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Epiphany Bonus
When entering Chaos, obtain 1 random Rare Card with an activated Epiphany.
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Best Build Guide
Justice
VanguardLast updated: 15/March/2026
Check all the starting cards & the EGO Card available for Magna
Frozen Fist
Attack
Frost Shield
Skill
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Ice Fragment
Upgrade
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Absolute Zero
Ego Skill
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Check all the epiphany cards available for Magna
Glacial Iron Fist
Attack
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Ice Wall
Skill
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Frost Charge
Skill
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Storm of Bitter Cold
Upgrade
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Epiphany cards are special evolutions for the cards you can obtain while playing the roguelike mode. Only some cards in the character's deck can get Epiphany effects. Since there's quite a lot of them, we don't display them by default — press the button below to show them.
Good shielding with reasonable damage output after set-up and when being attacked frequently.
Strong access to the Vulnerable debuff.
Nice AoE Potential while Ice Wall is active.
Grants Crystallization for constant shielding without needing to draw or use AP for it.
Has many expensive cards and is incredibly AP hungry.
Counterattacks (and damage) are far less effective in fights where enemies are not often hit.
Magna is a Justice Vanguard who wants to protect her team via huge shields and clapping back at enemies via Counterattacking.
Magna has almost everything you want from your tank. She offers multiple different ways to passively generate shields, which in turn will also generate stacks of Counterattack. Counterattacks occur when you're struck by an enemy unit. When this happens, any unit that holds a stack of Counterattack will immediately retaliate with an attack of their own - dealing 100% Defense-Based damage. If the damage dealt by the enemy when this happens is completely blocked by your team's shield, the damage dealt increases to 200% Defense-Based damage instead.
Magna also has consistent ways to inflict multiple Vulnerable stacks on her enemies via "Frost Charge" to further increase her team's damage output. Magna also has the unique ability to allow her Counterattacks to hit all enemy units, opposed to just the enemy unit attacking.
Unfortunately, Magna does boast higher-than-usual card costs across the board; fortunately, some of these cards feature the [Lead] tag, which gives any card holding this tag a 50% chance to have their cost reduced by 1 at the start of the turn until another card is used. This can help alleviate some of the high costs that come with Magna.
Magna can act as an extremely passive character as well, as quite a few of her cards are Upgrade cards - once these have been played, Magna can simply sit back and passively help her team thanks to having access to Crystallization.
If you’re looking for a character that can apply debuffs whilst protecting your team and even providing some decent damage. Magna is one of the best options.
Defense Scaling: Like other Vanguards, all of Magna’s damage-dealing abilities scale off of her DEF stat primarily. This allows her to improve her damage and shielding capabilities all at once, on top of improving the team's general tankiness.
Crystallization: A stackable and persistent defensive buff that grants 20% Fixed Shield (not modifiable with bonuses) to the team at the end of the turn per stack.
Counter: After taking damage and while the stack of the Counterattack buff is active, the owner of the buff performs a Counterattack on the assailant equal to 100% Defense-Based damage and if the damage dealt by the enemy is completely blocked via your shield, the damage increases to 200% Defense-Based damage. After each Counterattack a stack of the buff is lost. A max of 10 stacks of Counterattack can be held at a time.
Note: Multi-hit enemy attacks trigger multiple instances of Counterattack as long as you have the stacks.
Ice Fragment III
Upgrade
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Ice Wall III
Upgrade
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Frost Charge III
Upgrade
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Frost Charge III
Upgrade
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Ice Fragment II
Upgrade
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Ice Fragment III
Upgrade
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Ice Wall III
Upgrade
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Frost Charge III
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Passion
Void Justice
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CRIT Rate > CRIT DMG
Justice DMG%
DEF%
CRIT Rate% > CRIT DMG% > DEF > DEF%
HP%
HP%
DEF%
DEF > DEF% > EGO Regen = HP > HP%
Magna’s Signature Potentials are must-haves for improving her performance in her role and for the additional functionality they provide.
3-1: Adds the Counterattack effect to her starter Attack and Shield cards, boosting their power and her access to Counterattack considerably.
5-1: Increases the Shield gain of her basic Shield Skill card by 5%. Increases by another 5% if her Defense is higher than 250.
7: Increases her Justice Attribute Damage by 5% if her Defense is higher than 350, increasing by 1% per 10 points of Defense up to a total of 15% at 450.
Despite wording, Phytotype Synthetic only increases Magna damage, not allies.
Introduces Desire Cards. Desire Cards are cards that primarily exist to give a strong passive buff from meeting certain Desire Thresholds (3/5/7) which can only be done by having multiple ally decks also made in Season-4.
For Desire Threshold, it’s common to run 1 Claim / 1 Survival / 1 Inquiry for use in a variety of builds on supports; however, it's also common to just do 3 ‘X’ to meet effect easier or do 2 'X' / 1 Inquiry (to keep Sample Collection as Card Effect). This is extremely dependent on ally desire cards and individual team building goal.
