Of course there are onsen in hell! Let’s jump right in:
| New Units | |
 | Refreshes debuffs on enemies, and shaves off their HP while he’s at it |
 | Reliably cleanses debuffs, and has interesting strengthening for Nourishment |
 | A bit of this, a bit of that… and a bit of this, and a bit of that, and… |
 | Curses the whole enemy team, then punishes them for daring to have Curse |
 | About as subtle as a brick, but who needs subtlety when you’re this strong? |
 | Can reliably hand out Crit and Evasion, and has plenty of firepower available himself |
Zhurong’s 3★ is… pretty bland. He’s ok, if you have a debuff-heavy team that needs just a little bit more damage, but you’ll probably have better options available.
His 4★, on the other hand, has actual options: he’ll refresh any debuffs on the enemy, and shave a chunk of health off any enemies that already have any debuffs on them. For strong debuffs, this can be quite oppressive – if he’s in range of a Charmed enemy, they’re effectively permanently locked out of the fight – but he’s also going to do decent work on a team built around defensive debuffs (Curse, Dazzle, Darkness, etc.) as a damage-dealer.
He’ll take a bit of building around to get the most out of him, but he’s a pretty great option for more disruptive teams.
One thing that I’ll need to check is whether he’s able to copy debuffs across to other enemies – it’s not immediately apparent which way that will work. If he can, he’s going to be phenomenal with the right setup.
Unlike Zhurong, Sarutahiko’s 3★ brings good value to a team – Purification on phase start is a reliably strong way to deal with incoming debuffs, his Nourishment Strengthening actually does decent work (and it’s a common enough buff that including a source of it on your team won’t be too much of a stretch), and a 50 CP/remove all debuffs is a pretty decent effect when you lose him.
Also unlike Zhurong, I’m not sure that his 4★ brings enough to the table to be run over his 3★. Increased range on his Purification and Adamantine aren’t really enough to offset the increased team cost, and losing a 4★ (to trigger his LB2 effects) stings a fair bit more than a 3★, especially when the effects aren’t boosted between his rarities.
Ah yes, the old two-skillsets-for-the-price-of-one trick.
As an all-rounder, Mineaki is pretty decent – he’ll either give a good spread of boosts (Protection, Blessing, Concentration, and CP gain) to his team, or some decent negative effects to the enemy (Fear, Stigma, Skill Lock, and CP reduction).
Both sets of skills are pretty good, and don’t require him to move. With how long his negative effects last (3 turns for Stigma, and 5 turns for Skill Lock and Fear), you’re going to want him missing most of the time, occasionally popping up to the front to ruin the enemy’s day.
With such a flexible kit, he’ll be an easy pick for quite a few teams – though he doesn’t really bring anything specific, he’ll almost always bring something useful.
I’m trying to decide whether or not his default skill is a joke or not. If it is, I’m not sure I get it.
Fortunately, the rest of his kit is much more interesting – global Curse is a great defensive debuff, and the ability to cash in on an enemy’s Curse for a guaranteed 6x damage boost (aka Crit++) is damage output that’s very hard to ignore.
The rest of his kit are largely utility bits and pieces, with Vigour and Glint being nice supporting buffs and Nourishment and Remove Debuff giving him a little bit of self-sustain. Nourishment is particularly interesting here in combination with Sarutahiko for a couple of reasons:
- Daikoku Likes Sarutahiko, for that juicy +10% skill activation rate
- Daikoku doesn’t need to move for any of his skills, meaning Sarutahiko can apply his Nourishment Strengthening relatively easily
- Sarutahiko has increased vertical movement, which is usually useless but will (in this case) let him park Daikoku out of the way until you’re ready to attack
There are also a few things worth noting with his CS: first, since a CS doesn’t count as an attack, he won’t strip Curse off enemies with it, and second, Curse Resistance will trigger Buff Reversal – in most cases, this just means that he’ll do decent damage with his CS, unless you’ve stuck around the phase for far too long.
Weirdly enough, Horkeu Kamui has my least favourite skillset of the gacha. It’s definitely very strong (we’ll get there in a sec!), but there’s very little to make it stand out or to thematically tie it to the character – something that Lifewonders has historically been very good at.
Complaints aside, did I mention that he’s strong? Where to start:
Defensively, between Nourishment and self-healing, he’ll be getting about 500HP back a turn. He also gets Tenacity at a good rate, before he gets hit. He also gets Guts at 60% when he moves.
Remember when Snow was OP, with 500HP/turn healing and Protection?
Offensively, he’s only got reliable access to an 8.25x damage multiplier, though if you make sure to hit enemies before they can get rid of their Nullify Buff, this goes to 12.375x. If you’re worried about this being a little low, don’t worry, he can equip Marchosias’ AR.
Being an absolute monster aside, global Nullify Buff is probably going to be his biggest drawcard – we’re starting to see quests with some really obnoxious combinations of enemy buffs, and this will go a long way towards making them reasonable. It helps that he can solo the enemies afterwards, too!
Xolotl was well-overdue for a variant! Whatever the reason, waiting paid off.
There are two aspects of his kit that are worth pulling apart: his personal After Buff skills, and his Evasion- and Crit-granting skills.
With a 40% chance of getting Crit after a buff, and a 30% chance of getting Tenacity after a buff, he’ll have about a 46% chance of getting both effects on the first turn of the phase, and about an 80% chance of getting one of the two, thanks to his Nourishment and Evasion. Because I like to overthink things, here’s a table with some approximate trigger probabilities for you:
| # Other (trigger) buffs | %Chance of both buffs | %Crit only | %Tenacity only | %Neither 😦 |
| 1 | 27.6 | 19.6 | 10.8 | 42.0 |
| 2 | 49.4 | 22.0 | 11.0 | 17.6 |
| 3 | 65.2 | 18.8 | 8.5 | 7.4 |
| 4 | 76.4 | 14.6 | 5.9 | 3.1 |
| 5 | 84.0 | 10.8 | 3.9 | 1.3 |
With a solid buff like Crit, a ~70% chance off the back of two other buffs is really quite good. Combined with his application of Weakness, he should be able to reliably put out solid damage (though, thanks to his attribute, probably not quite as much as Horkeu!).
The other interesting part of his skillset are his Grant (Evasion/Crit) After Moving skills – both of these are great buffs, and to have them on tap on any friendly unit is a huge plus. Depending on the timing, units that can share their buffs could be absurd here.
The rest of his kit is mostly just gravy, but it’s not like he really needs it.
There we have it! As usual, the 5★ units are absurd, but there’s enough interesting stuff at the 4★ level and below to keep things fresh. As always, good luck if you decide to roll!
The@Housamo 