Arknights: Mint gameplay analysis

The latest addition to the free unit family, Mint is the second Phalanx Caster in the game, as an attempt by HG to fix AoE Caste... Ahem anyway. Mint and Beeswax are the only two of their kind as of now, even in CN server. For this post, I'll focus the details on Mint, whose kit in my opinion is more intriguing than Beeswax, regardless if she's worse than Beeswax in gameplay or not, but I'll compare the two of them a lot. Aside from being one of the tankiest ranged operators in game, Mint is also part of the non-Specialists team who can shift enemies.

So far, both of the Phalanx Casters lean on a bit of Crowd Control while also dealing AoE damage. Mint doesn't directly apply CC effects like stun or bind, but through shift. Enemies being shifted are basically "stunned" anyway so I count it for this comparison. This is confirmed by HG themselves since Mint has her own Crowd Control tag despite having no direct stun/bind. So why aren't the actual Shifter themselves have the Crowd Control tag? Well the answer is pretty obvious and it's... look what's that behind you?

Mint also has a bit of team support and an easier way to use her skills (but only at E2). Beeswax's kit allow her to be played to her defensive stats much heavier, so I do consider her better than Mint in a lot of ways (which, spoiler alert, you're going to hear a lot throughout this post). Despite all that, Mint's kit is quite amazing to see in action, meme or not, and there is some advantages to using Mint, so you wouldn't miss out that much. Plus, she's free from the Rewinding Breeze event record restore. 

Phalanx Caster is almost like a Splash Caster, so their ATK stat is almost similar as well, being just slightly lower than them. That’s of course not the whole story, as their attack speed is noticeably faster than Splash Caster’s, with 2s per attack rather than 2.9s. For extra comparison, Core Caster attack once every 1.6s, which is not that faster. That, again, is still not the whole story for their damage output, but we’ll get there in a different section.

Phalanx Caster has a very strong defensive stats, due to their main identity. With the highest base HP of the Casters (no Tomimi’s just cheating with trust stat), they can already comfortably absorb some damage. Furthermore, their base DEF is the highest of all casters, by nearly double of everyone else’s. Even better, most casters (and supporters) only gain RES with more promotion, while the Modal Caster immediately get 15 RES from the get-go, without any promotion. 

This is of course, before we talk about their trait, which gives them their main identity with strong defensive stats.

Unlike Splash Caster, they have a far fewer cost to deploy. Mint, however, is a welfare unit, and thus, has higher base cost than Beeswax. Mint's cost starts at 23 base and ends at 25 at E1, but obviously she can get potential for -3 cost at potential 6 easily, which ends at 22.

Does not attack normally but has greatly increased DEF and RES; When skill is active, attacks deal AoE Arts Damage.

This is Phalanx Caster’s biggest identity, and they missed a major point. They also aren’t quite clear (enough) about a few parts. Just in case, I’ll explain it better here.

• They don’t attack without their skill. This is mechanically similar to Angelina’s second and third skill. This is the last part in their offensive stats that’s different from other casters, as aside from ATK and ASPD, their damage output is also dependent on their skill duration and cooldown.

• While their skill is not active, they have a lot more DEF and RES, in addition to their already amazing defensive stats mentioned earlier. How much increased DEF and RES though? It is simple, yet they never tell us these details smh. Their DEF is added by another +200%, 3 times the base amount, and their RES is added by 20, which is now 35 RES instead of 15.

• And the major point that they missed: when skill is active, attacks deal AoE Arts damage. But it’s even more than that, it’s “attacks hit ALL enemies in their range”, which is massively different from the standard “deal AoE Arts damage” that Splash Casters, and also Artilleryman Snipers, have for their trait, which only deals splash damage around the impact point of their attack, regardless of how many enemies are inside their range. That also means that if the enemies are far apart enough, the splash damage unit can’t hit all of them and is essentially single target in some cases, even if all of the enemies are inside their range.

Because of their Trait, their range is designed accordingly to both limit, and to exploit their trait. It is limiting because they cannot utilize their “attack all in range” as much as they can, but also exploits their trait. Because in order to use this short aura range, you need to put them a lot more forward, and if they are forward, they’ll be the first to encounter fire from enemies, and you get the rest of the ideas.

