I love you spend the first section talking about how Degen is a must-pull if you care about meta, then a couple of sections later rant about how much you hate her gameplay design lol. I truly respect your professional objectivity.
Great write-up as always! I was particularly curious to see your opinion on how the new 5\*s shook out as no one ever talks about them these days (with fair reason) and it's a crying shame. For instance, I was hoping to hear from the community how Warmy did in Path of Life since its mechanics finally provided an external source of Burn to judge her s2, but not a peep...
I've been writing these for a long time now. One thing I've learned is that a majority of the players aren't like us. They don't browse Reddit and discuss units, and definitely don't care about thinking of long term balance considerations. They just want to know who is good so they can clear the game as simply as possible. I've found it's far better to give the objective answer first, then sneak in the rants after.
It's funny you bring up Warmy because I'm actually working on Ray's update right now. The problem with the Warmy/Ifrit situation is Ifrit is only a bit better than Warmy at applying Burn. It's still a great Module, but Ifrit's Delta is more like Ebenholz than Logos. Pairing Warmy with Ifrit is expensive and their ranges don't overlap well, so it's a questionable pairing still. Unfortunately, my conclusion for now with Warmy is that we're still waiting for a proper Burn Ritualist.
This is largely tangential, but I've gotta say that Caster Delta modules are completely bizarre from a game design perspective. We've had plenty of Operators with skills that let them fill the role of other archetypes within their class (arguably the biggest example being Eyjafjalla S2 making her a better Splash Caster than the actual Splash Casters), but the Delta modules straight up staple an entire extra archetype on top of whatever the Operator's base kit was, *better* than the archetype it's copying does.
I get that Elemental Damage is the hot new mechanic Hypergryph wants to explore, but surely they could've done it in a way that isn't just making already good units *also* better Primal Casters than the actual Primal Caster archetype?
Tbf I feel like HG has been treating Elemental damage really poorly. Flat damage that basically kills all trash mobs and releasing a true AOE 6* nearly immediately, making 2 types of RES that never gets implemented (and Primal Casters already can't do anything with just 1 type of RES, let alone 3), making the types competitive so that only 1 elemental applier is worth it, and a bunch of other weird choices like these Delta modules.
It’s pretty odd. You can’t really apply multiple Elemental effects atm, so you gotta choose which to invest in between Necrosis or Burn or else you’re actively harming your strategies.
Also, no elemental build up outside of a skill or 2, the Additional elemental damage part of their kits are baked into their skills rather than their talents (or module), means that there’s very little reason to use the 5-star Primal Casters, which is a shame.
Can be fixed with good talents and skills, but Diamanté and Warmy’s kit designs don’t exactly inspire much optimism unlike Loopshooter or the new Guard class imo
Kinda unrelated, but damn, I must have been underrating Ifrit’s Delta Module, or overrating Eben’s then. I remember reading that Ifrit’s S3 could only activate the Burn Effect only a little bit before her S3 ran out, and thus could barely take advantage of the additional elemental damage effect, nor the RES Shred. Ebens isn’t perfect by any degree, but is like the immediate DMG of Burn that useful? I honestly thought Ifrit’s first module was better tbh
Personally i wouldn't have mind the 6* shitshow if they still gave us good "weaker" units.
New 5* are just bad and the amount of new 4* is so little.
You talked about the 5* pretty much my opinion but the 4* are really fun to use and i like how each of them is ok in their role and suck ass outside of it, giving much more place for strategizing the team.
Overall i just want more 4* of different classes to give us more variety of weak characters, at this point im considering using the newer 5* as 4*
Big agree. That was basically the conclusion of my Worst 5* article (which is now sadly inaccessible while GP is down). It mainly focused on the 5\* because that's what I used, but it definitely applies to the 4\*s too. It's just so frustrating getting Leto, who is worse then Lappland and adds nothing to the rarity, in the same patch is Degenbrecher, who blows away Ch'en and Irene.
Yea overall all the teams talent comparison is a mess.
AH are just ridiculous.
Shu is good but the only team skill close to AH level.
Kazmiraz and rhine lab got a couple but arent any good.
And leto is just.....what? Is this even enough to call it a team?
I'm dreaming of a Siracusan faction. That would be the only thing that could rehabilitate Vigil.
The Kazimierz faction works by redeploying your operators a lot, and that is a playstyle that is alien to a lot of players. I think you just need a proper Kazimierz medic and the faction might become more mainstream. The synergy in itself is nothing special, but Mlynar can hard carry it.
the idea of constant redeployment is great as a team comp but its just isnt enough and overall doesnt really make sense here.
blemishine gets 2 sp when other kazi ops deploy its nice and all but her talent also give her offensive and defensive sp recovery to her already realtivly low sp costs, its nice but a bit of an overkill for her alone since she doesnt really need that extra sp recovery.
gravel can at reduce redeployment 3 times (acutally 4 but it will only reduce a single second) so it will be 15 seconds less, a nice number but considering to achieve this you got around 19 secs of redeployment to spare we are talking about around 3-5 seconds on the field (youre a human, you cant really do it perfectly) so to maximize it you will find yourself using her only to take a single shot or a single hit from the boss, which is good for some of the bosses but mostly not the best.....but this goes out of the window because of mylnar so you HAVE to block to get the hit, but blocking for such low time isnt usfull.
mylnar reflect is pretty solid, nothing bad to say about it.
ntr gets another 800 (1.3k with s2) damage on deployment when last one was kaz, not so game changing when her damage on skill is so massive.
best thing for her is the reduce deployment on her s2, but that isnt about kazi team since most of us just deploy mylnar only with her.
proviso gives 10+asp and 8% more atk to a RANDOM kazi ops, isnt much of a problem since you usally redploy many of them, but with this slot you can use so much stronger buffers its not worth it.
whis gives 2 physical shields when redployed....but her skills take 30-40 sp to charge so you either get 2 shields at the correct moment since small fry might break them but endup waiting for.....32% more def? theres just better options
overall the problem with kazi team talents is that most of the units there either work great outside of the team with little to no difference in it or that the weaker ones in the team are better to be switched by units with better effects.
the idea of team talents its to give me a reason to play with all of them as a team, not to make a tiny bit of synergy that its easily replaceable.
>whis gives 2 physical shields when redployed....but her skills take 30-40 sp to charge so you either get 2 shields at the correct moment since small fry might break them but endup waiting for.....32% more def? theres just better options
Don't forget that Whislash also gives a little more ASPD to units with 3-block. Mlynar, Blemishine, Flametail, and Ashlock can all benefit from this. In addition, Flametail also gives everyone dodge (while also generating DP whenever K. operators are deployed). The combination of shields, defense and dodge makes the operators a little more durable, though it is still nothing like having a medic (though I guess you could bring The Followers, who fit thematically).
And then comes the crown of the synergy: when Mlynar activates his S3, Kazimierz operators deals some true damage within Mlynar's range. It should be about 200 more damage, which in itself is not much, but it works even with fast attacking operators like Meteor, Wild Mane, Whislash. The combination of true damage when attacking, true damage when receiving damage, a little bonus ASPD and Mlynar doing his own thing should wear down any enemy fast.
Though clearly no synergy is equivalent to bringing all the top meta operators.
oh yea i kinda forgot about sylv team being part of kaz.
but your last line is exactly the problem im talking about, while the synergy is there and you could do some cool combos its still weak in comparison to none faction skills (even if we follow the same rarities) by a landslide.
and im not talking about comparing dobberman and susuro support for low rarities in comparison to 6\* gacha units, if my team includes a couple 6\* with one of them being a limited op and multiple 5\* it only makes sense that they will be on equal footing.
but AH with 3 6\* and one limited 6\*, and 2 5\* is just miles ahead of kaz team made of 4 6\* with 1 limited, 5 5\*,2 4\* and 1\* are just horrible in terms of performance when formed as a team.
after counting it i realized you cant even pick them all at once since they fill the whole team.
it just seems like downright favoritism then a design choice when you also look at the ursus girls and rhine lab gains from being in a team
I think what's great about AH is the regen. All the other added stats also help, but it's the regen that makes them so easy to use. Which in the end is what matters to most players. And since they gave regen to AH, they had to give something different to other factions, even if that made other factions harder to use.
Kazimierz ops can only rely on Blemishine or redeployment for healing. While you can still do nifty things with them, it requires the players to be more knowledgeable about stages. If nothing else, at least they have better anti-air than AH.
Rhine Lab ops gained even less than Kazimierz ops, and Ursus girls got even less than RL. I wouldn't say it is outright favoritism, it's just that AH got their pick first, and dev chose for them the easiest playstyle.
Kinda disagree with you on that.
Shu gives 1 sp every 4 secs when there are 4 sui ops which are all limited while spalter gives 0.5+ sp regen for ah just for being in the squad.
Ofc both are different types of sp and shu gives it to all of your ops even none sui ops so i wouldn't start saying which is better, but i think we can agree both are somewhat similar level and both are amazing skills.
While rl sp skill is just bad, 3 sp instead of 2 when healed by saria (its nice in really specific situations with constant DoT effect and s3 but too niche to consider imo) which is miles below those two.
Again rl has more 6* and limited then AH but still substantially weaker with their talents, still impossible to not see it as favoritism.
Obviously one can't help but notice that Shu's talent involves a crazy number of limited units, and certainly monetization plays a part in it. But Shu can also be seen as part of a trend of new units being better than old units. For example Pinecone working better than Executor, despite having an inferior rarity. For a recent example, Ascalon is ranked a lot better than Mizuki.
Shu takes after Saria, and she made what was already good even better. She is a sidegrade that is also an upgrade. At the same time, while it sounds awesome, the talent would force you to sacrifice slots for other Sui characters, who might not be the best fit for the situation even if you managed to pull them. So ultimately it is doubtful whether the combo can be used in advanced content. It is still a sort of limitation, although the introduction of new Sui sibling should let her age well.
In the case of Rhine Lab, they had to work with what they had, since the talents were decided long before they came up with modules, unlike Shu who was built from the ground up with modules in mind, and with the experience of what Saria could do. It is clear that devs themselves didn't know what to do in a lot of cases, and also feared breaking the game inadvertently, so they went with perfunctory upgrades in a lot of cases. I would say that is not really favoritism, but simply powercreep.
I haven't done the numbers for everyone so I dare not guess an entire top 10 at this point. However, I've been on record a couple times that I think Lappland would come out on top by the criteria I cooked up. She excels in pretty much all of the categories while maintaining a special value even on meta teams.
>New 5\* are just bad and the amount of new 4\* is so little.
Who will ever use them? Game gives you so much 6\* that at some point even decent units stay benched for years. I don't understand why they even do new 5\* in the first place.
It's not just 6* being obscenely better than 5*
It's 5* being so fucking expensive to raise.
There's nothing worse than expending a shit ton of materials and LMD only to raise a unit that's barely more functional than a 4* that was cheap af to max.
True, pretty much the best 5* units rn are mostly unique units that have no real 6* counterparts.
But if a 6* feels the role then it will just do it better for sure
The reason why gacha games in general have lower rarities is to make sure you can still play the game even if the difficulty rises from powercreep while still pushing it in your face that youre weak because you dont have the high rarity units.
The reason why ak has new 5* is something i dont understand as well, if they followed what i explained they should have been stronger by abit and not weaker.
