EPICFEST Exclusives

Dark Aegis Garu is a good midrange anti-Traitless Tanker and attacker. He has 153k base HP with 2 KBs, 320 range (Omnistrike with -150 to 400 range), 6400 DPS, 7 Speed, 151s CD and 5400 cost. Additional abilities in his arsenal include the ability to create level 5 Mini-Waves, Strengthen (+100% DMG at 50% HP), Survivor, Wave Immunity, and Resistance to Traitless.

Dark Aegis Garu has an impressive 612k effective HP vs Traitless, making it the tankiest unit in this niche, with Survive and a slow speed keeping him alive as long as possible. He also boasts an impressive offense, having a whopping 15.3k effective DPS when accounting for Strengthen and mini-waves. Overall, he tanks and eradicates Traitless enemies easily. His mini-waves have a good 813 pierce, and his main attack has 80 Omni piercing, allowing him to chip enemy backliners and hit multi-layered enemies more easily. Wave Immunity also ensures that he can easily destroy most wave stages in the game with his DPS, outranging most common wave enemies.

All of this may seem very impressive, but Dark Aegis Garu has several major weaknesses that can prevent him from being as good as he first seems. The first is its sub-par survivability outside of the Traitless category. An insufficient base HP and KB count, at a low-end standing range, leaves him vulnerable to enemy backliners and fast pushers. Mixed or Traited stages will often punish this and by late game, he will often not survive the early stages of a tough battle. Midrangers are generally susceptible to damage, and thus need a faster cooldown than longer-ranged alternatives, so his painfully long 151s CD makes it hard to recover from losing him early, with one Dark Aegis Garu often dying long before you can summon another.

In conclusion, Dark Aegis Garu is a unit with lots of impressive qualities, but is plagued by a long CD and sub-par base survivability. Dark Aegis Garu is limited by these flaws to not reach his full potential and only be able to perform decently, not exceptionally, in most general stages. However, he can still perform impressively in most Traitless stages. This is a rare and valuable niche which remains hard to find competent alternatives for, thus making him nice to own despite his issues.

Kasli the Bane (Dark Kasli) is an amazing surge Sniper. She creates a level 3 Surge (spawns 400 to 700) from 400 standing range (LD 275 to 675). Aside from these offensive capabilities, her defenses include 78.2k HP with 5 KBs, immunities to Wave, Weaken, Warp, Curse and Surge, and the rare Curse ability (100% chance, >100% uptime) which disables enemy status effects, so they cannot Slow/Freeze/etc any of your cats. Her cooldown is 125s.

Dark Kasli is near unstoppable. Her main strength is her utterly overwhelming 12k LD+Surge DPS against all non-Metal enemies, drastically higher than even the next best general LD attackers. Her damage output would be considered excellent even on a non-LD Midranger (on par with a top Midranger like Keiji after his Strengthen triggers), but with a higher standing range than most Midrangers, 275 piercing range, and the lingering hitbox of surges improving her accuracy and consistency, it is truly a game-breaking level of power. She does more than enough damage to quickly melt annoying backliners while also juggling fast melee peons that repeatedly walk into the surge, countering most classes of enemies well. Many things that would prevent other units from doing their job are no issue for Dark Kasli. You cannot Weaken her, and there aren't that many status effect enemies out there, but when there are, her Curse severely limits the chance they will get a chance to Freeze, Slow, Knockback or Toxic her or your other units, completely breaking stages that rely on these gimmicks to create difficulty. Waves and Surges cannot affect her, and her bulk and high KB count give her considerably above average survivability. Beyond her raw DPS, she hard counters Relics by turning off their signature Curse ability, enabling your other units to function as usual in their presence, while being uncursable herself, dominating the late-game Relic meta better than any other unit. Access to the rare Surge Immune ability makes Kappy and Floor 50 considerably easier challenges, and she is a dominant anti-Wave unit.

