March 7th

The poster-woman of the game is thankfully very good, and readily usable in every scenario due to her being a shielder support. Frankly, she’s great enough that I wouldn’t remove her from my party unless the enemies I’m facing are literally immune to getting frozen. She is the first shielder you gain access to, and naturally synergises with Dan Heng’s talent, and other shielders you may gain access to, such as Preservation Trailblazer.

In order to explain why, I’ll start with her talent. After any shielded ally is attacked, March instantly retaliates, counter-attacking the enemy who hit into the shield. This can occur twice between each of March’s turns. This is a pretty amazing talent, because it provides free extra damage from March out of turn, giving her more offensive value and significantly improving her overall energy recovery, as each counter shot restores energy much like a normal attack would, albeit at a reduced amount.

Her skill is her shield. It’s single-target, but it’s got a pretty impressive shield amount, and lasts an astounding length of time at base—3 whole turns. In addition to this, if the shielded ally has 30% max hp or higher, enemies become much more likely to attack them, synergising with her talent to get as many attempts at counters as possible.

March’s ultimate is also phenomenal, dealing damage to all enemies and having a 50% base chance to freeze said enemies for 1 turn. Being able to apply a status effect that usually requires an Ice weakness break, without needing that Ice weakness break, is unsurprisingly, really damn strong. Because it’s got such a good base chance to do so, with even small amounts of investment into the effect hit rate stat from relics, you can end up with an ultimate that freezes enemies extremely consistently.

The bonus traces only serve to improve March’s support capabilities; A2 allows March to cleanse allies by applying her shield, and A4 extends the shield duration by 1 turn, for a new max of 4 turns. Having the shield last for longer allows March to make more basic attacks, and thus generate even more SP for the rest of the team.

A6 is the funny one. It increases the ultimate’s base chance to freeze by 15%, for a new total base chance of 65%. You can genuinely reach 100% chance to freeze, or close to it, remarkably easily once this is unlocked. This means that unless the enemy you’re facing explicitly states they’re immune to being frozen, you pretty much always have a chance of freezing them, and because of the great energy recovery due to counters, you’re going to get to try your luck very often.

Her eidolons have some great value to them as well. E1 allows March to become a genuine freeze-bot, recovering 6 energy for every enemy she freezes with her ultimate, making this one the highest value first eidolons you can get.

E2 grants a shield to the lowest hp percentage ally upon entering combat, lasting 3 turns. This can be good for extended encounters or multiple back-to-back encounters, and it can end up saving some skill points on applying a shield to the low hp ally.

E4 is a huge upgrade, granting a 3rd counter between turns and increasing the damage dealt by her talent counters by 30% of March 7th’s DEF. As a Preservation unit, March is likely to be built with a focus on DEF anyway, so this allows March to gain a significant improvement to her overall offensive damage contribution.

If you make it to her E6, March 7th transcends into an even higher being, causing allies shielded by her skill to restore 4% of their max hp plus 106 at the start of each turn; March 7th becomes a healer, and a pretty decent one at that. Considering everything else she does, this pushes March over the edge and makes her one of the absolute most versatile characters in the game.