July 22

New Banners

Yukie [Limited, Debut]

Mead [Mysterious, Debut]

Recommendation For Newly Starting Players

Reroll for either Sea Janis or Yukie. 

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

As always it's a good idea to wait 1 week before pulling any debut units.

Yukie is a solid unit with very clear advantages AND disadvantages. Some people will make great use of her, others might not.

Mead is also a pretty decent unit with a unique niche, but most likely will not be dominant. However, consider that the next two Myst banners will probably be reruns, giving players time to recoup tickets (unless you are trying to snipe a particular unit from the rerun banners).

New Event

Elite Mode

Cheerleader Berrica (Boss), Combat Mechanic Trist

The exclusive mechanic for this event is that whenever a Fire element Sniper uses an AOE attack the enemies are hit with a debuff that prevents them from firing counters, flanks, or followups. This is to make up for the fact that Yukie's Suppress does not apply to PvE bosses.

Berrica has a new 30% base counter chance (exclusive to this event only). She also has 50% base accuracy as well as 50% increased crit rate (this isn't new), which is deadly because her crits have an insane damage output. Don't forget that her S3 (which already does enough damage to oneshot healers) also inflicts Injury.

Trist is a counter-fighter by design, and her counters are absolutely devastating because she fires raw ATK scaling non-crittable attacks, and as a PvE boss she has extremely high ATK, and she self-buffs ATK Up+. Expect anywhere between 6~10k damage even if the attack misses.

Recommended Strategy

They overtuned the shit out of this event to make you buy Yukie. This is the hardest Elite stage released in recent months. 

If you do not have Yukie the next best option is either Mina or Naranthir. Both of them are fire snipers with an AOE which can stop Trist and Berrica from countering. Borrow them from your friends if you don't have one.

Trying to turtle the stage is usually futile due to the excessive DPS and Berrica's Injury slowly wrecking your healers and HP scalers. Instead, aim to blitz Berrica as quickly as possible while disabling them with debuffs.

Unbuffable is crucial in preventing Berrica from gaining Invincible, or (more importantly) blocking Trist from gaining ATK Up+ or buffing SPD Up and Shield to her allies. 

ATK Down and ACC Down can massively decrease the incoming damage taken. SPD Down is also helpful, as well as Gauge Reduce to stop bosses from taking turns.

Particularly helpful units include Ith (Consider using S2 on Trist because the Targeted Taunt works on her), Aubrynn, and Sora.

Don't worry if everything fails because you won't have to farm this event much. The featured unit is useless, so just farm the essentials and move on.

Event Shop

Featured 5*: Edalia

She is not useful at all. Buy for Rainbow value or skip.

New Unit: Yukie

E7: Nahkwol

Yuri is a opener/debuffer/controller with a unique debuff (Suppress) and the first F2P-accessible Passiveless (aka Seal).

Her skill chain is S3 (Extra Turn) > S2.

S3 is an AOE attacking skill that strips all buffs, then applies Suppress and pushes skill CD by 1 turn, and creates an extra turn. It can be soulburned to ignore RES. All components of the skill (strip, suppress, and CD push) are part of the attack and are affected by misses.

S2 is a single target skill that first applies Seal to the target as a nonattack, then attacks the target, then self-buffs SPD Up at the end. The Seal application is not affected by misses as it is a nonattack component.

S1 is a single target attack with a 75% chance to Silence, and a gauge pushback if the Silence lands.

Suppress is a unique debuff that prevents the target from activating flanks, counters, or followup skills when it is not their turn.

While her debuffs are highly threatening in theory, she is clearly held back by her vulnerability to evasion & element disadvantage. Also, while she is great at controlling the enemy, she lacks firepower, thus having a low deck thinning potential.

Strengths

S3 is an extremely threatening skill that strips all buffs, completely shuts down off-turn actors, ruins the enemy's response by pushing cooldowns, while ignoring RES... If the attack hits. 

Units that counter or disable a game mechanic (in this case, off-turn flanks/counters/followups) tend to stay relevant in the meta for a very long time acting as a counterpick against specific threats. Yukie holds a monopoly on Suppress for now, and her "job security" is guaranteed until a new unit with Suppress debuts.

F2P players or small spenders who couldn't get Divergent Apostle can finally utilize Seal in their battles with Yukie's S2.

S2's Seal being a nonattack component allows her to partially counter units she normally can't hit with S3: Disabling Julia's passive decreases her evasion by 50% and prevents her from countering, and sealing SSJ will prevent her from gaining Defiance or countering with an AOE. However, S2 does not have a buff-strip and the Seal can be blocked by Immunity.

Many other "Meta" units in current use are also reliant on passives, and Yukie is more flexible than Div Apostle to be drafted into various comps. 

Weaknesses

Her base speed is very bad, sitting at 115. She cannot be easily built for opener-tier speeds, which is a problem for a unit who is meant to paint Suppress on the enemy as soon as possible before they can use their off-turn abilities.

She is a Fire element with no native accuracy bonus, and her S3 needs her attacks to hit in order to apply debuffs. This means that she has a high chance to miss against any Water element units (ex. SSJ, who has a very annoying off-turn counter) and Evasion units (ex. Julia, THE most dominant evasion counter-fighter).

She isn't a Caster and needs a separate Book Mage in the team to be able to soulburn S3. If she does not soulburn, or if she is used in a defense team, she is vulnerable to 15% absolute resistance (especially deadly if Suppress fails to apply on a critical enemy threat) as well as your usual RES calculations.

