History GameBreaker / Arknights

** Following in the steps of her original counterpart, Wiš'adel dropped into the fifth anniversary celebration with a literal bang, instantly carving a spot as a monstrously powerful Flinger who brings ridiculous power blowing most other Snipers out of the water. From the start, her first talent '''Good Gift''' allows her attacks to do bonus damage to her main target and attach "marks" to them which, when hit by her aftershocks, have a 15% chance to explode for heavy physical damage and a brief Stun in an area, giving her free bonus damage and crowd control without needing her skill, admittedly on an unreliable chance. Her second talent '''Revenant Yet Breathes''', however, lets her summon a "Shadow of Revenant" when first deployed (up to 3), which acts as a turret that periodically blasts enemies with Arts damage that can help her handle physically bulky foes, also slowing them and applying Wiš'adel's mark, with the turrets and mark combined giving Wiš'adel shockingly high DPS even without a skill. The Shadow ''lasts forever'' and is exceedingly tanky due to a combination of its inability to block and its shockingly massive bulk, and while Wiš'adel is within one tile of any Shadow, she gets ''permanent Camouflage'', making her effectively unkillable as long as ranged enemies can't destroy up to 3 ridiculously tanky summons before she spawns more. Her second skill '''Saturated Vengeance''' significantly reduces her attack interval and gives her a small ATK buff while letting her hit 3 enemies at once and, once half its duration is up and it's in Overload mode, changes to firing 4-round bursts that randomly target enemies in range; this can obliterate groups of enemies instantly due to the overlapping explosions and thus higher chances to cause her first talent's marks to burst, and once she's in Overload she doesn't even need grouped enemies as she can simply fire all her attacks at the same target if only one is in range. However, her S3 '''Bursting Dawn''' is where things get ridiculous: she instantly summons 2 more Shadows in her range, gains a huge ATK buff at the cost of drastically lowering her attack interval, and loads 6 ammo with a massively increased damage multiplier and splash radius while guaranteeing the procs of her first talent. Although she'll be firing as slow as molasses when the skill is up, the sheer damage each shell will do cannot be understated - under optimal conditions, Wiš'adel can deal a maximum of nearly ''20,000'' total damage to each target on ''every shot'', doing enough damage per hit that the usual problem of Flingers having their attacks reduced by DEF multiple times goes out the window, while her Shadows will be constantly firing shots and applying her mark to make sure she can land those juicy explosions and Stun anything that survives. In just six shots, Wiš'adel can completely obliterate every single threat in a gigantic area, especially with buffs since she scales ridiculously well with them thanks to a combination of her stacking multiplicative damage modifiers and multi-hits; to add insult to injury, her S3 breaks the rules of the Flinger archetype by ''being able to target aerial units'', removing even that minor class weakness entirely. On top of this, her skill cooldowns are surprisingly generous for how absurd they can be: her S2 and S3 have manual deactivation to save time (with her S3 being ammo-based making it harder for her to waste duration), her S2 and S3 having a 25 and 50 second cooldown respectively, and both of them having enough starting SP at M3 that Wiš'adel will be able to fire them ''10 seconds'' after deployment, letting her serve as a helidrop as well.

** Debuting as the welfare 6* of Episode 14, Civilight Eterna brings a Bard's kit loaded with tools to bolster her allies and keep them alive through the toughest of ordeals, serving as an excellent sidegrade to the already powerful Skadi the Corrupting Heart despite being a free unit. To start off, although her healing initially pales in comparison to a standard Medic (with the bycoming benefit of being able to heal normally unhealable units like Juggernauts, Mushas, and summons), her first talent '''Dusts of the Past''' slightly mitigates this by summoning three "Microdusts" that closely orbit her and burst on contact with friendly units (with a cooldown of 6 seconds each), increasing her healing to them by up to 50% for 6 seconds, helping her better sustain units closer to her. This is still not enough to put her healing up to par, which is where her skills come in, ''all of which'' have potentially useful applications. '''Past Lingers On''' is a permanent skill that increases her trait's healing from 10% ATK to a maximum of 35%, while halving the regeneration time of her Microdusts; although lacking the buffs of Skadi's infamous S2, the healing is almost ''double'' of said skill on targets hit by her rapidly regenerating Microdusts (while still having a significant advantage without it) and can rival many stronger Medics, making her an incredible source of AFK sustain. '''Tomorrow Beyond Reach''' flips this on its head and sacrifices healing for bursts of offensive power, with Civilight Eterna giving all allies in range up to a 100% ATK Inspire, expanding the rotation range of her Microdusts while increasing the cap to 6, and changes their function from amplifying healing to exploding on contact with enemies, dealing [[ArmorPiercingAttack True damage]] on hit while Binding them; both the offensive buffs and the damage from the Microdusts are surprisingly high, and with the quantity of the dusts and the fairly long Bind duration, Civilight Eterna can easily permabind a single target while chipping away at them with unmitigatable damage, while her empowered allies tear into them while they're helpless. Her third skill '''Reconstructive Reality Weaving''' instead brings a level of team survivability almost unmatched by any other support character: Civilight Eterna expands her range, increases the healing of her trait to a maximum of ''90% ATK'', causes her Microdusts to no longer vanish on contact for the duration, and gives all allies in range an Inspire effect of up to ''100% of her HP'', which is not only a rare form of non-self HP buffing, but for many units is equivalent to a whopping ''50-100%'' HP buff. On top of that, every 2 seconds, Civilight Eterna will ''evenly redistribute the HP percentages of all allies in her range'', which if you have enough units grouped up translates to everyone becoming next to immortal as a majority of the damage they take will be filled in by the health of their allies, especially if all of the other allies are at full health, raising the average HP percentage and allowing a severely wounded ally to recover almost all of their HP immediately. And this is ''on top'' of the huge HP buff and healing she's providing, meaning that unless an enemy can kill the target [[OneHitKill in a single shot]], you'd be hard pressed to have anyone die under her protection. As a free unit, she also enjoys more accessible Potentials compared to other units and especially the limited Skadi, which can reduce her DP cost to a miniscule ''7'' while improving her second talent '''The King's Echoes''' which now gives all allies on the field an unconditional 15% damage reduction against Sarkaz, which like Mudrock before her helps against the hordes of Sarkaz DemonicSpiders that frequently rear their heads. With the array of insane support abilities Civilight Eterna brings to the field, the remnant of the Sarkaz King is potentially one of the strongest, if not ''the'' strongest free unit players have gotten to date.

