like nothing compared to seeing BOTH a 9 combo shield AND a quint shield in the same SM. SMH MH. Side note if you don't filter enough water runestones and can't generate enough from the clumps that stolas creates, then guess what? You're BONED. See B1) again and start over unfortunately. This team is a well oiled machine and everything has to go exactly right, there's not much or ANY room for messing up. This battle in particular.

B8a) This is why you turned off Cass. Big meanie Leo and his fish friends did what Luna didn't have the balls to and will negate actives and their respective cooldowns. You really need the damage boost Cass offers or else you'll have to pull some amazing spins out of... the Aether itself. So I recommend making sure that Cass is off before entering the stage. Fortunately, because of the exact turn requirements of the previous stages after Freyja, Cass WILL be up again here if you have her at max CD. Huzzah for that I guess. Actually after Namtar this SM kinda is a walk in the park. You have 2 turns to kill these lost fish (if you had any hearts on the board you can bet they'll weather them) rudely weathers your runestones and the lion who I swear is named Murphy will make sure its ones that are hard to dissolve or... impossible! (I'm not a cynic I swear.) If you kill this first HP bar in 1 go, you have 2 turns for the 2nd HP bar. Stalling isn't so important from here on out, unless if you want your Aether up again. Quionqi will be up soon if you have the CD maxed.

B8b) You defeated the fish twins and their nasty weathered runes, and now all that's left is a big angry lion. Joy. As stated before, If you kill the 1st HP bar in 1 turn, this is much less scary. Having potentially 2 turns to kill this is honestly one of the nicest things the SM has done for us. 6 Mil HP, no biggie right? Hey remember when 6 Mil on ML used to be the most BS thing MH had ever done? I really miss those days. You can use an Aether here, just be prepared for the last few battles. You have a potential stalling stage upcoming, but no promises with Dr. Boo- I mean Aether blowing things up unexpectedly. Qionqi should be up by the final battle, so you can potentially have that be the only burst you need if you're a pro and don't even need to read this.

B9) I hope that whatever this Nezha has IS B9, because those eyes don't look so good. Getting enough sleep there? Or are people using you as leader and ally nonstop to grind out and max their Yog CDs. Either way for some reason he really hates earth and wants to punch our owl friend in the face. We purposefully entered this SM with fewer demon owls but affirmative action mandates a specific amount of annoying earth demon owls in every team. Rules are rules. Either way only having the one won't make our lives horrible here, just use your few turns to slap him down. A decent spin can easily just take it out, but you may want to get those Aether CDs up for the final stretch. Its up to you, but whenever I do this I have 1 Aether up at this point, and Qionqi go online at this battle or the first HP bar of R10. Those are plenty to finish off this SM.

B10a) Yog her... it... centipede thing... whatever is in the flesh after all these fan-fiction duos and rude hermits have finished throwing themselves in the way. You will notice that sh-.... Yog has a 9 combo shield... and the not so nice kind at that. Thankfully you (probably) didn't get hit and are at full HP. So you have some turns to mess around and get a board that can take her down. This is what good ol' Daji is here for, who needs to spin when you can just move stuff where the heck it needs to be right when you need it to be. You can save Daji for the last HP bar, but I don't recommend it unless you're really confident in your spins and I say do it. What is life without a little adventure. Its not like you slaved over that Daji getting her to max CD, only to grossly underuse her. Just sayin. Anyway, lots of boards are going to be trash coming out of B9b) so pray for skydrops or that you're good enough with Daji to get through this quickly.

B10b) I disagree with Pandora on a lot of things. But I also agree with him on a lot of things. X Burn 10% being the worst concoction that MH has ever spewed from their demonic brains is one of the things I agree with him on. This enemy skill is straight up sadistic. and with 18k damage and 1 turn CD, most teams will straight up die from 1 burnt stone touched and a slap from Yog. My approach to this is to turn on Aether, Qionqi, make a pitiful amount of combos, use DC and pray. In all honestly that's all that this team has prepared for it, but its quite a bit. You can try and venture into the burnt stones for combos if you feel you can for SURE kill Yog with what you're planning as long as you're not overzealous and touch too many. 4 combos is the minimum to shoot for though, it gives you plenty of damage to the whole team and activates Aether's x2.4 damage team skill. With all of these things combined you should be able to sit Yog down in her... its... place in your inventory where they... the centipede thing belongs.

Hopefully this is as entertaining and informative to all of you as it was to me writing and (PAINFULLY) creating the team for it.