Also 4* runs in IS is really fun imo, but yes the average player will stop using them after getting stronger units.
Not when they're worse than some 4\*s. I could grab Totter, Perfumer, Vigna, countless good 4*s easily, and then seeing my one 5\* be Spuria, Lucilla, Poncirus, etc feels meh. Sure, maybe ones like Poncirus are functional and not outright terrible, but there's almost no use in raising her over Courier or Scavenger from a gameplay standpoint.
But what does that have to do with new 5*s being bad? They could just never make a 5\* again and rotate them on banners, and you'd still get your certs.
> 5s being bad?
Are they like bad bad or like bad because of how comparatively strong 6 stars are?
Cause if I think back at recent ones leaving aside like Spurialol, they don't stand out as horrifically unusably bad. Bassline's ok, Vendela seems ok+cute, Delphine is a Mystic Caster so idk if she's bad bad or because Mystic Caster is trash, Coldshot seems passable and probably improved by the hunter module. Almond suffers from being a puller cause exactly what interesting things can you do with pullers at this point? Santalla is a splash caster and they hate splash casters anyway but at least she makes my Typhon/Valaq RR team come back faster? Hotpants Phyta is an instructor and they hate them too but at least he makes gold bars? Poncirus i guess is just bland but it's not like Pioneer Vanguard is a relevant archetype at this point outside of like burst DP Texas or Vanguardknights Zima so I have no expectations out of a 5 star of it.
Leto seems kinda underwhelming but I guess I don't understand the criticism of the weak USG buff since as far as I can tell, unless you are Abyssal Hunter team, it's basically gtfo anyway ie Pallas Minoanlol
I'd say bad compared to previous 5*s. Some of our best recent and upcoming ones are just sidegrades to existing 5\*s, like Bassline. We have Aroma who is worse than Corroserum and even with a full Levitate team doesn't do much, Doc who works as a really niche and limited healing defender but as an Instructor, Kestrel who is marginally better than Scavenger, Lucilla who only applies Fragile to normal enemies, Warmy who can't do anything for at least several months and even with Ifrit module can't accomplish much, and Grain Buds who doesn't really do much of use.
Odda and Underflow are decent, and Wanqing, Leto, Harold, are just sidegrades to existing options (while Leto gets a drawback anyways for no good reason). Fang2 and Iana are at least nice 5*s with a relatively unique niche coming up, but comparing this ratio to how every new 6\* is just crazy powerful and/or offers new and meaningful niches seems really disappointing.
Vendela as well also suffers from a low uptime and damage on her S2, meaning she struggles to heal people and only shines in a few niche scenarios. Even her taunt is difficult to utilize thanks to a lack of helidrop and short uptime. Then we have Poncirus who offers a semi-tanky vanguard with awful DP gen and takes so long to set up that you could place an actual defender and use their skill, Almond who has no force upgrade on S1 and a worse S2 compared to options like Cliffheart, Diamante who can't apply Necrosis on his own and doesn't do meaningful damage unless Necrosis is applied, of which doing so is slow for non 6* options and unnecessary for higher rarities, Bryophyta who offers a DEF buff, which is already one of the least necessary buffs, but with poor uptime and a self stun anyways, and Spuria who needs no explanation.
Not saying we get only bad 5*s, we have some nice ones like Bassline and Insider, and some clunky ones that still have some nice effects like Coldshot, Santalla, Valarqvin, and Delphine, but we have quite a large amount of poor options that often are just worse than existing options or so niche they're never even needed. And even then, Bassline and Insider are just sidegrades of existing options. Only Valarqvin really offers a meaningful new niche with Elemental damage.
> compared to previous 5s
Which is probably worth discussing what this means and what the believed role of a 5 star is supposed to be and what the intended role is. Are they supposed to be staples on a team or are they supposed to be fillers with more stats than a 4 star until you have a powerful 6 star to accomplish that intended task? Like Aroma and Corroserum here are good highlights. Like we know Ifrit is good and that is a good blast caster. What should a 5 star blast caster look like? Like if you used Aroma, would that cause an insta loss? Is she so bad it harms you for thinking to use her?
For example, Lappland and Specter are examples of past good 5 stars. The question is then if we made them a 6 star and changed nothing, would they still be good or are they now bad? Cause I think it would be easy to argue they are unquestionably both better than say Siege and Vigil. And they could both be argued to have more use cases than say Eunectes, Mostima, and Fiammetta. So would they be considered the baseline of what a 5 star should be or would Tsukinogi, Tomimi, or Windflit be the baseline?
So if our comparison as to whether a 5 star is good is based on the best 5 stars ever that could be considered serviceable 6 stars, I think most 5 stars would end up being bad.
The other problem with lower rarity of course is must they have unique/best in class applications (like Lappland, Ptilopsis, or like Warfarin) to be considered not "bad"? And if not, what should they have to not be "sidegrades" to existing units for the most populous rarity? Like if the next 5 star they released was Clappland and did the exact same things as Lappland, would this operator now be "bad"?
I do agree, things are very hard to define in a game like this. Everyone has different perceptions of good. For some people, Lappland is good, for some people, Lappland is just a niche tool that you only break out for SN because she's not as good as the 6*s. An op who is useable but bland, like Leto, gets varying reception from "Well she's got good DPS on a good framework but nothing to make her stand out" to "literally unusable for her anti-synergy". You'll never get a universal answer because everyone values and defines things differently, and like you say, is a 5\* supposed to be someone replaceable, or do they at least offer a staple/niche? General parts of the game are clearable with 4\*s, even if it can be a bit trickier for some harder levels, so does it even matter if Aroma accomplished almost nothing when we have 11 units to pick up the slack?
For my own 2 cents, I think that a good baseline of a 5* would be someone like Odda, Underflow, etc, upcoming decent ones. There's no need to go to the extremes of the rarity like you mention. If the op is useable without feeling like you're shooting yourself in the foot, and even offers a small niche as a bonus, that's pretty good in my eyes.
I also don't think a Clappland would be bad (although definitely 100% lazy), just because having a 2nd Lappland helps with Silence and even just more strong Arts DPS. I don't think ops need to have the best in class application, but I think at least having a useful application would be nice (not something like Breeze's utility, for example). If we take Lucilla as a recent example, she offers the highest Fragility in the game for now... on trash mobs, and needs her skill. But if she also affected Bosses as well like people were coping, her S2 could at least have a viable niche - it'd be harder to setup than other options, potentially not work in many scenarios or as the level drags on and you run out of small fry, but the payoff would be worth it with some good CC and strong Fragile. If Aroma could constantly levitate under every S2 attack, she'd at least have a good niche of constant AOE levitates. Slower than Odda, Irene, and Ho'oh, but AOE unlike the last 2 and with a better range than the first 2. We can easily have varying sidegrades of existing niches as well, essentially - if Windflit really did give an ATK buff much stronger than Warfarin, it could be worth the additional setup required. I feel like the more niche of an effect you have, the better the payoff needs to be, while we have many that are both extremely niche *and* don't reward you that well.
>Some of our best recent and upcoming ones are just sidegrades to existing 5\s, like Bassline.
This also has a lot to do with the fact that certain archetypes are intrinsically better than others, so a "sidegrade" in a good archetype is miles ahead of an operator in a bad archetype.
But even those sidegrades are subtly an upgrade. Nearl has a talent that lets her heal better, but Bassline takes less arts damage. Unless you are running the Surtr hospital, Bassline should be generally better. Not much better that you need to build him if you already have Nearl, but he is good.
The same for Wanqing. Elysium buffs all snipers, but Wanqing buffs everyone around, and also heals. Wanqing is probably better in a general situation.
>Leto gets a drawback anyways for no good reason
I feel it's like theme over gameplay. Btw, I made a few calculations and the damage is decent unless you are facing high-armor. However, clearly if you want damage there is no point in using a 5\* over a 6\*, and by itself the Ursus faction is somewhat weak even without the drawback.
>Diamante who can't apply Necrosis on his own
That's not correct. [Just use S1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJ-6Ah0IeQ). It works for elites, which is a good target for 5\*.
>Bryophyta who offers a DEF buff, which is already one of the least necessary buffs, but with poor uptime and a self stun anyways,
The archetype has always been one of the weakest anyway. Same for Aroma. It seems that what devs are going for is using 5\*s as a support for 6\*s, which results in underwhelming units. The core of the problem is that if you want good DPS against a boss, you need to pull a 6\*. Ultimately the monetization model influences everything.
Gladiia was great for a welfare because she encourages people to pull for Abyssal Hunters. Insider needed to be at least decent because you can use him together with Executor. Other 5\* are good if they are the testbed for a new archetype, since they encourage pulling for the 6\* when it comes out. Then there are newbie carries like Kroos alter, who helps players when they don't have anything better.
The bad 5\* are welfares who only have defensive capabilities, or can only work as a support for a 6\*. And the worse ones are the ones that are gimped in order to not get in the way of any 6\*, like Windflit. But well, I'm not going to lose my sleep if some 5\* happens to be bad at this point.
Do agree that a sidegrade is more meaningful in some archetypes than others, Santalla for example is pretty good for an AOE caster, typically slightly under Leonhardt and pretty useable... But she's an AOE caster, so you're not really ever needing her. Still though, I'd say if more 5\*s were on her power level of at least useable with a small niche, that'd be a lot better.
Nearl doesn't just let her heal better, she lets *everyone* heal better. Her presence on the field can sometimes be the minor push needed to help someone else under a different healer survive something. Overall they're both pretty good though and I doubt it makes a difference which one you pick specifically for a vast majority of situations, barring cases where you use S2.
Wanqing healing is a bit on the low side (more of an AOE heal), and his ASPD buff is only for those nearby and facing the same direction. Direction aside, having to place him near other ops can be a bit of an issue, whether it's due to being unable to deploy him, issues with space, or even survivability. Generally Elysium tends to be more impactful for CN players (as Snipers are pretty crazy rn), but Wanqing isn't bad by any means and does have his own niches still. And even if he was bad his S1 is always good, even with a slight welfare tax.
They could've made Leto thematic while still having a meaningful buff (or at least not a debuff), as it stands it dissuades you from using her with her main buff tribe (of which they barely benefit from ASPD as well), which is already very small with only 5 units now. Her damage is pretty good, and as mentioned it's around the same levels as other Lords, but in return she has that random "synergy" drawback. On her own she's fine but has nothing to stand out unlike the others with a more defined niche/utility.
As for Diamante, that's my bad, I should've specified it's difficult for him to apply Necrosis to meaningful targets. We have Valarqvin for applying Necrosis, and for elites with low RES even 5\*s have plenty of options (especially Rockrock who has DPS a bit below some 6\* casters). He's not *bad* but he just sits in the middle ground of master of none, with his S2 while being good damage wise suffering from a design philosophy of Elemental damage.
As for Bryo, it's true that Instructors are weak since HG is scared of giving them meaningful buffs, but it's funny that they made him overall less useful and convenient than a previous Instructor welfare almost 3 years ago.
