Video Game / Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle

"Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle! Alright! Let's get this started!"

Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle is a Gacha game by Namco Bandai released on both iOS and Android. based on the Dragon Ball franchise.

A mysterious force has gathered the Dragon Balls and has made a major wish - for all the fighters in space/time to gather to see who the strongest is. Aided by Future Trunks and King Kai, the player seeks to find out who did such a thing and fix things before they get bad.

The game gathers characters from virtually every major entry in the Dragon Ball saga - Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, the fifteen Dragon Ball Z movies, Dragon Ball Super, Dragon Ball Xenoverse and other random portions of the franchise. The players gather a team of six fighters of different rankings to battle over foes by matching color-coded ki orbs.

Examples:

• Adaptation Expansion: Certain story events would add a non-canon extra stage or two that goes beyond the saga or movie adapted.
  • "Low-Class Warrior: Raditz's Pride" has Raditz, motivated by his late father's spirit, aim to become stronger just to be seen as someone worthwhile in Vegeta's and Nappa's eyes. He succeeds, but unfortunately for him, this event takes place before the Saiyan Saga...
  • The final stage of "Fight Against Despair! The Last Super Warriors - Gohan and Trunks" has Trunks travel back in time post-Cell Saga to celebrate his victory over the future androids and Cell, where he learns that Gohan and the others would be competing in a world tournament soon, chaining the event to Bojack Unbound.
  • "Fight! Battle for the Strongest in the Universe!" adds an extra scene following Cooler's defeat that focuses on Vegeta taunting a Frieza solder that Kakarot's victory over Cooler is a surefire thing thanks to his Super Saiyan power, before going Super Saiyan himself to kill the unlucky soldier.
• Adaptational Heroism: Vegeta in the Quest Mode, surprisingly. He recognized and referred to Trunks as his own son way before the Cell Games, and agrees to hold off Turles as Trunks and the player goes on their adventure.
• Adaptational Villainy: In Quest Mode, Bardock's members still side with Frieza, maybe because Bardock wasn't in their sight...
• Adaptational Wimp: In Quest Mode, Frieza is stomped flat in his first form and doesn't even hit his other forms.
  • This becomes subverted later on down the road, however, as he'll soon be transforming once a stage, even teaming up with Cooler's Armored Squadron to gain the upper hand.
  • Cell, on the other hand, plays this straight. He never reaches his perfect form, and he gets wrecked by Super Vegeta, to the point where Vegeta forced Cell to spit out 17, reverting him back to his imperfect form.
• Advertised Extra: Despite making a big deal out of the transformation in promotional materials leading up to the Super Hero campaign, Beast Gohan is restricted to a single-use Active Skill Attack for [Awakened Super Hero] Ultimate Gohan.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted. Certain animations (mostly during Super Attacks) will be completely redrawn depending on which side it is launched from (for example: The enemy [Final Super Power] Super Saiyan God SS Goku (Kaio-ken) who appears in "Beyond God - The Ultimate Secret" will have his back facing the camera when launching his Kamehameha), and characters like Fusion Zamasu will always have their asymmetrical features stay put regardless of which side they're facing.
• Animation Bump:
  • [A New Body and Preparedness] Android 16 has a much more stylized and fluid Super Attack animation compared to the rest of cards. But considering that he's based off his FighterZ incarnation, this was probably intentional.
  • [Miraculous Outcome] Goku & Frieza (Final Form) (Angel) is also highly detailed and flows so smoothly, perfectly replicating the adrenaline rush one would feel from watching Episode 131 of Super.
  • All of the animations for characters released during the Meta Cooler Dokkan Fest falls under this. Quite ironic, considering one of the reasons why Return of Cooler failed was because of its sloppy animation.
  • The animations for the 7th Anniversary unit [Infinite Power God Warriors] Super Saiyan God SS Goku & Super Saiyan God SS Vegeta take a MASSIVE one, managing to replicate the moments of CGI animation the film had, especially from Goku and Vegeta's clash against Super Saiyan Broly for the Ultra Super Attack, while also managing to integrate what were originally moments of their solo moments into a two-man team effort.
  • Cards from Super Hero also have this effect thanks to the source film receiving an Animation Bump itself. Especially conspicuous are the orbital shots used in Super Attacks like that of [Awakened Super Hero] Ultimate Gohan.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Character cards that are dropped from Dokkan events are automatically Z-Awakened to their SSR status so players do not have to expend a lot of training items and awakening medals to awaken them just for a higher chance of raising their Super Attack level. This is very fortunate considering that you have a 50% chance that the level up even works in contrast to 5% if not awakened.
  • As of Super Saiyan Goku's Legendary Campaign, all Super Strike characters now have a 100% drop rate, making them less of a hassle to grind. Double so, since some characters (Vegeta, Paikuhan, Piccolo, Mighty Mask, Jackie Chun, Tien, Trunks (Xeno)) can have their super attacked raised by raising them to SSR rank and feeding them to their stronger counterparts.
  • "Transcendent Warrior" and "Summit of the Universe" has a 4th stage that has a higher chance of dropping their respective LR Cards rather than the abysmal rate in their 1st stage (which is only a guaranteed drop on your first playthrough). And as of Frieza's Legendary Campaign, you can use Namek Saga cards for a higher chance of obtaining additional dupes.
  • While you do have to grind for them, the Mysterious Hourglass allows you to revert any TUR character back to their SSR/UR state, making it easier to unlock a potential route or raise their Super Attack level without burning too much resources.
  • Should the players accidentally threw away their Extreme Z-Awakening medals, they are able to regain them by replaying the milestone levels to get them again at the cost of a couple of stamina points.
  • Unlike the LR Frieza campaign rewards, the mission reward for LR [Ginyu Force Reborn] Ginyu (Goku)(Force) never disappears and will stay permanent even if the player completed it at a later date, which means being able to rainbow the LR will always be a possibility.
  • The game will remember the Super Attack level upon re-Dokkan Awakening if you reverse a card who's Super Attack level exceeds 10 (such as an Extreme Z-Awakened character or a LR card), saving players the hassle of constantly keeping Grand or Elder Kais on standby every time.
  • A recent update added Memory Keys to the game, which allows you to play past events for a certain amount of keys, including discontinued events like the Dr. Slump events or "Captain Yamcha's Grand Slam!"
  • Unlike other special Hidden Potential units, both Butouden versions Goku and Vegeta have their orbs given out for free, just enough to max both of them out of their Hidden Potential. In the rare scenario where you either misuse them or logged in 3 months after the gift expires, the game has Potential tiles with only "1" number as movement to guarantee you heaps of Orbs per run.
    • Furthermore, both Goku and Vegeta have one linear potential routes so you can simply click on the end of the node and all others will be activated, saving players a couple of time in their Potential System.
  • While the rates of featured units remain the same, multi-summons will always guarantee you 1 SSR unit, giving player incentive to do multis as opposed to doing 10 single summons at a time.
  • Awakening medals that require to be purchased using event-specific treasure items will always remain available and never runs out, preventing players from having characters stuck at their pre-awakened state, unable to Dokkan awaken them until the event returns which could take months to do so.
  • Great Saiyaman from Battlefield does not attack in the first turn he appears to give players the opportunity to seal him before he unleashes his One-Hit Kill Super Attack.
  • Extreme Z-Battle events to Extreme Z-Awaken unfeatured SSR units will always remain available permanently and can be played without requiring to spent any keys to do it, ensuring that players can EZA them right away after pulling said units.
  • While Beerus uses his [Hot-Blooded God of Destruction] Beerus art during his God of Destruction boss fight when enraged, unlike his playable counterpart, this Beerus still belongs to the Universe Survival Saga instead of switching to the Movie Bosses category midway through the fight. This ensures that units that have a boost against Universal Survival Saga such as Caulifla and Kale units still works against him.
• April Fools' Day: Dokkan Battle has changed itself a few times for this reason.
  • 2016: Yamcha's Epic Clash was released, giving out the two joke cards [Absolute Loss] Yamcha and [Wounded Honor] Yamcha. Their passives tanks their ATK and DEF to 0. This event returned eight years later for the April Fools' Day campaign in 2024.
  • 2017: Dokkan Battle announced Saiba Battle, a game mode where you'll be able to grow and train Saibamen powerful enough to take on Raditz. The card given out was a Saibaman team which, while weak, did have an impressive Super Attack (even if it did take off 10% of your health...)
  • 2018: Dokkan Battle announced Dolly Battle, a game mode where you'll able to date various Dragon Ball women via dating sim, as Ribrianne helps you find true love. Screwing up, however, will result in the Shadow Dragons coming out to kill you. They did release a card that had all the Dragon Ball Heroines, except you couldn't use the card at all, unlike the previous year's Saibaman team.
  • 2019: Dokkan Battle goes 8-bit with Dokkan Butouden, complete with all new Goku and Vegeta cards with in-game sprites looking straight out of Legendary Super Warriors for the Game Boy Color. Even better, they have their own potential orbs to use, too!
    • To make the joke even funnier is that it pulls a Mythology Gag, as the description references the button combination Up, X, Down, B, L, Y, R, A. That code is from the actual Super Butouden games, and inserting that code while booting up the game actually will cause hidden characters to appear.
  • 2020: Dokkan Battle becomes Dokkan Racer, allowing you to speed through various locations with your favorite Dragon Ball character. Though it ended up getting scrapped due to not everyone finishing the preliminary race (Tao Pai Pai couldn't change directions, Krillin getting called on-duty, Yamcha getting crushed by Vegeta's Saiyan pod). To compensate, the game released an all new Bulma card, which can become a powerhouse in her own right when teamed up with Goku (Youth).
  • 2021: Dokkan gains a new game mode with Dokkan of the Dead, inspired by both the zombie resurrection part of Fusion Reborn and SEGA's House of the Dead series, where players take control of the Great Saiyaman from a first person perspective fighting against the undead hoard before squaring off against a revived Frieza.
  • 2022: With the help of the Para Para Brothers, Dokkan Battle becomes the dance-battling Dokkan Exercise, complete with a funky dance remix of the main theme.
  • 2023: Dokkan Battle adds the most highly anticipated game mode no Role-Playing Game is complete without: The Fishing Minigame. Oh, and the Orange Jacket Goku from the Cell Saga, too.
• Arc Number:
  • Just like its source material, the number 7 is everywhere, though some argue its taken to absurd levels here. The game has a 7 day countdown to major events and celebration, some of the stronger Baba Shop cards (obtainable through treasures) require 777 Incredible Gems, you can only summon Porunga once every 7 days (since you can only obtain one Dragon Ball a day), you bring a team of 7 cards in battle (six of your own plus one friend lead), modern Dokkan Fest cards require 77 medals from their respective Dokkan Event to Awaken, there are 7 steps to fully Extreme Z-Awaken a character, [Brazen Courage] Gohan (Kid) gives a +77% Stat boost to all characters, you get [Glorious Radiance] Hercule upon your 777th log in, 7 is the standard featured characters for many banners and certain characters (almost all of whom belong to "Representatives of Universe 7") get a 77% ATK and/or DEF boost from their passives.
  • LR [Miraculous Outcome] Goku & Frieza (Final Form) (Angel)—their stats end with 77 (even when rainbowed), they provide a +177% Stat boost to "Representatives of Universe 7" Category cards, their Ultra Attack is called "Miracle of Universe 7", and they can have up to three +77% ATK boosts stack upon each other (+77% ATK and DEF for attacking, +77% ATK for launching their Ultra Attack, and +77% ATK if they face an enemy that has their ATK reduced).
