Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle - Everything You Need to Know about the Combat System, Skills, and More
Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle is an interesting gacha game in that it not only features everything you’d expect from a game in the genre, such as unlocking and upgrading characters, turn-based combat, and lots of grinding. However, in contrast with many other titles, Dokkan Battle actually features a unique twist in the combat system, revolving around collecting Ki Spheres to empower your characters’ attacks and enabling the use of their strongest abilities.
While it’s pretty simple to grasp after a bit of playing, these innovations in the combat system make Dokkan Battle quite a unique and enjoyable experience, especially once you start unlocking the best characters and get access to a bunch of different abilities and attacks. Regardless, if you’re new to the game, it’s important to grasp the basics if you plan on progressing in this game. And for this reason, we decided to write this guide introducing you to the main combat mechanics in Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle.
In this article, we’ll be giving an overview of the combat system in the game, as well as talk about the different types of skills, attacks, passives, and other important aspects of your characters when it comes to battling.
The Basics of Battling
In contrast with other RPGs with turn-based combat mechanics, you don’t choose your attacks from a traditional menu in Dokkan Battle. Instead, your characters simply attack the enemy after an initial phase of collecting Ki Spheres. And depending on how many spheres you manage to collect, your attacks will vary both in type and in power.
This Ki Sphere collecting phase is what makes the combat in Dokkan Battle so unique, and adds a bit of a puzzle game element to it. In this sense, you won’t ever be mashing a single button to get through the battle, as you must always try to collect as many orbs as possible in order to empower your attacks and deal the most amount of damage in every turn.
The way the combat functions is that the battlefield is divided into the player characters and the enemy on the far side. Between the two, there is a large space filled with Ki Spheres of many colors. Whenever it’s your turn, you can click on any of the orbs in the closest row to pick it up, and if there are any of the same color nearby, it will chain to them and spread outwards towards the enemy.
The number of orbs picked up by the character in the ensuing chain will determine the strength of their attack for that turn. And when you manage to pick up at least 12 orbs of the same color, either in a single turn or across multiple, your character will unleash their Super Attack on that turn, which are usually some of the strongest abilities.
If you’ve fought a few battles by now, you probably already noticed that, at most, you can only get a chain of 5 orbs as there are 5 rows of these on the battlefield at any given moment. However, it’s important to note that orbs that are of the same color as the character’s type count for double the charge. Moreover, while the chain reaction always spreads outwards, there’s a chance that orbs that are beside the one you click on might burst and get picked up into the chain as well, as long as they’re of the same color as the initial sphere. With this in mind, it’s possible to get over 12 points per turn, as long as luck favors you.
One last important fact about the Ki Spheres is that the rainbow-colored ones act as a wild card and can function as an orb of any color. Keep this in mind for when you’re trying to unleash long chains.
Super Attacks
As we mentioned just now, Super Attacks are unleashed by the respective characters after you manage to gather at least 12 Ki Spheres, though the exact number can vary depending on the character and their respective super attacks. Nevertheless, these will usually be the strongest moves that are readily available to your characters at any given moment, so it’s always worth grabbing as many orbs as you can on every single turn.
And even if you can’t get the necessary orbs to unleash a Super Attack in any given turn, it’s always a good idea to pick up as many orbs. This is because not only do your current Ki Spheres count towards the total in the next turn, but your attack in the current turn will also be stronger, even though it won’t be a Super.
Link Skills
Some characters in Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle have unique Link Skills that can trigger whenever they are besides other specific units in the battle formation. These skills vary according to the character in question, though they usually revolve around important and powerful ki boosts and stat buffs, which in turn will let them use their strongest attacks more often, as well as deal more damage with every hit.
You can rearrange your character formations once per turn, before you pick up Ki Spheres, simply by clicking and dragging them towards the desired position. Keep in mind that your current formation rotates and alternates as the battle carries on, so always remember to rearrange and activate those Link Skills before attacking, as they can greatly increase your damage output.
Active Skills
These skills are quite simple and straightforward, but also very powerful and often worth triggering to obtain some easy victories. And just like their name might imply, they are active in the sense that you can activate them manually, but often only once certain conditions are met.
Active Skills function similar to Super Attacks in that certain conditions must be fulfilled in order for them to trigger. However, instead of picking up enough orbs, these skills often have different activation requirements. For example, Ultimate Malign Being Super Baby 2 (try saying that five times fast!) can transform into a Giant Ape, but only when his HP drops to 40% or below, and it can only happen once per battle.
Like Super Baby 2 above, there are many different characters that can have active skills. If this is the case, make sure to read them carefully as these abilities are often very strong, to the point where the utility of some characters even hinges on their Active Skills.
Leader and Passive Skills
Lastly, at least when it comes to the properties of your characters, some units can have different Leader Skills and Passive Skills. Though both are quite similar in that they are always active in combat, their effects can vary greatly.
Leader Skills are only active when the character in question is set as the leader of your formation. That is, when they’re set in the first slot of your team. These skills are usually very simple and consist of stat boosts to a certain group of characters in your squad. For instance, in the same example above, Ultimate Malign Being Super Baby 2 increases the Ki, HP, ATK, and DEF of characters that belong to the “Artificial Life Forms” category, while also giving slightly weaker bonuses to the same stats to “Extreme AGL” type units. Keep in mind that these bonuses also apply to the card that grants them, so it’s basically like a self-buff as well.
Passive Skills, just like with their Leader counterparts, are also always active and revolve mostly around stat bonuses, though they require a certain set of conditions to be triggered. These conditions vary immensely, so it’s important to thoroughly read the different character cards to know how to unleash a character’s maximum potential in combat.
Character Type Matchups and Attack Order
Finally, whenever you’re in a fight, the enemies you’re attacking are almost as important as unleashing your most powerful attacks. This is because there are five main types of characters in Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle, with each being strong against one, and weak against another. Here’s a breakdown of how the character types interact in Dokkan Battle:
- AGL (Blue) beats STR (Red)
- STR (Red) beats PHY (Orange)
- PHY (Orange) beats INT (Purple)
- INT (Purple) beats TEQ (Green)
- TEQ (Green) beats AGL (Blue)
Knowing these interactions can give you the push you need to beat the tougher levels. However, they are also always worth keeping in since, just like you can alter your formation in combat, you can also choose which enemies to target with every attack. For instance, if there’s a TEQ enemy in the opposite formation, and you’re about to attack with an INT character, you can click on the TEQ’s portrait to target them and deal maximum damage. This strategy is always recommended, particularly if you have strong characters that can 1hitKO their enemies.
And that’s it for our combat basics and tips for Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle. Feel free to leave your own nuggets of information in the comments to help your fellow gamers out!
