Review: Greco-Roman 3 Pantheon

Introduction

Due to the relative simplicity of these cards, this review will be a bit shorter than the last. (Review length will unsurprisingly be proportional to the nuance of the cards reviewed.)

The Greco-Roman 3 pantheon is generally quite good but slightly mixed. As a whole, these cards serve to advance power creep and further cement our current combo-focused meta, largely via the addition of Cronus and Uranus into our subpools. Hestia is a fairly unique red sub and a shiny new FUA option, perhaps comparable to a differently focused Glavenus. Tethys and Astraea are the least broadly applicable, though they can still find homes on a handful of teams (and have some nice art as well). The useful rolls (Cronus, Uranus, and Hestia) are luxury cards, not essentials, and should be thought of as such.

Two general things to note about Greco-Roman 3:

• This is a 6-star pantheon. The cards come in 6-star forms with awakenings already available and immediately able to undergo Ultimate Evolution. The data is unclear about whether 5-star pantheons and 6-star pantheons have the same rates in the normal unmodified REM, but it has been shown repeatedly that 5- and 6-star pantheons have the same rates when featured in a Godfest. Outside of typical GungHo desire sensor nonsense, you do not have to worry about these cards being statistically harder to roll than any 5-star pantheon card.
• Additionally, this is a pantheon with Awoken evolutions only. This means the unevolved base form has a different skill than the evolved Awoken form. We'll go through the skills of both the base and evolved forms later on in this review. All of the cards have completely parallel actives with identical effects and cooldowns, differing only in the colors of orbs produced.

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Card Ratings and Discussion

Because the leader skills and active skills of the entire pantheon are very similar, they have been reviewed together, after each individual card's analysis, and the analysis of individual cards will focus on sub potential. You can click any link in the table to jump to the corresponding section. The arrow ↑ at the bottom right of each section will take you back up here. Please see this page for an explanation of the rating criteria.

Rarity	Card	Sub	Lead	Assist*	Overall
6	Hestia	A	B		A
	Tethys	B-	B-		B+
	Cronus	A+	B	A / B+	A+
	Astraea	B	C+		B+
	Uranus	A+	B+		A+

   * A for the base (non-Awoken) form, B+ for the evolved (Awoken) form

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Hestia [Sub: A | Lead: B | Assist: A/B+ | Overall: A]

HP: 3473 | ATK: 1335 | RCV: 618 | WT: 820 | God/Healer LS: 2x ATK for Fire & Wood Att., 4x ATK for allies with both Att.; 3x ATK, 25% reduced damage when Fire, Wood & Light attack at once. [1/144/1, 43.75% shield] AS: No skyfall combos for 1 turn; changes all Orbs to Fire, Wood, Light & Heal Orbs. [CD: 7]

Hestia's probably the most interesting card of the set. Her most immediately obvious features are her FUA and three heart OEs, and so the cards that she most obviously competes with are Urd and Glavenus. The former is common and fairly well-rounded; the latter has extremely high HP and Attack but is a 6* roll from a 10-stone REM. Among these cards, Hestia finds her place as being the FUA option that doubles as a powerful RCV stick -- though not as ludicrous as Mel, she is still easily capable of outhealing entire teams with a single Heart TPA.

She gains further value in being God-type, being unbindable, having a notably short base cooldown, and covering an uncommon color combination. These are all qualities that let her function where Urd and Glavenus could not, and add up to a unique card with substantial use cases. Hestia's worst feature, her low non-RCV statline, is partly compensated for by her huge utility and ability to take Dragon Killer latents; sadly, though, there is no making up for her mediocre HP.

Hestia is a great sub for diverse leaders such as Enra, Ra Dragon, and nearly any combo lead. She has special value as a nice unbindable fire/wood coverage sub for teams that rely on colors, such as the aforementioned Ra Dragon. Specifically, she shines as a coverage option for 7x6 swap teams led by Blue Uruka, as a team such as Uruka x Blue Hunter can have trouble productively covering these colors. (Her base active is not useful with rainbow leaders, but is fortunately very reasonable to inherit over.)

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Tethys [Sub: B- | Lead: B- | Assist: A/B+ | Overall: B+]

HP: 3765 | ATK: 1635 | RCV: 348 | WT: 819 | God/Devil LS: 2x ATK for Water & Dark Att., 4x ATK for allies with both Att.; 3x ATK, 25% reduced damage when Water, Wood & Dark attack at once. [1/144/1, 43.75% shield]  AS: No skyfall combos for 1 turn; changes all Orbs to Water, Wood, Dark & Heal Orbs. [CD: 7]

Compared to her adorable art, Tethys as a card is a bit of a let-down. Unlike Hestia, Tethys doesn't have much to make up for her low weighted stats. She's still not a bad sub due to solid awakenings and a nice base active, but simply isn't that special. She's largely a worse and outclassed version of Scheat.

