Snakeknights

I occasonially clear stages with Phidia operators only, a niche more commonly called snakeknights. Videos of my snake only clears can be found on my youtube channel caliginousinsight. This page is dedicated to discussing how they play, both individually and together, and covering some of the numbers they're packing.

All math on this page is using the numbers of the operator at max level, trust, masteries, and module level, and no potentials except for the 4* and event 5* unless stated otherwise.

Why play snakeknights

The sheer amount of ways you can play Arknights is, in my opinion, its best quality as a game. Playing with self-imposed challenges is both a way to stretch your strategic muscles and a way to express yourself and shill your favourites. I already had a second account where I used only free operators, but that lineup became so large it somewhat lost the challenge, so I wanted something different.

By a fortunate coincidence the characters I like in story and units I like in gameplay found a lot of overlap among the Phidia operators specifically, so my eye pretty quickly fell on snakes only as an option. In particular, I wanted to play something that would let me show off Shalem. He's my favourite character in Arknights, but even though he's part of several well established niches (defender only, welfare only, and Victorian only) he doesn't get to shine all that much in any of those.

Snakeknights is a pretty accessible niche in terms of obtaining the relevant operators. There's not that many snakes to begin with, and any player who takes the game seriously enough to consider picking up a niche will have at least half of them without even trying, since we have two 4* and two free event 5*. Of the rest, Zuo Le, Melanite, and Corroserum all debuted on limited banners, meaning there's a good chance long-term players will already have them sitting around, and Eunectes can be picked up with certificates from make-your-own-banner kernel headhunting campaigns. The only one who doesn't quite have this convenience is Wulfenite, but she shares her debut banner with the highly anticipated and stupid powerful Necrass, so rolling for her is hardly a sacrifice.

Despite the small roster, snakeknights has access to a good range of functionality. There's a fairly even spread of physical and arts damage units, there's several crowd control and debuff options, there's a few options to hit flying enemies, there's a serviceable amount of block, there's a good amount of survivability, there's solid burst damage, and so on. Additionally, snakes cover for each other's weaknesses and enable each other's strengths pretty well. Thanks to that, this small group of units can tackle a very wide range of maps. There's also not much overlap in what each snake is capable of, so everyone is always pulling their full weight.

The snakes are a group of high-risk high-reward units that enable bold and agressive strategies. Snakes categorically boast high firepower and/or durability, but have various restrictions and limitations that need to be worked around to make them work, ranging from having only 1 block to do their laneholding with, to wonky or restrictive attack ranges, to actively killing themselves for the damage. Winning with snakes is rarely a matter of just putting down your state assigned busted 6* and watching the map solve itself, you're always thinking about how to lean into each snake's strengths to cover for their weaknesses.

Snakeknights offers clears you won't get anywhere else. Because snakes are such a gimmicky bunch, the snakeknights approach to any given map often differs a lot from that of other niches, particularly those established on arkrec. Even if there's a Zuo Le duo clear listed, snakes probably won't have an easy way to copy whatever that other operator was doing - but that doesn't mean they can't do it at all! That same gimmickness means they're often overlooked both by regular players and within the other niches they're a part of, and they get to shine and show off their good qualities in snakeknights.

Zuo Le

You don't need me to tell you Zuo Le is strong, we've all seen the solo videos. What I will tell you is that I consider Zuo Le one of the best designed units in the whole game, if not the actual best one. He's a busted unit with a kill everyone now button same as many others I'm a contrarian hater about like Surtr and Thorns and Ch'en the Holungday and Młynar, but using Zuo Le as a win this map button is much more involved than most others thanks to the way he's inherently a high risk high reward unit. His 1 block makes him dependent on his skills to handle enemy waves, and the speed at which he can use his skills depends on how much damage he takes across the map. If the map is easy he's just okay to decent, but the harder the map and the fewer other units you bring the stronger Zuo Le becomes.

S2 gives Zuo Le +170% atk, putting him at 2457 atk. S3 deals 6 hits of 245% damage and one hit of 490% damage, which translates to six times 2230 and one hit of 4459 for a total of 17836 damage before defense. Unlike other musha, Zuo Le has the damage per hit to outscale high defense enemies.

