Limited Units

E7: Abigail

By far the most dominant and versatile limited unit in the entire game, Aoi is a unique tank with an unparalled amount of utility.

Her prime feature is her Backline Protection passive: When the unit on position 4 takes fatal damage, Aoi prevents their death and gives them 1 turn of Unremovable Undying and Lifesteal. This is extremely valuable in PvP to protect a key unit.

Second, Aoi casts a "curse" debuff on the enemy with the highest ATK. Cursed units take damage when other units in their team are hit with single-target attacks. (This creates damage, it is not a redirection.) This lets you bypass evasion units, counter fighters, and even nullify the enemy aoi's protection. First place Curse on the enemy unit, then use your single-target nuker to attack another (safer to hit) unit, then at the end of turn, the Cursed unit will also take damage.

Third, Aoi constantly self-pushes whenever enemy units take turns, meaning her turn cycling is incredibly fast. Not only that, her S1 attacks have a 35% chance to push the whole team, improving everyone's turn cycling along with hers. Aoi can screw up turn orders in long battles.

And finally, Aoi's skills apply Injury to the target, decreasing their max HP, and her ultimate is a non-attack strip followed by a DEF Down, especially handy against shutting down evasion units or targeting the enemy's key unit (such as their own Aoi).

Strengths

Insane Utility: Aoi has nearly three units' worth of skills in one, and her deck-thinning potential is plainly unmatched. 

Backline Protection: This is the key aspect of Aoi's domination: You can place anyone on Slot 4 and Aoi will make them very hard to blitz down. Whenever a problematic solo-carry brawler showed up on the meta, Aoi followed: Erica, SSJ, Julia, and more. Making it plainly impossible to kill dangerous units immediately raises their threat level considerably, and only Aoi can provide this utility.

Great for Offense and Defense: The fact that Aoi's S3 has a nonattack strip and a DEF Down makes her perfect for offense teams: She provides insurance for your Slot 4 and also helps them kill a problematic enemy unit. The Backline Protection ability can also be used to "bait" enemy AI by placing element disadvantaged units on your Slot 4 to lure aggro onto them without killing them. 

Weaknesses

No solo potential: Aoi is entirely reliant on her team, and she has no ability to fend for herself.

Unbuffable debuff: If the unit on Slot 4 has Unbuffable and takes fatal damage, they won't receive the Undying buff. This is hardly an actual weakness though since the "prevent death" part of the passive still activates; Unbuffable only stops the undying buff from applying, but the unit will still survive at 1 HP, and will require another attack to be killed.

Build Guide

Offense-oriented: Speed/Revenge + Immunity/HP. Build for high HP (18k~), very high SPD (200~), and some EHR to get through tanks.

Defense-oriented: Speed/Revenge + Immunity/Resist/HP or a mix of HP and Resist. Build for very high HP (20k~), medium to high speed (180~), and build RES if your gear allows it. 

Right side HP% + HP%/RES + SPD.

Bond: By far the most popular choice is Reluctant Compromise for the best durability bonus. Otherwise, Feliz bond (Lead) also has damage reduction, or Bart bond (Wild) provides RES.

E7: Elena

Urd is an anti-AOE and anti-debuff counteropener.

Urd's core skill chain is Passive > S3. When she is hit by an AOE, Urd will self-cleanse all debuffs, then cast a nonattack skill that self-pushes 25%. After grabbing the turn, S3 cleanses 2 debuffs, then applies Invincible and RES Up to the whole team.

S1 removes one buff each from two allies when used.

The introduction of Urd to the PvP meta eradicated simple "cleave defenses" from the leaderboards, as Urd trivialized all of them. Cleaves are by nature time-sensitive; if Urd cuts in and makes everyone invulnerable, the enemy wastes their turn, runs out of steam, and is quickly dispatched. 

To this day, Urd has been shaping the meta, directly or not; since she is dead simple to build and easy to run as a basic counterpick, any defense that fails the "Urd Test" gets bullied and revenged to death. 

Strengths

The fact that S2's self-push is part of a nonattack skill means that Moira bond (Passionate) grants her up to 30% extra self-push from S2. Very few units can outpace a 55% self-push; Urd can almost always cut the enemy team if the attacker knows what they're doing.

While RES Up might be a niche and hard to utilize buff, anyone can utilize literal invincibility. Urd paired with mid- to low- speed units maintains the invulnerability for very long, enough to waste a whole lot of enemy turns.

Urd becomes a lot stronger when using variant fits with good gear.

Weaknesses

While Urd is classed as a medic, she is not considered to be a healer because she barely heals. Her only direct healing skill is S2, which only activates every 2 turns and only when the enemy uses AOEs. Don't expect Urd to sustain your team: She is a counteropener through and through.

While more of an accepted workaround than an actual weakness, Urd in a defense team does not activate when the enemy never uses AOEs: She must patiently wait for her turn to naturally come around, which is usually too late. Some variant fits attempt to circumvent this by building Urd extremely fast, but this also comes with its own drawbacks.

Urd can be baited by using two AOEs: first one to bait her S2 > S3, then an AOE buff-stripping skill to undo Urd's buffs. This "Counter-counter-opener" strategy is slightly contrived but is still valid.

Urd herself tends to run out of steam after using S3. If the enemy is prepared to outlast your team, they can usually just wait for the invincibility to wear off naturally.

Build Guide

Urd gets progressively stronger and gains more utility the better your gear is.

BASIC TIER: Any HP gear (Triple Health set or Speed + Any) will let Urd work as a counteropener. 

IMPROVED: Speed + Res or Triple Res, right side HP% + RES% + SPD. Speed helps Urd cut the enemy's turn, Res helps her shrug off the enemy's debuffs.

COUNTER-FIT: Counter + Res, right side HP% + RES% + SPD. When she counters with S1 she will cleanse 1 debuff from two of her allies, and this also lets her run bonds like Deep Kiss which gives her a meaningful healing ability.

In all cases, Urd is almost always fit with very high RES (at least 200%), and medium to very high speed (170~220) depending on the use case.

Bond choices also improve gradually as your gear improves.

Urds that lack speed, or must fight self-pushing enemy Cleave teams, run Moira bond for extra pushes.

