Teambuilding 101
Contents
Introduction
Greetings, reader!
I have seen many posts on r/SoccerSpirits asking the same question over and over again. “I have these units [insert a long — many times not even properly listed — list of units] and don’t know how to build a team.” Learning how to build a team by yourself is quite easy.
Thanks to u/KaiHG and u/Ragnello for pointing out mistakes and making suggestions! If you have any suggestions, you can PM me or write a comment in the thread on Reddit. Especially feedback from new players is very much appreciated.
You should know the basic mechanics of this game to get the most out of this guide. The Game Guide which you can find in-game has a ton of information which you can learn from. Go through it if you haven’t yet! There are other community guides as well. I want to point out the Soccer Spirits Calculator by u/Takachii which helps calculating damage and damage reduction values and the guide on how counterattack resistance & reflex works.
The most important aspects of building a team are choosing the elements and a striker + goalkeeper. The striker and goalkeeper are the backbone of your team. A strong striker and a goalkeeper are of utmost importance for the success of your team. Teams in Soccer Spirits don’t just consist of two units though. There are nine more units which make these two units shine even more.
My rule of thumb is that an invested striker and goalkeeper who are accompanied by other units which fit into their playstyle, boost their strengths and compensate their weaknesses is always going to be stronger than a poor composition of units even if the units themselves are stronger when compared in a vacuum.
Example: Kirin + Rudiel are a great pair in the frontline. Kirin paralyzes the enemy backline with a shot and Rudiel — a very strong stealer — gets the ball back. Damien + Rudiel are a bad fit though. Damien wants to finish the game as quickly as possible with a single shot that is as powerful as possible. Rudiel just doesn’t provide anything for executing that task. Baltheon on the other hand is great in combination with Damien but not an optimal choice for Kirin.
Which elements do I want?
Disclaimer: This guide is targeted towards players who have started a few months ago. You might have gathered quite a few units already but only have one legendary so far. Beginners who only have a handful of units which they can choose from should just use the best units they have for every role. Making a nice composition is impossible if you are too restricted in the choice of units.
That is why I strongly recommend to build a team which consists of two elements. Doing so provides you with the chance to use a Dual Ace so you won’t miss out on the Ace Burst and doesn’t restrict you too much unit-wise. Rainbow aces are usually a lot weaker than mono or dual aces which are boosted by Ace Burst.
There are several ways to answer to answer the question which elements you want to go with:
- Your free legendary unit can set one of the elements. If it is a striker or a goalkeeper, even better.
Before deciding on the second element, read about that units abilities and have a look at the chains. You could use the player book or the character description for that, but using the Soccer Spirits Wiki which has a lot of useful information should be a lot more comfortable. There are a few legendary units which already have dual aces for example Ein and Raphaela. Drawing them is going to make your decision very easy. Just choose the second element according to that ace. If you don’t want to, that’s fine as well.
You can find dual aces on many other non-legendary units too. Not all of them are useful though. Stats like reflex just don’t make that much of an impact. Using an ace that provides max HP and CR is also not a good idea if you have a CDR goalkeeper and an offensive team. Some units might have a nice ace but everything else about them could be subpar. There is a very nice list of dual aces in the Soccer Spirits Wiki.
- Another way to answer this question is your preference. When I started playing this game, I was hooked on Ardor. The general style of Ardor units just looked cool to me. That’s why my first team was an Ardor-Light team. The same is also applicable to single units. If you really like a specific unit, go for it.
- If none of the above helped making your choice, the next chapter will.
For the purpose of this guide, let’s assume that Duke is your starting legendary. This is pretty unlucky. He is neither a striker or goalkeeper nor does he have a dual ace.
His kit is nothing too spectacular. He has some selfish buffs which make him sturdier and hit harder. The line totem is a nice bonus which can help his teammates critically striking and raising their reflex, hence not getting counterattacked that much or even counterattacking themselves. He also benefits from that too, of course. His active is a vertical buff that has offensive and defensive uses. He increases the critical damage (CD) and reduces the incoming damage (DR) on the vertical line. That’s why he belongs in a vertical line with the striker or goalkeeper.
