r/OnePieceTC • u/_ROOTLESS_ God of Salvation • Dec 17 '18
ENG Guide ROOTLESS’s Beginners Guide to Teambuilding and Critical Thinking in OPTC [GLOBAL VER.]
(Last updated: 7th of September 2019.) Quick disclaimer: This guide is aimed primarily at new players and as such might seem like simply a compilation of common knowledge for most veterans, that being said I hope that some somewhat advanced players who still seem to find themselves constantly having trouble building their own teams for content can maybe learn something new from this guide.
Introduction
I want to keep this short to stay informational but a bit about me first. Long time global veteran as well as long time active member of the OPTC subreddit discord server and have been helping out new players there for the last couple of years. Im finally getting around to writing this guide since I want something to be able to link these players so that they can read about how to build teams themselves and hopefully through using common sense struggle less with content in the future.
In this guide I will present the fundamentals of teambuilding in OPTC and the importance of reading and understanding what different units do, what role they have in a team and what a team generally needs to beat content.
I also want to really emphasize the importance of the golden rule in OPTC teambuilding which is that teams should be built around the specific piece of content that you are trying to clear, new players need to understand that there is no team all around dream team that beats everything (even though undeniably some teams come pretty close). It is for this exact same reason that tierlists are so useless in this game, since units can have different value depending on usage and content.
That being said, without further ado let’s present the most fundamental part of teambuilding, which is what I call the “Teambuilding Checklist”.
Basics of Teambuilding: The 4-point Checklist
Generally the core of a team in OPTC will consist of the following:
1: An ATK booster, whether it is a universal ATK boost, a color ATK boost or a class ATK boost depends on the team but there will always be some sort of ATK booster (Worth noting that most teams run 2 ATK boosters, the reason why will be explained below)
2: An ORB booster, once again it can be a universal ORB booster, a color specific ORB booster or a class specific ORB booster but there will always be some sort of ORB booster (Worth noting that most teams run 2 ATK boosters, the reason why will be explained below)
3: An ORB controller, this is a unit that in some way can guarantee that your team will have a full board of matching orbs on your burst turn. This includes being able to deal with block orbs.
4: Utility slot/s. These units provide varied types of utility to either counter debuffs the bosses or bosses throw at you or to remove buffs that the bosses apply to themselves. The most common utility you will find yourself running is ATK down removal, paralysis removal, special seal removal, damage reduction as well as enemy buff removal such as removing enemy threshold damage reduction, defensive effects or resilience. In case you are fighting older content this spot will usually be filled with some unit that reduces other units cooldowns to run the quest faster or alternatively some other luxury unit that provides more damage for the sake of it.
These four elements should be in every team that you build for harder content in OPTC such as Raids and Colos as well as Forests and similar. Probably worth noting that this teambuilding checklist is less important in stuff like Story Mode and Fortnights as well as Treasure Map, since those pieces of content usually have restrictions in place and are fairly easy for the most part.
Some mechanics of the game that are good to know
1: In this game boosts CANNOT override each other. This means that if you use an ATK boost special, and then use another ATK boosting special afterwards, it will NOT override the first one even if its a higher boost. This also applies to ORB boosting specials in the same way, and in general for every single buff OR debuff that has the same icon.
Example of point 1: You have double G4v2 captains, Legend Nami (DEX/Green) and Raid (Clash) Doflamingo in your team. You reach the boss stage and you want to burst so you use your G4v2 special (ATK boost) and your Doflamingo special (ORB boost). If you want to use Legend Nami's special, HER ORB boost won't activate, since you already have Doflamingos ORB boost active, but all the other parts of her special will still activate.
2: Adding to the point above, identical (same type of) boosts in this game CANNOT stack nor will they prolong the initial boost. Whichever boost was used first is the one and only active instance of that type of buff.
Example of point 3: You have double G4v2 captains. You reach the boss stage without having used either of their specials. You want to burst so you activate one G4v2 special. Activating the second one now will not make your two ATK boosts stack, only the first one will remain and the second one will only deal AOE damage and transform your captain.
