#probably she's gonna be a bit better as poison-type dps

[books-are-my-life-stuff]

This week’s Champion Stadium is done! It was a pretty interesting one too.

This is the first Champion Stadium run that I did not use Hop at all, even though he’s my most favorite. There are some fights that probably could have gone better if I used him, though.

Agatha: In hindsight, I should have used Hop as the main tank here so he could have buffed attack and crit. While I always associate him as the physical tank, but since Rachel could debuff Special Attack, he would have been fine. That said, Leon would appreciate someone who could regularly replenish his move gauge should he need one anyway, so Rosa it is, even though she’s weak to flying.

But yeah, weird team compilation aside, I’m just so so excited to use Christmas Leon in Champion Stadium ever since I got him, and I’m really glad that this opportunity comes, to show how kickass he is! He froze Agatha’s entire team and swept it with ease. Reminder that my Christmas Leon is only 1/5, yet he did incredibly well already. His debut Champion Stadium performance was so great, I’m really really happy to have the Unbeatable Galar Champion in my team.

Bruno: Decided to use the usual Steamroll team to fight against Bruno, even though I fully know Roxanne is weak to fighting. It went pretty much the same as usual: Roxanne went down, Giovanni quickly finished the fight before he went down too. Liza got crit-ed so she went down, but Bruno only had very little health left. I feel like there’s still something else that needs to be improved here, but I dunno what it is. Maybe investing more on Liza?

Lance: Don’t mind Plumeria, she’s just there to inflict poison and to reach the requirement to unlock Master Mode, since Ice, Poison, and Ground are the only types that I haven’t finished. I was considering to use Valerie since she’s an attacker, but other than her sync move, her other attacks aren’t really doing much. Sycamore could naturally outdamage her buffed attacks even without Geomancy, so I decided to use him as the main damager there. Of course, it went very slow since Sycamore didn’t have an attacking sync move, but it worked anyway, helped a bit by Plumeria’s poison statuses. Swimsuit Misty is there as healer. 

I was going to use Lillie as the main tank since she has Group Dragon Guard, but even with that, I don’t think she can take a lot of damage. Also, Sycamore should have been the main tank there, but Swimsuit Misty survived just fine. MPR proc-ed a lot on her Potions, so that helped everyone to survive as well (except Sycamore because he’s already so tanky that he didn’t need much help to survive). 

Lorelei: Been a while since the last time I used Wally, so I chose him as the main DPS. Knight Diantha as the main tank there while Leaf is the healer. I also wanted to make use of Wally’s EX to wipe the sides. Knight Diantha is just so good, she can tank while dealing lots of damage alongside Wally. Unfortunately I never intended to gear Knight Diantha as tank, so she got crit-ed by Lorelei. Thankfully, while Knight Diantha was close to going down (though she’s going to be healed by Leaf anyway), Wally could quickly finish the fight. 

Blue: Now, here’s an interesting one. Blue used Alakazam, so it’s gonna be mostly special attacker. I could have gone with the Hop and Anni N combo, but the parameter is increased effect of status conditions (and I chose Special Attack reduction parameter as second parameter). So, while I have decided this is gonna be mostly Lusamine’s fight, I changed the team around a little bit. As a result, Halloween Caitlin as the main tank, with BP Erika to inflict statuses. Not the most ideal because no healer (except from Halloween Caitlin’s sync move), but it works somehow.

Even though MPR didn’t proc on X. Sp. Def, Lusamine survived Blue’s sync move with 1/3 health, thanks to Halloween Caitlin’s barriers from her sync and her buffs that she could provide. BP Erika also helped to weaken the sides with status condition and let Lusamine finish them to get the Positive Reinforcement buffs.

Halloween Caitlin went down, but Blue only had very little health left. BP Erika could take a hit and let Lusamine finished the fight. Lusamine surviving is a miracle itself, but it’s even more of a miracle that she could survive in a team with minimum healing. Great job for surviving, Lusamine.

I only need to use Ground-type left to unlock Master Mode, and I only have Hapu. Hopefully next time there’s gonna be an opportunity to use Hapu in a team without her needing to do much, just like how I used Plumeria in this week’s Champion Stadium. 