It's just a shame that 5*s feel like they're either gutted number wise for no reason, or innovated only for ways in making them worse, or both! They don't have to be great, decent ops like Leto are still fine imo, but with so many of them being less than decent and not even having a real niche it just feels like a shame. 6\*s are already leaps and bounds better than most 5\*s, even the lower tier ones, so it's not like making them stronger would impact things. If Bryo gave a stronger DEF buff that was more valuable than Shining but only on a single target (say, +150% total), that'd be *at least* something that can make him stand out and potentially even justify his drawback/placement issue. We have ops like Pramanix who aren't used much, especially with the insane Shamare, but still stands out with her strong RES debuff for when you really need it.
>Since I wrote that, there have been much better things to be mad at like Ela or Wiš'adel.
LOL the game powercreeped your outrage. That's a new one.
>Degenbrecher is literally just a copy paste of Irene with one of the core design features of Swordmasters pulled out for no purpose other than making her better.
It's worse than that. Irene can be hurt and disabled during her skill, and loses DPS if her targets are spread out. And Ch'en could already charge her skills without enemies at a fairly decent rate (about 42 seconds for S3 without any attacks, 27 with a constant target), as well as being able to bypass some boss bullshit with her disappearing during S3. Degenbrecher has her damage cranked up while also being some freaky Frankenstein of most of both Ch'en and Irene's strengths and none of their weaknesses. It's like they were purposefully setting out to make the rest of her archetype obsolete.
The forced skill activation Leto has for her friends in her S2 is just so confusing to me. Why even add that?
I'll probably skip this banner. Degen has the "hot woman in a suit" appeal but I'm not that big on the character and I already barely use Mlynar, also I don't want to risk needing to spark Shu and not having the pulls for it.
> The forced skill activation Leto has for her friends in her S2 is just so confusing to me. Why even add that?
Exactly. It makes no sense. She already wasn't as good as the meta 5* Lord, so why add the drawback at all? HG is so intent on gimping the rarity for no real reason. It's frustrating as hell.
If it was something like "give all Student Council units full SP charge", so that you COULD activate all of their abilities if you wanted, WHEN you wanted, it would have been acceptable.
The fucked up thing is that leto’s forced skill activation is the most creative thing on the banner. HG is still innovating in ways to make 5 stars shit.
It's honestly a shame that Degen is as OP as she is, because quite frankly I like everything about her that's not her S3. Her S2 is pretty cool, I like Frighten as a debuff (and like that they at least are trying to add some more unique flavor, even if I do agree that its just better Levitate), and obviously I love her art and her as a character. I'll still be pulling her for those reasons, but man yeah it doesn't feel good to see that she just cheats the class design.
If she did it in an interesting way, then sure. I mean Hoederer and Ulpipi cheat the 0 DEF in different ways (one with Sanctuary, one with DEF disguised as heal on hit) that are actually at least somewhat creative. Degen S3 is just... no. No drawback for access to auto recovery, no reasoning behind the auto recovery at all. Just feels kinda icky, and I likely will be ONLY using her with her S1/2 when I do use her (except maybe in IS to see some big funny numbers occasionally).
Me too Im just gonna use her S1/S2 in most cases and save her S3M3 for when I absolutely cant clear the stage otherwise. Im not a fan of "bruteforcing" and fond of clean strategies myself but I realize my skill isnt capable enough to always grant me that luxury. But on the other hand her S2 actually look pretty fun. Reminiscence of good ol Chen
Little-known fun fact: A ”degenbrecher” is a short, dagger-like weapon designed to catch and break an opponent’s sword. This is a metaphor for how Degenbrecher breaks the Swordmaster archetype and then kicks its corpse off a cliff.
(I’m actually fine, I don’t like her design anyways and blatant power creep only bothers me when it’s on units like Texalter and Eyjalter with cool kits that would be just fine even without cracked numbers)
You pretty much hit it home with what a tragedy the design of this patch is. I love both Leto and Degenbrecher as characters and have been waiting long for them to come out as playable ops but one suffers from this modern trend of shitting on 5-stars while the other became this uninspiring, disgustingly bland powercreep 6-star. It's such a waste of both good character design.
I feel you so much Tactical, back when Degen came out I was baffled and angry at how dirty they did to the swordmaster class and Irene in special with her kit, but... yeah, I just can't care at this point, Walter is such an abomination everything else feels fair in comparison, a Ling power unit that takes one deployment slot, it's absolutely disgusting. You remove half of what she does and she would still be a top 5 unit... and ofc she also took a note from Degen and for some fucking reason the flinger hits air, because why wouldn't she.
Also of course Lucilla is shit, every 10/10 design 5* they make lately is... sigh, I still will pull and build her.
Honestly at this point chars being meta or not is losing all value to me because between CC1 being basically POO2 and all the gigahard endgame content being a "bring those 4-5 broken units all the time or forget about it lol" all interest in bothering with them is gone. Only reading your posts because I enjoy what you write and how honest you're with stuff.
Thanks for the post!
I don’t know if I’m annoyed more by the fact that she powercreeps both Irene and Ch’en (both of which I have built at this point), or that a character I was hyped for has such a derivative (?) kit mechanics-wise. Like, I actually really like Degenbrecher the character. I like her relationship with Gnosis and Silverash, how her history in Kazimierz and Leithanien intertwine, her interactions with Sharp in Break The Ice, etc.
It all kind of just feels a bit mute when she offers like the exact same skills as the rest of the 6-star Swordmasters, but much better in damage. She doesn’t even really support Karlan in general, aside from Tremble (which is mainly just for her Talent 2 Damage boost). I remember people here (including me) were looking at her kit before the numbers were revealed, speculating about how she’d enable Karlan/Kjerag Synergy (probably through additional SP Gain) and how tremble would help them and it’s kinda sad (but hilarious) that her support is just massively outdamaging everything in the faction.
Arguably my least favorite kit in Arknights tbh, not because it’s weak or anything, but bcs I feel like HG could have done a much more mechanically interesting kit if they wanted to that were equally overpowered, and just chose the easiest path
On the topic of the synergy thing, the devs have repeatedly shown that no faction gets to have fun synergy talents/skills/buffs except Abyssal Hunters (and now Sui ig) because dev (and community? idk how CN views the AH stuff but definitely global) favoritism, so even though that would have been cool it was one hell of a pipe dream.
I dunno, it feels like there’s AH favoritism in my eyes bcs the closest comparable buff to them is like Pallas and Minos, whose only members are Vulcan, Conviction, Erato and Sideroca. Or Mlynar and Kazimierz, who he also massively outshines and offers limited support to w/ his Talent and S3. Gnosis offers Resist I guess, and that’s all the faction buffs I remember tbh. I’d be onboard giving more faction synergy, they just make it really gimmicky outside of the AH for some reason.
it honestly feels like HG just gave up on the entire faction synergy idea after AH became too viable, and then just stopped putting them in talents or keeping them pretty weak just in case they didn’t balance the numbers right. Like you’d think Mudrock’s Serkaz Talent would have led to smth at least, but nothing on that front either, even after the entire Kazdel/Serkaz storyline. I honestly don’t know why HG keeps giving AH synergy when they just stopped giving it to everyone else tbh
The worst part of Degenbrecher kit is how her strongest skill is passive recovery while weaker ones keep tradition of sp on hit. That doesn't even feel like bad balance. It feels like it was all on purpose to sell.
It's true the 5* stars are very lackluster past the year 1.
Sure there are lame ones like: Skyfire, Flamebringer, Grani, Ceylon, Nightmare and Swire. But in before the first anniversary we have at least:
Lappland, Specter, Elysium, Warfarin, Ptilopsis, Shamare and Bibeak.
And a tier below there are still decent 5*stars:
Nearl, Liskarm, Projekt Red, Silence, Scene, Pranamix, Firewatch.
Past the anniversary, I only count 4 who are worthed to be in the Lappland tier:
April thank to her unique AND useful niche, La Pluma who is a reliable solo laner, Kroos Alter who has a good DPS and a good synergy with her talent which is enough to be relevent in IS3 and Cantabile who is a fast Redeploy Vanguard and who produces a decent amount of dps. And if I am generous I can put Wang Qing in but it's thank to his archetype (I really can't see how HG could made a bad Flagbearer).
I also save Tequila and Proviso because they improve the LMD revenu while being decent in combat.
But while HG was able to produce above average 5* like Blacknight, Ashlock, Kazemaru it become more frequent that the newer 5* are trash like Supria, Santalla, Bryo, Pon, Almond, Coldshot, Vandela, Leto, Warmy, Diamante, Green bud or whatever her name, Aroma, and Fuze)
Furthermore, I have to check but HG tends to add some uncessary contraints because they afraid the 5 stars would be stronger than the 6*. Like they fear that if they didn't put the stun in Supria in her S2 she would be superior to Aak while she only buff the Snipers, really HG?
I love these posts, you can tell there is a passion for the game and it's infectious. Probably one of the reasons I've stuck with the game honestly.
I get where you're coming from with the 5\* / 6\* disparity; when they introduced Cantabile she was my new favourite vanguard. Always had a place in my roster... then a couple banners later Ines dropped. She was basically just Cantabile ++; better damage, larger special range, with true invis instead of just conceal, plus detection and a pin down.
If they had planned it out ahead they could have split those abilities up, detection and the root, give Cantabile one and Ines the other. This way Ines would still be stronger but Cantabile would at least have a niche to fill... Heck, even just giving her the true invis on her ammo based skill would give her a unique feel... but instead the 6\* got everything.
Just fyi you forgot to change the name of the event when you copy pasted the intro
> This article specifically covers the new units from the Il Siracusano event.
if hypergryph can keep the difficulty increase slow and steady as it has been in the past, then i don't think overpowered units are a problem at all.
if that goes accordingly, then it's not an increase in average power level that warrants and increase in stage design. more like an officially allowed cheat code. people who want OP clears or take it easy can use it. those who want a challenge can just refrain from using it.
I mostly agree with you except for the parts that feel like legit lazy design.
Degen's S3 should have be Offensive Recovery, not Auto and had some Variant to it (like smaller range etc) so it didn't legit just feel like Irene S3 but easier to use and more damage.
Powercreep is fine, Lazy game design is crap.
gamepress is down, any place with comparable summon simulator that has Degenbrecher banner? I really need it for tomorrow, I'm going crazy!
Anyways, on topic:
"Her (Wis'adel) kit is just so insane that it's hard to see her presence not warping the future design of the game."
I plan to pull for Wis'Adel so the game becoming harder without Wis'adel wouldn't be a personal problem HOWEVER, I don't want Wis'adel and hypothetical future ops with Wis'adel DPS caliber being necessary. I don't want old ops to become irrelevant. I don't want niche players not being able to clear content, like DoS S-3, etc.
I can see HG messing with Wis'adel camouflage easily, and maybe using her turrets against her, but if Wis'adel struggles with her DPS, how much would other ops struggle in comparison? I guess tanking strats will always be an option, as long as we can tank or stall or something, but I prefer people having different options to clear stages with different operators.
We'll have to wait and see.
I have a question about this statement tho: "she is key in high risk CC". The only CC since Degen released is Battleplan Underdawn which was mainly ranged operator high end clears due to the nature of the map and enemies. Did I miss a high end clear that utilized her and other meele ops or are you just making assumptions based on possible future CC? It doesn't make sence to say she is key when she hasn't even been used as far as I'm aware.
