In the last article I wrote about anti-salvage and concluded that it’s not that big of a deal! So what about “Heal Tax”?

What is Heal Tax you ask?

Well, there are two cards in English that have this ability: Hibiki from Kancolle and Ryuko from Kill la Kill.



【AUTO】[(1) Put this card into your memory] When this card becomes 【Reverse】 in battle, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose a card named “”Faithful” Destroyer, Верный” in your waiting room, and put it on the stage position that this card was on as 【REST】’ />.

【AUTO】Memory If this card is in your memory, when your card or your opponent’s card in the clock is put into the waiting room due to the respective player’s card effects, that player may put the top two cards from the stock into the waiting room. If not, that player puts the top card of the deck into the clock.

【AUTO】 [(1) Put a card from your hand into your waiting room & Put this card into your memory] When this card becomes 【REVERSE】 in battle, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose a card named “”Rampage” Ryuko” in your waiting room, and put it on the stage position that this card was on as 【REST】.

【AUTO】 Memory If this card is in your memory, when your card or your opponent’s card in the clock is put into the waiting room due to respective card effects, that player may put the top two cards from stock into the waiting room. If not, that player puts the top card of the deck into the clock.

Note two things:

The effect applies to both players You can actually heal anyway: either paying two stock, or taking the damage afterwards.

A useful situation for healing then taking damage, for example, is if there’s one heal tax card in your opponent’s memory and you’ve got a climax stuck in the top of your clock: you put the climax into the waiting room and get a potential non-climax card in the clock.

Also, important to note is that heal abilities aren’t usually mandatory:

【AUTO】 When this card is placed on the stage from your hand, you may put the top card of your clock into your waiting room.

So if you don’t want to put a card from the clock to the waiting room, you don’t get “taxed” in any way.

As you may know, healers are some of the possibilities for level 3 play and so we’ll focus on level 3 options as they usually impact your strategy for the rest of your deck.

I’m going to review all the English sets as of writing, talking about finishers available as an alternative to healers. I won’t be listing all of the level 3 characters in all sets, just the ones I believe are the most relevant (I’m excluding the majority of the Trial Deck Healers)



(Disclaimer: this article is not an in depth analysis of Heal Tax disruption for certain healers, nor does it aim to list all level 3s’ strengths and weaknesses in a statistical fashion. What it does aim to is to show you most level 3 options in every English set and let you decide if the presence of Heal Tax in your meta impacts greatly in regard to your deck building options)

1.Disgaea ～Hour of Darkness～

Until June, in English there’s only the old Trial Deck at our disposal, so our only option is Laharl, he’s a healer with an awesome ability for deck compression. Even though he’s restricted in the japanese banlist he wasn’t “emo swinged” (is this a thing? Are cards not printed in english because they were banned/restricted in japanese “emo swinged”?) but that’s another discussion!

Anyway… yeah, heal tax could be annoying against the Trial Deck as he’s your only option.

2. Puella Magi Madoka Magica / Puella Magi Madoka Magica

The Movie -Rebellion-

There are four level 3 healers in Madoka, one for each color.

Kyoko has an on attack burn ability, besides healing, so she could be a good option even if you’re not healing.

If you’re using blue you can heal with Sayaka Wish even if you can’t heal with Sayaka. There’s the early level Sayaka too if you prefer her.

When using green, there’s 3 kinds of clock-shooters as finishers… so you don’t give a damn about healing. You’re probably only going to use this Ultimate Madoka if you’re using the combo with Demon Homura, so, heal is just a plus, not a strategy and you could even choose to use the alternate version of Ultimate Madoka.

In yellow there’s the Rebellion Mami with a change for her and burn ability when she’s placed on stage and the Nagisa combo climax.

So… a lot of choices in all colors!

And then Madokami created cards unnafected by heal tax.

When you Sayaka Wish upon a star, makes no difference who your heal tax opponents are!



【COUNTER】 Choose one of your characters with “Sayaka” in its card name, and put it into your waiting room. If you do, put the top card of your clock into your hand, and put this card into your memory.

You can use this kind of heal freely, ’cause you put the card from the clock into your hand and not into the waiting room (which is what heal tax affects).

So, you can “heal” anyway!

In other sets there are some other cards like this that are unnafected, we’ll talk about them later on the article.



3. Hatsune Miku -Project DIVA- ƒ / Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F 2nd

As you can see above, these are the Project Diva healers.

