Standard Disclaimer: I Do not play on JP. I talk to JP Players for my info about what is/isn't meta. But I don't have firsthand experience with the meta. I can and will be wrong. You are encouraged to disagree with me!!!

At first I saw the Ichiko3 banner and thought that it'd be another easy flowchart. But then Karen6 was still running... and then Yuki6 is having a rerun... and "oops all overwriters" banner is there... I just can't get a break!!! That being said, It didn't actually take me that long, although I did take a few shortcuts that are not up to my usual standards. Like, the off-banner bonus corner is a bit of a mess. Sorry about that.

But before we get into the flowchart itself, I do have one quick flowchart-adjacent thing to talk about

Future Vision

As I was working on this flowchart, I was briefly concerned that maybe I shouldn't recommend Ichiko3 to people, despite her being AMAZING. Because we do not know who the Light Elemental Admiral is. And while it's unlikely that WFS would make Ichiko4 the light admiral, and throw light teams into ABSOLUTE CHAOS, it could happen!!! And if that happened shortly after everyone pulled for her, on my recommendation, I'd feel BAD.

Then I thought "Eh, even if it does happen, they'll have her for 6 months, it's still worth it." And went on my merry way.

But it did make me realize that our future vision is rapidly running out. My ability to know what Memoria are good is getting worse and worse every 2 weeks. I already am looking at JP Meta teams and largely seeing teams almost identical to what we have on EN now. Which makes recommending Memoria to you all... kinda spooky. At least, in the Authoritative Flowchart style that I have been using to date.

As such, I'm contemplating retiring the flowchart entirely. I had experimented with alternate infographic styles previously with Bungod, and while I SAID I would never do those again... well, I think it's a style that will work better long term for keeping people informed and helping them plan their quartz. A single image that can be shared with your friends, answering the question "Do I care about this new Memoria?" In as few words as possible is what I think the community would most need.

So if I can nail down a standard format so that it doesn't take too long to make... well... Maybe I spoke too soon when I said that I wouldn't do that ever again.

But this is all still up in the air. It's a problem I've been thinking about. SOMETHING is probably going to have to change, sooner or later, it's just a matter of how soon, and what should replace it. So I figured I'd mention it here and gather feedback from y'all.

Anyway, on to the Memoria

Karen6

PULL FOR KAREN6! She goes on EVERY team you build for the next 6 months. You have 14 more days, make it happen!

Ichiko3

Mandatory for light teams because she's the light overwriter. If you're light committed, pull.

Unlike the other overwriters, she's also good beyond that! She actually lacks any light-specific buffs or debuffs (Beyond the overwrite) Allowing her to work in other teams! +6SP to the frontline is VERY good, and the first cast is free if you have her at LB3. Combined with the additional 50% OD on her EX, and she enables teams to go VERY Fast.

Hilariously, the lack of other light specific buffs/debuffs make building light teams moderately difficult. You're going to miss out on some core buffs, no matter what ya do. So if you can't find a good source of Light Enhance for your team... don't worry.

If you're playing light, you REALLY do want that LB3, btw. Without it her common skill is mediocre.

The reason I don't recommend anyone else pull her on the flowchart is that I don't really think that non-light players should ACTIVELY pull for her. She's not worth a 45k quartz spark outside of light. But, if you're pulling on a different banner ~2-4 months from now and she just randomly shows up, remember this sentence and that you can maybe find a use for her!

Debuffer Banner

Overwriters are THE MOST important unit in an elemental team. If you're committed to an element, and don't have its overwriter, go get it!!! With Ichiko3, we have 4 out of the 5 overwriters available right now. So make sure you get whichever one you need!!!

As a reminder: I do not recommend building more than 1 elemental team. That's a BAD Idea. Pick 1 element, and COMMIT!

The banner also has Miya3 and Aina3, who are both good pickups, although not really worth pulling for specifically.

And, of course, there's always 1 unit on these 6 people banners that are just... kinda here. Today it's Yingxia3. Oh well.

