Game Breaker / SINoALICE

SINoALICE's biggest draw aside from the story is its Player Versus Player mode, the Colosseum. But like any other gacha game, to build the ideal grid, you need to roll the Grimoires and pray for the best, or shell out some cash.

Classes

• For players attempting harder story content, the Act of Authors class series answers those demands! In neutral territory (such as armor events and the Colosseum), they give a 10% bonus to their specialty weapon type. But bring them to somewhere where they have Area Bonus and they get a whopping 90% additional weapon efficiency for a total of 100% boost to their weapons. And say you strap 20 of each class's specialty weapon on them, things are going to get painful for the Nightmares real quick.
• For most players, Half-Nightmare classes are good enough for the Colosseum... unless they're a Minstrel or Sorcerer. Luckily for them, paying a visit to Dorothy's Workshop is worth it in the form of Sleeping Beauty/Sweet Dreams and Hamelin/Narcissistic Man for the Sorcerers, Three Little Pigs/Feast of Fashion and Snow White/ft. Seven Dwarves for the Minstrels! All 4 have an additional 5% boost to a secondary specialty weapon, which just so happens to be each other's. This means that players previously running mixed instrument-tome grids and the reverse on normal classes can now do more in the colosseum instead of simply staring at "No Effect" on easy Colosseum days.
  • And it gets even more bonkers with Round 2, with Red Riding Hood/Death Metal Costume (2nd Hand) and Alice/Author Cheering Kit for Minstrels and Little Mermaid/Onion-chopping Braces and Little Match Girl/Solar Panel Armor for Sorcerers! Now instead of 10% to their specialty weapon and 5% to their secondary type, it's 13% to their specialty and 7% to their secondary, and with the introduction of Class Awakening skills, expect your buffs and your opponent's debuffs to go from 0 to 20 real fast.
• The 6th Anniversary brought something that no one thought possible - Divine Half-Nightmares, in which the Character is possessed by a Divine spirit instead. And there's a reason why this lot do not come cheap - take for example Alice/Divine Fortitude Half-Nightmare. At Class level 10 alone, she can increase physical and magical damage by a whopping 6% when the player is using a Breaker or Gunner class respectively and at level 14 (and mind you, her max. Class level is 16) increases the Lifeforce gain by that same amount either through physical or magical attacks. Her Awakening skill on the other hand increases the PATK and PDEF of the player's main grid by 5%. Now put her in the support grid of a Breaker or Gunner class grid and watch as your opponents are sent to the edge of the Solar System and back.

Weapons (including skills)

• For physical-oriented guilds, Red Riding Hood/Alternative's mainhand Intent of Brutality is a must despite not having Dauntless Courage as its Colosseum Support skill. Its main draw is its active Colosseum skill "Conflagration of Revenge (III)", which aside from dealing great Physical damage to 1-2 enemies, and increases the effect to 150% if the guild is losing, allowing the guild to turn around a potential loss. Have all 5 Crusher vanguards use the weapon simultaneously when a Fire-boosting Nightmare such as Rikone or My Melody is active, and watch with glee as the opponent is thrown violently into Recovery.
• Any weapon with the Unfriendly Rivalry Colosseum Support skill. What the skill does is to, at a certain chance, increase the target of a weapon's skill by 1. This meant one more opposing Vanguard taking damage or being debuffed, or one more ally Vanguard getting buffed or healed. In fact, it was so powerful, it got banned from the WGC.
• The Serpent of Technique Devouring Active Skill is also this due to its ability to copy the skill of the previous weapon used by the player. Pair it up with another weapon that has powerful effects and watch with glee as the fireworks go off! However, it's also diminished somewhat by being limited to 1 per grid, missing outright if the player uses the weapon first in a battle, and if not upgraded to LL costs a whopping 100 SP to use in the Colosseum.
• Any instrument or tome whose skill has the Erosion subtitle attached to them. Normally, instruments and tomes don't affect defeated players, but if they have Erosion in the skill name, defeated players do count, which essentially means that defeated allies come back stronger, and enemies can return weaker.
• Finding yourselves in a pinch with a single strike between your guild and Recovery Phase? Clerics can now look forward to weapons with Momentary Radiance, which turns Clerics into walking ambulances by increasing healing effectiveness if the target(s) is/are on the brink of death, as in 99% or below. Talk about going from 0 to 100 in a flash, especially if Unfriendly Rivalry decides to activate there and then.
• Luminescent Oceanic Moon (Hell's Calamity) is THE premiere staff in the game - its Colosseum Active skill Fallen Angel's Embrace affects 3-4 allies, while also refunding a massive 100 SP to the Cleric who used it. Its Colosseum Aid skill on the other hand is Recovery Support/Extreme, which unlike regular Recovery Support, has a high chance of increasing the amount of HP recovered. And if Unfriendly Rivalry activates when it's used, it can potentially heal the entire vanguard instantly, turning them into unbreakable stone walls. It's so powerful, its subtitle is proof of its rarity - it can only be pulled in Hell's Calamity rearguard-specialized grimoire banners.
• Dear God are the Carnage Calamity weapons absolutely busted. For one thing, almost all of the Vanguard weapons have a variant of the Entanglement of the World Tree's Spear skill in which their output is increased when any element-boosting Nightmare such as Rikone or Iruz are active, and the Rearguard weapons have 1 member whose range encompasses the entire front line. All of them also have a unique ability to rotate between (Great) Fire, Water and Wind with only a single Dragon Tear as the cost. And that's only Part 1. Combined with Cepheus, Fornax and Sagittarius below, and you'll get a reason why some of the top guilds have hit 999,999,999 Lifeforce in the Colosseum.