They all have a second ability besides healing. The first set Rin sends your opponent’s characters to stock on reverse and has a change for her. In my opinion she’s not that great and can easily be replaced by Kagamine Rin “Original”(F 2nd), which is really better as a finisher if you want yellow in your level 3.

Electron Diva is probably the most used card from these five. She has a change for her, and is a 12 000 power character with a full stage, and it’s a case where healing really makes a difference between it being a great card or a not so great card. In Green you have, in my opinion, the best finishers for this set, first “Eternal Sounds” Hatsune Miku and if you want another clock shooter, the older Factory Tyrant. You got an early level too: Resonating Diva. Electron Diva was the best card before Project Diva F2nd but now I think she isn’t essencial in a deck.

Jumping to Kaito, as the blue healer, he’s great if you’re using green too and want something to give more power for your clock shooters. So, healing is nice, but the second ability is the real reason to use him, most of the times.

Len and Megurine Luka can be used if you want to run mainly yellow or red, respectively.

Len isn’t so good compared with Rin, so I can just see him useful in a full yellow Rin/Len build. Megurine Luka has a cool ability to attack the back row in a combo with the comeback icon climax. Of course red builds are always the most penalized against a Kancolle “Anti-Salvage + Heal Tax” deck.

4. Sword Art Online / Sword Art Online Vol. 2 / Sword Art Online II





Here, as you can see, heal is just a “bonus” on the cards, as they have other main abilities. Asuna is mostly used in yellow builds, or builds with yellow splashes. The heal bit is always nice, but the most important part of the card is the +500 power, +1 soul to all your “Avatar” characters. If Asuna is your waifu you have Beacon of Hope Asuna too.

Silica‘s build is again the most affected here, as she is in the anti-salvage list too. You’ve got another Silica as an alternative, as for red options you have Death Gun and Lisbeth too.

Leafa is a nice card if you’re doing a Leafa green deck. In this case the combo climax is once again the best part. You’ve got the Leafa early level too.

Both Kiritos aren’t that special… ’cause yeah, in blue you’ve got Sinon! She is, in my opinion, the best finisher in this set right now, and the reason isn’t the heal of course.

5. Fate Zero / Fate Stay night [Unlimited Blade Works]



Fate already has a great set of finishers and Fate Stay Night Vol. II is still on its way.

Right now in red your best options are Great Day for a Date, Rin, the early level For Victory, Rin, and Archer, so if you’re using the Fate Zero Archer it’s because of his ability to take down your opponent’s climax, heal, is once again, a nice bonus.

In yellow you’ll use “Musashi” Saber, as she’s probably the best Level 3 in the set.

And if you want blue, or splash blue, you’re probably using Caster.

In Green you’ve got Rider Clock Shooters, no heal there.



6. Angel Beats! Re:Edit



Angel Beats’ level 3 is heal heavy. Of course they’ve all got a second ability but it’s really easy to adopt a real heal strategy with this set. This affects the whole set, even the Music deck with Yui.

So, when you’re planning to go against Heal Tax it’s better to think about alternatives:

If you’re not building a Kanade waifu deck, you’ll want to run Yuri Nakamura for sure, as she’s the best finisher. You may combine her with one of the healers, or you may want to try Yuri Defying an Unreasonable Fate too, although her ability is kinda of stock intensive.

In the Music Deck you may want to run Little Braver, Yui with her burn ability when she enters the stage.

So, Angel Beats allows a strong heal based deck, and you can combine it with a salvage strategy too, but you’ve got some options if you’re afraid of anti-salvage and heal tax abilities, so, in the end, it’s your choice!

7. Love Live! / Love Live! School idol festival / Love Live! DX / Love Live! Vol.2

Love Live has a lot of stuff and it’s the hardest set for me to talk about ’cause I don’t usually play it.



In the 2014 Neo-Showdown Europe Continental, in which I had the honor of participating, I played against a lot of great Love Live builds heavily based on heal. The tournament wasn’t English only at the time, but nowadays we have most of the cards available back then, so it may be worth to take a look on the list of the European 2014 champion. This was before Kancolle was released in japanese.

Fun Fact: in this year’s Neo-Showdown Canada qualifier, a Love Live deck won with almost only cards from the first set!

As you can see, both lists use some of the cards of these healers lists, so if you’re interested on using this set maybe it’s a good exercise comparing them.

Besides the healers, I can show you some great finishers.

