Arknights: In-depth Review - Wild Mane

Wild Mane is the future 5★ Charger Vanguard welfare Operator from the Near Light event. Wild Mane belongs to the same archetype as one of the earliest welfare Operators in the game, Grani, but features a completely different playstyle that makes her unique amongst all other Vanguards of her archetype. As we’ve already seen before, though, a unique kit doesn’t necessarily make an Operator good. Let’s take a look at her kit and find out!

Wild Mane can be obtained through the Near Light event missions and shop. You can claim Wild Mane from the event mission rewards by clearing NL-3, and buy her Potential tokens for a total of 1400 event currency, with each costing between 200 and 360.

Wild Mane’s kit is one of the most unique ones amongst Vanguards, featuring different abilities that none other have access to. Thanks to this, her kit ends up being pretty varied and covering a wide variety of niches, opening a support role for her while still maintaining the traditional high DPS of the archetype.

Still, as it’s often the case with Operators like these, a lack of cohesion in their kit can make them fall flat when it comes to actually filling a decisive spot in any party, as their skillset doesn’t go all-in on a specific niche, or the different pieces of their kit don’t complement each other. We’ll see whether or not this is an issue with Wild Mane after looking at her stat spread!

In comparison to other Charger Vanguards, Wild Mane’s stat spread is just perfectly average. Her stats are absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, and feature the typical high Attack and decent survivability you’d expect from the archetype. Apart from her skewed Redeployment Time and DP Cost due to being a welfare Operator, Wild Mane’s stats are just that: completely average. Let’s move on to something more interesting.

After being deployed, Wild Mane reduces the Deployment Cost of all Guards in the team by 1, stacking up to 5 times.

This Talent is pretty strange in comparison to what one would expect from a Charger Vanguard, but in truth it works quite well exactly for that reason. Due to her archetype, Wild Mane will always refund her original cost when retreated, making this first DP reduction essentially free. In comparison to other similar Talents such as Texas, Elysium, Zima or Saileach’s and taking into account the meta prevalence of Guards, this is actually pretty good!

Even better, when Charger Vanguards receive their module she will start refunding her current cost on retreat, instead of the original one. This essentially translates to free DP Cost decreases once she’s in your squad, as deploying her over and over for this effect will be essentially free.

Finally, this Talent also pairs pretty well with her first Skill, which encourages the kind of strategy I just mentioned. All in all, a pretty solid effect!

Upon being deployed, Wild Mane gains a massive 135 Attack Speed boost for 30 seconds, which reduces her Attack Interval to 0.43 seconds.

Very simple skill, but actually pretty effective at what Charger Vanguards are supposed to be used for! Against enemies with very low Defense (such as early dog and slug rushes), this Skill can provide some really high burst DPS that will allow Wild Mane to generate loads of DP straight from the get go. Due to its limited duration, players are also encouraged to retreat her as soon as the skill is over to recover her entire Deployment Cost and enjoy the reduction for the team’s Guards, who are likely going to be deployed right after.

However, due to the lack of any Attack boost, Wild Mane deals horribly against armored enemies, very, very quickly falling off and dealing chip damage. This essentially turns Wild Mane into a sitting duck for the later stages of a fight, where there will likely not be any low Defense enemies anymore.

When activated, this Skill boosts Wild Mane’s Attack by 80% for 20 seconds, grants her one more tile of Attack Range forwards and makes her attacks push enemies away with Medium Force.

This Skill gives Wild Mane a decent boost of DPS that allows her to somewhat deal with more dangerous enemies and targets with more Defense. It also gives her some support role as her constant pushing is quite fast, if a bit quick. When placed behind another Operator, her quick pushes can keep them alive against practically everything she can push with her Force 1 attacks, as they will interrupt animations constantly. It can even protect against Avengers!

However, the not-so-great 33% uptime and relatively low Attack boost often leaves Wild Mane a worse option than Vigna if she can’t utilize her extra effects to a great extent.

So, should I build Wild Mane? Can she replace Vigna as my Charger Vanguard? Maybe even Bagpipe? The answer is NO. Wild Mane has a decent array of options at her disposal that make her decently versatile, but none of the niches she can fill are sufficiently relevant, and for the ones that are she will often be a worse option than Vigna. Still, you should definitely buy all her Potential Tokens, as they will transform into Yellow Certificates when this event reruns.