Wow the JP news came out of nowhere! Well there it is, the much fabled Slasher Revival, just 4 months late. It's been a while since we had a batch headlined by two new legends (V2 admirals maybe?) but the choice of characters couldn't be any more obvious and predictable. Back when Carrot and Raid Arlong released, a lot of people called V2 Mihawk release for New Year. But then Bandai seemingly got sidetracked and just decided to give Powerhouse
four incredible leads.
As others said, the timing of this V2 Zoro is a bit baffling, they have delayed him for so long (ok partially because he's been in a cryo chamber since post time-skip) that you'd think they'd wait 3 more months until we reach Wano (5th anni, hello?), where he'll undoubtly get at least one if not two legends. And yeah it's kinda disappointing they had to re-use the art from his one significant fight in Dressrossa. The artwork itself is nice though, so is Mihawk's. Talking about artwork, 5 stars Ryuma looks
amazing!
The characters themselves are pretty strong, if not original. They do feel quite "been there, done that" though. V2 Mihawk is pretty much V2 Sanji for slashers, except better because no health restriction to get matching orbs and the condition for his special is much easier to meet. 25% HP cut is better than straight damage in most cases. Looks like RR Rebecca will finally see some play since she can remove Chain Reduction. The upcoming Colo Brook (quite excited about that) might do that aswell.
V2 Zoro Captain Ability is a straight upgrade of 6+ V1 Zoro, which is very weird. He's the safe/tanky slasher lead with a pretty good special, Lucy like. He also works well as a friend captain for V2 Mihawk or just a sub on double V2 Mihawk. Him being an INT type is great to see, automatically makes him better.
Also pretty disappointed that Carrot doesn't work with either since she doesn't boost Free Spirit nor Driven. And she could be an ok sub as a 2x orb booster if it wasn't for the fact she becomes captain aswell upon activating her special... She only fully boosts Mr 1 and Kaku from the new batch. Talk about being sidelined.
Man, I wish I'd held off on the CYO Sugo and done two pulls on Jinbe for Hody instead. Though honestly I really wish I'd stuck to the original plan and skipped both for the TM Sugo as usual. Oh well, it was just 30 gems. I think Hody is mostly only "needed" for Jinbe anyway.
I think you can easily skip this V2 Jinbe sugo yeah, it's only really good if you go all out and do like 10 multis imo and somehow get the whole batch. If it helps, try to focus on the mouthwatering future Capone and Carrot sugos. :p
New batch on JPN is very much "Slashers exist!" Agreed that Zoro v2 feels early, especially since early Wano provides plenty of inspiration for a new version of him. Mihawk is fine, it's actually a bit tricky to figure out how to do his v2 since he hasn't really done much since Marineford, so I guess they decided to get more milage out of his Muggy Island outfit. The batch has a cool design (Foes of Zoro) and it's nice to get RRs of Daz and Ryuma.
That being said...it's not necessarily a "make a team of just these guys" batch. Zoro and Mihawk handle attack and orb boosts, but the RRs are largely utility. Hyouzou + Kaku can get you a full board of orbs if you put them in the middle and have Zoro as a sailor or one of your captains, but two character orb control is kind of outdated these days unless they're doing something else as well (which may or may not be the case here). You'll have to get conditional boosts, affinity, tap-timing, etc, elsewhere. Maybe an upcoming colo or TM unit will help there (Gastino is a good option if you're using Hyouzou). Captain-wise, it looks like you either want Zoro+Mihawk or double Mihawk with Zoro as a sailor (and good luck getting those kind of pulls).
Daz almost feels like he'll see more usage on his own since making Block orbs not reduce damage is a pretty unique ability. And Ryuma sadly seems like a unit without a real use since he's partially redundant with either captain and Fuji v2 would rather have TM MIhawk. I suppose he's always an option for midbosses and the like.
Some pretty good points. About colour affinity, there's finally a use for the recent Colo Smoothie. The upcoming Colo Brook might give us conditionnal boosts or tap timing. I do like the batch but it's definitely not a "all in one" package like V2 Germa batch was. It's mostly a lot of (much needed) utilities as you said. Daz is a bit weird, he has the unique Lafitte effect of making block and badly matching orbs not matter but at the same time he gets rid of block orbs.
Ryuma has the double special LB I think so he can see some use on recent colos, maybe for a burst on stage 3 then another burst one stage 4 before the final stage.
Grats to people who managed to grab their copy of Sengoku, that was pretty quick! I'm running this
Korean Warco team, it should work but I have yet to be ambushed. Just done 3 runs though. Downside is Tamago takes ages with this team, some ridiculous stalling and need to make sure to have over 28.8K HP and be on Marco before killing Tamago the first time in the final stage since you need to tank a hit. Apparently Sengoku already has his LB so the pressure of getting 9 copies is real....