Leader Skills

The importance of your choice in a leader skill
One of the most important and sometimes daunting task you'll encounter is choosing your team leader skill (which unit is going to be your first slot on the team). There are a wide variety of leader skills and knowing which is going to benefit you the most will come with time and experience. This decision can make or break a team. Let's go over the basics.

What does a leader skill actually do?
A leader skill modifies the stats of your team. They can range from 2-4 stat buffs depending on the leader skill chosen.

What kind of team are you trying to build?

 * Mono Element
 * Regional
 * Rainbow
 * Raid/Collaboration

Based on what you are trying to build for a team your leader skill choice will change. So, it's a good idea to find a few units in your collection from each element, region and damage modifier that can fill different team leader roles.

Example: You might choose as a physical damage leader and  as a magic damage leader for Mono Wind Element teams.

I don't have the a top tier unit with a great leader skill. What should I do?
Find the next best option and work on them until you get a unit with a great leader skill for the type of team you are building. There is almost always another option.

Do I have good units that can take advantage of my chosen leader skill?
For the most part, this knowledge comes with experience and knowing your unit's strong points. It never hurts to ask someone else what units might work well for a particular leader skill choice, if you are having trouble figuring it out yourself. You can also look up a units damage type(s) and formulas on ACDB.

How important is Gate 3 Enlightenment for a chosen units leader skill?
It really depends, you'll probably want to do some research on leader skills in List of units to determine this.

Enlightened vs. Non Enlightened Leader Skills
Enlightened leader skills have an improvement in their stat buffs over their pre-enlightened counter parts. When you're new to the game you'll want to be aware of this fact and do a little research on Unit Leader Skills before investing heavily into any unit. Sometimes these upgrades can change stat buffs from specific damage modifiers PATK/MATK to a generalized All ATK buff. Lets take a look at an example.

With Enlightenment Ramses jumps from 50% to 70% stat buffs. This is pretty typical of Farmable Units, but as you can see he gains 10% HP buff increase and his PATK buff from Pre Enlightenment gets split into a 20% All ATK and 20% PATK buff. Overall a general stat buff improvement. This is what you'll want to be aware of as you choose which units to focus on.

Recommendations for Leader Skills
Keep in mind you'll probably want to prioritize units with a farmable hard quest, unless you are investing your hard earned cash into gems or have a good stockpile of free gems. Generally speaking good leader skills provide buffs to HP, an ATK modifier, and Strong vs. Element. Occasionally a good leader skill will have an Evasion or CT modifier. Remember you are not only looking at the units base Leader Skill, but their Enlightenment Leader Skill as well.

Key things to look for in Leader Skill composition:


 * 50% HP Buff paired with some sort of PATK, MATK, all ATK, or weapon specific ATK modifier
 * A combined total >=50% PATK, MATK, all ATK or weapon specific ATK modifier paired with other stat buffs
 * MATK or weapon specific Power Buffs paired with any other stat buff combination
 * Strong vs. Element Buff (generally, the higher percentage the better. Typically only relevant when fighting against that element.) paired with any other stat buff combination

Mono Element Team
These teams are most commonly used. They are preferred because many maps are oriented towards specific elements which can be countered with the opposing element. They can also be good on mixed maps simply due to the synergy provided by a good elemental leader skill. Below are links to the respective mono element pages.


 * Fire


 * Water


 * Thunder


 * Wind


 * Light


 * Dark

Special Cases

These are units with good leader skills that are exceptions to the key things you would look for in a leader skill either due to well rounded buffs for a mixed team, good general debuff reduction, resistance increase across the board or lack of a better option for certain harder game content.

Regional Team
The second most commonly used team is a regional team, but in terms of leader skills good for a regional team there is only one that is any good and worth mentioning.

Rainbow Team
The third type of team focuses on whole party buffs. This is less common because the leader skills tend to give lower stats, so sometimes units will not have enough stats to deal damage and HP to be viable in high end content.

Raid Specific
These teams are focused on content that comes in 2 week bursts during collaboration events primarily. As such they aren't necessarily priority, however they can be nice to have as an option. Typically when you are building a raid team you are looking for the key things you would look for in a mono team, but with heavier emphasis on three additional buff types:


 * Strong vs. Enemy Type
 * Debuff Reduction
 * Status Res %

Examples:

Useful Links Related to this Page

 * Unit Leader Skills: A full listing of all unit leader skills currently in game.


 * Hard Quest Farm Guide: A beginners guide to farming hard quests for unit shards.


 * Farmable Character Shards: If you need to check if a unit has a hard quest.


 * Memento Leader Skills: For information on recommended Memento Leader Skills.