Flight Rising Discussion

So from my understanding, the ability stone eliminate is very high in damage but also takes up quite a bit of breath to generate. I ASSUME that the Strat involves a dragon using meditate to get a lot of breath, but even then it may take a turn or two to power up enough for an eliminate. One of my casual coliseum dragons has double discipline that almost certainly fills up his breath to 50%. However, that comes at the cost of no ambush or berserker.
So what gives? Eliminate's a cool attack, yeah, I have one and when my dragon finally powers up enough to use it, it does a good chunk of damage. B U T, I still don't see it being an effective and quick strategy unless the dragon is a complete glass canon with a lot of speed.
If someone could explain it more to my smooth and soft brain, I'd appreciate it immensely!

@ASleepyBoi [quote]unless the dragon is a complete glass canon with a lot of speed[/quote] essentially yes. most coli build guides that center around elim strats use a dragon that has high str and qck. i would recommend taking a look at some of the user made guides, this topic is a pretty good collection of them: https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/gde/2441268/1 there are a few different stat builds, and it really depends on what you're wanting to do. for instance, i have a dragon built specifically for training fodder (Mire Trainer) but will use other dragons with the General Farming Build when i'm grinding for a random material, familiar or during festivals. when using elim builds in higher level venues you also have to be aware of what types of enemies you can "set up" on. as you noticed, it does take a few turns for a dragon to build up enough breath to use eliminate. this usually means refreshing your first fight in the area until you get a party of casters, as that will typically give you enough turns to build breath without taking damage. most guides for specific venues will go into detail about what you should set up on, what enemies to take out first, and what your turn order should look like. this one from Maki is a good example: https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/gde/1344211/14#post_37194679

if eliminate kills an enemy, there's no breath cost! so the reason eliminate is so popular is because if your dragon is a glass cannon as mentioned, then once you have enough breath you'll be able to use eliminate every turn and immediately take out enemies (even if you have to hit them once or twice with basic attacks first). with two ambush stones on the elim dragon you'll be able to immediately get some easy breath

then again I am pretty new so I could be wrong/not know some stuff completely

My coli trainers are old-school, as in I trained and stoned them years upon years ago and haven't updated them since so I have no idea if things have changed since then. I'm also not very well versed with coli strats in general

But yes, my two trainers are glass cannon builds. You keep scratching enemies to build up enough breath while also dealing damage at the same time. From then on it's scratch+eliminate every enemy.

It's important to note that eliminate regenerates the breath it requires so long as your eliminate actually defeats the enemy it targets. So to make eliminate effective, you NEED to scratch beforehand (unless you're in a lower venue where enemies have low enough health that a single eliminate can do the trick - I'm mostly in the Mire though, where that's not the case). So you really can defeat a single enemy in just two moves, once you build up the initial amount of breath to reach eliminate.

This build is so fast for me that I can't imagine playing any other way, because then it'd take so many more moves and/or require actual strategy instead of just pushing the same three keys on my keyboard over and over again lol

Almost every coli build you'll come across in the Guides section will emphasize high strength and high speed, at the cost of every other stat. This is especially true if you plan to use a single dragon to train two others so you can exalt them for profit (or sell them to a Flight that is pushing).

This almost always ensures that you can 1-shot any non-boss enemy in the venue the dragon is built for. Most of the time, you need to use a Rally (increases Strength-based attacks by caster's level +5). When you defeat an enemy with Eliminate, it refunds any breath used in the attack, effectively making it a free hit. Of course, if you miss or the enemy has more health than you can deal damage to cover, you do lose 35 breath.

With my Mire Flyers, I can cast Meditate at the beginning of my Coli stretch, cast Haste, and cast Rally before the enemies get a turn. Then I can start using Eliminate to defeat them. With 2 fodder at my side, my trainer doesn't usually get hit that hard so I can continue. With the build I'm currently using for fodder levelling, I don't even have to worry about taking damage because the fodder will be level 5 before it becomes a problem.

Unless there's a boss. Then I refresh.

I use a meditate-based Mire Flyer build. My turns are basically Meditate > Haste > Rally > Defend or rally again if the enemies are all mages for the extra little boost of breath. You can one-shot eliminate anything in the mire other than the toads, and beyond the first battle, it's just Rally on the first turn and then elim elim elim until things are dead.

I like to build up extra breath when I've got a single caster-type enemy on screen that won't be able to do much damage to my training dragon, so aside from those instances or if you miss a bunch of attacks and end up losing the breath, it's pretty great for farming or leveling fodder. It does depend on having high STR and QCK, and I've got her stoned with Berserks and Ambushes for the stat bonuses. The boost to meditate really isn't worth taking over those.

meditate then haste then rally then defend then the exhaust is gone, go nuts

Most coli builds are glass cannons, yea. Since Eliminate doesn't use breath if it kills the enemy, it's ideal to either one-hit k.o. the enemy or use it as a finishing move, depending on the venue. There's a couple notable things about meditate builds that aren't always mentioned though:

1. Meditate lowers your STR by a significant amount for 3 turns
2. Both Rally and Haste give you 5 breath when you use them

So 1 Meditate and 1 Rally or Haste gives enough breath to use Eliminate, but stalling for a couple of turns may be needed depending on the venue

Idk, that's just based on what I've heard and my limited experience with meditate builds (I like scratch better for some reason). I hope it's helpful