Event Preview: The Dark Guild’s Servant

Event Type: Trial
The Unit: Maid Irene
Number of Maps: 10
Signature Unit Star Requirement: 5, max at 27
Monster Group: Goblins, Minotaurs, Humanoids, assorted Silver/Platinum characters etc.
Notable Monsters: Most of the humanoid units already made their appearances prior notably Katie’s War Games but a couple such as the Assassins and Pirate Captains are first timers. The pirates are relatively easy to deal with, but the assassins are actually quite deadly like their profession suggests, with high physical attack and deals double damage (final damage after standard defense reduction times 2) as well as being moderately tanky. Miranda/Maribel/Rita also features, with Miranda being the one to look out for since she can hit quite heavily as her skill will be on activation.
Strategy: The general difficulty of this event is pretty high for a free player with its nature being a trial event and the lack of specific units such as AW Prince meaning that it takes a lot more to ace this event overall. Despite so, the event strategy is surprisingly simple, and in most cases it is a lot of stat checks except for the X and G tiers where the decision to kite or bruteforce can mean different stat checks on different departments. The overall approach is still to fill your squads will a balance of physical single targets and magic AOE to cover for most part except Miranda, where true damage might be for the best if you have no suitable units to tank her.
Team Foundation: Physical single target is the most important damage source here, as most of the units have to be taken out as quickly as possible due to their high damage output and there isn’t a lot of good DPS choices when it comes to ranged magic damage and they are mostly sourced through melee units. Supplement these with magic AOE for block points with the occasional Witch slows. There are very limited true damage source at this stage of the game so if you have no Rikka a bruteforce tank against Miranda will most likely be the main approach of which you want to either drop about 2+1 healers into the fray with a strong tank or use units with great defensive mechanism such as pre-SAW Anya for example. Round up with several ranged melee units such as Ninjas or Magic Fencers as well as strong healers/Feng Shui and you are good to go.

Unit Analysis:

Irene is a Maid, a melee unit that has innate buffs available for specific unit classes, in other words specific classes that they serve. Unlike Dancers, Maids can enter combat stance and in the case of Irene she comes with a pretty standard, if not subpar package of a single target blocker in terms of stats. Units that are buffed by Maids when they are deployed will also behave like Tokens instead. That is to say, Maids are not unique when it comes their combat capabilities; it is their buffs that mattered.

In the case of Irene, despite the double attack and defense multiplier it is a relatively weak skill going forward due to her kit being a pure physical damage single blocker, something that her low cost couldn’t offset. As the game progresses units like White Emperor will gradually take the main stage with their multiblocking capabilities and still be able to do good damage. Irene’s position as a combat unit is mostly comparable to that of a valkyrie, yet she has no specific combat interaction such as leech or UP regeneration or even token mechanics to back her up. It is not until her Skill Awakening that she gain such interaction in being a ranged melee, but that will still not be enough as a comparison to the White Emperor who is also an event unit despite being a Black. In other words, there are too many scaling development on either new units being introduced or old units being buffed that sees single block physical damage units being phased out of their combat duties, which can spell disaster for a class like Maid.

Fortunately, the buffs that these Maids provide gave them a new perspective in terms of use. Most notably, the HP buff to Bandits is extremely appealing as it enables them to reach a higher EHP ceiling effectively enables several Bandits to pass the EHP threshold of certain megabosses when coupled with other related HP buffs such as Aisha’s or Imelia’s, most notably Lolonee and Cellia being able to tank the 5200s. Moreover, Irene gains the ability to buff Bandits without the need to be deployed on the field or getting Awakened, so it is an instant free buff so long you have her in your composition. The same goes for Rogue, but the skill duration isn’t what’s holding Rogues behind and they really only benefit if you deploy Irene thus changing their status to a Token at the cost of expending 1 unit deployment slot. After Awakening Irene gains two more class buffs where Pirates get an attack boost while Thieves have their cost lowered. The Pirate buff is useful for male-only maps where the substantial use of male pirates are common so they benefit the most from Irene’s such buff, while the Thief’s cost reduction is mostly negligible as they are mostly used as buff units themselves anyway (drop rate buff). Irene’s Second Awakening gave her substantial attack stat boost at the cost of HP allowing for potential one shots against certain monster groups. The overall growth is however not substantial due to the earlier hardware issue with her kit, and until she gets buffed from that department she won’t be seeing too much of a power-spike, and definitely not the front-runner in the list of units you should put priority on training.

Conclusion:

Irene is extremely efficient as a plug-and-play unit if you have proper Bandit setup. Other than that she isn’t the best unit in the park, and will most likely not require too much resources unless you are a fan of her and looking to collect all CGs in the future. Event wise, challenging but nothing too crazy.