Arknights: In-depth Review - Texas the Omertosa

Texas the Omertosa is the future 6★ Executor Specialist featured in the Chop the Thorns banner, which will run during the Il Siracusano event. Texas the Omertosa is easily the most awaited Operator in our near future due to how she essentially kickstarts yet another change in the meta-game of Arknights, but how powerful is she really? Let’s find out!

Let’s not beat around the bush: If you have heard anything at all about Texas the Omertosa, it’s probably about how unreasonably powerful she is. Either that or that she does to Phantom as Pozëmka did to Schwarz. 

Texas the Omertosa distances herself from the versatile-but-limited characteristic of Executor Specialists and dumps that trait into the garbage, giving herself both insanely high DPS and dominating support abilities without having to sacrifice any of her “fast-redeployness”. Texas the Omertosa can simply negate and take down a high amount of threats just by herself while remaining both incredibly easy to splash into any team and to actually use in battle, giving players an absurd degree of map control the likes of which other Executor Specialists could only dream of.

Compared to the other 6★ of her archetype, Texas the Omertosa has slightly lower defensive stats than Phantom (both HP and Defense), and slightly higher Attack. It’s not enough to actually matter much by themselves, but it shows the direction in which her kit is going to go from here.

While her Skills are active, Texas the Omertosa’s Attack is increased by 20%. Additionally, when killing an enemy for the first time each deploy, she recovers all HP and casts the Skill again.

This Talent is incredibly powerful and plays a huge part in making Texas the Omertosa as strong as she is. Not only does it give her a significantly higher on-Skill Attack than every other Operator in her archetype, it also significantly extends her Skill durations and own survivability via the second effect, which will trigger very often.

The recast effect triggers all on-deploy effects, and can help Texas the Omertosa survive without any sort of help simply by killing any enemies, which she does really well thanks to her damage-oriented skillset. This effect can also be triggered if she kills an enemy while off-skill, though it’s pretty rare that it isn’t activated while they are up.

On the off chance that Texas the Omertosa is affected by any status condition that would prevent her from casting a Skill (such as Stunned or Frozen), the recast effect will be delayed until that effect is removed.

Before killing an enemy for the first time each deployment, Texas the Omertosa’s Attack Speed is increased by 8 (+2 at P5) and she receives 25% (+5% at P5) less damage from all sources.

This Talent isn’t as visually impactful as the first one, but it nonetheless serves a good purpose on Texas the Omertosa’s kit. The damage reduction effect helps with her aforementioned “squishiness”, while the Attack Speed buff helps her get a couple more attacks in (with an extra one from her Potentials), which is particularly good with her second Skill.

Texas the Omertosa deals 10% more damage if there are no allies in the 4 adjacent tiles.

Texas the Omertosa deals 10% more damage if there are no allies in the 4 adjacent tiles.

Talent 1: On-Skill Attack boost increased to 25%

Texas the Omertosa deals 10% more damage if there are no allies in the 4 adjacent tiles.

Talent 1: On-Skill Attack boost increased to 28%

The basic branch of this Module is quite strong and mixes very well with Texas the Omertosa’s common role as an assassin, where the requirement is likely to be met most often. Her DPS oriented role together with her archetype make this effect really easy to take advantage of, and it has a rather powerful effect.

The advanced stages of this Module are also powerful, and complement Texas the Omertosa’s damage-oriented kit quite well. Going from Stage 1 to Stage 2, her total on-Skill damage increases by about 4.5% and 6% for her second and third Skills, which is quite a lot for an Operator with her level of burst and very quick cycling. Going further to Stage 3 gives an additional 3% and 4% respectively, which is still quite good but may not be worth the materials for players who don’t already intend to fully max Texas the Omertosa. 

When deployed, Texas the Omertosa’s Attack increases by 70%, and her attacks inflict Silence for 10 seconds. All enemies with the Silence status effect take 400 Arts damage per second for as long as the effect lasts. This Skill lasts for 12 seconds.

This Skill is a decent first one, with good enough damage and effects and a decent Arts DoT, but generally it’s never going to see any use as soon as you promote Texas the Omertosa, unless you really, really want the Silence effect and have no one else to apply it.

The Arts DoT is counted as being part of Texas the Omertosa’s own damage, meaning that if an enemy dies from it, the re-cast effect will be triggered immediately.

When deployed, Texas the Omertosa will immediately deal 240% of her Attack as Arts damage to all enemies in the surrounding 8 tiles, and debuff their Resistance by 30% for 10 seconds. Afterwards, her Attack increases by 55%, and each attack hits twice and deals Arts damage. This Skill lasts 10 seconds.

This was the first Skill that players gravitated towards, and it’s not very difficult to see why once you look at the numbers. With this Skill active, Texas the Omertosa has better burst DPS than Surtr of all things.

Of course, pure DPS does not tell the whole story of why Surtr is considered one of the best Operators in the game, but the fact that Texas the Omertosa is capable of packing that sort of damage on a fast-redeploy kit is definitely something worth mentioning. The on-deploy Resistance shreds covers the entire duration of the Skill, and it is also refreshed through the recast Talent once Texas the Omertosa kills an enemy, which will definitely happen considering her absurd Arts Burst DPS.

When deployed, Texas the Omertosa deals 165% Arts damage twice to all enemies within the 8 surrounding tiles, and stuns them for 2 seconds. Afterwards she deals 130% Arts damage to up to 4 enemies within this 8-tiles range every second, inflicting 0.2 seconds of Stun. This Skill lasts for 8 seconds.

This Skill was once severely underestimated due to the obvious offensive power of her second skill, and players used to believe these “micro-stuns” would be more detrimental than helpful. Nowadays, this is by far Texas the Omertosa’s most powerful Skill, to the point where many consider it warps the game in a very significant manner.

First of all, the damage of this Skill by itself is already great. It does not have the absurd Burst DPS of her second Skill (though it still beats Surtr by a little, somehow) but it is far more than enough to deal with most regular and elite enemies. The initial stun effect is pretty strong, and the aforementioned “micro-stuns” play an integral part in both keeping Texas the Omertosa alive and in boosting her overall damage.

These continuous and constant stuns will interrupt the attack animations of enemies trying to hit Texas the Omertosa, granting her a very good degree of safety if she starts blocking enemies that would usually spell doom for other Executor Specialists not focused on defense. Even if she’s not blocking anyone, these stuns will keep enemies within range of her sword rains for much longer, racking up damage constantly.

The way in which this Skill delivers its damage is also remarkably good. As Texas the Omertosa herself doesn’t receive any direct damage boosts, she can be deployed in relative safety and let her sword rain take effect as enemies walk through her range. Since this effect targets multiple enemies at once, it will also catch weaker mooks if Texas the Omertosa is deployed to handle riskier threats, meaning her recast effect will trigger consistently and quickly for that extra burst of 165% Arts damage, twice.

All in all this is the Skill that turns Texas the Omertosa into one of the most powerful Operators in the game, rivaling the likes of Młynar or Surtr.

So, should I pull for Texas the Omertosa? Is her approach to a DPS-oriented Fast Redeploy Operator as strong as people claim it is? Is she really powerful enough to displace Phantom? The answer is DEFINITELY YES. Yes, yes and nothing but yes. Texas the Omertosa is as much of a meta-defining Operator as Młynar, and combines powerful DPS and support tools on a very intuitive, easy to use and inherently powerful archetype for insanely powerful results. Texas the Omertosa, along with the future Kirin X Yato, create a duo of Executor Specialists so powerful that not automatically including them in your team is practically self-sabotage.