Zuo Le's talents both massively improve his skill cycling, which is what really makes him so silly goofy as a unit. With his mod X his first talent gives +2.3 sp/s when his hp is at 50% or below, meaning he gets 3.3 sp per second at low hp. This turns the 20 sp cost of his s2 into 6 seconds charge time, and the 25 sp on s3 becomes 7.5 seconds. His second talent additionally gives a 20% chance to get 1sp on every attack, increased to 70% if he's below 50% hp. As a musha his aspd also increases the lower his hp gets, and mod X Zuo Le at 50% or below has +70 aspd, lowering his base 1.2 second attack interval down to 0.7 seconds. If he wins every 70% on his second talent, his s2 charge time goes down to about 4.2 seconds and s3 to about 5.3 seconds. Which is, I don't need to tell you this, fucking bonkers.

The trick is that this only works if he's below 50% hp. His first talent scales linearly with his hp and therefore has some leeway, but his second talent chance drops down to only 20% chance the moment he is even a single point of hp above that halfway mark. His skills also both generate barrier, which allows him to sit at low hp while still having a lot of effective hp, but which conversely also means that he continues to recover hp on every attack while enemies struggle to break through his barrier to drop his hp again in between skill uses. S2 cuts his current hp in half, but the increased target count also means he recovers it again twice as fast. S3 can't cycle properly in the first place if there aren't any enemies that can hit him hard enough to matter. He's completely reliant on his skills to do his funny business, and how well he's able to use his skills depends on the precise circumstances of the map.

Zuo Le s3 feels like a swordmaster skill, but it can't hit air enemies, and only hits 3 targets per slash instead of the customary 6.

He's just an incredibly engaging and satisfying unit to use, and because you need a good understanding of the map you're playing if you want Zuo Le to break it open, using him never feels like I'm taking the easy way out of solving the map. Zuo Le doesn't show his full potential as map breaking unit unless you're already playing at a high level, getting to use Zuo Le to break a map open is a reward for being good at strategy game Arknights instead of a way to avoid having to become better at strategy game Arknights.

Zuo Le has two modules, but his X module is the only one worth getting. Mod Y increases the chance to get sp ticks on his second talent and increases the damage of the attack that procced the sp, but mod X completely defines how he's played right now, and because it also increases his aspd and the threshold at which he gets that aspd bonus, in practice mod X will still give you more second talent procs than mod Y. If you do unlock mod X you should also immediately max its level, because otherwise the threshold at which he gets sanctuary and the threshold at which his sp gain is fastest are desynced.

For masteries I recommend s3 > s2 and leaving s1 alone. S1 is a perfectly fine skill, but there's pretty much no reason to use it over s2 or s3 unless you just don't want to press Zuo Le's buttons, in which case you're doing the kind of lazy low-effort clear where Zuo Le isn't your best option anyway so you don't need him to be at peak performance either.

Zuo Le is by far the strongest unit in snakeknights, and the baseline approach for any map is to see how much of it can be done by Zuo Le alone and then have the others fill in the gaps. I don't mind this, because as established, I think Zuo Le is one of the best designed and most enjoyable units in the game. However, if and when snakes get their next jacked as fuck 6* I hope it's one that does something very different from what Zuo Le does, so that things don't devolve into basically just deploying Zuo Le twice.

Eunectes

I like to call Eunectes a cartoon anvil, becuase dropping Eunectes on a problem is rarely the most efficient solution, but it always works and it's really funny.

A lot of people seem hesitant or scared to use Eunectes. Oh she's so difficult to use, she's so expensive to deploy. This is only true if you're a COWARD. Eunectes has one eunectillion defense, deals one eunectillion damage per hit even offskill, and becomes nigh immortal with s3 active. Much like Zuo Le, Eunectes' strengths become more apparent and valuable the more difficult the situation. She's unwieldy and excessive if you're bringing a lot of units to cover your bases, but if you trust in Eunectes there's a lot of things she can handle.

Eunectes' sp gain is higher than you'd expect thanks to her second talent giving her +0.2 sp per second while she's blocking (the only condition under which she normally can gain sp anyway). This means her functional sp costs are lower than they are on paper, because she charges her skills a full 20% faster than normal whenever she does charge them. Her mod X lets her gain sp at 0.1 sp/s when not blocking and increases her second talent to +0.55 sp/s, making her skill cycles even faster.

Only mod X actually specifies that it unlocks her sp gain, but both modules change her trait to let her gain flat sp from sources like Warfarin and Liskarm's talents or Gelato stops from Guide Ahead maps.

When it comes to Eunectes you're usually looking at s3, which gives her basically infinite stats with a bonus fat regen for a generous 35 seconds, at the cost of stunning herself for 5 seconds after the skill ends. There's very few things that can kill Eunectes while she's in the robot, and there's a lot of things Eunectes can kill while in the robot because she's dealing 4k physical damage per hit before looking at modules. With mod Y this becomes 4.9k per hit to a blocked target. She can crumple pretty much any elite like a soda can.