Urds that lack RES run any of the RES bonds, such as Saika (Bashful), Petra (Sensual), Saku (Hibiscus), or her own (Breathless).

Her own bond (Breathless) also randomly clenases debuffs when Urd is attacked, which is great for sustained engagements.

Any of the team healing bonds (Bashful, Sensual, Deep kiss) can improve the team's staying power.

E7: Lua

Lucia is a high-speed non-attacking opener who runs like Claire on crack and is one of the best openers in the entire game.

Lucia opens the battle with her S2 which puts a unit to sleep and then generates an extra turn.

The core of her immense value is in her S3, which is a nonattack skill (cannot be evaded), can be soulburned to ignore RES (cannot be resisted), removes one buff (cannot block with Immunity set), and pushes cooldowns by 1 turn (cannot fight back properly).

As a cherry on top, her S1 (while inconsistent) applies DEF Down, perfect for finishing off stragglers.

In E7, Lucia's Original used to be one of the most oppressive openers of her time, with nearly 96% ban rate in RTA. Her reign of terror continued for two seasons before she was finally outclassed by new units. While she doesn't have the same level of dominance in Recode due to meta differences, she is still undeniably one of the most versatile and reliable openers for cleavers.

Strengths

Very little actual counter exists for her S3. While many units can react to it and maybe even seize the next turn, they usually can't do anything with that turn as their skills are in cooldown. For cleave teams, one turn is all you ever need to create your win condition.

Good base speed of 120. For reference, Lana's base speed is 117, and Claire's is 115.

Being a Sniper, she has several great bonds, including Cosma's bond (Gift) which cloaks her at the start of battle making her completely immune against single target counteropeners.

Certain units are especially vulnerable to cooldown pushes: Chaldea and Clone Janis instantly lose evasion when their S3 isn't available, and Sora and Chloe lose their constant self-pushing passive.

Weaknesses

Since S3 only strips 1 buff, it can be "blocked" using Shani in Despair's shield placed in front of Immunity.

Neko will become immune to all debuffs, including cooldown pushes, if Lucia uses S2 first to create an extra turn.

Units who can resist the cooldown push can still counteropen against Lucia, such as Saku who usually builds for very high RES. Not a problem for attacking teams that soulburn Lucia's S3, however.

Units with very strong or high-value S1s can still pose a problem even after being CD pushed: Sora for example can randomly stun one of your important units.

Build Guide

Typical opener build, extremely high speed + EHR if you can.

Right side ANY + ANY + SPD, optimized HP% + EHR% + SPD.

A variant fit is Crate + EHR/ATK% + SPD, giving her a little bit of damage so that she can threaten squishy units by herself. Not very popular.

Feel free to neglect EHR if you plan on bringing a seperate Book mage.

E7: Ocean Breeze Luluca

Saku is an anti-nonattack counteropener who cares for her allies and controls enemies.

When an enemy uses a nonattack skill, she self-pushes 40% and gains 2 focus. Then, she uses her ultimate, which removes 2 debuffs as an AOE, then applies DEF Up and Morning Dew. The ultimate grants 3 focus, which combined with the 2 focus from earlier, lets her immediately follow up with an AOE attack that strips 2 and applies Silence and ACC Down.

Morning Dew is an unstrippable buff that activates when the buffed ally is attacked. The buff heals the ally by 20% and then is removed.

When activated correctly, Saku will undo the enemy's debuffs and ruin their followup turn with Silence. 

To that end, Saku is usually built for extremely high RES to shrug off everything the enemy can throw at her to make sure she can use her skills.

Saku's S1 also pushes the gauge of the ally with highest action gauge, which can sometimes catch enemies off guard.

Strengths

She is pretty aggressive as far as counteropeners go: She can strip buffs and apply a soft CC, which makes her a credible threat against a lot of units. This is only getting more true as more and more units with nonattack skills are introduced. 

Morning Dew scaling off of the target's HP means that Saku herself doesn't need to build a lot of HP, leaving more room to build for RES.

Weaknesses

Her AOE can trigger Urd and the debuff spam can trigger Obsidian, a rare "counter-counter-opener" situation.

Because Saku usually builds for RES, she isn't very tanky, and is liable to be oneshot by particularly high damage nukers such as Mitsuki or Julia. 

Attacking skills will not trigger Saku. Which is an obvious statement but a workaround nonetheless; such skills will trigger Urd, but it is very rare to see both Saku and Urd in the same team because that sacrifices too much initiative. (If you see such teams, you can probably out-brawl them by bringing a team with better deck compression.)

Lucia's S3 can be soulburned to ignore Saku's RES and push her cooldown, prevent her from using her skills, and wasting her turn.

Build Guide

Speed/Counter + HP/Res or a mix of HP and Res.

Right side HP% + RES% + SPD.

Build for very high RES (at least 200%, but 230+ is safer). Consider using bonds that increase RES to achieve thresholds.

E7: Benimaru

Neko is a counteropener and nuker who is designed for one purpose only: Countering extra turn openers.

When an enemy generates an extra turn, Neko's passive activates. She will become immune to all debuffs, gain +50% base accuracy, and push herself. After doing so, she can use S3, which is a strong single target nuke, followed by an AOE extra attack.

Her only viable game plan is to be drafted against an extra turn generating opener (there's a ton of them: Bunrica, Heidi, Berrica, Mitsuki, Ith, Lucia...), steal the next turn after activating S2, then wipe the enemy team before they can actually follow through with their strategy.

Strengths

High versatility for a counteropener: She's used quite often especially in Guild War, mostly because a lot of extra turn openers are currently meta, but still useful.

Base accuracy: Allows her to counter evasion units like Julia paired with extra turn openers. Also allows her to guarantee hits against water element units.

Useful attack order: S3 is a single target attack that can paint DEF Down. This is then followed by an AOE. If someone is protected by Aoi, using S3 on her can kill Aoi and whoever she is protecting in one go if the conditions are right. Otherwise, S3 can be aimed at high-priority units to ensure kills.

Weaknesses

She is one-dimensional. Neko is used in exactly one scenario and nowhere else. She does not have the agency nor initiative to be used on her own with no regards to the enemy team's lineup. She is entirely reliant on the enemy team doing a certain thing. 