** Debuting as the welfare 6* of Episode 14, Civilight Eterna brings a Bard's kit loaded with tools to bolster her allies and keep them alive through the toughest of ordeals, serving as an excellent sidegrade to the already powerful Skadi the Corrupting Heart despite being a free unit. To start off, although her healing initially pales in comparison to a standard Medic (with the bycoming benefit of being able to heal normally unhealable units like Juggernauts, Mushas, and summons), her first talent '''Dusts of the Past''' slightly mitigates this by summoning three "Microdusts" that closely orbit her and burst on contact with friendly units (with a cooldown of 6 seconds each), increasing her healing to them by up to 50% for 6 seconds, helping her better sustain units closer to her. This is still not enough to put her healing up to par, which is where her skills come in, ''all of which'' have potentially useful applications. '''Past Lingers On''' is a permanent skill that increases her trait's healing from 10% to up to 35%, while halving the regeneration time of her Microdusts; although lacking the buffs of Skadi's infamous S2, the healing is almost ''double'' of said skill on targets hit by her rapidly regenerating Microdusts (while still having a significant advantage without it) and can rival many stronger Medics, making her an incredible source of AFK sustain. '''Tomorrow Beyond Reach''' flips this on its head and sacrifices healing for bursts of offensive power, with Civilight Eterna giving all allies in range up to a 100% ATK Inspire, expanding the rotation range of her Microdusts while increasing the cap to 6, and changes their function from amplifying healing to exploding on contact with enemies, dealing [[ArmorPiercingAttack True damage]] on hit while Binding them; both the offensive buffs and the damage from the Microdusts are surprisingly high, and with the quantity of the dusts and the fairly long Bind duration, Civilight Eterna can easily permabind a single target while chipping away at them with unmitigatable damage, while her empowered allies tear into them while they're helpless. Her third skill '''Reconstructive Reality Weaving''' instead brings a level of team survivability almost unmatched by any other support character: Civilight Eterna expands her range, increases the healing of her trait from 10% ATK to up to ''90%'', causes her Microdusts to no longer vanish on contact for the duration, and gives all allies in range an Inspire effect of up to ''100% of her HP'', which is not only a rare form of non-self HP buffing, but for many units is equivalent to a whopping ''50-100%'' HP buff. On top of that, every 2 seconds, Civilight Eterna will ''evenly redistribute the HP percentages of all allies in her range'', which if you have enough units grouped up translates to everyone becoming next to immortal as a majority of the damage they take will be filled in by the health of their allies, especially if all of the other allies are at full health, raising the average HP percentage and allowing a severely wounded ally to recover almost all of their HP immediately. And this is ''on top'' of the huge HP buff and healing she's providing, meaning that unless an enemy can kill the target [[OneHitKill in a single shot]], you'd be hard pressed to have anyone die under her protection. As a free unit, she also enjoys more accessible Potentials compared to other units and especially the limited Skadi, which can reduce her DP cost to a miniscule ''7'' while improving her second talent '''The King's Echoes''' which now gives all allies on the field an unconditional 15% damage reduction against Sarkaz, which like Mudrock before her helps against the hordes of Sarkaz DemonicSpiders that frequently rear their heads. With the array of insane support abilities Civilight Eterna brings to the field, the remnant of the Sarkaz King is potentially one of the strongest, if not ''the'' strongest free unit players have gotten to date.

** Following in the steps of her original counterpart, Wiš'adel dropped into the fifth anniversary celebration with a literal bang, instantly carving a spot as a monstrously powerful Flinger who brings ridiculous power blowing most other Snipers out of the water. From the start, her first talent '''Good Gift''' allows her attacks to do bonus damage to her main target and attach "marks" to them which, when hit by her aftershocks, have a 15% chance to explode for heavy physical damage and a brief Stun in an area, giving her free bonus damage and crowd control without needing her skill, admittedly on an unreliable chance. Her second talent '''Revenant Yet Breathes''', however, lets her summon a "Shadow of Revenant" when first deployed (up to 3), which acts as a turret that periodically blasts enemies with Arts damage that can help her handle physically bulky foes, also slowing them and applying Wiš'adel's mark. The Shadow ''lasts forever'' and is exceedingly tanky due to a combination of its inability to block and its shockingly massive bulk, and while Wiš'adel is within one tile of any Shadow, she gets ''permanent Camouflage'', making her effectively unkillable as long as ranged enemies can't destroy up to 3 ridiculously tanky summons before she spawns more. While her first skill is a somewhat generic power strike type skill, her second skill '''Saturated Vengeance''' significantly reduces her attack interval and gives her a small ATK buff while letting her hit 3 enemies at once and, once half its duration is up and it's in Overload mode, changes to firing 4-round bursts that randomly target enemies in range; this can obliterate groups of enemies instantly due to the overlapping explosions and thus higher chances to cause her first talent's marks to burst, and once she's in Overload she doesn't even need grouped enemies as she can simply fire all her attacks at the same target if only one is in range. However, her S3 '''Bursting Dawn''' is where things get ridiculous: she instantly summons 2 more Shadows in her range, gains a huge ATK buff at the cost of drastically lowering her attack interval, and loads 6 ammo with a massively increased damage multiplier and splash radius while guaranteeing the procs of her first talent. Although she'll be firing as slow as molasses when the skill is up, the sheer damage each shell will do cannot be understated - under optimal conditions, Wiš'adel can deal a maximum of nearly ''20,000'' total damage on ''every shot'', doing enough damage per hit that the usual problem of Flingers having their attacks reduced by DEF multiple times goes out the window, while her Shadows will be constantly firing shots and applying her mark to make sure she can land those juicy explosions and Stun anything that survives. In just six shots, Wiš'adel can completely obliterate every single threat in a gigantic area, especially with buffs since she scales ridiculously well with them thanks to a combination of her stacking multiplicative damage modifiers and multi-hits; to add insult to injury, her S3 breaks the rules of the Flinger archetype by ''being able to target aerial units'', removing even that minor class weakness entirely. On top of this, her skill cooldowns are surprisingly generous for how absurd they can be: her S2 and S3 have manual deactivation to save time (with her S3 being ammo-based making it harder for her to waste duration), her S2 and S3 having a 25 and 50 second cooldown respectively, and both of them having enough starting SP at M3 that Wiš'adel will be able to fire them ''10 seconds'' after deployment, letting her serve as a helidrop as well.