Her s2 is crazy overlooked by comparison, but it's a whopping 18 second stun on whoever she's blocking, unaffected by the target's status resistance because the stun is coded without a duration and just lasts for as long as Eunectes is blocking this enemy with s2 active. This makes it particularly good at dealing with enemies that can teleport past your blocker like Crownslayer, Trilby Asher, or Deathveil Assassin, because she has more than enough stats to take their attacks before their dodge triggers and they're not going anywhere once s2 is active. Her 1 block at base means she can normally only stun one target, but if you increase her block through one of the many mechanics that can affect this, she can stun multiple targets too. If you alternate Eunectes s2 with Crownslayer mod Y s3 you can legitimately permanently stun a target: Mod Y Crownslayer's skill gives a total of 22 seconds stun, more than enough time for mod X Eunectes to recharge her s2, and Crownslayer's 18 second redeployment timer lets her come back right when Eunectes's skill runs out.

I think Eunectes s1 is seriously worth consideration too, because her job as a unit is to be a huge statstick, and a permanent passive boost to her already humongous stats makes her an even bigger statstick. Eunectes is crazy good at just holding a guy because her ridiculous stats make her functionally impervious to physical damage, and she'll probably beat the guy to death while she's at it, especially on mod Y. S1 Eunectes without module has 1346 atk and 856 def. On mod Y that becomes 1627 atk and 1113 def while blocking. That's fucking numbers baby!!

Mod Y is often overlooked for the convenience of mod X, but as you may have noticed I keep bringing it up because it's also really good. The base effect gives her +15% atk and def when blocking (functionally unconditional because she's gonna be blocking enemies anyway) and the talent upgrade increases her talent 1 modifiers from 115% damage to 123% damage when above 50% hp, and 20% to 28% sanctuary when below 50% hp. Patching up the major weakness of her subclass may sound tempting, but I've found that in many situations Eunectes doesn't actually need to use her skill more than once per map, and in those cases the extra modifiers from mod Y make a major difference. Mod Y blocking stats are roughly the same as no module s1 stats, and you get to bring an actual skill on top of that.

Eunectes! Has! The stats! For that 33 DP cost you get a deceptively versatile unit with incredibly powerful skills and incredible stat heft who can adapt to a lot of different ways of using her, and the hurdles of her DP cost and sp gain make it all the more rewarding to use her well. Snakeknights often gets away with incredibly aggressive positioning on maps where other niches need to take out enemies from afar, because Eunectes can simply statstick harder than the enemy.

Shalem

As a unit, Shalem is part of a subclass that is in a somewhat complicated position from a design perspective, because it's really strong and versatile in a way that not many people are able to appreciate, and which is difficult to translate to a 6* without immediately making the most busted bullshit ever. He's a 3 block unit with solid bulk, high atk, multitarget arts damage on a good cycle for both skills, his talent lets him reduce enemy res, and his s2 extends his range and can even hit air enemies. His s2 also has the highest damage potential of all 5* defenders, in fact it has slightly more dps than Surtr's s2 on single target, and because that damage comes from dealing a high number of hits rather than buffs to any of his stats it scales well with every form of buff available in the game.

This exceptionally high damage comes the cost of his second skill consuming a total of 100% of his hp over its duration, meaning he is guaranteed to die without healing on him if he uses it. Part of being a more damage oriented subclass also means his defenses are a bit on the lower end for defenders. Combined it means that even though I picked up snakeknights because I wanted to show off Shalem, it was actually pretty hard to show off his good qualities as a unit in this niche until Rose Salt was introduced.

Shalem's kit is nice and coherent. His talent gives all his attacks (not just when a skill is active) a 25% chance to reduce the target's res by 25% for 3 seconds. This plays nice with both of his skills increasing the amount of hits per second he does, letting him get additional hits in within those 3 seconds to capitalise on and potentially reapply the debuff. I haven't noticed any visual indicator for this debuff, so it's unfortunately not really feasible to time other units' damage to Shalem's debuff.

Shalem has 754 atk, which is on the level of a Lord or Reaper guard of the same rarity, and his 1.6 second attack interval puts him at a base dps of 471. This gives him some of the highest off-skill dps among 5* defenders, outdone only by the Juggernauts and Duelists, who justify that damage with their unwieldy subclass traits. He genuinely just does a lot of damage in a way that kind of flies under the radar.

