#cephaloswag

[cerastes]

hey, so i got skadi (intentional) and ch'en (unintentional), from the current global pool, and while i kinda understand what skadi does, can you explain ch'ens niche? what exactly seperates swordmaster guards from other damage dealers?

Swordmasters specialize in Burst Damage specifically.

Swordmasters charge all their skills through Offensive, meaning, 1 SP per attack, and they hit twice each normal attack, but it still counts as one attack for SP charge (note I say 1 SP per attack, not per hit). Meaning, if they don't have enemies to hit, they are dead in the water in terms of charging. Additionally, their Attack stat is a tad low to compensate for the fact that they double hit, meaning that high Defense walls them harder than it does others, at least when it comes to their normal attacks... But certainly not when it comes to their Skills, because hoo boy, they get fat multipliers on those. Swordmasters are all about their Skills. Swordmasters are also one of the few types of Guards that has 2 Block instead of 1 (most of them) or 3 (Centurions, Liberators when skill is active), giving them some measure of lane utility. Swordmasters live or die by their Skills.

Now, how does Ch'en specifically work? She's the first Swordmaster in the game, actually, and it shows to some degree: Her stat Talent is not noteworthy, just a bit of Phys Evasion and some minor stat ups, but her other Talent is the important one: Every four seconds, all Operators on the field that charge their Skill Offensively or Defensively get 1 SP. That makes her and other Swordmasters like her Not Dead In The Water SP-wise, but it's also not really a replacement for attacks as much as a little balm to soothe the edge off during off-time. Ch'en's use will depend on what Skill you equip her with: With S2M3, you can helidrop her and use it instantly for a big burst of damage that also hits air units, and I'd say this is the best use for Ch'en, as a heavyweight helidrop burst. Her S1 is a short charge steroid hit (every 4 hits at M3) that deals decent damage and Stuns, but this usually does not see much use. Her S3, which was definitely what they intended to be her big breakout skill, is the flashing one thousand cuts kind of move that deals several heavy hits and finishes with a Stunning hit. The only problem with it is that it takes a year to charge, even at M3: 30 whole SP (with 20 pre-charge on deploy).

Now, this all sounds great on paper, right? Huge hits at the cost of some difficulty charging these huge hits, right? Well, the problem is, Ch'en is kind of unwieldy, and this is what I mean when I say it shows she's the first Swordmaster: Cutter, the 4* Swordmaster, is just perfectly crafted, with less damage potential but the ability to shoot it MUCH more reliably thanks to low SP costs and her deceptively good Talent that sometimes gives her extra SP per attack. Her Module also gives her a Flat DEF ignore per hit (not attack, hit), meaning that her autoattacks are also significant and she's less walled against higher DEF foes. Bibeak trades damage potential for Crowd Control, and is indeed an incredibly interesting Operator in that she's weaker the easier the map, because her Crowd Control isn't really valuable in general content, but on high-end content? That's where she shines, because her ability to constantly fire out Stuns makes her a VERY reliably diagonal deploy or supported cornerstone. Irene, the second 6* Swordmaster, has a 50% chance of ignoring half of the enemies' DEF on every instance of Physical damage she deals, so not only on hit, but also on ALL of her Skills, and this chance increases to 100% if the enemy she's hitting is aerial, meaning that the second hit of her S1 ALWAYS ignores half of the enemy's DEF since her first hit makes the enemy Float (unless the enemy is one of the perhaps 3 or 4 enemies immune to Float), and the entire first half of her S3 barrage will also ignore half of the enemy's DEF. Irene also gets to choose if she wants to rapid-fire skills (S1 and S2), hold charges so as to not waste attacks (S2) or if she wants her big fuckbomb attack (S3), making her an easy M9 Operator that's as versatile as you can make use of her, without sacrificing her huge damage potential.

You could very much say that Ch'en walked so every other Swordmaster could sprint and win Olympic Gold. This is a very common thing with launch and near-launch Operators, mind you: Eyjafjalla was the other way around, being so stupidly overtuned that she made sure no other 6* Core Caster could conceivably exist unless made radically different (Ceobe and Ho'olheyak) as well as just invalidating the entirety of the Splash Caster archetype.

In any case. Ch'en. Nowadays, if we're strictly speaking about highest level play and, ahem, The Meta, then Ch'en sits at the very top of that mountain, boasting high usage and being a core member of a lot of teams when it comes to the highest level con-- Oh, oops, sorry, all of that just now concerns her highly reviled limited swimsuit alternative version, original Ch'en Forma Well Drawn is, unfortunately, not particularly strong. She's far from weak, and in fact her S2M3 was a popular meta skill back then, for helidropping and static purposes both! But as the game went on, her split Phys and Arts damage became more of a liability than an advantage. Not only that, but, well, the mother of all helidrops was released not too long after, Surtr, whose S3 is... Well, it still defines the way Hypergryph has to design enemies nowadays because of how strong it is. And as more options became available, Ch'en fell off: She didn't have the Specter Factor, the Ptilopsis Factor, the Perpetually Relevant Factor, if you will.

Of course, she's not weak, she can still pack a punch with her S2 (used in Helidrops or as a static skill when you need faster firing rate than S3) and S3 (her big, slow skill that'll deal insane damage to a single target, provided you can make sure only they are in firing range, as it distributes hits randomly to targets in range), it's just the natural progression of the game, both in terms of enemies and Operators, have left her behind and out of top level play, but if you like her, she'll still do her job pretty damn well if you can put up with her high maintenance, such as high SP costs, split damage typing, and not a whole lot of bulk to actually tango with the things she'd want to charge up a Skill against, meaning that usually she'll only get a single pre-charged skill off (mind you, this is a problem all Swordmasters face, but Ch'en has the worst of it whereas the other Swordmasters, particularly Bibeak, have means to mitigate this) before exploding violently unless you use her as a diagonal (and whether you can use her as a diagonal depends on the map). I personally find her Auto Offensive/Defensive SP Charge Talent fun to have in the team, as it enables plenty of other powerful Operators to be even goofier: You've never seen an episode of Beyblade as exciting as putting Ch'en, Blemishine and Mudrock on the field and letting Mudrock do like a Dark Soul 1 player and spin to win, or watch as your Blue Poison's S1M3 fires notably more often thanks to that little oomph that Ch'en gives her with that Talent.

[cephalopodding]

ARTFIGHTS .. oc owners in alt text