Hades Alone (Lost Canvas) is a good EX unit whose value does not come from raw damage, but from tempo denial and true damage. He was released with a very specific mission: to control the two most oppressive accumulations in the game, Seraphina and Thanatos. He has always done that job well, and on top of it he carries a non-revivable execution, one of the few in Saint Seiya Awakening, which is why he keeps showing up from time to time in combo lineups.
His kit works like a chain. Portrait of Death is a single-target cosmic attack that from level 3 also applies [Mercy] and [True Red]. Paradise Lost opens a field for free (0 Energy) and slows down the charge bars of enemies that build up and explode, but here comes the catch: that control only affects Seraphina and Thanatos. Weight of Nirvana is the opposite kind of skill: for 1 Energy it permanently reduces the ATK, DEF and SPD of a single target and keeps adding [Mercy] stacks to set up the executions.
Everything else revolves around [True Red]. [Mercy] is a mark that sits on top of the enemy and deals true damage based on their Max HP (capped by Alone’s own HP) every time that enemy is hit, and if the target does not have [True Red] yet, it also adds a stack. At 3 stacks, [True Red] is consumed, deals true damage and executes the target if it is below the HP threshold. That execution works like Athena’s — the victim cannot be revived — but unlike hers, it triggers automatically, so we never get to choose when to finish an enemy. Because of that, Alone loves teams that hit many times: with units like Leo Regulus, who can attack 15 or 30 times, the stacks pile up on their own.
After the Awakened Cloth, all the improvements are concentrated in his fourth skill and none of them expand his bar control. First, Alone has to invest almost everything in Speed, so he usually goes down fast. With that shield he now survives long fights and keeps debuffing. Why? Well, in practice he remains a demanding unit. He needs to open his field as soon as possible, so Speed comes first and HP after, and the classic build is the supportive one, with as much Speed as possible in sub-attributes.
As for teams, since the field costs 0 Energy he can fit almost anywhere and already fulfill a function. He performs best in aggressive lineups that attack many times, and especially when the enemy plays Seraphina and Thanatos: if you control their bars while your own Seraphina and Thanatos are free to explode, the advantage is huge. The most common pairing is still the combo with Artemis and Shura DC, and that is not going to change. The problem is that he is also easy to answer: force him to lose control for two rounds and the field closes, and once Seraphina starts throwing waves nothing stops her, no matter how much we slow her bar.
So, is the Rebirth worth it? It is not a broken update — the bar control is exactly the same, and as an EX unit he is still expensive to raise and to equip with Skill Books — but it patches his two biggest problems: he can now execute enemies with a little more HP, and he stops dying before his marks do their job. Because of that, we will see him more often than before. And even if you do not plan to use him, his Rebirth still gives the account-wide bonus of 10% C.ATK and 100 extra HP for all units, which nobody is going to complain about.