His s1 at m3 lowers his attack interval from 1.6 seconds to 1.15 seconds and lets him attack all blocked enemies for a dps of 656 per target or 1967 at 3 targets. His s2 at m3 turns his attacks into six hits of 80% atk that target random enemies for 3619 damage per attack and a dps of 2262 spread randomly across the amount of targets. To repeat the previous comparison, s2 Surtr with no module (because Shalem has no module yet) has a single target dps of 2174, slightly lower than Shalem s2 (her s3 is 2656 dps per target). A defender putting out damage on the level of a guard of a higher rarity is insane! In Phantom and Crimson Solitaire he gets an additional 15% atk and 30 aspd, which combines into a roughly 50% dps increase while on his home turf.

If Shalem is blocking fewer enemies than his block count, his s1 will target unblocked enemies on tiles that blocked enemies are on until the amount of targets equals Shalem's block count.

That said, s2 is pretty difficult to use well, and becomes less consistent the more targets there are in range. The most common Shalem use case is using s1 to chew through groups of armored enemies without having to commit a separate caster to his lane. Shalem is almost entirely damage oriented, but he has 15 res as part of his subclass and his s1 increases his max hp by 50%, so he's pretty good against enemies that deal arts damage and can take the Manfred cannon with some foresight.

Shalem is a unit that doesn't work too well on his own, but grows exponentially stronger the more support you give him. With a consistent healer to back him up he can easily handle even pretty dangerous or dense waves thanks to the good damage and cycling on s1, and with some buffs behind him his s2 can shred enemies like paper. Some particularly good partners are Warfarin, who can give him sp and buffs, and Hibiscus the Purifier, who can inflict arts fragility and also make use of his res debuff herself. Because s2 is defensive recovery, it also pairs well with Aak's s3.

Melanite

Using Melanite well feels really satisfying because she can blow up whole groups of trash in one button. Her s2 hits every enemy in range, so if you line her up well there's no limit to the amount of targets she can hit, and with only 15sp cost and 2 charges, if one shot doesn't do the job then the second will. The bullet also lets her reach enemies way outside her normal 3 x 3 heavyshooter range.

The precise nature of her bullet is that it's a projectile with a set path, no target (meaning it can be used with no enemies in range), and a hitbox with a radius of 0.5 tiles. It originates from the center front edge of her own tile and travels at a speed of 10 tiles per second for 0.4 seconds, translating to 4 tiles. The damage starts decaying linearly after 0.1 seconds / 1 tile, and stops decaying at 0.34 seconds / 3 and a half tiles.

Because the hitbox is 0.5 tiles and the starting point is the edge of Melanite's tile, it's functional range is shifted half a tile forward. The bullet can reach halfway into the fifth tile, but cannot hit the back half of Melanite's own tile. This also means that enemies 1.5 tiles away will still be hit with the full damage, even though the damage decay technically starts at 1 tile already, and enemies in the fourth tile will actually still take slightly more than the lowest amount of damage. The circular hitbox means that enemies on the side edges of the far ends of the bullet range also won't be hit.

Melanite gets a bunch of different modifiers from her traits, talents, modules, and skill itself, so her damage is a bit hard to intuit just from looking at her on paper. The modifier on s2m3 is 500% at base and decays to 180%. Her talent increases skill damage by 15% from the second use onwards, which her module increases to 24%. The module also increases her damage to 105% when hitting enemies in the line in front of her, which always applies to s2. Her potentials give her a fairly modest 30 atk and 1% extra damage on her talent, but because of all her different multipliers, those combine into a significant damage increase. All of these modifiers are multiplicative with regular atk buffs too, so she scales well with any source of party buff.

The module additionally lets her ignore the physical dodge of enemies within that straight line in front of her. This is really useful against enemies like Nethersea Predators, which have 80% dodge but only 4k hp and 50 def, or Sarkaz 'Flying Boots' Mercenaries, who have 40% dodge but only 4k hp and 100 def. Their EX stage counterparts have 5k hp / 80 def and 5.2k hp / 120 def respectively. A well positioned Melanite can just explode these enemies instantly, no matter how many of them rush you at once. S2 is an instant attack, so it can be used to circumvent aspd reductions to some extent too.

Her s1 is less likely to see use if you have literally anyone else to do heavyshooter things, it's the kind of skill that's there just in case Melanite is your only option and you need her to do something more generic than blast a single line. This is awesome for me, who is playing a niche where Melanite is the only sniper, and it's a really good skill for simply getting the job done. It increases her atk by 180% for a sweet 2680 damage per hit or 2814 in front of her, lasts a generous 30 seconds for 40 sp, and it can also benefit from Melanite's talent to go up to 3323/3489 damage per hit on the second and later use. The cycling doesn't improve any with masteries though, so if you do have other options it's not really worth investing in.

