What is the Ritual archetype?
The Ritual Archetype refers to a group of units and teams whose main power budget is allocated to their Ultimates. While all units in the game have access to Ultimates, a Ritual unit’s kit uniquely revolves around empowering their Ultimates, whether it be through stacking buffs and debuffs that make their Ultimates stronger, or facilitating resource gain to help a Ritual Carry cast their Ultimate frequently.
In Depth: This archetype is arguably the oldest and most ubiquitous archetype in the game, containing units from as far back as launch, and is the archetype that is most intricately intertwined with the game’s core mechanics, that is AP management and Moxie gain — both of which are crucial in performing frequent Ultimate casts. Due to this, this archetype often contains units that overlap with other archetypes by virtue of the archetype’s main gimmick being a core mechanic of the game that all units have access to.
Thus, to understand the different teams that fall under this archetype, a player needs to recognize whether the team’s main gimmick is tied to their Ultimate ability.
For example, Nautika mainly deals her damage through her Ultimate, but that doesn’t mean she’s primarily a Ritual unit. Rather, her ultimate is simply the vehicle through which she deals her damage, but Bloodtithe is the main mechanic and unique resource her team needs to play around.
In contrast, Recoleta’s entire kit revolves around facilitating her Moxie and her stacking resource, her Narrative stacks, in order for her to unleash a nuke via her Ultimate. This is further accentuated by her unique mechanic, her Flood of Fiction card, which lets her force out her allies’ Ultimates.
How to play Ritual?
Unlike other archetypes, Ritual has multiple different teams under its belt, ranging from Recoleta’s Moxie-addicted team, to Igor’s bullet-centric team, to Ms. Stranger’s card discarding team.
Due to this, each Ritual Team has a unique way of being played. However, all of them boil down to these simple concepts:
Apply buffs and debuffs to empower the carry’s Ultimate damage;
Play the team’s kit in a way that facilitates consistent Ultimate gain and casting;
Maximize the carry’s unique stack mechanic and resources to optimize the team’s damage.
One thing is common among all Ritual teams, however: they all require some modicum of meticulous piloting, meaning Ritual teams are generally NOT auto-friendly.
In Depth: As previously mentioned, each Ritual Team is handled differently. However, there’s one key principle that all teams need to follow for successful Rituals: facilitation of the main carry’s required resources, which are usually expended whenever they cast their Ultimate. The higher the amount of resource expended, the more powerful the Ultimate becomes.
All Ritual carries follow this principle: Ms. Stranger has her “Silent Flutter” and “A Moth to a Flame” amplifications, A Knight has his Ceremonious stacks, Buddy Fairchild has his “Buddy Badge” stacks, etc.
The game plan is to stockpile the carry’s unique resource (which is made easier by specific teammates), which will then be consumed upon casting their ultimate to inflict heavy amounts of damage to the enemy, then rinse and repeat. Here’s a simple checklist on maximizing your carry’s damage, along with specific examples:
Identify which resource you need to stockpile to maximize the carry’s damage before unleashing their Ultimate. E.g., Recoleta needs Moxie and Narrative stacks; Igor needs Bullets and Shrapnel stacks; Ezio needs Eagle’s Guidance stacks.
Use your team’s cards, abilities, and Tuning to accumulate said resources. E.g., spam your ultimates to give Recoleta her Moxie and Narrative, Ezio his Eagle’s Guidance, or for Igor to apply Shrapnel stacks on the enemy.
Maintain a steady rotation of stacking up these resources to ensure consistent damage whenever your carry casts their Ultimate.
Mistiming the carry’s Ultimate cast or failing to manage the carry’s stacks can lead to a noticeable drop in damage and functionality. Thus, it is imperative to understand the quirks of performing the archetype’s “Rituals” to gain the most mileage from this archetype’s teams.
Make sure to check which teammates have unique tools to generate these resources to expedite the process.
Recoleta has her Flood of Fiction to force out ally Ultimates. Use it on allies who provide benefits when their Ultimates are spammed, e.g., Moldir or Melania, to both generate Moxie + Narrative stacks while applying crucial (de)buffs.
Igor specifically calls out his daughters to make stacking easier: Lopera prevents bullets from depleting while Moldir’s Ultimate can inflict up to 17 Shrapnel stacks on the enemy.
Ezio benefits from allies who can repeatedly cast their Ultimates in the same round, so Kassandra and Getian are excellent allies to both give him Synchronization and Eagle’s Guidance stacks.
But what are the benefits to playing Ritual over other Archetypes, and what may make you reconsider?
