April 15

New Banners

Combat Mechanic Trist event banner

Recommendation For Newly Starting Players

Still reroll for Saika.

Simple Rerolling (Don't start with limited units): Same process as always (Link to guide)

Advanced Rerolling (Start with at least 1 limited unit): Use the Advanced Rerolling guide (Link) 

Recommendation For Regular Players

There's a case to be made both for and against pulling Trist, but as always, a good idea to wait 1 week for the free tickets and to see how the meta develops.

Anh from last week is more problematic than expected. More down below.

New Event

Elite Mode

Anheeun (Boss) + Eimi

Anh deals Very high damage. Eimi will place a fairly large shield on Anh on her first turn, then pester you with AOEs.

Both Anh and Eimi will prioritize attacking Position 1.

Recommended Strategy

Toetip Erica + DEF Down + Healer + Very tanky bait for the bosses on pos 1. Anyone who likes getting hit can stand there. Gariel is great as her Immunity protects you from Eimi's AOE ACC Down. Tanky green element units will withstand the bosses excellently.

Some amount of AOE damage reduction is good, but not necessary.

Event Shop

Featured 5*: Nenookasi

Neno is famously capable of solo clearing Blue hunt. Absolutely worth picking up if you don't have her already.

New unit: Combat Mechanic Trist

or just trist since the base trist is irrelevant

E7: Senya

Hooray, yet another ATK scaling knight. She's not as boring as the previous two though.

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

Damage might be disappointing: This is the currently 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 probably 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.

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.

Other News

Update on Sleepy Anheeun: Followups count.

This means debuff attacking opener + SDawn combo is possible and already very real. Mostly seen in Guild War.

The most obvious choice is Sora + SDawn, but the lineup is vulnerable to Silvina. Those who can afford an extremely high speed Aubrynn runs Opener Aub + Sdawn to foil the Silvina counter.

Word of advice for anyone fighting against these comps: Anheeun is baitable with a dark unit. Protect a dark bait with Aoi, deal with the initial barrage, Anh immediately runs out of steam and you're effectively in a 2v3 situation. Fairly winnable. High RES Felicia or Counter RES Dildo are good options for the bait.

Gear Crafting Event is back

Link to the guide for what to do with the event