Which line should he be in?
- Frontline: A rule of thumb is to not put an attacker into the frontline if it’s not a Keeping the Ball attacker like Yong Hee or Gerrard because the unit is just going to penetrate the enemy backline potentially losing the ball while doing so. They usually also don’t have totems which help your frontline in doing their job, which is to put the enemy goalkeeper’s health to 0.
- Midline: Definitely the best choice for Duke. He hits hard and he is tanky which allows him to reliably stop the enemy team from going through your middle line. If you want him to help your goalkeeper, put him into center mid (CM). Otherwise place him in a vertical line with the striker which is either left mid (LM) or right mid (RM).
- Backline: Only put units into the backline that make the enemy frontline do less damage or hinder them from hitting at all. Duke only has his active for defensive purposes which can be activated from the midline and also isn’t fast enough to steal the ball before the enemy striker gets to shoot.
I will put him CM. He is just one of the best units in doing a CM’s job: stopping the enemy from going through your midline.
Striker and goalkeeper
Don’t use more than one striker and goalkeeper! Using more than one striker will weaken your frontline because you won’t have enough space for passers and units with useful totems. Focusing on the strengths of one striker is a lot easier and also makes your frontline hit harder overall. As for goalkeepers, many of them have abilities which only get activated when they are placed in the goalkeeper position or just have a kit which makes them good at getting shot at and nothing else.
Strikers and goalkeepers can each be put into two categories. There are utility strikers which have a kit that allows multiple shots in a short amount of time to end the game and OHKO strikers that want to end the match in one shot. Likewise, there are critical damage resistance (CDR) goalkeepers which become tanky by stacking stats like CDR, defense, DR and max HP and critical resistance (CR) goalkeepers which want to to stop the enemy striker from critting at all cost. Because of that, they want to have as much CR as possible coupled with defense, DR and max HP.
As long as you don’t have a specific non-striker and non-goalkeeper unit which you want to incorporate into your team besides the free legendary unit which every player gets at level 30, choosing units for these two roles is the first thing you do. Always.
Go to the in-game player book or the Soccer Spirits Wiki and go through the list of units.
You can sort by roles as well. Click on the different elements and go through the lists. Sorted by roles is the most comfortable because you can have a filtered look at an element’s strikers and goalkeepers. I would start by going through the element of your legendary unit.
There are some things which can make the decision easier:
- Find strikers and/or goalkeepers that benefit from your legendary unit. It’s not a good idea to choose Lucian or Irre who are both CR goalkeepers if your legendary unit (e.g. Garriott) only helps CDR goalkeepers. Likewise, a power passer like Baltheon whose job is to make one fat pass that enables the striker to kill the enemy goalkeeper in one shot. Pairing him with strikers like Bora or Kirin who need multiple shots to end the game just isn’t a good idea.
- Look out for units who have chains with your legendary unit. The most important chains for strikers are Affection & Competition. As for goalkeepers, Affection & Friendship are the most important. Competition is only important if your goalkeeper is based on CR.
- The new set of strikers (Maru, Ranaelen, Z022 Nitro, Xenon and Karin) all have dual aces. By choosing one of them you can hit two birds with one stone. Keep in mind that some of them have very specific aces e.g. Maru which might not be very useful for a general use team. Unfortunately, only legendary goalkeepers have dual aces.
- Preference: If you want to use a specific striker or goalkeeper, use them.
I went through Duke’s reverse chains. (You can see each unit’s reverse chains under the Story tab in the unit’s description or in the Soccer Spirits Wiki.)
The only striker in there is Hiro (Friendship) and the only goalkeeper in there is Kei (Friendship). Since the Friendship chain isn’t that much of a priority on strikers and my disliking of Hiro, I decided to choose another striker. Kei is the goalkeeper of my choice.
