I have explained useful information here that will help you get better scores in raids.
TLDR: female saiyan + monster + I throw aside + flexible / bomber / buff + some kind of buff skill + ultimate charge + high efficiency level + good metagame = top 3 on the leaderboard.
Kinds of Raids
There are generally 2 categories of raids:
RAIDS and Raid (Lite)
RAIDS are usually meant for CaCs that can fly (presumably higher level?) and are in time rifts high up in the sky. These raids usually allows fewer participants (so it becomes harder) and bosses usually hits much harder and have unique skills like mind control, dimension control and special ultimates.
Raid (Lite) are usually meant for lower level CaCs that cannot fly (presumably lower level?) and are in time rifts behind the stores that can be reached from the ground. These raids allow for more participants and the bosses don’t hit as hard and most often have none of the unique skills of the actual raid bosses. More like regular characters with a lot of HP.
Within these 2 categories, there are generally 2 kinds of raids:
BIG BOSS and SMALL BOSS
Big boss raids is when you fight a huge monster like the Golden Baby Ape or Cell Max (so far, I have only seen these two). Big boss tend not to move around too much but they will often have all the unique boss skills so that it becomes more of a timing fight, where you need to know how to catch those openings in order to put in your damage.
Small boss raids are human sized bosses that are always all over the place. Broly, Saibamen, Paikuhan, Majinn buu, Hercules etc are all examples of such raids. These bosses bounce around all over the screen making it hard to hit but, unlike big boss raids, it becomes possible to aim for full DPS on them, constantly putting in damage without need for specific openings or timing.
All raids require an unique approach and loadout. There is usually no one size fits all loadouts for all raids even though most would be quite similar.
What is a Good, Average, Bad result?
- GOOD RESULT: 10K to 15K
- AVERAGE RESULT: around 8K
- BAD RESULT: around 1K
It is interesting to see that people generally do fall into one of these bands of results depending on what they do. Falling into these bands tells you how optimized your loadout and playing is. People who consistently get good results, their focus is on improving efficiency (see section on general principles of raids). People who consistently get average results, usually is the wrong awoken or SS or skill. People who consistently get bad results, usually is very low level, attributes in the wrong places (yes, you have to have the right build to score well in raids) on top of always using Ultra Instinct…
Best Character, Awoken and Skills
Best Character for Raids
FEMALE SAIYAN. Period.
Just look at the leaderboard and you will always see female saiyan as the top 3. Why is that? Because female saiyan has the highest ki blast damage in the game. How about her weak melee? If you use ANY melee AT ALL, you are doing it wrong in a raid. Even though there is one boss, Hercules, who is resistant to ki blast but weak to strike skills, he is so weak to strike skills that even a female saiyan with 0 in strikes and using only strike skills can consistently get full damage scores (13107) on him.
How about attributes? 200 ki blast. Thats the only thing you need. I also like to have 11 ki bars as it takes no time at all to charge the 11th bar and it is so useful.
Best Awoken + SS
Beast + I have cast aside everything for this. PERIOD.
If you are using anything else, you are gimping yourself. Any of form super saiyan transformation is gimping your damage output. Any form of SSB/SSBE is gimping your damage output (due to having to use a SS other than this one) and gimping your DPS due to inefficiency caused by ki drain. I have seen people use my exact same skills in a raid but doing it in SSBE and come up with only about 8K score while I will do 12K to 15K.
I see sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many people, especially below level 100, use Ultra Instinct. I get it, its the coolest transformation in the anime. But it does NOTHING for you in a raid. It increases your damage 0 and when the boss wants to hit you, I guarantee you get hit and killed anyways. It is so sad i even see one person always using UI and scoring only about 5K to 8K per match and always within the top 10 of the leaderboard. I can only imagine how religiously that person plays everyday in order to achieve that. If only that person just use beast + cast, he or she would have been top 3 easily.
Best Skills for Raids
Single hit full damage skills are king of raids.
Yes, when it comes to raids, big fanciful hit numbers usually only mean that you are spending a lot of time to do very little damage (ie Low DPS). In fact, you are likely to do only a small fraction of the full damage as the boss is not stupid. Boss will evasive, boss will be bounced away by other players etc. Skills that deliver its full damage in a single hit guarantees that you will always be doing full damage and because its only one hit, it takes far less time and thus a higher DPS.
Examples of such skills are: Bending Kamehameha, Bomber DX, Kamehameha Boost
How about Ultimates?
SUPERS are king of raids. Ultimates waste a lot of ki, thus reducing DPK and DPS, they are usually multiple hits and they allow the boss to dragon dash and stam break you. The latter being why ultimates are so bad in raids.