3: Enemies can CLEAR your buffs but they CANNOT override them. This means that when some bosses give you a super weak ATK/ORB boost to prevent you from using a stronger one, you can simply avoid it by activating a 2 turn or longer ATK/ORB boost on the previous stage.
4: Some positive BUFFS share the same type/icon as DEBUFFS. This means that using the same logic as in point 3 we can avoid the boss applying certain debuffs to us we use a 2 turn or longer version of the same type/icon buff on the previous stage.
Example of point 4: You can use Raid (Clash) Boa (PSY/Yellow) to lock your chain at 2,5x for 3 turns on the stage before the boss. This will carry over to the boss and stop them from locking your chain at 1,1x for instance.
It will be a while until you face content that is tricky enough for you to take the above mechanics into account so just keep them in mind for now.
Now onto the meta and the extras, which will explain why you almost always need all of these in a team as well as the reason why most teams consist of two atk boosters and two orb boosters:
META
Content and therefore teambuilding have evolved greatly during the existence of the game. This has also lead to the release of units that are stronger so that players can deal with more difficult content. This phenomenon is referred to as powercreep and affects most games that regularly update during their existence.
I dont want to indulge in too much game history but in the early stages of the game content was more straightforward. You easily crushed the first 4 stages of a quest while stalling if needed and then arrived at the boss stage. Once there you would active your atk boost, your orb boost and your orb manipulator maybe some HP cutting special and burst the boss. This would kill the boss and the quest would be done.
Nowadays the game looks fairly different. Starting with the introduction of the Colosseum the playerbase got introduced to sub-bosses, which would be strong stage 4 bosses that required the usage of specials to beat. This shaped the meta to include another yet another duo of atk booster and orb booster in most teams.
In today's content debuffing and buff removal also play a key part in beating content, since most content nowadays either debuff your crew with nasty effect such as ATK down debuff, paralysis or special bind as well as buffing themselves with tricky boosts such as threshold damage reduction, percentage damage reduction, resilience or other types of problematic defensive buffs.
This shaped what is regarded to as the utility meta, which basically means that most teams need to run both debuff removal for their own sake and buff removal for the enemy boss or bosses. I will touch up on this more in the extra section.
To clear this type of rising difficulty in content, stronger and stronger units started being released and today we have plenty of top tier legends who can clear almost all content. This brings us to our next point, which is identifying and choosing a good captain for your crew.
What makes a captain good and how you build accordingly
Disclaimer: Due to me being a global player and having a firm belief that new players should at least start on global first, this guide only takes into account currently existing top tier units on global, but the same line of reasoning that I am about to introduce can be applied to units on the japanese version of the game.
This is where the usage of critical thinking, or as I like to refer to it; common sense comes into play. While the game does not have a definitive tierlist, there is certainly a common consensus regarding which legend leads are top tier. What makes a legend a top tier captain are two distinct factors;
A high multiplier boost for the crew, this can be universal (example: G4v2) class restricted (examples: Luffy/Ace, Doflamingo v2) or color restricted (examples: Shanks v2, Akainu v2, Lucy).
A special that fills one of the checklist points introduced above, preferably the ORB or ATK boost condition but the orb manipulation condition is usually enough.
As you might have noticed, almost all of the legend captains that are regarded as top tier by the community fill both of these criterias. This is also not a new thing when it comes to unit evaluations, seeing as top tier legends in the past such as SW Ace and Crocodile also fill in these conditions.
In order for a legend to be regarded as top tier without having a special that meets the checklist criteria, their special has to be exceptional to the point where it somehow allows you to bypass the need for the checklist.
I will mention the general exception, since this unit/s is noteworthy because of circumventing this general rule;
Doflamingo v2: His special does not boost orb nor class but yet he can definitely be regarded as top tier. This is because his special (if not hindered) allows you to essentially completely bypass the boss stage by bursting on the pre-boss stage and just killing the boss with overkill damage, hence negating the need for two instances of burst. The same argument applies for Katakuri v2.