You can also argue that those defensive stats are a byproduct of having this range. But it’s chicken and egg I guess. Anyway, this is their range, at base and at the first promotion.

Available at E1: When this unit's skill is not active, adjacent allies gain 5% DEF.

At E2 it’s changed to: When this unit's skill is not active, adjacent allies gain 10% DEF; When this unit's skill is active, become less likely to be targeted by enemies.

Since Mint is a free unit, her potential is very easy to get, so the talent’s improvement is almost guaranteed, which boosts it to 7% and 12% DEF. You can also see the range of her effect by looking at the cyan/turquoise outline when she is deployed.

Normally, you’d want to place Mint last so ranged enemies have her on their aggro. This let Mint make use of her defensive boost from her trait better. There are a few weird things with this talent though, I’ll explain soon.

If Mint isn’t E2 yet, then the fact that she’s still being attacked by ranged unit can make it dangerous to use her skill, especially if you started to get used to her tankiness without skill up. This is when Beeswax is better, because her second skill already allows her to partially draw aggro away from her starting from E1. And with her own regen talent, she can take some damage in case the obelisk broke faster than the skill duration or AoE attack, and restores herself back up once it’s over. Remember, their base defensive stats without their Trait are still pretty strong to begin with. Beeswax’s self regen is also better to make the most use of their trait. And Beeswax gets pretty much 90% of her 

You may be wondering why I said Beeswax is better with her regen. As expected, the best way to use this archetype is to put them deep in the enemy’s line. This let them abuse their huge defensive stats. Beeswax’s regen talent then allow her to be place even deeper in enemy’s line, far from the reach of any healer. This let her use her short range to its maximum, and you wouldn’t even need to spent much effort on keeping her alive. Mint on the same case, however, will not survive since she’ll just get corroded slowly from multiple instances of small damage. 

This makes Mint limited to at least inside a healer range, or at least with some global healers, but we don’t have that many of them. But at least she has her talent to buff ally right? Well yes, but that’s when it gets a bit weird. You’d want to place Mint last, so she takes the most from ranged attack, but she also increases the 4 adjacent allies’ DEF. But they would be quite safe already since Mint is taking most of the ranged attack. That leaves the melee attack on the ground only (she’d still buff ranged ally if they’re next to her).

When Mint use her skill though, she reduces her own aggro, so now everyone else is more likely to be hit, but at the same time, the DEF buff also stops working! It’s just weird all around and mostly affect just herself and melee allies in melee fight, so even her supportive role isn’t that supportive.

And when arts damage comes into the equation, her talent also does nothing. In fact, by using her skill when enemy casters are around, it actually hurts her ally more, because most non-caster/supporter doesn’t have base RES, so Mint is actually the best arts damage tank for most scenarios with that 35 RES. Not to mention the fact that most enemy casters also have high RES, so using Mint’s skill (which allow her to attack) doesn’t really do much damage to them. Now obviously one of her skill can disrupt enemies, and it’s not like your allies will instantly die from a few arts damage attack, so it’s fine most of the time.

Basically, I don't even consider the DEF-increase part of her talent when using her. Just take her lower aggro part from E2 instead.

• Always available – Caster Expert α: When assigned to the Training Room, the training speed for Caster operators is increased by +30%.

Upgradable to E2 and become Widely-Read: When assigned to the Training Room, the training speed for Caster operators is increased by +30%. Additionally, when training their skill to mastery 2 (M2), the speed is increased by an additional +45%.

This is one of the few training skills that affects a specific level of mastery. This gives their training speed increased by a lot but only for mastery 2 of a caster’s skill. With the base amount of 5% for anyone in the training room, base 30% from the skill, and an additional +45% for mastery 2, Mint can finish a skill from M1 to M2 in 16/(180%) = 8.888 hours, which is 8h and 53 ish minutes. That’s almost close to the base time for M1!

Why would you need this skill? Why not! Mint E2 is quite important for her particular playstyle anyway, assuming you wanted to use her.

• Available at E1 – Geology α: When assigned to a Factory, Originium formula efficiency is increased by 30%

No one should be orundum farming unless they know what they are doing, so Mint might as well don’t have a 2nd base skill

Range expands, attacks deal a % of ATK as arts damage

Increase range, each attack deals 140% Arts damage, last for 17 seconds, cost 26 SP, initial SP 8, Auto Recovery, manual activation.