  • Whenever a new Goku card shows up, expect the number 59 (referencing the translation "Go-Kyu" in Japanese) in their passive to crop up. Likewise, many Gohan units often have the number 58 ("Go-hachi") in their passives.
• Art Evolution: As new cards get released, as well as old cards getting Dokkan Awakenings, there is a noticeable refinement to the card's art styles, whether it be re-proportioned characters or a new shading used altogether. Compare [Star-Crossed Fate] Bardock with his Dokkan Awakening [Fight Against Destiny], or [Proudest in the Universe] Cooler (Final Form) with [Heinous Attack]
• Ascended Meme:
  • In the event based on Dragon Ball: Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!!, Goku uses the "Oh My Kami" joke that's been circulating around the English fandom for a couple of decades.
  • In the days leading up to the 300M Download celebration livestream, many fans were waiting for the moment Cell interrupts the stream to announce his Cell Games Tournament (This is due to the livestream being hosted on the 17th of August, which, while not the exact month, was the day Cell raided the WNN in the manga and anime to announce his tournament. Lining this up is that dataminers have determined the celebration will start on the 27th, exactly 10 days after the livestream.) While he didn't hijack the stream, Cell did post a video on the global Facebook page related to the theme.
  • At one point in the Quest mode, Android 17 refers to Android 16 as the "tough, silent guy who likes birds," possibly referencing the latter's obsession with them in Dragon Ball Z Abridged.
• Auto-Revive: Introduced in the 6th Anniversary units with the Revival mechanic are capable of being able to survive a K.O. attack and recover a portion of HP provided those conditions are met albeit they can only be used once per battle so multiple characters with the same mechanic will not stack.
• Awesome, but Impractical: A number of them:
  • The Baba Points SSR cards. They have awesome stat bonuses for a certain type, they cost 30k Baba Points and you'll probably be told 9 times out of 10 not to sell your Gasha-drawn SSR cards to get that total.
  • The Vegito and Gogeta Fusion transformations for both LR Goku and Vegeta and their angel incarnation respectively. While their Fusion is undeniably the most overpowered units in the game, to transform into them, you have to have your HP below 50% and wait 6 turns before you can do so. However that's easier than done given the fact that 6 turns for Dokkan standards is actually rather long particularly when those two are released and they're are so overpowered in their unfused form that you will probably stomp the bosses to the ground before you can even reach the threshold. Furthermore, thanks to their colossal defenses and great leader skills, it is very unlikely that the bosses will be strong enough to deplete you below the threshold unless you either sabotage yourself or are playing the Super Battle Road^note But even then, you still have to wait 6 turns before you can even think of transforming but if you managed to pass that threshold, you are either lucky that they do not Super Attack you or used items that allow you to survive for 6 turns and their fusions won't pass over once you defeated the enemies. In other words, if you successfully managed to fuse into either Vegito or Gogeta, you are probably winning the game anyway and are purposely dicking around just so you can get the transformation.
  • Likewise, [Boiling Power] Super Saiyan Goku, [Limitless Combat Power] Super Saiyan Vegeta, and [Glacial Prestige] Frieza (1st Form) also have transformations that borderlines impractical. Starting from the third turn, Goku, Vegeta, and Frieza will transform one level at a time for every turn they appear in, capping off at Super Saiyan Blue for the Saiyans and Golden Form for Frieza. However, this threshold basically means that in order to reach the highest level possible, you have to stretch the fight for longer than ten turns. By the time you actually manage to get SSB or Golden Frieza, the match has already been decided and you most likely have either sabotaged yourself or play Fighting Legend events to even reach that transformation state in the first place.
  • [Fusion Reborn] Super Gogeta is among the first units in the game to be able to No-Sell Super Attacks. On paper, it sounds like a great passive given the fact that Super Attacks are easily the most damaging attacks in the game. However Gogeta's passive only works against melee-based Super Attacks but compared to Combo types and especially Ki-Blast types, they're incredibly uncommon with the majority of them dealing Ki Blast attacks. Additionally, you also need to hit the target enemy with an Ultra Super Attack so if they attack first or you K.O. the enemy you won't be able to get the passive. And even if you could somehow meet said conditions, given the fact that Gogeta has a 30% damage reduction on all attacks for 5 turns after you Fuse, chances are you're probably gonna tank said attacks anyway making the ability itself redundant.
  • As the game progresses and the challenge behind events starts ramping up, Super Vegito's many DFE variants have begun to show faults with his mechanics. While he can take normal attacks no problem and can counter back for massive damage, he's a defensive liability against Super Attacks as his damage reduction only applies to normal attacks (not to mention the LR [Fused Super Power] and [Fused Hope] variants have no damage reduction in their kits). This is on top of him being a rather Squishy Wizard, especially in Slot 1, as he has low defenses at the start of each battle/turn and requires either a Super Attack or two and a lot of build up just for his defense stats to be raised to acceptable levels. In an era of shorter stages with powerful bosses, who can now launch their Super Attacks multiple times in one turn, this can make him come off as The Load as you'll most likely pass him up for more practical units.
  • The ability to damage all enemies with their Super Attacks/Active Skills. While it seems like an awesome and interesting ability to use against events with multiple enemies such as Super Battle Road or World Tournament, almost every other events only have a single enemy for you to fight. Additionally, Super Battle Road also allows you to use your Support Item slots and units that are effective against single enemies are also effective against multiple ones as the enemies aren't as resilient compared to other events making World Tournament the only event where its actually meaningful. It doesn't help that the game treated it like it's some sort of special & unique ability and units with AoE based supers will almost always have passive that revolve around it such as having different multipliers depending on the enemy remaining or nerf the Super Attack multipliers from the standard Immense to Supreme for DFE units in an effort to overbalance said abilities.
• Battle Intro: Starting from the 7th Anniversary, units can now have an Entrance Animation that is fully voiced. While it's mostly just a stylish addition, it does integrate into the gameplay by implementing turn-based passives that works right on the very turn that they appear.
• Bonus Feature Failure:
  • The Worldwide Download Celebration allows player to obtain Memorial Stones based on how many stones they spent on banners. These stones can either be exchanged for Tickets or be used to purchase a Dokkan Festival unit in the Treasure shop. While the latter seems appealing to get a DFE of your choosing, each unit costs 150 Memorial Stones and given the fact that you get 1 Memorial Stone for every 50 stones spent, that pretty much equates to needing to spent 7500 stones within a single year. For comparison, you can purchase 1 category lead in the Red Coin Shop with 400 Coins which equates to 2000 stones or an LR for 500 Coins equaling 2500 stones. If a player spend that many stones to be able to purchase a single unit, chances are they would have probably had most of the units rainbowed and others with multiple dupes anyway. You're practically better off just exchanging them for Tickets where for the equivalent of 1 guaranteed unit for 150 Summons, you'll be able to not only have the chance of getting the featured unit but also get other DFEs or if you're particularly lucky, an unfeatured LR from the summon pool.
  • "Astonishing Power-Up! Grand Elder Guru's Guidance" is an event that is supposed to help your characters link level far easier than the regular method. However, the event only provides a bonus 4.5% chance to link level while the chances of leveling your link is already low as it is enough with the chances of leveling to 10 is 3% which means that not only the chance of leveling up isn't guaranteed but it doesn't even raise the chance that high. Additionally, what made link leveling in quest modes very effective is that each enemies fought have their own chance of successfully leveling up your links but in this mode, you only fight one enemy so most of the time, you might not even succeed at leveling your characters at all even after attempting this stage multiple times. As a result, what was allegedly meant to be the definite stage for link leveling ended up being a complete filler event with the Quest Mode stages still remain among the best events to link level your characters.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Don't throw away those mission-drop cards! They may not be the best, but they still hold a lot of potential and they're needed to take on Prime Battles for potential LR cards.
  • The Baba Shop SSR cards hit this trope as well. At TUR, they have the same Leader Skills as the original Neo-God cards and only give a Ki boost along with a great chance at boosting ATK and DEF. However, they are some of the easiest to obtain, if time consuming due to cost.
  • While General Blue's Telekinesis doesn't do much in the damage department (even at SA10), it does provide a great chance at stunning the enemy, potentially stun-locking them throughout the entire match (assuming they're not immune to stuns).
  • A surefire way to survive the Extreme-INT stage of Super Battle Road is to use two [Light Orb of Hatred] Super 13 leads, since his leader skil reduces TEQ type ATK by 43% (So using two at once brings the TEQ enemies' ATK down by a whopping 86%). The main problem with using this tactic is that it takes forever to complete the stage, but with Extreme INT having a huge range of healers and tanks, your chances of surviving is much greater than using double Kid Buu or LR Bojack leads.
  • Defensive-based passives such as damage reduction and guard. Compared to offensive focused abilities that are designed to kill enemies as fast as possible such additional supers or critical hits, the ability to take hits don't seem to be as flashy or explosive but if said unit doesn't have any defensive capabilities to tank hits after the enemy survives, then none of those matter if they hit back enough to reduce your HP straight to 0 anyway and immediately end your run. Additionally as Power Creep makes the fights become harder and harder over time, units whose passives are focused more on defense will almost always age better than those that focuses on offense as damage reduction & guard directly reduces the damage dealt before taking defense into account which allows them to scale far better as the game progresses whereas being able to hit really hard won't matter if the enemy is way too tanky to shrug off said attack before retaliating back in return.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Beating the most difficult events in the game such as Transcendent God of Destruction or The Ultimate Red Zone rewards you with a Support Memory that permanently gives them an ATK & DEF boost to the appropriate categories, making them among the best Support Memories in the game as all others only work for 1-2 turns. However, given the fact that they're the hardest bosses in the game, you certainly do not need it against future enemies, since if you can beat them, then you certainly can beat other events where their category is required.
• Brutal Bonus Level:
  • Super Battle Road are challenge stages where you're forced to bring a team of one type (Super-AGL, Extreme STR, etc.) as you go up against five rounds against 2-5 enemies, each with jacked up stats, all on one life. If you don't have any top of the line cards, you're guaranteed to die as early as the first turn.
  • Extreme Super Battle Road takes everything that made its predecessor brutally hard and takes it up a notch. Some of them even have disproportionately high stats that make them capable of OHKOing you even through Support Items in order to compensate for several categories having recently released top tier units.
  • "Epic! Transcendent! Gods of Destruction Assemble" has you fight an extremely powerful God of Destruction enemy where besides having incredibly high health & damage reduction and hitting incredibly hard, each of them also have multiple gimmicks depending on the God you fight. For example, Heles changes her type every turn while Mosco's Super Attack affects your entire rotation.
• Call-Forward: [Fused Fighting Force] SSJ Goku (Angel) & SSJ Vegeta (Angel)'s 18-Ki Ultra Attack has them combine their Kamehameha with the Final Flash, even though they never done so in Fusion Reborn and wouldn't do this until the Universal Survival Saga in Super.
• Can't Catch Up: Being a Gacha game, this is inevitable. A unit that was once incredibly strong in the early days often lags behind in comparison to newer cards, not only due to the ever growing Power Creep but also thanks to bosses becoming increasingly beefy and attacking more often. While Extreme Z-Awakening was introduced to mitigate this, allowing older units to keep up with the newer ones, that's all the powerup they'll receive and once they age, there's no way they'll be able to become any stronger.
• Cast from Hit Points: Super Kaioken Goku, Chiaoman, Sourman, Full Power Frieza, and [Mass Produced Soldier] Saibaman's super attacks deal a certain percentage of damage to the player.
