Time Attack Tactics

Time is normally not really important, but there are a few levels were time is really important, the Time Attack levels. Each of the following tips can be used to save time. Though they each only give a small amount of additional time, during a Time Attack every second of saving can matter in the end.

General tips

Skill Animation

This is the probably the easiest way to safe time. Since 2.2 it is possible to turn of the skill cut-in animation (the animation that normally happens after activating a special power) in the settings menu.

Waiting Time

The earlier the gems move (and the turn is finished), the faster the allies can start attack. It is possible to start moving gems as soon as the Next Wave appears on screen, there is no need to wait until all enemies appear on screen.

High defense, low HP enemies

This section especially highlights tactics that can be used against enemies with High defense (so normally dealing only 1 damage per hit to them) and low HP (usually low double digits), like in Time Attack: Toclafane, A very Sontaran Christmas or the expert level (Time Attack) Run. Some of this is rather counter-intuitive.

ATK/Heal/HP

For tha majority of levels, ATK is the most important to achieve as much damage as possible. However when facing enemies with high defense, ATK becomess irrelevant. Most attacks will only do 1 damage, therefore it is preferable to have higher HP and Heal, to reduce the amount of time needed to heal the team.

Avoiding combos

Each combo/match adds time to the attack animation needed. Therefore it is best to safe time by making as little matches as possible, since they don't add damage because of the high damage. Because of this it might be better to consider a team with fewer colors among characters, since each correct match can trigger more attacks.

Especially combos made through freshly spawned gems add additional time and should avoided if possible, though this happens from time to time without any option to prevent them.

Dual color characters

Each dual color character's attack is counted as a separate attack, virtually increasing the number of attacking allies on your team. While it isn't possible to do more than 6 damage per turn without rank 5 characters, this goes up with dual color characters.

Bombs

One of the most important ability for this is the bomb power, because damage done by bombs bypasses defense, killing the low HP enemies with one use a bomb. Allies with the bomb power are listed in the category bomb characters.

No matches

This is especially useful for (Time Attack) Run and basically is a combination of the above tools. If you don't need to refresh any cooldowns and don't need any healing while waiting for a bomb to trigger, it is possible to do no matches at all. This will not refresh cooldowns, but the turns still counts for waiting for the bomb. Since no gems on the board will get replaced, this is the fastest possibility to trigger a bomb.