Looking through the dual aces I found out that Xenon, a Light striker, has a Light-Thunder dual ace. His ace is definitely usable. By looking at his kit, you can see that he has no critical rate (crit) and CD in his build at all. An ace which can compensate for that would greatly help. On the other hand, he has plenty of penetration (pen) and even some built-in penetration resistance reduction (pen res reduction).
Important note: When a unit has such a severe lack of crit, you can also completely abandon crit and go for raw damage. This means that you don’t want to compensate a lack of crit. You completely ignore crit and rather just concentrate on his strong points and make him deal high amounts of non-crit damage. In the specific case of Xenon, building him for raw damage and using his own ace would be more favorable. But for the purpose of this guide, I will try to compensate for his weakness but a similar line of thought for choosing the other units applies to the alternative route as well. You just have to adjust your desired stats provided by other units.
A quick look at the list of dual aces gives us some useful aces. Altair (crit & CR Thunder-Light) and Yong Hee (crit & CD Ardor-Light) have useful aces. The former is a backline unit with a defensive ace and the latter is a frontline unit with an offensive ace. I will choose Altair because her ace helps Kei who is a CR goalkeeper. The DR, pen res and CR are a perfect fit for him as well. For now, I am going to put her into the left back (LB) position. This might change while building the team though. The same goes for Xenon’s position.
Tip: In this case, choosing Ellatrice as the striker would also have been pretty good because of her being in Kei’s Affection chain but I just wanted to go with Xenon.
Passers
These are the most important assets in making your striker hit hard and more frequently. Usually, a passer has some kind of buff or debuff for your frontline or the enemy backline and some selfish buffs which make them pass for higher numbers and be more tanky.
Back when I started playing this game, the go-to thing was to put in one passer in your frontline. The other spots were filled with leaders who had useful buffs and/or debuffs. But since Presty was introduced (she is a goalkeeper who paralyzes your striker when being shot at), the meta has shifted towards using two passers. Over time, new passers like Sakiel or Melisa got introduced with very useful buffs and debuffs which also defeated the purpose of having leaders providing those things a little bit. You can still build frontlines with only a single passer — especially in Galaxy Challenge League (GCL) because of Presty’s absence — but a frontline with two passers just is better against a wider variety of match-ups. As a player who has started playing a few months ago, you don’t have the luxury of building multiple frontlines or even teams against certain match-ups. One formation which covers many match-ups is just easier to achieve for now.
Quick note: GCL is a PvP league where you can’t use legendary units. It alternates with Galaxy Super League (GSL) where you are free to use every unit you want.
Let’s get to the most important part of this chapter: choosing your passers. At this point in time, you should have already decided on your elements. Head to the Wiki and have a look at the passers. There are only a handful of in-line passers for each element which makes deciding easier.
How to decide which passers to use:
- Look at the weaknesses of your striker. If your striker severely lacks pen, fix it. You can incorporate passers which provide pen either through active passes like Hamerus or static totems like Silla. Pen aces are a popular choice to fill this gap because totems with other stats are more prevalent. Things like needing 150 spirit for an active shoot may require you to take care of sufficient spirit generation. The most efficient solution for this is using Ardor pass stones which recovers 20 spirit when that unit passes.
- Look at the strengths of your striker. If you striker has plenty of pen, you won’t need passers which provide static pen like Silla does. Your goal is to have at least 100% pen. Even though 100% pen is the most your striker is going to utilize, overcapping is a good idea. There are units and spirit stones which can debuff your striker’s pen. By having more than 100% penetration, this can be countered. Keep in mind that pen res can’t be countered by overcapping pen because pen res gets applied to the value which counts towards the calculation of the damage and not before that.
Does your striker have some kind of action bar (AB) recovery and stacking passives which allow them to hit many times in quick succession while also ramping up their damage each time? Passers like Nari and Sky who can make many passes in a short amount of time or passers like Melisa who have a reflex totem that helps in getting the ball back are a better fit than someone like Neraizel who can just make fat passes and recover spirit.
