Arknights: In-depth Review - Passenger

Passenger is the future 6★ Chain Caster featured in the Ero Passenger banner, which will run alongside the A Walk In The Dust event. He’s the second Chain Caster to ever be released, following Leizi’s disappointing footsteps. Will he redeem this sub-archetype with his unique kit? Let’s find out!

Alright, let’s not beat around the bush here. If you’ve heard anything about Passenger, it’s probably how bad he is, to the point of being rated even lower than the Moody Blue trio of Mostima, Skadi and Ch’en by many Chinese players. But how bad is he, really? Is he completely unredeemable?

Even after getting buffed, many players consider him to still be clearly underperforming, even after his attack was increased, the chain damage decay lowered by 5% per jump and the slowing debuff raised from 0.2 to 0.5.

Compared to the only other Chain Caster in the game, Leizi, this new unit has her beat in every single aspect but DP cost (which is already extremely expensive, almost as much as AoE Casters like Mostima or Dusk), as it was to be expected from such an increase in rarity. A more interesting comparison is with regular, run-of-the-mill Core Casters. Passenger has a higher attack than casters like Eyjafjalla or Ceobe, however his much slower attack interval makes his DPS much lower unless he’s constantly chaining the maximum number of enemies at once.

When Passenger attacks enemies above 80% HP, he receives a small buff of 20% outgoing damage for three seconds against those enemies. This is a very small increase, but it’s quite nice that Passenger has a skill that makes perfect use of this, as we’ll see in the future. Still, Passenger really does not have that high of a burst to make an amazing use of this skill, but it streamlines his kit straight into his most used skill.

A strange spin on the Lone Wolf talent a couple of other operators have: Passenger receives an 8% damage buff if there are no enemies on the four orthogonal tiles. While not a large buff, Passenger can definitely make use of it, as his most often used skill has a massive range, allowing him to attack from almost everywhere in the map.

This skill is almost a generic one, powering Passenger’s auto attack every 6 seconds (5 if M3), which equates to every 4th (3rd) attack. When this skill triggers, Passenger deals 210% (250%) damage and raises his slowing timer to 1.5 seconds, three times the regular amount. It’s really not worth investing into generic skills like this one, much less Passenger’s.

At M3, upon activation of this 40 SP cost, 35 second long skill, Passenger’s range immediately increases one tile further and his attack interval is halved to 1.15 seconds, very similar to that of a Pioneer Vanguard’s. His attack is also increased by 30%, and his chains are allowed to bounce up to 5 times instead of the regular 4, incurring the attack penalty that final bounce carries.

Surprisingly, while not the skill you’ll see people use, S2 actually has higher potential than S3. With a very similar average DPS, if he manages to hit five enemies constantly, Passenger will deal more average DPS than if he ran S3. Not skill DPS though, that falls much shorter still.

Passenger’s most flashy looking skill, definitely the most used one. This skill showcases his incredible range by manifesting a Lightning Storm on the enemy with the highest current HP on the same range as Saria S3. This Lightning Storm has a range equal to a Phalanx Caster’s at E1, such as Beeswax, and launches an attack hitting for 150% of Passenger’s attack every half a second, amounting to a total of 8 lightning strikes over the 4 second duration of the attack, which can also chain into up to 4 other enemies. This skill can hold up to two charges, but has a massively steep SP cost at 30 SP per charge.

Flashy as it is, however, the incredibly high SP cost per charge makes it just an average option for DPS, leaving Passenger without many options if the skill timing is not up. Additionally, the targeting can be quite weird to get the hang of, and the actual targeting within the Lightning Storm is unpredictable. While this is not a huge issue (the storm will manifest itself on top of the enemy with the highest HP and chain around, anyways), we have definitely already seen some content where such unpredictability can lead to quite undesirable events.

So, should I pull for Passenger? Is his kit interesting enough to warrant my Orundums? Will SOMEONE finally dethrone Eyjafjalla? Is his skill as flashy as it is good? The answer is a definite NO. Passenger is not good, there’s no beating around the bush here. Even after the buffs to his sub-archetype, Passenger still underperforms for his massive DP cost, and we don’t even know if our server will get the buffs right away! Sadly, the first 6★ male caster in the game is too disappointing to bother. High cost and low returns are not a good investment.