#unit reviews

[saltylords]

Alright! Let’s do a unit review! Just for funsies!

(These are just my opinions that I made while looking at usability with the wiki’s information. Do not kill me if it’s not what you’d like to hear.)

Let’s start with Rena•Kaede!

Connect: Damage Up (40%), Chance to Crit (70%), Regen HP (8%/3 Turns)

Magia: Attribute Strengthened Damage to All, Attack Up (Allies/3 Turns/27.5%), MP Restore (Self/16 MP), Damage Cut (Self/1 Turn/20%)

Magia 2: Attribute Strengthened Damage to All, Attack Up (Allies/3 Turns/42.5%), MP Restore (Allies/20%*), Damage Cut (Self/1 Turn/40%)

*The wiki said 20% MP gain, so I’m not sure if it meant 20% of MP or just 20 MP total.

All in all, she’s a magia unit, so her defense and hp aren’t the best (wet paper pre SE), but they’re workable. Her attack is excellent and her disk spread, while not that of an accel gorilla, is still excellent for magia building like Vampire Kanagi.

Now let’s look at her SE spread. We’ll ignore the MP Boosts and Doppel Adepts and focus on the others. For starters, she’s got a passive anti magia seal which is important for her as a magia unit. It’s not a problem that comes up much, with the exception of some high level challenge battles.

She has two nodes that take advantage of her two charge disks, charged disk damage up (10%) and charged attack damage up (10%). Charged disk damage up gives charge disks extra damage when used while charged attack give extra damage when using up a charge count with an accel or blast dick. Pretty good. Add the passive damage up node (10%) and they’re doing some pretty good damage!

She’s also got two nodes of Magia damage up that add up to an extra 15% damage up to the doppel adept and an accel MP up (12.5%), which you’d expect from a Magia unit. That’s good.

But her active SE is really meh. Damage up (10%) and Magia damage up (12.5%) for one turn. With an 8 turn cooldown, it’s really a wimpy active, but it does synergize well with the unit.

Her magia and Doppel do looots of damage with attribute strengthened damage and to add to that, she gives the team attack up and MP restore to all with her doppel. Plus a nice defense boost with damage cut. Very good effects on a unit that will reach magia easily.

Her connect is fine, I guess. Damage up is good because not many girls have this with their connect and it helps if you max out the attack cap. Critical hit chance (70%) is meh. Good, but has its chance to fail. And finally HP regen (8%) for three turns. Which if you’re stacking on top of other HP regens is alright, but underwhelming. This connect is a bit all over the place, but in a good way.

All in all, a unit that does as advertised of her type with some nice bonuses with her magia and doppel.

Armored Swimsuit Mami

Connect: Attack Up (40%), Guaranteed Fog, Guaranteed Skill Seal, Chance to Bind (60%)

Magia: Attribute Strengthened Damage to All, Burn (All/3 Turns), Magia Damage Up (20%/5 Turns)

Doppel: Attribute Strengthened Damage to All, Burn (All/3 Turns), Magia Damage Up (35%/5 Turns)

Look at all that metal... I would not want to clean off the rust after a day at the beach, that’s for sure!

Anyway, swimsuit Mami suffers, not from rust (that too probably), but from lack of MP building effects like MP gain up or accel MP up. Her SE mitigates that a little by having a passive MP regen (9 MP), but aside from that, she could use some memoria to help out!

She’s also an attack type, so she suffers from wet paper defense and subpar HP. Her SE helps a little, but not all that much.

Having an AABBC spread makes her very flexible on either helping magia teams or blast teams, especially since she has two blast up nodes (33% total) that help her do good damage on blast. And of course a small single magia node (7.5%) that helps boost her attribute strengthened damage magia and doppel!

So her magia... it’s not the worst! Attribute strengthened damage for both magia and doppel is excellent and burn is a good second level status ailment! And a five turn magia damage up is pretty good (20% at magia and 35% at doppel)! But that’s pretty much all. No healing, no team buffs, just burn and magia damage up to self. It’s a bit underwhelming.

Let’s move on to her connect! It’s actually pretty nice! Attack up, guaranteed fog, guaranteed skill seal, and a chance bind (60%)! So if the bind chance fails, the guaranteed fog helps to keep enemies from hitting you! Well, mostly! And skill seal helps with challenge enemies like AI who buff themselves with things like critical hit and defense pierce to knock your girls every three turns. It’s very helpful, if a little situational.

Since she’s an attack type, she has attack type SE nodes like chance to critical hit (15%), anti evade (35%), and evade (15%) which are meh, since all attack types have these nodes at these values and are nothing special. She also has a bind chance (15%) which is good occasionally, but not very high. So it also ends up being kinda meh.