** Unusual for a welfare operator, Bibeak is deceptively powerful owing to her talent and skills. At first blush, Bibeak doesn't seem to have much going for her, being merely a MovesetClone of Ch'en who lacks her prime counterpart's utility and damage. However, Bibeak's real strength lies in her '''Soul Drinker''' talent, which gives her +6 ASPD for every kill she personally got, and can stack up to 6 times. At max stack, Bibeak's attack pattern becomes a true BladeSpam that deals damage at a ridiculous rate, allowing her to regain her SP in very short order, as her skills are cheap to deploy to begin with. Once she has hit her stride, Bibeak becomes an unstoppable mass stun spamming machine, delivering reliable crowd control using '''Blade Swap''' that hits up to 6 enemies at once and disables them for nearly two seconds at Mastery 3, which is not very long for its SP costs, but easily remedied when pairing her with SP batteries like Warfarin or Liskarm, or with ASPD buffers like Angelina. With a constant stream of SP, Bibeak can permanently lockdown a group of enemies until they die. Better yet, it can also hold charges, not that she needs those considering her absurd SP regain rate. While underused normally, that ''Twilight of Wolumonde'' being rushed ahead of time on the global release basically turned Bibeak into a superstar almost overnight, even if she's still rather niche, since her stun spams make her a wonderful pick against the normally-dreaded Colossi who are simply too slow to even touch her when in this state, and she's considered one of the top-tier operators for Contingency Contract Blade or Lead Seal if one is aiming for a high risk level. In regards to the aforementioned Ch'en, Bibeak is now widely considered to be ''superior'' towards her higher rarity counterpart thanks to her permastunning shenanigans that Ch'en cannot replicate, additionally due to Ch'en having fallen off the meta as time passes until she got her Module upgrade.

** Following in the steps of her original counterpart, Wiš'adel dropped into the fifth anniversary celebration with a literal bang, instantly carving a spot as a monstrously powerful Flinger who brings ridiculous power blowing most other Snipers out of the water. From the start, her first talent allows her attacks to do bonus damage to her main target and attach "marks" to them which, when hit by her aftershocks, have a 15% chance to explode for heavy physical damage and a brief Stun in an area, giving her free bonus damage and crowd control without needing her skill, admittedly on an unreliable chance. Her second talent, however, lets her summon a "Shadow of Revenant" when first deployed (up to 3), which acts as a turret that periodically blasts enemies with Arts damage that can help her handle physically bulky foes, also slowing them and applying Wiš'adel's mark. The Shadow ''lasts forever'' and is exceedingly tanky due to a combination of its inability to block and its shockingly massive bulk, and while Wiš'adel is within one tile of any Shadow, she gets ''permanent Camouflage'', making her effectively unkillable as long as ranged enemies can't destroy up to 3 ridiculously tanky summons before she spawns more. While her first skill is a somewhat generic power strike type skill, her second skill significantly reduces her attack interval and gives her a small ATK buff while letting her hit 3 enemies at once and, once half its duration is up and it's in Overload mode, changes to firing 4-round bursts that randomly target enemies in range; this can obliterate groups of enemies instantly due to the overlapping explosions and thus higher chances to cause her first talent's marks to burst, and once she's in Overload she doesn't even need grouped enemies as she can simply fire all her attacks at the same target if only one is in range. However, her third skill is where things get ridiculous: she instantly summons 2 more Shadows in her range, gains a huge ATK buff at the cost of drastically lowering her attack interval, and loads 6 ammo with a massively increased damage multiplier and splash radius while guaranteeing the procs of her first talent. Although she'll be firing as slow as molasses when the skill is up, the sheer damage each shell will do cannot be understated - under optimal conditions, Wiš'adel can deal a maximum of nearly ''20,000'' total damage on ''every shot'', doing enough damage per hit that the usual problem of Flingers having their attacks reduced by DEF multiple times goes out the window, while her Shadows will be constantly firing shots and applying her mark to make sure she can land those juicy explosions and Stun anything that survives. In just six shots, Wiš'adel can completely obliterate every single threat in a gigantic area, especially with buffs since she scales ridiculously well with them thanks to a combination of her stacking multiplicative damage modifiers and multi-hits; to add insult to injury, her S3 breaks the rules of the Flinger archetype by ''being able to target aerial units'', removing even that minor class weakness entirely. On top of this, her skill cooldowns are surprisingly generous for how absurd they can be: her S2 and S3 have manual deactivation to save time (with her S3 being ammo-based making it harder for her to waste duration), her S2 and S3 having a 25 and 50 second cooldown respectively, and both of them having enough starting SP at M3 that Wiš'adel will be able to fire them ''10 seconds'' after deployment, letting her serve as a helidrop as well.

