Quote Originally Posted by kringley View Post
Ivan's squad works quite well, even scaled down to level 60. It got me through a lot of tough maps earlier on, and I still use it as a helper a lot (although not when I'm trying to three medal a map usually because its a fairly fast squad).
I'm actually keeping one of my girls pre-evolution right now just to keep my helpers at level 60 until I get one of my evolved girls up to that level.

As a side note, clearly I have a much narrower definition of synergy than some people, because I find relatively few combinations out there that are truly synergistic.
The squad was built with helping weaker people power through maps they can't normally clear (or would at least have difficulty with), thus it's meant to be fast and powerful, capable of bulldozing through most maps with ease while staying ahead of the [presumably] weaker squads. For those who have strong, leveled squads it's just an extra power + speed option.

My helper squad has 4 attack buffs (everyone except Anemone) for offensive boost, a defense boost (Anemone) + Enemy Attack Down (Bride Orchid) + Evasion (Ionocidium) + Life Drain Skill (Alpinia) + Heal on Pest node (Dianthus) for added survival, Counter for extra damage especially against AOE bosses (Anemone) and a Speed Boost to stay ahead of many squads (Alpinia). It's powerful and fast, with numerous ways to boost survivability. The attack order (for skills) is Hit All x3 -> Random3 -> Single Life Drain. Hardly anything besides Mission 13/14 bosses survives past Round 1 if more than one skill triggers.