Her SE active is actually pretty good! Attack up (20%) and guaranteed burn for one turn! And the cooldown isn’t all that terrible at seven turns! Just to remind people, burn is a second level status ailment that does 10% HP damage up to 10,000 HP per turn and afflicts the target with 80% more damage taken from the element it’s weak against. So she can hit extra hard on water enemies!

Aquagirl Sakurako

Connect: Damage Up (40%), Remove Status Ailments

Magia: Damage to All, Damage Up (Allies/3 Turns/32.5%), Charged Damage Up (Allies/3 Turns/25%), Remove Status Ailments (Allies)

Magia 2: Damage to All, Damage Up (Allies/3 Turns/47.5%), Charged Damage Up (Allies/3 Turns/40%), Remove Status Ailments (Allies)

Aquagirl Sakurako, while having the drawbacks of support type stats, still manages be a somewhat good unit. Not because of her SE, no that’s pretty bad. Mostly because of her magia and doppel.

Her magia and doppel give her allies damage up and charged damage up for three turns. She would actually pair up nicely with Swimsuit Rena/Kaede, since they both have a good amount of charge and accel disks and Rena/Kaede give team attack up with their magia. Not to mention other charge girls like Jun that add extra charge disks with charge combos. With her magia, she makes a pretty good charge support!

Her connect is not good. Damage up is nice, in case you hit the attack cap, but the only other thing she does is clear status ailments, which is very situational. Clearing status ailments seems to be this unit’s strong point, but without something like HP restore added to it, this connect comes up weak.

So like I said, her SE is nothing special. Regular things support types get, like Damage Cut (10%) and skill quicken (15%). But she does have anti magia seal and anti skill seal which are good things to have since she can reach magia easily. Not to mention her chance to fog (15%/3 turns) which, while not as good as darkness or dazzle, makes some attacks miss while lasting multiple turns! Good for avoiding damage!

Some extra things she has are a magia damage up (7.5%), accel MP up (12.5%), and charged disk damage up (10%). Much like Rena/Kaede, but not as good.

And then we have her active. It’s not particularly good, but it’s something. Defense down (15%) and light defense down (18%) for three turns. It’s basically the light version of Mikage’s SE active. Which isn’t terrible, but unremarkable. Especially with its 10 turn cooldown.

All in all, Sakurako’s strength lies in her magia, since her SE and connect have let her down. But that’s ok because she’s meant to be a team player, not a solo combatant!

[waheelawhisperer]

Integrated Strategies Unit Review: Gladiia

Time for me to review another favorite unit. Gladiia is basically Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower but in fish, so it's no wonder I'm a big fan. I get a lot of use out of her in normal game modes, but unfortunately getting her to work in Integrated Strategies is a bit more difficult because of the mode's resource scarcity and luck-based nature. That said, she brings quite a bit to the table if you're willing to invest the Hope.

Versatility: Excellent. Gladiia is an extremely versatile unit. She can pull enemies into pits (or just away from your DPS), her third skill is a great crowd control option on a relatively low cooldown, she can attack aerial units, she heals herself, she can be placed on ranged tiles and melee tiles, and so on. Pulling and pushing are useful traits in this mode because a lot of the maps have pits, so a good Shift operator allows you to eliminate dangerous enemies with minimal risk or effort. In addition, Gladiia is good at holding lanes early game when you only have a few units and transitions effectively away from that role into a more utility/CC/damage-focused operator later on if you decide to promote her.

Self-sufficiency: Good. Gladiia doesn't need a lot of support early on. Thanks to her heal, range, ability to block 2 units at once, and the decent DPS she gets from her second skill, you can just plunk her down in a lane and let her hold it on her own. Later, she tends to struggle against the stronger enemies, especially if not promoted, and needs a healer, a front line, additional damage, and so on, but even then, she doesn't necessarily need to be protected the way some other units do.

Dependency Upon Promotion: Poor. To be effective lategame on maps where you don't specifically want a puller, Gladiia really needs her promotion. She wants the stats to keep performing as a pseudo-Guard, access to her third skill to provide additional utility and help clump enemies up for her damage dealers, and the masteries to improve her skill damage, uptime, and shift strength.

Sustain: Excellent. Gladiia's talent allows her to heal herself and offers the same benefits to any other Abyssal Hunters on the squad. It's key to holding early-game lanes and allows Gladiia to sit on the front lines while you build up the rest of your squad in preparation for the lategame.

Crowd Control/Utility: Excellent. Her utility is fantastic. In addition to pulling, her swirly lets her bully mobs like the football team bullied me in high school, pulling them together so your other units can beat them up and steal their lunch money. Some of the lategame stages like to throw a lot of units at you at once, so being able to stall waves long enough for your DPS to bring them down is very useful. Her CC is also on a fairly short cooldown, making it easy to chain/cycle with CC from other units.

