In-depth analysis of Ability Based Daily Focus

It has been days since Splinterlands releases a new update regarding the daily focuses. Before the update, daily focus is based on a given Splinter element like Fire, Water, Earth, Life, Death and Dragon. With this mechanics, you only need to rent for a single splinter since the element that you have for your daily focus will always be available in your match. Most players only rent a single Splinter element capable to complete a deck for magic, range, or melee. Gameplay wise, it was easier to predict what your opponent will used since you can see it in their history. If they are using mulitple Summoners, knowing which Splinter element they will used is already enough to make a counter move. If in case you will not used the Splinter you have for your daily focus, you won't gain any focus points even if you win that match. For me, I'd rather risk using the Splinter for my focus with low win rate than using other Splinter element which has a much better win rate. What is the point of winning the match if you won't gain focus point, right? That was the problem the recent update solved. With the latest update in daily focus, you will still gain focus point or reward point even if you did not used the Splinter or Abilities required in your daily focus. Aside from the the Splinter element based daily focus, the dev team also includes new ability based daily focus which gives more variety to the game play.

New Daily Focus

Ability based daily focus is not new to Splinterlands. Previously, they also had this ability based but only limited to Sneak and Snipe.

STEALTH

Abilities: Sneak, Snipe and Opportunity
Difficulty: Tier1 - Easy

STEALTH is the easiest daily focus to achieved since Sneak, Snipe and Opportunity are abilities that are available at intial level of the monsters (only exception is FIENDISH HARPY as it gains Opportunity ability at level 4). Monsters gain new abilities as they level up but abilities that changed the way monster attack are always available at level 1. Aside from those three abilities mentioned, Reach and Scattershot are also considered attack-type ability although it is not considered in STEALTH daily focus.

Monsters/Summoners with SNEAK

Monsters/Summoners with SNIPE

Monsters/Summoners with OPPORTUNITY

HEALING

Abilities: Tank Heal, Heal, Cleanse, and Triage
Difficulty: Tier1 - Easy

HEALING abilities are one of the best utilities in the game. If you like Water, Earth or Life splinter, you may already used a triple or double healing combo with Taunt ability. It's a gameplay where you want your enemy attacks to focus only on a single monster while you heal that monsters through either Tank Heal or Triage ability. There are also a lot of monsters with self HEAL ability in every Splinter.

Healed Out is one of the greatest challenge you will encounter when you have this daily focus. Aside from this ruleset, Affliction ability is also your worst nightmare. The good thing is that Cleanse is also part of the HEALING daily focus so you can use it to remove the Affliction status.

Monsters/Summoners with HEAL

Monsters/Summoners with TANK HEAL

Monsters/Summoners with TRIAGE

Monsters/Summoners with CLEANSE

FLYING

Ability: Flying
Difficulty: Tier1 - Easy

FLYING ability is also one of the most available abilities in Splinterlands. So far I think there are more than 60 monsters with Flying ability, most of them are in the Dragon Splinter. Almost all of these monsters gained their Flying ability at level 1, with only 3 monsters gained Flying at higher levels namely Pelacor Arbalest, Angel of Light and Carrion Shade.

If you have this daily focus, Earthquake ruleset is one of your best allies as you will definitely have a lot of Flying monsters (incase you rent for this daily focus).

Snare ability will be your worst nightmare since it is a direct counter to Flying ability.

Monsters/Summoners with FLYING

DEFEND

Ability: Shield, Repair
Difficulty: Tier2 - Medium

DEFEND abilities which consist of Shield and Repair comes hand in hand. These are great abilties against Melee or Ranged monsters. You will most likely used this since there is a high percentage that enemy will always use a Melee or Ranged monsters. In Modern format, only Earth has the Summoner that gives additional magic damage, so if Earth Splinter is not available, then most likely opponent will use a melee and ranged monsters. Shield is a common abilities for tanky monsters. In terms of monsters with Repair ability, almost all of these monsters are available in Modern format except for Armorsmith. This means if you are only playing for Modern, this daily focus will not be a problem. Aside from that, we have Scavo Hireling from Neutral splinter which will be available most of the time, unless Neutral monsters or odd monsters are not allowed due to the ruleset

Monsters/Summoners with SHIELD

Monsters/Summoners with REPAIR

ANTI-MAGIC

Ability: Void, Phase, Void Armor
Difficulty: Tier2 - Medium

ANTI-MAGIC daily focus are abilities consisting of Void, Phase and Void Armor. Similar to the DEFEND which focus mainly on Melee and Range, we have this set of abilities that will defend us from magic damage. I considered it to be on a Tier2 - Medium difficulty because there are a lot of monsters that has these abilities but in terms of using them on a single match, I would not expect going for more than 30% bonus in a single match just because of using the abilities under this focus. Unless you are very sure that your opponent will use a full magic line-up, you may still balance your line-up with some monsters having anti-magic abilities and backline monsters with support abilities like healing or armor repair for Void Armor.

