Arknights: Should You Pull? Standard Banner: Archetto and Blemishine

The new Standard Banner features the following Operators:

Probably not, unless you have a lot of spare Orundum.

Archetto is a good support Sniper who unfortunately plays second-fiddle to Exusiai and Ash, and Blemishine is a versatile unit who needs niche Sleep strategies to stand out. If you have a specific use in mind for one of these unusual 6★s AND you missed La Pluma on the Dossoles Holiday banner, this isn’t the worst place to pull for them. However, most Doctors will probably prefer to wait for Great Axe and Pen Nib or Chop the Thorns instead.

As with all banners, a 5★ or higher Operator is guaranteed in the first 10 rolls. Should you pull for that? Maybe if you don’t have La Pluma, No if you do have her. La Pluma is a very strong laneholder, but Franka is underwhelming and Cliffheart is given to new players for free.

Anti-Air/ Marksman Sniper

+ Usual archetype strengths: Low DP cost, fast ASPD

+ Talent 1 generates SP for Snipers equipped with [On Attack] Skills while Archetto is deployed (i.e., Blue Poison, GreyThroat, Meteorite)

+ Talent 2 blocks the first hit Archetto would take after she is deployed and gives her a chunk of SP when activated

+ S1 is good for keeping groups of weak enemies under control

+ S2 resets Archetto’s attacks and can ricochet to hit enemies that are out of her attack range

+ S3 increases Archetto’s attack range and spams multiple hits against multiple targets within that range

- Usual archetype weaknesses: requires buffs to deal noticeable damage to high-DEF enemies, since she deals multiple weak hits instead of singular strong ones

- Talent 1 is only useful for Snipers who have [On Attack] SP-charging Skills, which is not very many of them

- Talent 2 rarely gets much value, since it only activates once per deployment and Snipers are typically deployed to avoid aggro in the first place

- Even with her Talent, Archetto’s Skills can be slow to charge (especially S3)

- The ricochet from S2 and S3 can be hard to predict

Healing/ Guardian Defender

+ Has an extra tile of attack range compared to most Guardian Defenders

+ Causes all allies with [Getting Hit] Skills to also gain SP when attacking (Talent 1)

+ Can attack Sleeping enemies and gets an ATK buff when doing so (Talent 2); pairs well with Sleep-inflicting Operators like Blacknight, Erato, or Kafka because of this

+ One of the few Healing Defenders with a Skill that increases her own survivability (S3 buffs her DEF)

+ S1 deals bonus damage to one enemy, heals a nearby ally, and holds up to three charges

+ S2 causes Sleep to all enemies in the same tile as Blemishine and also regenerates HP for all nearby allies every second (works on “unhealable” Operators like Hellagur, too!)

+ S3 buffs Blemishine’s ATK and DEF; adds bonus Arts damage to her attacks; and heals a nearby ally every time she attacks

= Prioritizes Sleeping enemies (Talent 2)

= She has extremely high burst healing potential, but she’s not the most reliable healer, since she needs to be in combat to use her Skills reliably

- S1 and S3 only heal when Blemishine attacks, so if equipped with either Skill, Blemishine can’t heal without an enemy present

- S2 and S3 are [Getting Hit] Skills, so she can’t charge them if not engaging with an enemy

- S3 is her strongest damage Skill, but it doesn’t heal her—only her allies—while active, so if using S3, Blemishine will need healing from another Operator to stay alive

Reaper Guard

+ Usual archetype strengths: Wide attack range for a melee unit (1x3); true AoE attacks; recovers HP for every enemy she hits, up to a cap of her Block count

+ A great cornerstone unit and lane holder, especially for her rarity

+ Talent increases her ASPD for every enemy she kills, up to a cap, and is usually easy to stack thanks to her strong AoE attacks

+ S1 causes her next attack to deal two stronger hits, healing her twice

+ S2 reduces her attack interval (so she can heal herself faster) and increases her ATK; her ATK is further increased against enemies with less than half HP

= Has Block-2, which is fine for actually Blocking but does limit her ability to heal herself

- Usual archetype weaknesses: Can't be healed directly (although regen does work)

- Mediocre base ATK, so she can have some trouble with high-DEF enemies

Duelist/ Dreadnought Guard

+ E1 Talent gives her a chance to ignore enemy DEF, so she can be good against high-DEF enemies

+ Talent activation chance is greatly increased by Skill 2

- Skill 2 also lowers her DEF to 0, making it a double-edged sword (haha)

- Note that Franka “ignores DEF” rather than “deals True damage,” so enemies like Lucian the Blood Diamond who have Physical Evade can avoid Franka’s hits even when her Talent activates

- Usually, Arts/ True damage are better ways to counter high-DEF enemies

Pull/ Hookmaster Specialist

+ Pulls enemies, resulting in instant death, movement pattern changes, etc.