Yuki6

My opinion on Yuki6 remains unchanged. Once we get V4 with its 750 border, She's going to be required if you want to chase high scores in Score Attack. At least, until we get Unison Wakki and/or Tama6, and even then she's still a very commonly used -100 stat memoria. She's very good.

But you don't NEED to chase high scores in score attack. You can just lower the difficulty, and still get max rewards.

I am just some rando on the internet, do not let me stop you from what your heart desires, the Oshi bypass is right there. But for MOST players, I do think that your quartz will be better spent on other banners in the future.

And that's it from me. I continue to look back at these posts and go "Man, these were supposed to be short!" But I feel like I kept it relatively brief this time. I did not put this on google docs yet because of all my thinking on what this should look like going forward, but I'll probably have it up there eventually.

I'll be pulling this banner too, and am personally SUPER Excited!!! This is the last piece to making light-only Ohshima WORK!!! I'll still have future upgrades to my team, but this is the big moment!!! I've been working towards this for years, and I couldn't be more excited.

To those of you about to pull, I wish you the best of luck!! And I apologize if I steal all the Ichikos for myself ;)

Standard Disclaimer:   Your quartz is something that YOU have earned.   YOU decide how to spend it.   I am just some random person on the internet.   I do not have first hand experience with the JP Meta.  I Can and Will make mistakes.  Trust me at your own peril.   Also I put a butt joke in this week’s flowchart, so, like, do you REALLY think I’m trustworthy?

I’m going to try and keep these writeups on Google Drive now.  They’re just going to be copy-pasted to Reddit, but this will let me put a link to the writeups in the images themselves.  I suspect people take these and repost them places so having a link to the writeup will help those who desire to know more.   And I suspect for this banner, people WILL want to know more.

But before we get to the main event, let's talk about the other characters.

Golden Week Banner (Ft. Ruka5)

There are other nice pickups on this baner, Tama5, Iroha2, Sumomo3.   Heck, Risa and Aina and Chie even have some uses!   But the BIG reason to pull this banner is Ruka5.

Ruka5 is the strongest character in the game.   She’s going to be kicked off of elemental teams when elemental admirals get here.  But for the next ~6 months?   She’s going to be on every team except MAYBE Bungod teams.

If you’re committed to running Bungod, you can skip her safely.   She may make it onto Bungod teams depending on your box, but the things she adds to Bungod teams aren’t worth pulling for.

If you’re not committed to Bungod, you need Ruka5.

Tenne4

Tenne is the first non-Bungod Henchwoman.   They all have a similar gimmick, of having an extremely spammable EX.   Unlike Bungod, Tenne does not care about the number of Henchwoman.  Instead, her EX gets stronger with every cast.   On the 4th cast (and beyond)  it gives 4 SP to everyone but herself, a ~4k pot heal, and a surprisingly decent potency Dark attack.    And, most importantly, she does not have a use limit on her EX.  She can cast it as many times as she wants.

She’s OP.  In any content in which you need to heal, she’s insane.  She has infinite healing.  For 8sp per cast.  That gives out SP to the rest of the party.   She is the single most broken Healer WFS has ever made.

BUUUUUuuuuut, she brings very little Damage utility.   The SP support is nice, but it takes ~32 SP in order for her to get going.  She will not help you clear Score Attacks quickly, nor will she help you deal more damage in score attack.  As such, she’s useless for Score Attack and similar game modes.

If you are struggling to clear the story, or Arts battles, or Astarium, or Anachronies, or any other content where the number of turns doesn’t really matter?   She’s the best character you could pull.   But the meta is focused on performing well in Score Attack.  And for that, she’s not worth a single quartz.

A “quick” aside about V4

Okay, this is going to be a lot of words, which goes against my personal theory of how these writeups should be.  I wanted to turn this into an image, but I ran out of time.  But this is IMPORTANT, so bare with me please.

