As with many games with PVP, certain units are considered dangerous or annoying to deal with, especially if they are considered "Up"note :
Awakened Units
Any Awakening unit with the exception of Maestra Nequitia, especially if they aren't given a ban status. Their increased stats and high specialization make them very dangerous.- Awakened Hilde is a very durable and self-sufficient Defender with her ability to give herself a shield equal to 25% of her max HP (which is already very high even among other Defenders). Her presence was diminished slowly by the inclusion of Awakened Na Yubin and later powercrept due to her Stone Wall kit paling in comparison to the later Awakened Units' Lightning Bruiser kits (most notably Jake, whose kit not only gives him great durability but also hard-counters Mechs). However, her ability to stay alive keeps her strong in lower ranks, or in higher ranks that weren't expecting her.
- Awakened Na Yubin is another Stone Wall seemingly designed to make people tilt in PvP. He specializes in Evasion rather than defense, making him capable of avoiding large amounts of damage and nullifying many Critical Hits if RNG is kind, and carries some very disruptive passive abilities. His most prominent one is on deployment, he casts "Barrier Reflux" which deletes any barriers on the enemy, and deals damage equal to the barrier's HP, and at level 5 any and all future enemies get a -30% Skill Haste, slowing down their Specials and their Ultimates which makes him a pain for just about any Counter in the game. He also has an enhanced attack where he slides forward, allowing him to push past your frontline and directly attack your squishier units in the back and also periodically re-apply Barrier Reflux, and also causes any enemies' Tower units (excluding bosses) to start losing HP, which means little in PVE but in Gauntlets it means any tower units have at most only 25 seconds to survive when he's on the field, drawing ire from players for invalidating a good chunk of the roster just by his existence alone (for a notable example, Yang Harim went from top-tier to Skill Gate Character in PvP largely because Yubin counters her entire kit). His Ultimate can also apply 15% Attack Down on enemies, making him even harder to bring down. He's no longer a perma-banned unit due to Awakened Horizon and Replacer King both being bigger threats and thus shifts in and out of the meta, though he got a new lease on life after the release of Elysium Philharmonics due to their key unit, Maestra Nequitia, being a Tower.
- Awakened Seo Yoon is a highly dangerous Glass Cannon with class advantage over Defenders making even the strongest Stone Wall break down through attrition. Her class disadvantage, Strikers, also has problems with her as she can summon telekinetic rifles which count as Snipers, up to 4. Added to this, is when she reaches certain HP Thresholds, she jumps back, adding distance from the frontline, transferring some of her damage to her rifles already on the field, and summoning 2 more telekinetic rifles and making her deceptively hard to kill. To also cause trouble, her Special causes "Healing Reflux" negating the enemies healing and dealing damage equal to the amount healed. To make matters worse, when she debuted in SEA, the following weeks were "Sincere Season" increasing her already absurd ranged damage by 20%. She's since fallen out of the top tiers due to new additions like Ministra (who does her job better) and Replacer King (who hard-counters her and is also just a menace in general), but is still a prominent threat.
- Awakened Yuna is a Lightning Bruiser with stats that put her on par with some Defenders, and her role as a Striker makes her good for the frontline however, what really pushes her over the edge is her summoned phoenix especially if they're on the field at the same time. She does constant damage to herself and nearby enemies, however if Rayleigh is on the field, he heals her for a net positive. Her Special and Ultimate also heal herself if they are together. Even if you decide to Shoot the Medic First, Rayleigh's ability allows him to come back after 5 seconds, once every deployment, during which Yuna gets a big defense buff and increased healing for the 5 seconds he's gone. Rayleigh also isn't one to ignore either, as his own attack targets your backline, and deals severe debuffs to their attacks. It's not too surprising that she was the first to reach Ban 4 (raising her cost all the up to 10, the maximum) in KR, although Power Creep has made her much easier to handle due to her weakness against burst damage (her actual durability isn't the best due to her lack of MDL and hitting Yuna with enough damage at once, such as with Kestrel Xiao Lin, will delete her before she can regenerate).