Looking past the exception, the reason why the special is so significant in deciding whether a legend is a top tier captain or not is because of the simple reason (here comes the common sense) that you will almost always be having two captains, yours and the friend captain and if they fill out half of the teambuilding checklist you will have the rest of the slots in your team free to adapt to the content, whether that means running more utility, more damage or even cooldown reducing specials to make the run faster.
For new players specifically, I really want to remind you guys that just because a legend isn’t “top tier” by these definitions does not mean the legend is bad per se. There are several examples of legends that clear tons of content using different playstyles such as legend Robin, legend Magellan, legend Tesoro or legend Enel (in 6+). These guidelines that I am presenting are not set in stone, you have to keep an open mind and think for yourself.
To summarize, top tier captains are top tier because apart from providing a good multiplier for the crew, they also fill key roles in the team composition and therefore give you more free spots to adapt to content. In contrast to this, legends which aren’t quite top tier leads suffer from usually having a good multiplier but a lacking special which means that they are restricted in what subs they bring and therefore cannot clear as much content. Examples of this would be oldschool top tier legends such as Log Luffy or Timeskip Luffy, which do not provide any of the checklists in their specials (and also suffer from outdated multipliers) and hence have more or less cycled out of the meta due to not being able to run enough subs to deal with the requirements of modern content.
Finishing up: Examples
I understand that for new players and even somewhat experienced players this might be a lot to take in at once and it might be hard to apply this without specific examples which is why I will include some basic examples that players with new rerolls can take advantage off and hopefully once they learn the basics explained above they can build their own teams independently to clear content.
Also please remember that none of this is set in stone, there are always cases that are different which makes you throw your whole team around. A practical example of this is for instance Dex Colo Kid, where stage 4 debuffs you with paralysis and puts up threshold damage reduction while the bosses there are actually pretty squishy, so you are better off running more utility instead of a ATK/Orb booster for that stage.
In any case, here come the rerolling beginner friendly examples:
First step to build a team is to identify a good lead based on the criteria shown above. Every single new player on global should retry the strawhat multipull mail until they get at least G4v2 (Ideally with DEX Legend Nami as well) so I will use him as our prime example.
G4v2 is a monstrous lead with his 3x to 4x universal multiplier while having the versatility of switching forms depending on how you want to burst. There he fits the first criteria for being a top tier lead. Once we look at his special we see that he meets the second; A universal 2x ATK boost for the whole crew, as well as counting STR, QCK, PSY, RCV and TND as beneficial for three turns.
If you look back at the checklist and think, you will notice that your crew already consists of 2 ATK boosters, your G4v2 and your friends G4v2. This means that you just need one orb booster for each ATK boost, some sort of orb controller and you will have the last spot free for any type of utility you might need. Furthermore G4v2 is a universal lead, so you won't have to pay attention the the subs classes or colors.
We will start with the easiest orb booster that all players are guaranteed to have or obtain: Raid (Clash) Doflamingo. Easily farmable unit which provides a universal 2x orb boost to the whole crew. This gives an orb booster for one of your ATK boosts. A viable replacement/alternative is Raid (Clash) Bellamy, who is even easier to clear and can be found permanently on Extra Island on Global, in the "Driven Quests" section.
Most of the time you will be needing another one for your other ATK boost though, and while the options are plenty we are going to be focusing on the F2P options, since those are the easiest to guarantee for new players.
As it happens, there is only one universal 2x orb booster that is F2P, that being Raid Doflamingo that is already in our team but due to G4v2’s high multiplier we will be just fine with a 1,75x orb booster where we got the excellent F2P candidate Raid Kuma. Not only will Kuma provide us with a 1,75x orb boost for the whole crew but Kuma will also convert EMPTY, TND, RCV, BLOCK and BOMB orbs to matching. This makes Kuma provide some soft orb control on top of the orb boost.
If you tab back to the checklist you will notice that we are doing splendid. We already have 2 ATK boosters in the form of the G4v2 captains as well as two orb booster to use for the burst turns where we use our ATK boosters. You will notice that we are still missing a proper orb controller as well as the utility slot.