Melanite appears to be a highly specialised unit, but she's actually pretty versatile. Her ability to instantly explode weak enemies with a 9 second startup, in addition to her status as the second-cheapest snake to deploy, make her a good opener on fast maps. Heavyshooters aren't really meant to be dedicated anti-air and Melanite sometimes struggles to focus on the drones or kill them fast enough before they zoom out of her range, but here too, the instant damage against everything in a line on s2 helps her a lot. Melanite is just a very consistent and reliable unit.

Corroserum

Corroserum is a highly specialised unit, which means he's kind of ass except when he's godlike. His main features beyond his blast caster subclass traits are his fast skill cycling and the ability to silence all the enemies in his range with his s2, and silence is one of those things that's useless until it's not. However, his single line range and high dp cost can make it hard to actually make use of that debuff even in cases where it would be useful.

Corroserum's talent increases his sp recovery by +0.45 (0.5 with potentials) after he hasn't attacked for 4 seconds, and his module increases this to +0.65 (0.7). If there's a bit of downtime between waves Corroserum can fairly easily have his skills available for every wave, which makes him a very consistent aoe damage option in cases where his line range works. It also has some synergy with the 10 seconds of stun at the end of his s1, earning him a bonus 2.7 (3) sp before module and 3.9 (4.2) sp with module before taking any further downtime into account. My own Corroserum is max potential, so that's the numbers I'll be using from now on.

S1 has a longer duration, faster cycling, and higher multipliers than his s2, so unless you need the silence debuff it's pretty much always better. Because of his long attack interval he only loses 3 attacks over the duration of the stun, and the skill duration is long enough that the stun at the end often happens during or close to downtime between waves anyway.

S2 being manual deactivation means it resets his attack interval at the start and end of the skill, meaning you can activate the skill right after he used an attack to immediately attack again, and then end it for another immediate attack. This is something that applies to all manual deactivation skills, and there are some niche cases where this will allow him to squeeze just a little bit more damage in. S1 doesn't reset his attack interval, so to get the maximum use out of it you should use it right when he initiates his attack animation.

When silence IS useful, Corroserum has the unique ability to apply it from 5 tiles away, to flying enemies, and to absolutely everything in range. Corroserum's infinite target count means he won't get distracted by other enemies or overwhelmed by sheer numbers the way more popular options like Lappland or Jaye would. One of the game's tricks that it employs, not often but often enough, is to send a large group of silenceable enemies at you so that you can't silence them all, and it's those kind of situations where Corroserum really shines, because he can in fact silence them all.

Frankly, Corroserum's main problem as a unit is just that Ifrit has been in the game since launch, and Ifrit is really strong and has a lot of different features, so when inventing the second ever iteration of the subclass they were somewhat conservative so as to avoid creating a design mistake. This left Corroserum with a combination of traits and numbers that feel undertuned and don't make him an attractive unit to most people, not in the last place because Ifrit has been in the game since launch so many players will just have Ifrit built already. In snakeknights, too, Corroserum has his occasional moment, but he's by far the least vital member of the whole operation.

For general gameplay use I honestly wouldn't suggest investing in either Corroserum's masteries or his module. His job is to soften up groups of enemies before they reach your frontlines and debuff them when necessary, and he's perfectly fine at that without all that extra investment. His skill cycling doesn't improve with masteries at all, and if you're relying on Corroserum's damage to win the run you should probably revise your strategy anyway. His module will get you a few seconds less charge time on his skills under optimal conditions, but again, if those 3 seconds make or break your strategy in normal play there are other things you can adjust to make up for that which don't cost a bunch of module blocks and materials.

Indigo

I like mystic casters. Their subclass quirks give them a set of obvious strengths and weaknesses that are rewarding and not too hard to play around, and if you've read this far you may have intuited that I love a unit that is strong in a gimmicky way instead of a straightforward way. Indigo's particular quirk is that her every attack has a chance to bind the target for a generous 4 seconds, and she won't attack bound enemies, regardless of whether she was the one who inflicted the bind.

Bind is arguably one of the strongest debuffs in the game, because getting to tell an enemy to stop moving is insanely potent, and no enemy is immune to it. Indigo being able to do it theoretically at any moment is strong as hell, and also dangerous to real life sanity.

"This will work if Indigo rolls bind good" - statement of the copium addled.

Her base attack interval is 3 seconds, so if it's just one target in her range she will store up one attack before hitting them again 2 seconds after the initial bind wears off. Her module gives her a bit of aspd, which reduces her base attack interval to 2.88 seconds and the gap between the bind wearing off and Indigo's next attack to 1.76 seconds.