Range: Good. Gladiia can't attack targets to the side of her without activating her second skill, but her range extends as far forward as your average antiair sniper, and she's able to hit aerial units on top of it. Skill 2 extends her range to the sides and allows her to cover a wider area.

Cost: Poor. The Hope cost is really Gladiia's biggest weakness. She's a 6-star that really wants her promotion, which means you have to spend 9 Hope to maximize her effectiveness. That's 9 Hope you aren't spending on the turbo-brokens like Thorns, Eyjahoweveryouspellit, Kal'tsit, or Ch'en Alter.

Boss-Killing: Adequate. Gladiia isn't really meant to be a boss-killer, but her swirly allows her to at least stall certain bosses while your DPS pounds on them, and the fact that it's Arts damage means she can take a good chunk out of enemies like Big Bob with high Def and low Res.

Overall: Good. Gladiia is a strong unit who's unfortunately held back by high Hope costs and a dependency on promotion to remain effective lategame. She brings a lot to the table and grants the player a great deal of flexibility early game, but she falls off a bit unless you make the necessary investment to keep her relevant and comes with a high opportunity cost. Every other puller will work almost as well purely for pulling enemies into pits, so you have to commit to using Gladiia to her utmost in order to justify spending your Hope on her instead of taking, like, Rope or something and then trying to grab another unit with your remaining Hope. That said, if you give Gladiia the resources she needs, she will reward you.

[waheelawhisperer]

Integrated Strategies Unit Review: Siege

Now that I've had some time to play the new game mode, I figured I'd share my thoughts on how various units performed. I'm not doing this to create any sort of tier list, nor am I trying to set the meta. I'm just reviewing the units I've used based on the criteria I set out when I posted my initial impressions. There are people with larger brains than mine who can figure out the meta much faster than I will, nor am I an expert on Integrated Strategies, so I'm just taking the chance to use units I like.

I'll be rating operators purely on the strength of their base kits rather than taking into account any synergy with items. This game mode is such a crapshoot that you can't reliably supplement your units with specific relics most of the time anyway, and an individual operator's effectiveness can vary wildly based on the contents of your inventory. I will consider each operator's Versatility, Self-Sufficiency, Dependency Upon Promotion, Sustain, Crowd Control/Utility, Range, Cost, and Boss-Killing Capability and assign each category a score of Poor, Adequate, Good, or Excellent before giving the operator an overall score.

Let's start with one of my old favorites, Siege. Saber Lion is the reason I started playing this game, and though Margaret Nearl has supplanted her at the top of my list of favorite units and the Vanguard meta in the main game isn't as friendly to her as it is to Bagpipe and the flagbearers, Siege is still very fun to use and has proven to be effective in the new game mode.

Versatility: Excellent. Siege is remarkably versatile for a Vanguard, with three solid skills that offer different things to a team. You'll probably get more use out of her S2 than anything else, since that combines high damage output with the ability to generate DP, but S1 has its uses on certain maps where positioning melee units to attack the enemies consistently is annoying and you just need DP to get your damage-dealers and medics out, and S3 lets her play the role of a Guard at need. Being able to flex roles is very valuable in a role where basically everything is a crapshoot, so Siege's adaptability is very nice.

Self-sufficiency: Good. Siege doesn't need a whole lot of help to do her job. Her high stats for a Vanguard let her serve as an early-game frontline while you build up your squad. Keep her HP topped off and she'll keep generating DP or caving in the skulls of particularly dangerous enemies.

Dependency Upon Promotion: Excellent. Siege benefits from access to her third skill and any masteries, but she doesn't need it. If you just need her to pump out DP, she'll do that just fine at E1. She benefits from access to additional stats

Sustain: Poor. Siege lacks any form of sustain and will require a healer in the long run.

Crowd Control/Utility: Good. It's not as reliable as some others, but a 40% chance to stun is nothing to sneeze at and can be layered on top of other CC if necessary. Her passive also gives a small stat buff to other Vanguards, which can be nice if you're running several of them.

Range: Poor. Siege is a melee unit and cannot attack aerial units.

Cost: Poor. Siege is a six-star unit, which means just recruiting her onto your team costs 6 Hope, and it's another 3 if you want to promote her.

Boss-Killing: Good. She's nowhere near as impressive as operators like Surtr or Schwarz, but Siege can serve as a boss-killer in a pinch with S3. The multiplier on that skill is absolutely massive, and if you give her a buff or two and let her go to town, she can take beefy enemies apart surprisingly quickly.

Overall: Good. If you're playing purely to maximize effectiveness and have an extensive roster, Siege is unlikely to ever be your optimal pick, but she's an interesting Vanguard and will pull her weight. I'll admit I have a soft spot for her, but I've been enjoying incorporating her into my team during my IS runs.