Dark Kasli is not infallible, despite her vast strengths. For one thing, she has a 275 range blindspot with only 125 inner range. It is rare that anything will bypass her bombardment of damage to infiltrate this blindspot, but faster or tankier peons may occasionally succeed. If her surge spawns at 700 range, most of her damage only hits from 450 to 825 range, making her effective blindspot bigger. Though at the same time, if it spawns at 400 range, it covers 250 to 525, and may cover more of her blindspot, but instead offer limited piercing. The randomness of this means sometimes she will be more vulnerable than normal, but make up for it with greater reach, or be less vulnerable than normal at a cost of less piercing power. She remains vulnerable to status effects (other than Weaken and Curse) until her first hit lands, and slower KB’d enemies might stay out of her attack zone for long enough to escape her curse and land a hit, so her Curse can be circumvented too, though often not an issue with proper setup. Curse can also turn off enemy Knockback or Warp abilities that sometimes help keep your units alive longer. These are, however, nitpicks that barely detract from her overall dominance in the game.

Kasli the Bane is undeniably one of the best Ubers in the game. She holds her edge all the way into the endgame, and has few to no bad matchups. At least one of her sheer power, her Curse, her immunities, or her durability will find application in essentially any stage. Her weaknesses are minor, and usually just result in her falling back on another strength instead of failing entirely. If you own Dark Kasli, you have essentially won the game.

D'arktanyan is an incredible midrange LD Rusher with Massive Damage to Traitless, and Strengthen doubling his damage when below 60% HP. From a standing range of 340, he attacks with 5100 DPS over an LD area of 200 to 550 with full backswing lasting 2.5s. He is Wave Immune and Warp Immune, and has 91.8k HP with 5 KBs and 30 Speed. He costs 4350 to deploy, and has a 91.2s Cooldown

D'arktanyan has more HP than a unit of his class has any business with. His immense bulk ensures you can almost always use all of his 5 KBs and trigger his Strengthen reliably. After Strengthen triggers, D'arktanyan still has more HP (>50k) than most of his competitors and can stay on the field in this state for a very long time, during which his enhanced 10k DPS is amongst the best in the game for general LD attackers. His long backswing further sustains his lifespan by keeping him out of danger after pushing the enemy frontline, while also increasing his offensive potential via using his KBs to rebound attack. Even when D'arktanyan does die, his short cooldown means there's another one coming soon. Factor in his rare ability to deal triple this damage output (30k effective DPS when Strengthened) to Traitless enemies and D'arktanyan's destructive power is nothing short of monstrous. He can outrange, tank or reach via stepping stone the majority of Traitless enemies, and his Wave Immunity lets him shut down essentially every wave enemy in the game, combining with his sheer power to make him near unmatched in these niches. Warp Immunity also allows him to exploit his bulk against ranged Star Aliens.

The main thing holding D'arktanyan back is his mid-level standing range which in some situations can make his performance suboptimal against high DPS enemy backliners, including certain Traitless bosses. Yulala and Crazed Tank variants directly outrange him, with too much damage to tank, and cannot be reliably stepping-stoned in their stages. Manic Dark's range and Freeze ability stop him in his tracks. Kappy's and Uril's surges eat through his HP very quickly, but as his speed and fast attacks let him often still land a few high damage hits on them, this only reduces him to a bit of a glass cannon rather than completely stops him. On the other end of the range spectrum his 200 range blindspot, while small, does exist and lets super melee range pushers like Bore variants annoy him.

It is interesting to note that D'arktanyan's strengthened general DPS is close to Meowsketeer's anti-Traited DPS. This should illustrate how broken he is; his general LD DPS is competitive with specialists, and his specialist DPS is out of this world. Combined with unusually large bulk to let him sustain that damage far longer than a typical Rusher, and a very short list of downsides, it is clear that he is easily one of the best units in the game and will be useful almost anywhere, save a few situations where range issues take hold. Given his high HP, high damage build, he benefits immensely from boost, and a hyper or ultramaxed D'arktanyan is borderline unstoppable, even in end game stages.

Dark Mitama is an extremely powerful anti-Traitless midrange CC / Support unit, whose core ability is to Slow and Weaken (50% power) Traitless enemies for 3.33 seconds. Defensively, she features 44.6k base HP, 6 Speed, and an astonishing 15 KBs to reposition herself on the field, as well as Resistance against Traitless. She also has immunities to Slow, Freeze, Weaken and Knockback and the trademark Wave Immunity of all Fest Ubers. Offensively, she can act as a Sniper that stands at 375 range, with LD that hits from 250 to 650 and DPS of 5400. Lastly, her cost is 5250, with a bit more than 2.5 minutes of recharge time.