• Composite Character:
  • Even though both the Dokkan Fest and PHY SS3 Angel Gokus are from their appearance in the Majin Buu Saga (which is why they have the category in the first place), their Super Attack is the Double Dragon Twin Fist move used on Janemba in Fusion Reborn. This might have been because the Dragon Fist was already SSJ3 Goku's attack, and outside of the movies, his Angel counterpart didn't really bring anything new in the super move department. This eventually gets lampshaded by the game itself, as all of the SSJ3/SSJ3 Angel Gokus are under both the Majin Buu Saga and Movie Heroes categories.
  • Despite the card being based off of his Future Saga appearance, people noted that [Ultimate and Invincible Fusion] Vegito's base form Super and Ultra Super Attacks are based off the moves Vegito used against Super Buu back in the Majin Buu Saga. Justified in this case, as Vegito was in his base form for roughly a few seconds before immediately powering up to Super Saiyan Blue when facing Fusion Zamasu.
  • As the animation becomes more improved, characters from other time periods will have them use skills and combat techniques from other periods in time in order to look more dynamically fluid, such as [Fusion Reborn] Goku (Angel) & Vegeta (Angel) having their animations based on their Super Saiyan 2 VS Majin fight in the Majin Buu Saga, or [Indomitable Fighter] Super Saiyan Gohan (Future) having animations modified from his mainline self's counterpart from Broly - Second Coming.
• Counter-Attack:
  • Hitting non-base Vegito with normal attack will get a counterattack, while hitting Super Saiyan 4 Goku, Vegeta, or Gogeta with Super Attack has a 30% (70% for the latter) chance of dodging the attack and counterattacking with a Super Attack instead.
  • [Miraculous Final Battle] Goku (GT) & Super Saiyan 4 Vegeta and [Showdown for the World's Strongest] Goku have this for their Standby skills, as if they or anyone within the turn get's K.O.'d during the Standby period, then they'll Auto-Revive and strike back with a powerful Finish Attack.
• Covers Always Lie: The Dokkan festival banner for the debut of STR Rose Black has SS3 Broly as one of the characters featured in the banner. However, the cover for him is his TUR version, not his SSR version which actually caused confusion for casual fans who doesn't know of his pre Dokkan awakened version when they acquired him. Due to the huge risk of getting sued for false advertising^note Japan has a much stricter laws on Gacha regulation compared to other countries, the banner is promptly removed within hours after it's featured.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Zig-zagged. Though a team of all same colors mean that they're strong against one type, weak against another and indifferent against others, the game rewards you with higher bonuses by being more and more specialized.
• Department of Redundancy Department: [Phantom Majin Sealed Within] Tapion (Hirudegarn)'s Hirudegarn Transformation can Evade every single attack which would have been an amazing ability, if it weren't for the fact that Giant Form Transformations are already invulnerable to enemy attacks, making such ability pointless aside from cutting down on animations.
• Difficulty by Region:
  • In the Global release, SSJ4 Gogeta is immune to stun attacks. Compared to the Japanese release, where he is immune to both stun and sealing attacks.
  • Think getting 30,000 trade points for one of the Baba Shop cards was bad? The Japanese version had them priced for 100,000 trade points.
  • The Japanese version of the SSJ3 Goku (Angel) fight, on top of having to deal with an instant kill countdown, could also bypass all of your damage reduction skills, meaning that characters like Super Vegito, Golden Frieza, [Unwavering Conviction] SSJ Trunks (Future) and [Utopia Realized] Zamasu will take the full blunt of his attacks no matter what.
  • Zig-Zagged when it comes to farming any SSJ Goku's Super Attack. While Japanese players didn't had to go through the extra process of Dokkan Awakening to and from [Message From Another World] Goku (Angel), their [Legendary Super Saiyan] Super Saiyan Goku could only Z-Awaken to a SSR, giving him a 50% chance to level up another, much stronger SSJ Goku. The Global version, however, has him Z-Awaken up to UR, making it a guaranteed SA raise if used on another SSJ Goku.
• Dub Name Change:
  • Some characters have different names from their initially-given names. For instance, Cooler is referred to as "Coora" and Bojack is referred to as "Boujack".
    • "Coora" ended up getting changed back to "Cooler" in the global release following a patch.
  • Goku (Ultra Instinct -Omen-) was changed to Goku (Ultra Instinct -Sign-) in the Global Release.
  • For some undefined reason, Salza was renamed to Thouser.
• Double-Edged Buff: With the introduction of Domains, any buffs that applies to a certain category or class of characters will also apply to the enemy team if they fulfil those conditions. [Infinite Sanctuary] Infinite Zamasu can cause Super Class enemies to receive 30% more damage when his Domain is activated... but so will every other Super Class ally on your team.
• Double Unlock: The Dokkan Jukebox allows you to obtain any in-game theme that you can listen to within your profile, but to unlock those themes, you need Burst Coins... But even with enough coins stockpiled up, you still need to unlock those themes to be purchasable by completing a specific event's Burst Mode with a certain points threshold.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Certain cards were once released as boss only characters before becoming payable characters, such as the Goku seen in the first phase of the Super Vegito Dokkan events (eventually became [Quiet Grit] Goku, who could Awaken into LR [Golden Fist] SSJ3 Goku), or the Lord Slug first seen in the Hero Extermination Event (became the drop character [Gushing Evil Powers] Lord Slug).
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • "The Mysterious Alien Warrior from Space" actually ended differently, with Goku still alive and thanking the player for helping him save Gohan from Raditz. All the other story events would play canon straight.
  • Transcended URs and LRs didn't exist when the game started. This lead to some interesting choices, such as a Final Form Frieza actually being released as a SR just so he could Dokkan Awaken into a SSR Golden Frieza.
  • Strike Events only allowed players a chance to get a nice SR card. It wouldn't be until a few World Tournaments would pass that they could become SSRs.
  • [Everlasting Legend] Super Saiyan Goku, [Budding Heart] Piccolo, [Limitless Energy] Androids #17 & #18, and [Reign of Terror] Frieza (1st Form), the first four LRs ever to be released, don't have either the "Shattering the Limit" or "Fierce Battle" links.
  • Early Gacha-based LRs tend to have ridiculous requirements to get them to that level. [Limitless Energy] Androids #17 & #18 required you to go through all of the Dokkan Events up to "The Golden Emperor's Vengeance" to get all of the required medals. [Beyond the Ferocious Flash] Majin Vegeta still required you to go through various Dokkan Events, but only the five after "Golden Emperor". Then there's [Indestructible Saiyan Evil] Legendary Super Saiyan Broly, who required you to get the usual 77 "Berserker of Destruction" medals, then get 77 of the North, South, East, West Kais and Kibito medals just to evolve him to LR.
  • Dokkan Events tend to have specific units and links that the bosses are weak to. Early on, most of them were released with passive or links that specifically deals bonus damage. For example, the Family Kamehameha and Blazing Battle Link Skills have the phrase "Disable Rampage" in their description (which is designed to counter Broly's tremendous defense) while The Wall Standing Tall has "Disables enemy's True Power" which allow units with the link to deal bonus damage to Gohan. This has since been dropped later on with events that require specific characters or links to deal bonus damage were added to the Dokkan Event itself. Units released after this still has them in the description for old Dokkan Events for parity with the old ones.
  • The 1st Anniversary, besides Gogeta, also features Janemba as the headlined anniversary unit opposite of the former making him the first and only Extreme Class unit to be featured as an Anniversary Dokkan Festival character. Subsequent Anniversaries focuses entirely on Goku and Vegeta including their Fusions as the main units with any possible Extreme Class featured being relegated into Part 2 of the celebration as Legendary/Carnival Summon LRs or as a banner unit opposing the featured Super Class unit.
  • While Super Saiyan God SS Vegito's kit entirely revolves around additional attacks, [Azure Omnipotence] Super Saiyan God SS Vegito, the first Vegito Blue to be released, also has a built-in counterattack mechanic that was previously shared by [Unparalleled Golden Ki] Super Vegito. Subsequent Vegito Blues released ditch the counterattack component and focuses entirely on additionals while the counter mechanic is exclusively kept for future Super Vegito units.
  • When the Tanabata banner was first released that features the return of the Anniversary L Rs, it had 12 featured characters like a Legendary Summon banner. However, in contrast to the normal Dokkan Festival banner, it had a 3% featured rate, making the rate to pull the desired unit far lower than the typical Legendary Summon banner. Then, upon being released in Global, the featured units were increased to 20 albeit buffing rate to the standard 5% shared with other banners. Subsequent Tanabata banners now follow the same format as the Global version of the original banner.
  • Relating to the Tanabata banner, Global's first iteration of the banner was released during the Thank-You celebration much like their Japanese equivalent but subsequent Tanabata banners released on Global would be released on Christmas even when the Tanabata LR is released beforehand (for example, [Fusion Reborn] Goku (Angel) & Vegeta (Angel) was released during the Thank-You celebration but the next banner that features the returning Anniversary units won't be released until Christmas 1 month later.
  • [Transdimensional Instinct] Goku (Ultra Instinct -Sign-), the first category lead Extreme Z-Awakening as well as [Assassin's Ultimate Technique] Hit only has a 10% buff to their category leader skill, from 150% to 160%. It's only during [Power to Face Despair] Super Saiyan Gohan (Future)'s EZA do subsequent DFE category leads have their leader skill boost upgraded to a full 170% across the board including [Peerless Gleam] Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta and [Crashing Maelstrom] Omega Shenron. Non-DFE category leads that gets their EZA still retains their boost to 160 though.
  • [Miraculous Outcome] Goku & Frieza (Final Form) (Angel) wasn't featured to be pulled when they get their Extreme Z-Awakening on JP server. Subsequent summonable LRs EZAs released afterwards do get their own dedicated banner for the Extreme Z-Battle event and that applies when Global gets their own 6th Anniversary where Goku & Frieza gets their Legendary Summon banner for the celebration.
  • Earlier in the Global version's lifespan, events based on movies and specials used their original Japanese titles directly translated as the event name (such as "The Strongest Rivals" instead of "Cooler's Revenge" or "Fight Against Despair! The Last Super Warriors - Gohan and Trunks" instead of "History of Trunks"). Nowadays, any movie event uses their Funimation-appointed names, as seen with the "Lord Slug" and "Wrath of the Dragon" events, with the only exceptions being the story-compilation events (Such as "Fight! Battle for the Strongest in the Universe" since it compiles both Cooler's Revenge and Return of Cooler).
  • While unconditional Entrance Animations had always lasted a set number of turns, the first three conditional Entrance Animations - STR Goku (Kaio-ken), TEQ Vegeta (Giant Ape), and INT Majin Vegeta - had their bonuses last for the rest of battle. While future boosts that are entirely dependent on the enemy remains for the rest of battle, subsequent conditional Entrance Animations based on an ally on the team lasts a set number of turn like the former starting from INT SSGSS Vegeta and SS Trunks (Future).
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Some Super Attacks, such as Kid Buu's Super Vanishing Ball and Beerus's God of Destruction Edict are capable of doing this. Not that it means anything. There's even a Category for this under the name "Planetary Destruction".
• Excuse Plot: The supposed plot in this game is that someone has made a wish to gather all fighters in one timeline and you team with Trunks and King Kai to examine who is the culprit...Except you don't actually do any investigations at all so much as you got completely sidetracked into fighting all sorts of foes. Come Version Z, the Tutorial excises any reference to the Quest story and instead, revamp it by turning it into a retelling of the Saiyan Saga storyline.
