Nine-Colored Deer

Nine-Colored Deer is a crossover unit who hails from a 1981 children’s movie based off an old Buddhist legend. In the movie, she is a sacred envoy who saves the lives of others until she is betrayed by a greedy merchant, who intends to hunt her down and sell her pelt to the emperor. The Nine-Colored Deer is protected from the hired hunters by a halo of sacred light and walks away to give her gifts to other parts of the world. In Arknights, Nine-Colored Deer is a mysterious doctor and herbalist who provides medicines and remedies for free to poor villages who need it. However, when a village views her with suspicion—thinking that her herbs are causing diseases rather than curing them—she departs for Rhodes Island instead, becoming an Abjurer Supporter who heals allies and resists ranged attacks. You can probably see the parallels between the stories already.

Abjurer Supporters are odd units designed for defensive support. They deal Arts damage normally, but when they have a Skill active, they heal allies instead. Healing allies makes sense with their defensive role, especially since Abjurers have faster ASPD than most Medics and so can be more reactive with their healing. However, the healing stops when the Skill ends, so Abjurers aren’t usually a reliable replacement for a Medic. Furthermore, Abjurer Talents—like Nine-Colored Deer’s Ethereal Iridescent Clouds—involve placing a defensive Shelter buff on low-HP allies within the Abjurer’s attack range. The idea seems to be for the Shelter buff to keep a low-HP ally alive long enough for the Abjurer to activate a Skill and heal them. In practice, however, Shelter is usually too weak to be helpful (and increasing damage output is generally a more powerful tactic than increasing damage mitigation anyway).

Since Abjurer Supporters must time their Skill usage carefully in order to heal allies when needed, it’s important to know what their Skills do! Nine-Colored Deer’s S1, Fortune Bringer of the Mortal Realm (what a mouthful!), is a simple ATK buff. Since it also triggers Nine-Colored Deer to heal, however, what it really does is make Nine-Colored Deer a stronger healer than her low ATK stat would suggest. Her S2 (Return to the Immortal Mountains) also does this, but in a different way: it increases her ASPD. And that’s not all—the Skill also gives all allies within range the Shelter effect for its duration, regardless of their current HP! This removes Shelter’s anti-synergy with Nine-Colored Deer’s healing, and while that doesn’t make Shelter useful, it at least makes the effect easier to use. The Skill also grants Nine-Colored Deer herself a high amount of ranged Physical block (to represent the arrow-blocking from her story—very cool detail!)

Nine-Colored Deer has a cool story, a terrific visual aesthetic, and a Skill that beautifully integrates her lore with her gameplay. Unfortunately, she won’t typically have much impact on the battlefield. She has low stats (like other members of her archetype) and her S2 has terrible uptime and a slow cycle. More importantly, she fails to put up meaningful numbers for her Shelter buff and doesn’t even apply it until allies are already in danger of dying at the hands of any serious enemy. It’s too bad that Nine-Colored Deer decided to invest in the “blocking arrows” part of her lore rather than the “drowning the unworthy” part… though since Reunion hasn’t betrayed Nine-Colored Deer to Wei Yenwu yet, maybe the “drowning” part wouldn’t have worked anyway.