She MUST KILL on her very first S3 and secure a win or else she does not work. She immediately runs out of steam after spending her skills. She cannot sustain herself to wait around for the next cooldown either. To that end, she requires top-notch DPS gear with low or no speed to ensure maximum damage and secure kills reliably.

Build Guide

Destruction + Crit/Pen. Maximum ATK, maximum CDMG, 100% crit rate, dump all other stats.

Right side CDMG + ATK% + ATK%.

Some amount of speed is not harmful, and EHR can help paint DEF Down on tanks, but they aren't necessary.

Her own bond is the best unless you have other source of ATK Up. Otherwise, use any damage bond such as Hello Customer.

You should almost always pair her with Aoi unless you don't expect Neko to get hit.

E7: AE-KARINA

Rubi is a DEF scaling, offensive tank/brawler who reacts when her allies are at low HP and punish the enemy with splash damage.

Rubi's core skill chain is S2 (Passive) Push into S3. When any of her allies are below 50% HP due to an enemy attack, Rubi will selfpush 50%, then self-buff DEF Up and team buff Shield.

S3 is a single target attack that applies DEF down, self buffs SPD up, and when hit, causes an AOE splash damage. This can often heavily damage or kill the targeted unit in one shot if the attack successfully hits and the DEF down procs. The splash damage isn't as devastating but still poses a grave threat against squishy damage dealers.

S1 is a single target attack that can apply DEF down.

Rubi is very commonly fit with Counter set and is almost always using her own bond that deals additional DEF scaling damage on single target attacks (both S1 and S3).

Her role is to force uncomfortable choices on the enemy: If you focus on Rubi first, you waste your time hitting a highly tanky brawler who can randomly counterattack with high damage and backfire on you, while the rest of the enemy team are left to do their own thing; If you focus on other enemies, Rubi's S2 activates, where she self-pushes, self-buffs, and punishes you with S3 splash damage.

Strengths

As a DEF scaler, Rubi has very high damage reduction, and is strong against lifesteal brawlers who need to deal high damage to heal in proportion to it. The effect is amplified when Rubi gains DEF Up.

The damage from Rubi's bond, like other bond-based damage sources, ignores evasion. Since evasion fighters often build for low HP this makes her a considerable threat. Additionally, damage from bonds apply at the end of turn and ignores damage restriction, which also makes her dangerous to units like Naksha or Carolyn.

A counter-fit Rubi has fairly high sustained threat profile especially when under direct attacks. Any healing sources will massively improve her staying power.

DEF Down is a very strong effect in general that can be taken advantage not only by Rubi herself but also by everyone else in her team.

Weaknesses

Rubi has no debuff care for herself or her allies and is highly vulnerable to them, especially DEF down, Unbuffable, Restrict, ACC down, and Crowd Control effects.

Importantly, when Rubi is under Sleep or Stun and her passive activates, she will successfully gauge push herself, but her buffs (DEF Up and Shield) will not activate, then it will go under cooldown, completely wasting it.

Rubi's passive does not react when her own HP is low, so she can be helpless if focused as the primary target.

100% DEF penetrating attacks can easily oneshot rubi as she sacrifices HP for DEF. Likewise, fixed HP damage will kill her very easily (most notably HKD). 

Passive skill activation triggers Saku, whose S3 can buff her whole team, remove Rubi's DEF Up, and Silence her.

Yukie's Suppress, if it manages to hit despite the element disadvantage, completely shuts down Rubi as she can neither counter nor activate her passive.

Build Guide

Rubi always runs her own bond (Pristine) and does not function correctly without it. Using any other bond is usually only reserved for bait fits.

Counter + Defense / Immune. Right side DEF% + DEF% + SPD.

Alternate build paths include:

• Debuff security: Counter + RES or a mix of Defense, Immune, and Res. Aims for 150~200RES to resist some debuff attempts, at the cost of damage.

• Maximum S3 Damage: Speed + Defense or Defense + Defense + Defense, Right side DEF% + DEF% + SPD / DEF%.
  Aiming for high speed and maximum DEF to make the most of the one turn she is given.

E7: Dizzy (Reworked)

Sora is a debuff-heavy AOE nuker. She has been significantly changed from her E7 version, making her somewhat "original."

At her core, Sora is an AOE damage dealer. All of her skills are AOE attacks, her hits are guaranteed to crit, and she has a built-in damage bonus against debuffed targets. However, what makes her special is her debuff ability: Her S3 has a nonattack component that reduces buff duration by 1 turn, and applies SPD Down, ATK Down, and ACC Down, before attacking enemies. This means that she can strip and debuff fire units or evasion units reliably to completely shut down their ability to fight back meaningfully. The fact that the debuffs apply before the attack also means that she automatically benefits from the damage bonus for attacking debuffed targets.

Not only that, when S3 is available, Sora constantly pushes herself whenever enemies take a turn. This forces the enemy to deal with her: Take too long, and Sora will steal the initiative and neutralize everyone.

Even her S1 is valuable, as it is an AOE with a stun, perfect for forcing randomness to the enemy and creating variables. This also means that pushing Sora's cooldown with Lucia or Claire doesn't work as her S1 can still stun important units.

Strengths

ATK Down and ACC Down removes the enemy's ability to do meaningful damage. Not quite a crowd control, but almost as good. 

S3 applying three debuffs pose a problem vs healers and counteropeners who only cleanse two (Urd, Saika, Saku, etc).

Sora teams are hard to cleave. Her constant self-pushing makes her an extremely high-priority threat who cannot simply be outsped by a faster opener. She must be dealt with right away, or she will deal with you. She is a ticking time bomb that heavily restricts the enemy's options.

She is especially strong against Redeemer Lucia, whose S2 has a 50% chance to miss the Sleep against Sora. In addition, pushing Sora's cooldown doesn't neutralize her because her S1 can still randomly stun people which is an unacceptable risk for cleavers.

Weaknesses

While her battlefield control is strong, her actual threat level is, surprisingly, not very high. She has no crowd control to prevent actions, or any threatening debuffs like Unbuffable or Unhealable. Therefore, it is entirely possible for an opponent to simply bide their time, get rid of Sora's debuffs, and continue on. Sora truly shines when paired with units who can capitalize on her debuffs; either directly like Sweetheart Dawn, or indirectly with a high-speed follower.

