Stanied Glass 101: Stained Glass Medals and You

First, let's just describe what a Stained Glass Medal ("stain") entails in general:

For One Turn:

Buffs:

+7 General Attack

+7 Upright OR Reverse Attack

+7 Power OR Speed OR Magic Attack

+40% Special Attack Bonus Increase

Debuffs (AOE):

-7 Power OR Speed OR Magic Defense

-4 General

DOWNSIDES:

1. Six hits! That's -6 on hit counters, and -1 on attack counters.

2. The +40% Special attack bonus increase doesn't stack.

3. EA is not really good for this medal because of 1 and 2.

OVERVIEW:

+40% special attack bonus increase is like having an AB2Max stapled onto all your following guilted medals in

addition to their regular skills. I think that's about all that needs to be said on that.

This medal is powerful enough to go in the first slot of any keyblade. At *worst*, it's hitting 1s because of the

insufficient GDD. But, let's look at that in context. One cast of this will always be better than one cast of your

favorite Illustrated Kairi EX or Illustrated Xion EX just thanks to the multiplier and buff collection. So, even then,

it's going to be doing 6 times the damage of your KEX or XEX. Typically, however, it's going be doing at least the

same amount of damage as your first cast of KEX or XEX per hit.

So now you have one alignment (Upright or Reverse) attack buff set up, and one full suite of elemental (Power, Speed,

Magic) buffs and debuffs set up. The last thing you need is just to get your remaining GDD set up, along with

alignment defense downs, which, coincidentally, are some of the best medals available (on 2018-4-27), so you can

just go ham.

Now, you may be wondering, since it has such good damage multiplier, why not put it in slot 2, or 3? You *can*... but

remember, it gets higher multiplier with lower slot, and at max guilt that means it's losing 1/5 of its multiplier,

which gets bigger and bigger when you remember that you have an effective +270% guilt. If you had two traitless stain

medals (such as an Upright Power stain followed by a Reverse Magic stain on Fairy Stars), you should expect them to

do about the same damage despite the second one missing out on the full GDD (subject to individual heartless, some

terms and conditions may apply.)

ELEMENTAL BUFF MANAGEMENT:

It's probable that you've been considering your medals up to this point assuming that you're doing an entirely

on-color keyblade, like always using the Upright Power stain on Fenrir, and once the Speed ones inevitably released,

using those for keyblades that want them. But you're building a keyblade with your one single stain you pulled, say,

Upright Magic. "I don't have a Power stain, so I'm just gonna keep using my kex + ea copy plan for Fenrir." Here's my

advice: Just Use The Stain Please For The Love Of Kingdom Hearts.

Consider this single target build on Fenrir:

kex, ea power copyart, kh3 mickey ex, hd xion, wol, hd rikuplica

Now, let's take a look at working in your new Magic stain. We start out by throwing out the first two medals. The

Mickey gives +7 P-str, and -3 P-def, so we only need -4 P-def and -3 def. Wouldn't you know it, a kex (or even a xex,

for giving you the extra oomph on a reverse shared medal) fits perfectly in that slot. Now you have all the buffs you

had before with just a kex copied, AND you have the +40% guilt. Wild! Don't forget, lots of medals that you're used

to just using for damage have their own buffs and debuffs, so just arranging them properly after your stain is all

that matters.

Single target build But Better:

upright magic stain, kex, kh3 mickey ex, hd xion, wol, hd rikuplica

Now, naturally, you can optimize it a step further by using the upright power stain, letting you do something fun with

your 1.9 multiplier slot. Not much, honestly, but something. You could even stick in a power copyart again, with more

attack oriented traits, and get the old two-for-one special on stains, finishing your GDD setup. The possibilities

are endless. The only thing you really need to do is try to get one upright stain and one reverse stain, because

there are no medals (2018-4-27) that give you as big of a boost to upright and reverse as the stains.

Here are some more example builds showing how these can be used, courtesy of @kh_yukina:

https://twitter.com/kh_yukina/status/989845970539175937