After you have started equipping your dragons with optimal runes for a while, you will start to notice that similar dragons use similar runes. This is due to their role in a team and their drag skill. So let's look at the stats a dragon has and in what cases we would wish to increase them with certain runes.

HP (Health Points) and dragons lose HP every time they are attacked. Many healers have a skill where the amount of HP they recover is increased proportionally to your Max HP. This means the higher their HP, the more HP they can recover for themselves and their teammates.

So recovery type dragons with a skill based on their max HP, should use HP runes with HP% main stats.

(We will see why you may want to equip yellow Critical Rate in the section about the Critical Rate stat.)

DEF works with HP to calculate how much damage a dragon takes from an attack.

The higher a dragon’s DEF, the less HP they lose when they are hit by an attack.

This means that a dragon that can tank hits must have both good HP and DEF. If it has high HP but low DEF, then it will lose a lot of HP in one go, making it harder to heal. If it has high DEF but low HP, then it may lose all of its HP after a few consecutive attacks.

Dragons whose heal is increased proportionally to your DEF heal more when their DEF is higher, so these dragons will want orange runes with DEF%.

All dragons have an ATK stat, which is used to calculate how much damage their normal attack does.

In addition, some Attack type dragons’ skills receive a X% bonus from ATK. The damage dealt from their attacks is calculated by their ATK stat, multiplied by the bonus. Thus, these dragons will want to make use of red runes with ATK% main stats.

However, dragons that have naturally high Critical Rate would still want to use pink runes in order to benefit from its Critical Rate. This means that, as you will want to boost the Critical Rate of attackers anyway, it is ideal to equip pink runes on all attackers. However, you will probably in shortage of pink runes, so it is fine to use red runes on ATK-based attackers in the beginning. For more information see the section on the Critical Rate stat.

The more ATK Speed a dragon has, the more often it will do normal attacks.

The most important thing about ATK Speed, though, is that some dragons’ power is greatly increased, proportionally to their ATK Speed. Therefore, you will want to give these dragons blue runes, with ATK Speed% as the main stat of their slot 2 rune, and give it as much ATK Speed% as possible with substats as well.

When a dragon achieves a Critical Hit, its final damage (or heal) is further multiplied by its Critical DMG. Critical Hits and Critical DMG affects HP recovery as well!

It is possible to increase the Critical Rate of a dragon to 100% through runes and mastery, so that your damage is always increased by your Critical DMG. Many - almost all - attackers and healers will want to get as close to 100% Critical Rate (or even hit 100%!) as possible. This is why many attackers and healers use Critical Rate as the main stat of their slot 4 rune.

Some attackers have a drag skill where a Critical Hit will increase damage by X. When these dragons achieve a Critical Hit, the damage from their attack is multiplied by its Critical DMG stat, as well as the multiplier stated in its drag skill description.

The rune that boosts Critical Rate is the purple Chance set. Sometimes you have to decide between using pink Damage runes or purple Critical Rate runes. The purple Chance set boosts Critical Rate by 12%. If your dragon's Critical Rate is low (roughly, less than 50%), you may wish to use 1 Chance set. Note, however, that the pink Damage set boosts Critical DMG by 20%, considerably more than the boost provided by a purple Chance set, making a purple Chance set somewhat undesirable in comparison.

This is Dark Arkana. You may have heard him being praised as an excellent attacker. One of the things that makes him so great is the fact that the damage from his skill is greatly increased, proportionally to your Critical DMG.

We know from the section on Critical Hit that when a dragon achieves a Critical Hit, its ATK is multiplied by its Critical DMG. For Dark Arkana’s skill, however, its damage is multiplied by its Critical DMG, then further boosted by 1.2% for every 1% Critical DMG it has.

During battle, its Critical DMG can also be further boosted by its allies, such as Dark Cupid, making for a massive damage output.

The same can be said for other dragons whose damage increases proportionally to their Critical DMG. (Dark Arkana specifically is so highly praised because its passives also further increase its damage.) Their damage is taken from their ATK stat, their Critical DMG stat, and further increased by the boost provided by their drag skill. Thus, dragons whose drag skills scale off Critical DMG can be very scary indeed.

When a dragon successfully evades an attack, it avoids damage completely.

When it comes to attacking the opponent, your ACC and the opponents’ Evasion come into play.

For example, if your dragon’s ACC is 100 and the opponent’s Evasion is 100, your dragon’s attack will not land any damage. This is a strategy effective and popular in Colosseum.

Note however that boss monsters have an absurdly high ACC so using Evasion against boss monsters is not efficient.

Similar to Evasion and ACC, when your dragon is successful in applying an effect to the opponent, your dragon’s Effect Accuracy is calculated against the opponent’s Effect Resistance.

This stat does NOT affect the chance of an effect being applied successfully. For example, let’s take Fire Godium’s passive skill ‘Mystic’:

‘80% chance to affect target with up to 2 DEF decrease effect for 15 sec.’

Effect Accuracy does not affect this 80% chance. Instead, if the 80% chance is successful, only then is the Godium’s Effect Accuracy calculated against the opponent’s Effect Resistance.

Note that every dragon has an innate Effect Resistance of 15%. This means that no matter how high your dragon's Effect Accuracy is, there is always a 15% chance of the opponent evading the effect.

The best runes for a dragon are usually runes that will benefit its drag skill. So when you are looking for runes for your dragons, don't just follow the recommendations. Look for ones that will boost the power of your dragon's drag skill!

That is why the following dragons need the following runes:

These healers use orange Solidity runes with DEF main stats because their heal increases based on their DEF stat.

These attackers use red Might and pink Damage runes with ATK and Critical Rate main stats because their damage is based on their ATK. Furthermore, all attackers want high Critical Rate to boost their power further, and that is why they use Critical Rate main stats on rune slot 4.