Mast Early Thoughts

Intro

Note: This was made before the release of Mast, and a early Analysis will follow soon after proper testing.

Besides looking like a smug brat with a pinchable cheek. She looks like a battleship for a reason! Mast brings a rather unique kit to the table which can see some current and future use.

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Basic Info

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Skill 1: Pirate’s Grit

Note: Assume all skill levels are 10

Activates when Crit attack hits 2 time(s). Affects the target(s).
Sea Breeze: DEF 1.9% of the caster’s DEF, stacks up to 50 time(s) and lasts for 3 sec.
Activates when HP falls below 70%.
Affects self and 2 ally unit(s) with the highest ATK (except caster).
Critical Damage ▲ 50.94% continuously.
Activates when entering battle.

An interesting skill. I’ll talk more about about the def reduction. At max stacks, this would almost equal to 100% def reduction of Casters def, meaning the higher Mast’s def is, the more def is reduced. How does translate to damage?

it’s simply ATK – Def when hitting an enemy then applying all further multipliers. if we take the ratio’s of supporters defense values to attackers, it can be compared to be a +15%-20% attack boost, although this will vary more depending on the difference between the investment difference for Mast and attacker Nikke’s. This Includes dupes, gear equipment, Overload Equipment (unsure if Def rolls would play a role, most likely not) and etc.

This assumes that the enemy rapture has enough defense to reduce as well, as it is unknown if it is possible to reduce defense beyond 0. This also assumes stack duration refreshes every time a new instance of stack has been applied to enemy rapture.

The Critical damage below 70% HP will be explained further in below section

Note: Stacks are enemy based, and not applied on self. So she would have a impossible time to stack Sea breeze on multiple enemies.

Skill 2: Pirate’s Sight

Activates when entering battle.
Affects self and 2 ally unit(s) with the highest ATK (except caster).
Critical Rate ▲ 23.56% for 30 sec.

An Unfortunate skill. a great buff that is severely limited by its 30s timer. Because of this fact, this really limits her potential as despite giving rather good Crit damage buffs. Now we’re very limited to low Crit rate for the rest of the battle unless paired with a Nikke that has skills that increase Crit rate. Hence, limiting her flexibility as well.

Burst: Sail Through The Tempest!

Affects self and 2 ally unit(s) with the highest ATK (except caster).
Max HP ▲ 86.2% of the caster’s Max HP without restoring HP, lasts for 7 sec.
Critical Damage ▲ 25.19% for 7 sec
Affects the target(s) afflicted with Sea Breeze.
Storm: Deals 4.52% of final ATK as damage.
Mirrors the stack count of Sea Breeze every l sec for 7 sec.

Spicy part of her kit. The max HP boost without healing is rather interesting wording, because of this we can assume that she is able to reduce her own current hp to <70% (skill 1 critical damage proc) after Max HP buff for 7s every time she bursts. Therefore, her skill 1 should always be active during the first 7s of full burst.

To Clarify on this, let’s say we have a 1,000,000/1,000,000 HP Mast. We proc her burst. Now we have an extra 80% of HP pool without healing it, therefore it would be now 1,000,000/1,800,000 HP, which is currently below 70% of current hp.

This is also notable on units such as Scarlet and Guillotine as both units receive offensive buffs when under a certain HP threshold.

Her burst damage scaling is a bit questionable, as it either re-applies current stacks of Sea Breeze to prevent it to fall off (which is very unlikely anyways in boss battle scenarios) then applies 4.52% of ATK x amount of stacks or Applies 4.52% of ATK x amount of stacks per second, for 7 seconds. Both of which don’t look too appeasing, but more damage is better if the latter is the case.

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Possible Use Cases

Campaign

I do not see Mast working in campaign in any mob wave scenario. She does not have burst generation capabilities which is extremely important for a b2 unit for campaign. her Crit rate buff lasts 30s which is not enough to clear campaign stages if playing under medium deficits, let alone large amounts. Lastly, since most targets move around, and there is multiple scenarios where there’s down time (no enemies on screen) and her stacks would simply disappear. Even in chapter bosses, her use won’t be good either at High CP deficits. As her Defense would also be nerfed according to CP deficit Penalty. Which greatly diminishes its value.

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Arena

Her Crit buff seems great to start a round with, but it comes at a huge cost of gimped team burst generation. We don’t start with the Crit damage buffs either as we need to burst or hope mast gets targeted but doesn’t immediately die so the attackers can benefit from Crit damage. But there are a good amount of b2’s that can offer table-turning abilities instead of simply adding more damage at the cost of burst generation.

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Special Interception | Union Raid | Solo Raid

Here is where she shines a bit more, her def down is a pretty good team DPS gain and so is her critical buffs. However a team with mast needs a lot to work. Firstly we need Crit rate as after her 30s is done, she loses a lot of value, the only unit that provide team Crit rate is Volume which luckily also fills the role of cool down reduction. We can put any offensive attackers theoretically, but there are two units in mind that would take advantage of Mast’s burst, Specifically the MAX HP part.

With those Nikke’s being Scarlet and Guillotine. When Scarlet bursts at <50%, she gets additional Crit rate, While Guillotine’s Attack increases the lower her HP is. Secondly we need a taunter/ tank to prevent the two from dying, which would be noise. Now we have a perfect Electric based team for Solo/Union raid who are weak to the element.

In theory, she can be used with any team, and she can just be used just like any ordinary b2 buffer. However the issue with this is we already have other units that can do much better and is much more flexible (Novel, Blanc w/ Noir) and would compete with others (Viper, Guilty, Dolla w/ Miranda).

Formula

Not to mention, Crit damage in the damage formula is in a slightly bad spot. It does not directly multiply damage as it is put in a bracket of other variables, and those are

Final ATK x (All variables listed below)

• Core hit (2x -2.5x damage depending on weapon)
• Full burst (1.5x damage)
• Weapon effectiveness range (1.3x Damage)
• base crit damage (1.5x Damage) + Additional crit damage buffs

As you can see, it gets diluted pretty hard. So units with high innate crit damage and can reliably hit core will not be a very good pair with mast, more notably Modernia. Or any boss whomsts cores can be hit easily.

However, she does hold one unique Niche for special interception. Snow white one shot comps ✨✨.

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Ending Thoughts

Sadly, She seems like she shines in rather niche comps until more Crit rate buffer units come by as there are a select amount of burst 2 Nikke’s that are much more flexible and do more at the same time.