Light Vagabond (Darion)

Stats

Skills

Skill 1: Slash Rocks [100%ATK + 18%HP]: Swings a giant sword to deal damage and decrease the target’s Defense for 2 turns with a 40% chance. This attack will deal more damage according to your MAX HP.

• Lv.2 Damage +10%
• Lv.3 Harmful Effect Rate +10%
• Lv.4 Harmful Effect Rate +10%
• Lv.5 Damage +10%
• Lv.6 Harmful Effect Rate +10%
• Lv.7 Harmful Effect Rate +10%
• Lv.8 Damage +10%
• Lv.9 Harmful Effect Rate +20%

Skill 2: Slash Waves [(100%ATK + 12%HP) x 2]: Attacks an enemy with a sword 2 times. Each attack has a 50% chance to decrease the target’s Attack Power for 2 turns. This attack will deal more damage according to your MAX HP. (Reusable in 4 turns)

• Lv.2 Harmful Effect Rate +10%
• Lv.3 Damage +10%
• Lv.4 Harmful Effect Rate +10%
• Lv.5 Damage +10%
• Lv.6 Cooltime Turn -1

Knighthood (Passive): Decreases the damage that all other allies receive by 20%. This effect won’t add up to other damage reduction effects. (Automatic Effect)

Rune Recommendations

Patch Notes

Updated 2017.8.30

• Slash Waves:
  • Inflicts damage proportionate to the Attack Power -> Inflicts damage according to the Attack Power and your MAX HP
  • Each attack has a 30% -> 50% chance to decrease the target’s Attack Power
• Knighthood (Passive): Decreases the damage that all other allies receive by 15% -> 20%

Site Review

Dungeons: Darion’s an excellent starting monster for any GB10 team. His passive damage reduction improves the overall reliability of your team, while his attack break helps your squishier monsters survive the final boss attacks. He serves a very similar role in DB10, although he is much less effective there due to the immunity prevalent on the boss. Once your team has stabilized, Darion will likely be the first monster you swap out for a nuker to reduce your clear time.

Raids: When raids was released, many players finally brought Darion out of the storage to be runed here. Darion is an excellent monster in raids, with two useful debuffs and a passive that helps prevent your team from wiping out. While he is hindered by his poor base stats due to his status as a Nat 3* monster, his utility here more than fulfills his role as a frontline tank. With all that said, however, Dias practically does Darion job and more. With stronger base stats, faster base speed, better resistance awakening and a outright upgraded passive, there isn’t really a reason to use Darion if you already have Dias.

ToA: Unlike the other PvE content, Darion does not bring much to the table for ToA. His debuffs are easily replaced by Bernard and Belladeon, two monsters that you’ll likely have built at this point in the game.

PvP: Generally, Darion can be used in PvP as a softener in arena defense, or as a default defense and attack breaker in your team. However, Darion is pretty much a PvE monster more so than a PvP one, so you’ll find plenty of better alternatives out there.

How to Counter

Most Darions in defenses won’t be much of an issue. What will cause problems will depend on who he is paired with. Higher-level arena defenses will place a nemesis healer such as Praha or Ariel, using Darion’s damage reduction to ensure that they can get a move off instead of dying. For these teams, the best way is to either bring a multi-hitting monster such as Julie to soften the enemy, or to bring Oblivion to reduce the effectiveness of Darion. For Darion himself, Will Runes and cleansers such as Veromos can be a pretty effective counter to him. Just focus on killing off the enemy threats first, as Darion’s defense break can be rather potent.

Other advice:

• Stats is much more important on Darion than the runeset for raids. It really doesn’t matter what substats he has, as long as you can stack as much HP, defense and resistance on him so that your team can benefit from his passive
• As he gets accuracy on awakening, he doesn’t really need that much to be effective. If you’re using him regularly in PvP, aim for around 60% acc. If you are using him solely for raids, he really doesn’t need any more, so just focus on the other stats
• His first skill can actually do upwards of 10k damage if he crits on a defense broken target, so if you do have some runes with crit rate substats, you might as well just go for it.

Editor’s Note

While his uses are fairly limited, Darion is still a worthy monster to build. He is an excellent monster that helps you break into the next content of the game, be it GB10 or raids. If you’re like me, who only started playing after the Dias Hall of Heroes, he is a very good monster to help your starting raid team. However, do be on the lookout for April 2017, as there is a high chance for Dias to be re-released for a Summoner’s War 3rd Year Anniversary event.

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