Debuff spam is highly vulnerale against Obsidian, and will trigger Urd, even if she can't deal with all the debuffs.

AOE Spam Feeds counter-fighters like SSJ and Julia as well as units like Gariel.

Build Guide

Speed/Destruct/Counter/Rage + Acc/Immune.

Right side can vary tremendously, from HP% + EHR + SPD to CDMG/Crate + ATK% + SPD.

Many different build paths - she can be built fast as an opener, with maximum damage as a nuker, or even a counter-fighter build using her AOE stunning S1.

Bonds like Cruel Truth will maximize her ability to create variables and randomness in fights. Can also hold Book for an offense team.

Pairs extremely well with SDawn who activates when allies use attacks with debuffs & follows up with even more debuffs.

E7: Blooming Lidica

SDawn is an off-turn cleave component that spams debuffs and follows up with a single target nuke. 

She is activated when any ally attacks an enemy that has a debuff at the end of the turn. This means that attacks with a debuff will count, assuming it is not resisted. Attacking an already-debuffed enemy will work as well. She will fire an AOE that reduces buff duration by 1, and applies Unbuffable and Restrict. 

Dawn's S3 is a single target, HP scaling, non-crittable, 50% DEF penetrating attack that also applies skill nullifier to all allies. The DEF Penetration effect increases the higher her speed is compared to the target, which, combined with the fact that her speed increases proportional to the number of debuffs on enemies, can result in extremely high damage in the right circumstances. This can be used to eliminate one problematic enemy unit, especially DEF scaling tanks like Rubi.

The Skill Nullifier from her S3 can force the enemy to waste a tempo, and can ruin time-sensitive cleave comps.

SDawn is most commonly paired with units like Sora to take maximum advantage of her debuffs, or built with crit rate to activate Sweet Dreams Anheeun who is dependant on allies inflicting critical hits. She can be more versatile than expected under a skilled commander.

Strengths

Off-Turn Activation: Her flexible activation condition allows for a wide variety of team comps. A creative example is pairing her with Swimsuit Janis, and using her random counterattacks that carry Unhealable and DEF Down to activate Dawn.

Debuff Spam: An off-turn AOE that strips and applies Unbuffable and Restrict that is fired when the enemy is already debuffed allows Dawn teams to stack multiple debuffs to overwhelm healers who "cleanse 2" like Saika or Urd. 

Non-Crittable S3: High amounts of raw damage that does not rely on critting makes her S3 good for dealing with a wide variety of targets, including evasion units.

Weaknesses

Passive skillset: Needs a seperate unit (usually an opener) who has debuffs and has an attacking skill.

No Self-Push: Cannot gain a tempo by herself, her speed increase passive helps a bit but isn't very consistent. Her own bond pushes the enemies back, which is an unreliable way to indirectly gain tempo

Easy to Counteropen Against: AOE will trigger Urd (Can be worked around by applying so many debuffs that Urd's S3 cannot keep up). Debuff spam will trigger Obsidian.

High RNG: Skills are likely to be at least partially resisted by 15% absolute resistance as she has 3 debuffs per target (strip, unbuffable, restrict). Anyone who is familiar with using Cosma will know how inconsistent this can be.

Build Guide

Speed + Health/Acc.

Right side HP% + HP%/EHR + SPD.

Build for very high speed and very high HP. Build EHR if going against tanks.

A popular variant fit builds for Crit Rate (not necessarily 100%, but enough to get at least one crit per AOE) in order to activate Sweet Dreams Anheeun. This sacrifices S3 damage potential, however.

If paired with Anheeun, Crate + HP%/EHR + SPD unless you can get enough crit rate from substats.

E7: Melissa

Luna is a solo carry brawler with high potential. The core of her strategy is her skill chain:

1. S3 a key enemy to strip, damage, and paint Curse (the debuff from Aoi)

2. S2 another unit which will then do extra damage using Curse.

3. Using S2 will also give Luna immunity and undying. Killing any enemy will reset the cooldown of S2, allowing her to continuously refresh her undying buff.

4. If she receives fatal damage while S2 is available, she will "spend" her S2 cooldown to gain immunity and undying (similar to Aubrynn's passive).

In theory, Luna strips and paints Curse on a high priority enemy, then one-shots supporting enemies one at a time, constantly refreshing her undying, and resetting her skill cooldown.

Luna is also buffed compared to Melissa in E7, her "prevent death" S2 passive is new, her force-trigger Flanking on S1 is new, and she self-buffs ATK up before firing S3, which ignores element disadvantage.

Strengths

High carry potential on paper, she can dismantle enemy units one by one just like Mirabelle can while having some survivability on her own.

S3's strip is considered a nonattack and thus cannot be evaded (the attack can be evaded, but the buff strip will never miss as it is not part of the attack). Handy for setting up Curse on evasion units.

Weaknesses

She must score one kill per S2 or lose her tempo. She will require extremely good gear, with very high offensive stats as well as high speed for turn cycling.

She is vulnerable to any debuffers who strip.

While she has Immunity after her first skills fire, she has no self-cleanse. This means that she is highly vulnerable to debuffs (especially CC) at the start of battle.

When fighting an Aoi-protected unit, if S3 does too much damage, it may trigger the enemy Aoi's passive which applies an unremovable Undying buff to the enemy. This can massively complicate the match.

Build Guide

Destruction + Riptide/Pen/Crit. Since she can rely on her Undying and passive to stay alive, feel free to neglect durability for maximum damage potential.

Right side CDMG + ATK% + SPD.

Build for high speed for tempo, or mid speed if you have supporting units who can push her.

As a mage her best bond for offense teams is Book (Flutter), but any other damage bond will also work.

E7: Peira

Heidi is a debuffing opener who also acts like a Backward Knight.

She first opens by firing her S2 which strips, and applies Unbuffable and Restrict (Cancels all action gauge pushes) to all enemies. She then generates an extra turn.

Next, she uses S3, which cloaks her, grants her a very large shield, and gives her a unique Guard buff which redirects 40% of damage taken by her allies to herself. Her large shield will absorb this redirected damage, so she won't die from it.

While she has a Shield, her S1 has a 65% chance to stun.