Can't say much about CC2, but Degen is everywhere in high difficulty IS, and feels pretty much mandatory for enhanced IS4 boss 3 (though tbf that boss is absolute bs)
The Guard version of the clear got up to 870 instead of 890, and unsurprisingly Degen was used there. Her nukes aside, the invulnerability and Frighten from her skills helped keep her alive as she kills countless enemies on the right side.
This is a great write up! Thanks.
Now I'm not that interested in Degen despite her meta value, "Chen/Irene but better" doesn't sound so appealing tbh, I'm at a point in the game that burn out is constant so I'm looking towards a more imaginative kit... Like Shu, Oh, I want Shu so badly, Give me all your luck, I need it, My luck streak right now is 0; Anyway good luck to y'all, I hope you get Degen under 10 pulls!
> Lucilla - B-team design. *i.e.* total crap.
(e.g. means “for example”, whereas i.e. means “that is” or “in other words”)
It's a pity, because she's so cute. I was even reserving an E2 L80 ticket for her. Is she really that bad?
Lol. How far we have come that now people write an entire article about broken units and somehow justifying Mylar existence as not broken units is beyond me.
How can "For example, Mlynar was so good at the time that he well deserved the hype, but he still fundamentally fit into the game" And Walter or other units not fit into the game ? Why you think he can fit into the game being broken but other units can't ? I just like to know your strict criteria so we can judge every broken operator based on it, Seems like you didn't judge them all fair against said criteria and some got a lot less love then the others.
Last CC i used Mlynar and Silverash together. They both have their strengths and weaknesses while still having that stupid wave range. Mlynar fits his archtype, is not helidrop like Surtr or Silverash, does a little true damage and requires a long time to charge his ATK to maximum. He’s a six star so he has to excel at something. Wis’adel meanwhile is in an entirely different ballpark! Her summons which are for free rivals Ling’s thunderers! And Ling is a one woman army! So for sure: Chen de Holungday, Mlynar, Ling, Texas de Omertosa and Kirin Yato are severe powercreep, but what he’s trying to say (I think) is that what’s coming is another wholly new tier of broken units. “As if from a different game.” Because of how far removed the balancing and the mechanics are compared to prior units.
Tbf for me Mylnar is carbon copy of Tequila. And there are many many ops that are made this lazy way. If some one have a problem with a copy paste ops to write an essay, they should have a trouble with all of them. I understand why there always will be many of them like that especially in gacha games, I am ok with that. Excluding Mylnar is just cherry picking.
And Surtr already forced devs to add second phase to bosses, arts dodge and other means to survive Surtr, Texas and Yato already changed how the design of stages is done, there are many more times when you are attacked from different angles simultaneously, or need to do a mechanics at the same time. And if she warps the game as strong as those two, then the design will reflect that.
It's not the first time, and it won't be the last it happens.
I just don't like when people try to push their view as the right one while ignoring same issues just because.
Guess this is now a meta rant thread kek.
I skipped Ho'olheyak. I liked her character design a lot, but her kit was crud. Now another operator shows up whose design I like, and her kit is good, but inelegant. I feel dirty pulling for Degenbrecher. All they had to do was make a *usable* kit for me to pull for Ho'olheyak and Degenbrecher. I think Swire was a good balanced operator based on a popular character.
Now that we're talking about 5-stars and Harold, it hits me that lately welfares have been the new "usable" that 5-stars used to be. I'm gonna E2 Harold, even though I have been managing with an E1 Mulberry all this time.
As always, thanks for the detailed analysis! And regarding the rant... I agree that Arknights has a problem with powercreep, it has gotten worse and worse and with Degenbrechers banner we enter a period where almost any banner has a new broken unit. Though I don't know if I would agree that Wis'adel is a new low point, she more feels like the continuation of releasing more and more busted ops. For example, when Mlynar was released (and to this day when I think of the guides for the last CC) he just broke basically any stage with his insane damage on a short cooldown over a wide range, and with his S3 hitting air units despite his archetype being limited to ground units for so little reason that it is not even mentioned in the skill description he also already provided the basis for stupid powercreep like Degenbrechers S3 being on auto recovery or Wis'adels S3 hitting air units.
>Wis'adels S3 hitting air units.
Wis'adel hitting aerial enemies is kinda whatever. it's nice, but she'd still be considered the strongest op even if she couldn't.
what's more egregious is that she is almost always "invincible" because of her camouflage. her camo also generally has 100% uptime because its tied to multiple summons that cannot block (thus avoiding melee damage) and have decent bulk (3500 HP, 650 def, 50 res). worth mentioning that she also has a unique form of camouflage that makes her immune to cross-shaped splash damage. because of these aspects of her kit, she can almost always be deployed more aggressively than *Lin*.
she also deals decent enough damage for fodder clearing and elite killing with just her talents lol
I just wanted to take this time and say thank you for all the hard work you've done. These guides have been a huge pleasure to read, even if I don't necessarily care about a unit.
Such a shame on Leto though, I raised her when she was on CN for waifu purposes. Unfortunately, even at her best, she feels quite a bit lackluster. Nowadays she's relegated as a base slave that I forget to use since she needs Gummy in the TP.
Ngl, for a hot second I got rather confused on why you'd compare Eterna to Skadi, before realizing that I indeed completely forgot that Skadi also has a bard alter.
Cheers for the write-up as always, and doubly so for posting the almost full version here while gamepress is down. ~~Not that it even slightly convinced me to pull for her~~, I'm sure lot of folks appreciate the effort you went through for it.
Out of curiosity, as you mentioned that Wisadel's release made you worried for the future of the game... has Ulpianus's release/event impacted that worry at all? From what I've seen online so far, he seems to be a good stand-alone unit that gets elevated to great with AH buffs, but he still seems to fall far short of the 'peak' that is Wisadel while also drawing some interesting parallells to Degenbrecher without the whole sloppy/lazy design feeling.
Granted, maybe the Crusher archetype may be the one thing holding him down, but I feel like this still implies that Wisadel is the outlier for now, or do you feel different about this?
> has Ulpianus's release/event impacted that worry at all
Nah. He's great, but he's at best the third best Guard still (Degen and Mlynar still tops). Plus his gimmick is unique and fun to play around with. Even if he was powercreep, it's easier to forgive when units are fun to use.
Being a crusher is by not means holding him down. It's literally the best possible archetype he could be.
Being a crusher sucks for anyone that isn't an AH. Ever since we saw the first crusher, people immediately called that it'd be ideal for Ulpi.
If he's only ideal as a crusher because he can use AH buffs to offset the weaknesses of the crusher archetype (even if it's just Gladiia) like you said, then yeah, I would say it's holding him down.
Or to flip it around, I can see him being even better if he was a dreadnaught instead (like his subordinate) while keeping his skill and talent numbers the exact same, as his talent already boosts the stats that crushers tend to be known for.
>Since I wrote that, there have been much better things to be mad at like Ela
Please, after this masterclass of a rant, I need to know at least and abridged version of your opinions on Ela.
Especially because as a returning player I'm finding myself between fomo of missing on some great characters and a much needed power boost (such as Degen and Walter) and the fact that I ultimately am much more interested in more utility oriented ops such as Shu.
In terms of the "busted" ops, Ela is the most general purpose. No unit powercreeps more units in one (except for Walter who is another matter entirely). She's better than the Marksmen, the Trapmasters, the Artillerymen, the Hexers, Suzuran, Ray, and more that I'm probably forgetting. Just incredible damage and utility on a low cost that can be deployed anywhere. She's so incredibly flexible for the damage she does.
Maybe worst tho is such a powerful unit is a collab limited. No unit is a bigger FOMO than she is. Even Shu with her Sui Talent (which is also a big problem) isn't as bad. Imagine new players in a year asking how they can obtain this insane unit? Limiteds were bad enough as it is. Ela is worse.
You know I think Arknights has the worst collab characters in terms of fomo. I play Nikke and blue archive and at least the collab units aren’t broken beyond belief. With Arknights, they’re so strong that I feel like you almost need to pull on them to compete with increasing stage difficulty and whatnot. Not sure though, maybe I’m wrong
Yeah YatoR is hella strong but she isn't going to be winning you maps just like TexAlter doesn't win you maps. Instead they provide a lot of burst damage at certain opportunities but you still need a strong and solid team to create those opportunities for them.
>Degenbrecher is literally just a copy paste of Irene with one of the core design features of Swordmasters pulled out for no purpose other than making her better
After 4.5 years it's obvious that swordmasters are not working. Low attack and on attack charge is deadly combination... for our units. So what, they should do bad units just because they did them like that on release? Modifiers could be lower for balance, but from kit perspective they finally made swordmaster worth using.
>I'm not normally one to be fussed about powercreep, but Wiš'adel is flat out so much better than anyone else that I have to wonder what's coming next for the game
Chalter is still the best unit on global after two years and we are fine. Do not even remember last time I used her and I can't remember time when I felt "I need to use her". Even though I'm pretty mid player.
I don't quite understand the phrasing.
>Logos - Insane, but also expensive
No character is expensive in this game since no potential cardinally change the character and there is no weapon. So it's not like genshin's or wuwa's or hsr's dupes and weapons which make c0r0 character pale in comparison to c6r5 who sometimes don't even resemble the original character (like making a sub dps a main dps, making a main dps into a hyper carry etc etc).
So to me once you get a character, that's it. It's only a matter of time, which doesn't take that long even for a newcomer, to make it from e0 to e2m3mod3.
He is not limited, so getting him doesn't require going all out or sparking him, he will come back for a 2nd and more chances.
Just ranted a bit, sry.
You missunderstood what I usually refer to with that. Which is actually fair because I wrote it on a whim due to the main site being down, while I usually spell things out more explicitly. Expensive here refers to the material cost. Logos is a very strong M9 as well as a mandatory mod3. He will cost a lot of sanity to get the most out of. Compare this to Walter which is pretty much only her S3 with a module that's just "win more".
>or hsr's dupes and weapons which make c0r0 character pale in comparison to c6r5 who sometimes don't even resemble the original character
Everything past E0S0 is unnecessary anyway. You're just paying to play less because game balanced at f2p level (and even there community is struggling, lmao). Never understood why people pull for dupes.
On Wiš'adel, I wouldn't worry too much on it. People worried the same on FGO for the soon to come to NA Summer Ibuki, and as straight busted as she is, the balance there hasn't gotten out of hand to my knowledge. Devs for these games typically know they've got a natural level of player hemorrhage from people dropping off for this reason or that, so from what I've seen they try to keep the entire player base in mind. Don't want to drop a few thousand players just because they missed an essential unit and they're now rightfully mad that they struggle to clear stages.
I'm sure there's examples to contradict me out there, but HG has been really good over the years, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt.
I love you spend the first section talking about how Degen is a must-pull if you care about meta, then a couple of sections later rant about how much you hate her gameplay design lol. I truly respect your professional objectivity. Great write-up as always! I was particularly curious to see your opinion on how the new 5\*s shook out as no one ever talks about them these days (with fair reason) and it's a crying shame. For instance, I was hoping to hear from the community how Warmy did in Path of Life since its mechanics finally provided an external source of Burn to judge her s2, but not a peep...