Stored attacks each separately roll the bind chance, and a mystic caster's stored attacks are added to the actual attack being done after storing them. Her module increases her maximum charges to 4 and the bind chance to 27%, meaning at maximum charges she rolls for bind 5 times for a total 79% chance to bind, and at the much more common 1 charge (meaning 2 attacks) the chance is 46%. That's pretty generous for something she can do before taking any skills into account.

Her s2 increases the bind chance of each attack to 81% and reduces her attack interval to 1.8 seconds or 1.73 with module, allowing her to store up two charges instead of one between bind procs when there is a single target in range, as well as making the next attack happen 1.4/1.19 seconds after the last bind runs out. With only one target in range during s2 those two attacks she stores up while the target is bound create a 99.3% chance to bind on Indigo's next attack after the previous bind runs out, making the skill mostly reliable on a single target with diminishing returns the more targets are in range.

Aside from the bind itself, s2 also inflicts damage over time on bound enemies in her range, and this bind does not have to come from Indigo herself to trigger the damage. This is 264 damage per 0.5 seconds on a fully invested Indigo. Indigo is often combined with Ethan in 4* stall strategies, because Indigo targeting specifically the enemies that Ethan didn't bind yet compensates for both their random chances, and Ethan being able to theoretically bind all targets in his range allows Indigo to inflict her dot on a much larger amount of enemies than she would be able to alone.

Indigo s1 is a remnant of an era of the game where particular subclasses would all have the same s1 and only get some unique flavour on their s2, so it's The Mystic Caster Skill 1, which doesn't particularly mesh well with anything else she does or have a lot of practical uses. The single line range that extends beyond her normal range, short duration and cycle, and fast burst of hits has some potential niche uses though, like preventing her from being distracted by enemies on the sides of her range in critical moments, or quickly storing up attacks to compensate for a lack of actual downtime.

Indigo generally isn't a unit you bring for the damage, but as a mystic caster she has absurdly high atk and damage per hit, and the ability to store attacks lets her instantly explode some poor schmuck who happened to come into her range after some downtime. She probably has some of the highest damage potential among 4*, I haven't done any math on that and don't care to, that's just how mystic casters are built.

Honestly, all issues one might have with Indigo come down to the fact that she's a 4*, which makes her like 10% less reliable than if she'd had an extra star. She already punches pretty high above her weight class as-is, if her binds were any stronger she'd have no business whatsoever sitting in her current rarity. Indigo works better the fewer enemies there are, which is completely normal for mystic casters, and it's only because I'm doing low operator niche clears that I need to rely on her rolling the right binds as much as I do anyway.

Verdant

Snakeknights has some major weaknesses it has to play around. The first is that snakes are pretty expensive to deploy across the board, making it hard to open some maps because the first enemy will have reached the gate by the time natural dp generation allows me to put anyone down. The second is that in the time before Rose Salt, my ranged units were completely vulnerable to ranged enemies, and while my main powerhouses Zuo Le and Eunectes have ways to heal themselves, they still need enemies to actually come close first. Eunectes in particular is also pretty weak to arts damage.

If ONLY there was a unit that was cheap to deploy, had enough damage to take out early map enemies, and specialised in taking ranged arts damage to the face forever. Alas, there are no such units in this game, let alone in my tiny, tiny niche.

Lmao

Verdant is a dollkeeper which means he has 2 block, low-ish def but high-ish atk that lets him take out early map trash, a very modest 12 dp cost, and is extremely difficult to kill. In fact, Verdant is probably the most durable dollkeeper of them all, because all the others have their doll do some dumb shit like dealing damage instead of surviving forever. A fully invested Verdant on s1 has 15 res and 3389 hp. The substitute has 23 res, 3795 hp, and recovers 152 hp per second. It lasts 20 seconds, so it has 6832 effective hp, and if enemies can't deal that much damage in those 20 seconds they can't kill him at all.

Verdant is fucking awesome. Verdant is the glue actually keeping this niche together. I love Verdant.

If you put Verdant on a tile he's not leaving that tile until you tell him to. He's not gonna be blocking all of the time while on that tile, but he's sure as hell not leaving it, and this neutralises a huge chunk of the mechanics in this game. The ability to simply sit on a tile without dying is extremely underrated and extremely valuable. Imagine if Gravel instantly redeployed herself after she got blown up. That's Verdant and people have the gall to call him a bad unit. Verdant is fucking awesome.