Nightmares

• For a while in the early years, it was commonplace for all guilds to start with a Nightmare that restored SP in order for guild members stacking up combo counts to replenish enough SP to later swap to their main grids. And if they didn't have those because members missed out on the Prison of the Abyss event which had Prison Warden Fear or didn't pay for similar Nightmares, they'd start out with Nightmares that reduced SP consumption such as Eris, Avatar of Gluttony. But as time went by, those Nightmares soon faded from the meta due to the increasing number of weapons that did their jobs, with Eris occasionally brought back for Colosseum SP. But in August 2022, what finally put the kibosh on them was the Tanken Driland collab event, which introduced Evil Beliamon, Beliorcbanza and Godking Bone. These three introduced the Dance of the Water/Wind/Fire Sprite skills which basically fused Eris's skill with Ugallu/Lindwyrm/Freeze Golem's skills, rendering Fear, Eris and any vanilla element boosters such as the above 3 Nightmares void. The only thing that set the trio back was their availability, being collab-exclusives that will most likely not see a rerun in the future. But hey, at least that collab did not have any special Desire medals!
• Sarthe, the Winged Water Magician has cemented itself as The Dreaded among Colosseum Nightmares. Its skill, Smoke-Dulled Malediction (III), causes the next opposing Nightmare summoned to have its preparation time be extended to 1 minute and 30 seconds, with the opponent being left vulnerable for that time while they get smacked. There's no way to counter it, with the best solution being to summon your own copy to oppose the opponent's if they used theirs first or summon the next Nightmare as quickly as possible before theirs takes effect. Pair Sarthe up with Nightmares that rewind preparation time such as Wind Golem or Desire Bot Mk. II and the poor opponent has to play the waiting game while praying they don't get too damaged. Like the Unfriendly Rivalry weapon skill, Smoke-Dulled Malediction is also banned from the WGC.
• As seen in the 1st World GranColosseum Japanese Preliminaries, a combination of a so-called 'speed Nightmare' such as Chimera or the 3rd Anniversary variant of Yuno with Funeral Loiza as the last Nightmares summoned in a match can hurt a lot since the latter in particular boosts the activation rate of Colosseum Aid skills which in turn gives the guild a higher chance of earning a lot of points before the timer runs out. F2P players can substitute Loiza with Blue Poppy if they want a similar effect.
• When the Nightmare Daphne first came out, it came with a Colosseum skill that converted excess healing to Lifeforce in the Colosseum, essentially turning Clerics into backup Vanguards since prior to Daphne's release, overhealing an ally didn't contribute to their HP. As a result, Daphne ended up in many strategies to allow guilds to get more Lifeforce, timing its activation to if the guild managed to summon a Demon that required staves first. Unfortunately, Daphne's since been nerfed by Pokelabo due to the mass score inflation during the GranColosseum, to the point where it's now a Joke Character and has since been outstripped by Kuromi, who has the same skill but 1 tier higher and costing 0 SP to cast compared to Daphne's 200 SP.
• Everytime a new Nightmare with The Bell Sounds a Wildfire/The Bell Sounds a Storm/For Whom the Bell Splashes is released, expect them to outstrip the previous version pretty quickly. The current queens of the skill are The Poorest Beastman, Reika, Bell Umbrella in the Clear Wind, Athha and Deira, One-Horned Rhino Princess with all three carrying the Godspeed subtitle in their skills which decreases their prep time to a mere 10 seconds in the Colosseum (5 in Story), but with a longer active time than their Short counterparts.
  • The Guard versions of the Bells may still find relevance in the Global server (unless someone already has Deira and Athha), but the A Fluffy Encounter rerun in JP gives us Hangyodon, Tuxedo Sam and KIRIMI-chan that come with a new version, Layered Grudge of Scattered Winds/Foam/Sparks, that combines the Bell skills with an added effect in the Colosseum; defeated Vanguards will get a DEF boost. Since they're all brand new skills, players can either use them to substitute for the Bells or, if they're feeling rather sadistic, stack both Bells and Layered Grudge skills to bring grief to their opponents.
  • And then the 6th Anniversary topped that with Sorrowful King of the Star Era, Cepheus, Wise King of the Star Arrow, Sagittarius and Allied King of the Star Furnace, Fornax by making them Poor Reika, Athha and Deira on steroids. How broken are they, exactly? Well, they have the same function as the trio... while also reducing the opponent's target range by 1. And it doesn't just apply to the vanguards; everyone in the opposing guild is affected. Unfriendly Rivalry, your days are numbered. Additionally their skills are separate from the Bells, adding to certain players' sadism to the horror and despair of others.
• And if you thought Ugallu, Lindwyrm and Freeze Golem couldn't get any more irrelevant with the Driland trio essentially taking their place, introducing Ruler of the Flame Blossoms, Nome, Black Hat Lifetree, Klau and Mask of Swift Battles, Iruz, which come with EX versions of their skills; taking 10 seconds to prep in the Colosseum but having a whopping 190 seconds active time, making them perfect stallers that will give strategists enough time to plan their next Nightmare. The same can also be said for Blue Poppy as it's slowly replaced with Fruitless Bloom Predator, Meme that's essentially the Uplifting Chant version of Nome, Klau and Iruz.