Strengths

Very High Base Speed: Her base speed of 128 is only 1 less than Bunny Erica who is the fastest unit in the game. Makes it very easy to build her for opener-tier speeds while also building other stats (such as HP or EHR).

Maintains strong value after opening: S1 can stun, similar to Lana. Redirects 40% of damage taken by the team to herself, improving staying power. Most openers usually do little to nothing after opening, but Heidi keeps being useful. This is what makes her different.

Weaknesses

Extremely easy to counteropen against: AOE triggers Urd. Debuff spam triggers Obsidian. Extra Turn generation triggers Neko. Nonattack skill triggers Akane and Saku.

Shield Conversion: Olive will MURDER Heidi with her S2 Shield Conversion skill which turns shields into damage 1:1. Good thing she isn't very common.

Ignore Damage Distribution: There are quite a few attack skills that "Ignore Damage Distribution Effects," such as Mitsuki S3, Anastasia S3, and Mirabelle S3. They will completely ignore Heidi's Guard.

Cannot soulburn to ignore RES.

Vulnerable before S3: Since her attack comes before her shield, if she is attacked before then (for example, by counter-fighters like Neno or Erica or SSJ) she might die before she can S3.

Blue Element: Has a 50% chance to miss Green element units due to element disadvantage. Normally not a big deal, but watch out for green element units in the meta.

Build Guide

Typical opener build, high speed + EHR. Build for HP if your gear allows it. 

Right side HP% + HP%/EHR/RES + SPD.

A variant fit builds for RES to prevent the enemy Saku from stripping away Heidi's shield and Guard. This is only sometimes seen in Guild War defense.

Use her self bond for stability, and Rosalie bond (Sampling) to create variables.

Pair her with a strong solo-carry (usually brawlers and counter-fighters), or Mina.

E7: Lethe

Mikael is an HP scaling brawler who does very little damage upfront, but brings the pain with a nearly unblockable penetrating damage mechanism.

Whenever Mikael attacks someone with S1 or S3 on her turn, the target will gain 1 stack of Sigil. Sigil application ignores evasion and RES, and goes through Immunity - the first and only debuff that does so. The debuff does nothing on its own. When a target has 3 Sigils after Mikael attacks them, she will followup with Luminance, an HP-scaling, noncrittable attack that penetrates 100% of defense. Expect more than 10k damage for a typical build.

If Luminance kills, it also applies Extinction so that the target cannot be revived.

Mikael's first soulburn is also free thanks to her passive, meaning she can chain S3 > S1 on her first turn, stacking 1 Sigil on all enemies and 2 stacks on one target, so that they can be attacked with the Luminance attack on Mikael's next turn.

S3 is a noncounterable AOE that reduces buff durations by 1, and applies Frostburn (Damage redirection disabled) and Restrict (Cannot receive Gauge pushes). 

Strengths

Sigil accumulation is absolute, and cannot be blocked in any way. This lets Mikael ignore most damage mitigation tricks.

Luminance is a non-crittable HP scaling attack, meaning it will do reliably high damage even against units who evade it.

Being an HP scaler who do not need to build for crit stats Mikael can build for very high HP and can be hard to kill.

Weaknesses

Her tempo is a bit slow - she needs 2 turns to activate her first Luminance against 1 target, and 2 more turns each for every additional target. She can snipe one high-threat unit upfront, but if the enemy keeps up their threat profile, Mikael can get out-brawled.

Her damage isn't high enough to one-shot high HP units like tanks and HP-focused healers.

Build Guide

Triple HP or Speed/Revenge+HP. High HP, high speed, dump all other stats.

Right side HP% + HP% + SPD.

A variant fit is using her as an opener, with extremely high speeds. Fairly niche and conditional.

Mikael must be protected so that she can stack Sigils. The whole team should be centered around her pace. Aim to outlast the enemy.

Bonds with "Increase damage%" effects can increase Luminance's damage. Bonds that increase HP work well with her as well.

E7: Summer Break Charlotte

Silbal is a peculiar AOE sub-DPS who force-triggers her own flanking. As a reminder, Flanking is normally a random (3%) chance attack that triggers when another ally uses a basic skill (S1). Instead, at the start of battle and when your allies take 4 turns, Silbal self-buffs Flanking Boost which guarantees that her Flanking triggers when an ally uses S1. This flanking attack is an uncounterable AOE that paints DEF Down (75%) and boosts your team's gauge by 20%.

This skillset is normally designed to be paired with a cleave team. You take the first turn, grab the initiative, giving plenty of opportunity for Silbal's flanking to occur. You could even play around her 20% gauge boost.

Silbal's S3 also self-cleanses all debuffs, and stuns or outright kills a unit with 70% DEF penetration.

Unfortunately, the fact that she relies on Flanking, which only triggers on S1, makes her unsuitable for use in most comps where S2 and S3 are the most important skills. Her stat-spread is too wide and makes her awkward to use in both cleave teams and in brawl/stall teams. 

Strengths

An off-turn AOE that paints DEF Down is fairly useful in theory considering how strong DEF Down is.

At the start of battle, if anyone in your team uses S1, Silbal will flank and push everyone by 20%. You could build around this for a cleave team. Just be mindful that this is an AOE skill, and while uncounterable, will still trigger units like Urd.

She gains 45% free crit rate from her passive & 12% from her discipline, making her very very easy to build for 100% crit.

Weaknesses

As a Defender, Silbal suffers from extremely low base ATK, but does not have any HP scaling. She must build for high ATK despite starting with very little of it. In addition, her selection of usable bonds are limited.

She must build for ATK, Crit Rate and CDMG like a normal DPS, and has no stats to spare for durability despite being a defender. Her S3 self-cleanse is useful for offense (remove annoying debuffs like ATK Down or ACC Down) but doesn't help her against crowd control or with actual survivability.

Her reliance on flanking poses another serious problem - most units are focused on their S2 and S3. You must employ units with high S1 value to be able to trigger Silbal's flanking, which greatly limits the synergy potential.

Having to wait for 4 allied turns for her passive to recharge is also very slow tempo unless you are specifically built around that limitation.

She is also awful in defense unless paired with very specific units, as normal AI skill priority puts S1 at the very bottom. In addition, her AOE flanking is liable to trigger units like Urd or Petra.

