Arknights CN: New Operator Announcement - [Irene] Talents, Skills, Art, Animations.

Translation Credits: Jetroyz and Iana

"Messenger of the Inquisition of Iberia, Irene. You are the Doctor of Rhodes Island, yes? Those few Aegir hunters seem to trust you well enough. Let me see just how unique you are in our future partnership."

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"To be clear, I have no intent of excluding any new co-workers. Of course I wish for every person at Rhodes to get along, but that's exactly what I'm worried about. Do I really need to say it again? She's... from the Inquisition."

"I understand, I know it's a cooperative relationship and that she's an inquisitor no longer, but is that really the end of it? I know you're pretty... approachable, but surely you know what that lantern means to the Aegir from Iberia? What'll they think of it?"

"No, as an Iberian, and as the Supervisor-In-Chief of inter-operator relations, I need to do something... brother, I've fretted over this for the good half of a day, and there's nothing that you want to say?"

"If you want to take it up with someone, you should go speak to Doctor Kal'tsit. Rather, she just passed behind you. You can go speak to her if you want."

"Huh? You saw her? And you didn't give me a heads up?! Did she hear anything? Wait, besides her, isn't that Spec-"

"Shush. Now they'll really hear you."

......

"Poor little bird. I seem to be getting wind of someone speaking of you."

"No matter, I'll merely do what I need to. I'll not care much for the judgment of others... No. I hope that perhaps I can change their assessment of the Tribunal."

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Race: Liberi

Origin: Iberia

Proficiencies: Eavesdropping, wielding of rapiers

"When an inquisitor makes a call, it should not only be on the premise of law, but also of one's own heart."

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Illustrator: aZLing4

CV: Rie Kugimiya

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Irene is a 6★ Guard [Dualstrike / Swordmaster] that can Levitate enemies into the air.  Her kit includes DPS and crowd control elements, as well as DEF ingore and increased damage to aerial enemies!

Archetype: Guard [Dualstrike / Swordmaster] 

Trait: Normal attacks deal damage twice

Talent 1: When dealing Physical damage, has a chance to ignore a certain percentage of DEF. Greatly increased chance against aerial units.

Talent 2: Increase Attack Speed. When there are [Sea Monster] enemies on the battlefield, further increase the effect.

Levitate: Changes into an aerial unit and becomes unable to move, attack and use skills; Duration halved against heavier enemies

Skill 1: The next attack deals Physical damage to the target and Levitates it for a short duration, then deals another hit of Physical damage.

Skill 2:  Deal Physical damage to multiple ground enemies ahead and Levitate enemies with low weight for several seconds. Can hold charges.

Skill 3:  Deals Physical damage to all nearby ground enemies and Levitate them for several seconds. Afterwards, rapidly strike multiple times, each hit dealing Physical damage to all enemies in a small area around a random target.

Note: These are first impressions and based on conjecture since we don’t know the exact details. 

Irene will be the second 6 Star Guard [Dualstrike / Swordmaster] and the 5th overall member of the Archetype.  Her kit introduces a new mechanic: Levitate, which changes enemy melee units into aerial units (yes, this counts for targeting priority like A-A snipers and damage bonuses).  It also makes them unable to move, attack and use skills (the duration is halved against heavier enemies).  Levitate not only acts as a form of crowd control, but also enhances her own damage, since her Talent 1 has increased DEF ignore against aerial enemies.  The DEF ignore from her talent can be quite useful for this Archetype since one of the drawbacks of the Archetype is low ATK due to their double-hit basic attacks (which means they basically gain "double" from the DEF ignore for each hit).  

Her Talent 2 increases her ASPD, which is also nice for this Archetype because their skills typically charge on-attack.  Thus, ASPD not only increases their DPS directly, but also increases the use-frequency of their skills.

All three of her Skills Levitate enemies and deliver additional damage. S1 is a single target-consistent damage skill that probably won't see much use.  S2 is a multi-target skill that can hold charges.  At first glance it looks similar to Bibeak's S2, which is known to be a very good crowd-control skill, so it will be interesting to see how it compares in practice.  The limit to low-weight enemies means it won't be very effective against elite and boss types. S3 is an AoE skill that is pretty hard to guess too much about at this point until we know more about its damage modifiers and weight limits on the Levitate, but it could potentially be an interesting multi-enemy burst damage or crowd control skill.

The main thing lacking from her kit is SP generation.  With on-attack skill charging, units of this archetype can struggle to charge their skills when they aren't constantly attacking (like in between waves), which also limits their heli-drop use.  This will make SP costs important to her viability.

So will Irene be able to surpass Ch'en, her Archetype predecessor, and become an impactful meta Operator?  It seems it will depend a lot on the practical usefulness of the new [Levitiate] mechanic, so stay tuned!