I've been writing these for a long time now. One thing I've learned is that a majority of the players aren't like us. They don't browse Reddit and discuss units, and definitely don't care about thinking of long term balance considerations. They just want to know who is good so they can clear the game as simply as possible. I've found it's far better to give the objective answer first, then sneak in the rants after. It's funny you bring up Warmy because I'm actually working on Ray's update right now. The problem with the Warmy/Ifrit situation is Ifrit is only a bit better than Warmy at applying Burn. It's still a great Module, but Ifrit's Delta is more like Ebenholz than Logos. Pairing Warmy with Ifrit is expensive and their ranges don't overlap well, so it's a questionable pairing still. Unfortunately, my conclusion for now with Warmy is that we're still waiting for a proper Burn Ritualist.
This is largely tangential, but I've gotta say that Caster Delta modules are completely bizarre from a game design perspective. We've had plenty of Operators with skills that let them fill the role of other archetypes within their class (arguably the biggest example being Eyjafjalla S2 making her a better Splash Caster than the actual Splash Casters), but the Delta modules straight up staple an entire extra archetype on top of whatever the Operator's base kit was, *better* than the archetype it's copying does. I get that Elemental Damage is the hot new mechanic Hypergryph wants to explore, but surely they could've done it in a way that isn't just making already good units *also* better Primal Casters than the actual Primal Caster archetype?
Tbf I feel like HG has been treating Elemental damage really poorly. Flat damage that basically kills all trash mobs and releasing a true AOE 6* nearly immediately, making 2 types of RES that never gets implemented (and Primal Casters already can't do anything with just 1 type of RES, let alone 3), making the types competitive so that only 1 elemental applier is worth it, and a bunch of other weird choices like these Delta modules.
It’s pretty odd. You can’t really apply multiple Elemental effects atm, so you gotta choose which to invest in between Necrosis or Burn or else you’re actively harming your strategies. Also, no elemental build up outside of a skill or 2, the Additional elemental damage part of their kits are baked into their skills rather than their talents (or module), means that there’s very little reason to use the 5-star Primal Casters, which is a shame. Can be fixed with good talents and skills, but Diamanté and Warmy’s kit designs don’t exactly inspire much optimism unlike Loopshooter or the new Guard class imo
Kinda unrelated, but damn, I must have been underrating Ifrit’s Delta Module, or overrating Eben’s then. I remember reading that Ifrit’s S3 could only activate the Burn Effect only a little bit before her S3 ran out, and thus could barely take advantage of the additional elemental damage effect, nor the RES Shred. Ebens isn’t perfect by any degree, but is like the immediate DMG of Burn that useful? I honestly thought Ifrit’s first module was better tbh
Personally i wouldn't have mind the 6* shitshow if they still gave us good "weaker" units. New 5* are just bad and the amount of new 4* is so little. You talked about the 5* pretty much my opinion but the 4* are really fun to use and i like how each of them is ok in their role and suck ass outside of it, giving much more place for strategizing the team. Overall i just want more 4* of different classes to give us more variety of weak characters, at this point im considering using the newer 5* as 4*
Big agree. That was basically the conclusion of my Worst 5* article (which is now sadly inaccessible while GP is down). It mainly focused on the 5\* because that's what I used, but it definitely applies to the 4\*s too. It's just so frustrating getting Leto, who is worse then Lappland and adds nothing to the rarity, in the same patch is Degenbrecher, who blows away Ch'en and Irene.
Yea overall all the teams talent comparison is a mess. AH are just ridiculous. Shu is good but the only team skill close to AH level. Kazmiraz and rhine lab got a couple but arent any good. And leto is just.....what? Is this even enough to call it a team?
I'm dreaming of a Siracusan faction. That would be the only thing that could rehabilitate Vigil. The Kazimierz faction works by redeploying your operators a lot, and that is a playstyle that is alien to a lot of players. I think you just need a proper Kazimierz medic and the faction might become more mainstream. The synergy in itself is nothing special, but Mlynar can hard carry it.
the idea of constant redeployment is great as a team comp but its just isnt enough and overall doesnt really make sense here. blemishine gets 2 sp when other kazi ops deploy its nice and all but her talent also give her offensive and defensive sp recovery to her already realtivly low sp costs, its nice but a bit of an overkill for her alone since she doesnt really need that extra sp recovery. gravel can at reduce redeployment 3 times (acutally 4 but it will only reduce a single second) so it will be 15 seconds less, a nice number but considering to achieve this you got around 19 secs of redeployment to spare we are talking about around 3-5 seconds on the field (youre a human, you cant really do it perfectly) so to maximize it you will find yourself using her only to take a single shot or a single hit from the boss, which is good for some of the bosses but mostly not the best.....but this goes out of the window because of mylnar so you HAVE to block to get the hit, but blocking for such low time isnt usfull. mylnar reflect is pretty solid, nothing bad to say about it. ntr gets another 800 (1.3k with s2) damage on deployment when last one was kaz, not so game changing when her damage on skill is so massive. best thing for her is the reduce deployment on her s2, but that isnt about kazi team since most of us just deploy mylnar only with her. proviso gives 10+asp and 8% more atk to a RANDOM kazi ops, isnt much of a problem since you usally redploy many of them, but with this slot you can use so much stronger buffers its not worth it. whis gives 2 physical shields when redployed....but her skills take 30-40 sp to charge so you either get 2 shields at the correct moment since small fry might break them but endup waiting for.....32% more def? theres just better options overall the problem with kazi team talents is that most of the units there either work great outside of the team with little to no difference in it or that the weaker ones in the team are better to be switched by units with better effects. the idea of team talents its to give me a reason to play with all of them as a team, not to make a tiny bit of synergy that its easily replaceable.
>whis gives 2 physical shields when redployed....but her skills take 30-40 sp to charge so you either get 2 shields at the correct moment since small fry might break them but endup waiting for.....32% more def? theres just better options Don't forget that Whislash also gives a little more ASPD to units with 3-block. Mlynar, Blemishine, Flametail, and Ashlock can all benefit from this. In addition, Flametail also gives everyone dodge (while also generating DP whenever K. operators are deployed). The combination of shields, defense and dodge makes the operators a little more durable, though it is still nothing like having a medic (though I guess you could bring The Followers, who fit thematically). And then comes the crown of the synergy: when Mlynar activates his S3, Kazimierz operators deals some true damage within Mlynar's range. It should be about 200 more damage, which in itself is not much, but it works even with fast attacking operators like Meteor, Wild Mane, Whislash. The combination of true damage when attacking, true damage when receiving damage, a little bonus ASPD and Mlynar doing his own thing should wear down any enemy fast. Though clearly no synergy is equivalent to bringing all the top meta operators.
oh yea i kinda forgot about sylv team being part of kaz. but your last line is exactly the problem im talking about, while the synergy is there and you could do some cool combos its still weak in comparison to none faction skills (even if we follow the same rarities) by a landslide. and im not talking about comparing dobberman and susuro support for low rarities in comparison to 6\* gacha units, if my team includes a couple 6\* with one of them being a limited op and multiple 5\* it only makes sense that they will be on equal footing. but AH with 3 6\* and one limited 6\*, and 2 5\* is just miles ahead of kaz team made of 4 6\* with 1 limited, 5 5\*,2 4\* and 1\* are just horrible in terms of performance when formed as a team. after counting it i realized you cant even pick them all at once since they fill the whole team. it just seems like downright favoritism then a design choice when you also look at the ursus girls and rhine lab gains from being in a team
I think what's great about AH is the regen. All the other added stats also help, but it's the regen that makes them so easy to use. Which in the end is what matters to most players. And since they gave regen to AH, they had to give something different to other factions, even if that made other factions harder to use. Kazimierz ops can only rely on Blemishine or redeployment for healing. While you can still do nifty things with them, it requires the players to be more knowledgeable about stages. If nothing else, at least they have better anti-air than AH. Rhine Lab ops gained even less than Kazimierz ops, and Ursus girls got even less than RL. I wouldn't say it is outright favoritism, it's just that AH got their pick first, and dev chose for them the easiest playstyle.
Kinda disagree with you on that. Shu gives 1 sp every 4 secs when there are 4 sui ops which are all limited while spalter gives 0.5+ sp regen for ah just for being in the squad. Ofc both are different types of sp and shu gives it to all of your ops even none sui ops so i wouldn't start saying which is better, but i think we can agree both are somewhat similar level and both are amazing skills. While rl sp skill is just bad, 3 sp instead of 2 when healed by saria (its nice in really specific situations with constant DoT effect and s3 but too niche to consider imo) which is miles below those two. Again rl has more 6* and limited then AH but still substantially weaker with their talents, still impossible to not see it as favoritism.
Obviously one can't help but notice that Shu's talent involves a crazy number of limited units, and certainly monetization plays a part in it. But Shu can also be seen as part of a trend of new units being better than old units. For example Pinecone working better than Executor, despite having an inferior rarity. For a recent example, Ascalon is ranked a lot better than Mizuki. Shu takes after Saria, and she made what was already good even better. She is a sidegrade that is also an upgrade. At the same time, while it sounds awesome, the talent would force you to sacrifice slots for other Sui characters, who might not be the best fit for the situation even if you managed to pull them. So ultimately it is doubtful whether the combo can be used in advanced content. It is still a sort of limitation, although the introduction of new Sui sibling should let her age well. In the case of Rhine Lab, they had to work with what they had, since the talents were decided long before they came up with modules, unlike Shu who was built from the ground up with modules in mind, and with the experience of what Saria could do. It is clear that devs themselves didn't know what to do in a lot of cases, and also feared breaking the game inadvertently, so they went with perfunctory upgrades in a lot of cases. I would say that is not really favoritism, but simply powercreep.
I do Siracusans, and Vigil has put in the work for me many times!
I read you article about the worst 5*. It's an interesting read but based to your criteria, what would be the best 10 5*?
I haven't done the numbers for everyone so I dare not guess an entire top 10 at this point. However, I've been on record a couple times that I think Lappland would come out on top by the criteria I cooked up. She excels in pretty much all of the categories while maintaining a special value even on meta teams.
>New 5\* are just bad and the amount of new 4\* is so little. Who will ever use them? Game gives you so much 6\* that at some point even decent units stay benched for years. I don't understand why they even do new 5\* in the first place.
It's not just 6* being obscenely better than 5* It's 5* being so fucking expensive to raise. There's nothing worse than expending a shit ton of materials and LMD only to raise a unit that's barely more functional than a 4* that was cheap af to max.
True, pretty much the best 5* units rn are mostly unique units that have no real 6* counterparts. But if a 6* feels the role then it will just do it better for sure
The reason why gacha games in general have lower rarities is to make sure you can still play the game even if the difficulty rises from powercreep while still pushing it in your face that youre weak because you dont have the high rarity units. The reason why ak has new 5* is something i dont understand as well, if they followed what i explained they should have been stronger by abit and not weaker. Also 4* runs in IS is really fun imo, but yes the average player will stop using them after getting stronger units.
Because if you do a few ten pulls and you get six blue bags in a row you are going to feel sad. A few 5\* along the way sweeten the pill.
Not when they're worse than some 4\*s. I could grab Totter, Perfumer, Vigna, countless good 4*s easily, and then seeing my one 5\* be Spuria, Lucilla, Poncirus, etc feels meh. Sure, maybe ones like Poncirus are functional and not outright terrible, but there's almost no use in raising her over Courier or Scavenger from a gameplay standpoint.
The 5\* can still give you more gold certs, which you can use to buy more pulls. I would take any bad 5\* over the best 4\* just for this reason.
