Rare Recruit Strawhats - Updated Character Review

Rare Recruit Strawhats – Updated Character Review

The second character review post is already here! In the few days that have passed since the first one, quite a few things have happened, including the arrival of sockets. As such, we are going to add a hidden powers comment so you know how many sockets a character has and what we recommend you to choose.

The tables below focus on the second version of the Strawhats, which were added to Rare Recruit shortly after the game launched. There was a first batch called “Baroque Works”, which we have decided to skip since most of those units are farmable and only two or three of the ones available are interesting in One Piece Treasure Cruise current state. However, worry not, because we have decided to include Robin in our review!

	Monkey D. Luffy Gear 3rd Captain Ability: Boosts any character’s ATK by 3.5x after hitting 3 Perfects in a row Special: Deals 15x character's ATK in STR to all enemies Number of Powers: 2
Review: You may like how his captain ability works or not, but nobody would deny that Gear 3rd Luffy has been a beast since the moment he was released. He has high attack and health, he has one of the best skills in the game and he can clear most if not every single piece of content released so far. Training Forests? Check. Clashes? Check. Fortnights? Check. However, such power can’t be hold without a disadvantage. And Luffy’s is the fact that, if you miss one of the first 3 Perfects you need to hit in order to unlock his power, your damage output will be vastly reduced. For that reason, you may not find Gear 3rd suitable for some intensive farming, and it’s not a captain that you will use every day (unless you really like it, of course!). However, he is a wild card that you can use when your standard Slasher, Striker, or type based team isn’t enough.
The Future: Not much changes for Gear 3rd Luffy. He keeps being a really useful unit and, in some cases, he even is a better option than Voyage Dream (aka Log) Luffy. There is a new buff some raid bosses use that makes them immune to damage until a certain number of hits have been landed. With Gear 3rd Luffy, you won’t lose any damage due to this shield, since the first three hits (which don’t do any damage due to said shield) weren’t important to begin with.
Hidden Powers: Since Gear 3rd Luffy only has 2 sockets, there aren’t many combinations available for you. Our recommendation, however, is that you priorize Bind (Lock) reduction above everything else, since a character binded vastly reduces the amount of damage you can inflict to your foes. The other socket can be filled with Despair (Silence) reduction, or any other power of your liking.

Original 5 Stars – Updated Character Review

The Original 5 Stars – Updated Character Review

 

This marks the first of a series of planned articles, where we are planning to talk about the current states of different Rare Recruit exclusives. A lot of these units have been out for a while now and, while they may have initial been great units, things may have changed since their initial release. We will talk about how those units fare in Global and we will try to summarize their current state in Japan in order to analyze their long lasting appeal.

 

Our first article will discuss the initial batch of 5* Rare Recruit Units that were available at the time the game was originally released. This is a pretty small list, but this should give you at least an idea of what we are trying to accomplish with this series.

 

	Portgas D. Ace Flame Mirror Captain Ability: Boosts ATK of QCK characters by 2.5x Special: Deals 15x character's ATK in QCK to all enemies
Review: For me personally, this was the coolest unit in the game when it first released. Ace is obviously an awesome character in general, so, combined with the low amount of QCK characters available at the time, he was one of the best pulls you could get.   How does he hold up now though? Kind of so-so really. He’s still the only 2.5x ATK booster Captain for QCK units, but Jozu tends to outshine him as a Captain in a lot of situations. While his HP is nice, his other stats really aren’t much to write home about and his special is pretty lacklustre. While he’s still very useful, he wouldn’t be our first pick if we were rolling a new account.
The Future: The future doesn’t really change much for Ace, other than the fact that he will probably see even less use as a Captain. There will still be some instances where his slightly higher ATK boost will come in handy, but he will still tend to be overshadowed by other Captains, such as Jozu and Enel.