M3 gives 160% Arts damage, 20s duration, 20 SP cost. (the rest is the same)

This skill is basically the same as Beeswax’s first skill. Same range expands and all. This is their range with this skill up.

Because they don’t attack without skill up, you can basically treat this range as their normal attack range, unlike the basic one shown.

Both skills are the same even in term of damage, where Beeswax gain +40% ATK, and Mint deal 140% of ATK per hit, which results in the same % without any other factor.

But as you can see, Mint’s skill is an Attack Multiplier, so it benefits more from Attack Boost like Warfarin or Aak (whose buff she can very much survive against). Whereas Beeswax’s is an Attack Boost, so it is less improved by other % ATK Boosts.

Best use after E2, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to make use of her defensive stat as much as you’d like. I know I said that her base defensive stats without the boost is still high, but that compare to other ranged units’ standard, so it’s not that high. So best use with her E2 talent, as a solid replacement for AoE Casters (get rekt lul). With the skill up, Mint (or Beeswax), has a larger range, faster attack rate, and can attack all enemies in range instead of just splash damage, more survivability. Not to mention that they are even tankier without skill and are cheaper to deploy. What the AoE Casters have in return is the ability to attack without skill, and some has skills with either similar crowd control or skill that give them the same “attack all enemies in range”. But the high DP cost, slow ATK SPD, and lack of tankiness are more than enough to make them not as great of a choice.

I don’t truly recommend M3 this skill just so you can have an AoE Caster, but it’s not a bad investment. But her second skill deserves a M3 much more.

Every attack now drags(?) enemies toward herself with a force and deals % of damage. When the skill ends, deal 1instance of a larger % of damage.

Every attack drags enemies in with small force (force 0) and deals 115% Arts damage. When the skill ends, deal 240% arts damage. Lasts for 20 seconds, costs 31 SP, 12 initial SP, Auto Recovery, manual activation.

M3 increases force to medium (force 1), deals 130% Arts damage, when skill ends, deal 300% Arts damage. Cost 25 SP, 15 initial SP.

There is an advanced detail that may (or not) shake up your world with this skill, but Imma leave that for later. First, since this skill doesn’t have any range increase, it will use the normal range that they have, which admittedly, is pretty short. As argued in the trait section of course, it is mainly to make use of the defensive stats.

Again, this skill also provides her with an Attack Multiplier, which allows her to stack up with buff better. In fact, even better than Beeswax, who doesn’t have any boost to her ATK stats during her S2. Despite that, I’d still say once again that Beeswax is slightly better, since she can spawn a blocker, which allows her time to deal those damage, while Mint can really only hold lightweight enemies. Beeswax’s obelisk also draws aggro completely away from her too, unlike Mint who just reduce aggro (so she still gets targeted if she’s the only one around, for example). This once again reinforces the earlier claim that Beeswax is very good for performing solo somewhere away.

Okay I know that I have been repeating that Beeswax is better in this Mint guide, but I have to keep going (I’m so sorry Mint ;-;). The fact that she deals the huge damage at the end of her skill is also worse than Beeswax who deals the huge damage at the beginning. After a long skill duration, it is very likely that a lot of enemies, if not all, are already dead by then, thus it is also very easy to waste the burst potential. At least, it means that whoever managed to survive the onslaught of s u c c will be receiving a final damage burst that may end them by then.

Now we have the shift aspect of her skill. The shift direction is toward herself, this basically function like a black hole. But unlike Sucrose cough, she only shifts when attacking, which usually means once every 2 seconds. ATK SPD can affect this and make the pulse happens faster or slower. And of course, Angelina’s weight reduction can also boost the shift force (by reducing enemies’ weight), which allows Mint to hold everyone near her much easier.

SHOCKING (but also kinda unimportant) NEWS: This skill doesn't pull enemies. It is a type of PUSH, just toward her instead of away from her. The majority of you may ask “well okay but what’s the difference in the end?”. Well, the difference is how pull and push works, and spoiler alert, they work very different from each other. I explained in more details here. (warning: very poor attempt)

Okay sorry about that video, but as you can see, by making her attacks push instead of pull, she loses out on a bit of CC duration and distance, so it’s slightly worse off. Is it really that matter? Kinda. With how much Mint can attack throughout the skill duration, it can add up. Though I will admit if it does actually make or break your run, I’d recommend changing the strat, or at least put some more levels to your operators.