There are also some setups which completely abandon pen and solely rely on buffs which increase your damage dealt or increase the damage taken by the enemy (both will be called DI from now on) but those teams usually need a high level of investment to properly work because a very important source of DI are legendary unique stones (LUQs) which just aren’t accessible for newer players. I’d recommend going for the traditional pen route.
- Another — albeit not as important as the above — factor which plays a role are chains. The Affection chain of your passer is the most important chain. Look out for units whose Affection chain can be activated by one of the units you already have in your formation. You should also take note of passers which have units in their chains that could potentially be implemented into your team.
Checking the chains of the units currently in your formation is also a good idea. Passers who can activate important chains on the striker and goalkeeper are always worth considering.
Unfortunately, Xenon doesn’t have any passers in his chains or reverse chains. His weaknesses are clearly a lack of receiving pass effect (RPE), crit and CD. His main strength is clearly the amount of pen in his build. The penetration resistance reduction (pen res reduction) is the cherry on top which makes his pen worth even more.
Our goal is to find passers which help him gain RPE, crit and CD and maybe even bring some pen res reduction to get more out of his pen.
The only Light in-line passers which fits the bill is Sakiel. Her active pass provides CD, she debuffs CR (which is the same as buffing crit) and one of her passives also buffs CD for the whole line when she receives a pass. Debuffing defense and buffing pass effect definitely also help.
Thunder in-line passers complement Xenon a lot better. EA01 Luka, AU96 Karpila and Asuray all have useful buffs.
- EA01 Luka buffs crit and makes your frontline faster while slowing down the enemy backline. Her additional spirit generation is also nice.
- AU96 Karpila also buffs crit (+10% more compared to EA01 Luka), has an active pass with CD and also a little bit of attack power (AP). Thanks to her selfish pass effect buffs, her passes are also going to be quite big.
- Asuray would be a great asset for Xenon if only she had some form of crit in her kit outside of her active pass. She has a defense and pen res debuff while also increasing the RPE of your frontline. Especially the pen res debuff and RPE buff are worth a lot for Xenon.
I decided on AU96 Karpila as the second passer. This team is for someone who started a few months ago. Pen res isn’t as popular in lower rankings as in higher rankings because of the lack of LUQs and hence the lack of Dense Magma as a substat. RPE is also easier to come by in spirit stones than crit. Spirit stones can have up to 30% RPE but only 18% crit on them barring substats.
Backline
You will need one unit dedicated unit to breaking through the enemy frontline as reliable as possible. I would choose one linebreaker before putting in other units which just help your goalkeeper survive longer. Defenders, attackers, leader or even assisters can be linebreakers.
All of them have advantages and disadvantages.
- Defender: Most reliable at stealing the ball from the enemy frontline. The AI will act even if the unit has low HP. Other roles’ AIs might chicken out when they could have stolen the ball. A drawback is their lack of firepower when penetrating themselves though. Once a defender stole the ball successfully, they will usually attack the enemy midline unit in front of them. Since penetrating isn’t their strength, this might cause a loss of the ball in the midline. Examples are units like Lindberg and EA42 Vanity.
- Attackers: Most reliable at getting out of the backline and midline when they have the ball themselves. Attackers are like defenders such that they will almost always try to penetrate through the enemy backline when they have the ball themselves. They are very reliable at doing so and can even get the ball through the midline without much problems because of their innate strength at penetrating. They are prone to not even attempting to steal the ball when they are low on HP though. The best example for this is Loyce. A big advantage of attackers is that they can’t be counter attacked (they can still be killed by the attacked unit though) while penetrating themselves. So you don’t need to build CAR on attackers.
- Leaders: They can have some very strong selfish buffs making them very good at breaking through the lines but then again chicken out and just be a totem because they have low HP. There is a wide variety of them with many different combinations of offensive and defensive power. Some examples are Kevin who is a defensive choice or Virgil who is a mix of offense, defense (if you have a CR goalkeeper) and utility (spirit generation, AB recovery).
