[The House of Spiders: The Thumb Nursefather] Rodion

The strongest beer bottle thrower is finally here, and she did not disappoint! Her gameplay revolves around switching states on her Eye of Precognition relic while also being a Tremor and Burn Identity (not Poise keyword-wise, unfortunately) BUT mainly Tremor, especially with her absurd amount of Tremor Burst. Let’s take a look deeper into her kit!

Starting with her 6 unique statuses:

• Eye of Precognition - Interacts with her dodge mechanics, starting at 30 stacks and loses it on clash, base skill use, and activating her Precognition skill. Now, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on the context, she can only lose up to a maximum of 10 stacks per turn, so she would need a total of 3 turns at best to use 30 stacks fully. When the stack reaches 0, this status will become Eye of Precognition - Overheat.

• Eye of Precognition - Overheat - While she has this status, the Precognition skill will not activate. In exchange, she gets 3 Offense Level and -3 Defense Level. On turn start, she will also get 10 stacks and upon reaching 30 stacks, this status will turn back into Eye of Precognition.

• Accelerating Future - Free damage boost (max 15%), clash power (max 2),1 base skill coin power depending on the stack (max 5). Gained when clashing while having Eye of Precognition status. Do keep in mind that you stop getting this status if your Eye of Precognition turns into Eye of Precognition - Overheat. Pretty much the backbone of her clashing power, as with this, she can reach an absurd number

• Shin (心) - Disgrace - Free min & max speed +1, extra +1 Tremor and Burn infliction, and extra damage boost (max 15%).

• Acceleration Round - Unique ammo used by skills to make her skills do more damage and more Tremor Burst. Also interacts with her always active Passive and is quite valuable for it.

• Game Target - The enemy with this status will take +15% more damage from Thumb Rodion. Mainly Important for S3-2 Interactions.

Next is her innate always active Passive; the first one explains the Eye of Precognition status. While she has Eye of Precognition, she gets Accelerating Future stacks for every clash, and activates the Precognition skill once per turn when attacked by an unopposed attack, unbreakable coins, or losing a clash. If the Precognition skill is activated from an unopposed attack and unbreakable coins, the Eye of Precognition will lose 3 stacks and 5 stacks if it was from a losing clash. If the Eye of Precognition turns into Eye of Precognition - Overheat, Thumb Rodion will reload (once per encounter) and add Disposal on the top skill row. If her Eye of Precognition stack drops to 0, Thumb Rodion gets staggered, or Thumb Apprentice Heathcliff is defeated, she will gain Shin (心) - Disgrace. Lastly, she has a one-time unstagger, just like every other season 7 ID.

Her second passive gives her 2 Poise Potency and Count for every Acceleration Round spent and allows her attack to not get cancelled when she does not have Acceleration Round. Moreover, she inflicts Game Target on the enemy Thumb Rodion attacked last or the one with the lowest HP if the prior conditions cannot be fulfilled and she counts as Tremor and Burn ID (mainly for Mirror Dungeon).

Third passive is for HoS Ryoshu, she will get 1 Entanglement, Coin Power +1 for defense skill and Base Attack Skills deal +10% damage against the enemy with Shield when Thumb Rodion is defeated.

Finally, her normal passive, requiring 3 Wrath and 2 Sloth Owned, gives 25% more damage and +1 Coin Power on skill 3 if she has Acceleration Round. On top of that, she can get a maximum of 15% damage boost on base skills based on Burn. However, if the target has Shield, this can go up to 45% instead. The head’s strongest Shield muncher right here.

Now onto her skills:

• Skill 1 Colpi di Taglio - Base roll 11 - Max roll 16 - Max Accelerating Future 18 (Clash 20) - Without conditionals active, this skill is below average; other than that its just an okay skill that gets heavily carried by the Accelerating Future status.

• Skill 1-2 Sezionatura di Coniglio - Base roll 12 - Max roll 15 - For a free skill, it is pretty good, especially due to the Tremor Count infliction and Tremor Burst.

• Skill 2 I'll Gladly Blast a Hole Through Ya - Base roll 16 - Max roll 23 - Max Accelerating Future 26 (Clash 28) - Just an average skill 2 by season 7 standard, with very consistent clash.