Most importantly, hopefully I can clear the next Champion Stadium! As always, thanks for reading my weekly rambling!

[valeriannnn]

if youve ever wanted to think about what almost every major RWBY character would main in professional overwatch, then today is your lucky day! brought to you by hiatus, return of owl, and 3am delirium

RUBY - Star DPS.  Extremely flashy, always on the highlight reel.  Will play whatever is needed to pound the enemies into dirt, but also the type to say "fuck it ok guys trust me im gonna pop off" and swap to her signature widow/tracer to Pop Off.  Works unfailingly.  Team captain and emotional core.  Prefers mobile heroes and an unpredictable playstyle.

WhiteSnow - Flex Support/Flex DPS.  Put her on any sniper (including and especially Ana) and watch all hell rain down.  Methodical playstyle, favors high-utility heroes.  Aside from snipers, can often be found on Baptiste/Mei/Symmetra.  Enables teammates to make big plays, but often sacrifices her own presence in the killfeed for the benefit of the team as a whole.  Loves to maker opponents' lives a living hell with CC.  Line em up, knock em down.

Belladonna - Offtank.  Extremely attentive to her backline, constantly running interference and peeling for allies.  Impossible to catch off-guard.  Delights in thwarting the enemy team's plans and preventing them from making the plays they want to.  Excellent map awareness and always the one to touch point to preserve overtime.  Shotcaller.  Struggled with committing to risky/aggressive plays, but being on a reliable team has made her more comfortable performing her role and trusting her teammates to have her back.  Prefers mobile heroes but will adapt to any situation to work in perfect tandem with...

YangXiaoLong - Main Tank.  Could have been a DPS main but early on committed to tank role to enable her duo parter (and little sister) to pop off (and have shorter queue times).  Developed a real knack for controlling space and being a brick goddamn wall between her squishies and the enemy team.  Extremely aggressive playstyle, but has cooled down in recent years to be more of a team player.  Still loves to thrash about when given the opportunity.  Known for bold plays and phatty shatties.

Arc - Main Support.  Tried for years to be a DPS hotshot but was determinedly mediocre and got hard stuck in plat.  Persuaded by Pyrrha to pocket her for a few games, and discovered the depth and fulfillment of playing support to a well-coordinated team.  Nurtured his aptitude for assisting from the backline and quickly rose through the ranks.  Will play whatever is meta but will always be a Mercy main at heart.  Played Brig during GOATS.  Shotcaller.

Valkyrie - Doomfist.

Nikos - Main Tank.  Extremely methodical player, reknowned for big brain cerebral plays and unflappability.  Can be slow to push advantages, but never makes mistakes.  Loves the mind games in a Rein v Rein matchup, and unfailingly blocks the enemy shatter (delights in cucking the enemy Rein).  Will play Orisa For The Good Of The Team but takes no joy in it.  Terrifying on defense; takes a strong position and allows time pressure to force enemies into missteps.  When you make a mistake, she will be there.  Strategic backbone of the team.

RenLie - Flex Support.  Bloodthirsty support.  Likes the balance of damage potential and support capacity in Zenyatta, but puts forth strong showings on Moira and Ana as well.  First priority is of course keeping his team alive, but flankers trying to dive him in the back line tend to get sent home in tears.  Big Jjonak energies. :uwuknife: Can be susceptible to tunnel vision/desperation, and occasionally needs teammates to re-ground him.  Always nanos Nora.

PPolen - Offtank.  D.Va one-trick.  Absolutely notorious for eating ults; absolutely infuriating to play hitscan into.  Flawless mechanical skill.  Occasionally struggles with communication, but honestly so on-the-ball that it doesn't usually come back to bite her.  Always has gold objective time.

Qrow - True flex.  Exclusively solo-queues on ladder, just plays the leaderboards.  Played just about every role at some point (except main tank, fuck that), but currently on a flex support kick.  Holds world records for gravs/blizzards/immortality feels clipping through the geometry and falling out of the map.  The sort of Ana who will singlehandedly take out both enemy DPS when beset by flankers only to immediately die to an errant Moira orb.  Gamers can we get an F in chat.  Accustomed to playing on 200+ ping and is deeply unsettled when he moves somewhere with good internet and has to re-learn all his timings.

