Moonlight 5-Star Tier List: Part 1
Greetings Heirs,
Are you new to the game? Have you seen or pulled a moonlight unit and wondered if they were worth investing into? If so, you’re in the right place. We’re gonna break down how you get a moonlight unit, Who’s worth their salt, and what to expect from a Moonlight hero once you’ve obtained one. We’ll be focusing on the 5-star units this time as they are often the centerpiece of the team.
Table of Contents
Where to get them?
There are two main ways to obtain a Moonlight Hero: Galaxy Bookmarks and Mystic summons.
Galaxy Bookmarks come from a few different sources, as Smilegate gives us five each month from completing Automaton Tower and on the final day log-in/attendance reward each month.
It is possible to obtain Galaxies as drops from normal and hell difficulty raid, and lastly Golden transmit stones can be exchanged for Galaxy bookmarks in the shop. It takes 6 golden transmit stones (GTS) to obtain five galaxies. GTS can also be earned from completing limited event achievements, web events, random drops in world boss, one per month can be purchased in the guild member shop, and as expedition completion rewards.
Mystic Medals on the other hand, are earned almost exclusively through guild war, regardless of if you win or lose, and additional medals can be obtain by:
- Small drop chance from completing hunts.
- Log-in/attendance rewards
- Random appearances in the secret shop
- Weekly Arena ranking rewards.
The last two options have situational value, however, I strongly discourage accepting mystics medals as the weekly arena ranking reward. When the week ends, you’ll be offered the opportunity to get skystones or mystics, and more often than not, you could spend your skystones to refresh the secret shop and find more mystics than they award for the week.
At the end of the day, the decision will be yours and you should prioritize your rewards based on the needs of your account, but this is the most efficient method to min-max your opportunity cost.
The last place you can get a moonlight hero is off the normal covenant summon. This is less than a 1% chance to occur, but every now again, you might see a purple flash and there is a chance, to obtain a moonlight 5* hero in this manner.
This method I also don’t encourage, for most players, it will be better if you save your bookmarks for Limit units and featured banners, but the option is there if you’re the brave or risk-taking type of player.
And so with that out of the way, let’s get into the meat and potatoes. You want to know who’s good, who’s not and why. The Criteria for this tier list is as follows:
- S-tier units – These are characters who are both extremely strong, and do not rely on their team composition to excel. You pretty much can not go wrong when using these units in your team.
- A-tier heroes – These characters are very strong independently, but excel in their compositions.
- B-tier heroes – These characters are powerful, but extremely selfish, and often have significantly higher equipment or team requirements.
- C-Tier heroes – These characters are underwhelming because they are one trick ponies, and if they fail at their gimmick, they are often a dead slot in your team.
C – Tier
So we’ll start off at the bottom of the barrel. These Moonlight 5*s are unfortunately under appreciated and under-powered. They are defined easily as “One-trick Ponies” because they only do their one thing, and after they’ve done their one thing they are essentially sitting ducks.
These characters are not weak per se, but have niche applications or require a lot of help. Without their prerequisites, they are lackluster at best.
Starting off with…
Specimen Sez
I will start with Spez because his potential to be really good is there. When there is a stunned opponent on the enemy team, he gets 100% defense penetration. Literally erases them from existence, and he was buffed to have extinction so they will not come back and cannot be revived.
But stun is the kicker for this character. Without stun, he’s sub-par, and while there are many partners for him to stun with, his reliance on debuffs is too high. Immunity and cleansing are commonplace in the competitive scene which means he needs help from a buff stripper and a stunner only to delete one target.
Potentially you can kill multiple targets if you use Rhianna and Luciella, because his skill 3 resets on kill, and RnL will give you an extra turn. His max potential can only be achieved with a 20% RNG artifact proc, a stun debuff, and a strip.
His most optimal partners for stunning include: A.Tywin, Silver Blade Ara, Dizzy, Mui, All-Rounder Wanda, General Purrgis, Zerato, Aramintha, and Leo.