** Logos made his long-awaited playable debut as a monstrously powerful Core Caster with a highly unorthodox kit, befitting his status as the heir of the Banshees and one of Rhodes' finest. His first talent is a chance proc that gives his attacks a chance to inflict an additional weaker hit to a random enemy in range (including themselves) and briefly slow them, letting him moonlight as a psuedo-Chain Caster the same way Eyja moonlights as a Splash Caster while giving him free damage even if he's only attacking one target. Meanwhile, his second talent allows him to strengthen both himself and his fellow Arts users by letting him debuff targets on each hit, inflicting -10 RES and a flat 150-165 additional Arts damage taken, letting him and his allies crunch through RES and deal even more damage. When it comes to his skills, unusual for many 6-stars, ''all three'' of his skills are uniquely powerful. His first skill is an infinite duration skill that expands his range and buffs his ATK, while making it so any enemy that enters his range while under a flat HP threshold is ''instantly killed'', while also dealing damage to another enemy equal to the HP they had at the time of execution; this threshold can become up to 150% of Logos' already high ATK, meaning that weaker or ArmoredButFrail enemies will be obliterated just by ''stepping in his line of sight'', which can also proc his first talent to create a chain reaction of {{Mooks}} popping left and right. His second skill has a short cooldown and acts as his single-target DPS skill, massively buffing his RES to let him duel casters (with him reaching ''90 RES'' at M3), and turning his attacks into a lock-on that inflicts continous damage while slowing the target, both of which massively ramp up over time; if he locks on for 5 seconds, this can become up to 120% ATK every half second along with a 60% slow, which can melt even tough bosses out of existence in a snap, while synergizing well with both of his talents due to the skill's rapid damage interval. His third skill instead takes a page out of Eyja's book by being his own version of Volcano, greatly expanding his range, increasing his ATK by up to ''300%'', and barraging 4 enemies simultaneously per hit. However, this skill also ''slows down enemy projectiles by 95%'' for its duration, and will ''completely obliterate them'' if the skill ends while any are still in range (and Logos isn't disabled); at worst, this gives the player more time to react to attacks and operators more time to pump out heals or charge skills to take the oncoming damage, and at best can result in [[NoSell the enemy's most powerful attacks being completely negated]]. With a combination of damage, support, and utility, Logos easily lives up to the Banshees' legendary reputation, and manages to finally challenge Eyjafjalla for not only the top spot of Core Caster, but for ''Casters'' in general.

** Virtuosa debuts as a limited 6-star Ritualist Supporter, bringing a whole new brand of damage and support in one package. She specializes in dealing Necrosis damage through her first Talent '''Wordless Elegy''', which constantly slows enemies briefly in her range and inflicts Necrosis damage based off a percentage of her ATK stat, which is further boosted by her second Talent '''Mental Inversion''', which amplifies Necrosis damage taken by 20%, and her skills further capitalize on these strengths. Her first skill, '''"Golden Ecstasy"''' is a charge-based skill that disables her normal attacks when not using it, but when the skill is used, it deals a heavy Arts burst alongside a large Necrosis burst worth up to 110% of her ATK, letting her inflict Necrosis Burst fairly quickly, and at max Mastery, the skill starts with a full 3 charges when Virtuosa is deployed, making her a surprisingly strong helidrop option. Her inability to attack normally with this skill is not as crippling as it sounds, as it has a very low SP cost of 6, and her main form of offense comes from Necrosis damage anyway. Her second skill '''"Requiem Mass"''' boosts her ASPD and lets her hit an extra target, and grants a nearby ally with the highest ATK the ability to also deal Necrosis damage with their attacks, opening up plenty more potent damage strategies. Her third skill '''"Liberal Tango"''' though, is where the fun ''really'' begins. In exchange for not attacking, Virtuosa's attack range expands to a massive area similar to Suzuran's Foxfire Haze, receives up to a massive +180% ATK boost, amplifies the effect of her second Talent by 2.5 times, and also boosts the HP/ATK/DEF of a nearby ally with the highest of those stats by +30%, including Virtuosa herself. Any enemy that dares to step into her domain will find themselves suffering from Necrosis Burst pretty much ''instantly'', halving their ATK and causing them to take a hefty 800 elemental damage '''per second''' while their Necrosis gauge recovers, which takes long enough for many enemies to just perish outright in the process, and if they still survive, will be weakened enough for her allies to kill instantly, resulting in ''massive'' damage potential. As no enemy currently resists elemental damage, thus making Virtuosa effectively deal true damage, this makes her well-suited to take on just about ''everything'' with her powerful and unique damage output.

** Following in the steps of her original counterpart, Wiš'adel dropped into the fifth anniversary celebration with a literal bang, instantly carving a spot as a monstrously powerful Flinger who brings ridiculous power blowing most other Snipers out of the water. From the start, her first talent allows her attacks to do bonus damage to her main target and attach "marks" to them which, when hit by her aftershocks, have a 15% chance to explode for heavy physical damage and a brief Stun in an area, giving her free bonus damage and crowd control without needing her skill, admittedly on an unreliable chance. Her second talent, however, lets her summon a "Shadow of Revenant" when first deployed (up to 3), which acts as a turret that periodically blasts enemies with Arts damage that can help her handle physically bulky foes, also slowing them and applying Wiš'adel's mark. The Shadow ''lasts forever'' and is exceedingly tanky due to a combination of its inability to block and its shockingly massive bulk, and while Wiš'adel is within one tile of any Shadow, she gets ''permanent Camouflage'', making her effectively unkillable as long as ranged enemies can't destroy up to 3 ridiculously tanky summons before she spawns more. While her first skill is a somewhat generic power strike type skill, her second skill significantly reduces her attack interval and gives her a small ATK buff while letting her hit 3 enemies at once and, once half its duration is up and it's in Overload mode, changes to firing 4-round bursts that randomly target enemies in range; this can obliterate groups of enemies instantly due to the overlapping explosions and thus higher chances to cause her first talent's marks to burst, and once she's in Overload she doesn't even need grouped enemies as she can simply fire all her attacks at the same target if only one is in range. However, her third skill is where things get ridiculous: she instantly summons 2 more Shadows in her range, gains a huge ATK buff at the cost of drastically lowering her attack interval, and loads 6 ammo with a massively increased damage multiplier and splash radius while guaranteeing the procs of her first talent. Although she'll be firing as slow as molasses when the skill is up, the sheer damage each shell will do cannot be understated - under optimal conditions, Wiš'adel can deal a maximum of nearly ''20,000'' total damage on ''every hit'', doing enough damage that the usual problem of Flingers having their attacks reduced by DEF multiple times goes out the window, while her Shadows will be constantly firing shots and applying her mark to make sure she can land those juicy explosions and Stun anything that survives. In just six shots, Wiš'adel can completely obliterate every single threat in a gigantic area, especially with buffs since she scales ridiculously well with them thanks to a combination of her stacking multiplicative damage modifiers and multi-hits; to add insult to injury, her S3 breaks the rules of the Flinger archetype by ''being able to target aerial units'', removing even that minor class weakness entirely. On top of this, her skill cooldowns are surprisingly generous for how absurd they can be: her S2 and S3 have manual deactivation to save time (with her S3 being ammo-based making it harder for her to waste duration), her S2 and S3 having a 25 and 50 second cooldown respectively, and both of them having enough starting SP at M3 that Wiš'adel will be able to fire them ''10 seconds'' after deployment, letting her serve as a helidrop as well.

