So...what are Gowen's non-attack grims supposed to do?

[DeeGee]

Simple question here...see, by now, if it isn't blindingly apparent that every sphere has attack grims, I don't know where you've been.

Falkow has eldritch hands, black storm (this one is actually rather dependable IMO), thunderheads, and tempest. Not exactly the greatest candidate for grim damage, but Falkow doesn't need it thanks to its return grims, which provide it massive utility in the large majority of matchups.

Lawtia: it's a bit more situational, with cards such as criminal edge, tears of blood, and pure terror. But generally, Lawtia grims used in the endgame have the ability to hit as hard as Gowen's, without the necessity of raising sphere too much. If you put in overdose on MD augment, that's 100 damage right there for 2 SP. However, you rarely see these grims because spending multiple SP to force 1 or 2 SP in revives just isn't efficient when you can instead skill up and learn to time death's embrace and bitter destiny, and say "**** you!" to your opponent when your 3 SP grim wipes out 5+ SP in one go.

Refess: the sphere that IMO goes stride for stride with Gowen on attack grims, and even one-ups it in quite a few cases where defense or undeads are involved. Hand of god, burning sun, judgment hammer, and magic bolt (with folrart mage support) round out its collection, and between those grims, you basically have the answer to just about anything you want to kill. Oh, and there's also hero's strike, which I have no idea why you'd want to use it, but okay. (Actually I can see FFS+salamander->toromea->hero's strike on an eskatia->fireball breath vs. EN)

Now onto Gowen: yeah, it's got a lot of low-level attack grims. Roar of anger. Brave Strike. Dragon breath. Dragon fire. Burning air. Fire snake whip. Boulder drop. River of fire. And then it has some mid-level attack grims. Fire arrow. Explosion of anger. Ball of flame. Rain of arrows. Fire tornado. Roar of the Flame Emperor. Yep, it's got a bunch of them. Problem being? They're all more or less variations on a theme--spend an inefficient amount of SP at the end of the game to wipe out final copies when LP is a more pressing issue than SP, since you have SP from dying units. Problem with that? There's only so many of these grims you can pack. Although they all have their situations in which they shine, there are only so many of them you can pack. A dragon breath, a couple of fire arrows, and maybe a ball of flame, and that's basically all of the grimspam (11 SP total) that a file outside of big red can really sustain.

Which brings us to the big issue--what the heck are Gowen's non-attack grims supposed to do? There are a handful I can think of:

Ignition, Fairy Dance, Magic Weapon, Song for a Hero, Reforestation, Miracle Fruit, Gravity Sphere, and maybe you can count Lawtia's punishment hole in there too.

Now, compare all of the above to:

Falkow:
Sweeping tidalwave, return, cyclone, wrath of the sea lord.

Lawtia:
Exchange of souls, death's embrace, bitter destiny.

Refess:
Solar cage, mirror of light, general's order, key to the holy realm.

The comparison in tech grims isn't even close. General's Orders makes any Gowen buff grim look absolutely silly by comparison, and Falkow and Lawtia's "this is a low SP game in which we have the advantage" simply invalidate a long laundry list of strategies that just might work if you had the SP to play them.

Oh, right...Gowen used to have one really decent tech grim, coupled with a certain SS that forced a low-SP environment ala Lawtia/Falkow. Yep, I'm talking about fruit + double RFA. Too bad that got nerfed to the point that you can't really use it too well against rushes, huh?

So, testers, when is Gowen going to get any decent tech grims?

[Icyglare]

You should find the epic thread that Callonia made, if you're going to make a QQ thread towards a specific sphere, you should use his as an example.

[Ropey]

I just used a file with bringer, Sakura Dilate and a bunch of damage grims . The problem? If your opponent don't use enough characters then Sak is limited. It's tough to do enough damage these days. More and more units have a little bit of def or 55hp and bringers extra 10 open damage is really missed.

You might as well multi with dilate and just return as every other muppet does. It's obvious that if you can engage or return cards then you break the link between cards. Unless you constantly hit the same unit you can't do that with Gowen.