• Fake Difficulty:
  • Super Strikes pre-Legendary Campaign forced you to take a team with a team cost of 100 or lower (includes Friend cards), meaning you have to put up with making a team consisting of mostly SR / SS Rs (or a team consisting of only two Dokkan Fest cards, yours and a friend's).
  • The original version of the Transcendent Warrior event restricted your card pool to only the Super Strike cards. Aside of all the problems these cards had by themselves, their leader skills (mostly) only increased Ki and nothing else, and they only apply to one or two types, and there are only so many of one type you can choose from. This makes it much harder than it should to build up Ki for Super Attacks, and keep in mind you had to do this challenge nearly 700 times just to awaken your Super Saiyan Goku to an LR. Thankfully, once SSJ Goku's Legendary Campaign arrived, the card pool was extended so that all cards dropped from Strike, Story or Dokkan events can compete.
  • The Extreme Z Areas can fall into this, as those events requires that you bring a team of specific units (mostly drop cards, but the Hero Extermination Plan EZArea requires Gacha-pulled characters to compete in them). On top of that, the game would also force you to run a certain unit that very well clashes with every other unit (Again, the Hero Extermination Plan EZArea is the biggest offender for this, as [Puzzle Wrapped in Enigma] Whis and [Raging Rampage] Hatchiyack each hit for wet blankets even at 100% Potential, and doesn't link at all with any other required card). And in Transcended Warrior's EZArea, not only do you have to have the required units to challenge the event, but they also have to be at 100% Hidden Potential and must be fully Extreme Z Awakened.
  • The Extreme Z-Area for Summit of the Universe has also fallen into this due to the frustrating existence of [Battle Expert] Krillin. He has a 30-50% chance of guarding all attacks making this a total Luck-Based Mission due to how hard Frieza can hit for, and has a hard time linking with anyone not named Goku (Kaio-ken). To make matters worse, the developers decided to make him the friend lead, forcing a modest 50% stat boost on everyone, instead of an Extreme Z-Awakened [Everlasting Legend] Super Saiyan Goku, who not only gives the whole team a whopping 90% stat buff, but starts everyone off with 4 Ki instead of 3.
• Fake Longevity: The Prime Battles L Rs require that you get 777 medals from their respective events. The only problem with this is that each runs requires 25 to 50 stamina per run, and the amount of medals that drop could range from 5 to 20. Thankfully in the modern day, the stamina amount has been cut down significantly, and the medal drop issue has been mitigated as past Prime Battles would allow for players to run a certain category to increase drop rates.
• Fanservice Pack:
  • On the LR Android 17 & 18 card, 18 is noticeably bustier than on the previous cards in the sequence, or any of her other cards.
  • For some reason, the Heroes exclusive adult Supreme Kai of Time card has much larger breasts than all other portrayals of her with even the original art being relatively tame compared to this...
• Fountain of Youth: The R Chi-Chis and [Acclaimed Ability] Krillin get this treatment when they Dokkan Awaken.
• Giant Equals Invincible: The "Giant Form" cards, like Great Apes, Giant Namekians, or [Infinite Love] Ribrianne (Giant Form), are immune to every attack the opponent throws at them, even against Super Attacks that are designed to instantly kill you. Averted with Hirudegarn, who has a 100% dodge chance instead.
• Glass Cannon:
  • [Super Warrior of Destruction] Legendary Super Saiyan Broly's passive reduces his defense to 0 when he attacks. Averted for his Z-Awakening version, however where he gains both attack and defense when attacking.
  • [Indestructible Saiyan Evil] Legendary Super Saiyan Broly's passive shoots his attack power by a whopping 80,000 points but plummets his defense power by a crippling 20,000 points.
  • [Mythic Evolution] Super Saiyan 3 Broly gains 12% ATK for every Ki Sphere he collects... but loses 6% defense. If he collects 10 Spheres; he has only 40% defense, and with some Support Item usage, this can be dropped to 0% for an all-in attack gambit with 17 Ki Spheres.
  • Not even Bio-Broly escapes this as he zig-zags this trope: If he goes up against 1 opponent, he becomes a Mighty Glacier as his defense doubles while his attack power is cut in half while the opposite occurs if he's dealing with two or more opponents.
  • [Transdimensional Instinct] Goku (Ultra Instinct) has his ATK boost goes from +100% to +150%, he gets +3 Ki, can break enemy guard and he has a great chance to dodge enemy attacks, but he loses his DEF boost, so if he can't dodge an attack, it's going to hurt. Thankfully his Extreme Z Awakening has allowed for him to maintain some defense, as well as upgrading his Super Attack so he can stack Defense as well as Attack.
• Harder Than Hard: Several high-difficulty events have released over the course of Dokkan Battle's history, so difficult that they provide a challenge to even meta-shattering units released prior, to the point that either A) you rely on pure RNG and get lucky enough to win, or B) have the most up-to-date meta units at the time. Some of these events include:
  • In 2021, there's the 'Epic! Transcendent! Gods of Destruction Assemble" event, which challenges players to defeat the 12 Gods of Destruction, with each battle being an intense 1v1 with varying gimmicks (Type changing, rage forms, AoE Super Attacks, ect.) and featuring a foe with a ton of health and hitting like a truck.
  • Then in 2022, there's the Ultimate Red Zone. It's like a multi-stage version of the Gods of Destruction event similar to the Fighting Legend stages, featuring both foes from the movies and Dragon Ball GT. The difficulty in these events is absurd and it only gets harder until the final stage. To add to this, the events would only allow one Support Item to be brought in.
  • Also in 2022, the Fearsome Activation: Cell Max! event released, and what people got was two phases that barely lasted long enough for build-up units to stack, and a third phase that with incredibly high stats would absolutely wallop players if they were caught with a weak unit in the wrong place at the wrong time. And on top of that, just like the Ultimate Red Zone, players can only bring in one Support Item. But on top of that, that Support Item can only be a Senzu Bean, so no damage reducing, attack delaying, or nuking-based Support Items could be used to bypass this event's difficulty.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The quest mode is absolutely infamous in doing this. It doesn't matter if you bring someone like [All or Nothing] SSB Vegito and one shot them with over 10 million damage, the boss character will shrug it off and escape as if you never fought them to begin with.
• Healing Factor: Some characters (like [Merciless Judgement] Goku Black (Super Saiyan Rosé) & Zamasu and [Uncontrollable Instinct] Kid Buu) can regenerate a set percentage of health at the begining of each turn.
• Healing Shiv: Some characters, such as Metal Cooler (STR) and Pan (GT) (Honey) have a passive ability that allows them to recover health through damage they deal.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: As a means of bypassing the Heads I Win, Tails You Lose and The Battle Didn't Count problems that both the quest stages and older story events had, newer story events will have certain bosses gaining advantages to the point where they can't die, whether by boosting their damage reduction to 100%, or by having them dodge all of your attacks. Downplayed as you still get rewarded with goodies, and you only need to survive at the very least 1 turn before the next cutscene activates.
  • In the Dokkan Event "Eternal God, Distorter of Worlds", the final phase of Stage 4 has you squaring off against Infinite Zamasu, who cannot be killed no matter how many attacks you throw at him. The only thing you can do is survive for three turns and wait for Zeno to show up and eradicate him for you. Just like in canon.
• HP to One: Invoked with [Eerie Victory Declaration]/[Domineering Victory Declaration] Jackie Chun, [Pinnacle of Rage]/[Zealous Roar] SSJ Goku and [Namekian Pride] Nail, who can tank any K.O. inducing attack, leaving the player at 1 HP as long as their passive activates at the start of the turn.
• I Believe I Can Fly: Characters that can't fly or use the Nimbus Cloud use a Jet Pack, regardless of the character's size.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The Dokkan Festival cards can be considered the bread and butter of the game as they provide strong leader skills and their passive ability and stats almost always outclass all the other non-fest cards of the same rarity. To get them, you have to use your Dragon Stones in order to summon them on whatever Dokkan Festival cards are being featured right now and hope that you get an SSR rarity let alone the festival cards in the banner.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The LR cards, they are among the most powerful cards in the game where not only do they have tremendous stats but their Super Attack deals both Colossal and Mega Colossal damage to the enemy and they have among the best artworks in the game. However, obtaining them requires tremendous amounts of patience, resources and luck in order to obtain and Dokkan Awaken them. The best of the bunch that doesn't involve mono-color teams is [Thousands of Wishes] Goku, which grants +3 Ki and +100% HP, ATK and DEF for all types. Of course, you have to play the game for 1000 days...
• Jack of All Stats: [Outburst of Emotions] Super Saiyan 2 Vegeta & Bulma is this. Leader skill gives a modest boost to Super-type cards, a decent +100% boost to ATK and DEF as a passive, has the Counter mechanic seen with characters like Super Vegito and Caulifla and Beerus' rage mechanic.
• Joke Character: Yamcha cards from April Fool event when Dokkan Awaken, however...
  • Lethal Joke Character: With the lowest cost after Dokkan Awaken, they're still useful.
  • [Glorious Radiance] Hercule falls under this as well, as he has pitiful defense, having a low (220%) damage modifier on his Super Attack, and his passive gives him a 70% chance to reduce his own ATK by 80%. His only saving grace is that his Super Attack can help him regenerate 8000 HP, and by Super Attack level 7, he can launch it when his Ki is at 9 or more.
• Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: The Baba Store is quite ridiculous in this regard. While the Baba Store allows you to sell all your items and cards, only character cards will give you the most points, with Gasha-drawn SSR and higher cards offering the most.
• Kryptonite-Proof Suit: Janemba's passive ability allows him to guard against all types, including PHY and AGL attacks that would normally have the type advantage against him.
  • [Limitless Fusion]/[Fusion of Ultimate Rivals] Super Vegito and [Miraculous Re-Fusion] SSGSS Vegito along with their Dokkan Awakenings can also do this, while delivering a punishing counter attack of their own, but not against super attacks.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • While it's to be expected in a gacha-game based of one of the most popular anime of all time, a pretty terrible example happened when Bandai Namco released an Ultra Instinct -Sign- Goku card barely even a day after it aired on Super.
  • The Masked Saiyan falls under this for anyone who has yet to play Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. Not only does his mask crumble upon Dokkan Awakening, his super attack has him saying "I am not Bardock!". Also, the STR, PHY and TEQ Super Saiyan Bardock cards use The Masked Saiyan's medals for Dokkan Awakening as well.
    • And then there's the SSJ3 Bardock event...
  • Averted for the global release of the Dragon Ball Super: Broly event. Because not all countries has had the movie officially released, Akatsuki decided to go the extra mile and remove all in game story cutscenes from the event to prevent spoilers.
  • An interesting variation happens on the Global side, as it's the game mechanics that gets spoiled ahead of time. This first occurred when Ultra Instinct Goku's Dokkan Event was released with the Transformation Mechanic in tact months before it would have gotten properly introduced with the 3rd Year Anniversary LR cards Super Gogeta and Super Vegito. The same thing would happen again, as LR [Miracle-Calling Clash] SSJ Gohan & SSJ Goten revealed the Active Skill system before the 4th Anniversary LR Cards SSJ4 Goku and SSJ4 Vegeta got the chance to introduce them.
  • The Battle Intro animations and concept of 200% Leader Skills were both spoiled on the Global side ahead of time thanks to [Brief Paternal Moment] Majin Vegeta having both of them in his kit as part of the 2022 Saiyan Day celebration.