- Awakened Sooyeon is a specialized Glass Cannon that has the most dangerous Dynamic Entry: When she is deployed she deals damage to all enemies on the field, in Gauntlets it also deals 33% damage to their current HP. Her Special gives her an increase to her durability by giving her a barrier of 30% her max HP and she takes 30% less damage as long as the barrier is up. She also gives hitstun immunity to Rangers outside of Ultimates. But the two things that really sticks her out are: She's an Air unit meaning a large amount of the casts can't hit her, and those that do tend to be squishier than most, and she costs 5, one less than other Awakened units, meaning she gets back into the field faster.
- Evolved One is a Defender with the playstyle of a very aggressive Striker, and one of the most centralizing units in the Gauntlet. Most of her infamy comes from a combination of her absurd tankiness, between her massive stats and the ability to consume friendly Mechs on deployment to become even more bulky (though her inability to be healed or buffed makes her an easier target than she seems) and her devastating ultimate, which ignores half of enemy units' damage resistance, deals huge damage, and has a huge Valid Hit count. Deploying Evolved One pretty much forces the enemy onto the back foot from the get-go since they have to kill her before she uses her ultimate and inflicts a Total Party Kill, but committing units on her makes them vulnerable to counterplay from the Evolved One player's other units. However, the release of Awakened Jake tanked her playrate considerably since he hard counters Mechs to such a degree that Evolved One might as well not have bothered to show up.
- Ministra was a monster from the word go. After her brief stint as the Chapter 1 Breather Boss, she reappeared after "Bottom of the Shade" as a Lightning Bruiser with some of the highest damage modifiers to her Specials and Ultimates. She has the honor of being one of the few 5-cost Awakened units. Every kill gives her the ability to lay a totem that hits any nearby enemy with heavy debuffs, and if she drops to low HP she summons a Mutated Spira, which has nearly double the stats of the already strong Spira and can attack Air units. Her power was so strong that it wasn't uncommon to find full auto-teams in Ranked PVP during her peak time.
- Amy Firstwing in her original incarnation was so widely despised and tilt-inducing that she reportedly caused Korean players to review-bomb the game. Her abilities allowed her to inflict Confusion on enemies, basically allowing her to potentially slaughter PvP opponents with their own best units, making her a rare case of a unit that caused more frustration to whales than most players, though her high damage output and ability to reel in backrows meant F2P players weren't safe either. It's quite telling that reworking her kit to focus around instantly killing things was considered a nerf (because at the very least you only lose units instead of having them turned against you).
- With his Balance Buff and the addition of Blue Bridge Mk.2, Replacer King became the new king of the meta. His passive gives him damage resistance and summons a Replacer when a non-Mech ally dies, and most dangerously, it gives his basic attacks unlimited range and piercing when it triggers. Since King himself is a Defender, this allows him to murder enemy Snipers in particular and do a number on any backrow target while simultaneously wearing down the enemy frontline. It doesn't help that this also promotes a playstyle of throwing bodies at the opponent that they have to laboriously fight through just to get to him (which is where Blue Bridge comes in as its ultimate deploys an entire pack of Soldiers that all trigger King's passive when they die), and his health pool and damage resistance mean he's not going down easily even if you do manage to break through his lackies, and that's assuming he hasn't destroyed everything you have in the meantime.
- If Replacer King is the king of the meta, then Awakened Horizon is the queen. She's an utterly ruthless Lightning Bruiser that deals monstrous damage and is also very, very hard to deal with: she's an air unit so she dodges every form of ground damage, she's a Mech so she gets bonuses from Coffin-6 and dodges every anti-Counter unit, and she's a Striker so she laughs off most anti-air units (which tend to be Rangers). Finally, while most air units tend to be very fragile to offset them being immune to anti-ground attacks, Awakened Horizon is not as she can very frequently become invulnerable thanks to her passive. On weeks where she's not banned, running anti-Mech options, Serina Crew (to strip her invulnerability buff), or Awakened Lee Sooyeon to blast her out of the sky is all but mandatory.
- July 2023 brought in a wave of stat buffs to Awakened units, and Gerard Curian came out of it as one of the clear winners. While he was previously a Glass Cannon unit primarily used for Soldier teams, the buff not only improved his already-considerable damage output but also nearly doubled his HP, putting his durability on par with non-Awakened Defenders. This him the premier Gauntlet Sniper and one of the best DPS units for any team, as he can now withstand many anti-backrow units while melting entire teams, forcing the use of things like Daark Seven Sylvia just to kill him specifically and thus leaving less DP for things to counter the other units on Curian's team.