** To give a perspective as to how powerful Eyjafjalla is, her very existence since the game's launch has caused ''nearly every single Caster'' to struggle in the meta due to Eyja's power and consistency, with the Casters in this page's folder offering their own unique and powerful roles to make them stand out. Only with the release of the equally ridiculous Logos below was Eyja's top spot ''finally'' challenged, and she still remains a exceptionally powerful unit.

** Logos made his long-awaited playable debut as a monstrously powerful Core Caster with a highly unorthodox kit, befitting his status as the heir of the Banshees and one of Rhodes' finest. His first talent is a chance proc that gives his attacks a chance to inflict an additional weaker hit to a random enemy in range (including themselves) and briefly slow them, letting him moonlight as a psuedo-Chain Caster the same way Eyja moonlights as a Splash Caster. Meanwhile, his second talent allows him to strengthen both himself and his fellow Arts users by letting him debuff targets on each hit, inflicting -10 RES and a flat 150-165 additional Arts damage taken, letting him and his allies crunch through RES and deal even more damage. When it comes to his skills, unusual for many 6-stars, ''all three'' of his skills are uniquely powerful. His first skill is an infinite duration skill that expands his range and buffs his ATK, while making it so any enemy that enters his range while under a flat HP threshold is ''instantly killed'', while also dealing damage to another enemy equal to the HP they had at the time of execution; this threshold can become up to 150% of Logos' already high ATK, meaning that weaker or ArmoredButFrail enemies will be obliterated just by ''stepping in his line of sight'', which can also proc his first talent to create a chain reaction of {{Mooks}} popping left and right. His second skill has a short cooldown and acts as his single-target DPS skill, massively buffing his RES to let him duel casters (with him reaching ''90 RES'' at M3), and turning his attacks into a lock-on that inflicts continous damage while slowing the target, both of which massively ramp up over time; if he locks on for 5 seconds, this can become up to 120% ATK every half second along with a 60% slow, which can melt even tough bosses out of existence in a snap, while synergizing well with both of his talents due to the skill's rapid damage interval. His third skill instead takes a page out of Eyja's book by being his own version of Volcano, greatly expanding his range, increasing his ATK by up to ''300%'', and barraging 4 enemies simultaneously per hit. However, this skill also ''slows down enemy projectiles by 95%'' for its duration, and will ''completely obliterate them'' if the skill ends while any are still in range (and Logos isn't disabled); at worst, this gives the player more time to react to attacks and operators more time to pump out heals or charge skills to take the oncoming damage, and at best can result in [[NoSell the enemy's most powerful attacks being completely negated]]. With a combination of damage, support, and utility, Logos easily lives up to the Banshees' legendary reputation, and manages to finally challenge Eyjafjalla for not only the top spot of Core Caster, but for ''Casters'' in general.

** Ray continues the recent trend of powerful single target Snipers following Pozëmka and Typhon with incredible flexibility and utility in her kit along with competitive DPS that practically matches that of her predecessors. Her kit is designed to compensate for all the flaws of the Hunter archetype while making full use of its strengths, with her primary mechanic being her '''Patrol Partner''' talent which allows her to deploy a sandbeast within her attack range that affects a 3x3 area around it, which allows Ray to prioritize and attack targets within that area dealing up to 15% increased damage to them, lets her expand her attack range (with the potential to increase her frontal range to a ridiculous 5 tiles), and the ability to break normal targeting priority and focus specific targets. This pairs well with her second talent, '''Focus''', which provides Ray an ATK buff stacking up to 3 times for each attack on the same enemy, which magnifies Ray's already high ATK stat along with the Hunter's inherent 120% damage scaling on attacks, giving her massive single target DPS on her normal attacks. Along with her damage, however, Ray offers shockingly high amounts of utility for a damaging archetype, with her first skill, '''Escape Shot''', allowing her to fire up to two charges of an attack that pushes targets away at a large force, something not usually seen outside of the Push Stroker class, while also increasing her maximum ammo count on next reload by 2 on Ray's next reload, which is easily achieved as the attack has an absolutely massive scaling of up to '''450%'''. Ray's second skill, '''Wide Area Overwatch''', is an infinite duration skill which expands Ray's attack range by one tile each to her sides while providing a huge ATK buff (something that works well given Ray's multiple ATK scalings in her kit), but the biggest benefit of all is that the skill reduces the cooldown of Ray's sandbeast and gives it the ability to retrieve any ammo fired in its zone after retreating, which helps to circumvent the Hunter's ammo limitation which serves as the branch's biggest weakness. However, the skill that truly makes Ray match her peers in terms of power is her third skill, '''Seeing the Light''', which immediately forces Ray to fully reload at a massively increased pace before she attacks, expanding her attack range to near that of an Artilleryman Sniper, and enhancing each attack to deal up to '''330%''' damage and Bind the target for 2 seconds, which given that the Hunter's attack interval is 1.6 seconds, allows Ray to persistently Bind a single target for an prolonged period of time while bursting them for thousands of physical damage per hit. Although Ray will have trouble finishing off the target if she's emptied the clip and they somehow aren't dead, the skill makes up for this with ''incredible'' skill cycling and uptime, with a duration of 16 seconds and an SP cost of 30 seconds which is reduced by 10 if Ray defeats an enemy during the skill's duration - not just making it easy to have her skill ready whenever she needs it, but also sometimes letting her just ''use it again'' if the target hasn't died yet, helped by the sandbeast making it harder for an enemy to escape her gigantic effective range before she's got another skill ready. Despite a poor initial showing of the Hunter archetype's potential with Coldshot, Ray's solidly designed kit that allows its strengths to shine along with great numbers all around has proven her to be an unexpectedly high-tier Sniper that, although having a higher learning curve due to her sandbeast's mechanics and the Hunter's ammo mechanic, bears all the tools needed to be an excellent choice in spite of the competition.