  • For the Movie Celebration for Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, which aired globally in English on August 19, 2022, on the day right after, an extremely hard boss event featuring Cell Max was released.
• Limit Break: Gathering enough Ki Spheres for a certain character in one go (any combination that fills at least twelve nodes, or nine with certain EZA boosts) allows that character to release a Super Attack that deals heavy damage to their opponent.
  • LR cards often have Ultra Super Attacks, extremely powerful Super Attacks that usually trigger starting from 18 Ki. If a unit with an Ultra Super Attack collects more than 12 ki, a second ring will appear on their icon over the first one.
• Long Song, Short Scene: LR [Miracle-Making Super Saiyan] Super Saiyan Goku has his own unique theme like other Dokkan Fest units. However due to being a summonable LR without an Active Skill or Transformation, there is no way for it to be played with the only instance that the music is used is during the Super Android #13 Story event which unless you purposely stall, you will likely only hear the first minute of it before curb-stomping said boss.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • You can obtain Nimbus medals from the Supreme Kai trials by beating certain Dokkan stages within a certain time... assuming you have the perfect rotations, maxed Super Attack levels, enough Potential Orbs invested in your characters and if you didn't bring someone like SSJ4 Gogeta...
  • In Extreme Z-Battles, you can't bring items, and the bosses will be immune to every debuff in the later stages. You have to pray to Zen-O that the rotations fall to your favor, the bosses won't feel like Supering your team out of existence, and if characters like Caulifa and SSJ4 Vegeta would activate their dodges/counters for you to survive.
  • The base Goku who appears in phase 3 of "The One Beyond God Descends! Ultra Instinct", as well as its recreation in "Dokkan Event Boss Rush", represents Goku charging his Spirit Bomb in a last-ditch gambit to beat Jiren. As such, he only gets one attack, but it will always be his Spirit Bomb Super Attack. The only way to reliably break through to the following phase, regardless of where he is in the turn order, is to stall him with a Ghost Usher. If you don't have that, then flubbing the whole fight is as easy as getting targeted at the immediate start of the turn.
• Magikarp Power: [Overflowing Resolve] Goku is the easiest card in the entire game to farm; and drops as a Rare. Dokkan Awakening him 3 times [4 on Global] takes him all the way to a Lv 120 TUR SSJ3 Goku (Angel) that is widely considered one of the best Free To Play cards in the game.
• Marathon Level: Fighting Legend: Goku has you pitted up against Goku and all of his transformations from his base form to Mastered Ultra Instinct for a grand total of eight phases where every single one of his forms possess tremendous amount of health and can hit really, really hard. The same principle applies to Fighting Legend: Vegeta. This later carries on to Infinite Dragon Ball History where each level can take up to 7-9 phases.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Tapion (Hirudegarn) is the Giant category leader with his own Dokkan Event, but he's not a Dokkan Fest card himself (in fact, he first appeared on a Rising Dragon Carnival banner co-released with the Wrath of the Dragon story event). Unlike other Giant cards, Tapion's transformation isn't up to chance, but is automatically activated once per battle upon dropping below 50% HP, in which Hirudegarn is released. However, this is where things get wonky, as Tapion himself is a Super-Class character, but once Hirudegarn is released, he switches to an Extreme-Class, which, depending on the lead he's under, could reduce or negate the leader skill bonuses Tapion would've gotten. Hirudegarn also doesn't take attacks head on, he dodges them instead.
• Metal Slime:
  • The 50% type supports are only available within the mono-Type banners and were never added to the unfeatured pool. As if it wasn't already bad enough, the Type banners return at an extremely irregular rate and more often than not, said banners tend to be a single Multi-Summon banner before permanently disappearing from Summon pool. While it is possible to purchase them with Blue Coins, each of them costs 300 Coins, equivalent to spending 1500 stones and said coins require the player to summon on either the mono category banners (which only features General SSR units of said category with little chance of getting an unfeatured LR since each Multi guarantees a featured unit), the Rising Dragon Carnival (before the 2022 WWC which uses Carnival Coins in its place), or the yearly Dragon Ball Heroes banner even though most players would rather spent those stones on Dokkan Festival banners that gives out Red Coins.
  • The Super Dragon Ball Heroes units only appears in the annual Heroes collaboration campaigns and are never added to the unfeatured pool, making them the only time you can ever pull them (although on the plus side, they're released simultaneously on both servers on November so you don't have to wait for months before they're available on Global server). To make things worse, Heroes units that are either unfeatured or didn't receive their Dokkan Awakening are only available in the unfeatured pool. And said pool only has a 3% unfeatured rate with each Multi-Summon being a guaranteed Featured unit, making it significantly harder to pull them in the event that you miss the chance to obtain them. The only other method of obtaining them would be to buy them using Special Dragon Stone, however not only they're expensive but you can only purchase up to two of them and you can't buy two copies of the same character.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Completely averted. You can create a team that consists of nothing more than different variations of the same character at your own leisure, and as long as the resulting team cost fits the conditions, you can use it all you want.
  • This is specially prevalent when the characters you pick happen to be the same characters you're fighting, or when you make a team that contains both a fusion (like Vegito) and that fusion's components (Goku and Vegeta).
  • However, this is played straight when it comes to putting a card with the same name as another card in your team. If you try that, the game won't let you do that, and the only way to get a duplicate card is to find a friend with the same card as a leader, which depending on the card, can be easier said than done.
  • The Metal Coolers invoke a bit of Loophole Abuse as the Gacha-earned Metal Coolers can work alongside the Metal Coolers players can earn through the "Fight! 10 Billion Power Warriors" event, as the Event Metal Coolers have their Types written on their name tags. This also goes with the much weaker Cell Jr.s and Saibamen.
  • LR Super Vegito and LR Super Gogeta also invoke Loophole Abuse, since their name tags are labeled as "Super Saiyan Goku & Super Saiyan Vegeta" and "Super Saiyan Goku (Angel) & Super Saiyan Vegeta (Angel)" respectively. Hell, the game even lampshades this as the hint systems explained that you can link these cards up with any Super Vegito or Super Gogeta cards no problem.
• Nintendo Hard:
  • Originally, there was anything Z-Hard/Super difficulty. Opponents will be Awoken to Extreme/Super and will be much stronger and tougher to fight. Various events involving special characters such as Jackie Chun, Mighty Mask, Mecha Frieza and King Cold will be much stronger with extra HP bars. Then, there's the Dokkan events where fighters will even have special abilities that require a special hero to nullify them.
  • Super 2 difficulty often gives bosses Stun Immunity, sometimes even Sealing Immunity.
  • Then there's Super Battle Road which challenges you with a category or type limited team, and has you fight through three to four stages of extra strong opponents. And to top it off, there's also Extreme Super Battle Road which ramps up the already intense difficulty up to eleven.
• No Fair Cheating: The amount of Dragon Stones you currently own is saved in their server database. If you tried to hack so that you have like say 10000 stones, the server will instantly detect this and will immediately ban any players who attempts to do so.
• No-Sell: The third phase of Android #17's fight in "Defender of Beliefs and Dreams" has him enact a barrier that automatically repels any energy based Super Attacks. Of course there's nothing stopping them from just using a non-energy based anyway...
  • In 2021, players themselves would have the ability to use this, as the Dokkan Festival unit [Game of Death] Android 17 (Future) & Android 18 (Future) would have the ability to nullify ki-based Super Attacks.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • When TEQ Cell was first released, he opened up to a nuking meta where players would run nuker leaders as well as use Ki changing characters & items which led to Cell single-handedly destroying the enemy in one attack. This allowed players who owned him to curb-stomp not only his event but also the previously difficult STR Broly's Dokkan Event. Subsequent events made all bosses have multiple phases to deter any further nuking tactics. Years later, when they released another event with a single phase, they banned any and all nuking leaders (and Devilman) from being used in said event.
  • One of the gimmicks of the EZA event is that the boss has a big damage reduction against anyone not of the proper category and type and if you bring a unit that doesn't qualify either of the criteria, then they will face both of the damage reductions which forces you to bring a specific unit to defeat the boss. Enter Devilman whose ability has a 1% chance of instantly KO-ing the enemy even through both the reductions which means that if you are particularly lucky, you can bypass the whole requirement and defeat the boss without worrying about summoning for a specific unit. As a result, Bandai decides to place a ban Devilman from entering an event that will be useful starting from the Dokkan Punch Machine!(The event is basically to get as much damage per possible in a single attack, something that Devilman will easily accomplish) and starting from Kid Buu's EZA, a damage threshold is placed for SSR rarity or below so the devil will no longer be able to One-Hit Kill the boss.
  • [Next-Level Strike] Super Saiyan God SS Goku's Extreme Z-Battle only has one restriction starting from Level 15, and that is a -80% Damage reduction against AGL-Type units. No doubt to stop people from using [Two Makes The Strongest of All Universes] Super Saiyan 2 Caulifla & Super Saiyan 2 Kale to cheese through the event.
  • The Cell Max fought in Ultimate Red Zone [Red Ribbon Army Edition] can cycle through types via phase shifting every turn. Otherwise, people would be exploiting Piccolo (Power Awakening)'s Giant Form to make short work of him (especially since he starts as an Extreme AGL Type).
  • [Power Beyond the Extremes] Gohan (Teen) singlehandedly ruined unconditional guarding after his release, as that combined with his infinite Defense stacking makes him and his transformed Ultimate Gohan state the best Stone Wall to ever exist in the game. However, that means future units with Guard-All abilities had drawbacks forcibly shoved into them to reduce the broken nature of this effect, such as only having them trigger against certain enemies, making it RNG-dependent, or restricting that ability to only last a set amount of turns or when the character is in a specific position in the turn. Sometimes there will be a character with seemingly no restrictions to activating guard (like [Furious Last Resort] Vegeta (Great Ape) or [Limit-Breaking Super Power] Super Saiyan 3 Goku (Xeno)), but have terrible defense stats with no means to stack it, requiring either a specific team set-up or post-attack conditions to be satisfied in order to get a static boost.
• One-Hit Kill: Several bosses can initiate this, usually having a countdown to them.
  • Full Power Frieza, Golden Frieza, Future Trunks, and SSJ3 Angel Goku all have a 'countdown' mechanic in their final phase. Should the countdown hit 0 and their Super Attack is not sealed; they will unleash a One-Hit Kill.
  • SSJ3 Goku , SSJ3 Vegeta and SSJ3 Bardock have a strict turn limit; and will One-Hit Kill you if you do not beat them before this. This One-Hit Kill, however, is final.
  • Can be invoked with Devilman; whose super attack has a 1% chance to One-Hit Kill any target. This can even kill otherwise immune assist characters in some boss fights; such as Zamasu in the Goku Black Rose event.
  • Phase 3 of Ultra Instinct Goku's event has Goku in his base form attacking once per turn. The kicker? All his attacks are the large Spirit Bomb (unless you seal him), and they each hit for 4 million damage every time.
  • Great Saiyaman boss from the Battlefield may hit like a wet puddle with his normal attacks, on top of giving you a free turn to assault him with reckless abandon... but then comes his Super Attack. Its damage is so ridiculously high that the player is instantly killed by it even with all the damage reductions. Many first time Battlefield players express their surprise that someone like him could hit so hard.
