Arknights: In-depth Review - Lumen

Lumen is the future 6★ Therapist Medic welfare Operator from the Stultifera Navis event. Lumen’s kit is designed around providing some of the best Status Resistance support available without sacrificing too much raw healing, with Skills designed around providing constant and consistent support through entire stages. Is he powerful enough to act as a normal Medic even without the threat of altered status effects? Let’s find out!

Lumen can be obtained through the Stultifera Navis event missions and store. You can claim Lumen from the event mission rewards by clearing SN-4, and buy additional Potential tokens for a total of 1750 event currency, with the first one costing 250 and each subsequent one 50 more.

Lumen’s main “gimmick” as a Therapist Medic is combining some of the best sources of Status Resistance in the game with good enough raw healing through his Skill to be able to act as sole healer for entire stages, focusing on more consistent high healing instead of extreme burst like Purestream’s. As a result, Lumen can constantly keep Operators topped up without being bothered too much by his archetypal limitations and perform a good enough job to sub for regular Medics in stages where his specific support may not be necessary or even useful.

As expected, Lumen’s stats are noticeably higher in all regards compared to his lower rarity counterparts. In comparison to other Operators of his same class, Lumen boasts the highest HP amongst all Medics (Kal’tsit and future Chain Medics aside), with Attack and Defense stats more closely resembling those of Single Target Medics one rarity below him.

As a Therapist Medic, however, Lumen’s effective healing is hindered by his archetype’s Trait, which lowers the healing amount by 20% against Operators in the outer edge of his range. As a result, the actual effectiveness of these stats can vary significantly depending on where the Operator is located.

Grant Status Resistance after healing for 4 seconds. If the target is above 75% HP, grant Status Resistance for 6 seconds instead.

This Talent is extremely similar to Purestream’s first Talent, with a nice additional boost that applies after the healing, which helps significantly with consistency and lets Lumen apply long-lasting Resistance constantly. Very simple, but also effective and helps Lumen still perform his job while his Skills are on downtime.

If an ally within range is inflicted with a status condition, immediately heal them for 80% of Lumen’s Attack. This effect can only trigger once every 12 seconds (-2 at P5).

This is a very solid Talent that lets Lumen control abnormal status effects even more consistently, and even gives him options to deal with effects inflicted with non-damaging attacks such as Frost Towers, which only Ceylon could do before him. Unlike Ceylon, however, he cannot target Operators that cannot receive heals with this effect, such as Summoned Units, Musha Guards or Juggernaut Defenders.

This healing is triggered as a separate effect from his regular attacks, and can activate at any time independently. Despite this, it is affected by all effects on Lumen at the time it activates, with his third Skill being by far the most notable and the one that turns this Talent into a truly notable one, providing support against status ailments like no other Medic before him.

Lumen gains reduced Taunt level and Resistance

Lumen gains reduced Taunt level and Resistance.

Talent 1: Now grants Resistance for 5 seconds, or 7 seconds when the target is over 75% HP.

Lumen gains reduced Taunt level and Resistance.

Talent 1: Now grants Resistance for 8 seconds when the target is over 75% HP.

The basic branch of this Module is quite nice for Therapist Medics, who often struggle if they are inflicted with disabling status effects such as Stun or Freeze. Having innate Resistance is quite powerful and fixes a major problem that this archetype suffers from, and while reduced Taunt is not incredibly impactful in the long run, it helps ease strict deploy orders a bit without painting a target in a very squishy Operator’s back.

The advanced stages of this Module, however, are a massive waste of resources. 6 seconds of Resistance is already enough for Lumen to perform two more normal attacks and reapply Resistance if need be, and even if it wasn’t his second Talent and Skills already feature many additional ways to take care of status effects without relying on the lingering effects of his normal attacks. Taking into account the extreme cost of 6★ Module Upgrades, I cannot discourage investing into this one enough.

When automatically activating, Lumen’s next attack creates a 3 by 3 healing terrain that heals everyone inside for 55% of Lumen’s Attack every second. This Skill has an SP cost of 10.

This is a very simple Skill that works decently well if all you want is high consistency with some AoE healing capabilities. The recovery of the terrain is quite decent, and allows Lumen to keep the HP of multiple Operators in check, even if he has to sacrifice some more interesting effects. The terrain itself will also constantly maintain Resistance on the targets, and can even reach outside of Lumen’s normal range if he targets an Operator on the very edge.

All in all, however, you probably have better options to take care of this, even if it’s just bringing a Multi-target Medic. Even in cases where Lumen’s Resistance effects are not necessary, you’re probably better off going with his third Skill.

When activated, Lumen will immediately heal up to three targets within range for 260% of his Attack. When Overcharged, it will automatically remove all status effects from the targets. This Skill has an SP cost of 13, or 26 for the Overcharge effect.

A punctual burst of healing like this is generally not going to be extremely useful, but the Overcharged effect is quite interesting, being the first one to instantly cure status effects. This can be quite powerful in situations where you know multiple Operators are going to be inflicted with debilitating effects such as Stun or Freeze (from Basin Sea Reapers, for example), but always keep in mind that it requires being able to target, so it will not work for Frost Towers.

While it looks like this Skill has a decent enough niche to see some use, in reality it is by far Lumen’s most rarely used Skill. This is partly because the conditions to make the most out of it are not incredibly common, but mainly because it is both too similar and a worse alternative to his third Skill, as we will discuss next.

When activated, Lumen will gain 8 Ammo and receive a buff of +55% Attack, +30 Attack Speed and prioritizes targets with status conditions. Ammo is only consumed when healing a target with a status condition, at which point the healing amount increases to 200% of Lumen’s Attack and the status condition is instantly removed. This Skill has an SP cost of 50 and, as an Ammo Skill, has infinite duration and can be deactivated manually.

This is Lumen’s most popular Skill, and for a good reason. The buffs to his regular healing apply even when he’s not consuming Ammo, giving him a quasi-permanent buff in most stages that gives him surprisingly good, consistent healing. As for the Ammo-consuming part, while the quantity itself is pretty low you are not going to find a better way to deal with status conditions in the game, and the massive burst of healing almost guarantees a full heal if the condition itself is paired with a burst of damage, such as Corrosion or Burning.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, all of the buffs of this Skill do apply to Lumen’s automatic heals via his second Talent, which will not only have increased healing but also trigger the Ammo consumption effect and immediately purge status conditions once it’s activated. This gives Lumen an extremely quick way to deal with status conditions as his Talent triggers completely independently from his normal attacks, thus letting him cure status ailments as soon as they are applied if the Talent is off its cooldown.

So, should I build Lumen? Is he a better answer to status conditions than Purestream or Whisperain? Can he sub for a regular Medic? The answer is MAYBE. Lumen is undeniably a very strong healer with a powerful niche in which he performs excellently, but that also makes him a tool for a very specific purpose, even if he can work well enough elsewhere. For players that aren’t hard-pressed by these conditions just yet, raising other Medics such as Nightingale, Ptilopsis or Warfarin may prove more useful in general content with their unique effects. Regardless, you should definitely buy all his Potential Tokens, as duplicates will transform into A LOT of Yellow Certificates when this event reruns.