** Following in the steps of her original counterpart, Wiš'adel dropped into the fifth anniversary celebration with a literal bang, instantly carving a spot as a monstrously powerful Flinger who brings ridiculous power blowing most other Snipers out of the water. From the start, her first talent allows her attacks to do bonus damage to her main target and attach "marks" to them which, when hit by her aftershocks, have a small chance to explode for heavy physical damage and a brief Stun in an area, giving her free bonus damage and crowd control without needing her skill, admittedly on an unreliable chance. Her second talent, however, lets her summon a "Shadow of Revenant" when first deployed (up to 3), which acts as a turret that periodically blasts enemies with Arts damage that can help her handle physically bulky foes, also slowing them and applying Wiš'adel's mark. The Shadow ''lasts forever'' and is exceedingly tanky due to a combination of its inability to block and its shockingly massive defenses, and while Wiš'adel is within one tile of any Shadow, she gets ''permanent Camouflage'', making her effectively unkillable as long as ranged enemies can't destroy up to 3 ridiculously tanky summons before she spawns more. While her first skill is a somewhat generic power strike type skill, her second skill significantly reduces her attack interval and gives her a small ATK buff while letting her hit 3 enemies at once and, once half its duration is up and it's in Overload mode, changes to firing 4-round bursts that randomly target enemies in range; this can obliterate groups of enemies instantly due to the overlapping explosions and thus higher chances to cause her first talent's marks to burst, and once she's in Overload she doesn't even need grouped enemies as she can simply fire all her attacks at the same target if only one is in range. However, her third skill is where things get ridiculous: she instantly summons 2 more Shadows in her range, gains a huge ATK buff at the cost of drastically lowering her attack interval, and loads 6 ammo with a massively increased damage multiplier and splash radius while guaranteeing the procs of her first talent. Although she'll be firing as slow as molasses when the skill is up, the sheer damage each shell will do cannot be understated - under optimal conditions, Wiš'adel can deal a maximum of nearly ''20,000'' total damage on ''every hit'' (albeit being reduced by DEF up to four times), while her Shadows will be constantly firing shots and applying her mark to make sure she can land those juicy explosions and Stun anything that survives. In just six shots, Wiš'adel can completely obliterate every single threat in a gigantic area, and to add insult to injury, her S3 breaks the rules of the Flinger archetype by ''being able to target aerial units'', removing even that minor weakness entirely. On top of this, her skill cooldowns are surprisingly generous for how absurd they can be: her S2 and S3 have manual deactivation to save time (with her S3 being ammo-based making it harder for her to waste duration), her S2 and S3 having a 25 and 50 second cooldown respectively, and both of them having enough starting SP at M3 that Wiš'adel will be able to fire them ''10 seconds'' after deployment, letting her serve as a helidrop as well.
** Her module is very straightforward, having the traditional Flinger effect of adding an extra aftershock, and simply improving her first talent's damage multipliers. Turns out, that's all that she needs to wreak even more havoc, with her bonus aftershock giving her a higher chance per hit of triggering her first talent, and her extra numbers just amping her already gigantic damage even further.

** Logos made his long-awaited playable debut as a monstrously powerful Core Caster with a highly unorthodox kit, befitting his status as the heir of the Banshees and one of Rhodes' finest. His first talent is a chance proc that gives his attacks a chance to inflict an additional weaker hit to a random enemy in range (including themselves) and briefly slow them, letting him moonlight as a psuedo-Chain Caster the same way Eyja moonlights as a Splash Caster. Meanwhile, his second talent allows him to strengthen both himself and his fellow Arts users by letting him debuff targets on each hit, inflicting -10 RES and a flat 150-165 additional Arts damage taken, letting him and his allies crunch through RES and deal even more damage. When it comes to his skills, unusual for many 6-stars, ''all three'' of his skills are uniquely powerful. His first skill is an infinite duration skill that expands his range and buffs his ATK, while making it so any enemy that enters his range while under a flat HP threshold is ''instantly killed'', while also dealing damage to another enemy equal to the HP they had at the time of execution; this threshold can become up to 150% of Logos' already high ATK, meaning that weaker or ArmoredButFrail enemies will be obliterated just by ''stepping in his line of sight'', which can also proc his first talent to create a chain reaction of {{Mooks}} popping left and right. His second skill has a short cooldown and acts as his single-target DPS skill, massively buffing his RES to let him duel casters (with him reaching ''90 RES'' at M3), and turning his attacks into a lock-on that inflicts continous damage while slowing the target, both of which massively ramp up over time; if he locks on for 5 seconds, this can become up to 120% ATK every half second along with a 60% slow, which can melt even tough bosses out of existence in a snap, while synergizing well with both of his talents due to the skill's rapid damage interval. His third skill instead takes a page out of Eyja's book by being his own version of Volcano, greatly expanding his range, increasing his ATK by up to ''300%'', and barraging 4 enemies simultaneously per hit. However, this skill also ''slows down enemy projectiles by 95%'' for its duration, and will ''completely obliterate them'' if the skill ends while any are still in range (and Logos isn't disabled); at worst, this gives the player more time to react to attacks and operators more time to pump out heals or charge skills to take the oncoming damage, and at best can result in [[NoSell the enemy's most powerful attacks being completely negated]]. With a combination of damage, support, and utility, Logos easily lives up to the Banshees' legendary reputation.

** Following in the steps of her original counterpart, Wiš'adel dropped into the fifth anniversary celebration with a literal bang, instantly carving a spot as a monstrously powerful Flinger who brings ridiculous power blowing most other Snipers out of the water.