• Overly Long Fighting Animation: SSJ4 Gogeta, Goku (Ultra Instinct -Sign-) and Goku (Ultra Instinct) all suffer from this for their Super Attacks, as do most modern units as Super Attack animations become more advanced and detailed. Thankfully an option to speed up battle animations has been added, mitigating this issue.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Various variants and Category Leaders can be easily overshadowed by newer cards. For instance, the PHY [Azure Omnipotence] Vegito Blue (+3 Ki, +50% HP, DEF and ATK for Super-Class) is overshadowed by the LR STR [All or Nothing] Vegito Blue (+3 Ki, +70% HP, DEF and ATK for Super-Class) who is overshadowed by the TEQ [Strength Beyond Gods] Vegito Blue (+3 Ki, +120% HP, DEF and ATK for Super-Class if you have one of each color) who is overshadowed by the AGL [Boiling Power] SSJ Goku (+3 Ki, +120% HP, DEF and ATK for Super-Class unconditionally), who is overshadowed by TEQ [Resilient Will to Protect the Future] Trunks (Teen) (Future) (+3 Ki, 120% HP, DEF, and ATK for Super-Class unconditionally or +3 Ki, +170% HP & ATK and +130% DEF for Future Saga category units), who is surpassed by AGL [Righteous Otherworld Defense] Pikkon (+3 Ki, 130% HP, DEF, and ATK for Super-Class unconditionally or +3 Ki, +170% HP, DEF, and ATK for Connected Hope category units), who is surpassed by AGL [All-Out Final Battle] Super Saiyan God SS Goku & Super Saiyan God SS Vegeta (+3 Ki and HP, ATK & DEF +150% for Super-Class units unconditionally or +3 Ki, 170% HP, DEF, and ATK for Battle of Fate, Future Saga or Power Beyond Super Saiyan category units plus an additional +30% HP, ATK & DEF for Realm of Gods or Time Travelers Category units)
• Permanently Missable Content: The game has a few of these as they were rendered obsolete by later events. Among them:
  • A crossover event with One Piece: Treasure Cruise, which allowed players from both games to work together for prizes.
    • The event had a special card for players, [The Last Instant Transmission] Super Saiyan Goku, which is unattainable after the event.
  • Strike Events starring Piccolo Jr. (That's DBZ Piccolo, just still evil) and Kibito. While another Piccolo Jr. card came out, there have been no other Kibitos to be released.
  • "The Winding Snaky-Way to King Kai" training event.
  • Three Story Events - "The Mysterious Alien Warrior From Space" and "A New Threat! The Saiyan Warrior Race", which were fused into a new version of "A New Threat! The Saiyan Warrior Race", and "Countdown to Resurrection", which was fused with the "Resurrection 'F'" event. Later, both were added to the "Dragon Ball Story" mode that lets players relive historic Dragon Ball moments a la Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2.
    • While [Slumbering Strength] Gohan (Kid) was transferred to the new "A New Threat! The Saiyan Warrior Race", [Sadistic Strongman] Nappa and [Invader from Afar] Vegeta weren't. In fact, their Dokkan Awakening forms, [Devastating Carnage] Nappa and [Transcendent Combat] Vegeta, were brought in instead.
    • On the other hand, [Protector of the Peace] Krillin and [Revived Nightmare] Frieza (Final Form) were not brought over to "Resurrection 'F'".
  • Any events related to Doctor Slump has not once seen a return in either versions of the game. Fortunate enough to pull one of the Arales but couldn't farm all the necessary medals in time? Tough shit.
    • Averted in the Global version, which added the "Penguin Village Adventure" story event to the Portal of Memories. Though neither the Arale Dokkan event or "The Peculiar Penguin Village" events or any of Arale cards has returned still.
  • Following the Japanese release of the Otherworld event, and the change from being a Special event to Story, "Epic Battle! Arise, Otherworld Challengers" has been lost to make way for "Epic Battle! The Mighty Ones of the Otherworld", which still houses the same rewards as the previous version.
  • The older versions of "Fight! 10 Billion Power Warriors," "A Lone Warrior's Last Battle," "Galactic Crisis," "The Strongest Rivals," "Defeat the Legendary Super Saiyan" and "Fight Against Despair" were eventually scrapped and replaced with updated versions that contains Category bonus support ("Wicked Bloodline" for Return of Cooler and Cooler's Revenge, "Giant Form" for Bardock: Father of Goku, "Hybrid Saiyans" for Bojack Unbound and the Broly adaptations, and "Future Saga" for History of Trunks), more accurate story cutscenes and higher drop rates.
• Power Creep: The game has had a steady increase in this as certain special "Leader Cards" have been released that boosts all stats heftily. Players have given these cards the names "God Cards", "Neo-God Cards", "120% Cards" and "Category Leaders".
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • Cards that receives an Extreme Z-Awakening immediately after their release. While the boost does allow them to become strong units in their heyday, Power Creep means these cards will inevitably start to age. What made it even worse is the fact that since they've already received their EZA, they have no hope of ever being able to become relevant again, forever making them obsolete and out of the meta.
  • While Full Power Frieza's Extreme Z-Awakening boosts his stats to almost LR-Tier, his passive, unfortunately, doesn't change much, only granting him 3 extra Ki and a measly 30% DEF boost as the first attacker.
  • [Unparalleled Golden Ki] Super Vegito received a meagre 40% ATK & DEF boost but while it's compensated with having huge initial stats, he will only receive it at same turn after receiving an enemy attack which still doesn't really alleviate his weakness to enemy Super Attacks. Furthermore, he also has the unique ability to predict enemy Super Attacks but it will only work should your HP fall below 40% which is the point where you really don't want to eat a Super Attack anyway regardless of who they're launching to.
  • [Mythic Evolution] Super Saiyan 3 Broly is the first of 120 leads to receive an Extreme Z-Awakening and for a Glass Cannon like him, it's sorely needed. But unfortunately, while he will be able to hit extremely hard, his DEF debuff is still retained. Granted he does receive an initial DEF boost but in harder events, if Broly fails to K.O the target, it is very unlikely that he would even be able to survive especially if it's a Super Attack.
  • [Full-Tilt Kamehameha] Super Saiyan 2 Gohan (Youth)'s Extreme Z-Awakening gives him a sizeable DEF boost^note His passive provides an initial +58% DEF boost along with an additional +58% DEF when performing a Super Attack and his Super Attack effect now raises his DEF for 1 turn which alleviates his Glass Cannon weakness. Sure that does make Gohan usable in difficult events but that's all the boost he received from his EZA. He doesn't get any scaling nuking boosts like the other 2 LR Super Saiyan 2 Gohans nor does he change Ki Spheres like his AGL counterpart to help with his nuking potential so his damage output barely changed aside from raising his Super Attack level from 20 to 25 (which is raised from 570% to 620%). Compared to Goku & Frieza whose third boost has been improved from an ATK-lowered enemy to any debuffs or Broly whose EZA gained a substantial ATK boost along with a big Ki boost and attack effectiveness against Saiyan & Goku enemies respectively, INT Super Saiyan 2 Gohan's EZA felt comparatively lacking.
  • Super Strike cards in general. At their best, they can be run as filler-support units thanks to their passives. At their worst, they're not even worth grinding unless you need units for the Prime Battles. This is mostly due to their abysmal stats, being outclassed by other, much better F 2 P units like [Sword of Courage] Trunks (Kid) or [Furious Transformation] SSJ2 Vegeta & Bulma, and the fact that outside of [Fabled Champion] Grandpa Gohan and [Martial Artist's Honor] Tien, none of their Super Attacks can hit for anything higher than a huge (290%) modifier. You can raise their Super Attack level to 15 (making it a 340% multiplier maximum), which also adds in the effect of making their Super Attack hit 20% harder (unless the Strike character in question is either [Strategic Combat] Piccolo, [Intensified Killing] Cyborg Tao or [Raging Counterstrike] Mecha Frieza, who only gets the added benefit of launching their Super Attack at 9 ki, locking them at that 340% boost), but even then, they can only do so much unless one is willing to put in dupes and potential orbs into them. Not helping is that they required Bulma (Youth) and Turtle medals to awaken, which can only be obtained at the World Tournament. To compensate, they do have the two links Bombardment and Super Strike, which can boost their attack by 35% (Except for [Terrestrial Flash] Android 16, who only has Super Strike), but the only you will ever get this link to activate is that you run them under a Mono team or Super/Extreme class leader, but they link so poorly with everyone else that it's not even worth it.
  • Unlike most other transformations that are beneficial in some form, [Explosive Evolution] Turles's transformation is often perceived to be detrimental to the team not because it's objectively worse but because his role completely changed. Basically, in his unawakened state, Turles ranks among the best support in the team due to giving +3 Ki and +40% ATK boost but when your HP is 80% or less, there is chance for him to power-up using the Tree of Might where he loses his support capabilities in favor of being a hard hitter as well as a free HP recovery. However, for many players, the boosts he gives from transforming is far overshadowed by the support capabilities he gives for the team, not helping is that there isn't a way to control when you want to transform or not.
  • [Transdimensional Instinct] Goku (Ultra Instinct -Sign-)'s Awoken form gives himself a sizeable ATK boost along with a great chance to evade enemy attacks. However, since he loses the DEF boost from his original state, it turns him into a high-risk, high-reward Glass Cannon who can suffer greatly just by failing to earn the favor of RNG. Some players even declared his transformed state to be worse just because of this downside.
  • [Foe Elimination Circuit] Android #13 in his initial state is a strong supporter of his own "Androids" category while also guaranteeing his hits to always hit which makes him useful in events such as Hirudegarn or Goku (Ultra Instinct). However once he transforms, he loses this support buff while his ATK & DEF boost is still the same unless he run "Target: Goku" allies which accumulates his boost to up to +221% compared to +160%. However the problem is, not all Androids fit under the latter category (Android #16, Super Android #17 & #18, Perfect Cell, Android #21, etc) so in order to get the full boost, you need to run specific teams to utilize his full potential. To make it even worse, unlike other units during the same era he was released, #13's transformation is unconditional ^note Start of 5th turn with 2 other Androids in his team. He automatically transforms without requiring an Active Skill. This means that if you to fully utilize his support, you would have to awkwardly run a non-Android leader such as Transformation Boost or Artificial Life Forms with another Android in the same rotation, meaning that you can't control when you want to transform him such as STR Cooler.
  • [Otherworld in Collapse] Janemba's Active Skill Transformation into Super Janemba exchanges his Guard, conditional support & damage reduction in favor of slightly higher boosts, an unreliable Ki changer and the damage reduction from Rainbow Ki Spheres became an unreliable Evasion. Guard ranks among the best passive in the game and when combined with his damage reduction, allows Janemba to tank a point-blank Super Attack from even the hardest events so by transforming him, he not only becomes far less durable but renders him defenseless against INT enemies. Even his ATK boost is barely improved as unlike units such as Cell or Bojack that gains the additional boost when attacking, Janemba's additional boost is additively added so instead of potentially getting a +292% boost, he merely gains +220% from collecting 3 non-Rainbow Spheres in contrast to the +120% and an additional +30% Extreme Class support from collecting 4 non-Rainbow Spheres. The only bright side to it is that unlike the other examples in this list, Janemba's Transformation is toggle-based so it's possible to ignore it altogether.