Verdant can sit on nethersea brand no problem to prevent it from spreading. Verdant can put out burning reeds. Verdant can safely take constant fire from two hostile grammophones at once with hp to spare. Verdant can hold chains in Babel maps without the burdenbeasts breaking all his bones. Verdant can jumpscare those guys who call in drones and then eat the drone fire. Verdant can be placed in dangerous positions to redirect Realigned Flux because none of those Leithanian casters can do jack shit to him. Verdant can be dropped in the middle of a bunch of caster sheep and live. Verdant can survive Talulah's entire wall of fireballs without any external help. The list goes on and on and on. Verdant is fucking awesome.

Dollkeepers clear all their debuffs when switching to or from their substitute, including for example the otherwise permanent defense reduction from corrosion or acid originum slugs.

Now to be fair, Verdant is not actually immortal. I've had Verdant die on me a few times, to my surprise and dismay. His limits are usually around like, four enraged elite imperial strikers, or four double aspd caster sheep while on pink steam, or six witch king orchestra drummers, or any other situation where any other unit would have exploded twice as fast. Can we blame this humble plant boy for not being made of the same stuff as an s2 Specter? He's a 4* and doesn't need you to do literally anything after deploying him. I tried using Specter the Unchained instead of Verdant once and she died to ranged arts damage. Verdant is fucking awesome.

His s2 is extremely niche next to his s1, rather than a damage button it's better thought of as a way to control when he's on his substitute. You could heal him while he's using it and get some melee arts damage out of him, and it's gonna be some pretty decent melee arts damage because dollkeepers have good stats, but there's better ways to get some melee arts damage even within the very limited lineup of snakeknights (yay Shalem), and the primary Verdant use case is having him hold a tile or bait damage that you can't or don't want to dedicate a healer to.

Verdant is extremely easy to use because you literally just put him down and he sits there eating damage forever and this wins you the map. Verdant's paradox simulation struggles to even show off what makes him so good because the solution is to drop him right in front of the red box and then look away. There's really only one major problem with using Verdant, which is that he's untargetable for a few frames while switching to and from his substitute, leaving an opening for other units who do die when they're killed to get targeted instead. Verdant is fucking awesome.

Rose Salt

Rose Salt was announced on CN about a month after I started playing snakeknights and concluded we could really use a healer. The delay between CN and global servers put her global release in early June, right around my birthday. This is because I am heaven's favourite child and I always win.

Rose Salt is a multi-target medic with a talent that increases the healing received by allies within her range, 17% at base and 22% with module. Healing received buffs increase any type of heal that shows a green number above the operator, including of course any attack done by medics, as well as the HP recovery from Musha and Reaper traits, but excluding the regen effect on for example Bards. Within snakeknights, this means Zuo Le's hp recovery trait can benefit, but not Eunectes s3 or Verdant's substitute. Zuo Le's s3 briefly turns the hp recovery from his talent into a barrier instead, but Rose Salt's talent does not increase the amount of barrier Zuo Le gains from his s3.

Rose Salt's talent, despite lowering her atk a little, gives her the highest off-skill healing power of all aoe medics before looking at any modules, 421.2 healing per attack and 147.8 healing per second (Nightingale has 420 hpa and 147.4 hps, Perfumer with regen included has 147.7 hps). With modules she's in second place with 496.5 hpa and 174.2 hps, only 4.5 hps behind mod X Nightingale, and she still outdoes mod Y Nightingale (though this is muddled a little by mod Y allowing 4 targets at once to be healed). Rose Salt's talent basically adds an extra star to her stats, and because the talent increases the healing received by allies in range rather than just her own healing output, she gives that extra star to any other medics you pair her with too.

Even before considering snakeknights, Rose Salt is a pretty big deal because she's the first multi-target medic since year 1, and the first one to have an actual afk skill. Nightingale s2 is auto-activation too, but it's arts barrier, not actual healing. Rose Salt has a completely straightforward power strike type s1 on 8sp auto recovery with charges. The charges mean you don't lose uses to her attack interval not lining up with the sp cost, so she just heals 90% per 8 seconds extra, translating to a 55.8 hps increase. This puts her at 203.6 hps, around the same level as an off-skill single target medic, except she's healing three targets.

Her main draw is definitely her s2 though, because it has the unique ability to prevent your operators from being oneshot. While active, 50% of each instance of physical or arts damage taken by allies in her range will instead be spread out into a 5 seconds damage over time effect, allowing operators to take hits worth up to twice their maximum hp and giving you more time to heal off incoming bursts of damage.

S2 specifically only works against physical and arts damage. True damage like the Manfred cannon or corruption can't be reduced, nor can self-inflicted damage like Shalem s2.