• Skill 2-2 Sezionatura di Cervo - Base roll 16 - Max roll 24 - Max Accelerating Future 25 (Clash 27) - Due to the number of ways she can gain Acceleration Round, you will rarely see this skill unless it is on purpose. It is a complete upgrade compared to the normal skill 2, having Tremor - Scorch conversion and 2 Tremor Bursts at that.

• Skill 3 Sezionatura di Elefante - Base roll 16 - Max roll 29 - Max Accelerating Future 32 (Clash 34) - A very good skill when all of her damage conditionals are active, while also having 3 Tremor Burst. Scales insanely well when the target has a pretty stacked Tremor Potency. In addition to that, she loses 10 stacks of Eye of Precognition. Always use this with Acceleration Round as you will be missing Tremor Burst and her active passive bonus.

• Skill 3-2 Disposal - Base roll 20 - Max roll 40 - Max Accelerating Future 45 (Clash 47) - Absolutely insane skill, capable of reaching up to 120% damage modifiers and 170% on the final coin (150% if target has shield, 200% on the final coin with shield) with 5 whole coins and can reliably crit with her Poise generation. The best part? You can use this twice in a row, as if this skill gets a kill, Thumb Rodion will get a reload and an extra copy on the skill dashboard if the target had the Game Target status. Not to mention, she also gets to Tremor Burst 4 times, essentially crippling anyone hit by this skill. Now, all of that comes with a downside; however, as the first Skill 3-2 will be available after 3 turns at best, but the next one will be available after 4 turns at best if you get the duplicate due to how Eye of Precognition's state works. ALWAYS use this skill with the Acceleration Round, as you would be missing a significant amount of damage. Fun fact: this skill rolls higher than Valencina’s without accounting for Offense Level.

• Defensive Skill 1 - Fuck Off! - Base roll 11 - Max roll 13 - Max Accelerating Future 15 (Clash 17) - Essentially Reload lite as it only refills 5 Acceleration Rounds. Only use this skill to set up for Skill 3 or Skill 3-2 turns.

• Defensive Skill 2 - Precognition - Base roll 10 - Max roll 18 - “What, having a hard time landing a hit?” Essentially, her main gimmick. To elaborate, she gets a free evade that rolls PRETTY high. When she successfully evades all coins in a skill, she will launch a free Skill 1-1. Yes, she generates a whole 3 Resources every turn as long as she can activate this skill. Do keep in mind that this skill WILL continue to be active until it loses, just like how normal evade works and will always activate even if you are unable to consume Eye of Precognition. Very strong, as she essentially gets a free attack without any consequence

To sum it up, Thumb Rodion is a very strong Burn and Tremor ID that has a very synergistic mechanic all around. Having free evade and the potential to generate 3 in a single turn for 3 turns (4 with Thumb Apprentice Heathcliff) combined with all of her damage modifiers and her ability to shred any enemy with Shields (as of writing this review, there are not many enemies who has a massive amount of Shield, but her value will scale the more there is). Her gameplay revolves around constantly consuming as much Eye of Precognition as possible to get Skill 3-2 and resources, while also reloading using counter or Skill 3-2 when needed. You will need to constantly switch states to maximize damage.

If you have Thumb Apprentice Heathcliff, you should always pair them together as he is very synergistic and can cover Thumb Rodion’s weakness when she has an Eye of Precognition - Overheat by acting as a one-time Precognition for unopposed attack against her (doesn’t activate Skill 1-1  unfortunately).

ID/Team Synergy:

• [The House of Spiders: The Thumb Apprentice] Heathcliff - Very good pair, being able to generate a ton of free resources with him and covering for Thumb Rodion’s weakness.

• [Blade of the House of Spiders] Ryoshu - Sacrifice lol, 10% damage boost against Shield depending on the context can be valuable, but it may be better to keep her alive.

• Tremor-based team - Due to her insane amount of Tremor Burst, she scales really well here. Tremor - Scorch may override Tremor - Reverb, but a modern Tremor team usually incorporates both with the Everlasting Faust E.G.O, resulting in extra damage.