Arguably the most flexible archetype (next to Follow-Up) in the entire game, boasting a plethora of available supports and carries that can overlap with one another and cover for each team’s missing pieces.
Genuinely fun and engaging gameplay with a satisfying payoff when the “Rituals” are performed properly.
Due to how Ritual units are focused on empowering Ultimates, the supports from this archetype can be comfortably subbed in as side-grades in other archetypes should your roster be incomplete.
Ritual archetype units are extremely accessible for new accounts and can carry new players throughout the story and important content like Reveries. For example, Buddy Fairchild and Silverwing Eagle are powerful, cheap 5* units that are great for newer accounts and can be obtained at max portrays for free, while Melania is selectable from the free 6* progression reward.
Due to Ultimates being a core mechanic of the game, this is the only archetype that can genuinely let lower rarity units become powerful enough to sufficiently tackle difficult content, e.g., Alexios being able to hit 5m in Mane’s Bulletin or DPS Sonetto / Horropedia shenanigans in Deep Reveries.
By nature of being Ultimate-focused, teams from this archetype have notoriously long animations that can get old real quick.
Teams within this archetype are not auto-friendly. Failing to understand and perform the “Rituals” properly can lead to horrendous damage floors and mediocre damage ceilings in late-game content.
Other archetypes can have higher damage floors and even higher damage ceilings with less effort required from the player.
Being so ubiquitous means that there’s no singular core set of team members that can be slotted in every Ritual-based team as a plug-and-play core, very much unlike other archetypes that have “wheelchairs” like Charon + Enigma, Isolde/Lorentz + Marsha, or Flutterpage + Fatutu.
Despite being an ancient archetype, it has yet to see its full potential as it’s still lacking a dedicated sustain unit, with the archetype often borrowing sustains from other teams.
Teambuilding
Building a Ritual team set-up isn’t as straightforward as other archetypes due to the myriad of options available. The first step is to identify which team you’re going to go for, usually anchored by your DPS of choice.
From there, understand how that unit’s mechanics work, then choose units that synergize with them. Here’s a simple guide for setting up a Ritual Team, along with a sample and rationale:
Choose your carry. They should be a unit that deals their damage primarily through their Ultimate:
Buddy Fairchild is a good choice. He wants to stack up [Buddy Badge]s to boost his personal ATK and his Ultimate’s scaling.
Choose your two supports. Consider your carry’s mechanics and choose units that can synergize and facilitate their playstyle.
Buddy Fairchild primarily wants two things: (1) units who provide bonuses to Ultimate damage and (2) units who can perform a lot of Ultimates to quickly stack up his “Buddy Badges.”
By this logic, units like Melania and Getian are great fits. Getian provides a hefty damage increase for Reality Damage Ultimates, and his “Admonition” procs count as Ultimates for Buddy Fairchild’s stacking, while Melania provides vital Critical related buffs to boost Buddy Fairchild’s damage, while also helping him easily loop his Ultimate via her “Passion Drain” debuff.
Choose your sustain of choice. Ideally, they should be a unit that can perform their job without needing to use much AP whilst providing good supportive utility or even cover for your carry’s weakness.
One of Buddy Fairchild’s notable weaknesses is his downtime in between Ultimate casts.
With this in mind, J is a wonderful choice since he can cover for the team’s damage while Buddy Fairchild is recharging, provide good utility through his passive sustain and buffs, while also leveraging both Melania and Getian’s buffs with his own hard-hitting ultimate.
Sample Ritual Teams
Recoleta’s frequent Moxie consumption helps maintain Moldir’s [Readiness] stacks for high amounts of buffing.
Similar as above with Igor’s consistent Moxie consumption, with the addition of Lopera being the backbone of the Bullet sub-archetype.
Ezio on 2-2 and Kassandra on 2-0-3. Ezio wants teammates that can spam Ultimates, something that Kassandra and Getian fulfill.
This team revolves around inflicting [Neg Status] effects to empower their buffs and Ultimates. This may become its own archetype.
An important thing to note here is that the Ritual Archetype heavily overlaps with the Dynamo Archetype. Due to how the [Pulsing Field] Array works, the Dynamo Wheelchair of Charon, Ulrich, and Enigma provides a ton of Ultimate Might and other generic buffs like DMG Bonus and Critical buffs that a lot of Ritual carries can take advantage of.
With the Dynamo Archetype being effectively a modern offspring of the Ritual Archetype (with all of its units scaling heavily off of Ultimate Might) that boasts a coherent support core that provides solid, synergistic supportive capabilities, there are instances when the Dynamo Wheelchair ends up being the best choice for some Ritual carries.