Monsters/Summoners with VOID

Monsters/Summoners with VOID ARMOR

Monsters/Summoners with PHASE

BUFFS

Ability: Inspire, Protect, Swiftness, Strengthen
Difficulty: Tier2 - Medium

BUFFS daily focus are abilities mainly to increase the stats (speed, melee damage, health, and armor) of our allied monsters. These are abilities you can use or deploy altogether as the effect of these abilities stacked together. The only reason why I considered it as Tier2 - Medium difficulty instead of Tier1 - Easy is that most of these abilities are unlocked at higher levels. Aside from that, Summoners who provide buffs to our monsters like increase health, armor, or speed do not count. This means we can only reach a maximum of 60% bonus for this focus. If only Summoner buffs count, then I'm sure it will be the easiest as most Common and Rare Summoners provides stat buffs rather than abilities.

Monsters/Summoners with INSPIRE

Monsters/Summoners with PROTECT

Monsters/Summoners with SWIFTNESS

Monsters/Summoners with STRENGTHEN

IMPAIR

Ability: Demoralize, Silence, Headwinds, Blind
Difficulty: Tier2 - Medium

IMPAIR are daily focus which consist of abilities that reduces the damage of enemy monsters. This is one of my favorite especially if you are using Death as your main splinter. The good thing with these debuffs are you can adjust based on your opponents match history and the allowed rulesets. This is very much similar to BUFFS daily focus, the only difference is that with BUFFS you can adjust it based on what your teams need, while for IMPAIR you either adjust it based on your teams' weakness or what you think the opponent's strategy will be in terms of attacking prowess.

Summoners with effects similar to these abilities like reducing melee damage (Demoralize), reducing Ranged damage (Headwinds), and or reducing Magic damage (Silence) are not counted. An exception would be BLIND from Lir Deepswimmer since it is considered ability effects.

Monsters/Summoners with DEMORALIZE

Monsters/Summoners with SILENCE

Monsters/Summoners with HEADWINDS

Monsters/Summoners with BLIND

REFLECT

Ability: Backfire, Return Fire, Magic Reflect
Difficulty: Tier3 - Difficult

REFLECT daily focus is to counter ranged and magic monster, although Backfire also works for melee. This is more easier compare with ANTI-MELEE as it can be used to counter for both ranged and magic monsters. I mean, there's a high chance that enemy backline monsters will be a ranged or magic rather than a melee attacking monster. There are also two Summoners you can use for this ability based daily focus, Lir Deepswimmer and Owster Rotwell.

Monsters with Backfire are very few are mostly unlocks at higher league starting from Silver (Naga Assasin and Riftwing). While for Reflect and Return Fire, you can have those abilities at level 1 athough very few monsters have it at initial level. Mostly those abilities become available at higher leagues, so playing at higher leagues will have an advantage.

Monsters/Summoners with BACKFIRE

Monsters/Summoners with RETURN FIRE

Monsters/Summoners with MAGIC REFLECT

ANTI-MELEE

Ability: Thorns, Retaliate
Difficulty: Tier3 - Difficult

ANTI-MELEE is the daily focus which aims at countering melee monsters. Thorns provide a direct 2 melee damage when hit by a melee monster, while Retaliate allows monster a chance to attack back when hit. The difference between the two is that for Thorns, the return damage is constant at 2 melee damage, while for Retaliate the damage depends on your monster's melee damage. Shield ability will reduce the return damage from both of this attacks.

If you have this daily focus, I suggest to get a Mylor Crowling as your main Summoner for Earth as it provides Thorns ability to all monsters. Although if you use this as your Summoner, it will be useless to deploy monsters with the same ability. With that, you may be limited with only 10% bonus for daily focus.

One of the main reason why I considered it as a Tier3 - Difficult is because it will be hard to deploy 3 or more monsters with these abilities. Aside from that, if you will focus on these abilities, your deck can be easily countered with Ranged or Magic line-up.

Monsters/Summoners with THORNS

Monsters/Summoners with RETALIATE

NULLIFY

Ability: Shatter, Cripple, Dispel
Difficulty: Tier3 - Difficult

NULLIFY daily focus includes the Shatter, Cripple and Dispel which mainly removes the buffs, armor and reduces your max health. There are also very few monsters with Shatter and Cripple abilities. Mostly you can find these two abilities in Death splinter as they known for debuffs. The good thing here is that Dispel is included in this focus which is a lot easier to find especially since Venari Spellsmith and Spirit Hoarder from Neutral have this ability.

You cannot get additional bonus from Summoners since currently no Summoners preovide this ability to allied monsters.

Monsters/Summoners with SHATTER

Monsters/Summoners with CRIPPLE

Monsters/Summoners with DISPEL

AILMENTS

Ability: Poison, Affliction, Weaken
Difficulty: Tier3 - Difficult

AILMENTS focuses on giving negative status to your opponent monsters. This is again a specialty of Death splinter as 2 Legendary Summoners from Death splinter has this effect, Mimosa Nightshade provides Affliction status to enemy monsters while Waka Spiritblade provides Poison ability to all allied monsters.

if you have this daily focus, I suggest to get Doctor Blight as it both has the Affliction, Poison and Weaken. And if you are playing in Wild format, then having Gobling Shaman, Swamp Thing, and Undead Priest are also great.