’X’ refers to a ‘Placeholder for Specific Desire Threshold Goal’, i.e. if you are building your team for 7 Claim then you might do 2 Claim / 1 Inquiry.
Introduces Persona Cards and Engravings. Persona Cards are powerful cards that introduce new playstyles or ways of buffing/debuffing. Engravings are effects that can be applied to both the Persona Cards and Equipment, functioning near identically to Refinements of Season-2 but with new effects.
The most common Card Engraving to take is [For each Lux Engraving, +15% Damage Amount to ally Attack Cards for 1 turn] or [Attunement: Decrease Cost by 1 until used].
The most common Equipment Engraving to optimize for is the stacking [When Action Count of enemies is increased by allies, +50% Damage Amount to Ally Attack Cards for 1 turn (1 time per turn)] and [When a card of this unit is activated, 30% to increase Action Count of all enemies by 1 (1 time per turn)], but it's possible to use a variety of other options for a specific set-up (like Discard [Quietus] Engravings when playing high [Quietus] builds or Umbra Engravings just to meet the threshold for certain Persona cards).
Introduces Refinements, effects on Equipment that allow one to get additional Equipment effects for no Faint-Cost (post-S2), and God’s Hammer, a powerful effect that gives a random copy of any other Equipment effect on-top of current Equipment but costs 10 Faint Memory and is only gained from the Boss.
+30% Defense-Based Damage Amount.
When an Attack Card is activated on a target in a Vulnerable state, +15% Critical Chance.
Because God’s Hammer is completely RNG at the end of the run, we do not have a specific recommendation since the player has very little control over the decision but for ATK-based Attackers usually ATK% gear is considered best and DEF-based Attackers DEF% gear is considered best.
Introduces Forbidden Cards, powerful cards that create new synergies and can only be acquired once per run (can be duped at one event or via save data editing).
Forbidden: Gesture of Freedom. Permanent Cost-Reduction to 1-card, can be manipulated.
Forbidden: Eternal Hunger. +Draw, ++AP (Ally Reliant)
Forbidden: Portrait of Fury. ++Draw
Forbidden: Guidance of Futility. +++Survivability
Ice Fragment
Upgrade
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Ice Fragment I
Upgrade
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Ice Fragment II
Upgrade
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Ice Fragment III
Upgrade
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Ice Fragment IV
Upgrade
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Ice Fragment V
Skill
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Glacial Iron Fist
Attack
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Glacial Iron Fist I
Attack
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Glacial Iron Fist II
Attack
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Glacial Iron Fist III
Attack
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Glacial Iron Fist IV
Attack
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Glacial Iron Fist V
Attack
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Glacial Iron Fist I: Gains around 1.5x base ratio (Pre-Potentials: 450% from 300%). This makes it a much better damage card on top of it being a decent shield; however, its 2-cost makes it hard to justify this as a shielding option when Maribell has a 1 or 0-cost (Shelter Mk.II) that does less damage but provides the same amount of shielding (because all dmg-based shields have the same cap).
Glacial Iron Fist II: Now applies 3 Vulnerable. This is a great option to consider if you want to apply a lot of Vulnerable, but its 2-cost can make it hard to justify for that reason, when a simple Divine Vulnerable will give almost the same value and can be on a random 0-cost attack.
Glacial Iron Fist III: Loses its dmg-based shield but gains a 50% multiplicative boost if you own any shield. This is the best option for doing damage with this card.
Glacial Iron Fist IV: Now hits in AOE. This is a great option to consider for AOE scenarios where you are using Magna.
Glacial Iron Fist V: Card gains [Exhaust 2] and applies ‘Retain Shield’ to you for 1 turn. This is an incredibly strong effect that would likely be rated as her go-to… if it didn’t have [Exhaust 2]. Retain Shield is an effect that gets the most value in longer engagements, as it will let you maintain max shield over multiple turns, but the card having the [Exhaust] tag on it makes it extremely hard to use in scenarios where it would be valuable.
Neutral: No specific Neutral Epiphany is recommended, but the base Epiphany is more or less the same strength as most of its Upgrades.
Divine: Which Divine Epiphany to go for will depend on what your team needs and which Epiphany you chose, but here are the main ones to look out for if you have spare Save Data: Vulnerable 2, -1 Cost Reduction.
Ice Wall
Skill
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Ice Wall I
Skill
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Ice Wall II
Skill
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Ice Wall III
Upgrade
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Ice Wall IV
Attack
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Ice Wall V
Skill
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Ice Wall I: Now gives 3 Counterattack instead of 2. The expensive 2-cost and the fact that there is an alternative option (Ice Wall III) that effectively gives the same primary effect while being passive and permanent with a 1-time cost make it hard to justify using this in most builds. Moreover, in Counterattack-based builds, you will likely already be hitting the cap of max 10 Counterattacks, so the extra Counterattack is unlikely to get high value in any optimized Magna build.
