Sakura Late “Early” Analysis

Skills

Cherry Blossom Tea – Skill 1

■ Activates after 3 normal attack(s). Affects all allies.
Cherry Blossom Tea: 8.15% of DEF, stacks up to 10 time(s) and lasts for 15 sec.

The Player can spam shots to speed up the process of getting the DEF buff via manual play. Spamming sniper shots also generate burst generation rather fast as well if needed. The player can switch to another preferred unit to manual after some stacks of Sakura’s S1 have been achieved.

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Falling Petals – Skill 2

■ Affects all allies.
When attacking an enemy projectile, damage to that projectile ▲7.74% permanently.
■ Activates when entering Full Burst. Affects all allies.
Burst Skill cooldown ▼ 4.84 sec.

Slight bump to projectile damage, not that useful at all. However, the CD reduction may be useful in some scenarios, but not impactful enough to justify upgrading the skill to high levels. It may be more impactful in the future if there is a unit that reduces CD amount as much as Liter or Volume does in the B2 slot, as combining Liter, Sakura and Dolla in one team has almost enough CD reduction to cycle through the same b3 burst every full burst. Modernia is able to cycle through her ult comfortably every burst with this team though, due to her extended burst timer. Although this is niche, info may be useful to some players.

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Resplendent Cherry Blossom – Burst

Cooldown: 40s

■ Affects all allies.
Damage dealt by Wind code enemies ▼ 56.16%, lasts for 30 sec. Activates 1 time(s) per battle.
ATK ▲ 12.35% of caster’s ATK, lasts for 10 sec.
■ Affects all allies when Cherry Blossom Tea is fully stacked.
Damage to interruption part ▲ 13.91%, lasts for 30 sec.

Main part of Sakura’s kit, an absolute unit against Alteisen (especially notorious in Special Interception) himself. Sakura’s burst massively reduces damage against Wind element raptures for 30 seconds, although this effect only activates once per battle. With the bonus of easier part breaking when Skill 1 is fully stacked, Sakura is also useful against Bowtie, another rather difficult boss found in Tribe Tower Floor 140 and Story Hard Mode Chapter 8-27.

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Analysis

Her kit is tailored against Wind element bosses that deal massive damage. It’s almost like…. they’re selling us more solutions to Alteisen (train), no, never, not my Tencent company, they’d never do that.
Sakura does well against bosses such as Bowtie and Alteisen as she provides breathing room in the form of massive damage reduction against Wind-type raptures for 30s once per battle. Otherwise, Sakura really isn’t used anywhere else unfortunately, mainly because of her 40s CD while being a Burst 1 unit.

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Arena

As a sniper unit, her burst generation is low in Arena. Her skills don’t help her or the team at all unless for some reason, the enemy team has an all wind team comp in their defense spot. Otherwise do not use Sakura for PVP, as much better alternatives are available.

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Campaign

Sakura may have uses in Wind-type stages and if the player does not lack damage, but survivability. (Certain stages in Chapter 12)

Otherwise, using the usual 1-1-3 (One burst 1, One burst 2, 3 burst 3 team comp) even in Wind stages would fare better.

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Special Interception

Absolute train beater, she is a unit that specializes on making Alteisen (train) easier. Team comps below are some team comps I recommend using if you want to use her against Alteisen.

DPS Team

Viper Substitutes – Guilty, Novel, Rupee
Scarlet Substitutes – Alice, Preferred DPS
Modernia Substitutes – Drake, Laplace, Preferred DPS

Viper is important in the B2 slot because she is a Tri-clip shotgunner, which means she generates a lot of burst gen which helps in phase 2, she can also do good damage herself. Guilty is second because while personal DPS output is higher, but her burst generation is lower.
Goal here is to have enough DPS to take out the first missile launcher before it causes too much damage to your team, as even with the damage reduction, it still hurts a lot. After that, it should be a rather easy run. If the player has trouble destroying the second missile launcher at the left side of the train, the player may stall the right side by keeping the turrets a live for a bit and focus on damaging the left side.

Ludmilla Team

Ludmilla Substitutes – Noise
Scarlet Substitutes – Alice, Preferred DPS
Modernia Substitutes – Drake, Laplace, Preferred DPS
Dolla Substitutes – Viper, Guilty, Preferred b2 unit

If the player is unable to destroy the missile launchers in time Due to lack of dps, using this team will give more breathing room, as the damage reduction of Ludmilla and Sakura Stack. The caveat of this team is the need/comfort of a CDR unit, low burst generation and lower damage when facing phase 2 of train.

Jackal Team

Scarlet Substitutes – Alice, Preferred DPS
Modernia Substitutes – Drake, Laplace, Preferred DPS
Dolla Substitutes – Viper, Guilty, Preferred b2 unit

This team shares the same idea as Ludmilla team, however Jackal is able to rocket spam against train for much more energy generation, with the added safety net of damage share during and after Sakura’s burst. Although slightly RNG because of AI targeting. Jackal is also able to rocket spam against phase 2 rockets for consistent energy generation under manual play. Also hitting rockets with rockets is totally a Jackal thing to do.

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Strengths

• Great against wind based stages and Train
• Visible g-string

Weaknesses

• She almost has no uses outside her niches as of right now
• very niche
• 40s CD requires a 2-1-2 formation (2 burst one, 1 burst 2, 2 burst 3) which really hurts damage output
• Will make you drunk

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Should You Pull

Outside of waifu purposes, only pull her if you want to have an easier time against train, otherwise she can be skipped and be wishlisted after in the normal recruit banner if wanted.

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Temporary rating

Category	Rating
Overall	5.8
Wave	5.5
Bosses	5.5
Interception	7.0
Arena	4.0

Skill Priority

Nikke	Skill1	Skill2	Burst	Notes
Sakura	2	4	4+	Skill 1 and 2 are not very beneficial as defense has rather bad scaling and does not reduce much incoming damage, and small amount of CDR is not worth very high investments. Burst can be upgraded to higher levels if needed to make train clears more comfortable.