Getting monsters with Poison is also good since there are no restriction for using this ability. The only challenge here is that Poison will likely be available starting from Silver league. While for Affliction, there are monsters that has this ability even at level 1. So you might focus on Affliction and Weaken when you are playing with lower level monsters.

Monsters/Summoners with POISON

Monsters/Summoners with AFFLICTION

Monsters/Summoners with WEAKEN

DISABLE

Ability: Piercing, Stun
Difficulty: Tier4 - Very Difficult

DISABLE is more of an offensive strategy. Piercing is good when facing monsters with extra armor. As you know, even an armor with 1 point can still block a 5 melee damage. Stun is a great ability so even without this ability based daily focus, I might deploy monsters with Stun ability. The challenge here is that both these abilities are available mostly at higher levels.

Monsters/Summoners with PIERCING

Monsters/Summoners with STUN

EXPLOITS

Ability: Oppress, Giant Killer, Deathblow, Knock-Out
Difficulty: Tier4 - Very Difficult

EXPLOITS daily focus are the ones that I considered as one of the difficult to pull-off not only because of few monsters having these abilities but also the way to utilized these abilities.

These four abilities have pre-requisites or conditions to be met before their effect can be triggered. Oppress triggers only when you are attacking a monster without attack capability. Giant Killer only triggers when you are attacking a monster with 10 or more mana requirement. Deathblow activates only when there is a single monster in your opponent. While Knock-out only works if the targeted monster is stunned. Getting monsters with Stun ability is already a bit of a challenge, stunning them is another one since there is only a 50% chance that a monster will be stun. Then attacking them while they are stunned is the hardest to achieved.

Getting Djinn Muriat, Djinn Inferni, Vampiric Blossom, Lunakari Mistress, and Grenader will be your best move as they can give you bonus even at level 1.

Monsters/Summoners with OPPRESS

Monsters/Summoners with GIANT KILLER

Monsters/Summoners with DEATHBLOW

Monsters/Summoners with KNOCK-OUT

FATALITIES

Ability: Bloodlust, Life Leech, Redemption, Scavenger
Difficulty: Tier4 - Very Difficult

FATALATIES are a combination of abilities that triggers when someone dies. So far, Bloodlust is the most difficult to get since there are currently 2 monsters that we can use in Ranked mode that has this ability, Grum Flameblade and Jared Scar. Redemption is also a challenge since you need to have higher level monsters before this ability will be unlocked. Only Scavenger and Life Leech may be the good choice to focus when you have this as your daily focus. Just hope that Death splinter is always available so you can gain more bonus from this daily focus. You can actually achieve 60% bonus all from Death monsters even at Silver league. The only problem is if you can win having all those monsters deployed :D

Monsters/Summoners with BLOODLUST

Monsters/Summoners with LIFE LEECH

Monsters/Summoners with REDEMPTION

Monsters/Summoners with SCAVENGER

Modern or Wild Format

In terms of choosing which format of the game you want to play, for me the Daily Focus will somehow affects my decision. If you have ability based daily focus, it will be hard to play in Modern when you want to maximize the bonus effect when choosing cards that have these abilities. You need to evaluate first whether your strategy with using those cards can be effective in Modern format given that you have limited cards to play.

If you have Splinter based daily focus, then playing with Modern or Wild format is somehow the same as the bonus will depend whether you use cards for that Splinter or not. And since your focus Splinter is not guaranteed to be available due to the recent update, you will need additional 1 or 2 deck aside from your focus splinter to be competitive especially if you are already at a high points.

Maximizing Reward Point

Each card that has the abilities included in your daily focus whether ability based or Splinter based will count as 10% bonus in calculating your reward points. Gold cards also has the same bonus at 10%. If you want to maximize your bonus per match, it will be better to have (either buying or renting) gold cards for your daily focus as it will give you 20% already for a single card plus some additional bonus if that's a alpha or beta or if you are on a winstreak.

Please remember that this bonuses will only take effect once you win the match. it simply means that WINNING is more important that simply choosing cards that are included in your daily focus.

Take Aways:

Here is the summary of the rankings based on my opinion taking into account the availability of those abilities (per league, level, and/or editions) and also the effectiveness in using those monsters. It is easy to just put up monsters having the abilities you need but ensuring you have a good chance of winning is difficult. You need to plan your strategy well while utilizing these monsters or abilities.

Difficulty	Daily Focus
Tier1 - Easy	STEALTH, HEALING, FLYING
Tier2 - Medium	DEFEND, ANTI-MAGIC, BUFFS, IMPAIR
Tier3 - Difficult	REFLECT, ANTI-MELEE, NULLIFY, AILMENTS
Tier4 - Very Difficult	DISABLE,EXPLOITS,FATALITIES

Summoners that provides increase or decrease stats like melee, ranged, or magic damage, speed, armor or health are not counted in the ability based daily focus. Since this buffs or debuffs cannot be countered with using Cleanse or Dispel abilities, it will be a huge imbalance if this will count towards the reward point bonus.

There are other abilities that are not yet included in these ability based daily focus like Last Stand, Halving, and Resurrect. We'll have to wait for future updates in case these abilities will be included to the existing one , or will have its own group.

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