Most places you might use the aforementioned Scheat, you can use Tethys as a slightly inferior option. You can stick a Weld equip on her to make it feel like almost the real deal. If you already have a Scheat or aren't really in need of blue TPA subs, it's very worth considering not evolving Tethys to take advantage of the attribute absorb void active.

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Cronus [Sub: A+ | Lead : B | Assist: A/B+ | Overall: A+]

HP: 4053 | ATK: 1703 | RCV: 208 | WT: 815 | God/Attacker LS: 2x ATK for Wood & Light Att., 4x ATK for allies with both Att.; 3x ATK, 25% reduced damage when Wood, Light & Dark attack at once. [1/144/1, 43.75% shield] AS: No skyfall combos for 1 turn; changes all Orbs to Wood, Light, Dark &  Heal Orbs. [CD: 7]

Extremely straightforward. Cronus does't do anything complex; he simply hits and hits hard, with awakenings and active that support this role. He might be cute, but he's not particularly subtle. If you are in a position to be thinking about Alt. Arena, note that he can take Physical Killer latents to blast through the otherwise annoying Noah. He is not especially preferable for Arena 1-3 due to his absurd damage compared to almost all other cards.

Cronus is usable on essentially any combo team as a triple 7c powerhouse. He is also usable on Rushana teams and gets a big shoutout for being a monstrous Kamimusubi option.

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Astraea [Sub: B | Lead: C+ | Assist: A/B+ | Overall: B+]

HP: 3815 | ATK: 1705 | RCV: 390 | WT: 852 | God/Balance LS: 2x ATK for Light & Water Att., 4x ATK for allies with both Att.; 3x ATK, 25% reduced damage when Fire, Water & Light attack at once. [1/144/1, 43.75% shield] AS: No skyfall combos for 1 turn; Changes all Orbs to Fire, Water, Light & Heal Orbs. [CD: 7]

Astraea sits in the unfortunate spot of having awakenings that clash with her active and only happen to benefit a small number of teams. Light row teams aren't weak (remember that B-rated and even C-rated cards can clear Arenas 1-3 when used properly) and Astraea does bring a huge number of rows, adding significantly to their passive damage. However, light row leads as a whole largely want high HP subs, good utility, and reliable orb generation -- none of which she can provide. (There's a 13.5% chance that her active won't give enough lights to make a row.)

Teams like Ameno, Saria, and row-focused Ilm could all benefit from Astraea, but she is not the best choice for any of them, and Ameno in particular doesn't crave rows for the content he is typically used in.

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Uranus [Sub: A+ | Lead: B+ | Assist: A/B+ | Overall: A+]

HP: 3543 | ATK: 1683 | RCV: 388 | WT: 820 | God/Devil LS: 2x ATK for Dark & Fire Att., 4x ATK for allies with both Att.; 3x ATK, 25% reduced damage when Fire, Water & Dark attack at once. [1/144/1, 43.75% shield] AS: No skyfall combos for 1 turn; changes all Orbs to Fire, Water, Dark & Heal Orbs. [CD: 7]

Very similar to Cronus and similarly straightforward usage. He mostly differs in that he can take God Killer latents, increasing his potential against some key late-game spawns. Like Cronus, Uranus is also not especially preferable for Arena 1-3 due to his absurd damage compared to almost all other cards.

Uranus is stellar on pretty much any combo team. Due to Reincarnated Haku's great sub capabilities, he is also the best leader of the bunch (more on that below).

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Leader Skills [Astraea: C+ | Tethys: B- | Hestia/Cronus: B | Uranus: B+ ]

All the leader skills are simply color swaps of each other, so we'll evaluate them as a whole. We'll use Hestia's as an example:

LS: 2x ATK for Fire & Wood Att., 4x ATK for allies with both Att.; 3x ATK, 25% reduced damage when Fire, Wood & Light attack at once [1/144/1, 43.75% shield]

This leader skill seems all right on paper, especially numerically, but the more you look the worse and more bizarre it gets. The first thing to notice is that the full passive multiplier only applies to Fire/Wood and Wood/Fire cards. Cards with only one of those colors deal only 1/4 damage (assuming the same friend leader) compared to cards with both. This greatly restricts your sub options and can be difficult for many players to teambuild around without resorting to poor or incoherent choices. In addition, fully activating the leader skill requires attacking with Light in addition to Fire and Wood. This seems to incentivize the use of a Fire/Light or Wood/Light sub -- but confusingly, such a sub would only get 1/4 of the full multiplier, as by definition it cannot be Fire/Wood or Wood/Fire.

The end result is a leader that's very limiting to build for and requires you to deliberately hamstring at least one sub to actually play. No, we don't know why this is a thing or who thought this would be a good idea.