The long standing weakness of universal teams is the struggle to find a full board orb controller, with the options being few and rare. The best option available at the moment is legend shirahoshi, that provides a full board of rainbow orbs which count as matching for every unit and cannot be messed up by the enemies. Understandably not everyone has access to this one specific legend so in most cases the best F2P alternative is Raid Cracker, who provides a full board of dex orbs and makes them count as matching for everyone for one turn. In the specific case of G4v2 you will notice that he makes 5/7 orbs count as matching during his burst in G4 form, which is why you can sometimes rely on that to give you the matching orbs you need, or alternatively try to find an orb manipulator that guarantees that you get one of the five orbs made matching by G4v2.
Now the only thing remaining the filling the utility slot. This slot should remain flexible to adapt to different content, given that bosses do different things. There are plenty of strong candidates for this spot however such as Valentines Day Shirahoshi, which apart from removing 5 turns of paralysis and special bind also provides a full board of RCV orbs at the beginning of the quest which is tremendously beneficial for G4v2 specifically.
And there you go, you have successfully built a team that meets the general criteria for good teambuilding and provided that you adapted to the specific quirks of the content you should be able to clear it.
I will give one last example of teambuilding with another legend that I see suggested to new players often, namely Akainu v2.
If we look at Akainu v2’s captain ability, you will quickly notice that you are pretty much restricted to making a color team, with the colors STR and INT. We can see that he has a strong multiplier for those colors and on top of that provides 1 million extra damage at the end of the turn if you hit all perfects (2 million with double Akainu v2 leads) as well as making STR and INT orbs matching. This fills the first top tier captain criteria. If we look at Akainu v2’s special we see that he shuffles all orbs to STR and INT (So he essentially provides full matching orbs) and on top of that boosts the orbs by 2,25x for INT/STR characters. This assuredly meets the second criteria, as Akainu v2 fills 2/4 of the teambuilding checklist points by himself.
If we think critically a bit about this, we can easily reach the conclusion that Akainu v2 only needs 2 ATK boosters to match his orb boost and has 2 free slots for whatever utility the content demands.
For F2P ATK boosters we will be looking for units like Raid Rayleigh, that is STR and boosts the whole crews ATK by 1,75x for 1 turn. Another worthwhile mention is Colo Z, who boosts STR and INT characters ATK by 1,75x at the cost of reducing your current HP by 80%. Notable non-F2P mentions are RR STR Moria, who boosts STR, DEX and INT characters ATK by 1,75x for 2 turns or ideally the dream sub legend Shanks v2, who boosts INT characters ATK by 2,25x as a Akainu v2 sub.
It is worth noting that some Akainu v2 owners (that lack their own Shanks v2) prefer to pair with a friend Shanks v2 to fulfill this condition and to compensate run a orb booster and a ATK booster instead of 2 ATK boosters.
Finally we have 2 free slots for whatever the content demands. Utility units who are INT or STR are plenty so it should be easy to find what you need to beat the content you are challenging. Top tier utility units that Akainu v2 likes to use are TS Nami, which takes care of 5 (6 if limit broken) turns of paralysis and special bind. Another good utility sub for Akainu v2 is RR STR Marco, which takes care of ATK down and Bind, as well as reducing incoming damage by 90%.
As mentioned before the alternatives are plenty so you should simply look around your box to see what can use.
Last words
I would definitely not say that OPTC is a simple game, given that the teambuilding aspect of the game requires a good amount of game and unit knowledge. However I feel confident claiming that the fundamentals of the game are easy to grasp and that once you get the hang of it teambuilding can be both fun and easy. I really cannot stress enough how important it is to read what your units do and think about it, that way you can compliment what your team needs and what you need to bring to deal with difficult content.
I hope that my guide has provided some sort of clarity when it comes the this very important aspect of the game and that you can enjoy playing independently in the future. If anything remains unclear I am always easy to find on the subreddit discord server.
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u/ltn811 Promising Rookie Dec 17 '18
A copy of Golden Pound Usopp maxed is a must