Ice Wall II: Now gives additional shielding based on Counterattack held. This is a very high shield potential card, but extremely conditional, expensive (2-cost), and requires set-up for it, which is awkward for a Supportive card.
Ice Wall III: Is now an Upgrade that gives the ‘Counterattack is AOE’ effect for the entire battle, passively. This is the go-to Epiphany, as most recommended Magna builds are passive via Upgrades like this, Icy Fragments and Frost Charge III–when this is combined with the other Upgrades, it can allow passive AOE Vulnerable to enemies.
Ice Wall IV: Now does damage in AOE based on held shield. This is basically a worse version of Maribell's Shelter Strike (in single-target, with E1 Maribell) but a better version in AOE/multi-target. It can also be used WITH Maribell for 2 shield-based damage dealers, instead of one.
Ice Wall V: Now applies the ‘Counterattack is AOE’ effect over 2-turns instead of just 1. The expensive 2-cost and the fact that there is an alternative option (Ice Wall III) that effectively gives the same primary effect while being passive and permanent with a 1-time cost make it hard to justify using this in most builds.
Neutral: Neutral Epiphanies are not recommended as the base card of this is rather weak and can be hard to play around.
Divine: Which Divine Epiphany to go for will depend on what your team needs and which Epiphany you chose, but here are the main ones to look out for if you have spare Save Data: -1 Cost Reduction, Morale/Resolve (Ice Wall III).
Frost Charge
Skill
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Frost Charge I
Skill
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Frost Charge II
Skill
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Frost Charge III
Upgrade
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Frost Charge IV
Attack
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Frost Charge V
Skill
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Frost Charge I: Now gains an additional shield based on the number of targets. This is a very conditional but very high shield card, with it having uncapped shield potential as its dependent, only on the number of targets – tho the number of targets you are facing is a variable out of player control, making this context dependent.
Frost Charge II: Now applies 4 vulnerable. This is a nice card as it can allow for more vulnerable application than just a divine Epiphany, making it a strong 1-cost for applying vulnerable quickly.
Frost Charge III: Changes to an upgrade that applies Vulnerable 3 on counterattack, it additionally gives 4 crystallization which will give passive shield. This enables Magna’s most popular use in meta teams, which is passive vulnerable application via upgrades. This use is upgraded significantly with E4 (counterattack does not consume vulnerable), but it is still popular and usable even at E0.
Frost Charge IV: Becomes an attack that does Defense-based damage x3 to random enemies and applies Vulnerable 1 to each enemy hit (max 1 per enemy). This is a great card, not for its Vulnerable, but because it can allow Magna to be used as a Defense-based multihitter which can scale very well off of a lot of generic buffers she otherwise couldn’t (Narja, Rei, Cassius, etc). It’s worth considering if wanting to force carry Magna.
Frost Charge V: Loses the shield but gives 3 counterattack. In counterattack-based builds, you’re likely already hitting the counterattack cap, so this is an option that basically loses the shield or passive utility of alternative options.
Neutral: Target Neutral Epiphany: N/A.
Vanguards don't get good neutrals.
Divine: Which Divine Epiphany to go for will depend on what your team needs and which Epiphany you chose, but here are the main ones to look out for if you have spare Save Data: Draw 1, -1 Cost Reduction.
Ice Fragment I: Now 6 crystallization instead of 4. This is great for getting a lot of passive shielding via crystallization, so the choice if that’s what you want.
Ice Fragment II: Now gain 2 Counterattack at the start of every turn. This is a great choice for applying a lot of Counterattack and the go-to choice for Counterattack-based builds. The only reason it isn’t recommended higher is that it can end up being somewhat detrimental to Vulnerable builds without her E4 (which makes it so Counterattack does not consume Vulnerable from Magna).
Ice Fragment III: Gains [Initiation] and applies a passive 30% mult buff to all of Magna’s counter-attacks. This is an amazing option for optimizing counterattack damage, and could increase in popularity if counterattack becomes more of a competitive option in optimized setups.
Ice Fragment IV: Now a 2-cost that does a decent AOE def-based damage attack. This is extremely expensive and will likely net worse utility and damage than its Counterattack alternatives since she has many ways to add utility or damage to her Counterattack effects.
Ice Fragment V: Changes to a skill card that gives 4 counterattack and gives a hefty multiplicative buff to the next counterattack triggered. Following the buffs to other versions of Icy Fragment, this now falls behind in counterattack generation and its buff will generally be less valuable than Icy Fragment III’s, but it now only costing 1 instead of 2 makes it much more playable and competitive.
Neutral: No specific Neutral Epiphany is recommended, but the base Epiphany is more or less the same strength as most of its Upgrades.
Divine: Which Divine Epiphany to go for will depend on what your team needs and which Epiphany you chose, but here are the main ones to look out for if you have spare Save Data: -1 Cost Reduction, Morale/Resolve, Draw 1 (Icy Fragment V).