- If you want a unit that is best described as game-breaking, Awakened Sigma is the way to go. She is deployed alongside her Terrabrain, which not only buffs and heals her while it's on the field, but also inflicts a Berserker State on her when it's destroyed. Sigma herself is a menace of a Lightning Bruiser; her basic attacks have high ASPD and insane damage, inflict slight knockback, and can target Air units. Her Ultimate is one of, if not the highest damage-dealers in the game, allowing her to melt ships even with the Gauntlet's MDL for SSR ships. She is also oddly tanky for a Striker and fast to boot.
- Long after debuting as one of the most underwhelming Awakened units ever released (such that she was the first Awakened to get Up status), Lee Jisoo became meta-warping when she got her Alternium Reactor. It not only finally addressed her kit as a utility tank by giving her HP Regen, damage reduction, and Status Effect resistance, but all enemy Rangers, Strikers, and Snipers receive a -75% Skill Haste debuff for a good 12 seconds while she's on the field. On weeks where she isn't banned, her only counter is ironically herself; the team that keeps their Jisoo alive is more likely to win, period.
Other Units
Even non-Awakened characters have can be groan-inducing when faced with them:- Xiao Lin has some of the highest DPS in the game and with her in the backline, she can easily destroy well-rounded frontlines if you don't have an assassin-like unit or a ship to deal residual damage on her. Made even worse by her rearms, as Kestrel makes her better at her job of wearing down your frontline and piercing your ship while also murdering frontline Strikers and also being able to survive for a bit against Forward Deployment assassins. Or using Nest Keeper, which lowers enemy evasion, almost guaranteeing her shots would connect, while also providing a barrier and Skill Haste when it breaks. Nestkeeper in particular was so dominant in the Gauntlet that she prompted reworks to deployment and the addition of Tower counters to the game, before the devs finally caved and nerfed her directly to drop her from "appallingly overpowered" to merely "very good".
- Gaeun is a well-rounded Ranger with a potent stun on her Special and her passive shortens her Ultimate's cooldown. The trouble with her is that she has just enough defense that she usually can survive one strong hit and keep going, and her low costs has her more readily available than other units, often earning her the title of "Hidden Awakened".
- Kyle Wong is a fairly decent Jack of All Stats Ranger who gets stronger the more often he attacks, but what makes him stand out is his Special where he deploys 2 bulwarks on the field. These bulwarks Draw Aggro, and worst of all, are capable of stunning the enemy if they are hit by the bulwarks deploying. These can easily stop a push thanks to a generous amount of HP giving the player time to recoup or Kyle to gain his buffs. He's mainly kept in check by his extreme squishiness which means most Forward Deployment units have no problem disposing of him, though he's still very prominent in lower ranks.
- Claudia Nelson is a simple Support Party Member whose main role is healing and not much more, however in Gauntlets, bound to run into her a lot. Her deployment can instantly heal 20% of all her allies, making enemies that were barely alive back to a credible threat, her low cooldowns also make her very potent with CDR gear and her low rarity makes her easy to build. She's consistently one of the few R rarity characters to have ban levels.
- Elizabeth Pendragon's Rearm, Blue Blood Elizabeth, takes what was formerly a character considered to be past her prime and brings her into the spotlight with a vengeance. In addition to having more formidable stats to back up her aggressive skillset and let her live long enough to deal damage, her Dynamic Entry effect also damages ships, meaning that just seeing her on a team often means that you're being put on a death timer immediately. To make it worse, a maxed-out Elizabeth can destroy certain SR ships just by being deployed, leading to an unsurprising amount of frustration. Things got particularly ludicrous when Investigator Kang was added, as she and Elizabeth together could kill most ships with just their on-deploy effects before Kang got a swift emergency nerf.