Build Guide

Pair her with units who generate extra turns & units with high-value S1. Ith is a great example, and she is probably the greatest synergy unit that you could pair with Silbal.

She can build with Lifesteal for added staying power, speed for tempo, or destruction for maximum damage. Depends on what you're looking to get out of her.

Right side CDMG + ATK/ATK% + SPD/ATK/ATK%.

HP% main ring or boots can also be considered.

E7: Baiken

Drizz is a Bleed-based single target nuker. Her skill chain is S2 > S3, where S2 applies up to three stacks of Bleed onto a target, and S3 deals heavy damage, along with igniting the Bleeds (applying the latent damage of the remaining Bleed stacks, based on their duration). 

Despite being buffed once and gaining Uncounterable status to both of her skills, Drizz is still an underpowered unit, with no clear application. Being reliant on debuffs yet having no buff-strip, her lack of utility, as well as her ridiculously long skill cooldown, limits her usefulness.

She is sometimes used as the main damage dealer for Blue Hunt Oneshot teams thanks to her ability to deal a lot of damage with S3.

Strengths

High single target damage, if the situation allows. Her damage is big enough for her to be used in a Blue Hunt oneshot team.

S2 and S3 are uncounterable, meaning she could be used to safely defuse counter fighters.

Weaknesses

Unlike other single target nukers who simply deal straightforward damage, Drizella must set up bleeds first (which can be blocked by Immunity) then attack, which mostly just gets in the way of herself.

Since the Bleeds are an attacking component, they can be evaded by red element units or evasion fighters.

Her cooldown is very long and she loses steam after her first turn.

Build Guide

Since she is reliant on debuffs anyway, she is best equipped with Rage set, because she can set up the conditions herself. 

Right side CDMG + ATK% + SPD.

E7: Illynav

Memoria Marsha is a severely underpowered unit both in E7 and in Recode. Very little theorycrafting information exists and it is extremely rare to see anyone using her in battle.

Details for this unit will not be provided unless someone else does the write-up for me. I'm not going to research this unit myself lol

E7: Edward Elric

Bartholo is an anti-debuff counteropener with an AOE and a strong single target nuke.

When she is attacked and gets inflicted with a debuff, she does 2 things:

1. (Same as Clone Carolyn passive) cleanse 1 debuff, activates once per hit.

2. Followup with an AOE that strips 1, applies a random debuff, and selfpushes 20%. Activates once per self turn.

Note that the passive checks if she is debuffed before the self-cleanse, so the skill will still activate even if she is hit with 1 debuff which is cleansed.

Her S3 is a single target nuke that ignores damage redirection (Backwards, Heidi's Guard, etc).

Hbart's intended purpose is to act as a counteropener. When the enemy opens with an AOE debuffing attack, she cleanses one, self-pushes 20%, and if she can steal the next turn, kill one unit with her S3, defanging or crippling the enemy.

Due to the fact that she is an HP scaler she is sometimes used as a counteropener/anti-cleave solution in a tanky brawler defense team. She is also a viable RTA counterpick, for those who bother to play RTA at all.

Strengths

Hard to debuff: Has the same passive as CCaro who self-cleanses one debuff every time she is attacked.

She is also an HP scaler, who is built tanky, so she is hard to kill in general.

S2 paints random debuffs (ATK Down, ACC Down, Taunt, Silence, Restrict) as an AOE. This is extremely unreliable, but if a CC (Taunt or Silence) lands on an important enemy unit, that might really screw up your opponent.

Weaknesses

Skills that paint 2 debuffs or more at the same time will leave debuffs on her. If she gets the next turn with debuffs on her, S3 may fail to kill, which would defeat her entire purpose. For example, Sora, who will not miss her 3 debuffs because they're a nonattack component, attacks Bart, Bart will cleanse the SPD Down but will still have ATK Down and ACC Down, so she won't be able to kill anyone right away.

20% self-push is not a lot for a counteropener. She must build for high speed, and if she gets into a gauge push race against an enemy who also pushes, she might fail to secure the turn. For example, when Bart's S2 triggers the enemy Urd, she will fail to cut the turn against Urd who has a much larger self-push.

Being a Red element she has a 50% chance to miss against Water element. Usually not a problem except when it matters.

She is fairly gear hungry. Bart is an HP scaler, but has a decent ATK scale, providing an incentive to build for both. As a damage dealer she needs full Crit Rate and high CDMG but gets neither from discipline. She also needs high speed to cut the turn (190~220spd), and no RES since she must get debuffed to activate her passive.

As with all units who rely on getting debuffed, she is vulnerable to 15% absolute resistance screwing her in the wrong way.

Build Guide

Straightforward counteropener build: Speed + Pen/Crit, high speed, high HP, high damage

Brawler: Lifesteal + Pen/Crit, higher HP, higher damage, less speed

idk about a destruction build but we'll see. The meta can always develop in unexpected ways.

Her self bond (Passion) lets her snowball the match by stacking a CDMG and SPD buff. Since S3 selfpushes 50%, a high speed bart could achieve insane turn-cycling, assuming that the match even lasts that long.

Otherwise just run whatever damage bond you want, or Celeste bond (Gluttony) for additional self pushing. Any of the self-healing bonds will let her cosplay as a brawler without running a Lifesteal build.

E7: Senya

Trist is an ATK scaling counter-fighter with an innate crit resistance and a little bit of crowd-control.

The core of her skillset is in her passive, which deals an ATK scaling extra damage to her attacker if the attack does not result in a crit (miss, normal hit, or strike all counts). She gets 50% crit resistance from her passive.

Her S3 is an AOE that paints ACC down (more chance to miss crits on her) and a 75% Taunt (force enemies to attack her to trigger the passive), then applies Counterattack (same buff from Belle) and ATK up+.

After using S3, Trist will counter with S1 every time she is hit, and when S1 is used outside of self turn, it has a 100% (minus resistance) chance to paint Taunt.

To summarize, the basic design is:

• Have crit resistance.

• Make enemies hit you.

• If the hit doesn't crit = hit back, paint taunt so they have to hit you again, and deal extra damage.

Strengths

Creates variables: Traditional damage dealers who nuke with high crit damage will have at least 50% chance to fail the attack against Trist, then get hit with an extra damage (and maybe even a counterattack). Fighters who don't build for durability at all will absolutely fold to several of these counters.