Here in a few months, we’re going to get the 4th iteration on how Score Attack works.   You might have heard it referred to a 40/35, V4, 750 Border, or any number of other things.   On JP this came out at the same time as the damage rework, and was ½ of the reason that JP Players were so angry about the Damage Rework.  It is going to change the meta DRASTICALLY.  Kinda…

The name of the game has always been to get as many buffs as you can, Raise the enemies DR To max, Slam all your Debuffs on them at once, and then one-shot the boss with a single powerful attack.  That’s Heaven Burns Red endgame gameplay in a nutshell.  When building teams for that, there are 2 considerations.

Most of the time, what we talk about is how to fit the 9-14 different things you need into 6 character slots.  A character is “Good” the more of those things it can do at once.  That’s largely what meta considerations have been, the more different things a Memoria can do, the more meta they are.

But putting out all of those buffs (and 2 stacks of them no less!) Takes a LOT of SP.  The second consideration that we DON’T Talk about, is living long enough to get all those buffs/debuffs out.  There are several reasons we don’t talk about this as often.  One is that it really varies heavily based on fight, so it’s much harder to give clear-cut advice on, for example.  But the biggest reason is that right now, it’s not particularly hard. You can just increase your VIT/SPR, and maybe throw an Aoi1EX at the problem, and call it a day.  And that works on almost any team.  With ENs stat inflation, characters who help you live longer are a role you just don’t need to care about.

V4 changes this.   Without explaining Border, the bosses will be hitting you with the expectations that your VIT/SPR are in the 750 range.  If your stats aren’t that high, you will take SIGNIFICANTLY more damage.  And even my fully LB4 teams do not have defenses that high.  I, with my LB4 Whale-tier Units, am going to die if I take too many hits without other forms of mitigation.  And most of you will NOT have the same levels of defense that I have.

When V4 comes out, nothing changes about the goals of teambuilding.   What will change, is that “Living long enough to get your buffs” is suddenly going to be the Hard part of the Equation, and the part we’re all going to need to talk about, a LOT.

Seira4

Seira4 works similarly to Tenne4, in that she has an 8sp EX with infinite uses that gets stronger each cast.   At 4 casts, Seira4 Removes 3 debuffs, Gives Turn based Enhance, Turn based Tactical Vision, and turn based Defense up (All for 3 turns.)

She also has a common skill which gives 10% OD everytime she uses her EX, so you can add 10% OD to the list of things she gives.

She also has a very notable LB3 Passive, in which everytime she receives SP from another party member's skill, she gives out 2 SP to everyone.  Obviously designed to work with Tenne4, but also works with anyone else who hands out SP. Kura1 with her Evo, for example. I don't think Miya2's master skill works with this, but I don't actually know for sure. (Thankyou kind commenter for pointing this out!)

It’s also worth noting that Seira1’s EX gives turn based Crit and Crit Damage, and while that crit damage is lower than other more modern units (60% instead of Ruka5’s 100%)  She can still handle that role if you need her to.

If she only gave the enhance/tactical vision, then she’d be a sidegrade or small upgrade to Tama5.  Worth considering for the extra SP Support, or the cleanse.  The BIG REASON to consider Seira4, is that Defense Up.

This is why we had to talk about V4.  You don’t necessarily Need Seira4 if you aren’t worried about surviving in that V4 world.   Aoi4+1 will do work, Karen6 is going to help, and there are other options too.  Irie, for example, heals AND gives def up!  

But Seira4 gives def up while ALSO having access to 3 important buffs that every team needs.   AND She has a cleanse.  If you are worried about your ability to survive in V4, Seira4 is the best way to get additional layers of survivability without sacrificing your ability to win the fight.