Best use against low weight enemies, but you already knew/expected that.

Considering that shifted enemies are basically treated as “stunned” (or more accurately “unbalance”), this skill also quite amazing to disrupt enemies’ attack. This of course requires Mint’s attack to hit when the enemy is performing an attack animation, which requires a bit of luck in syncing them together. Since Mint hit everyone in her range, high chance is at least a few of them will be interrupted, especially over that duration.

The skill pushes enemies toward Mint, always. Which means unless you put her really forward to “pull” enemies away from the blue box, it’s going to be a bit awkward to use this skill. But that won’t necessary happen a lot, because you should already be placing Mint forward!

The short range doesn’t let her to hit a lot of enemies if placed on the side of the path. It’s basically like Executor when looking directly into a single path. This is nice as she needs to be placed forward to have this kind of covering range, and guess how tanky she can be?

And, just like Executor, Mint’s also amazing at holding a couple lane at once. There are quite a few maps with 2 lanes that is split by a high ground (1 to 3 tiles of width). With the push force increased at M3, she can also function as a way to hold enemies away from the blocker, also in conjunction with the “stun” from the shift. This allows her to put out some really strong Crowd Control, as enemies also have to spent time walking back to your blocker, while also repeatedly being dragged away.

There are some good places to put Mint to best use this skill, but against the interest of a guide, I’m sorry to say I’m not sure how I can best describe way to see it. It is map dependent, as you’d want Mint to be the first operator the enemies encounter, but she also prefers to be in a place to make use of the true AoE, and her short range slightly limits that. She also has to be placed forward of the rest of your team, so it also depends on how you play the map specifically. I’ll try to give some examples though

At M3, the highest enemy's weight that she can still interrupt is 3, at a net force of -2. Weight 3 enemies also usually have quite high DEF (refer to my Rosa’s guide), so Mint’s arts damage is also great at dealing with them aside from canceling their attacks, which are kinda slow. And, with Angelina's S3, she can interrupt weight 4 enemies, which are basically all of the enemies except for bosses!

Remember, her push also depends on her attack, which occurs at a 2s interval without ATK SPD buff. This also increase her “Crowd Control” ability by increasing her attack rate, but also get decrease by attack slow such as Chapter 6. Though she is still pretty good in Chap 6 because of her high RES.

PHA–Ⲭ: Attention Retention Device

• Stage 1:

HP +130

ATK +40

DEF +15

Trait upgrade: Does not attack normally but has greatly increased DEF (+215%) and RES (+25); When skill is active, gain +100% DEF, +10 RES, and attacks deal AoE Arts Damage. {inactive state increased from +200% DEF and +20 RES; active state gains 100% DEF and +10 RES}

Preliminary thoughts: This mod branch focus more on their major identity of ranged tank. Before this, their dual mode cause them a bit of an issue, because you have to choose between a good tank or a regular AoE damage dealer. And the difficulty of choosing which mode led to their (un)popularity (just ignore the Carnelian copers). Now they can always keep some parts of that tankiness with their skills. Which Mint actually doesn't use that well because of her talent now that I think about it.

• Stage 2:

HP +150

ATK +47

DEF +20

Talent upgrade: When this unit's skill is not active, adjacent allies gain 18% DEF; When this unit's skill is active, become less likely to be targeted by enemies. {improved from 10% DEF}

+2% with pot

• Stage 3:

HP +170

ATK +52

DEF +23

Talent upgrade: When this unit's skill is not active, adjacent allies gain 21% DEF; When this unit's skill is active, become less likely to be targeted by enemies. {improved from 18% DEF}

+2% with pot

Preliminary thoughts: the talent is still wack as I have said in its section. The DEF buff isn't even that valuable so nothing changed here. Only Ⲭ1 is worth getting.

Anyway that should be it for the cute little wind kitty! I’ve seen quite a lot of fellows who likes her, so I’m sure lots of people already have some experience with her. How do you find her, aside from the fact that she is hella fun to use? I love using her so far, especially since she let me see a new way to plan a battle formation. And her Crowd Control is nothing to scoff at either!

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next time