In green I can’t resist to choose the clock shooters, from the first set Idol Otaku, Nico or Eli from vol.2.

In red you have “Happy Maker!” Kotori Minami as a pay one burner when she enters stage, or in yellow “The Sheep’s Feelings” Kotori.

Finally in blue there are two cards worth showing, “Happy Maker!” Rin Hoshizora, with a really cool trick to mess with your opponent’s compression, and finally Love Live’s “Sayaka Wish“: “Love Wing Bell”, that lets you heal even with Heal Tax active.



【COUNTER】 Choose one of your characters with “Rin(凛)” in its card name, and put it into your waiting room. If you do, return the top card of your clock into your hand, and put this card into your memory.

8. FAIRY TAIL ver.E



Fairy Tail is a small set and it doesn’t have a large set of options for Level 3. If you want to use blue, you have these 2 healers, and in red you have the Trial Deck healer.

As good finishers, you may use the clock shooter Lucy or the restander Erza:

9. Persona 4 ver.E





Persona has some unusual Level 3s. Store Manager’s Son, Yosuke and One who Wields Power, Margaret could heal or not and may activate other abilities if you can mill the right cards.

“The Raging Bull of Destruction” Shadow Labrys can clock shoot a level 2 or lower card when she reverses a level 2 or higher card, with the right climax in play. This is a different ability from the usual clock shooters as it doesn’t necessarily send to clock the card it reverses, but I think it’s a great card. The second ability makes this card worth it by itself. In Green you’ve also got Kung Fu Club, Chie as a restander.

In red don’t forget there’s Young Okami,Yukiko, one of the best level 3s in this set, but you need to have a lot of Japanese Clothes or Fan trait cards on the deck.

10. KILL la KILL



Kill la Kill has just one Level 3 healer: To Protect the World, Satsuki. In this case without the heal she isn’t really great as the only other thing she offers is a decent body for an early level and a small compression bonus.

Anyway, Kill la Kill has 3 other great options as Level 3: Mako is really great (well, it’s a Musashi, or… Musashi is like Mako, ’cause Kill la Kill was released first chronologically). The only drawback is that she isn’t a “Clothes” trait card, so it has decreased synergy with the rest of the deck, but even if you’re not using yellow as main color, you can splash her as a finisher and it’s still worth it. Ryuko can deal the last damage you need to win your opponent and you can (and probably want to) crash her into a stronger character, and Nui has her really fun and powerful change ability.





11.BAKEMONOGATARI / NISEMONOGATARI



Well, this set is probably the one where you’ll notice that healers are the best options, as you don’t have the usual finishers (clock shooters, burners…). Hitagi and Shinobu are probably the most used cards of this set.

You can choose other useful level 3s, but they’re usually just additions, and not main strategies.

Of course, if you usually play in Japanese, you already have the new Monogatari set that gives you a lot more options. But it won’t be released in English in time for this year’s Spring Fest, so maybe later in the year (I hope) I’ll have more to talk about Monogatari Series.

12. NISEKOI -False Love-



In Nisekoi you have four healers, one for each color. They’re not the most important level 3 cards in this set. Seishiro is mainly used in Seishiro waifu decks. Onodera is great because of her second ability, giving a lot of compression to your deck and hand advantage. She is mainly used if you want to splash green on your deck or if you’re using an Onodera build. Chitoge and Marika have nice secondary abilities too, so heal is again a plus.

Anyway, when playing Nisekoi you probably want to play Marika and/or Chitoge as finishers, or the early level Onodera: “The One” cards.





13. LOG HORIZON

There are no choices in Log Horizon at Level 3!

And you don’t need choices, ’cause Level 3 is already great.



Akatsuki’s a healer, but that’s just a plus as she burns with her climax in play, when she reverses her opponent, made easy by the 4000 power she also gets.

Shiroe protects you from damage from your opponent character’s 【AUTO】 effects which is becoming increasingly important, and Naotsugu has Great Performance to protect your other characters and with Shiroe behind him he is usually very capable of that!

14. Attack on Titan

Atttack on Titan is really interesting, ’cause it allows two different ways of healing without having problems with Heal Tax, one for Corps and one for Titans.