- Assists: Some of them have selfish buffs alongside defensive totems which make them pretty good at stealing the ball. While they are not as good as defenders at this, they have one big advantage over them. Assists will never penetrate when they have the ball. Once they have stolen the ball from the enemy frontline, they will pass the ball to your midline or use their forward or long pass. This can bypass walls in the enemy midline. The most prominent example is Khalid.
You can go through the list of units which fit your elements and the type of your goalkeeper (CR or CDR) and then compare units to each other and decide based on that but your goalkeeper’s chains are a pretty good spot to look at first. If there is a unit that provides defensive totems, is reliable at getting the ball out and also activates one of your goalkeeper’s chains, you won the jackpot.
CDR goalkeepers are looking for company which buffs stats like CDR, DR, defense, max HP and pen res or debuffs stats like CD, pass effect and AP.
CR goalkeepers on the other hand want as much CR as possible. Once you get crit on a CR GK, it is usually over as you’re neglecting other stats to stack CR. Your top priority should be to stop that from happening. That’s why a good rule of thumb is to only use units in your backline which all have some form of CR buffs or crit debuffs. DR, defense and max HP are also important though. Pen res is not that important on CR goalkeepers because their DR values are usually not that high, diminishing the value of pen res.
That is also why CR backlines usually consist of four units instead of three. Using three units is fine for CDR goalkeepers who don’t want to stop the enemy striker from critting at all cost. This makes it problematic to use CR goalkeepers and frontlines which are built around strikers like Kirin or Bora who only truly shine when used in a four unit frontline.
Units with elemental damage reduction (EDR) like Death Queen, Patricia and Magnus are always worth considering and a great help if their EDR matches the enemy striker and their buffs fit your GK. Pang is a unit which is catered towards CDR goalkeepers while Nerua should only be used with Thunder CR goalkeepers because of the elemental restriction her buffs.
The only relevant units in Kei’s chains are Skorn, Duke and Virgil.
I don’t really like Skorn’s kit. His only defensive asset is his active which can only be activated when he has the ball himself which would mean that the enemy already got to shoot. His forte might be getting attacked and killing the enemy frontliner in the process but that doesn’t convincing and reliable in Auto PvP.
Duke is already in the team.
Virgil on the other hand sounds like a juicy addition to the backline. He is okay at linebreaking, has a lot of utility and most importantly, provides an effective 50% CR (30% crit debuff and 20% CR through Kei’s Competition chain. He doesn’t buff any DR, defense or max HP but Kei has a lot of DR and defense on his own. The lack of HP has to be fixed somehow though. Either by using units like EA42 Vanity who are suitable for a CR goalkeeper and also provide max HP or in Kei’s case by using Ermaltion as his unique spirit stone (UQ). That stone provides a whopping 50% max HP and 25% CR and fills up one of his utterly trash Light spirit stone slots. The light spirit stone slots are bad — especially for goalkeepers — because the defensive options just provide useless secondary stats. The Light defense stone has AB recovery and Light HP has cooperative defense (coop) as a secondary stat. Both secondary stats are literally useless on a goalkeeper.
Having looked through the list of relevant units, I found three more units which are definitely worth considering. Unfortunately, there are only two spots left in our team. These units are EA42 Vanity (max HP, pass effect and crit debuff), Kate (EDR against Ardor & Whirlwind and CR) and Leon (defense, CR and max HP).
Leon is definitely going to make it into the team. He has everything Kei needs stat-wise paired with a juicy revive for the horizontal and vertical line which can make the difference between getting to the front and having a dead striker or having to tank a solo shot with your goalkeeper. Choosing between EA42 Vanity and Kate is kind of hard because both are pretty good. One has max HP going for her and the other has EDR going for her. For now, I am going with the former because of the max HP and having her full potential against every match-up but the latter is also worth building to swap her in against Ardor and Whirlwind strikers.