But how about EMPEROR DEATH BEAM? Isnt it the best ultimate for raids? We will talk about that in a seperate section… (yes, its that “good” that it deserves its own section)
Have Two Sets of Skills Ready
I find that it is most productive to have two sets of skills ready. One set for max damage but requiring max focus and attentive playing like Bomber DX set. One set for when you are too tired to focus and just want to get an average score without much energy, like playing Sword of Hope or even EDB. Yes, we are not machines, especially middle few days after my first day grind (see section on meta game), I like to take it easy for a couple of days before stepping up for the final two days.
General Principles of Raids
TIME
You have 5 minutes. Period.
I see people play raids like they have forever. No you only have 5 mins and therefore every SECOND counts. However, the VALUE of each second is very different as time goes by. Generally, the VALUE PER SECOND of time increases as 5 mins approaches. Which means at the start of the raid, the value per second is the lowest and thats when you can afford to “waste” a bit of time without significant consequences. However, value per second becomes extremely high towards the end, especially during the final min. Some skills allow you to bank in on low value per second time in order to save the effect for high value per second time. My favorite is the Godly Chronos Canon. What you do and how you spend each second becomes extremely crucial. This leads to what I call “efficiency”.
EFFICIENCY
Efficiency is everything in a raid. Efficiency means how seamlessly and continuously are you able to keep dishing out damage without interruption. The more efficient you are, the more damage you will do over time and the better score you will get. Things that reduce efficiency includes:
- Charging Ki. The more often you have to charge ki, the lower your efficiency. If you have to charge ki 15 times over a 300 seconds period (assuming you take 7 seconds to fully charge), you have wasted 105 seconds or 1.75 mins out of a 5 mins raid dishing out no damage. Thats 35% of the time doing no damage. However, if you only need to charge ki 10 times, that reduces to only 70 seconds or 1.16 min or 23% of the time doing no damage. The less time you need to charge ki, the better. (more about this in another section)
- Getting Hit. The more you get hit by the boss and allow yourself to get hit, the more time you waste not hitting the boss. I see so many people BLOCKING when the boss hits them! This is the worst waste of time as the boss will just keep hitting and wasting more time. The worst part is, the boss could end with a grab and you still get damaged anyways. The best thing to do to reduce this inefficiency is to IMMEDIATELY use an evasive. Best if it is an evasive that hits the boss back so you are doing damage at the same time. My favorite is jumping spread shot which allows you to immediately and seamlessly lead into an attack. Depending on situation, punisher guard or drain field could also be better for dealing with bosses with peeler storm.
- Moving. Yes, moving around takes time! The more you move around, the less damage you are dealing out. This means you need to know the BEST SPOT to be in on each map. Where should you stay on the map so you can spam bendy without moving much? This also means choosing skills that tracks well on a big map rather than chase down bosses with Bomber DX (which is GREAT for smaller maps). Generally, you want to prioritize bendy over bomber in a big map and bomber over bendy on a small map since you won’t have to chase the boss that much. I personally aim for NOT MOVING AT ALL (this is why you will see me sitting in a far place, refusing to chase the boss with the rest of the group). If the boss moves too far away and i cant hit him, I do something else that saves my time later like charging ki or refreshing reinforcement skill because the boss wont leave you alone for very long, he will come. 🙂
- No Skill Rotation. If you are making up action sequence on the fly, most certainly you are not the most efficient. There must be a strong rotation that you keep repeating in order to reduce time slippage in between deciding what to do. Rotation can be like Bendy x 9 > Refresh boost > ki Charge (and repeat). Having a strong rotation reduces the time you need to decide what to do. Everytime I see someone in a match throwing out all kinds of skills quite randomly, I know that person is going to score very badly.
- MELEE! If you are meleeing, you are wasting time. Melee has such meaninglessly low damage that it could be regarded as you wasting time just having the satisfaction of putting out high hit numbers while doing no damage at all. I do absolutely NO meleeing in raids. I aim to not even put out a single punch. If you really need melee to set up for your super, make it SHORT. How about if I bring an optimized melee build using SSG? It will still fade in DPS compared to just spamming something like a bendy kame. (i really appreciate people who melee a lot tho, not only is he or she keeping the boss busy and away from me, he or she is holding the boss in place so I can land my strikes. So he or she is an angel, getting no scores but helping me get scores. Thank you.)
- DYING. If you get KO, its the BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME if you do not immediately revive yourself with a senzu. You are just lying there as time goes by just hoping someone comes over and spends another 5 seconds or so reviving you. Make sure you carry a senzu, pop it the moment you get KO and keep dishing out damage. Dying also takes you out of your transformation, especially Beast, so you need to spend extra time / ki just to get it back. Depending on the value per second, most of the time its best not to get the transformation back if time is running out.