From the start, her first talent allows her attacks to do bonus damage to her main target and attach "marks" to them which, when hit by her aftershocks, have a small chance to explode for heavy physical damage and a brief Stun in an area, giving her free bonus damage and crowd control without needing her skill, admittedly on an unreliable chance. Her second talent, however, lets her summon a "Shadow of Revenant" when first deployed (up to 3), which acts as a turret that periodically blasts enemies with Arts damage that can help her handle physically bulky foes, also slowing them and applying Wiš'adel's mark. The Shadow ''lasts forever'' and is exceedingly tanky due to a combination of its inability to block and its shockingly massive defenses, and while Wiš'adel is within one tile of any Shadow, she gets ''permanent Camouflage'', making her effectively unkillable as long as ranged enemies can't destroy up to 3 ridiculously tanky summons before she spawns more. While her first skill is a somewhat generic power strike type skill, her second skill significantly reduces her attack interval and gives her a small ATK buff while letting her hit 3 enemies at once and, once half its duration is up and it's in Overload mode, changes to firing 4-round bursts that randomly target enemies in range; this can obliterate groups of enemies instantly due to the overlapping explosions and thus higher chances to cause her first talent's marks to burst, and once she's in Overload she doesn't even need grouped enemies as she can simply fire all her attacks at the same target if only one is in range. However, her third skill is where things get ridiculous: she instantly summons 2 more Shadows in her range, gains a huge ATK buff at the cost of drastically lowering her attack interval, and loads 6 ammo with a massively increased damage multiplier and splash radius while guaranteeing the procs of her first talent. Although she'll be firing as slow as molasses when the skill is up, the sheer damage each shell will do cannot be understated - under optimal conditions, Wiš'adel can deal a maximum of nearly ''20,000'' total damage on ''every hit'' (albeit being reduced by DEF up to four times), while her Shadows will be constantly firing shots and applying her mark to make sure she can land those juicy explosions and Stun anything that survives. In just six shots, Wiš'adel can completely obliterate every single threat in a gigantic area, and to add insult to injury, her S3 breaks the rules of the Flinger archetype by ''being able to target aerial units'', removing even that minor weakness entirely. On top of this, her skill cooldowns are surprisingly generous for how absurd they can be: her S2 and S3 have manual deactivation to save time (with her S3 being ammo-based making it harder for her to waste duration), her S2 and S3 having a 25 and 50 second cooldown respectively, and both of them having enough starting SP at M3 that Wiš'adel will be able to fire them ''10 seconds'' after deployment, letting her serve as a helidrop as well.

** Lappland's module not only lets her deal an additional hit as Arts damage per attack, it also upgrades her talent to also inflict ''Fragile''. This greatly improves her utility beyond just silencing, letting her also soften up enemies for her and her allies to kill.

** Thorns's module further accentuates his amazing strengths as a laneholder. On top of his trait letting him deal an additional hit as Arts damage, his DamageOverTime from Nerve Corrosion now ''stacks'', resulting in a significant damage increase that can rip through mobs even faster.

** Virtuosa debuts as a limited 6-star Ritualist Supporter, bringing a whole new brand of damage and support in one package. She specializes in dealing Necrosis damage through her first Talent '''Wordless Elegy''', which constantly slows enemies briefly in her range and inflicts Necrosis damage based off a percentage of her ATK stat, which is further boosted by her second Talent '''Mental Inversion''', which amplifies Necrosis damage taken by 20%, and her skills further capitalize on these strengths. Her second skill '''"Requiem Mass"''' boosts her ASPD and lets her hit an extra target, and grants a nearby ally with the highest ATK the ability to also deal Necrosis damage with their attacks, opening up plenty more potent damage strategies. Her third skill '''"Liberal Tango"''' though, is where the fun ''really'' begins. In exchange for not attacking, Virtuosa's attack range expands to a massive area similar to Suzuran's Foxfire Haze, receives up to a massive +180% ATK boost, amplifies the effect of her second Talent by 2.5 times, and also boosts the HP/ATK/DEF of a nearby ally with the highest of those stats by +30%, including Virtuosa herself. Any enemy that dares to step into her domain will find themselves suffering from Necrosis Fallout pretty much ''instantly'', halving their ATK and causing them to take a hefty 800 elemental damage '''per second''' while their Necrosis gauge recovers, which takes long enough for many enemies to just perish outright in the process, and if they still survive, will be weakened enough for her allies to kill instantly, resulting in ''massive'' damage potential. As no enemy currently resists elemental damage, thus making Virtuosa effectively deal true damage, this makes her well-suited to take on just about ''everything'' with her powerful and unique damage output.
** Virtuosa's heavy emphasis on Necrosis damage also brings an unexpected Operator into the spotlight: '''[[LowTierLetdown/{{Arknights}} Ebenholz]].''' His third module lets him deal additional Necrosis damage with based on 8% of his ATK with every attack he deals, and also upgrades his second talent to deal an extra 30% of his ATK as elemental damage when the enemy suffers from Necrosis Fallout. Virtuosa's S3 also further jacks up Ebenholz's already high ATK stat by 30%, further boosting his damage output. Combined with how easy it is for Virtuosa to inflict Necrosis Fallout, and Ebenholz's ''very'' high ATK stat that's further increased with his third skill, this makes him a shockingly powerful boss killer that can punch through almost anything with what is functionally true damage.

** Virtuosa debuts as a limited 6-star Ritualist Supporter, bringing a whole new brand of damage and support in one package. She specializes in dealing Necrosis damage through her first Talent '''Wordless Elegy''', which constantly slows enemies briefly in her range and inflicts Necrosis damage based off a percentage of her ATK stat, which is further boosted by her second Talent '''Mental Inversion''', which amplifies Necrosis damage taken by 20%, and her skills further capitalize on these strengths. Her second skill '''"Mass Requiem"''' boosts her ASPD and lets her hit an extra target, and grants a nearby ally with the highest ATK the ability to also deal Necrosis damage with their attacks, opening up plenty more potent damage strategies. Her third skill '''"Tango of Liberty"''' though, is where the fun ''really'' begins. In exchange for not attacking, Virtuosa's attack range expands to a massive area similar to Suzuran's Foxfire Haze, receives up to a massive +180% ATK boost, amplifies the effect of her second Talent by 2.5 times, and also boosts the HP/ATK/DEF of a nearby ally with the highest of those stats by +30%, including Virtuosa herself. Any enemy that dares to step into her domain will find themselves suffering from Necrosis Fallout pretty much ''instantly'', halving their ATK and causing them to take a hefty 800 elemental damage '''per second''' while their Necrosis gauge recovers, which takes long enough for many enemies to just perish outright in the process, and if they still survive, will be weakened enough for her allies to kill instantly, resulting in ''massive'' damage potential. As no enemy currently resists elemental damage, thus making Virtuosa effectively deal true damage, this makes her well-suited to take on just about ''everything'' with her powerful and unique damage output.