RWBY+JNPR+P All form a single 9-man roster.  Sub out roles with redundant players for map set strategies and for flexible plays.  Probably called the Beacon Huntsmen or something generic like that, who cares

Winter - Main Tank and Offtank.  Excellent mechanical skill.  Unparalleled when allowed to execute her set strategy, but struggles with adaptability.  Extremely self-sacrificial, and knows exactly how to leverage her health pool to buy time and/or space for her allies to make the plays they need to.  Will unflinchingly act upon callouts, good or bad, because the worst outcome is a split decision.  Especially fond of a quick reset.

Whitley - Doesn't play Overwatch, but holds several championship trophies in international Pokemon tournaments.  Minecraft youtuber.

Adam - Widow one-trick.  Highly overrated, inexplicably popular streamer.  Mechanically talented but poison in a team environment.  Picked up and quickly dropped from several professional teams.  Teabags.  Looks impressive on stream but crumbles against opponents with any semblance of coordination.  Eventually blacklisted from professional environments after one too many scandals in his personal life.

Ozpin -Franchise owner.  Has never actually touched Overwatch, but used to be a respected Starcraft player back in the day.  Took on a coaching role for a time, but now largely manages from afar.  Has a sparse and cryptic social media presence.  Makes business decisions largely at random, unbeknownst to all his subordinates.

Salem - Hates videogames. Will unplug the router if you piss her off.

Ace Ops - High profile roster hand-picked for perfectly complementary hero pools.  Hyped to fuck in the preseason.  Unparalleled individual play but poor communication, incompatible playstyles, and truly abysmal coaching staff keep them from being a top-tier team.  Widely considered a disappointment considering the talent and money backing them.

Harriet - DPS.  Exclusively plays flankers and extremely mobile DPS.  Tries to solo-carry; in her defense, it often works.  Unironically brags/complains about having gold medals.  Quick to tilt but often uses the negative energy to pop off even harder.  Overtime clutch god.

Marrow - Flex DPS.  Cautious player, often hesitant to commit to risky strats.  Flawless positioning, both personally and for thrown abilities.  Talent for projectile DPS; probably contributed not-insignificantly to scatter arrow being removed from the game.  Prefers to understand the enemy's strategy before acting.  Shotcaller.  Nobody listens.

Elm - Main Tanks (Except Reinhardt), Zarya.  Aggressive tank player, frequently found with gold damage.  Generally good natured but vulnerable to tilt if on a losing streak.  Highly momentum-based.  Makes tutorial videos on strategy and positioning for her youtube channel.  Wants to see the competitive scene develop and flourish, but sensitive to feeling threatened by new talent.  Helps them anyway.

Vine - Flex Tanks (except Zarya), Reinhardt.  Unflappable, regardless of quality of games or recent performance.  Good at reading enemy team and tracking ults.  Generally calls enemy plays before they happen.  Always sticks with Elm, largely out of obligation to bail her out when her aggression puts her in a dicey position.  Understated player, rarely in highlight compilations, but extremely consistent performance.  Plays off-meta in scrims so as not to reveal strats.

Clover - Main Healer. Can play any support, but Lucio main through and through.  Suffers from Reddit Lucio syndrome, but usually good enough (or lucky enough) to get away with it.  Loves to deny enemy followup.  Peel master, boop god.  PMA to a borderline-irritating degree.  Gives great pep talks at half time.  Tends to overcommit to strategies that are dead in the water; sometimes it's better to call it and switch comps while you still have time on the clock. Despite this, is opportunistic in the moment-to-moment sense and quick to capitalize on enemy vulnerabilities.

Flynt Coal - Lucio one-trick.  I mean, come on.

Wukong - ???  Exclusively plays off-meta heroes and weird shit.  Talented but remains on ladder because he doesn’t like the rigid structure of tournament play.  Refuses to be confined to a single role.  Hates role lock cause he can’t swap mid game anymore.  Despite all this, somehow tends to be more of an asset than a detriment.  Definitely a team player.  PMA king.  Occasionally finds legitimately competitive strata for underutilized heroes.  Nutty with hammond movement, godawful with mines.  Has the Winston skin equipped, of course.