+ Skills can do ranged Arts/ True damage, so she hits harder than you might expect

+ Can be deployed on ground or ranged grids

- More expensive to level than lower-rarity Pull Specialists, but not significantly better in most situations to compensate

- Given to new players for free and, like most Operators, doesn’t benefit much from Potential boosts, so there’s little need to pull for her

- Welfare 6* Puller Gladiia (from the Under Tides event) can Pull as well as Cliffheart but also has better utility for non-Pulling maps

Archetto believes that the Lord helps those who help themselves. And she’s quite willing to help herself to anything she needs, especially more SP for her allies, more arrows for her giant bowgun, and more alcohol for the post-battle celebrations. Archetto synergizes best with other [Attacking Enemy] Snipers, as she passively grants them more SP while she actively rains splitting, ricocheting arrows onto her foes.

Watching Archetto gatling-gun a million arrows across the field is a joy to watch, but the practicality of the strategy can leave something to be desired. There aren’t many high-powered Snipers yet who benefit from Archetto’s Talent, and her ricocheting attacks can fall flat if enemies don’t line up properly. With fan favorites Exusiai and Ash providing notably higher and more reliable single-target damage, Archetto can have a hard time demonstrating her value in battle.

I don’t recommend pulling for Archetto, although she can be fun to use.

Blemishine knows it’s not easy to be a knight. Her life has been littered with strange occurrences and risky experiences, and her kit is filled with strange features and risky choices to match! She’s a Healing Defender with massive damage potential who has to stab enemies to heal her allies. She gives allies who normally gain SP by [Getting Hit] bonus SP whenever they stab something. She inflicts the Sleep ailment, which normally makes enemies immune to being attacked, so that she can… stab them even harder. Yeah, there’s a lot of “stabbing enemies” in Blemishine’s kit.

At her best, Blemishine is an untouchable roaring blaze of justice, blasting enemies with huge Physical-and-Arts-damage hits while healing an adjacent ally to full with every strike. It’s not easy to get the stars to align so that this works, however. Blemishine is quite squishy without her S3 and can’t heal herself with her S3; she wants the damage bonus against Sleeping enemies for her S3, but she can’t cause Sleep with her S3; and that’s not even considering how Sleep can mess with the rest of your team, since most Operators cannot attack Sleeping opponents.

It takes a lot of work to get Blemishine to show her true value on the battlefield (I don’t envy Whislash for having to train her!) If you put in the effort, however, Blemishine can be a breakout star, pulling off an outstanding performance herself and also elevating the performance of everybody around her. Especially Sleep-causing Operators like Iris and Erato or [Getting Hit] Operators like Mudrock and Liskarm.

I don’t recommend pulling for Blemishine, but she’s worth raising if you pull her, especially if you have other Operators who synergize with her kit.

I don’t recommend buying Blemishine from the shop unless you are hellbent on using Sleep strategies (which you probably shouldn’t be, because they’re not terribly efficient, but they ARE fun and that’s important too).

La Pluma is a quiet, scatterbrained kind of girl, and she’s not always the best at solving problems. This may be because her first reaction is chopping problems in half with her scythe. Having grown up in the middle of a war, La Pluma knows how to hold off large numbers of opponents all by herself, and she does it as Rhodes Island’s first Reaper Guard—mowing down foes by the bushel and draining their life force to heal herself as she does so. 

In contrast to some of the very complicated Operators that Arknights has released, La Pluma is refreshingly simple. Enemies walk into her range and she hits them. Hitting them gives her health so she can keep hitting them. If she kills them, she gets better at hitting the next batch.

The great part is, her simplicity doesn’t come at the sacrifice of power. La Pluma is really good at hitting things. She doesn’t come with fancy bells and whistles, and she doesn’t need to. Plunk her down in just about any lane and go make a sandwich. La Pluma’s got you covered.

I recommend pulling for La Pluma.

Franka is a Dreadnought Guard who specializes in taking down high-DEF targets. Her Talent gives her a chance to ignore enemy DEF when attacking, and her Skill 2 greatly increases this Talent’s activation chance. Once that Vorpal Edge goes snicker-snack, heads are sure to roll.

In a vacuum, Franka is perfectly effective. The issue is that her job is usually done more easily by units who use Arts damage. If you invest in Franka, she can pull her weight, but it’s difficult to find a situation where she would be preferable to a Caster or an Arts Guard.

I don’t recommend pulling for or buying Franka.

Cliffheart is a Pull Specialist, able to grab her enemies and yank them into deadly pits or other obstacles for one-hit-K.O.s. On any stage where such deadly pits exist, Cliffheart can be a powerful ally. Unfortunately, on stages without these pits, Cliffheart becomes much less useful, and in most cases the lower-rarity Rope can perform Pulling duties just as well as Cliffheart can.

I don’t recommend pulling for or buying Cliffheart.