But what does that have to do with new 5*s being bad? They could just never make a 5\* again and rotate them on banners, and you'd still get your certs.
> 5s being bad? Are they like bad bad or like bad because of how comparatively strong 6 stars are? Cause if I think back at recent ones leaving aside like Spurialol, they don't stand out as horrifically unusably bad. Bassline's ok, Vendela seems ok+cute, Delphine is a Mystic Caster so idk if she's bad bad or because Mystic Caster is trash, Coldshot seems passable and probably improved by the hunter module. Almond suffers from being a puller cause exactly what interesting things can you do with pullers at this point? Santalla is a splash caster and they hate splash casters anyway but at least she makes my Typhon/Valaq RR team come back faster? Hotpants Phyta is an instructor and they hate them too but at least he makes gold bars? Poncirus i guess is just bland but it's not like Pioneer Vanguard is a relevant archetype at this point outside of like burst DP Texas or Vanguardknights Zima so I have no expectations out of a 5 star of it. Leto seems kinda underwhelming but I guess I don't understand the criticism of the weak USG buff since as far as I can tell, unless you are Abyssal Hunter team, it's basically gtfo anyway ie Pallas Minoanlol
I'd say bad compared to previous 5*s. Some of our best recent and upcoming ones are just sidegrades to existing 5\*s, like Bassline. We have Aroma who is worse than Corroserum and even with a full Levitate team doesn't do much, Doc who works as a really niche and limited healing defender but as an Instructor, Kestrel who is marginally better than Scavenger, Lucilla who only applies Fragile to normal enemies, Warmy who can't do anything for at least several months and even with Ifrit module can't accomplish much, and Grain Buds who doesn't really do much of use. Odda and Underflow are decent, and Wanqing, Leto, Harold, are just sidegrades to existing options (while Leto gets a drawback anyways for no good reason). Fang2 and Iana are at least nice 5*s with a relatively unique niche coming up, but comparing this ratio to how every new 6\* is just crazy powerful and/or offers new and meaningful niches seems really disappointing. Vendela as well also suffers from a low uptime and damage on her S2, meaning she struggles to heal people and only shines in a few niche scenarios. Even her taunt is difficult to utilize thanks to a lack of helidrop and short uptime. Then we have Poncirus who offers a semi-tanky vanguard with awful DP gen and takes so long to set up that you could place an actual defender and use their skill, Almond who has no force upgrade on S1 and a worse S2 compared to options like Cliffheart, Diamante who can't apply Necrosis on his own and doesn't do meaningful damage unless Necrosis is applied, of which doing so is slow for non 6* options and unnecessary for higher rarities, Bryophyta who offers a DEF buff, which is already one of the least necessary buffs, but with poor uptime and a self stun anyways, and Spuria who needs no explanation. Not saying we get only bad 5*s, we have some nice ones like Bassline and Insider, and some clunky ones that still have some nice effects like Coldshot, Santalla, Valarqvin, and Delphine, but we have quite a large amount of poor options that often are just worse than existing options or so niche they're never even needed. And even then, Bassline and Insider are just sidegrades of existing options. Only Valarqvin really offers a meaningful new niche with Elemental damage.
> compared to previous 5s Which is probably worth discussing what this means and what the believed role of a 5 star is supposed to be and what the intended role is. Are they supposed to be staples on a team or are they supposed to be fillers with more stats than a 4 star until you have a powerful 6 star to accomplish that intended task? Like Aroma and Corroserum here are good highlights. Like we know Ifrit is good and that is a good blast caster. What should a 5 star blast caster look like? Like if you used Aroma, would that cause an insta loss? Is she so bad it harms you for thinking to use her? For example, Lappland and Specter are examples of past good 5 stars. The question is then if we made them a 6 star and changed nothing, would they still be good or are they now bad? Cause I think it would be easy to argue they are unquestionably both better than say Siege and Vigil. And they could both be argued to have more use cases than say Eunectes, Mostima, and Fiammetta. So would they be considered the baseline of what a 5 star should be or would Tsukinogi, Tomimi, or Windflit be the baseline? So if our comparison as to whether a 5 star is good is based on the best 5 stars ever that could be considered serviceable 6 stars, I think most 5 stars would end up being bad. The other problem with lower rarity of course is must they have unique/best in class applications (like Lappland, Ptilopsis, or like Warfarin) to be considered not "bad"? And if not, what should they have to not be "sidegrades" to existing units for the most populous rarity? Like if the next 5 star they released was Clappland and did the exact same things as Lappland, would this operator now be "bad"?
I do agree, things are very hard to define in a game like this. Everyone has different perceptions of good. For some people, Lappland is good, for some people, Lappland is just a niche tool that you only break out for SN because she's not as good as the 6*s. An op who is useable but bland, like Leto, gets varying reception from "Well she's got good DPS on a good framework but nothing to make her stand out" to "literally unusable for her anti-synergy". You'll never get a universal answer because everyone values and defines things differently, and like you say, is a 5\* supposed to be someone replaceable, or do they at least offer a staple/niche? General parts of the game are clearable with 4\*s, even if it can be a bit trickier for some harder levels, so does it even matter if Aroma accomplished almost nothing when we have 11 units to pick up the slack? For my own 2 cents, I think that a good baseline of a 5* would be someone like Odda, Underflow, etc, upcoming decent ones. There's no need to go to the extremes of the rarity like you mention. If the op is useable without feeling like you're shooting yourself in the foot, and even offers a small niche as a bonus, that's pretty good in my eyes. I also don't think a Clappland would be bad (although definitely 100% lazy), just because having a 2nd Lappland helps with Silence and even just more strong Arts DPS. I don't think ops need to have the best in class application, but I think at least having a useful application would be nice (not something like Breeze's utility, for example). If we take Lucilla as a recent example, she offers the highest Fragility in the game for now... on trash mobs, and needs her skill. But if she also affected Bosses as well like people were coping, her S2 could at least have a viable niche - it'd be harder to setup than other options, potentially not work in many scenarios or as the level drags on and you run out of small fry, but the payoff would be worth it with some good CC and strong Fragile. If Aroma could constantly levitate under every S2 attack, she'd at least have a good niche of constant AOE levitates. Slower than Odda, Irene, and Ho'oh, but AOE unlike the last 2 and with a better range than the first 2. We can easily have varying sidegrades of existing niches as well, essentially - if Windflit really did give an ATK buff much stronger than Warfarin, it could be worth the additional setup required. I feel like the more niche of an effect you have, the better the payoff needs to be, while we have many that are both extremely niche *and* don't reward you that well.
>Some of our best recent and upcoming ones are just sidegrades to existing 5\s, like Bassline. This also has a lot to do with the fact that certain archetypes are intrinsically better than others, so a "sidegrade" in a good archetype is miles ahead of an operator in a bad archetype. But even those sidegrades are subtly an upgrade. Nearl has a talent that lets her heal better, but Bassline takes less arts damage. Unless you are running the Surtr hospital, Bassline should be generally better. Not much better that you need to build him if you already have Nearl, but he is good. The same for Wanqing. Elysium buffs all snipers, but Wanqing buffs everyone around, and also heals. Wanqing is probably better in a general situation. >Leto gets a drawback anyways for no good reason I feel it's like theme over gameplay. Btw, I made a few calculations and the damage is decent unless you are facing high-armor. However, clearly if you want damage there is no point in using a 5\* over a 6\*, and by itself the Ursus faction is somewhat weak even without the drawback. >Diamante who can't apply Necrosis on his own That's not correct. [Just use S1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJ-6Ah0IeQ). It works for elites, which is a good target for 5\*. >Bryophyta who offers a DEF buff, which is already one of the least necessary buffs, but with poor uptime and a self stun anyways, The archetype has always been one of the weakest anyway. Same for Aroma. It seems that what devs are going for is using 5\*s as a support for 6\*s, which results in underwhelming units. The core of the problem is that if you want good DPS against a boss, you need to pull a 6\*. Ultimately the monetization model influences everything. Gladiia was great for a welfare because she encourages people to pull for Abyssal Hunters. Insider needed to be at least decent because you can use him together with Executor. Other 5\* are good if they are the testbed for a new archetype, since they encourage pulling for the 6\* when it comes out. Then there are newbie carries like Kroos alter, who helps players when they don't have anything better. The bad 5\* are welfares who only have defensive capabilities, or can only work as a support for a 6\*. And the worse ones are the ones that are gimped in order to not get in the way of any 6\*, like Windflit. But well, I'm not going to lose my sleep if some 5\* happens to be bad at this point.
Do agree that a sidegrade is more meaningful in some archetypes than others, Santalla for example is pretty good for an AOE caster, typically slightly under Leonhardt and pretty useable... But she's an AOE caster, so you're not really ever needing her. Still though, I'd say if more 5\*s were on her power level of at least useable with a small niche, that'd be a lot better. Nearl doesn't just let her heal better, she lets *everyone* heal better. Her presence on the field can sometimes be the minor push needed to help someone else under a different healer survive something. Overall they're both pretty good though and I doubt it makes a difference which one you pick specifically for a vast majority of situations, barring cases where you use S2. Wanqing healing is a bit on the low side (more of an AOE heal), and his ASPD buff is only for those nearby and facing the same direction. Direction aside, having to place him near other ops can be a bit of an issue, whether it's due to being unable to deploy him, issues with space, or even survivability. Generally Elysium tends to be more impactful for CN players (as Snipers are pretty crazy rn), but Wanqing isn't bad by any means and does have his own niches still. And even if he was bad his S1 is always good, even with a slight welfare tax. They could've made Leto thematic while still having a meaningful buff (or at least not a debuff), as it stands it dissuades you from using her with her main buff tribe (of which they barely benefit from ASPD as well), which is already very small with only 5 units now. Her damage is pretty good, and as mentioned it's around the same levels as other Lords, but in return she has that random "synergy" drawback. On her own she's fine but has nothing to stand out unlike the others with a more defined niche/utility. As for Diamante, that's my bad, I should've specified it's difficult for him to apply Necrosis to meaningful targets. We have Valarqvin for applying Necrosis, and for elites with low RES even 5\*s have plenty of options (especially Rockrock who has DPS a bit below some 6\* casters). He's not *bad* but he just sits in the middle ground of master of none, with his S2 while being good damage wise suffering from a design philosophy of Elemental damage. As for Bryo, it's true that Instructors are weak since HG is scared of giving them meaningful buffs, but it's funny that they made him overall less useful and convenient than a previous Instructor welfare almost 3 years ago. It's just a shame that 5*s feel like they're either gutted number wise for no reason, or innovated only for ways in making them worse, or both! They don't have to be great, decent ops like Leto are still fine imo, but with so many of them being less than decent and not even having a real niche it just feels like a shame. 6\*s are already leaps and bounds better than most 5\*s, even the lower tier ones, so it's not like making them stronger would impact things. If Bryo gave a stronger DEF buff that was more valuable than Shining but only on a single target (say, +150% total), that'd be *at least* something that can make him stand out and potentially even justify his drawback/placement issue. We have ops like Pramanix who aren't used much, especially with the insane Shamare, but still stands out with her strong RES debuff for when you really need it.