When looking at future releases for this archetype, make sure you are looking for the following things:
How fast can these units facilitate the generation and expenditure of the carry’s required resources?
Can these units reliably and consistently unleash their Ultimates under less-than-ideal circumstances?
Do these units provide hefty (de)buffs to empower the team’s Ultimates?
Are these units particularly synergistic with other units who want to spam their Ultimates?
Unit ranking
What follows are two tables, one displaying only characters that adhere specifically to the Ritual Archetype. The other is a table of Generalist options, also ranked. Take note of the following:
Core — Integral to the functionality of the archetype.
Common — Most often seen in this position alongside the Core. Can be BiS.
Flex — Either good in specific situations or potentially good in a Common slot.
Cope — Only really used if nothing else is available. And even then, lmao.
It is important to preface this by mentioning that due to the nature of the archetype, there are so many different potential teams that can be made, so much so that there is no singular “core” unit needed for this archetype to function. Thus, the core units in this spread are those that are considered the “anchors” of their respective teams, rather than being core units of the archetype.
It is important to note that just because a unit is categorized as Core does not mean they can be used in every single Ritual team. This is an important distinction to remember due to the unique nature of this archetype; please take its sub-types into consideration before building.
Ritual Unit Spread
Damage Dealer | Support | Sustain | |
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Core |
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Common |
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Flex |
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Cope |
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Core:
Igor - Ritual-Bullet DPS specializing in high amounts of both Single Target and Mass DPS.
Ezio Auditore - Star Ritual DPS capable of high amounts of consistent Single Target DPS.
Ms. Stranger - Powerful front-loaded DPS good for most content.
Recoleta (E1 or Base) / DPS - Can unleash powerful nukes after sufficient set-up.
Getian (E1) - Array deployer with offensive buffs for Reality Ultimate carries, frequent Ultimate activations.
Kassandra (Support) - ATK and PEN buffs, can facilitate Assassination procs, and has frequent Ultimate activations.
Lopera - Array deployer with powerful crit and bullet buffs, and crucially, bullet retention.
Moldir - Ramping offensive buffs proportional to Moxie spent.
Common:
Hissabeth (E1) - AP positive ramping DPS with decent ST and Mass damage.
Silverwing Eagle - Consistent ST DPS that scales with Negative Statuses.
Kassandra / DPS - High ST DPS through back-to-back ults every turn.
Melania (E1) - Passive support post ramp-up with powerful crit buffs, teamwide Moxie storage, and Moxie gain facilitation.
Recoleta (E1) / Support - Moxie gain facilitator through Passion Drain, while Flood of Fiction can force out teammates’ ults.
Flex:
Buddy Fairchild - powerful Mass damage output with full [Buddy Badge] stacks.
Centurion (E1) - Card spam DPS that scales off of both Incantation Might and Ultimate Might.
A Knight (E1) - frontloaded Mass DPS specialized against multiple waves of enemies.
Name Day - Ultimate Might buffer and gives AP Free Ultimate cast for the unit in front of him.
Cope:
Noire - Back-to-back ult recasts with damage that scales off of Negative Status. PLACEMENT MAY CHANGE DUE TO NEWLY RELEASED EUPHORIA.
Shamane (E1) - Provides debuffs and a bit of teamwide Moxie refund.
Generalist Unit Spread
Damage Dealer | Support | Sustain | |
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Core |
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Common |
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Flex |
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Cope |
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Core:
J (E1) / DPS - Powerful mass DPS that scales off of Burn stack overflow.
Charon - The anchor for the Dynamo Wheelchair, providing powerful offensive (de)buffs.
Enigma - The other half of the Dynamo Wheelchair with powerful sustain and buffing capabilities.
J (E1) / Sustain - Provides powerful shields and high amounts of offensive buffing and personal damage.
Marsha - Powerful shielding and cleansing utilities with decent crit buffs.
Common:
Rhiannon - All-rounder support with powerful generic offensive (de)buffs and Extra Turn shenanigans.
Ulrich - Powerful (de)buffs with decent damage output.
Kiperina - Great passive shielder with decent damage and buffs.
Rubuska - Great passive healer with great ST offensive buffs.
Flex:
Anjo Nala (E1) - Powerful mass Ritual DPS when Beast/Plant bonded.
Medicine Pocket (E1) - Provides passive sustaining and decent offensive debuffs.
Cope:
6 (E1) - Provides a plethora of offensive and defensive (de)buffs.
Pickles (E1) - Passive dispeller and offensive buffer for Mineral units.
Ezra (E1) - Shields with decent (de)buffs and Moxie facilitation through his Ultimate.