Arknights: In-depth Review - Kroos the Keen Glint

Kroos the Keen Glint is the Welfare Operator associated with Invitation to Wine (IW), and is perhaps most relevant to new players. However she exists in an awkward opposition to her 3★ variant’s incredible cost efficiency. You can’t use both at the same time, which means young rosters will most likely be forced to pick one or the other. 

To give the bottom line up front, which Kroos should a new player raise? The optimal choice is 3★ Kroos, but her 5★ variant offers a much higher power ceiling if you’re willing to forgo some resource efficiency.

The Kroos that’s been around since the start of the game is cheap to raise; to go from Elite 0 Lv1 to Elite 1 Lv55 (her max level) costs 115,400 EXP and 104,040 LMD (this includes her 10,000 LMD promotion cost). The only materials she demands are for raising her Skill Levels, and her DPS benefits more from character levels anyway.

3★ Kroos easily outcompetes most options that aren’t a 5★ Marksman and, because she’s so cheap, makes the perfect second-fiddle for stages that demand it. She is also a solid draft in the new Integrated Strategies 2 (IS2) game mode as she is essentially ‘free’ to recruit.

Most conventional wisdom tells new players to raise a duo of Marksmen Snipers. One of the reasons for this is that Marksmen are cheap and effective DPS units. Average DEF values in the early chapters are low enough that Marksmen are effective against most enemies, and they can be deployed quickly because they don’t cost many Deployment Points (DP).

The other reason to raise a pair of Marksmen is because some stages have enough drones coming from different angles that having a second dedicated drone killer can make or break a squad’s ability to clear the stage. Lungmen Downton (Annihilation 3) is perhaps the most difficult, and important, of these stages. It represents a significant milestone for account progression too, as it raises the cap for Orundum (Gacha Currency) that a player can earn from their weekly Annihilation runs.

So far we’ve said that 3* Kroos is an ideal second Marksman, but let’s take a look at the numbers involved and see just how much cheaper she really is. The 5*s are identical in EXP/LMD cost, and pretty similar in material cost, so we’ll only include Kroos from that rarity.

3★ Kroos saves you resources on every front. The EXP/LMD savings might not sound like much, but not having to farm Sniper Chips or spend any materials to promote her means that she’s a great first promotion target on top of leaving you more resources to spend on other units.

Furthermore, there is an argument to be made that your second Marksman Sniper will eventually be dropped anyway. Lungmen Downtown was mentioned earlier as a difficult stage that usually requires two Marksmen for a first clear. After this, though, there aren’t really any stages that are more demanding on your second Marksman, if any.

As average DEF values rise beyond what an E1 Marksman can handle, and as your other DPS options grow in strength, it’s not uncommon for the second Marksman to start being cut from squads in favor of more effective options.

Because of this, 3★ Kroos is almost always an optimal second Marksman to raise, as she is quite powerful for how cheaply she fills a role that is arguably on a time limit.

Any player that acquires Kroos the Keen Glint during IW is eligible for a rebate when choosing to raise either of them. For 3★ Kroos, the rebate only includes EXP/LMD, but for her 5★ variant it includes some materials too.

Remembering what 3★ Kroos costs from earlier, we can see that this rebate gives back nearly 60% of the EXP cost and just over 30% of the LMD cost. You still need to have those resources in the first place, but it’s a hefty reduction for an already cheap operator.

Kroos the Keen Glint enjoys this feature too, though. Let’s look at what she gives back.

5★ Kroos is a bit more complicated, because she doesn’t get her full refund until E2. For E1 55, she refunds just under 25% of the EXP and LMD cost (24.3% and 23.6% specifically). Promoting to E2 gives back slightly more: ~45% EXP and ~30% LMD. This is still “less” than what 3★ Kroos rebates, but this time you receive some material compensation as well.

Now that we’ve covered why Kroos’ 3★ variant is - and always has been - a strong choice, it’s time to cover her new 5★ form. 