And while there are other ST stunners in the game, they usually have their own role to fill that is not for supporting Spez, like Assassin Coli, Specter Tenebria, or Cerise. To make matters worse, you may have noticed that some of his partners listed here were also in this tier list, some who are significantly better than he is (Tywin or Tenebria) and others who’re down here with him (Silver Blade Ara).
Silver Blade Aramintha
On paper, this character looks like she should be extremely powerful, but much like Spez, she is reliant on a buff stripper to make her opening skill 3 do its full magic. You might think, “Just pair her with Basar!” and this is true, however, anyone paired with Basar can get away with their gimmick.
The prevalence of immunity makes it difficult for her to function independently and without stuns and burns, the rest of Ara’s kit falls flat. She loses her CR push and her ability to deal AoE damage with her skill 1. And since she’s reliant on her Effectiveness to land her debuffs, she loses a lot of damage in the process.
Blood Moon Haste
This unit was released as a direct counter to revivers, but specifically Arbiter Vildred. He reduces damage when his skill 3 is on cooldown, he has healing and damage scaled by his max health on his skill 3, and his passive gives a barrier and immunity whenever someone revives.
His ability to sustain and protect his team is huge as long as you are fighting a reviver, but if there is no revival in the enemy team, he’s an under-powered Hp bruiser. There’s no reason to bring him outside of revivers, and that is far from the standard of power, when compared to the other moonlight heroes here. When he works, he works beautifully, but outside his niche, lackluster.
Desert Jewel Basar
This character is the one trick pony. He has Cleanse, CR Push 30% and Immunity on his skill 3. His skill 1 stuns with a 35% chance and his passive skill 2 makes his skill 1 heal aoe, based on the maximum health of his party and his own attack. This sounds great on paper, but it fails in practice.
The presence of buff strippers is high, and while it’s nice to have CR push, cleanse and immunity wrapped in one package, it doesn’t stop enough of the enemies options. If you go first, you pop his skill 3, you get your immunity and push. You’ll get stripped, and counter pushed or debuffed, and going first had no impact.
If you go second, you have to risk getting stripped and CC’d before being able to use his skill 3 to correct it and shift momentum. And if you want to do a CR pushing team, there are just better options. This leaves DJ Basar in a weird place where he’s inferior to his non-ML version, no matter what his turn order is. His skill 1 only does decent healing if the team he’s with is tanky. He can’t support squishies, and he can’t protect them either.
Sage Baal and Sezan
The final entry on this list and my how the mighty have fallen. Sage Baal, is uncontested, the worst moonlight 5* in the game, and if you have this unit, I am sorry. He needs to be buffed. His pre-nerf version was extremely strong, but pales in comparison to what normal Basar has become.
Sage Baal, has the ability to strip one buff from the whole team, and 85% chance to put them to sleep afterwards. He used to strip 2. However, due to the arrival of Fallen Cecilia, he can no longer perform this function reliably. Fallen Ceci’s shield spawn at the beginning of battle, and covers the immunity buff from equipment. Which means, if Baal attempts to strip a Fallen Ceci team, he removes her barrier only, and sleep fails because everyone still has immunity.
This is essentially the death of this character. He still has 20% Combat readiness push on his skill 2, while the skill is not on cooldown, but they nerfed his cooldown from 4 turns to 5. His skill 3 does damage based on his missing health, and resets if he kills, but this character doesn’t have the stat distribution to support an aggressive build. His skill 1 is only 65% chance to sleep 1 target, which is also not reliable.
The only recommendation I can offer for this character if you pull him, is bench him and wait. I imagine Smilegate will address him again one day, but save your resources and keep pushing. There are several other buff stripping characters who have more to offer than Sage Baal atm, like normal Lidica, Mui, Crescent moon Rin, and many others.
B – Tier
Judge Kise
At this point, some of you might be confused. “Judge Kise, B-tier? Crazy!”
I know how that sounds, because she is the number one cleaver in the whole game. There’s no one who does it better than she does, but Judge Kise is not without her flaws.
Per the criteria we established earlier in this guide, B-tier characters are strong, but are usually selfish, and have steep gearing or team requirements. Judge Kise is the hallmark of this idea.
To effectively use Judge Kise, she has to be at least +10 Mola. You want maximum damage on her skill 2 and her skill 3. You also need “Portrait of the Saviors” or “Draco Plate” for her artifact. You need at least a +3 Auxiliary Lots for the 100% combat readiness push and he must have a maxed out Tahagel’s book. This is the minimum requirement.
This also means your Aux lots must be fast enough to go first, and “fast enough” goes up the higher you climb in ranks for pvp. In gold, fast enough might be 180 speed. In master, 210. In Challenger, 250. Champion or above, who knows, sky’s the limit.
As you increase in rank, the quality of defense teams will also improve, and the amount of support Kise will need increases as well. You’ll need Immunity set on her, to prevent Elbris Fallen Ceci’s from provoking you. If ML Ken is present, you’ll need Draco plate to survive his kick on your first swing. You may need to swap from Aux lots to Tywin/Basar/C.dom combo.
Her requirements are always rising. Again, there is no better cleaver in the game, but minimum investment for this character is already high, requiring two highly sought after moonlight heroes, in addition to all other puzzle pieces, and it only scales from that point.
Dark Corvus
This guy is a beast. He can and will 1 vs 4 someone, in the right conditions and he is truly unstoppable in the guild war format. But he needs “A. Lots” of health, a good amount of effect resistance, speed and def to weather the beating he designed to take.
Dark Corvus has the following traits:
- Deals 50% of his maximum health as damage on his skill 3, 90% if soulburned.
- Reduces the cooldown of his skill 3 by 1 when attacked, by 2 if crit.
While being the pinnacle of bruisers, Dark Corvus offers nothing to his team but being a meat shield for Light AI, and is easily ignored due to his low base speed. Anyone who ignores effect resistance can kill critical parts of his kit. F.Kluri and Lilias can soulburn their provokes to lock him down and Seaside Bellona can place unhealable on him, cutting his ability to sustain.
Apocalypse Ravi
Ravi is a bully, plain and simple. When built optimally, she has incredible sustain, incredible bulk, and amazing swing potential with her S3. If you for some reason fall behind and lose someone, she revives them with skill null and 100% combat readiness push. In the hands of a capable player, the threat of swinging momentum is very powerful.
However, this is her only function. If you’re not losing, you still get a strong S3 to pressure your opponent with, but raw ST damage dealers are a dime a dozen, and you may prefer someone who -will- just finish the job in a single blow. Ravi’s mix of Bulk, damage, and pressure are slot efficient, but there are bulkier characters and better damage dealers.
Little Queen Charlotte
I saved Little Queen for last, cause she’s special. She is by no means the worst of the group, but despite having an extremely valuable passive, which reduces her received crit damage by 30% and the teams received crit damage by 15%, Warriors really aren’t the benchmark for being supportive, and as you many have noticed, there are 4 warriors in this part of the tier list.
LQC has strong damage dealing potential and good sustain. She’s equipped with Dark buster and 50% def penetration which makes her a huge threat. But again, much like her peers, she is not team defining, and has a singular purpose: Dunking dark units.
If you build her like a Bruiser (which you can), she may not delete a dark threat without help. And if she needs help, like attack buff or defense break, you probably could have used anyone else in her spot and got the same result. She has a potentially higher raw damage output than Remnant Violet for example, but doesn’t come with extra tools to supplement her game plan.
By comparison, crit damage reduction isn’t as valuable as straight up evasion because it doesn’t prevent debuffs and sometimes, depending on your gear, still doesn’t reduce enough damage to survive.
However, when built with maximum DPS and bulk as icing on the cake, Little Queen can straight up delete characters like ML Ken, Champion Zerato, ML Haste, and even some mid-size Fallen Cecilias.
That’s all we’ll cover this time as this was already a pretty lengthy synopsis, but check back again next month for part 2, where will cover the remaining Moonlight 5*, discuss who’s at the top of this list, and why! Until next time!