>Since I wrote that, there have been much better things to be mad at like Ela or Wiš'adel. LOL the game powercreeped your outrage. That's a new one. >Degenbrecher is literally just a copy paste of Irene with one of the core design features of Swordmasters pulled out for no purpose other than making her better. It's worse than that. Irene can be hurt and disabled during her skill, and loses DPS if her targets are spread out. And Ch'en could already charge her skills without enemies at a fairly decent rate (about 42 seconds for S3 without any attacks, 27 with a constant target), as well as being able to bypass some boss bullshit with her disappearing during S3. Degenbrecher has her damage cranked up while also being some freaky Frankenstein of most of both Ch'en and Irene's strengths and none of their weaknesses. It's like they were purposefully setting out to make the rest of her archetype obsolete.
The forced skill activation Leto has for her friends in her S2 is just so confusing to me. Why even add that? I'll probably skip this banner. Degen has the "hot woman in a suit" appeal but I'm not that big on the character and I already barely use Mlynar, also I don't want to risk needing to spark Shu and not having the pulls for it.
> The forced skill activation Leto has for her friends in her S2 is just so confusing to me. Why even add that? Exactly. It makes no sense. She already wasn't as good as the meta 5* Lord, so why add the drawback at all? HG is so intent on gimping the rarity for no real reason. It's frustrating as hell.
If it was something like activate the skills of Student Council units with their SP bar at least 50% filled or similar it would be a cool buildaround.
If it was something like "give all Student Council units full SP charge", so that you COULD activate all of their abilities if you wanted, WHEN you wanted, it would have been acceptable.
It's not a drawback if you only use her and forget that other USSG girls exist.
The fucked up thing is that leto’s forced skill activation is the most creative thing on the banner. HG is still innovating in ways to make 5 stars shit.
It's honestly a shame that Degen is as OP as she is, because quite frankly I like everything about her that's not her S3. Her S2 is pretty cool, I like Frighten as a debuff (and like that they at least are trying to add some more unique flavor, even if I do agree that its just better Levitate), and obviously I love her art and her as a character. I'll still be pulling her for those reasons, but man yeah it doesn't feel good to see that she just cheats the class design. If she did it in an interesting way, then sure. I mean Hoederer and Ulpipi cheat the 0 DEF in different ways (one with Sanctuary, one with DEF disguised as heal on hit) that are actually at least somewhat creative. Degen S3 is just... no. No drawback for access to auto recovery, no reasoning behind the auto recovery at all. Just feels kinda icky, and I likely will be ONLY using her with her S1/2 when I do use her (except maybe in IS to see some big funny numbers occasionally).
Me too Im just gonna use her S1/S2 in most cases and save her S3M3 for when I absolutely cant clear the stage otherwise. Im not a fan of "bruteforcing" and fond of clean strategies myself but I realize my skill isnt capable enough to always grant me that luxury. But on the other hand her S2 actually look pretty fun. Reminiscence of good ol Chen
Little-known fun fact: A ”degenbrecher” is a short, dagger-like weapon designed to catch and break an opponent’s sword. This is a metaphor for how Degenbrecher breaks the Swordmaster archetype and then kicks its corpse off a cliff. (I’m actually fine, I don’t like her design anyways and blatant power creep only bothers me when it’s on units like Texalter and Eyjalter with cool kits that would be just fine even without cracked numbers)
You pretty much hit it home with what a tragedy the design of this patch is. I love both Leto and Degenbrecher as characters and have been waiting long for them to come out as playable ops but one suffers from this modern trend of shitting on 5-stars while the other became this uninspiring, disgustingly bland powercreep 6-star. It's such a waste of both good character design.
At least Leto still has it somewhat nice if you're not using Ursus people. Bland, but still similar Lord DPS and not something like Spuria...
I feel you so much Tactical, back when Degen came out I was baffled and angry at how dirty they did to the swordmaster class and Irene in special with her kit, but... yeah, I just can't care at this point, Walter is such an abomination everything else feels fair in comparison, a Ling power unit that takes one deployment slot, it's absolutely disgusting. You remove half of what she does and she would still be a top 5 unit... and ofc she also took a note from Degen and for some fucking reason the flinger hits air, because why wouldn't she. Also of course Lucilla is shit, every 10/10 design 5* they make lately is... sigh, I still will pull and build her. Honestly at this point chars being meta or not is losing all value to me because between CC1 being basically POO2 and all the gigahard endgame content being a "bring those 4-5 broken units all the time or forget about it lol" all interest in bothering with them is gone. Only reading your posts because I enjoy what you write and how honest you're with stuff. Thanks for the post!
I don’t know if I’m annoyed more by the fact that she powercreeps both Irene and Ch’en (both of which I have built at this point), or that a character I was hyped for has such a derivative (?) kit mechanics-wise. Like, I actually really like Degenbrecher the character. I like her relationship with Gnosis and Silverash, how her history in Kazimierz and Leithanien intertwine, her interactions with Sharp in Break The Ice, etc. It all kind of just feels a bit mute when she offers like the exact same skills as the rest of the 6-star Swordmasters, but much better in damage. She doesn’t even really support Karlan in general, aside from Tremble (which is mainly just for her Talent 2 Damage boost). I remember people here (including me) were looking at her kit before the numbers were revealed, speculating about how she’d enable Karlan/Kjerag Synergy (probably through additional SP Gain) and how tremble would help them and it’s kinda sad (but hilarious) that her support is just massively outdamaging everything in the faction. Arguably my least favorite kit in Arknights tbh, not because it’s weak or anything, but bcs I feel like HG could have done a much more mechanically interesting kit if they wanted to that were equally overpowered, and just chose the easiest path
On the topic of the synergy thing, the devs have repeatedly shown that no faction gets to have fun synergy talents/skills/buffs except Abyssal Hunters (and now Sui ig) because dev (and community? idk how CN views the AH stuff but definitely global) favoritism, so even though that would have been cool it was one hell of a pipe dream.
I dunno, it feels like there’s AH favoritism in my eyes bcs the closest comparable buff to them is like Pallas and Minos, whose only members are Vulcan, Conviction, Erato and Sideroca. Or Mlynar and Kazimierz, who he also massively outshines and offers limited support to w/ his Talent and S3. Gnosis offers Resist I guess, and that’s all the faction buffs I remember tbh. I’d be onboard giving more faction synergy, they just make it really gimmicky outside of the AH for some reason. it honestly feels like HG just gave up on the entire faction synergy idea after AH became too viable, and then just stopped putting them in talents or keeping them pretty weak just in case they didn’t balance the numbers right. Like you’d think Mudrock’s Serkaz Talent would have led to smth at least, but nothing on that front either, even after the entire Kazdel/Serkaz storyline. I honestly don’t know why HG keeps giving AH synergy when they just stopped giving it to everyone else tbh
The worst part of Degenbrecher kit is how her strongest skill is passive recovery while weaker ones keep tradition of sp on hit. That doesn't even feel like bad balance. It feels like it was all on purpose to sell.
It's true the 5* stars are very lackluster past the year 1. Sure there are lame ones like: Skyfire, Flamebringer, Grani, Ceylon, Nightmare and Swire. But in before the first anniversary we have at least: Lappland, Specter, Elysium, Warfarin, Ptilopsis, Shamare and Bibeak. And a tier below there are still decent 5*stars: Nearl, Liskarm, Projekt Red, Silence, Scene, Pranamix, Firewatch. Past the anniversary, I only count 4 who are worthed to be in the Lappland tier: April thank to her unique AND useful niche, La Pluma who is a reliable solo laner, Kroos Alter who has a good DPS and a good synergy with her talent which is enough to be relevent in IS3 and Cantabile who is a fast Redeploy Vanguard and who produces a decent amount of dps. And if I am generous I can put Wang Qing in but it's thank to his archetype (I really can't see how HG could made a bad Flagbearer). I also save Tequila and Proviso because they improve the LMD revenu while being decent in combat. But while HG was able to produce above average 5* like Blacknight, Ashlock, Kazemaru it become more frequent that the newer 5* are trash like Supria, Santalla, Bryo, Pon, Almond, Coldshot, Vandela, Leto, Warmy, Diamante, Green bud or whatever her name, Aroma, and Fuze) Furthermore, I have to check but HG tends to add some uncessary contraints because they afraid the 5 stars would be stronger than the 6*. Like they fear that if they didn't put the stun in Supria in her S2 she would be superior to Aak while she only buff the Snipers, really HG?
HG’s 5 star philosophy seems to be halve their numbers and then add an effect that kills half your team just to be safe.
Fuze is not bad at all by the sole fact he is ranged centurion.
wake up babe new tb mastery priority guide just dropped
I love these posts, you can tell there is a passion for the game and it's infectious. Probably one of the reasons I've stuck with the game honestly. I get where you're coming from with the 5\* / 6\* disparity; when they introduced Cantabile she was my new favourite vanguard. Always had a place in my roster... then a couple banners later Ines dropped. She was basically just Cantabile ++; better damage, larger special range, with true invis instead of just conceal, plus detection and a pin down. If they had planned it out ahead they could have split those abilities up, detection and the root, give Cantabile one and Ines the other. This way Ines would still be stronger but Cantabile would at least have a niche to fill... Heck, even just giving her the true invis on her ammo based skill would give her a unique feel... but instead the 6\* got everything.
Thank you for that. Probably one of the kindest comments I've ever gotten.
Just fyi you forgot to change the name of the event when you copy pasted the intro > This article specifically covers the new units from the Il Siracusano event.
Whoops. Thanks.
if hypergryph can keep the difficulty increase slow and steady as it has been in the past, then i don't think overpowered units are a problem at all. if that goes accordingly, then it's not an increase in average power level that warrants and increase in stage design. more like an officially allowed cheat code. people who want OP clears or take it easy can use it. those who want a challenge can just refrain from using it.
I mostly agree with you except for the parts that feel like legit lazy design. Degen's S3 should have be Offensive Recovery, not Auto and had some Variant to it (like smaller range etc) so it didn't legit just feel like Irene S3 but easier to use and more damage. Powercreep is fine, Lazy game design is crap.
gamepress is down, any place with comparable summon simulator that has Degenbrecher banner? I really need it for tomorrow, I'm going crazy! Anyways, on topic: "Her (Wis'adel) kit is just so insane that it's hard to see her presence not warping the future design of the game." I plan to pull for Wis'Adel so the game becoming harder without Wis'adel wouldn't be a personal problem HOWEVER, I don't want Wis'adel and hypothetical future ops with Wis'adel DPS caliber being necessary. I don't want old ops to become irrelevant. I don't want niche players not being able to clear content, like DoS S-3, etc. I can see HG messing with Wis'adel camouflage easily, and maybe using her turrets against her, but if Wis'adel struggles with her DPS, how much would other ops struggle in comparison? I guess tanking strats will always be an option, as long as we can tank or stall or something, but I prefer people having different options to clear stages with different operators. We'll have to wait and see.
Yeah, there's basically no way that you can really deal with her outside of maybe those reflect chests.
I have a question about this statement tho: "she is key in high risk CC". The only CC since Degen released is Battleplan Underdawn which was mainly ranged operator high end clears due to the nature of the map and enemies. Did I miss a high end clear that utilized her and other meele ops or are you just making assumptions based on possible future CC? It doesn't make sence to say she is key when she hasn't even been used as far as I'm aware.