It should be noted that with absolutely perfect teams, Hestia might be rated higher, as she can take advantage of Enra as a sub. However, most players do not have access to several Enras and other perfect subs, and simply might not want to even if they could -- why lead Hestia and sub Enra when you can lead Enra and sub Hestia for generally much better results? These concepts are true of the rest of the series as well.

As the leader skills are identical except for the colors required, they all share this same awkwardness. Astraea compounds these issues with her utilization of rows and correspondingly greater orb hunger. (It's possible to simply not play her with light rows, in which case you abandon 5/8 of your leader's awakenings. Neither option is appealing.) On the flip side, Uranus in particular has a great subpool, and so is a modestly better leader than the rest despite still being awkward.

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Actives [Non-Awoken: A | Awoken: B+]

All the actives are simply color swaps as well. Thus, we'll discuss them a whole.

Non-Awoken form. Voids Attribute Absorbs for 1 turn; changes all Orbs to three colors (depending on the card) & Heal Orbs. (CD: 15)

Really nice active. Attribute absorb void is still not very well distributed, and this is its first availability in the standard REM. It is super efficient for multi-color combo teams, as it both provides the absorb void and immediately grants a board to take advantage of it. Several endgame spawns such as Noah Dragon and Hashihime become considerably less annoying when you don't have to worry about their color absorb mechanic.

The diversity of a four-color board gives the active extra flexibility: base Cronus, for instance, creates Wood, Light, Dark, and Heart, allowing him to be inherited as an attribute absorb void + kill board on teams as diverse as Kamimusubi, Rushana, Blue Hunter, and more. All of the base Greco-Roman 3 cards have this flexibility to some degree. Even if you don't need the attribute absorb void (or don't end up encountering the relevant spawn), the actives are still usable as board inherits, though you do end up paying a hefty cooldown.

Attribute absorb void is fantastic and quite convenient. On the other hand, it is certainly not essential in any dungeons to date. There are ways around every color absorb spawn in NA without resorting to an active like this, so while convenient, the mechanic is still a luxury.

Finally, none of these cards are good subs in their non-awoken forms. Their stats and awakenings are pretty minimalistic and really only have inherit value. (Cronus and Uranus are technically passable, but... just don't.)

Awoken form. No skyfall combos for 1 turn; changes all Orbs to three colors (depending on the card) & Heal Orbs. (CD: 7)

These actives are decent and useful. The no-skyfall component actually lowers the skill's cooldown -- a four-color board with Hearts should normally be 8 turns, not 7. (For some reason, GungHo has conceptualized no skyfall a "negative" effect.) The resulting short cooldown makes the skill both an efficient base active and great to inherit over. That aside, eliminating skyfall for a turn can allow leads such as Anubis x Diablos to damage control in otherwise impractical situations. (Note that this usage is slightly undermined by the effect lasting only one turn; spawns requiring damage control generally take more than one turn to kill.)

Four-color board actives are quite nice on 6x5 boards, as they guarantee at least seven combos no matter how bad your orb distribution is (and will almost always have more). They lose value slightly on 7x6 as a tricolor will typically give more damage more reliably, but are still powerful enough the majority of the time. You can combine them with other skills (ex. a heartbreaker) to more reliably generate a focused kill board if necessary.

illirica from reddit adds:

The "no skyfall" part of the active skill is also extremely useful for getting around attribute absorbs. As someone who managed to skyfall a dark combo 4 rounds in a row this morning on Zaerog in the OSC, a no skyfall active would have simplified that part of the battle significantly. With 7x6 leaders like Diablos, it's pretty easy for even a combo lead like Anubis to reach a decent level of multiplier while avoiding matching a certain color of orbs. RNG, naturally, often sees fit to "helpfully" supply the unmatched color through skyfall. Sometimes having a board change that you know you can use and rely on your own skill at matching (and not matching) can be quite useful.

 All sentiments that we wholeheartedly echo!

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Summary
These cards are quite good on the whole, but do not represent something that most players should be actively hunting for. The triple 7c cards represent a small advancement of power creep, but are utterly unnecessary in almost every dungeon outside of the extremely challenging Alt. Arena and can prove explicitly disadvantageous in Arenas 1-3. This, combined with the very probable NA release of a strong farmable double 7c, makes Cronus and Uranus not quite as worth chasing as they first appear, though they are of course absolutely awesome if you do happen to roll them. Tethys and Astraea are very pretty but relatively average, and most useful for their base form inherits. Hestia is fantastic and relatively unique, though still not entirely irreplaceable.

Rolling for these cards isn't a bad idea if the pantheon shows up in an otherwise solid Godfest. On the flip side, it is probably not worth rolling mediocre Godfests to chase these cards.