  • [Fate-Changing Messenger] Trunks (Teen)'s Active Skill transforms him into a Super Saiyan, which also has the added bonus of stunning and sealing the enemy. He also gains an additional boost if the enemy is debuffed and if all the allies are under the Android/Cell Saga Category, he gets a 50% chance to stun the attacked enemy for 2 turns. While that sounds like an amazing Transformed passive to have, the problem with this is that due to Trunks's Active Skill condition^note You need to have him perform 6 attacks in battle but even with all his additional attack conditions proc'd, he can only do up to 5 attacks per turn which means that at minimum, he can only accomplish it as early as turn 5 at best, his debuff-focused passive will almost never be seen, as in any events other than Super Battle Road, the enemy would have already been immune to most of the debuffs. Even in Super Battle Road where the enemy can be fully debuffed, by the time you can Transform, you're probably already winning anyway and the outcome likely has already been decided long before that. So take all that away and all that Super Saiyan Trunks have is a minuscule amount of DEF boost while his damage output is barely any better as his multiple additional attacks (including up to 3 Super Attacks per turn) in Base Form allow Trunks to his just as hard as a critical boosted Super Attack especially if all of them manage to separately proc Critical hits.
  • The reward for completing 8th Anniversary Shadow Dragon challenge event is a Support Memory that gives all "Shadow Dragon Saga" Category allies a permanent boost for the rest of battle along bonus 1 Ki for 7 turns for Extreme Class allies. While it ranks among the best Support Memories to boost the team, the problem is the fact that at the time of release, every one of their best allies in the Category all belong to the Super Class and aside from PHY Nuova, all of them also belong to the "GT Heroes" Category while the best Extreme Class in the team is [Merciless Punishment] Syn Shenron, a banner unit released exactly one year ago in the 7th Anniversary. There's simply no reason to use the Support Memory when the one a year ago (which gives "GT Heroes" a permanent boost along with a Ki to Goku allies) remains far better in every way.
• Product Placement:
  • For some reason, Android #21 and SSR Android #16 have a Dragon Ball Fighter Z watermark on their card arts. Either they want to promote the game, give credit to the original creator, or prevent receiving a copyright strike, implying that they have to negotiate to add them into Dokkan Battle. Dragon Ball Heroes and Dragon Ball: Fusions cards later followed suit.
  • When [Saiyan Outcast] Broly's Extreme Z-Battle was released, starting up the game would play the Dragon Ball Super: Broly trailer. Don't get too excited though, it's the same trailer that was already released online.
• Random Drop: The total and complete bane of many a player in various events. Strike Events and many Dokkan Events have a rare chance of a certain card to be dropped. Most can be used to Dokkan Awaken them for other usages, but a handful of them are used for Super Attack boosting. It doesn't help that these cards are SR Z-Awakened cards, and thus only have a 50% chance of actually working.
• Random Number God: This is a gacha game after all.
• Regional Bonus:
  • In the Global release of the game, [Dark Menace] Goku Black went from a character with a measly 3000 flat attack boost per ki orb obtained to a valuable hard-hitting support unit that supplies an extra 3-ki to all Extreme types at the start of each turn, making him a force to be reckoned with on an Extreme PHY team. This even extends to his Extreme Z-Awakening, with Global giving him an even greater stat boost thus making him more viable in the long run.
  • The Japanese release of Super Kaio-ken Goku (Angel), Pikkon, Perfect Cell (Angel), Frieza (Angel), King Cold (Angel) and the F2P SSJ Goku (Angel) all saw major boosts to their passives, however, Super Kaio-ken Goku and Pikkon lost Fierce Battle in exchange for Shattering the Limit (Pikkon also lost Prepared for Battle in exchange for Supreme Warrior), and the types for Pikkon and SSJ Goku (Angel) was swapped (Pikkon is now a INT type instead of a STR, visa-versa for the F2P SSJ Goku (Angel))
  • [Overflowing Resolve] Goku, the Rare card you get from "Enough Talk... Time for an EPIC Showdown!" in Global is vastly different from the original version in Japan.
• Retcon: [A Surging New Power] Goku (Ultra Instinct -Sign-) has him completely shirtless. Future artwork featuring him as well as his Dokkan Awakening [Transdimensional Instinct] gives his blue undershirt back, where he would only loose it upon transforming into Ultra Instinct.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: When certain characters like [Transdimensional Instinct] Goku (Ultra Instinct -Sign) are Dokkan Awakened, they will lose their Kamehameha in exchange for stronger super attacks. In the above example, however, he retains it, but it isn't the main attack anymore - he still fires his Kamehameha, but he instead follows up the blast with a Dragon Hammer-style charging strike known as "Unpolished Instinct".
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: If the player fails to defeat Bardock's 5th phase in time, then he will decide to flee away from the Time Nest, robbing the player away from the glory and reward for defeating him.
  • An even straighter example happens in both stages of the Growth Event "Pan's Secret Adventure". Pan (who is inexplicably dressed up as a bee here) has tiny amounts of HP, but accents that with Metal Slime levels of defense, so to keep the player from having to chew through thousands of HP while dealing Scratch Damage, Pan will automatically nope out of the battle after the player finishes their first turn.
• Second Place Is for Winners:
  • During the "Looking For Mr. Right" competition between the Japanese and International versions, the winner would get a unique Vegeta card while the loser would get a unique Yamcha card. Of course, even Yamcha has his fans, most of whom played the absolute bare minimum to get the event rewards and then stopped, hoping the other team would win and letting them snag the "consolation prize" of the Yamcha card.
  • Many players (especially those on the Global servers) have already expressed throwing the 250M GLB v JPN challenge in hopes of getting the new Final Form Frieza card, for being the first usable FF Frieza card, being Extreme PHY, and the fact that he has a cooler SA animation over the winning Goku's Angry Kamehameha.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Players would often find ways to make some of the events much harder than they intended to be, such as using nothing but F 2 P units on Super 2 Dokkan Events, not using any items on Super Battle Road, building teams around one theme (such as an all Buu team), or using less than optimal teams (like using nothing but INT Types against PHY Omega Shenron).
  • Finally official with the new Burst Mode, which can be activated for a certain stage for a certain period of time. In Burst Mode, players can add all sorts of restrictions to their own party (Lower Ki, allow only certain types or Categories, disable items, ect.), or buff the enemy. (Increase their stats, give them immunities, give them the power to seal or lock movement for your units, ect.) By activating more of these restrictions and challenges, players can acquire more points, which are then transferred into Burst Coins once the event period is done, letting players buy music for the Jukebox.
• Serial Escalation: When the game first launched, characters could be upgraded to Super Attack Level 10 and can achieve a higher rarity rank through Z-Awakening. Then SR/SSR characters could become SSR/UR through Dokkan Awakenings, which turns those characters into completely new units with new skills and abilities. Then UR characters could Transcend the UR limit though Dokkan Events or Special Story Events, raising their maximum level from 100 to 120. Then Dokkan introduced LR cards that can go through another Dokkan Awakening tier to achieve Super attack Level 20 and reach Level 150. Then Extreme Z-Awakenings were introduced to give older cards new relevance, allowing them to reach Super Attack level 15/25, with TURs also training up to Level 140. Then SUPER Extreme Z-Awakenings were announced for the EZA'd Dokkan Fest cards, which again overhauls their passive abilities to become viable in the new 9th Anniversary meta.
• Set Bonus:
  • Each character has a certain Link Skill that can boost various stats when two characters have the same Link Skill. There are some that are required to be obtained to just defeat certain bosses.
  • Certain story events can give you additional rewards depending on how many units of a specific category you have on your team. For example, using any Universal Survival Saga card on any of the three story parts can raise the drop rate of those event's Awakening Medals or Character drops.
  • Certain characters' passives will have them become stronger the more characters from a specific category is in your team, such as Super Ribrianne having a bigger ATK and DEF boost the more "Peppy Gals" characters there are on the team.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Deliberate Integration in regards to the [Saiyan Outcast] Broly Extreme Z-Battle. While other Z-Battles takes place in various storms and volcanic eruptions, Broly's Z-Battle takes place within the same mountain range he fought in the Dragon Ball Super: Broly trailer. His Super Attacks are also tied to the stage he's in, slamming and dragging your characters across the icy mountains like he did with Goku and Vegeta.
  • Another Deliberate Integration scenario takes place within Final Form Cooler's Dokkan Event "The Ultimate Transformation". You can't use Icarus or the Senzu Bean support items since, like in Cooler's Revenge, Icarus was shot down by the Armored Squadron and the Senzu Beans were destroyed by Salza (sorry, "Thouser") upon finding Gohan and the others.
  • SSJ Future Gohan's Dokkan event may look like a Deliberate Integration at first, as it starts out in a rocky wasteland area like his SR card [The Future Bearer], up until the last phase, where it becomes a Conspicuous Segregation thanks to his Explosive Dance Super Attack taking place exclusively within a ruined city. Keep in mind that none of the cutscenes had the battle arena change from the wasteland to the ruined city.
• Spam Attack: The Merged Zamasu boss fight has the gimmick that he can perform two Super Attacks in a single turn. Most bosses can only Super once per turn.
  • Kid Buu's Super 2 difficulty stage does nothing BUT Super attacks in his 3rd phase. Without some way to stop him from doing this he will overwhelm you.
  • The player can invoke this with cards with the Additional Attack bonus. Especially with AGL-types [Some AGL types have some form of counter] and PHY-types [Many high-tier PHY types have a built-in additional attack; Vegito Blue can attack up to four times a turn!]
• Stock Footage:
  • With the amount of time the Kamehameha/Super Kamehameha gets used, it might as well be this. Even names like Perfect Cell's "Solar Kamehameha" and Teen Gotenks' "Burning Kamehameha" uses the exact same poses and, in the case of Solar, adds a beam penetrating the Earth at the end. The few who subverts this is [Fatal Resolve] SSJ2 Gohan (Youth) and [A Surging New Power] Goku (Ultra Instinct -Sign-).
  • Fans were quick to notice how the Ultra Super Attacks for LR SSJ4 Goku and LR SSJ4 Vegeta are almost one-to-one with the Super Attacks for [Prideful Battle] Majin Vegeta and [Inevitable Battle] SSJ2 Goku (Angel). It was eventually explained that the LR's Ultra Super Attacks were developed first, with the animators deciding to re-use the same animations for Majin Vegeta and SSJ2 Angel Goku.
• Suddenly Voiced: For the longest time, no card in Dokkan Battle had voice acting mid-battle. Then the 4th Anniversary LR cards, [Apex of Supreme Saiyan Power] SSJ4 Goku, [Unrivaled Saiyan's Peak] SSJ4 Vegeta and [Wings Spread Out to the Cosmos] Pan (GT) (Honey), were released with all new Active Skills, which has full-on voice acting upon use.
• Super Mode: There are special SSR cards of various Saiyan characters who will actually have a chance to become Oozaru and will lay waste on their opponents.
  • This also applies to [Impetuous God] Beerus, [Determined to Fight Back] SSJ2 Vegeta, and their Dokkan Awakened variants, where any amount of Ki can trigger a super attack. Awesome, but Impractical, however, as it activates once below 30% HP, and it only lasts one measly turn as opposed to the Oozaru lasting at least two.
  • A recent update has included special cards with transformation mechanics of their own, such as LR Goku and Vegeta (transforms into Super Vegito), LR Goku (Angel) and Vegeta (Angel) (transforms into Super Gogeta), and Goku (Ultra Instinct -Sign-) (who awakens into Mastered Ultra Instinct). The main difference that unlike the Oozaru cards, they have set conditions of having HP at 50% or below to activate (and 6 turns has to have past for the L Rs). But once they transform, it's permanent.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: TEQ(Green) > AGL(Blue) > STR(Red) > PHY(Yellow) > INT(Purple) > TEQ. The "light" and "dark" equivalents in this game are the "Super" and "Extreme" modifiers that hero and villain cards, respectively, gain on Z-Awakening.