As with most event welfares, Kroos misses out on an ATK potential (pot) bonus, and at max pot will cost 1 more DP than a typical non-welfare Operator. The one saving grace in her list of pots is the talent increase (150% -> 160%), as even the ‘reduced redeployment time’ pot simply normalises her redeploy timer to the 70s timer most Operators enjoy as their baseline.

Missing the extra ATK is painful for a Marksman given their low base ATK value, and Kroos’ ATK is already slightly lower than GreyThroat’s (her main competitor in the 5★ rarity). However, this might not weigh against Kroos as much as it may seem at first glance. If we accept that new players are going to be the ones most likely to raise 5★ Kroos, then we must also accept that potentials on non-welfare 5★s are likely out of the picture - for a new player, it’s likely that GreyThroat, Platinum, and Blue Poison will all be missing their DP and ATK pots too.

For this section, we’ll look at a mix of Skill Level 7 (SL7) and Mastery Level 3 (M3) values. It’s important to at least cover each Skill’s potential at SL7 because of 5★ Kroos’ appeal to young rosters.

Basic +ATK% buff (30% at SL7), and multi-strike (2 hits). This skill has Attack Recovery, meaning that it only generates Skill Points (SP) when attacking an enemy. If Kroos is always attacking, it will only take 15s to charge her skill at SL7. With a Skill duration of 13s, this totals to a 28s skill cycle (time from one skill activation to the next) and gives an uptime of roughly 46% (uptime can be calculated by duration/cycle, so 13/28 in this case). M3 doesn’t do much for this skill - +2s duration and +3 initial SP and a meagre +10% ATK (+40%) total.

Attack Recovery skills can sometimes be a pain to manage. If there are no enemies in sight then your Operator isn’t charging their skill - GreyThroat suffers from this badly, but we’ll cover that later. At least this Skill has a low enough SP cost that it shouldn’t be too frustrating to manage.

Another concern might be that the Skill duration is short, and it is. Operators like Astesia can struggle with very short skill durations, but for Astesia it’s more a case of failing to kill priority targets fast enough, sometimes needing two Skill cycles to finish off more chunky enemies. In contrast, Kroos’ favoured targets should mostly be weak enough to down in one Skill cycle.

S1 also offers Camouflage, which is neat but frankly better found elsewhere (i.e., April S2). Again, the main attraction for this Skill is simply that it cycles fast and should be ready every time you want it.

No ATK buff, but an ATK Interval reduction instead (SL7: -0.3; M3: -0.375). Multi-strike (2 hits) like S1, increased to 4 hits per attack after striking enemies 40 times (M3: 32 hits). This Skill has a 66s Skill cycle at SL7, a 26s duration, and 40s downtime (M3: 65s, 30 on/35 off), so how long until Kroos starts hitting 4 times per attack? For this we’ll assume that she’s always attacking.

Straight away you can see that mastery is a pretty significant bump for this Skill. Mastery makes it 4s faster to start hitting 4 times, leaving nearly twice as much remaining Skill duration. The only other thing worth mentioning at this point is that the lack of an ATK% buff - and Kroos’ lower base ATK (no ATK pot) - will mean this Skill is more sensitive to rising DEF values. 

The delay until Kroos starts attacking 4 times means the DPS of this Skill is backloaded. This can be awkward to deal with, as most Skills in Arknights do not have any kind of ramp-up time.

With everything we’ve covered so far, we can see that Kroos the Keen Glint is mostly competing for relevance with herself. She wants to take the role of rapidfire, multi-hitting Marksman, either as the main Sniper or secondary, but to do so she must outcompete her own self’s sheer cost efficiency as a 3★.

It’s pretty common for 3★ Kroos to be raised as the second Marksman in a roster, so how does she stack up against the other choices? For this, we’ll give Kroos max pot and max level, as it’s easier for a new player to guarantee a max pot 3★ than higher rarity options.

We’ll leave 6★ options out of this comparison for now, because they stand head and shoulders above everyone else.