Ilia - DPS.  Popular streamer.  Tried going pro for a bit, but didn’t like the schedule and retired shortly.  Frequently plays with the community and does weird custom game modes for a laugh.  Loves Daddy Rein Chases Tiny Torblets.  Refuses to open loot boxes, much to the dismay of her stream.  Plays Golfing Over It during long queues.  Draws all her own custom emotes.

Watts - DPS.  Mains Widow, Sombra; plays anything that lets him avoid ever actually engaging the enemy at close range.  Thinks the game stopped being good when Sombra GOATS stopped being a thing.  Spends all day on twitter heckling pro players and declaring Overwatch a dead game.  Suspected of cheating.  Considers himself a shotcaller but isn't very good at it.

Tyrian - Plays Junkrat and Roadhog exclusively.  Thinks it's bullshit that the game doesn't have friendly fire.  Thinks it's bullshit that Junkrat doesn't deal self-inflicted damage anymore.  Master of the bounce shot.  Tends to treat the game like a TDM and forget the objective in favor fragging out.  Targets a single enemy player and tries to get them to tilt.  Uses voice chat but only laughs.  Never makes callouts.  Trash talks in all-chat.  Considers it a personal victory if he gets someone to rage quit.

Hazel - No Role.  Doesn't really get the idea of the metagame; knows it's generally good to have a balanced team but thats about as deep as he chooses to go.  Was one of the old guards of PC gaming but now that it's a mainstream hobby has to refuses to confront that he's hot garbage at them.  Can't really parse everything that's happening onscreen in a fast-paced game like overwatch, so he just picks Torb (regardless of map or attacking/defending status) and uses the turret as a security blanket.  Godawful turret placement.  Still has a good time somehow.

Cinder - Main Tank.  Likes the importance of the role, and especially the way her team has to follow her calls for any chance of success.  A nice balance of aggression and craftiness, she makes a fearsome opponent.  Callouts could be more frequent/detailed, but her directions are always good when given.  Very susceptible to emotional ups and downs, and often takes out frustration on teammates.  Takes losses very hard, gloats about wins.  Happiest with an Ana pocket.

Emerald - Offtank.  Would be much happier on DPS or Support, but desperate to show off and live up to Cinder's expectations.  Sticks with her main tank except when it's absolutely necessary to peel for the back line.  Tends to be overcautious with ults; she's good enough mechanically to earn them relatively quickly, but fear of whiffing one makes her reticent to spend them.  Flawless bubble timing on Zarya.

Mercury - Support.  Still considers Symmetra a support.  Quick to whip out the blaster and try to fight off flankers instead of calling for assistance.  Knows all the angles for a narsty biotic grenade.  Plays as though he's got better positioning and backup than he does; frequently gets opponents to back off just by winning the mental game.  Will let allies die on ladder if they piss him off.

[murasaki-murasame]

I’m still a little salty about how few units actually got mana spirals this month, but the ones we did get were surprisingly powerful, and the new banner also introduced some surprisingly meta-changing units, like the sentient potato who just wants to be vored.

There’s a lot to talk about so I’m gonna put my rambling under a cut, lol.

OK so first of all. Pipple. This fuckin’ non-limited 4-star water wand built with defense and energy buff skills, who is LITERALLY A TALKING VEGETABLE, is somehow the actual meta-changing start of this banner. After waiting more than an entire goddamn year for our first 5-star water blade, he ends up getting overshadowed by a goddamn potato. And as much as I love Valerio as well, I wouldn’t have it any other way, lmao.

It feels insane to even say it, but with the way his kit works, he honestly feels like a lite version of Gala Cleo. He can probably do just fine on his own in a normal water team, but if you get four Pipples together and give them something like Odd Sparows, they become a group of tanks who can deal surprisingly high damage, while sustaining themselves with healing doublebuff.

When I first saw his skills I thought that he was basically just a slightly better version of Pia, and that he’d basically just be a meme character, but honestly his passive abilities are enough to make him genuinely great. They give him a really unique play-style, especially with how he approaches energy.

