Arknights: In-depth Review - Vigil

Vigil is the future 6★ Tactician Vanguard welfare Operator from the Il Siracusano event. Vigil is our third welfare 6★ Operator, and this one focuses on unconventional interactions through his summon, with a particular focus on bursts of damage. Despite this, Vigil is often considered to be one of the worst Operators within his rarity, so what happened? Let’s find out!

Vigil can be obtained through the Il Siracusano event missions. You can claim Vigil and his Potentials by reading event stories unlocked after clearing stages IS-1, IS-3, IS-4, IS-ST-2, IS-8 and Lappland Saluzzo’s Story.

Before we continue to the review proper, a refresher on Vigil’s archetype is in order. Tactician Vanguards are ranged Vanguards capable of deploying a Tactical Point within their Marksman Sniper-like range. This Tactical Point can block one enemy at a time, and the Vanguard itself deals 150% damage against enemies blocked by the Tactical Point, but does not necessarily prioritize them.

Generally this section tends to be rather uninspiring due to how similar stats tend to be within the same archetype, but in this case these stats are very significant for the discussion of Vigil’s viability. First, the easy part: compared to Blacknight and Beanstalk, his stats are higher all across the board as would be expected.

Now, for the harder part: It is not Vigil’s stats themselves that make him mediocre, but his summon’s. Part of what makes Vigil so unique is the way his Tactical Point, the Wolf Pack, works, which I will discuss more in-depth in his Talents section, but it has a rather nasty effect in the way its stats are balanced as a result. 

When compared to Blacknight’s Slumberfoot or Beanstalk’s Metal Crab, the Wolf Pack has less than half the max HP of the former and 800 less than the latter, sitting at a very low 1100, less Attack than both and less Defense than the Metal Crab. His aforementioned Talent attempts to fix this issue, but in the end and without any additional way to protect themselves, the Wolf Pack ends up easily getting picked off by most remotely threatening enemies.

When Vigil is deployed, he can summon a Tactical Point within range consisting of two Wolf Shadows. A new Wolf Shadow generates every 25 seconds, up to a maximum of 3. For every Wolf Shadow in the pack, it gains 1 Block Count and its attacks deal 1 additional hit. When the pack’s HP reaches 0, a Wolf Shadow is removed instead of the entire pack.

This is the crux of Vigil’s niche and the reason why the stats of his Wolf Pack are balanced so strangely. Their stats are significantly lower than those of any other Tactician Vanguard’s Tactical Point because he is expected to have multiple stacks of the Wolf Shadows at all times. This, in turn, conflicts with the remarkably low individual HP of each Wolf Shadow and the lack of good ways for Vigil to generate more or keep those he already has safe.

This mechanic gives Vigil some unique niches, such as being able to deploy a summon that always takes at least 3 individual hits to kill or having a Block Count of 3, which is unheard of among Vanguards (and not good for him considering the low stats of his summons). These niches, however, are not particularly useful anywhere in the game, so Vigil ends up being relegated to performing in niches that no one cares about.

When either Vigil or the Wolf Pack attack an enemy blocked by the Wolf Pack, they ignore 175 (+25 at P5) Defense.

This Talent fits decently well into Vigil’s rapid-fire, low-Attack kind of DPS, and while it does help with weaker mooks, it doesn’t suddenly turn his performance into a particularly noteworthy one.

When automatically activated, Vigil immediately obtains 7 DP and generates one Wolf Shadow. This Skill has an SP cost of 21

This is the very simple equivalent of other Tactician Vanguard’s first Skills, whose purpose is to quickly regenerate their summon if need be.

In Vigil’s case, this Skill is a little more interesting due to how it interacts with the different states of the Wolf Pack, having slightly different effects depending on how many Wolf Shadows are left. If there are none, this Skill will immediately regenerate one and reset the timer of his first Talent back to 25, if there are 1 or 2 this Skill will generate one Wolf Shadow without refreshing the timer, and if all 3 present it will simply fully recover the HP of the Wolf Pack.

While this sort of Skill is usually not the way to go for this archetype (particularly for Blacknight), it’s the only way Vigil has to keep his Wolf Pack safe, so it can sometimes be used in conjunction with that minimum number of hits his summon can survive in order to give him some sort of pseudo-stall feature, despite the automatic trigger. Don’t expect much, though, it’s still Vigil.

When automatically activated, Vigil immediately obtains 2 DP. The next attack the Wolf Pack performs deals 200% damage and restores their HP by 20%, and grants 1 additional DP if this attack kills an enemy. This Skill has an SP cost of 5

This Skill has by far the highest potential DP/s generation out of all Vanguards in the game, even beating the classic Standard Bearer Vanguard powerhouses such as Elysium and Myrtle.

The keyword here, of course, is potential.

The devil truly is in the details in this Skill, and I’m not talking about how the extra DP-on-kill effect will fail to trigger on anything stronger than an early dog rush. The real downfall of this Skill is something the game doesn’t mention at all: until the Wolf Pack has spent this increased Attack charge, the Skill can never be cast again.

This means Vigil with this Skill equipped has a similar problem to Siege’s second Skill, where he needs to constantly have enemies blocked by the Wolf Pack in order to obtain any DP at all due to the incredibly short cycle of this Skill and lack of any sort of charge-holding method.

Even worse, the Wolf Pack really isn’t made for this sort of job. Their stats are not good enough to withstand tougher enemies, and the inability to be healed means that, no matter what, they will fall eventually. When all Wolf Shadows are gone, Vigil will become a sitting duck for the up to 25 seconds it takes for a new one to regenerate and consume the Attack charge so the Skill can be cast again, and standing at 1100 HP there’s no guarantee they will not die again immediately afterwards, or get picked off by any ranged enemy.

When activated, Vigil gradually obtains 12 DP and his attacks become triple hits. When he’s attacking enemies blocked by the Wolf Pack, both he and the Wolf Pack deal additional Arts damage equal to 50% of Vigil’s Attack. This Skill has an SP cost of 35, and a duration of 15 seconds.

This Skill acts as Vigil’s main form of “burst” damage, to quite mediocre results of 1.6k burst without the blocking effect. The damage itself may be enough to kill slightly tougher enemies if this secondary effect triggers and the Wolf Pack has the maximum number of 3 Wolf Shadows, but this also means they have to be blocking the enemy, which puts them at risk and will almost certainly cost you a couple of Wolf Shadows. With no way to regenerate them and without a quick enough burst to avoid this entirely, it’s back to waiting for them to respawn on their own again.

Following the constant struggles that Vigil has through his kit, this Skill is massively held back by the poor balancing attempt on the Wolf Pack’s stats, resulting in a Skill that attempts to imitate the quick-cycling burst of Flametail but ends up putting Vigil’s summons at jeopardy, all for a result that isn’t even that great and a horrid uptime of 30%.

So, should I build Vigil? Are his gimmicks unique enough to warrant a spot in my party? Is his DP generation worth the while? The answer is DEFINITELY NOT. As it stands, Vigil is easily one of the worst 6★ Operators in the game, with a kit that stumbles at practically every opportunity and accomplishes little to nothing even when we assume ideal circumstances. Despite this, you should probably still gather his Potential items, as they are completely free and don’t require any currency. 

Keep in mind, though, that the method for obtaining these is different from the usual token-purchasing of previous welfare Operators, so it remains to be seen if we will get a Distinction Certificate payload once the event reruns.