Filling the gaps
The only free spots in your team should be the support slot (if you don’t have a CR goalkeeper) and two free spots in your midline. You can start by filling the midline first or start by choosing your support unit first. The support unit is going to lean your team more towards an offensive one (frontline support) or an defensive one (backline support).
Broadly speaking, there are two categories of midline units; walls and totems. Walls are there to block the enemy from getting to your backline. Totems are there to help other units in your midline or other lines and activate chains.
Personally, I don’t like using more than one totem in the midline to avoid making it too fragile. Good totems are units like Libeaus (only if your goalkeeper is Light) or Erica (only if your goalkeeper is Ardor). Coincidentally, both of these units are quite tanky as well. Units like Yeon and Verister have their uses as well. These are easy to get through though, making them prone to being too much of liability. Avoiding their weakness is possible by placing them directly behind your striker making it less likely for them to get attacked.
Walls have many selfish buffs that make them hit and tank harder, plain and simple. Some examples are Kiera (she doubles down as an interceptor, allowing her to intercept long passes coming from the enemy backline and forward passes + long shots coming from the enemy midline), Ariel, Xing, Kyosuke and Luri.
Nowadays, the support unit should either be in the frontline or the backline. You want to survive as long as possible and finish the match as fast as possible. A few years ago, the game was all about walling off the enemy in the midline which made four unit midlines popular.
If you have a CR goalkeeper or utility striker, placing the support unit in the backline or frontline, respectively, is a good idea. Otherwise, a combination of preference and trial & error is a viable option. If you want your team to be stronger offensively, go for a four unit frontline. On the other hand, if you want your team to be stronger defensively, go for a four unit backline. By now, you should know how to decide on the specific unit.
Our team already has a support unit. It doesn’t really matter which backline unit besides Altair — she can’t be the support unit because we are going to use her ace — is going to be in the support slot.
While choosing Xenon as my striker I had already noticed Libeaus in his Affection chain. She is a great midline unit in this team because she is tanky, has a debuff when she passes and most importantly provides offensive power in the form of an Affection chain on the striker and defensive power in the form of pen res and defense for the goalkeeper. Both the striker and goalkeeper become stronger by just inserting her into the midline.
Having an interceptor in the midline is helpful against forward and long passes. The Light and Thunder interceptors, Happy and MM93 Ainy, are both quite good units on their own. The former has a revive for the line and AB recovery when critting and can silence the enemy team for two minutes if her intercept activates. The latter buffs crit and reflex and also makes your midline units heal for a certain percentage of the damage they dealt.
One could argue to put either of them into the team. Personally, I like MM93 Ainy slightly better because of her in-built critical resistance which is a great when combined with Altair’s ace. This makes it pretty hard for the enemy backline units — which usually don’t have too much crit — to crit her successfully making her a better wall.
Units like Ariel, Cassiel and Luri are also great contenders for that spot. They all have some form of DR and CR in their kit which makes it very hard to kill them.
This choice was the hardest so far because you could argue for every single unit listed above. There might be some matches where you would need an interceptor, a strong wall that can kill the enemy when being attacked or added utility. Judging by these criteria, Happy seems to fit the best in a general purpose team. She also benefits from Libeaus totem for Light units as a bonus.
And this is the final team. There are definitely alternatives to many roles. Making adjustments as units get buffed/nerfed and as you progress and obtain more legendary units is a good idea. If you managed to build a coherent team with the help of this guide, you should be ready to make those adjustments yourself in the future.
Another important aspect of building a team is choosing the right spirit stones for your units. There will be a chapter on that in the near future. Additionally, a chapter on adding legendary units in an already existing team will also be written. I have seen many teams where people added a legendary unit just because of the L on the character’s card. This then leads to a non-coherent and overall weaker team even if the replaced unit might be weaker when directly compared to the legendary.
To be added
- Spirit stones
- Adding legendary units to the team
- Offensive comp
- Long shooter comp
- Alternative team around raw damage Xenon