Karen6

Okay, I lied.   The BEST way to get additional layers of survivability, is to kill the boss so that you don’t need to survive anymore.  Dead bosses don’t punch back

That’s the key to what Karen6 offers.   She does that in a LOT of ways.  Karen6 is so strong, that multiple of my sources for these flowcharts quit JP because she made the game too boring.   She’s good.  She’s VERY good.   She is basic human rights tier, and you should pull for her, end of story.    But, let's say you do pull for her.  How do you use her?   I also wanted to do an image for this, but also ran out of time, so brace yourself for even more words.

The BIG SHINY thing in Karen6 kit is her ability to inflict “SUPER DOWN.”   Right now, in game, when you break a boss, they get a little counter on them that says “Down turn 1.”  After your characters finish acting on the turn you broke that boss, it’ll drop down to “Down Turn 0” and the boss won’t do anything that turn.   After your characters act again, the “Down Turn” will disappear, and the boss will continue to punch you in the face.

If karen6 Breaks the boss (Or hits them after they’re broken) while they are in the “Down Turn”  She will inflict Super Down.  This sets the bosses DR to Max, instantly.  It also gives the boss an additional 300% DR on top of that, similar to Super Break (A mechanic only Yuki4 and Yuri2 have)  This will go away once the “Down Turn” ends, returning the enemy to whatever DR they were at before (probably 100%ish)

This, alone, makes Karen6 really strong.   She removes completely the need for you to build DR on an enemy, letting you skip right to the kill on the turn that you break the boss.   This cuts a LOT of turns out of any given run, meaning you take less hits, and therefore less damage.  In addition, since a lot of our damage potential got nerfed with the damage rework, DR raising is now one of the biggest damage multipliers available to us.  Adding an extra 300% DR onto that is a LOT of extra damage. So yea, speed AND damage.  BUT WAIT, There’s more!!!

Karen6 also gives out 1sp to the whole party as a passive.   No requirements, no activation clause.  She just does it.   This also speeds things up.

Karen6 EX that you should be using to break the bosses DP, will give the party a bunch of OD When she breaks.   This can be further increased by using a Resonance Memoria from 31X.  Irene3, Yingxia4, or Vri2 will do the trick.   She also hits for 10 times with that EX.   This generates a lot of OD, which gives you extra turns and bonus SP.  Turns in which the boss does not hit you, and bonus SP to reduce the wait time for buffing.

Karen6, being a Unison Memoria, also has a 2nd EX.  It costs 0SP while The enemy is in the Down State.  It’s 10 hits with a very high DR multiplier.  So she can quickly fill that extra 300% DR She adds, while also generating more hits of OD.

Oh, and all of Karen6 attacks are Crit Pen.   Probably should have mentioned that.

OH, and all of Karen6 attacks count as the correct element for E-shield enemies.

And that’s it.   That’s all the ways that Karen6 speeds up your team, so that you can kill the boss faster, so that it hits you less often.  In the future, we’ll be seeing 3-4 turn clears of Score Attack bosses, even the big scary V4 score attack bosses, and Karen6 is a big part of that.  I hope this helps explain to people why they want her, and how to use her once they DO have her.

I will add, as one final thing, that you don’t HAVE to have her.   You can get by without her.  I’ve seen it done on JP.  Your account is not cooked if you don’t pull for her.   Heck, I personally am not pulling for her.   But much like Ruka5 (and Yingxia1 before her)  Your life will be MUCH more difficult if you choose to go that path.   I do not recommend that, unless you like suffering.   Pull for Karen6.

Conclusion

I apologize again for the long write up.  I’ve got a bunch of travel plans this weekend that I’ve been preparing for which ate a lot of time.   I wanted to make a Bungod-style writeup for Karen6, but it just wasn’t in the cards.  But I hope they’ve been informative, and useful.

Karen6 is the last of the big general “You must pull this unit” memoria.   There have been memoria stronger than her, but they’ve not been generic, instead locked to a specific element.  The flowcharts will have to be more complicated in the future.   Joy.

But that’s then!  This is now!  And now, is Karen6!!!   Tomorrow is the dawning of a new Era!   For all of you about to pull, and I hope that’s most of you, I wish you luck!!!