I wasn’t sure what to make of his first ability at first since it’s description is super vague, but apparently it makes it so that his basic combos are 120% or so better than those of a normal wand unit. Which is pretty insane on it’s own. But then you have his third ability, which is basically just the one Yaten already has, where he gets buffs along with his energy level, up to a maximum of 40% strength and 15% crit rate when he’s energized. But unlike basically any other unit in the game, who wants to dump their energy stacks into an attack skill or a heal, Pipple doesn’t do that at all. He doesn’t even have any attack skills or heals, so if you ignore weapon skills and dragon skills, he doesn’t have anything to use energy on like that. Instead, he’s meant to basically stay permanently energized so that he doesn’t lose the buff that comes along with it. So once you get him energized, it basically means that he has a 40% strength and 15% crit rate buff for the entire rest of the fight. Plus he can trigger strength doublebuff with his S1 to give him even more strength.

I don’t think the DPS charts do justice to his true potential because of how weird and indirect his kit is, but I think he’s genuinely really strong. He’ll probably work really well with the eventual water element 6-star weapons, since the skills on those are just buffs, so he can use it without losing his energy buffs.

People have already cleared expert and master HBH with 4 Pipple teams, and apparently it’s not very difficult at all, and it’s basically impossible to get killed with that comp. It’s probably slower than other water team comps, but it seems very tanky.

I think he does enough damage on his own to be very good in a team with other units, but I’m not as sure about that. You’d probably end up designing a team around him like you do with Patia, to make full use of strength/healing doublebuffs.

At the very least I think he’s immediately better than Lily. Which probably isn’t a huge achievement, but still, lol. If he ends up being good for regular teams and not just 4-Pipple teams, I think he’ll help let Gala Elly run without Chocolatiers, which could be nice.

I was thinking that, until Thaniel eventually gets a buff, I might use Xainfried for HBH now that he’s gotten his own mana spiral, but once I get a HDT1 water wand, I’m kinda tempted to just play Pipple instead, lmao.

In general i really like units like this who have weird and unique play-styles, and it’s really fun to get some silly and non-human adventurers like this. And since he’s a non-limited 4-star, it’s not a bad thing if he ends up being really meta-defining. Overall his existence is just a net positive for the game and I’m wuv him :) I’ve been kinda bitter lately about how the non-limited water roster as a whole just doesn’t stack up well against limited water units like Gala Elly and MH Sarisse, but Pipple [and Xainfried getting his mana spiral] really helps with that. I feel like Pipple might end up being a popular budget entry point into HBH.

He also might be basically the only unit in the game to make good use of The Petal Queen in order to immediately energize himself, which is fun. I like how these sorts of units who don’t use attacking skills end up benefiting from some weird and niche wyrmprints that you usually don’t use otherwise. It seems like Chocolatiers is better for HBH, but for basically any other fight I think The Petal Queen would probably be better, since the immediate jumpstart on his offensive buffs would probably be better than the immediate defense buff.

And on the topic of the mana spirals we got, I’m still super salty that Norwin didn’t get one, or even any of the other gacha 4-star shadow units, but at least the three mana spirals we got were really great.

Xainfried’s probably getting overlooked by Nefaria and OG Cleo’s mana spirals, and also by Pipple being the hot new water unit everyone loves, but his mana spiral seems like it’s really helped him, and I don’t regret getting him up to around 64MC immediately. I think the DPS sims put him at around the level of Victor and Kirsty, which is a pretty big deal considering how underpowered he was before this. There’s also the fact that we don’t have a frostbite punisher wyrmprint or dragon yet, so his true damage potential probably hasn’t been reached yet. I think he’s probably going to end up being readily accepted into all levels of HBH after this, which would be great. I think he’s always been perfectly viable for HBH, but never ‘meta’. But he seems really strong now. And once we get a frostbite punisher print, he might become a really meta unit since he and Valerio are currently the only frostbite enablers in the game, though I think Mitsuba will probably get frostbite too, and they’ll probably give it to some of the existing water units through their mana spirals. He’ll probably be one of the better frostbite enablers, though.

OG Cleo getting a buff wasn’t exactly a surprise, and it mostly went the way I expected, but her getting buff dispel was a surprise. I think she’s probably the best healer for Kai Yan, but I dunno if buff dispel will be a huge deal in HJP. But since Nefaria also got buff dispel, I think S-Verica is still gonna have a space in the Kai Yan meta. People probably won’t want to run much with Heinwald in that fight, sadly, lol.