- MISSING. Everytime you miss an attack, you are wasting time and ki. The worst offender are ultimates that use all your ki and the boss evades or blocks or simply steps out of the way… now you have to charge ki and restart. This is another reason why SUPERS are the king of raids, not ultimates. The cost for missing something you spend a lot of ki on is just too great.
- Not Healing Your Teammates. Yes, not healing your teammates and saving your heals only for when YOU need it will ultimately reduce your efficiency and make you look like a jerk. I always use my heals for my teammates even if I am full health, because these teammates are keeping the boss AWAY FROM ME and helping me get hits in! Esp teammates that likes to EDB or melee, I make sure i keep them alive, they are angels that help me score well.
- Reviving teammate the wrong way. Yes, everyone should carry their own senzu. However, if you really need to revive a teammate, do it while charging ki. You are going to be charging ki anyways, might as well make that time useful. If you are just standing there reviving the teammate, you are wasting your own efficiency.
DPK and DPS
The two most important concepts to understand about raids is DPK (damage per Ki) and DPS (damage per second).
DPK is how much damage you are doing per ki bar. This matters because some skills like ultimates, have very high DPS but very low DPK. A low DPK means that you are
Timing and Positioning
Two players with the exact same build will have different results based on how well they manage timing and positioning. This really means efficiency. The more efficient player will always have the higher score. However, knowing about timing and positioning greatly improves your efficiency too.
TIMING
Timing everything you do. Timing when you shoot an attack. Timing when you charge ki etc. Most times, even half a heartbeat difference in timing makes huge difference and can make you hit or miss. Every boss has a different timing. Even size of map and terrain type affects timing.
Burst Charge vs Ultimate Charge
I know a lot of people think burst charge is best. But it is not.
Burst charge is very inefficient due to its start and end animation. As such, taking that into consideration, burst charge actually requires 1 second per ki bar, which is very very inefficient. It is good for specific situation like when you need 2 ki bar quickly but those situations are rare in a raid.
Ultimate charge is the best charge skill for raids IF you commit to always charging to full. If you do not charge to full, you will become inefficient over time, having to charge more often for less.
Comparing the two, I often get into a raid and I hear a teammate use burst charge while i use ultimate charge waiting for the boss to arrive (usually about 7 seconds). In that 7 seconds, I fully charge 11 bars of ki while that teammate using burst charge, I only hear about 2 and a half charge, which is about 7 ki bars only. Again, only 1 bar per second, very inefficient.
If you have the slots for it, having BOTH ultimate and burst charge is best. I used to run that setup a lot. Ultimately, i went for only ultimate charge because the situations which i need burst charge is just too rare.
About EMPEROR DEATH BEAM!
A lot of people condemns EDB (Extreme Dumb Blast?) in a raid but I am going to be very practical and go into the pros and cons (yes, there are actually pros!).
Lets start with the Cons, why everyone tells you not to EDB:
- Bad Score. I have tested EDB in raids over and over using all kinds of builds and my average score comes up to only about 2K to 4K even on games where my EDB pretty much hits most of the time. EDB just has such low DPK and DPS.
- You will use up all your Ki, you cannot stop halfway. So if you miss or the boss evades, you would have wasted your whole ki and time and have to do it all over again. Even if it all hits, it ends so quickly that you are spending most of your time charging ki, as such it has very low efficiency.
- Boss can dragon dash and stam break you because its an ultimate.
- Boss 100% will use multiple evasives if they have the stam for it. Even if boss dun have enough stam, about half the time boss will just block and this is the worst because now nobody can hurt the boss. (this is why i always have special beam canon to open up the block).
How about the Pros?
- Holds boss so teammates can hit more efficiently. This to me is the greatest redeeming feature of EDB. In fact, I hate to see the day nobody use EDB because I love at least one EDB guy in my team per match.
- Easy track and hit. Some people just cannot track the boss well, EDB solves that problem 90% of the time. Sometimes, boss can be bounced away at the last min causing the EDB to miss fully. Also, it is very brainless and easy to use so if you are already in commanding lead (see meta game section) and you just want to score 2K to 4K to maintain the lead leisurely, go EDB!
HOWEVER
Not everyone can EDB!
You have to build for it. Typically, you should not be using EDB if you can make only less than 40 hits. This means your ki is too low and less than 40 hits just helps nobody. Sometimes I see people play EDB with only 25 hits or so, it really doesnt help anyone. This means that you really need to build for EDB. You want to use meditation + any quick reinforcement skill to maintain the mediation and have 15 bars of ki. This is the only kind of setup i would encourage for EDB and I am thankful to this player for it.