** Virtuosa's heavy emphasis on Necrosis damage also brings an unexpected Operator into the spotlight: '''[[LowTierLetdown/{{Arknights}} Ebenholz]].''' His third module lets him deal additional Necrosis damage with based on 8% of his ATK with every attack he deals, and also upgrades his second talent to deal an extra 30% of his ATK as elemental damage when the enemy suffers from Necrosis Fallout. Combined with how easy it is for Virtuosa to inflict Necrosis Fallout, and Ebenholz's ''very'' high ATK stat that's further increased with his third skill, this makes him a shockingly powerful boss killer that can punch through almost anything with what is functionally true damage.

** Lin initially starts off as a decent Phalanx Caster, able to tank some attacks quite well with her '''Foolproof Plan''''s Crystal Barrier, but suffers from poor uptime and long cooldowns on her skills, with her '''Shrouded Strength''' not being reliable enough to mitigate it due to only being a 50-55% chance to gain 1 SP when she's attacked. All of that changes ''drastically'' once her module is unlocked and fully upgraded. In addition to letting her retain half of her archetype's massively increased defenses when her skill is active, it also upgrades Shrouded Strength to a much more reliable 75-80% chance to gain ''2 SP'' whenever she's attacked, which significantly improves the uptime of her primary skill '''Riving Nighttails''', which massively increases her attack range and power alongside increasing the damage nullification threshold of her Crystal Barrier, which also explodes and instantly reforms for extra damage should Lin score a kill during the skill's duration, turning her into a highly fearsome tank-nuker hybrid. With her module and maxed out defenses, Lin is capable of completely nullifying ''any'' physical damage that is 1250 and below, which is nearly ''every single physical ranged attack in the game,'' letting her draw in any physical enemy fire and retaliating with exceptional damage. Among the highly cutthroat competition of Casters, Lin manages to stand out with her ludicrous tankiness.

* '''[[Characters/ArknightsCastersAToM Ceobe]]'''

* '''[[Characters/ArknightsCastersAToM Dusk]]'''

* '''[[Characters/ArknightsCastersAToM Eyjafjalla]]'''

* '''[[Characters/ArknightsCastersAToM Goldenglow]]'''

* '''[[Characters/ArknightsCastersAToM Ifrit]]'''

** The fourth Integrated Strategies mode effectively puts her in the spotlight as one of the best Operators to bring as a starter, if not ''the'' best for the simple reason that her 2nd Skill will burn and wipe any enemy mob rushing your defensive line, in a gamemode where the main difficulty of many of the harder stages comes from fast enemies {{Zerg Rush}}ing you. Reed can clear out pretty much all of the first floor stages even on higher difficulties, alleviating the EarlyGameHell of the mode, and later in the game even the dreaded [[DemonicSpiders Shattered Champions]] will have trouble getting past her as her fireballs will sustain the blockers and burn them to death while further debuffing their ATK. Once promoted, her 3rd skill is also excellent for sustaining a lineup and nuking an entire enemy rush in one go, and in particular can single-handedly clear out all of the annoying tile blockers in the first ending boss. In fact, the "Overcoming Your Weaknesses" starting squad with Reed, Popukar, and Orchid is generally considered [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome the strongest possible starting squad for runs on higher Braving Nature levels]], although you'll need the Tactical Ranged Squad to guarantee this start.

* '''Peek Into the Eternal Night''', obtainable from the "Missing Mountains" encounter, grant your operators +25% atk and 25 attack speed at the cost of draining 25 health per second, and that's a bargain for the buffs it provides. Most operators have at least 800 health, so that's at most 3% health loss per second, sufficient time to place a healer to negate the minuscule health loss. And if you get the Actor's Perfume (1% health regen per sec) and some health buffs, the downside is totally negated.
* A series of 3 collectibles will buff your melee operators, starting with '''Frozen Husk''' which grants +40 ASPD for 5 seconds when your melee operators take damage. That's already very good, but then '''Frost Buck's Pauldrons''' will buff their ATK and DEF by 40% for 30 seconds when they are blocking 2 enemies. Considering most melee operators have 2 blocks and the sheer amount of {{Zerg Rush}}ing Collapsals in the mode, the activation condition is trivial and will ensure all blocked enemies will be cut down to ribbons in short order. Finally '''Snow Doe's Gloves''' requires 3 blocked enemies to activate, so realistically it will only work for Defenders or Centurions (given the lack of block count bonus in this IS), but will buff ASPD by +80 and ''50% chance to dodge physical/arts damage''. Just getting one of these, even the most basic Frozen Husk, is already game-changing, but stacking 2 or even all 3 will absolutely murder the map.

* A series of 3 collectibles will buff your melee operators, starting with '''Frozen Carcass''' which grants +40 ASPD for 5 seconds when your melee operators take damage. That's already very good, but then '''Frost Buck's Pauldrons''' will buff their ATK and DEF by 40% for 30 seconds when they are blocking 2 enemies. Considering most melee operators have 2 blocks and the sheer amount of {{Zerg Rush}}ing Collapsals in the mode, the activation condition is trivial and will ensure all blocked enemies will be cut down to ribbons in short order. Finally '''Snow Doe's Gloves''' requires 3 blocked enemies to activate, so realistically it will only work for Defenders or Centurions (given the lack of block count bonus in this IS), but will buff ASPD by +80 and ''50% chance to dodge physical/arts damage''. Just getting one of these, even the most basic Frozen Carcass, is already game-changing, but stacking 2 or even all 3 will absolutely murder the map.