Unique "Uncrittable" synergy: If you put Crit RES Up buff on Trist she will have 100% combined crit resistance. The only way for her to be critted at this state is by being attacked with units whose attacks are "guaranteed to crit" AND also build crit rate.

"Hits are guaranteed to crit" is internally represented as a simple +100% crit rate, and this allows those units to partially or fully bypass Crit RES. Practically this isn't too big of a deal considering what kind of units do have this effect...

Strong against Lifesteal and evasion: All current lifesteal brawlers rely on dealing with high crit damage and healing based off the damage dealt. If a crit does not occur, not only can they not heal as much, but they'll also get hit with an extra damage that cannot be evaded. If you're thinking about Julia, your instinct is correct.

Weaknesses

Disappointing damage: This is the biggest problem with her. Her base ATK was actually nerfed compared to E7, and her multipliers aren't amazing. She will threaten squishy units just fine, but don't expect much more than that. In a tanky brawler matchup, she might run out of gas before she can do anything.

Wrong class: Trist is an ATK scaler, yet she is a Taurus Knight with horrible base ATK to the point where she prefers flat ATK mainstat pieces.

Wrong class 2: She's a counter-fighter and a brawler but is a Knight. Her bond choices are very bad.

Overreliance on self bond: There's vanishingly little alternative bond options for her due to her being in the wrong class, her bond is pretty much only useful for her, and it's chance-based, forcing +30 upgrade for proper usage.

S3 self-buffs: ATK Up+ and Counterattack are extremely high value buffs that will absolutely ruin the match if stolen by HKD. They WILL get stolen by HKD the instant Trist counters once.

Weak against debuffs and strips: If her buffs are taken away she can't counter anymore, and if she gets hit with ATK Down her damage craters. Hard crowd control will completely shut her down.

S2 "Nullzone" skill is a nonattack: Will trigger Akane and Saku. Problematic if you didn't intend to trigger them. Easy counteropener potential if Trist is used in defense.

High gear requirement: You might be thinking that a unit who can't crit and thus don't need to chase Crate and CDMG at all would be easier to build, but the problem is that Trist requires non-standard gear, and it's likely that you'll have to farm bespoke pieces just for her.

Build Guide

High ATK, high HP, high SPD, dump all other stats. DEF is okay but not a priority.

Right side can vary, with a mix of ATK% and HP%. Boots can be speed main or otherwise.

Some advocate for a low SPD build (stronger against HKD, more room to build for ATK and HP).

Excellent if paired with Crit RES Up units, mainly Rafael who has been extremely unpopular so far. Potential synergy with Time Aoi.

E7: Choux

Aoi was so popular they did a second collab. Time Aoi is the newest addition to the "bullshit RNG counter slop" line of brawlers with the added ability to RNG resist your critical hits.

Time Aoi's damage scales with her max HP making her an HP scaling brawler.

Time Aoi has the "Erica Passive," AKA 20% chance to counter when allies are attacked. Her S1 is a single target attack that self-pushes by 20%, and has a 40% chance to followup with S2.

S2 is a single target attack that penetrates 70% DEF, with an innate lifesteal, and the added ability to increase damage and reset its cooldown when used with full focus. The skill text wrongly describes it as being an AOE.

S3 is another AOE that also applies Crit RES Up and Immunity to allies.

Compared to Erica: Erica is still better for PvE (more damage and offensive team buffs), but Time Aoi has far more PvP utility.

Compared to SSJ and SSN: Time Aoi has no debuffs, but she protects her entire team unlike SSJ/SSN who focuses more on solo brawling potential.

Compared to Julia: Time Aoi doesn't have evasion but Crit RES functions somewhat similarly, and is able to counter when allies are hit unlike julia. Time Aoi also has AOE attacks, unlike Julia.

Strengths

Like all counterfighters, Time Aoi creates uncontrollable variables with her counters, forcing RNG checks on the enemy; this is especially amplified with her Crit RES which can randomly foil the enemy's attacks.

Being an HP scaler who is built tanky & having Crit RES buff makes her hard to kill. She is especially hard to blitz down off the cuff due to her Crit RES UP buff at the start of the battle, as well as the fact that she usually runs her own bond which provides an unremovable 20% Crit RES. 

If her S1 triggers S2, she can do scary amounts of damage, especially owing to its 70% DEF penetration.

Weaknesses

In an offense team, her inherent randomness turns her RNG against your favor. This is the same with all the other counterfighters: Erica, SSJ, Jullia...

While she does have Immunity, she cannot cleanse existing debuffs, making her weak against debuffers (and especially controllers) with a higher tempo than her. A slow Time Aoi is an easy prey against cleavers, who can simply strip the RES Up and either keep her disabled with a CC or kill her off.

Like all HP scalers, she is vulnerable to Injury. Usually not a problem, but there are a few odd units in the meta with inherent injury. Reducing Time Aoi's max HP also reduces her damage.

Build Guide

Counter + Pen/Crit/Health. 100% crit, as much CDMG and HP as possible. Right side CDMG + HP% + SPD.

Lifesteal build is possible, but trades counter proc chance for staying power.

A variant fit dumps Crit Rate and CDMG in favor of maximum HP and Speed, using the fact that her damage, even if they don't crit, are still high enough to threaten squishy units. This build would run Speed + Health, right side HP% + HP% + SPD.

Do not neglect speed. She needs the tempo, and having speed works as insurance for when her counters fail to proc.

Her own bond is great on her to create variables. Any of the lifesteal bonds can improve her staying power without having to use Lifesteal sets. Otherwise, any damage bond or even Gluttony for tempo works great.

E7: Midnight Gala Lilias

Caro is a DEF penetrating single target nuker with great staying power.

She has two characteristics:

First, her S3 is a single target nuke that, while having extremely poor base damage on paper, self-buffs ATK up before attacking, ignores damage distribution (like Backwards Glance) AND damage reduction (like Reluctant Compromise), and penetrates more DEF based on the HP difference between her and the target. She will penetrate 100% DEF if the target has 16,000 more HP than her.

Caro's S3 can easily oneshot someone if the conditions are right.