“Resisting Fate” Levi

【AUTO】 [Put a card from your hand into your waiting room] When a card named “The Wings of Freedom” is placed on your climax area, if this card is on the center stage, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose a 《Corps》 character in your clock, and put it on any position of your stage. 【AUTO】 [(3) Put a 《Corps》 character from your hand into your waiting room & Put another character from your stage into your waiting room] This ability activates up to one time per turn. During the turn that this card is placed on the stage from your hand, when this card’s battle opponent becomes 【REVERSE】, you may pay the cost. If you do, 【STAND】 this card and move it to another open position of your stage.

“Enormous Stature” Colossal Titan

【CONT】 If you have a card named “”Threat to Humanity” Colossal Titan” and “”Broken Wall” Colossal Titan”, this card gets -1 level while in your hand. 【CONT】 During your opponent’s turn, if this card is in your center stage and is not 【REVERSE】, all of your other “”Threat to Humanity” Colossal Titan” and “”Broken Wall” Colossal Titan” get the following ability. “【CONT】 This card cannot become 【REVERSE】.” 【AUTO】 [Put a card named “And, in 850……” from your climax area into your waiting room] At the beginning of your encore step, you may pay the cost. If you do, return the top card of your clock to your hand, and this card gets +3000 power until the end of your opponent’s next turn.

Levi heals a card onto the stage, Colossal Titan heals a onto your hand, both with combo climaxes. So… heal freely!



That leaves just Mikasa as the “regular” healer. No problem, she has a nice second ability too that confuses your opponent’s attack 😛

Don’t forget the other great cards at your disposal: Eren and Armin for Corps, Female Titan for Titans.

15. KanColle / KanColle, 2nd Fleet



Kancolle has a lot of different cards, so it has a lot of healers too. As you can see above, maybe the most used of this lot is Kongo. As we saw in the last article, Kancolle’s red build is one of the most penalised with anti-salvage. Heal Tax is an issue with this Kongo as well.

But if anything, Kancolle doesn’t have a problem with finishers, and you probably know well the Akagi and Musashi team. We’ve got other possible builds too with great finishers alternative to the common build: the 2nd fleet Yamato, Clock shooter Hyuga-Kai or Haruna. You could be very innovative with this set and create new combinations using some of the less used level 3 cards.

16. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Haruhi is receiving the extra booster next month (May), so there will be some new choices here. As of writing there are two healers, and a pool of four level 3s to choose from.



If you’re playing Haruhi, you’re probably using Trouble Girl, Haruhi. She heals, but her combo climax gives one damage on attack, so it’s a really great card as a finisher (and a common at that xD). Nagato has a really funny and powerful ability, scrambling your opponent’s stage and making his cards lose their markers!

There are alternatives in the remaining two colors. In Yellow there’s the Haruhi Restander and in Green Mikuru denies your opponent of playing climaxes (no climax combos for you sir!).

17. THE IDOLM@STER CINDERELLA GIRLS





These are the new healers from Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls.

Mika heals, but has a second ability that’s sure to help your deck compression, Anzu is an early level that heals, and Ranko has a combo climax as her second ability to deal damage and/or help your compression. Uzuki has a really fun big combo if you want to make that deck, but can it can be harsh against Heal Tax, ’cause it takes away the fun of healing 3 damage in one sitting.

You’ve got more great Level 3s, as Miku, giving burn, and soul penalty if you mill red and blue cards, Chieri with burn too, or Anastasia if you’re using blue.

There’s a lot to test out with this set.

FINAL REMARKS

17 different sets, lots of healers, but also a lot of choices and alternatives!

It’s always useful to heal a bit, but there’s no need to focus only on healing as a strategy.

In the earlier days of Weiss healers were more frequently used, some decks used strategies revolving around 8 climaxes with comeback icons and 8 level 3 healers! And that really worked!

It also “didn’t work”, because players were at 3/5, 3/6 damage and basically rolled back that damage on healing power alone, it would make the game drag along as both players usually employed the same strategy.

Heal Tax and Anti-Salvage where introduced in the game so players could conceive and employ new strategies. The sets started evolving too, and new mechanics rose to the spotlight: like burn and clock shoot which speed up the game and make you think more carefully when sending an opponent to level 3. It also makes other levels more relevant for your game plan instead of having decks relying almost solely on level 3 to win.

In the English meta nowadays it’s not difficult to choose a balanced strategy so as to not be punished by “anti” abilities. No single strategy or deck is too strong, ’cause you can always change your build to be better prepared against a specific strategy! That’s truly thinking about “Meta”! And that’s one of the fun parts of the game!

Hope you liked this long overview about the Level 3 of the game!

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