Nefaria, on the other hand, was a huge surprise, since it looked like they’d just skipped over her entirely. But she got a mana spiral out of the blue, and apparently it’s made her extremely powerful, maybe second only to Gala Cleo herself, lol. I’m still annoyed at how their approach to fixing her was just ‘slap the poison meta on her existing kit’, but oh well. It did the job with making her extremely good, I guess. I’m happy that she’s finally a good unit, even if I wish they had been a bit more creative about it.

Since they have basically the same kit, and wind also has it’s own poison meta, they’re probably just going to give Hawk the exact same buff [maybe without the buff dispel, though], and hopefully that’d also lead to him being extremely strong. 

The Kai Yan fight also came out, which is it’s own whole thing. I’m currently just grinding standard to get the materials to max out the shadow tree, but from what I can gather, both difficulties are apparently a lot easier than Volk, which is . . . kinda surprising. Maybe it’s just because the shadow roster is stupidly powerful, but it sounds like the requirements to get by in Expert aren’t very high at all. Which probably means that the meta surrounding it will probably be more accepting of a variety of units. But probably with a preference for the 70MC ones.

I was worried that they’d tune the fight too much around Gala Cleo and just make it super punishing and impenetrable, but it feels more like they just didn’t even bother putting effort into designing the fight in a way that shut her down. Which is probably a good thing in the long run, since it makes the fight more accessible. I thought they’d at least make the satellite things absorb some of Gala Cleo’s S1 hits, but apparently not, lol.

I’ll see how expert goes when I get to it, but I wonder if in the long run, it’ll be easier to break into Kai Yan and get a MUB 6-star shadow weapon to take into HJP, instead of doing HZD first to get a shadow HDT weapon. That’d be interesting.

The shadow 6-star weapons also seem to have some interesting effects. I thought that all the 6-star weapons might just get alternating strength and regen buffs, but the shadow ones have attack rate and defense. I guess it’s probably designed with each Agito fight in mind, since healing is important to Volk, while Kai Yan has more unavoidable damage.

I have no idea what they’ll do with the other element types, but one way or another I think, as I said, Pipple’s gonna really benefit from a water Agito weapon, since it won’t have an attack or a heal [hopefully] for him to waste his energy stacks on.

I kinda hope the wind one gives a crit rate buff, since wind needs more of that in general.

Oh yeah, and Valerio also exists, lmao. I still really want him, but I can live without him at this point, especially with how much I’ve come to love Pipple as a character. I do like how unique and interesting Valerio’s kit is, though, and I’m glad that he seems to be pretty strong overall. I wish they’d stop designing blade units that are dependent on high combo counts, though. It’s just not a good weapon type for that, lol.

I don’t think Nimis is particularly amazing at the moment since there’s not many water units who can reliably get high crit chance in the first place, but since Pipple can pretty easily get a more or less permanent 15% crit rate buff, Nimis might be pretty good on him. Basically water needs a unit like Ezelith to really make use of him. And thus far we don’t really have that, but I still feel like Laranoa might end up getting basically the exact same buff that Ezelith got when she gets her mana spiral, in which case she’d probably use Nimis. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mitsuba ends up being based around crits when she comes out, as well.

And on that note, the second part of the current banner should be starting in the next few days, and it’ll almost certainly give us Mitsuba as a 5-star water dagger, and Picaro as . . . some sort of 4-star. Unless they invent an entirely new dragon for the banner, I think they’ll just have Nimis on rate-up for it again, or feature an existing water dragon like Leviathan. In general I’m just not very interested in the idea of the part two banner at the moment. Mitsuba’s a fun character, but I like both Pipple and Valerio more, and in terms of burn res water daggers I think I like Orsem more, too. I also just kinda hate Picaro so I have no real interest in the idea of getting him as a playable adventurer, lol. I’m not even sure what type of unit he’ll be, honestly. I think he’ll be a flame 4-star, going by his character design, but I’ve got no clue about his weapon type. He doesn’t really seem to be holding a weapon in his art like Valerio and Mitsuba are, so it’s hard to guess. I’m also not even sure if the flame roster has any notable gaps that can be filled by a new 4-star. I guess it might be neat if he’s a sleep res healer that has sleep cleanse, but I guess we’ll see.

