The Mo Long counter Advent Calendar - Day 2
The team: Gemini Bastet Taor
Usable against: Any team that does not have a strong wind threat like Ritesh or Seara. Also does not work against Triana, but will work against other revivers even wind ones like Elad.
How it works: I always like teams that outspeed and kill the enemy before they get a turn. After all, dead monsters can't vio proc. Unless you're using def ignore though, the number of different teams that can accomplish this is quite limited since you need to strip will, land def break, buff your DD, ATB boost your DD, and then finally nuke. You can only have 3 monsters in a GWO, so you obviously need to use supports that cover multiple roles. Gemini is a key monster here because he does both strip and def break on 1 skill, and even provides a spd lead for the team. Meanwhile Bastet provides the atk buff and atb boost, and she also has impactful other skills that ensure you can cleanup the fight on subsequent turns.
I'm normally not a fan of having to land both AoE strip and AoE def break, as that is way too many resistance checks for me to consider reliable. I never use any other AoE strippers (not counting Tiana) on offense in arena or GW because of this. However despite Taor having an AoE nuke, his strength lies in his single target Squall. This is actually a single target nuke team, not an AoE cleave team. I'm not expecting Gemini to strip and def break all 3 enemy monsters, I only need him to strip and def break 1 monster. Once I squall someone out of the way, the resulting 3v2 becomes much safer and manageable regardless of who is left.
Strategy: Always Squall first instead of Taor S3, even if you manage to def break all 3 enemies. Squall guarantees a 1 shot on a def broken enemy, whereas tanky monsters can survive Taor's S3. Squall also sets you up for subsequent turns with spd buff, and if you start with Squall you get 3 turns in a row of a strong attack (S2 - S3 - S2, versus starting with S3 where you'll have to use S1 for your 3rd turn). Mo Long is first priority if you manage to def break him. Perna (or whatever the fire bruiser is) is lowest priority since fire monsters are the least threat to your lone DD.
If you are using this team against Elad, I wouldn't risk going for Elad first. It's perfectly fine to allow him to revive an ally, dead monsters who get revived don't keep their ATB bar so you can just repeatedly kill the revived monster. You have multiple sources of def break, and Taor has multiple nukes in a row.
Runing considerations:
Taor is on a standard spd nuker build. Vio is not necessary.
Standard Gemini build is despair, but a lot of players have pretty fast Bastets and since Gemini needs to be tuned to go before Bastet, swift Gemini is ok too. You shouldn't be relying on Gemini despair procs anyway. I also highly recommend 85 acc on him. A lot of the Mo Long comps you'll be using this on are frequently on max res builds, such as Jeanne and Harmonia.
Bastet can be on whatever build you have her on for other uses. Just make sure you have her fast enough to outspeed Mo Long. My personal threshold is to expect 260 Mo Long in G3 (and some will be even faster).
Seriousness factor: 7/10. Overall a pretty high win rate team for me. Loses points though because you do have to land strips and def breaks. Also, while fairly rare, shield sets on the def can greatly reduce the consistency of this team.
Posted Dec 2, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC · edited