So I figured I'd rush out a very brief overview of the units in the gates. I wanted to get full analyses out, but running short on time so they'll likely not be out til it's too late to summon. This is just going to be a list of pros/cons for each unit for anybody still on the fence.

This is probably going to be seen too late by most of you unless Gumi extend the gate, and for that I apologize.

Leona

Personal thoughts: Leona's going to be strong in the colloseum for a lot of the foreseeable future, so she's worth investing in. That said, her summon rates in the gate seem to suck.

Pros:

• Strong arena/colloseum sub due to a variety of defensive abilities on top of single hit attacks for breaching angel idol thresholds.
• Acceptable ABP/CBP bonus lead if you don't have any others.
  • AoE normals works fine as a LS in regular arena, but is risky in collo without the right sort of squad to back it up.

Cons:

• Doesn't really have a strong role in regular content.
  • Can nuke, but struggles with BC management due to hit count and falls short of other nukers in practice.
  • Has decent ATK->DEF on BB, but is paired with Taunt that requires a lot of work to use safely.

Terry Bogard

Personal thoughts: Terry's reign in colloseum is over, but he's still viable if you don't have arena batch or Juno yet. If you do... well, you can skip him.

Pros:

• Decent arena lead/sub with low BB/SBB hit count, high defensive merit and decent survivability LS.
  • Falling out of favour in colloseum with the rise of the arena batch and Ilm in pretty much all roles, but still viable for regular arena.

Cons:

• The way his buffs are split between BB and SBB make him hard to use as main mitigator - he only gives full party mitigation on SBB, only gives crit null on BB, and his hit count makes maintaining that SBB hard, even with a 2 turn SP enhancement.
• A lot of Terry's buffs are outclassed due to power creep at this point. He only gives 150% tri-stat and 25% HP->DEF when the top tier for those buffs is now around 180%/30% (and even 30% HP->DEF is stuck competing with 80% ATK->DEF). Ultimately he's not a strong unit outside of the arena.

Benimaru Nikaido

Personal thoughts: Benimaru's an interesting unit that's trying to work for strategies that are much more represented on global's units than JP's units. He's got some fun UBB tricks too, but I don't see him being massively important.

Pros:

• In practice, his LS is actually similar in damage output to Leona's for regular arena, but offers no ABP/CBP bonus. As it's focused on hit count I wouldn't recommend it for Colloseum right now.
• Benimaru is a rare case of a unit that offers 2 hits and AoE normals on a single BB without any enhancements (in his case SBB). There are other units that can give this, each with their own strengths:
  • Benimaru gives it along with really good OD fill and BC when attacked, offering a lot of support to UBB strategies. He could be an excellent sub unit for Savia UBB squads, for example.
  • Wannahon gives AoE/ 2 Hits on BB paired with good ATK down infliction and ATK/crit stuff on SBB, covering almost every buff relevant to normal hit strategies in one unit.
  • Zenia is... Zenia. She pairs her hit count stuff with spark damage and BC fills, but using her as an AoE normals buffer costs a lot SP-wise
  • Soleil has a very similar kit to Wannahon on her SBB, but isn't OE and doesn't attack when buffing. She does have some cleanse/heal stuff on BB though.
• Benimaru has an interesting niche in supplementing "UBB Spam" strategies, as he offers a very high 10% OD fill when using his SBB and his LS is one of the available options for 0 BC cost strategies which allow for instant UBB use on OD activation. In practice many end-game fights have conditions which negate these strategies, but they might see some sort of resurgence with Shion's release in global in the coming months.

Cons:

• Benimaru is mostly a niche unit:
  • Hit count stuff is a niche that's not widely used in standard builds, and mostly taken just for specific nuke strategies.
  • Similar, OD stuff is niche to end-game content, and unless you're doing hit count UBB or perma mitigation UBB you're probably better off taking other OD fillers with more viable buffs.

Athena Asamiya

Personal thoughts: Athena's design is trying to do something with buffs people don't really use that much, but because of that Athena won't be used that much either. She might be able to do some unique stuff though.

Pros:

• Hard to think of any
• Well, she does have some stuff. Athena's Lifesteal and Heal when Attacked buffs are both best-in-class, and while neither is perfectly reliable, they supplement other healing methods fairly well by potentially reducing the RNG on HC distribution.
• Also, her damage reflect is particularly unique, being extremely rare in the OE era and having a higher value than any other damage reflect to date. It could potentially lead to unique strategies, but due to how it works, these would be much, much slower than trying to win content properly.
• She's an option for elemental mitigation, being a rare case of a unit with all 6 elemental mitigation buffs as options in her SP enhancements.

Cons:

• Athena may have "strong" lifesteal/heal when attacked/elemental mitigation, but these aren't commonly considered important buffs to squad buildin, rather bonus buffs you get with other important abilities.
• Her only particular "important" buff is her HoT, but it's significantly below par compared to similar units.
• If you look at her kit as a whole, Athena feels like a weaker Selena. One of the first OE units, and a free one to boot.

Iori Yagami

Personal thoughts: The first letter is an i, not an L. Also don't pull for this guy.

Pros:

• ???
• In defense of Iori, he does make a decent hit count squad sub unit if you somehow don't need any buffs from one slot. Between his SP enhancements and SBB personal buff, he'll have 380% ATK and 1 hit count, which would make him one of the hardest hitting units in a hit count squad.

Cons:

• The thing I said above is the only good thing I can really say about him.
• Iori's pretty much Vargas with better personal damage.

Kula Diamond

Personal thought: Kula's very, very similar to Kanon, and Kanon is a permanent unit you may very well already have. Would recommend only pulling if you're a collector.

Pros:

• Kula's like a weaker sidegrade of Kanon, offering a DEF buff, BC when attacked, a Barrier, Crit Null and Cleanses.
• In terms of what she can do which Kanon can't, Kula has DEF->ATK conversion, a 2 turn crit null option, ailments counter and a UBB which covers both Barriers and 100% Mitigation options for nuke survival.

Cons:

• Kula's like a weaker sidegrade of Kanon, not offering ATK->DEF, EWD null, Ailment Null, Debuff Null or burst heals.
• The things which Kula has which Kanon doesn't are significantly less valuable than the things Kanon has which Kula doesn't.

Mai Shiranui

Personal thought: Mai's probably the best unit in her gate, and is a little better than she looks at a glance due to her SP options pushing her away from the crit role. Apart from her UBB gimmick she doesn't do anything unique, so she won't suddenly become meta if you skip her.

Pros:

• Mai's an interesting take on a raid content type crit buffer bringing ATK down, ailment null/cleanse and burst heals to the field alongside crit stuff.
• Overall if you spec her for the ailment/heal stuff, she actually covers an interesting niche in squad building where she can bring valuable defensive effects if you somehow have DEF/BC on hit buffers which don't have ailment cleanse/null, but she also brings strong offensive buffs to content where they might matter.

Cons:

• Mai's best stuff is all in SP enhancements, which means her build choices matter a lot more than most units.
• Mai has to frequently switch between BB and SBB to maintain all her buffs.
• Unfortunately as a result of content design, places where you want crit buffers generally don't need that defensive stuff because you win instantly, while places where you want that defensive stuff ignore crits.
  • But in the latter case, Mai's still got enough of a kit to be slottable.