Dark Mitama's main strengths are her powerful anti-Traitless abilities. With around 66% Slow and Weaken uptime, she is able to nullify or greatly reduce any Traitless enemy's pushing power. Another one of her strengths is her very high 178.5k effective HP, which is further doubled to 357k once her Weaken is factored. This lets her actually utilize most of her incredibly high KB count in her niche, granting her incredible survivability against Traitless. As her attack cycle is mostly backswing, she counterattacks on each of these KBs, instantly punishing the enemy that hit her. This also ensures she does not advance until she is ready to attack, increasing her already great survivability further. Her great stats in general let her counter a wide spectrum of enemies, especially annoying Traitless threats like R. Ost, Rain D, Kappy and Dolphina. Additionally, compared to other LD Snipers, her DPS is high and is paired with a quite large 275 piercing range, letting her reach backliners such as THE SLOTH, Camelle, and Master A. Her immunities extend her uses further, hard-countering Traitless wave attackers like Kory, Dober and Hermit, and CC enemies like Henry and Croakley.

When it comes to her flaws, the main ones are her below average standing range and slow speed. Despite her good offensive stats as a general LD unit, her base HP is low for a unit of her range class. Her speed, long backswing and high number of KBs, while very helpful for keeping her away from harm, reduce her offensive capability as it is hard for her to invade the blindspots of LD enemies as a Midranger. This often can be remediated by employing slower meatshields and support units, but she can still struggle on stages that feature both LD and Omnistrike enemies, such as Curry Comet. Lastly, as her cooldown is longer than average and her cost is somewhat expensive, you normally won't have multiple of her on the field.

Overall, Dark Mitama is a very valuable anti-Traitless unit with broken crowd control capabilities against them, being able to single handedly dominate any Traitless-heavy stage and counter almost all enemy types including CC and wave threats. As a midrange LD unit for general use her health is low, but when properly protected you can utilize her impressive DPS and piercing power to great effect. In conclusion, Dark Mitama is a very good unit which can work in multiple situations and features a niche that is difficult to replace.

Shadow Gao is an excellent Backliner with almost complete dominance against Traitless enemies. It has 97k HP with 4 KBs, 6300 DPS at 480 range, 6000 cost, 158s Cooldown and 9 Speed. It also has Wave and KB Immunities, as well as Massive Damage and Freeze for 1s against Traitless.

Shadow Gao's main strength lies in its immense power against Traitless enemies. Not only does it have an almost unrivaled 17k effective DPS and a bonus Freeze to mildly disrupt anything that survives, it also outranges most common Traitless enemies, and has high enough HP and endurance to sometimes tank and directly hit those that it doesn't. KB Immunity further helps it land attacks uninterrupted, giving it a rare and especially good matchup against Mr. Mole. All of this combined means it destroys most Traitless bosses throughout the game effortlessly, completely dominating Floor 30/40, and makes it essentially the top counter to high range Traitless bosses like Crazed Wall/Axe variants which can give even other Epicfest exclusives some trouble. Shadow Gao also works very well in general wave stages, especially those with Traitless wave enemies, and does quite well even in purely Traited stages thanks to solid base DPS and survivability.

While very strong, Shadow Gao isn't without its flaws. Its high cost could make it hard to spawn on cash-tight rush stages, and KB immunity could hurt it in high pressure stages where getting repositioned by an occasional KB would be preferable. While Shadow Gao's rather high HP somewhat justifies it, its high cooldown can also make it painful and hard to recover from when one does die. Within the anti-Traitless meta, its only real counters are Traitless bosses with Surge like Kappy or Uril, as these can bypass its range advantage while also shredding through its HP, though usually not before it lands a few hits and takes a good chunk of their HP anyway.

Shadow Gao is a strong and well-rounded backliner with extra abilities allowing it to counter Traitless and Wave enemies extremely well, which are 2 very desirable niches. While it does have a few flaws in its build, these do not stop Shadow Gao from being excellent at its job, and very desirable to own.