User blog comment:Piyush Banerjee/Shin DxD 2 discussion/@comment-2602:306:CD9A:C860:1999:D3D0:B3E7:CF47-20190219114510/@comment-33341107-20190222153340

Yeah I don't get what the point of it was saying Rias' team is strong without Issei, she replaced her heavenly dragon with another heavenly dragon, he replaced his strategist (since shes the one who used to direct him) with a new strategist (Ravel). Their is no difference, ones a lack of power the other is a lack of intelegence.

Valerie, Lint, Crom and Strada all joined her team for the tournament so they have no experience working with her, as for her actual peerage members, do we know how long any of them have been with her? Akeno was her friend since 11 but was it ever stated when she got the rest of them? As far as taking on stray devils, if you think thats as significant as the training Xenovia and Irina have received together during their time in the church, or the experience Issei has had fighting every significant opponent in the series than I think you may be seriously over estimating stray devils.

Using physcology to take down Grayfia was clever but sending Kiba at Issei wasn't. She should have sent Crom or Strada, Kiba was her thrid best option to throw at him and thats the option she went with? Saying that was clever is like saying its smart to stop drop and role after you just poured petrol over yourself and set yourself on fire. I don't think she was respecting Crom's feelings when she had him fight Fafnir, she knew the rest of her team wouldn't because ... (feelings?) She should hace had him fight Issei, an opponent he also wanted to fight.

You say her plan was to wait for back up but Crom was fighting Ddraig and was unlikely to win anytime soon if at all and while Xenovia, Irina and Ouryuu were getting tired, all were still capable of fighting, none had been retired and Xenovia was litteralý undefeatable. Taking that into account along with the fact that she had already used balor mode their is no way anyone was going to reach her before her balor form timed out, if her plan was just to stall than how was that an effective plan to win? He has 2 HD so I'll have my only one take on his non-combatant, giving him time to summon the 2nd instead of injuring or defeating him before Ddraig comes along, waiting for Crom, if it was her plan was a terrible one because she'd already wasted his time by having him fight Asia. As far as strategies go, Ravel wanted Grayfia to fight Balor Rias, who was pretty likely to win anyway so that didn't really matter to Ravel and the only 2 players on Rias' team who were a threat to Issei were Crom and Strada, it doesn't matter if she didn't plan for Kiba, because he was bever going to beat Issei, the plan, despite Rias' pretty poor efforts, still unfolded exactly as Ravel wanted, except for the opening attack.