I still think Pipple’s gonna end up being the real star of his banner as a whole, lol.

Anyway, for the time being, I’m gonna keep grinding Kai Yan, and I’ll probably do a few runs of HMC to get Pipple his HDT water wand. After that I’ll see if that’s enough investment to let me break into eHBH with him. I’ll probably end up having to max augment Odd Sparrows first, but I’ve at least started on that already. I at least have Xainfried as a good alternative option to get into that fight, but I just really really like the idea of taking a sentient potato creature to fight a flame dragon :v

[murasaki-murasame]

I’ve got a whole bunch of thoughts about Gala Laxi and all the new summer units, and even though I should just wait until they actually come out and we get exact numbers for everything, I still wanna make a whole post about it, lol.

Anyway this will go under a cut.

Firstly, Gala Laxi is a flame dagger, as I expected, so that’s cool. I did think there was a chance of her being a water blade, but honestly her being a flame dagger unit just made more sense. I feel bad for everyone who invested in Ezelith, if Gala Laxi ends up being better, but I never invested in her so I’m fine with this, lol.

She does look really good on paper, though, and I need more good flame units so I want to get her. Like with all units, her overall damage output will depend on what her exact damage mods and whatnot are, so it’s impossible to tell for sure how good she’ll be, but on paper she looks really good. One of the first things that stands out to me, which makes me even more interested in getting her, is the fact that she has the same standard attack damage co-ability that Tiki does. Which I REALLY want, since I skipped Tiki’s banner when it came out.

Other than that, her kit seems pretty straightforward, and actually doesn’t have as many downsides as I thought it would. The whole concept of Eden Mode seemed like it’d be a real risk-reward type of thing, similar to how her original version works, but the only real downside to it is that her unique gauges don’t increase when she’s in Eden Mode, and they reset afterward. But those just give her extra buffs, so it’s not like she’d be notably handicapped after Eden Mode ends.

Going by how her gauges work, it sounds like the general idea is for you to use your standard attacks and your S1 to max them out before using Eden Mode, to make the most out of them before they reset once that ends. I get the feeling that the alternate versions of her skills that happen during Eden Mode are gonna be really strong, to give her that burst damage vibe.

It also looks like when Eden Mode’s activated she basically summons a robot companion that shoots additional projectiles, which is an extremely interesting idea. It makes me wonder if they might be experimenting with adding some kind of companion system, maybe based around the puppy from April Fools. Either way, I get the feeling it might give her a lot of additional DPS during Eden Mode, so that’ll be neat. It might also help her get combos going faster, which ties into her third ability, where if she can maintain a combo she can basically stack up to 12% crit rate and 40% crit damage, which resets when her combo ends. Which also kinda reminds me of Ezelith, lol.

I don’t really care that much for Laxi as a character, but as a unit she’s really tempting and I hope I can get her. I actually don’t have that many good flame units built up at the moment, so she’d really help flesh out my flame team.

Next we have Summer Sinoa, who’s a 5-star wind wand. I won’t mind much if I don’t manage to get her from the gala, but her kit does interest me a bit. I like that they kept the RNG team buffs idea from her original version and fleshed it out into something that works for a 5-star unit. Usually RNG buffs aren’t very good, but it’s nice that if you can max your Overload stacks, you can give the entire team all three buffs at once.

Going by how her Overload stacks make her S1 charge more and more slowly, I think you’ll have to choose between either 1: holding off on your S2 until you have max Overload stacks for the full team buff, at the cost of dealing with the slower S1 charging, or 2: using your S2 as much as you can to get rid of your Overload stacks so your S1 charges faster, at the cost of getting a random buff from it that only affects yourself. So it’s a choice between focusing on team support vs her own personal DPS. We’ll see how her damage mods go, but she has a 30% skill damage passive, and her first ability means that she gets an extra 20%, 25%, or 30% skill damage buff for her S1 based on her Overload stacks, so she might actually do enough damage that you could opt to use her more selfishly.

Then there’s Summer Norwin, who I obviously care the most about, lol. I’m kinda iffy about him being a wind dagger, but I don’t use any of the other ones I have so he won’t really interfere that much with my wind team set-up, so that’s nice. Basically everyone on this banner has a complicated kit, but his feels especially strange. It feels kinda impossible to make any predictions about how good he’ll be before we get more info on him.

