New character - Miracle Fairy Anne
XAnne kit has just been revealed on the official Twitter of NIKKE!
Here's her information card:
We already added her to the website, so if you want to check her skills and information in a more mobile-friendly format, please click here to open her profile.
First impressions
Miracle Fairy Anne is a Burst II Supporter that wields a Rocket Launcher. Similar to XRuppe, she's another gimmick character that forces you into a certain formation if you want to use her.
Let's go over XAnne skills first.
Fairy Dance
■ Affects all Supporter allies. Activates after 3 normal attack(s).
Recover 6.07% of attack damage as HP over 5 sec.
Her S1 is a simple healing that can be activated quite often, but it only affects Supporter allies, which makes it pretty underwhelming.
Fairy's Jest
■ Affects all allies. Activates when above 90% HP.
HP Potency ▲ 23.46%.
■ Activates when the last bullet hits the target while having over 90% HP. Affects all enemies.
HP Potency ▼ 78.93% for 10 sec.
Her S2 does two things.
First, it increases the healing received by all allies as long as XAnne stays above 90%. This is a pretty decent bonus that helps them stay alive longer and is especially good if you pair XAnne with another healer (but this can be hard to do, considering the formation restrictions explained later).
Second, it decreases the healing received by enemies. Still, to activate the debuff XAnne needs to both be above 90% and she needs to fully unload her magazine. While in PVE healing isn't a big issue, this can be really helpful in PVP, especially to counter Noise who currently is the best PVP character in the game.
We are still testing how XAnne works against Noise and while the debuff affects Noise healing output that comes from her Burst, the 'self-healing' part of her kit (which comes from the Max HP buff that increases both max and current HP - we still don't know if this is a bug or intended behavior) isn't affected that much. Still, we need to do more testing here.
We already found a few issues with the debuff though:
XAnne rate of fire is very low and she uses the last 'bullet' in the mag right when both sides are about/just used their burst skills. This means that:
XAnne could be stunned by enemy Privaty before firing the last bullet, so no healing debuff will be applied,
XAnne could be damaged during the burst, so she won't be above 90% when she's firing the last bullet so no healing debuff will be applied again.
So while initially, XAnne looked like a great counter to Noise, in reality, it's very hard to actually make her counter-healing work.
Blue Butterfly Slumber - 60s cooldown
■ Affects 1 random fallen Attacker ally unit(s).
Resurrect with 99% HP. Activates once per battle.
■ Affects all Attacker allies.
Restores HP equal to 38.61% of the caster's Max HP.
ATK ▲ 77.22% for 10 sec.
XAnne Burst skill allows you to resurrect an ally, but compared to Rapunzel, not only it's limited to just Attacker allies, but also it can be activated only once per battle.
The second part of the Burst skill gives a massive ATK buff to all allies and also heals them. The ATK buff is the second strongest in the game (only Yulha, who at max rank can increase the party's ATK by 90%, is better).
Still, the skill is bugged. Tripple bugged.
The resurrection instead of bringing back an ally with 80-99% HP, brings him back with just 80-99 HP which gets him killed instantly (still, this doesn't happen every time),
The ATK buff is delayed and instead of being applied instantly, it takes ~2 seconds for it to apply to the party. This means that during the burst chain, whoever is in the Burst III spot won't benefit from the ATK buff at all,
she won't heal her allies at all on rare occasions.
How XAnne will affect the meta?
Honestly, it will be very hard to use her in PVE as while the ATK buff looks super tasty, her Burst Skill has a massive 60s cooldown - this means that if you want to use XAnne you need to run 1-2-2 formation and pair her with a Burst II character with 20s cooldown (so for example Centi or Rupee). And this also means that you will only benefit from the ATK buff once/twice per non-boss stage. Her anti-healing is also basically useless in PVE unless they start adding more bosses and enemies that can heal themselves.
While before her release, she looked like a natural counter to Noise in PVP (and other characters that rely on healing), due to how long it takes for her to empty the whole magazine and that she needs to be above 90% HP to even activate the anti-healing debuff, it makes her hard to use - especially in the current Rocket Launcher meta where she can get splashed with damage super easily. And that's even without considering the two bugs, especially the ATK buff one - 2 seconds of delay is a very long time that can be the difference between winning or losing.
Pros
good energy generation because of the Rocket Launcher,
massive ATK buff,
anti-healing is decent in PVP and might be needed in the future in PVE,
resurrection can be clutch in some battles.
Cons
you need to keep her above 90% HP for her S2 skill to do anything - which is hard to do in PVP especially,
forces you to play the 1-2-2 formation,
slow Rate of Fire which affects how often she can apply the anti-healing debuff,
currently, she is bugged and her ATK buff is delayed.
Should you pull?
We will continue testing XAnne and her performance in both PVE and PVP, but for now, she looks like she isn't worth it - unless you love her design or want to get all limited characters in the case in the future, she will become better.
XAnne ratings and review will be added to the website within 48h.