Suppress can be cleansed, and is particularly susceptible to self-cleansers of all kinds. She can disable some of them with Seal, however.

Build Guide

Build for as high SPD as possible, or speed tune her as a sub-opener who goes after your primary opener (which may help Yukie grab a turn with her slow base speed, but lowers deck thinning potential further still).

Speed + Accuracy / Health / Immune. Right side HP% + EHR% + SPD.

Fast DPS build is possible but generally discouraged.

Building EHR lets her operate without soulburning S3 & lets her land Seal against high RES enemies. Dumping EHR can allow for higher speeds.

As for bonds, 20% Accuracy bonds can reduce some of the evasion RNG of S3, but not enough to make it reliable (definitely not enough to expect a hit on Julia). 

Cosma's bond lets Yukie cloak at the start of battle and hide against single target openers.

Her own bond lets her randomly paint DEF Down.

New Unit: Mead

E7: Solitaria of the Snow

Mead is a debuffer/controller who shuts down the enemy's Focus gain.

Her defining feature is her passive. As long as Mead is alive (and her passive isn't Sealed), all enemies will be unable to gain Focus in any way. This includes popular units like:

• Julia (can't fire random S3)

• Time Aoi (can't fire enhanced S2, S2 cycle time increased)

• Saku (S2 Passive > S3 skill chain no longer works; AOE never fires)

• Erica (can't fire S3 ever)

• Chaldea (AI will never use S3)

• SSN (can't fire S2 passive AOE)

Mead DOES NOT prevent Morale gain, which includes units like Obsidian, Shien, or Belle.

Aside from this utility, Mead functions as a debuff-spamming controller. She cloaks herself at the start of battle as well as at the end of her turn making her very hard to target, and maintains a unique Flow State buff that makes all of her attacks apply a random debuff regardless of whether the attack hits or not. 

Her S3 is a single target skill that reduces buff durations as a nonattack, then attacks to apply Stun, gauge reduce, then self-buffs Shield. The skill can be soulburned to create an extra turn which allows her to chain the skill into S1.

Her S1 is a single target attack that has a 75% chance to strip 1 buff, then follows up with an AOE stunning attack when Flow State is active (which is always active, unless Mead was hit with Unbuffable). This AOE followup that triggers on every S1 allows her to spam debuffs using Flow State.

Strengths

Same as Yukie, units that counter or disable a game mechanic (in this case, Focus based skills) tend to stay relevant in the meta for a very long time. Mead is easier to use in this regard because all she needs to do is exist on the field.

The ability to paint random debuffs regardless of whether the attack hits allows her to put (often devastating) debuffs on evasion units. Julia is the most obvious example in this regard, being unable to gain focus and now being hit with ATK down, ACC down, SPD down, and Unbuffable.

Her AOE skill being a followup of S1 means that it cannot be countered, handy for painting debuffs on counter-fighters.

Cloak does not break if the unit is shielded and the attack fails to break the shield. Mead gets a shield from S3 and maintains Cloak using her passive, making her hard to pin down and kill quickly.

Being a Mage she has access to very strong bond choices, such as Book (to soulburn either herself or another unit), Cruel Truth (random evasion-ignoring Stuns, which only adds on to her debuff spam), or Cyber Clash (evasion-ignoring AOE Fixed Damage every time she uses S1). 

Weaknesses

If inflicted with Unbuffable, she can no longer refresh Flow State, and will not be able to inflict debuffs or cast her AOE after using S1.

Easily countered by Obsidian, who is unaffected by Mead's passive because she uses Morale not Focus. Continuously painting debuffs on the enemy will let Obsidian cycle turns extremely quickly.

While a niche pick, Gagarin is also able to counter Mead because her AOE passive is based on Morale accumulation.

Mead completely lacks firepower and relies on her allies to kill the enemy, and thus suffers from low deck-thinning potential.

Low base speed of 117 makes it hard to build her as a dedicated opener; her abilities aren't really suited for such a role either.

While her "maximum" debuff spamming potential is high, the rate of application is relatively low, and she doesn't have enough time to make a lot of impact in short-lived matches.

Build Guide

Make her fast, make her tanky, make her effect hit rate-y.

Speed / Revenge + Accuracy / Health / Immune. Right side HP% + HP% / EHR% + SPD.

Building for high RES to prevent her from getting hit with Unbuffable is a possible build as well.

Counter builds are generally discouraged since she cloaks herself.

Mead is better in drawn-out battles between brawlers or turtle comps where constantly pestering the enemy's ability to fight back is key to victory. She is mostly a counterpick against Focus users, but doesn't only have to be a counterpick.

Several possible bond choices:

• Book to help Mead or her ally soulburn

• Cruel Truth for maximum control potential, Stuns are the hardest CC available

• Cyber Clash to give her meaningful chip damage

• Reluctant to make her very hard to kill

• Love's Resonance (Dapo bond) is a cheap alternative to Truth.

Other News

Bond Shop Refreshes

Yukie's bond is hard to use for anyone but her, and the debuff proc is unreliable. Only consider if you live and die by RNG.

Mikael bond: There are better alternatives. HP scalers hugely benefit from Time Aoi's bond, for example.

Lucia bond: Hard to use for anyone but Lucia herself, and the Cloak is chance-based unless fully upgraded (which is really expensive). Not recommended unless you are already using it.

Rest aren't worth mentioning.

Unit changes

Yuri's S1 can no longer be countered. This is nice, but nothing major.