If any of her attacks result in the enemy having less than 50% HP, she team-buffs ATK Up and pushes her team's gauge by 20%.

Second, Caro maintains a "Pain Tolerence" buff that limits any single damage instance to 35% of her max HP (similar to Janis and Naksha but better). Her S1 also has built-in lifesteal that scales off pure ATK.

Her attacks are also guaranteed to crit (which fully ignores crit RES).

Strengths

She (theoretically) has the strengths of Mirabelle and Naksha in one unit and then some more: The qualities of a single target nuker and a damage-limited lifesteal brawler.

She also has a higher deck-thinning potential than Mirabelle who traditionally requires two support units: Aoi to protect and provide DEF Down, and Saika to sustain and provide tempo and ATK Up. Caro self-buffs ATK Up, usually builds high speed, penetrates DEF, and has a built-in survival tool with Pain Tolerance.

Her S3, if the HP differential is met, can reliably delete units off the field. The attack is guaranteed to crit if hit meaning it ignores crit RES (great counter against Time Aoi, who is a high HP brawler with crit RES). She can oneshot tanks and healers as well.

Caro is also hard to cleave off the cuff due to Pain Threshold, you either need three attacks or a buff strip followed by an attack. If she is allowed to maintain PT, she'll survive like a cockroach even harder than Naksha ever could because the raw HP healed from S1 is proportionally higher than Naksha's lifesteals bring her. In other words it takes less HP healed to recover 35+% which guarantees the survival of another hit.

Weaknesses

She's actually really hard to build. None of her gear must have HP, HP%, EHR%, or Crit rate. She doesn't build for DEF either. And if you're going for pure damage, you also want to avoid RES%. This leaves vanishingly little room for error when it comes to gear selection, and all the substats must be exacting in specification.

As a grass element Caro has a 50% chance to miss against red element units. Considering that Aoi is one of, if not the most important high HP tanks she's supposed to kill this is an insane drawback.

It is actually very difficult to achieve the full 100% penetration by creating a 16,000HP differential. A "normal" build will land Caro at roughly 6~8k HP; that places the threshold around 22~24k HP, pretty much only achieved by Ariel, Aoi, and other dedicated tankers.

DEF scalers, who normally build medium to low HP to go for high DEF, are especially difficult to achieve high penetration against.

Her damage limiter being a buff instead of a passive opens her up to all sorts of vulnerabilities:

Pain Threshold can be stripped, just like stripping Counter off of Belle

Caro will not refresh PT if she's Unbuffable

The buff can be stolen by HKD, which will obviously nosedive the match

She is also vulnerable to the usual ways to bypass damage limiters, such as simply doing a lot of attacks (much more effective here as Caro builds extremely low HP; even units who don't build damage at all, such as healers, will hit the damage threshold), damage from debuffs such as Curse or Bomb, extra damage from bonds, and fixed damage.

Build Guide

Riptide set is semi-mandatory as Caro MUST have as low HP as possible.

For the rest, she can run Lifesteal (for maximum staying power), Destruction (for kill security), or Speed (for tempo).

Right side CDMG + ATK% + SPD.

Aim for ATK, SPD, CDMG. No other stats needed - build RES if you have the room for it, but it is not necessary. Absolutely not worth sacrificing damage for RES.

using a lv.78 helmet (from events) is highly recommended as those have slightly less HP.

A much more advanced (and difficult) build is to use a +0 unupgraded helmet to build for as low HP as possible.

Bond choice: Any damage bond.

E7: Ludwig

Shizuna is a nuker who can strip, stun, and turn herself invincible.

Shizuna's skill chain is S2 > S3. S2 is a single target attack that attacks, decreases buff durations by 1, stuns, self-buffs Invincible and ATK Up, and self-pushes 50% (in that order). The buffs being applied after the attack is a small downside. S2 can be soulburned to ignore RES.

S3 is an AOE that penetrates up to 60% DEF, and if the skill kills any enemy, extends self buffs by 1 turn, which naturally extends her Invincible.

Her S1 can steal (Strip & Copy at the same time) 1 buff from the target, and self-pushes.

Importantly, S2 does not generate an extra turn, but rather grants a measly 50% self push, which means that she can't truly chain her skills on her own. She must wait her turn before she can follow with S3.

Strengths

Shizuna has the highest base ATK of all units so far, and that helps her deal fairly high damage if fit correctly. She can use S2 to stun and heavily damage a threatening unit, then (if she can get her next turn) follow up with S3 which can kill one or more units to maintain her Invincible.

An example build with 3.3k atk and 300cdmg shows 8~9k for S2 and 14k for S3 (w/ ATK up and Invincible) which is a lot of damage.

Weaknesses

Her deck thinning power is very low, her skill chain is lackluster, and her utility is dubious. There are many units that perform similar roles as Shizuna but have proper skill chains and more utility. Many such units that are currently meta have an off-turn self-push to help grab their own turn (Layla, Gail, and more) or have team gauge pushes to boost the whole team's tempo (So many examples...) while Shizula struggles to even pull herself up.

Very low base speed of 112 makes it hard to build her fast enough.

Being a Green element, she struggles against Red element units, and she doesn't have helpful "tricks" like Base Accuracy or Guaranteed Crits.

Build Guide

Build as a standard high-speed nuker with Speed / Destruction + Crit / Pen / Riptide. Right side CDMG + ATK% + SPD.

Bringing Book (Flutter) allows her to soulburn S2, which is better value than mere damage bonds.

A high-speed opener build is possible especially if chained with Dawn and Anh, but is ill-advised due to Shizuna's low base speed of 112.

Building for RES is possible to protect her Invincible and improve her staying power, but this doesn't hold much merit as she fizzles out after S2 > S3 and has little to no advantage towards staying alive. She shines in cleave comps where the battle ends quickly.

As for team comps, Shizuna struggles to perform on her own and must be combined with units who can grant her tempo. Yuri is an especially strong combo as her Blink buff (which is guaranteed to happen if Shizuna soulburns S2, which fulfills Yuri's S2 conditions) can give Shizuna +50% more gauge push giving her 100% total for a faux-Extra Turn effect. 

Any other unit who can react to her S2's high damage (Gail, etc) or its debuff application (Layla, Dawn, etc) can work also.