Arknights: In-depth Review - Mlynar

Młynar is the future 6★ Liberator Guard featured in the Never Vowed banner, which will run alongside the An Obscure Wanderer event. Młynar is the first gacha representative of this archetype, which already made a pretty good impression with the Dossoles Holiday welfare Operator Tequila. Does Młynar manage to compare to his raw Burst DPS? Let’s find out! 

I’m not going to beat around the bush here: Młynar is completely busted, and this is probably to no one’s surprise. We probably should’ve already seen this coming when Tequila was given SilverAsh-tier DPS to compensate for his harder to use archetype and mediocre range for a multi-target physical Burst DPS option, but the 6★ representative of the archetype has enough damage to blow practically every other Operator out of the water.

While he does sport a slightly worse range than SilverAsh, no crazy support abilities and is overall more difficult to utilize due to his archetype (needing another Operator to cover for his downtime), Młynar is so far ahead of the competition that trying to bury the lead is an exercise in futility: he is going straight into EX tier, he’s going to stay there for a very long while, and if you care about meta at all he’s the one Operator to pull for, maybe even get pots if you are so inclined as they are particularly powerful as well.

As a reminder, Liberator Guards are Block-3 Operators that cannot Attack or block while off-skill. During their downtime, their Attack stat constantly ramps up significantly then resets once they finish a Skill activation. This gears them perfectly for incredible Burst DPS and not much else As for actual, noteworthy differences when compared to Tequila, Młynar is able to hit aerial enemies such as Drones through third Skill, which is a pretty big change all things considered. 

Finally, it is very important to understand that Młynar benefits significantly more from any increases in Level and Potential than most other Operators in the game. Due to his multiplier-based kit, every single point of Attack gained through these methods translates into more than 3 naturally, and more than 5 with his best Skill activated. This review will cover Młynar’s performance with his full Potential, which results in a DPS increase of around 10% when at full effect.

Comparing Młynar to other non-Tequila Guards is somewhat unfair due to his gimmicky archetype. His Attack value is by far the lowest out of all Operators in the class at base, but after it ramps up for 40 seconds it goes even higher than Skadi’s or Nearl the Radiant Knight’s by around 130 and 80 points for each. 

As per his defensive stats, Młynar also comfortably beats out every other Guard in the game, having the second highest HP stat for his Class (only beat out by Quartz or a fully-stacked Flamebringer) and fifth among all Operators, he has the highest Defense out of all Guards, and ties with Arts Fighter Guards and Lappland for the second highest Resistance in their Class at 15, only behind Amiya’s 20.

When attacking enemies, Młynar’s Attack increases to 110%. (113% at P3). If there are 3 or more enemies within the surrounding 8 tiles, Attack increases to 115% instead (118% at P3) and Młynar receives 15% less damage from all sources.

This Talent is extremely powerful as it acts as a permanent DPS increase to all of Młynar’s direct attacks, which help his burst immensely. Triggering the conditional part of this Talent is a bit harder considering Młynar cannot block while offskill and is likely to just kill all enemies before they get the chance to swarm him, but it can act as a nice boost of around 4% Burst DPS for his best Skill.

Potentials are also extremely powerful for this Talent, as little as just a 3% boost may seem. In total, the Potential 3 boosts to this Talent increase Młynar’s top Burst DPS by about 2.5%, transformed into over 9% with the base Attack boost from his Potential 4. This goes to show how Młynar is able to reach incredible DPS by stacking multipliers on top of each other, be it via Trait, Talent or Skill.

Młynar has a higher Taunt level when deployed, making him more likely to get attacked by enemies. Additionally, when he is fielded all Kazimierz Operators reflect 15% (18% at P5) or Młynar’s Attack as True damage when attacked.

Aggro control is a particularly strong tool that’s always welcome, especially in Operators as tanky as Młynar. The second part of this Talent is not as impressive, as the only effects that actually modify Młynar’s Attack directly are his Trait and anything that interacts with it, resulting in overall poor and reactive damage when offskill, and mediocre damage that severely pares in comparison to his Burst DPS when his Skill is active.

When activated, all of Młynar’s attacks deal 200% of his Attack as Physical damage, and his defense is increased by 60%. This Skill has an SP cost of 30 and lasts for 30 seconds.

This Skill provides Młynar with some decent source of Burst DPS, but the lack of any increase in range makes it not too worthwhile in comparison to certain other burst Skills. An uptime of 50% is generally really good, but the concept of uptime itself doesn’t really work with Liberator Guards, as they’ll often still prefer waiting until their Trait is fully stacked to unleash their damage.

The Defense boost makes Młynar incredibly tanky with around 800 Defense, 15 Resistance and over 4000 HP, but turning Młynar into a Defender for 30 seconds is a waste when you could either use an actual Defender or use Młynar’s outstanding Burst DPS to decimate any enemy before they have the chance to pose a threat.

When activated, Młynar’s range expands to Tequila’s Esoteric Bladework’s, his Attack Interval slows down by 0.3 seconds (to 1.5 seconds per attack under normal circumstances), and all attacks deal two hits of 190% Physical damage. This Skill can be manually deactivated at any time, and if Młynar defeats any enemy during the Skill’s duration, his Trait will not reset. This Skill has an SP cost of 25, and lasts for 20 seconds.

This Skill provides for some incredibly high Burst damage with decent range and very, very quick cycling, making it excel at taking down spaced-out threats one after the other. The secondary effect of not resetting the Trait’s effect on kill is very easy to activate as long as the Skill is activated at the right time, and enables SP support to work properly on Młynar.

Regardless, it definitely pales in comparison to his third Skill. While this would usually be considered a fantastic option, it suffers from the same issue as Ch’en the Holungday’s 'Night of Violet': it simply cannot compare in all relevant scenarios.

When activated, Młynar’s range explands to SilverAsh’s Truesilver Slash minus the furthest sideways tiles, his Trait’s effect is instantly doubled and can attack up to 5 enemies at a time (aerial enemies included) for 180% Physical damage per Attack. Whenever Młynar kills an enemy through this Skill, his Trait’s effect will decay by a flat 10%. Additionally, when an enemy within range is attacked by a Kazimierz Operator they will receive 12% of Młynar’s Attack as True damage. This Skill has an SP cost of 42, and lasts for 28 seconds.

This is the Skill that turns Młynar into the meta-dominating beast he is. Following with the prior mention of him stacking multipliers to reach insane levels of Burst DPS, this one straight up doubles his Trait’s effect to 400%, which paired with his almost-perfect SP cost results in a full charge for every cycle of this Skill.

Before any decay can happen or even if you activate it as soon as it’s ready, this Skill already reaches DOUBLE of SilverAsh’s insane Burst DPS on a much shorter cycle and with almost the exact same range, turning Młynar into the new golden standard for Burst DPS. The shorter cycle allows him to pick off more threatening enemies with condensed DPS and be ready for the next target quickly, all the while fitting much better into party compositions as more of a team player than a direct nuke.

This Skill is, simply put, insanely broken.

So, should I pull for Młynar? Is his damage really as cracked as people hype him up to be? Could he really be strong enough to redefine what “meta” is? The answer is DEFINITELY YES. There’s not much to be said on this conclusion that you haven’t probably heard before, but Młynar is on a level above any other Operator, shining even amongst other broken ones, to the point where, if you must choose one banner to pull in from a meta perspective, there really is no question as to which one it is.