Damage per Ki (DPK)
WIP
Damage Per Second (DPS)
WIP
The Meta Game
On top of scoring well per match, here are some meta considerations that will help you dramatically improve your leaderboard placement:
- WHEN TO COMMIT TIME
Raid is not the same at the start and towards the end. Why? Because the raid boss GAIN LEVELS! As the raid boss gets closer to level 99, the boss resistance increases and it becomes HARDER to score well doing the exact same thing. As such, I like to commit the most time on the FIRST AND SECOND DAY of a raid. This is when it is easiest to get max score per round and also when it is easiest to get games quickly as most people will be playing only the first two days. I typically commit about 10 hours all night with no sleep on the first day and try to hit 4 million to 5 million on the first day. This leads to the next point…
(first day of caulifla/kale raid)
- ESTABLISH COMMANDING LEAD
Placement on the leaderboard is not only how well you do per match (it is granted if you wish to be top 3, you should be getting 10K to 15K per match) but how you manage the moods of your competitors. Nothing crash the spirit and discourages your competitors than a commanding lead. When your competitor sees that your score is already so much higher than his or hers and its only the first day, it discourages him or her from trying too hard. This makes it so much easier to maintain your leaderboard placement over the rest of the days. I typically aim to maintain my score at twice the score of the second place person. If that person plays 500K the next day, I play 1 million and i keep maintaining that ratio. But I definitely do not work as hard anymore over the next few days. If your scores is just slightly higher than your competitor, it ENCOURAGES your competitor to work harder and now both of you have a hard time.
3. HOW TO GRIND
Yes, doing well in raids is the pinnacle of GRINDING. But not only silly grinding with poor result but it demands your top result every single time over an extended period of time. This means keeping your performance and focus for hours non stop. This is not an easy thing to do. I would say, people fail to become number one not because they played badly but they didn’t have the willpower to push for it. I was number two for the Broly raid because I didnt have the willpower to make that final push too. But in terms of grinding, I find that it helps TREMENDOUSLY by having hourly goals. I usually aim to have a 8 match and 400K to 500K goal per hour. As the days go on, it becomes harder and harder to have 8 matches per hour due to lesser and lesser people playing. I also make sure i take a 10 mins break at the top of each hour in order to keep my morale high. Over my 10 hours first day grind, I don’t waste time eating. I go to the bathroom at the top of each hour. I don’t waste time checking the leaderboard. Going back and forth the leaderboard reduces your matches per hour. I only check once at the top of each hour to make sure i am meeting my goals.
(second in Broly raid cos I totally burned out and cannot push the final 3 to 4 hours. Razor Guardian is amazing of cos!)
- TEAMWORK IS OP
The most OP way to do well in raids is to have a friend play EDB and you both drop matches continuously non stop by invitation. This is the most OP way to play raids because you are not waiting for matches so you are getting more matches and having a friend with a specialized EDB build just holding the boss so you can get max damage in ensure you always hit 15K per match. I rarely do this because i rather play with many different players and i hate to trouble people too much.
- FINAL TWO DAYS
Most people work hardest during the final two days and that is a very inefficient way of grinding raids because final few days the boss is at max 99 level and hardest to score max score against. If you have been maintaining commanding lead, final two days is just playing from time to time to maintain that gap. It will not take all day grinding to do. On the final day, I always calculate the time vs gap between me and the competitor just below me. I give him or her the benefit of the doubt that he or she will do max 500K per hour and I see how much time is left. I like to make sure that even if he or she grinds that full time, he or she will still be at least 800K to 1 million short of overtaking me. For example: if only 5 hours left, I assume that person will do 5 x 500 = 2.5 million and I make sure I keep a 3.5 million gap. Once I make that gap, I am done. I dun grind all the way on final day usually. Usually, the competitor is not stupid too. He or she will also calculate and know it is impossible to overtake and also give up. So its good for me and him or her.
Raid Ethics
Raid Ethics are what I think are best practises that makes the raid better for everone:
- Always use ALL HEAL
I do see people on the top 3 who never use all heals. People like that not only appear like jerks (yes, they play long enough to have zeni for all heals) but they also make the match less efficient for themselves as I explained in the general principles section.
- Hit the Ready Button
The moment you go into a room, hit the ready button. There is nothing more painful than watching the 15 second countdown because one guy didnt hit the button. Please respect everyone’s time.
- If you don’t have a solid build, just EDB
At least you will be helping the rest of the team.