This makes Rose Salt particularly good against bursts of high instance damage like Patriot's spear throw, Harold's mapwide damage for each unlit furnace, Dolly exploding each pink steam tile, etc. Even when you're not dealing with damage that would instantly kill you, she makes the window you have to heal off damage before it becomes lethal much more lenient, for example healing through Steam Knight's barrage. It lasts a fairly generous 27 seconds on a not too high 36 sp, so there's a good bit of leeway in timing when to use it.

The skill only reduces her attack interval, without increasing her atk. This means Rose Salt's on-skill healing per second is on the lower end for multi-target medics, but she also significantly reduces the amount of burst healing you need in the first place. Her onskill healing output is actually still in the same ballpark as Nightingale's on both s1 and s3, because they both have slightly lower raw healing in exchange for the defensive utility. Because her talent plays so nice with other healers, Rose Salt is going to be the most attractive option in any situation where you need more than one medic.

Within snakeknights it's really only Shalem that desperately needs the healing support, since the other blockers are plenty durable on their own already. You'd think that a multi-target medic isn't ideal when healing a single unit, but as established Rose Salt's healing output is way above her weight class, so she's more than enough to keep the gang alive in most situations.

Wulfenite

Wulfenite isn't out on Global yet at the time of writing, so my assessments are theoretical and based CN players' videos for now.

Wulfenite is a trapmaster specialist with the unique ability to manually detonate her traps, instead of them automatically detonating the moment an enemy steps on them. This alone makes her uniquely good at dealing with the handful of mechanics that traps can interact with, such as grammophones or burning reeds, because her traps won't be removed by enemies passing over them. In exchange for this convenience she can deploy only 3 traps at a time (4 with potentials), and her skills cost more sp to generate new traps than those for traps with automatic detonation.

An understated quality of trapmasters is that they actually have pretty good autoattacks. They have slightly lower atk and slightly faster aspd than marksman snipers, making for overall slightly higher dps in a vacuum. That fast attack speed is particularly relevant for snakes, because most snakes before Wulfenite specialise in slow, heavy hits, which makes it difficult to interact with hitcount mechanics. The marksman range and ability to hit air enemies with those fast attacks also make it a lot easier to deal with flying enemies. None of those features are reason to pick up Wulfenite to supplement a full roster, but for snakes her base subclass traits alone make her a valuable addition.

Wulfenite's s1 traps stun all enemies on the tile for 3 seconds. Her s2 traps lower the defense of enemies in the four surrounding tiles by 25% for 5 seconds, and if one of these traps is detonated, all Wulfenite's other traps on the map that are ready will also immediately detonate. Both types of trap are detonated by means of a skill the trap has that costs 5 sp to charge, and the delay between clicking their activation and the effect actually landing is negligible. It feels likely that the traps are affected by any mechanics that affect sp gain, but I can't test this until she hits Global.

S1 traps deal one hit of 250% atk damage and s2 traps deal two hits of 250% damage, making for 1525 physical damage per hit. Her module gives a 20% chance to deploy a trap that deals double damage, so 3050 damage per hit. A regular s2 trap can put a heavy dent in if not outright delete most trash units, and a crit one packs a serious punch even on elites. Other skills with two hits and a debuff tend to apply the debuff after the first hit, so it's safe to assume this is the case for Wulfenite's traps too.

The trap damage scales off Wulfenite's atk in the moment the trap is triggered, so with enough buffs activating four traps at once can explode even bosses.

Enemy def debuffs are actually still fairly rare. Wulfenite is one of 18 operators that can reduce enemy defense, and one of 10 that have specifically a percent-based defense debuff. Among those 10, Wulfenite is one of 4 that can debuff an arbitrary number of targets, and only Shamare can compete with Wulfenite's flexibility in positioning. Shamare's debuff is also twice as potent and lasts thrice as long as Wulfenite's, and Wulfenite's debuff is actually one of the least potent in the overall list, but Wulfenite has more personal damage by comparison (the other two def debuffs with no target limit are Pramanix s2 and Thorns the Lodestar s3, the latter of which requires at least two other operators to work).

The s2 defense debuff pairs well with both Wulfenite's own fast autos and the fact that the main damage dealers in snakeknights are all physical. Since it affects the four surrounding tiles, it's possible for her to debuff enemies that are blocked without needing to do levitate tricks to place traps underneath them. Both Zuo Le and Melanite concentrate their best damage into roughly a second, so the 5 second duration on Wulfenite's debuff is not much of a constraint. Range is a pretty big limitation for snakes, so Wulfenite's ability to slap some damage on enemies nearly anywhere on the map is very promising.