Damage seems to be working just like last time. With my 560k SED I've gone all the way from the disgustingly evil 56k one-hits (specially recurrent when the current guard has only 60~70k left ) to the glorious 110k one-hits. Once the guards start coming with more than 400k I just hit them with full-attacks for 600k and I'm good.

In just one day of event I boosted my starting 550k to almost 580k, and I believe I'll reach 600k today or tomorrow (hoping to reach 700~750k by event's end).
Seeing how the event standings work, I hate it that F2P players have no access to any slayers now. Just having two of the e-slayers has any whale's bonus as double that of any F2P player if they had access to only two slayer cards (Like last guards); with potential to boost that to triple amount.

That means that whales are still going to get all top50. And that's not event taking pudding intake.

Without any slayer cards? They're just making 99% of their player base ignore/hate guards events. I can easily reach the 100k pts needed for the limmed R card, but I know it was really hard for many players in the first guards.

I had to use a lot of stocked puddings and namins to reach Kasumi (I had the bad luck of getting Akie two days before Coliseum ended )
And just wait untill those super-elite guards start appering in these events. Anybody with SED below 500k will pretty much be useless in those.