- Raphaela Juri boasts the unique quirk of being the only non-Defender with an MDL stat (Max Damage Limit, which causes any instance of damage exceeding a percentage of the character's health to be soft-capped at that percentage, with the exceeding amount being greatly reduced), starting out as an immobile wall before shifting to an aggressive Striker after her health drops enough or enough time passes. The problem is that her initial MDL was 2%, meaning she could shrug off an obscene amount of damage and then decimate the opponent's backrow in return. She was so bulky, in fact, that she single-handedly extended the average length of Gauntlet matches before getting nerfed a scant two weeks after her release, dropping her MDL to a marginally less ridiculous 4%, and she's still considered a very good pick for countering enemy rushes.
- Eins and Zwei are among the few Counters to consist of multiple units and are deceptively bulky to boot, making them an extremely disruptive frontline nuisance and Valid Hit absorber with a strong area-of-effect disable for an ultimate. What really makes them a terror in the Gauntlet is that they only cost 2, making them easy to slot into teams even when banned.
- On release, Goliath was quickly praised for being a new Mech unit and for being the first Siege unit to be added to the game since release. That praise just as quickly became disgust and terror as Goliath turned out to be one of the biggest Game Breakers the Korean Gauntlet had ever seen. With an utterly gargantuan HP pool and huge damage output that could bypass MDL whenever it deigned to attack a unit, almost nothing could stop it from advancing and destroying the enemy ship in short order thanks to a bug where its passive damage increase was considered exempt from the typical Contractual Boss Immunity that ships have meaning that an optimized Goliath only needed to attack a ship three times to win, this strategy was so prevalent it was to the point where players were forced to run Anti-Siege gear and frontlining Hayami Sanae for her buffs if they didn't want Goliath bulldozing them single-handedly. Studiobside acknowledged Goliath's brokenness the very same day it was released, and within a week it was given significant nerfs to health and damage output, dropping it down that now it's mostly run in rush comps or Siege teams.
- ATF-35 Thunderbolt was, in theory, an air-to-air specialist that could quickly defeat air enemies at the cost of not having a ground attack. In practice, players quickly realized that face is the place because a Thunderbolt without air units to attack would go straight for the enemy ship instead, effectively making it the first airborne Siege unit in the game. This made Thunderbolt the poster child of annoying aggro teams in the Gauntlet (which were focused on simply destroying the enemy ship as quickly as humanly possible rather than trading blows with enemy units) as the only way to slow it down was to drop an air unit in its path, which it would likely destroy in short order, and while your other units are tied up dealing with Thunderbolt, the opponent has a prime opportunity to pile on even more pressure. Given how oppressive this sort of playstyle can be, Thunderbolt often finds itself with ban levels.
Ships
Ships also get considered in Ranked Gauntlets and are often a source of frustration:- Lake Superior lowers DMG taken and can give barriers that prevents hitstun. Its offensive attack also pushes all the enemies together into the middle, pushing the frontline back and pulling the backline forward. Unsurprisingly, it is also known as one of the most banned ships.
- Enterprise is a very common ship due to its overall usefulness and practicality. It has a powerful beam with knockback, and a secondary attack that locks nearby enemies together for a short time.
- Blue Bridge Mk.2 not only provides hefty bonuses to attack speed to deployed units and provides healing and Skill Haste with its first active ability, but its second active ability deploys multiple soldiers right on top of the enemy to cause massive amounts of disruption. All of this utility makes it an extremely strong ship for any team, but what really pushed it over the top in PvP was Replacer King, who can convert the soldiers summoned by its ability into more Replacer troops if they go down.
- New Detroit is often groan-inducing as seeing it means that you're usually facing a rush comp that has completely forgoes its defensive choices for maximizing damage. Its passive only benefits Strikers but its skills can be problematic to face when it drops your units HIT and DEF down by at least half, while you're desperately fending off a Zerg Rush of Striker units.
- Matador became more frequent on the list of banned ships as Soldier teams became more popular. Its first skill fires some very strong torpedoes that can remove barriers from struck units and inflicts knockdown, but the real kicker is the second skill which fires giant anchors at the enemy's backline, dealing damage to every enemy on the field, slapping them with a 10% damage amp debuff, but most importantly, pulling their rearmost enemy right to the front of the ship and inflicting them with a 50% damage amp debuff. Used correctly, Matador on its own can pull the enemy's Glass Cannon Sniper or Support unit and kill them with a barrage of ship fire in seconds.