• Tech Tree: As of the Version 3.00 update, we have the Hidden Potential system. Despite it working only for UR and LR, it allows you to further increase the stats of any character, and even give them special perks such as Combos, Evasion, and even Criticals.
• Temporary Online Content: Starting from the 7th Anniversary, the game will bring in licensed vocal tracks for major celebrations related to their themes in the home screen or during special challenge vents, including "DAN DAN Kokoro Hikareteku" and "Blizzard" for said celebration, "Tobikkiri no Saikyo tai Saikyo" and "HERO (Kimi ga Hiro)" for the 2021 WWC, and every Dragon Ball opening for the 8th. However, due to how licensing agreements works, that means the songs only last as long as the celebration does, so once they're over, they revert to whichever in-game theme can be used to replace them. The 8th Anniversary takes this further, as they had an event that lets you unlock and listen to those opening themes in the profile jukebox, but once that celebration is over, they were all removed and replaced with a special remix of the game's first battle theme.
• The Dividual: [Unbridled Horror] Androids 17 & 18 and their Dokkan Awakenings count as a single unit.
  • This also applies to the TUR and LR versions of the Goku Black & Zamasu combo, in a more literal sense.
  • And just recently, [Budding Warriors] Trunks and Goten have gotten this treatment.
  • [Otherworld Super Warriors] Goku (Angel) and Vegeta (Angel) and [Eternal Rivalry] Goku and Vegeta, though once they reach LR status, both cards can change into LR Gogeta/LR Vegito when certain conditions are met.
  • Downplayed with SSJ2 Vegeta & Bulma. While Vegeta is the one that shows up on the field and attacks, Bulma will appear as justification for his Counters and Rage abilities.
• Theme Music Powerup: Whenever a character Transforms or uses their Active Skill, their music will always override any boss theme for 1 turn before returning back to regular music. This includes the Giant transformations and power-ups.
• Too Awesome to Use: The Elder Kai cards. They allow players to instantly boost up their Super Attack level. However, most players would rather prefer to hunt down duplicate cards or those close to it to attempt these boosts instead of actually using them.
• Took a Level in Badass: The purpose of performing an Awaken, Z-Awaken or Dokkan Awaken is to perform this trope as the character's stats will go up as well as being bumped up a new ranking. One of the most ridiculous characters to do this is [Overflowing Resolve] Goku. He starts as an R, then Z-Awakens into an SR. He Dokkan Awakens into [Message from Another World] Goku (Angel), then can Z-Awaken into a SSR rank before Dokkan Awakening into a SSR [Legendary Super Saiyan] Super Saiyan Goku. THEN, he can Z-Awaken into a UR rank, then Dokkan Awaken back down to an SSR Rank, [Flawless Technique] Super Saiyan Goku (Angel), who can re-Z-Awaken back into a UR! WHEW.
  • An update allows him to Dokkan AGAIN into TUR [Multiplied Fighting Power] Super Saiyan 3 Angel Goku, officially giving him more Dokkan Awakenings than even the LR's.
• Tournament Arc: The game will roll out World Tournaments every once in awhile, being able to win amazing prizes, including the chance to win amazing SSR-Rank characters.
• Truer to the Text: Thanks to the massive improvements in attack animations and gameplay mechanics, characters and sagas revisited in either DB/Story Events or Dokkan Festivals will have their abilities and plots to be more in line with the original manga or theatrical anime run (barring a few Pragmatic Adaptation exceptions, such as the final stage of "Fight Against Despair!" being a lead in to Bojack Unbound). One notable example is [Strike of Full Anger] Super Saiyan Goku keeping his reserved face if he finishes the final enemy off with his Angry Kamehameha Active Skill, where as most other adaptations opted not to include it.
• Unblockable Attack: All of Super Gogeta's attacks (regular and Super Attacks) can't be guarded against.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: [Wings Spread Out to the Cosmos] Pan (GT) (Honey)'s Extreme Challenge Campaign gives you a generous number of stones and Elder Kais if you managed to fully Extreme Z-Awaken her before the duration ends. However since you can only do the event once per week (and said campaign only lasts long enough to do each event for up to 5 weeks), if you're unlucky enough to lose, you're gonna permanently miss out on the last tier of rewards. And in Global, the duration isn't enough to get the medals needed on a regular run so if you're not lucky enough to get a ? Panel which gives more medals, then said mission will be permanently missable.
• Uniqueness Rule: Though you can put multiple versions of a character on the same team, if they happen to share the same name (i.e. Super Saiyan Goku attacking in the same rotation as another Super Saiyan Goku), then none of their Link Skills will activate if paired up with each other. This can be circumvented if they start with the same name but soon transforms into a different form from the copy (such as Super Buu absorbing Gohan), which will then allow them to link up in battle, or if they are an exchange unit (such as [Warriors Entrusted with Earth's Fate] Super Saiyan Goku/Super Saiyan Gohan (Youth)), due to them escaping this limitation on a technicality, but this isn't always the case for most units. Extreme Z-Battles completely enforces this as that mode will prevent you from putting more than one copy of a character in your team by blocking every other variant out when one is selected for battle.
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • Nowadays, any units that lower the DEF of the enemy with either their passive skill or Super Attack effect might as well not exist at all given the fact that almost all the Dokkan bosses utilize damage reduction where they will lower the damage every time they get attacked, and it cannot be negated by any means(not even with a critical hit). The only bosses that utilizes defense as their main trait is Broly, SSJ 3 Broly, Super Vegito, and Future Gohan. And even then, a critical hit will allow the player to completely bypass their defense and hit them for full damage anyway. While there are units that gets bonuses on a DEF-lowered enemy, the hardest events disable every debuffs making them even more pointless anyway.
  • Any units whose mechanic is entirely dependent on debuffs becomes virtually useless in every hardest event but (Extreme) Super Battle Road as the final phase bosses tend to have immunity to every debuffs up to including the afromented lower DEF debuff.
  • Some units gain boosts when they deal the finishing blow to the boss such as HP recovery, ATK boost or Ki. Even against bosses that has multiple phases, for them to get the boost you have to hope that other units in the same rotation deal heavy damage but not strong enough to kill them and there's also the issue of your units being strong enough to kill the boss themselves which many of them lack. This mechanic becomes even more useless in events with only one boss phase as the boosts do not carry over through each run and the event would have been over by then.
  • Surviving K.O. attacks allow you to survive any attack that would have finished you off so that you can use Support Items to recover your HP. Back then, it was useful to withstand any fatal blows dealt by the bosses as the usually have a countdown Super Attack that deals metric tons of damage. However as the years pass by and bosses became harder, they started to attack more often and while they'll able to withstand 1 attack, they won't be able to survive any subsequent attacks.
  • Super Attacks effects that raises ATK are always inferior to the ones that raises DEF even putting aside the whole "defense is better than offense" debacle. Much of this is due to the fact that rather than directly multiplying your ATK stat on a Super Attack, it actually raises your Super Attack multiplier so on an immense multiplier whose effects greatly raises ATK for 1 turn, it merely raises the multiplier from 505% to 555% which meant that rather raising your overall damage output by 50%, it only raises by approximately 10% or lower. The same also applies to effects that infinitely raises your ATK and raises allies ATK' on a Super as it additively add on to the percentage rather than actually multiplying it. Super Attack effects that raises DEF in contrast actually multiplies your defense so Super Attacks that raises DEF are always one of the best SA Effect as the ability to multiply your DEF can make the difference between dying and surviving from enemy attacks while those that only raises ATK tend to be one of the worst besides lowering DEF. The only ones that can actually take advantage of this are those that are capable of countering enemy attacks and ones who can deal Ultimate Damage with their Active Skill, the former is due the fact that counters uses normal attack as damage multiplier which the Super Attack does multiply and the latter is because it is treated as a separate counter rather than adding on to the Ultimate Damage multiplier.
  • [Battle to Reach the Top] Super Saiyan Vegeta (GT) and [Battle to Become the Strongest] Super Saiyan Goku (GT)'s Active Skill allows them to dish out an attack with Ultimate damage which can only be activated after performing 4 Super Attacks. For all the effort required with such a horrendous requirement that can only be triggered at turn 7 on average, said Active Skill hits like a wet feather in contrast to the damage dealt on a regular Super Attack. This is due to the fact that while normally Ultimate Attacks do use their Super Attack multiplier, Goku & Vegeta's additional boosts comes from collecting Ki Spheres which meant that their Active Skill by contrast only uses their start of turn boost which results in said Ultimate Damage only dealing a third of the damage they deal on average particularly due to the fact that unlike other nukers, Goku and Vegeta's boost comes on a Super Attack which meant that the boosts directly multiply with each other rather than additively adding them like every other nukers.
  • [Destroyers Born from the Dragon Balls] Shadow Dragons Army's Active Skill give themselves Ki as well as debuffing the enemy's ATK. While the bonus Ki will always remain a useful skill to have, the problem with it is the fact that the Active Skill can only be triggered as early as the 7th turn but at the point that it's available, the enemy would have already been immune to being ATK debuffed. Even in Super Battle Road stages where the enemies can be fully debuffed, most of the events lasts only in 4 turns on average and if you somehow managed to reach 7 turns to trigger the Active Skill, you're probably already winning anyway as much of the difficulties is dependent on whether or not you can survive the first few turns.
  • [Overflowing Reflective Radiance] Super Saiyan God SS Gogeta's Active Skill allows him to not only redirect all enemy attacks at him for 1 turn, but also gives him guaranteed dodge within that same turn... except this is still affected by any Dodge Nullification skill the boss activates at the start of the battle, especially in events where it would've been most useful in like Red Zone, nor does it deter any "Attack All" attacks made by the enemy in that turn. This makes what should be a useful skill into a very easy way for him to get pelted, especially if he hasn't had a chance to attack and build up his defense for that turn. [God of Destruction's Holiday] Beerus (Pajama) showcases just how awful this skill can be, having the same Attack Interception skill as Gogeta... except he only gets a measly 30% Damage Reduction as his only defense before he can fire off any Super Attack or gather the Rainbow Ki Spheres needed to boost his Defense only slightly, making him an even worse defensive option in challenging events.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Strike Event bosses. Ignoring the 100-point limit, these will be the first bosses you'll probably face that have multiple HP bars, deal massive damage and force you to sit there and think about what to do
  • Somewhat averted as of the "Legendary Campaign" Challenge, as the 100-point limit has since been permanently removed.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Many Dokkan Event bosses have some sort of damage reduction that can only be negated by specific characters or link skills. For example; Kid Buu takes extra damage from many cards from the Buu Arc. Janemba's weakness? Super Saiyans.
  • Super Gogeta isn't much better, being weak to characters with the 'Big Bad Bosses' link that many of the major villains [Cell, Frieza, Buu] have.
  • While it was rather difficult upon his release due to the scarcity of the link at the time; Super Vegito's weakness to Fierce Battle has become a case of Badass Decay as more and more cards get the link.
  • LR [Wolfish Awakening] Yamcha & Puar will always be stunned if a "Peppy Gal" category is present as an enemy, however, this is only really a problem if you encounter Boujack's crew as the last fight of the Super PHY Super Battle Road stage.
• Zerg Rush: Any stage where you fight the Ginyu Force in its entirety always starts with all of them using their super attack on the first turn, much to the annoyance of many.