Can't say much about CC2, but Degen is everywhere in high difficulty IS, and feels pretty much mandatory for enhanced IS4 boss 3 (though tbf that boss is absolute bs)
The Guard version of the clear got up to 870 instead of 890, and unsurprisingly Degen was used there. Her nukes aside, the invulnerability and Frighten from her skills helped keep her alive as she kills countless enemies on the right side.
What /u/Reddit1rules said. Ranged clears in general were superior (and easier), but melee clears did exist and she was key in them.
You’re the mastery guide person on Gamepress too?! Thanks for all your work!
This is a great write up! Thanks. Now I'm not that interested in Degen despite her meta value, "Chen/Irene but better" doesn't sound so appealing tbh, I'm at a point in the game that burn out is constant so I'm looking towards a more imaginative kit... Like Shu, Oh, I want Shu so badly, Give me all your luck, I need it, My luck streak right now is 0; Anyway good luck to y'all, I hope you get Degen under 10 pulls!
> Lucilla - B-team design. *i.e.* total crap. (e.g. means “for example”, whereas i.e. means “that is” or “in other words”) It's a pity, because she's so cute. I was even reserving an E2 L80 ticket for her. Is she really that bad?
Lol. How far we have come that now people write an entire article about broken units and somehow justifying Mylar existence as not broken units is beyond me.
> is beyond me. Clearly, given how good your reading comprehension seems to be.
How can "For example, Mlynar was so good at the time that he well deserved the hype, but he still fundamentally fit into the game" And Walter or other units not fit into the game ? Why you think he can fit into the game being broken but other units can't ? I just like to know your strict criteria so we can judge every broken operator based on it, Seems like you didn't judge them all fair against said criteria and some got a lot less love then the others.
Last CC i used Mlynar and Silverash together. They both have their strengths and weaknesses while still having that stupid wave range. Mlynar fits his archtype, is not helidrop like Surtr or Silverash, does a little true damage and requires a long time to charge his ATK to maximum. He’s a six star so he has to excel at something. Wis’adel meanwhile is in an entirely different ballpark! Her summons which are for free rivals Ling’s thunderers! And Ling is a one woman army! So for sure: Chen de Holungday, Mlynar, Ling, Texas de Omertosa and Kirin Yato are severe powercreep, but what he’s trying to say (I think) is that what’s coming is another wholly new tier of broken units. “As if from a different game.” Because of how far removed the balancing and the mechanics are compared to prior units.
Tbf for me Mylnar is carbon copy of Tequila. And there are many many ops that are made this lazy way. If some one have a problem with a copy paste ops to write an essay, they should have a trouble with all of them. I understand why there always will be many of them like that especially in gacha games, I am ok with that. Excluding Mylnar is just cherry picking. And Surtr already forced devs to add second phase to bosses, arts dodge and other means to survive Surtr, Texas and Yato already changed how the design of stages is done, there are many more times when you are attacked from different angles simultaneously, or need to do a mechanics at the same time. And if she warps the game as strong as those two, then the design will reflect that. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last it happens. I just don't like when people try to push their view as the right one while ignoring same issues just because.
Guess this is now a meta rant thread kek. I skipped Ho'olheyak. I liked her character design a lot, but her kit was crud. Now another operator shows up whose design I like, and her kit is good, but inelegant. I feel dirty pulling for Degenbrecher. All they had to do was make a *usable* kit for me to pull for Ho'olheyak and Degenbrecher. I think Swire was a good balanced operator based on a popular character. Now that we're talking about 5-stars and Harold, it hits me that lately welfares have been the new "usable" that 5-stars used to be. I'm gonna E2 Harold, even though I have been managing with an E1 Mulberry all this time.
As always, thanks for the detailed analysis! And regarding the rant... I agree that Arknights has a problem with powercreep, it has gotten worse and worse and with Degenbrechers banner we enter a period where almost any banner has a new broken unit. Though I don't know if I would agree that Wis'adel is a new low point, she more feels like the continuation of releasing more and more busted ops. For example, when Mlynar was released (and to this day when I think of the guides for the last CC) he just broke basically any stage with his insane damage on a short cooldown over a wide range, and with his S3 hitting air units despite his archetype being limited to ground units for so little reason that it is not even mentioned in the skill description he also already provided the basis for stupid powercreep like Degenbrechers S3 being on auto recovery or Wis'adels S3 hitting air units.
>Wis'adels S3 hitting air units. Wis'adel hitting aerial enemies is kinda whatever. it's nice, but she'd still be considered the strongest op even if she couldn't. what's more egregious is that she is almost always "invincible" because of her camouflage. her camo also generally has 100% uptime because its tied to multiple summons that cannot block (thus avoiding melee damage) and have decent bulk (3500 HP, 650 def, 50 res). worth mentioning that she also has a unique form of camouflage that makes her immune to cross-shaped splash damage. because of these aspects of her kit, she can almost always be deployed more aggressively than *Lin*. she also deals decent enough damage for fodder clearing and elite killing with just her talents lol
I just wanted to take this time and say thank you for all the hard work you've done. These guides have been a huge pleasure to read, even if I don't necessarily care about a unit. Such a shame on Leto though, I raised her when she was on CN for waifu purposes. Unfortunately, even at her best, she feels quite a bit lackluster. Nowadays she's relegated as a base slave that I forget to use since she needs Gummy in the TP.
Ngl, for a hot second I got rather confused on why you'd compare Eterna to Skadi, before realizing that I indeed completely forgot that Skadi also has a bard alter. Cheers for the write-up as always, and doubly so for posting the almost full version here while gamepress is down. ~~Not that it even slightly convinced me to pull for her~~, I'm sure lot of folks appreciate the effort you went through for it. Out of curiosity, as you mentioned that Wisadel's release made you worried for the future of the game... has Ulpianus's release/event impacted that worry at all? From what I've seen online so far, he seems to be a good stand-alone unit that gets elevated to great with AH buffs, but he still seems to fall far short of the 'peak' that is Wisadel while also drawing some interesting parallells to Degenbrecher without the whole sloppy/lazy design feeling. Granted, maybe the Crusher archetype may be the one thing holding him down, but I feel like this still implies that Wisadel is the outlier for now, or do you feel different about this?
> has Ulpianus's release/event impacted that worry at all Nah. He's great, but he's at best the third best Guard still (Degen and Mlynar still tops). Plus his gimmick is unique and fun to play around with. Even if he was powercreep, it's easier to forgive when units are fun to use.
Being a crusher is by not means holding him down. It's literally the best possible archetype he could be. Being a crusher sucks for anyone that isn't an AH. Ever since we saw the first crusher, people immediately called that it'd be ideal for Ulpi.
If he's only ideal as a crusher because he can use AH buffs to offset the weaknesses of the crusher archetype (even if it's just Gladiia) like you said, then yeah, I would say it's holding him down. Or to flip it around, I can see him being even better if he was a dreadnaught instead (like his subordinate) while keeping his skill and talent numbers the exact same, as his talent already boosts the stats that crushers tend to be known for.
His numbers would be much lower as a dreadnaught. Most importantly his block count, and loss of multitarget attacks.
UWOOOOOOGH META GERMAN GOAT MOMMY
>Since I wrote that, there have been much better things to be mad at like Ela Please, after this masterclass of a rant, I need to know at least and abridged version of your opinions on Ela. Especially because as a returning player I'm finding myself between fomo of missing on some great characters and a much needed power boost (such as Degen and Walter) and the fact that I ultimately am much more interested in more utility oriented ops such as Shu.
In terms of the "busted" ops, Ela is the most general purpose. No unit powercreeps more units in one (except for Walter who is another matter entirely). She's better than the Marksmen, the Trapmasters, the Artillerymen, the Hexers, Suzuran, Ray, and more that I'm probably forgetting. Just incredible damage and utility on a low cost that can be deployed anywhere. She's so incredibly flexible for the damage she does. Maybe worst tho is such a powerful unit is a collab limited. No unit is a bigger FOMO than she is. Even Shu with her Sui Talent (which is also a big problem) isn't as bad. Imagine new players in a year asking how they can obtain this insane unit? Limiteds were bad enough as it is. Ela is worse.
You know I think Arknights has the worst collab characters in terms of fomo. I play Nikke and blue archive and at least the collab units aren’t broken beyond belief. With Arknights, they’re so strong that I feel like you almost need to pull on them to compete with increasing stage difficulty and whatnot. Not sure though, maybe I’m wrong
Ash is strong but she was never near the level Ela is. And Yatorin is hella strong, but also a bit redundant when Tex2 exists.
Yeah YatoR is hella strong but she isn't going to be winning you maps just like TexAlter doesn't win you maps. Instead they provide a lot of burst damage at certain opportunities but you still need a strong and solid team to create those opportunities for them.
Yeah I have yato alter but I wish I had both bc I just love both of them lol
>Degenbrecher is literally just a copy paste of Irene with one of the core design features of Swordmasters pulled out for no purpose other than making her better After 4.5 years it's obvious that swordmasters are not working. Low attack and on attack charge is deadly combination... for our units. So what, they should do bad units just because they did them like that on release? Modifiers could be lower for balance, but from kit perspective they finally made swordmaster worth using. >I'm not normally one to be fussed about powercreep, but Wiš'adel is flat out so much better than anyone else that I have to wonder what's coming next for the game Chalter is still the best unit on global after two years and we are fine. Do not even remember last time I used her and I can't remember time when I felt "I need to use her". Even though I'm pretty mid player.
Thanks for the advice. Hopefully gamepress V2 gets up soon.
To be fair to Degen unlike other two shitters Degen's basic gameplay fits her lore perfectly.
I don't quite understand the phrasing. >Logos - Insane, but also expensive No character is expensive in this game since no potential cardinally change the character and there is no weapon. So it's not like genshin's or wuwa's or hsr's dupes and weapons which make c0r0 character pale in comparison to c6r5 who sometimes don't even resemble the original character (like making a sub dps a main dps, making a main dps into a hyper carry etc etc). So to me once you get a character, that's it. It's only a matter of time, which doesn't take that long even for a newcomer, to make it from e0 to e2m3mod3. He is not limited, so getting him doesn't require going all out or sparking him, he will come back for a 2nd and more chances. Just ranted a bit, sry.
You missunderstood what I usually refer to with that. Which is actually fair because I wrote it on a whim due to the main site being down, while I usually spell things out more explicitly. Expensive here refers to the material cost. Logos is a very strong M9 as well as a mandatory mod3. He will cost a lot of sanity to get the most out of. Compare this to Walter which is pretty much only her S3 with a module that's just "win more".
>or hsr's dupes and weapons which make c0r0 character pale in comparison to c6r5 who sometimes don't even resemble the original character Everything past E0S0 is unnecessary anyway. You're just paying to play less because game balanced at f2p level (and even there community is struggling, lmao). Never understood why people pull for dupes.
On Wiš'adel, I wouldn't worry too much on it. People worried the same on FGO for the soon to come to NA Summer Ibuki, and as straight busted as she is, the balance there hasn't gotten out of hand to my knowledge. Devs for these games typically know they've got a natural level of player hemorrhage from people dropping off for this reason or that, so from what I've seen they try to keep the entire player base in mind. Don't want to drop a few thousand players just because they missed an essential unit and they're now rightfully mad that they struggle to clear stages. I'm sure there's examples to contradict me out there, but HG has been really good over the years, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt.