We're at Full Power: A guide to Shock teams.

This guide goes into depth regarding Shock teams, their strengths and weaknesses, monsters to consider, and how to build and play them.

Overview

A Shock team, as its name implies, is focused on imposing multiple instances of the Shock debuff onto the enemy team while attacking with combo builders, utilizing Shock to build extra combo as well as triggering its unique passives, which can provide charge stacks, healing, debuff removal, and more. While it’s an aggressive playstyle in that you’ll often see every monster on the team attacking every turn and building high combo, Shock also has the ability to sustain a long game, thanks to passive healing and debuff removal they get when attacking, and to their ability to quickly accrue a ton of charge stacks.

Why Shock?

Fundamentally, Shock as a team is all about tempo. Every turn you attack, you spread more Shock debuffs, which gets you more Charge stacks, which means even more debuffs and stacks next turn, until your team snowballs out of control. The Shock team is interesting in that it has different strengths and weaknesses than many other teams. On the positive side, Shock doesn’t care about debuff teams basically at all. Thanks to Electrolytes, Shock monsters have a 75% chance of cleansing a debuff each time they trigger shock damage, which can often lead to them cleansing 6 or more debuffs per attack on each monster. Crackle Knight and Qilin both have cleanse, and with the massive amount of hits a shock team is capable of putting out, these teams can also deal with opposing buffs very efficiently. The Enegrize passive allows a Shock team's monsters to heal to full health every turn, passively while attacking. However, Shock teams lose out significantly if they aren’t attacking with every monster every turn, so their access to utility and healing is inherently tied to what Shock support they have on the field. Without Electrolytes, they become much more vulnerable to debuffs. Without Energize, they have no way of effectively healing themselves without losing their attacks, and without Charged Anomaly or Charged Destruction, their ability to apply Shock is severely hampered. Because the best Shock support is also incredibly rare (Energize is available to three monsters, Shock Charging to two, Electrolytes to only one), this makes shock teams comparatively easy for aggressive teams to pick apart, as replacements probably won’t have access to the same supports as the monsters that were lost. Because shock teams don’t have the ability to store charge stacks from multiple rounds and often want to be using spread damage to trigger Shock on all enemies, they can also struggle with more defensive teams who can survive their AOEs and heal off the damage.

The Shock Core

Unlike some team archetypes that allow a great deal of variation between teams, the Shock archetype is built around a few very important passives that are shared by few or even one monster, which makes them more standardized than some other team archetypes. While there certainly are variations on Shock teams, there are three monsters you’ll see on almost every one:

Qilin

With the rework to Qilin’s skill tree in the Legendary Keeper update, it’s risen to become the face of the Shock archetype, providing something crucial that the shock archetype has previously lacked: a monster that can both spread shock quickly and benefit from it. Using Shock Charging and Supremacy combined with Charged Anomaly, Qilin can apply multiple instances of Shock to the enemy while it attacks, and thanks to its access to AOE skills in Thunderstorm and Ice Storm, it can trigger Shock on all enemies, building high combo and generating a ton of Charge stacks.

Crackle Knight

Another crucial piece of the Shock team, Crackle Knight brings the unique Electrolytes passive, allowing your team to cleanse themselves of debuffs while they attack. It also serves as the team’s tank, using Magnetize in the place of Taunt to take hits for its frailer allies. With Shocking Slash or Chain Reaction, Crackle Knight can build combo quickly while applying more shock, and deals reasonable damage for a primarily defensive monster.

Spectral Eagle

Eagle is the most common damage dealer for Shock teams, providing another crucial piece of Shock support in Energize, which provides massive healing for the team, as well as Impactful Shock to boost Shock damage. Thanks to Shock Charging from Qilin, Eagle can keep its Charged Up passive fully powered at all times, which makes it more durable and do more damage, and thanks to Phoenix Affinity, it’s harder for an enemy team to bring it down.

Filling out your team

Beyond the core three, several other monsters compete for space on shock teams. Here is an overview of each, and what it brings to the table.

Mad Eye

Shock support: Stunned, Toxic Reaction, Supremacy

Mad Eye brings the rare Stunned passive, allowing Shock to reduce the enemy's dodge chance. It can also apply shock and trigger it with Thunderstorm, and provides charge stacks with Supremacy. However, it suffers from a weakness to Magic damage, and needs teammate support to do anything with its charge stacks. It also supports three other debuffs and so loses some of its potential on a team dedicated solely to Shock.

Beetloid

Shock support: Energize, Chain Lightning, Charge synergies

Beetloid offers excellent passives for a Shock team. Chain Lightning allows it to help spread Shock quickly, while Energize can keep the team healthy, and Charge Amplifier allows it to significantly boost the damage of its teammates, not to mention its excellent Sorcery support that can boost their damage further. The one major mark against Beetloid is that it doesn’t often want to attack, and losing a full monsters’ worth of attacks is a tough tradeoff for a Shock team, especially since it also lacks Multi Shock.

Glowfly

Shock support: Multi Shock, Charged Hazard

Glowfly supports both Shock and Charge stacks well, as well as having a second passive that can turn charge stacks into Shock debuffs. However, it's incredibly frail, often requiring a full shield to even have a chance of surviving an attack, and Shock teams have few defensive options besides Crackle Knight’s RNG Magnetize.

Sizzle Knight

Shock support: Chain Reaction, Multi Shock, Impactful Shock

Sizzle Knight is a strong damage dealer for Shock teams, hitting hard with single-target attacks while still getting full benefit out of Shock skills thanks to Chain Reaction. However, it’s competing directly with Eagle, who’s a better choice most of the time, and many shock teams elect not to run both.

Elderjel

Shock support: Magnetize, Stunned, Charge Synergies.

Elderjel is a fantastic damage dealer for any team, hitting hard with high crit damage and triple Critical Consistency. It also has access to Stunned, a very rare passive that allows Shock to lower enemy dodge chance, which is extremely helpful, as well as having Magnetize to mess with enemy offense. Dark shift offers additional Charge stacks and hits harder, while Unshifted has much better defense.

Manticorb

Shock Support: none
Manticorb doesn't bring any specific Shock support (though it can apply it with Voltage or Thunderstorm), but what it does bring is absolutely ridiculous damage potential once the Shock is set up. Manticorb has two instances of Cascade as well as Critical Apex, so any effect that can give it more hits will increase its damage massively, and getting three or four Shock procs on each enemy can mean three or four thousand damage at the end of a long Cascade chain.

Glowdra

Shock support: Multi Shock, Charge synergies

Glowdra is already an excellent combo builder, using Mystify and debuff on hit passives to apply buffs to itself while it attacks, and all that is made even better in a Shock team. It doesn’t have much Shock support besides the generic Multi Shock, but it still sees common use as a combo builder, especially in shock teams with a Sorcery subtheme.

Ornithopter

Shock Support: Shocking Current, Charge synergies

While Ornithopter doesn’t have much direct shock support, it brings basically everything else a Shock team wants. Critical Boon and Critical Mass to buff the team while attacking, Critical Buffs and Critical Edge to generate more Charge Stacks, a good AOE to trigger Shock on all enemies, and Cleanse alongside a second instance of Punishment, allowing both it and its partners Qilin and Crackle Knight to get more combo from debuff removal. It also has unique access to Wind Allegiance, which allows its shock hits to bypass wind resistance.

Shockhopper

Shock support: Multi Shock, Energize, Toxic Reaction

Shockhopper brings excellent shock support to the table, and access to the coveted Curse Chain to replicate Chain Lightning, while also supporting Chill, another debuff that can be applied by Charged Anomaly. It also has Auto Restore, an extremely rare passive that can help with debuff removal if Crackle is gone. Relying on Charged Anomaly for debuff application also allows it to forgo its normal debuff equipment and run defense instead, which helps a lot with keeping it alive, it can even run a Gray Pearl variant that deals surprising damage. Shockhopper’s main issue is that it can’t both apply shock and take advantage of it at the same time, as its only spread attack that isn’t an ultimate, Sonic Wave, can’t trigger Shocking Current.

Promethean

Shock support: Multi Shock, Shock Charging, Steam Punk, Chain Reaction

Promethean is the only other monster with access to the coveted Shock Charging, allowing you to maintain your Charge stacks even after Qilin has been taken down. It also has Steam Punk, which works with Crackle Knight and any other constructs you may be running, and it’s the only Shock monster with access to Slow Burn, allowing it to stockpile Charge stacks to muscle through defensive monsters. Promethean’s biggest flaw is that without an ultimate, it can’t spread Shock quickly, as its only active method of applying shock is Shocking Current while its only AOE is Flurry of Blows.

Mad Lord

Shock support: Impactful Shock, Supremacy

Mad Lord is only monster with any amount of Shock support that has Death Blow, a tremendous damage increase for debuff teams. It also has Shocking Slash to apply shock and various AOE skills to trigger it, along with its choice of synergistic shift passives. However, being weak to Physical and Magical damage really hurt Mad Lord defensively, and it doesn't have the raw damage potential of something like Eagle in a team that's focusing on a single debuff.

Gearing your Shock team

The Shock team's unique playstyle and mix of offense and defense leads to its monsters running different builds than we commonly see on other teams. Presented here are some builds for the core 3, which will mostly work for other monsters on your team that fill the same role. If you're interested in learning more about gearing, check out my Equipment Guide.


Full tank Qilin

Qilin is an absolutely crucial piece of the team, so it can be wise to run a fully defensive setup on it. While this has less potential for debuff application and charge synergies, it's also much more likely to stick around and provide its important passives. Charging Sphere provides some nice charge stack support in addition to its defensive stats.

Aggressive Qilin

This is a build designed to maximize Shock application. Charging Sphere and Ancestral Medal provide the maximum amount of Charge stacks, while Lightning Sphere adds an additional chance to inflict Shock, and Bow adds an extra hit.

Full tank Crackle

Similarly to Qilin, Crackle is an essential piece of the Shock team, and this build does everything it can to keep it alive. Trident provides more effective durability than Large Shield for this build, as well as higher attack, but you can run the shield if you'd like to use some magical attacks.

Aggressive Crackle

Thanks to Magnetize allowing Crackle to take hits for its teammates, it's able to make good use of the Abyssal Sword, often getting two or more chances at a buff/debuff per turn. Similar to Qilin, it runs Medal, Charging Sphere, and Lightning Sphere for maximum Shock application, but adds in a Hide because it needs to have the highest defense on the team to make Magnetize work.

Crit Eagle

Since Eagle is the team's damage dealer, it usually prefers to fun a full crit build. Ancestral Medal offers fantastic synergies on this team, so that's run over a third crit item.

Links

Other Guides by me
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2563960096

[ChunkyChocobo]

Any links for the talent builds? At least for the core.

[SmugLookingBarrel]

Sizzle can work fine as a replacement for Eagle, but losing Energize really hurts the team. I actually recommend running Shockhopper as your damage dealer instead.

[Minh]

aww super helpful guide but so sad I didn't pick the eagle as the starter monster
is sizzle a solid replacement? (damage dealer role)