But going by what we know from the preview, his main gimmicks are his self-inflicted debuff, and his unique version of skill shift. If I’m reading it right, both of his skills are skill-shift skills with four stages each, but using either skill moves BOTH skills to their next stage, so in practice he’ll get through them really fast. The first three stages of each skill are pretty basic, since they just do increasing amounts of damage, but the weird stuff is with how phase 4 of his two skills work. Phase 4 of his S2 does more damage and inflicts poison, but it also gives him one stack of his unique debuff, and makes him take damage relative to how many stacks of it he has, while phase 4 of his S1 removes all of his debuff stacks, and energizes the team. Which is all kinda hard to wrap my head around, lol. The whole order of operations involved is kinda hard to interpret. Like, does he take damage from his phase 4 S2 the very first time he uses it, or does it only happen if he uses it when he already has at least one stack of it beforehand? He’s also unable to get energy stacks while he has his debuff stacks, so I’m hoping that the cleanse effect on his phase 4 S1 triggers first, so he also gets to receive the energy buff.

His first ability is energy = skill haste, so I imagine that he must be able to give himself his own energy buff, since there’s basically no other sources of energy in wind for him to make use of. This whole ability in and of itself is kinda strange to me, though, and I’m not sure how much it’ll help him, since he’d lose his energy stacks when he uses a skill anyway, so there wouldn’t be much uptime on the skill haste. But it’s still a 25% skill haste buff when he’s energized, which isn’t exactly bad.

I think he’ll actually have pretty good uptime on the team energy buff, though. It feels like it’d be pretty slow since it’s the phase 4 effect of a skill shift, but if I’m right about how it works for him, it’d effectively only take two uses of his S1 for it to trigger.

If you want to maximize how often you do the team energy buff, I think his skill rotation would basically be S2 phase 1 -> S1 phase 2 -> S2 phase 3 -> S1 phase 4, though unless they have the same SP cost you probably won’t be able to just alternate between them like that. But still, he’d probably be able to get the buff off with every second or third use of his S1, if you focus on that.

But one weird consequence of how his skill shift seems to work is that in each skill shift rotation, you have to choose one skill to use at each stage, which means that if you use your phase 4 S1 all the time, you’ll be skipping your phase 4 S2. Which honestly seems like a good thing, since it means you’ll never actually inflict that debuff on yourself. But on the other hand, his phase 4 S1 doesn’t do damage and only does the team energy buff, while his phase 4 S2 does damage and inflicts poison in addition to the self-inflicted debuff, so depending on his damage mods you might want to focus on his S2 instead and just deal with the debuff if you want to maximize his personal DPS, and are willing to deal with the side-effects of the debuff.

Additionally, he also has a 30% poison punisher passive, which is nice, even if he’d probably have to rely on having someone else to inflict it most of the time. He also has a 10 his = hp regen chain co-ab, which I think is the first time we’ve seen something like that, and it seems really interesting. It might not be a very strong heal, but it means that if he works with people with good combo uptime, he’d effectively be a substitute healer, which might be really useful for stuff like eCiella.

In general he and Summer Sinoa actually feel pretty similar, in terms of how it seems like they can basically choose if they want to focus on team support or personal DPS, while each having different stack mechanics that have negative effects to juggle. Which makes me wonder exactly how good they’ll actually end up being in practice, and how well the AI will handle them.

Finally we have Summer Konohana Sakuya, who honestly seems kinda disappointing, lol. Basically she seems based around long fights where you’ll have time to actually build up her stacks, but I just don’t know if the effects they provide are worth the time. Wind also doesn’t really have any characters other than DY-Xainfried who can shapeshift a lot to make use of how she can apply an additional buff stack with her dragon skill.

I could see her being useful in eCiella, and probably mCiella when that comes out, if it’s an even longer fight. But at least for me, I already have a whole lot of good wind dragons, so she’s not super tempting. Which is good, since I want to focus my resources on future gala dragons instead, lol.

Basically everyone on this banner feels kinda weird and complicated, but hopefully they’ll all be worth getting. Gala Laxi seems like she’ll be the winner, but the summer units have potential to be really good too.