• Numbers taken from Viktorlab

Notes:

1. Skill DPS omitted for ‘powerstrike’ skills because it’s misleading

2. Viktorlab gives GreyThroat S2 more love than it deserves for AVG DPS, more on this later

3. 200 DEF was picked because it’s a value that doesn’t invalidate anyone, but makes a significant enough dent for some

From the above, we can see that 3★ Kroos sets a strong baseline and keeps up with the 5★s whenever their specialisation isn’t relevant (burst DPS for GreyThroat, multi-target for Blue Poison, and high single-hit damage for Platinum).

GreyThroat’s Skill DPS from the above table is undeniably impressive, but we mentioned earlier when looking at 5★ Kroos’ skills that Attack Recovery can be painful to handle. GreyThroat’s S2, at SL7, requires 34 attacks to generate enough SP to be used - more than double what 5★ Kroos requires for her S1.

While GreyThroat does have a minor ASPD boost from her talent, it’s not nearly enough to offset such a high SP cost on her S2. It is dangerous to take the above numbers at face value as a conclusion that GreyThroat is the best 5★ Marksman.

One might wonder if a good Skill cycle is that important. The answer is that it depends, but let’s start with an average wave timer. 45s (+/- 10s) is a pretty happy median for most stages in Arknights - this gives us a range of 35s to 55s. Exusiai S3M3 hits the nail on the head for this, and is usually an effective yardstick for judging a Skill cycle.

So what does this mean for 5★ Kroos? Well, S1, despite Attack Recovery, is almost always going to be ready when you want it. For S2 it’s ‘slow’ with regards to average wave timings, but S2 is a single-target oriented Skill so it’s easier to allow for deviation (Skill cycles that closely match wave timings matter more for wave-clear-oriented Operators).

What we might conclude from all this is that 5★ Kroos has two fine skills at E1, which is rare. If you look at the other 5★ Marksmen at E1, Blue Poison will likely only want to run S1, Platinum only ever wants to run S2, and GreyThroat lives in this weird limbo where neither Skill is much to sing about. When you look at Kroos, maybe you’ll default to S1 for the fast cycling and feel safe that it’s going to be ready whenever you want it, or for more planned strategies you might pull out S2 to squeeze out more Skill DPS.

Returning to the topic at hand, let’s see how Kroos the Keen Glint looks at Elite 1 and Elite 2. As mentioned earlier, she’s competing directly for the role of rapidfire Marksman, which means her competition (apart from herself) can be narrowed down to GreyThroat and Exusiai. We’ll give 5★ Kroos max pot, for the same reason we did for 3★ Kroos - it’s easy for new players to guarantee.

At E1, the paper maths indicates that Kroos the Keen Glint is a pretty competitive choice, and much stronger than her 3★ variant. Before drawing any conclusions, we should have a look at how well this scales if you invest even more.

There are a few takeaways from the above table. The most obvious one is that Exusiai is a pretty good unit. Next we can see that 5★ Kroos’ S1 really doesn’t stay relevant past E1, and lastly we can see that it doesn’t take much DEF for GreyThroat to overtake Kroos - though for this last point it pays to remember that GreyThroat can sometimes struggle to generate SP for her Skill.

Does Kroos the Keen Glint offer enough of an upgrade from her 3★ variant? On paper, yes. 5★ Kroos is simply stronger than her 3★ self. But this is far from the whole story.

3★ Kroos represents an opportunity to cheaply fulfil a role, and there’s an argument to be made that by the time 3★ Kroos is losing her staying power then it’s time to cut your second Marksman from most squads anyway.

As mentioned at the beginning, 3★ Kroos is often a great option in IS2 - she costs 0 Hope to recruit and, as ever, gets most jobs done just fine. This is important because it allows the player to save Hope for more impactful units.

So, is Kroos the Keen Glint worth raising? If you care about maximizing your resources, then sadly the answer is NO. Kroos’ 3★ form is simply too efficient, and she does not offer quite enough as a 5★ to give this up. However, if resource efficiency is less of a concern to you, then Kroos the Keen Glint is a strong option that has a much higher ceiling.