[Callonia]

RFA wasn't nerfed, It was simply made equal with other removal soul skills.

And since you asking what they're supposed to do..

Ignition, Fairy Dance, Magic Weapon, Song for a Hero, Reforestation, Miracle Fruit, Gravity Sphere, and maybe you can count Lawtia's punishment hole in there too.

Ignition = This grimioe can be used by anything and can be multisphered. It reduces the unit's hp to 10 in exchange of adding it to the attack power.

Units that make best use of this grimiore is OP Dilate and his death slash + Veteran Folrart Paladin, anything that counters on attack numbers sucks to be you if you get salamandered though but this is a high risk high profit grimiore. I used It on my wasseir and watched wassier do field wipe after field wipe every turn.

Fairy Dance= Counter to Balls of flame and makes field harder to fieldwipe in general. Zombies sometimes multisphere just to use it to buff their full field of zombies.

Magic Weapon = potent grimiore for op dilate, earth dragon, bringer, asuet, or a fodder grimiore for Mage Frontier Soldier which gains alot of stats from discarding magic weapon etc. Makes their actions much more lethal.


Song for a Hero = make your opponent rage with cheesy units if you wear their field down to the point where a single lvl 5 can fieldwipe them repeatedly. Bestest used as finisher grim.


Reforestation = Its used as a Cure for Gowen units that don't wanna multisphere into refess sphere for Cure. And it has been used magnificently as healing grim.

Miracle Fruit = Only reason this grimiore exists at all is to cover Alteil Team's **** to say that there is a "counter" to RETURNS. Nothing more, nothing less. So they can get away with never nerfing return and keeping WK one trick return pony. Just pretend this grimiore never existed, you'll have better time. Its something called Lip Service.

Gravity Sphere = In case you haven't noticed, Gowen have quite a few agility 1 units, and this grimiore will make units attack in random order instead of agility order and field wipe you. Such units as genshin etc etc

Punishment Hole = Control card, nuff said. I ran into punishment hole file once and it hurt. Level of annoyness is maximum! Lameness is equal to pixy and defs. Only weakness is that gowen units is unaffected which is why people ignore it because they are sissies and want 100% control something about power complex.

[DeeGee]

Callonia, I don't mean the existing grims.

I meant what are Gowen's non-attack grims in general supposed to do? What's the theme here? Just a bunch of stuff used more by other spheres than Gowen itself?

[Pikeru]

Speaking of Miracle Fruit and excuses, let's not forget the new Torte used to raise your fairys' levels every turn. It was an excellent ability that served no purpose past countering returns. The fact they decided to remove it imo screams bias.

[Icyman2]

Old torte was terrible...

[Callonia]

Speaking of Miracle Fruit and excuses, let's not forget the new Torte used to raise your fairys' levels every turn. It was an excellent ability that served no purpose past countering returns. The fact they decided to remove it imo screams bias.

It serves to buff Bringer's damage output on fairies so he can slay them harder XD

Callonia, I don't mean the existing grims.

I meant what are Gowen's non-attack grims in general supposed to do? What's the theme here? Just a bunch of stuff used more by other spheres than Gowen itself?

Out of all grimiores you listed, I see Fairy Dance used the most especially by tribals that manage to lay down like 4 units or more on the field. Merc nation, Beltorart, and Pixies. Once, I saw a solar kingdom file using fairy dance.

2 times, a falkow pike file used a fairy dance on their field lol


The pattern is utility grimiores that benefits gowen sphere as much as other spheres as well.

General Orders, I have seen bigs multisphere into refess to use general's orders to dodge the assassins for their bigs. Refess non-attack grimiores have as much utility as gowen ones does. Blessings was used on lawtia units.
Cures used on bigs from other spheres.
etc etc.

The most selfish sphere here is probably Falkow with sole exception of aurora. Their grimiores pretty much only suit themselves and any rush files that multisphere for return abuse.

[worthing]

Use mercenary, you'll never need another grim ever

[Icyman2]

Use mercenary, you'll never need another grim ever

+1