Arknights: In-depth Review - Kafka

Kafka is the future 5★ Fast-Redeploy Specialist featured in the Jail Tiger Unchained banner, which will run alongside the Mansfield Break event, specializing in Sleep and Arts support. Can such a unit shine when competing with her fellow 5★ Projekt Red?

Well, yes! If 2★ Yato has taught us anything it’s that no fast(ish)-redeploy will ever be useless. Yet, Kafka falls into a strange niche, as her kit makes her completely useless at baiting moves away from other operators. Instead, the main appeal of her kit revolves around gaining long-lasting control of the battlefield, mainly through usage of her first skill.

Even then, the issue of only a single operator (that operator being Blemishine) being able to interact with slumbering enemies remains present. Is Kafka finally the unit to make Sleep a viable status condition alongside Projekt Red? The answer is a solid… kinda. Let’s find out by looking deeper into her kit.

In regards to stats, Kafka is a little bit strange. She boasts a higher base HP than Gravel, the highest out of all fast-redeploys, but has no realistic way to use it. Same issue applies to her Defense, Resistance and even Block Count. Due to her talent (which we’ll review in a short while) Kafka’s only relevant stats are her Cost, Attack Interval (Which are the same as every other 5★ fast-redeploy, 9 and 0.9) and her Attack, which at 525 is only higher than Gravel’s.

So far, the odds seem to be stacked against her, but when things start to get interesting is with her Talent. Let’s take a look at it.

Kafka’s single talent is no doubt a really weird one. At E2, when her skill is active, Kafka becomes Invisible and her block count is reduced to zero, meaning she becomes untouchable by anything but splash damage and environmental hazards. Of course, like all other fast-redeploys, her skills immediately trigger upon being placed on the field, meaning that she will immediately receive this effect. If you have been paying attention, this is part of what makes Kafka such a strange unit, and most of her stats (including, weirdly, her Max HP trust bonus) practically useless.

Not all of it is that complex, though. For as long as her skill is active, she will also receive a 15% Attack buff. If played correctly, this means Kafka actually has ever so slightly less Attack than Projekt Red under these conditions! Do her skills get any use out of this?

A good point of reference for this unorthodox skill are Projekt Red and Waai Fu’s Skill 2. Much like those two, this instant skill affects enemies in a range around the unit (in this case, exactly the same cross-shaped area as Projekt Red) and immediately applies a status effect to all the enemies within the area of effect. In Kafka’s case, this means five seconds of that ever-elusive sleep, at the end of which she will deal 450% of her attack damage (after applying the 15% buff from her talent) as Arts Damage to all nearby enemies, regardless of whether or not they were slumbered. On paper, this sounds great: the damage burst beats Projekt Red’s Skill 2, even. In practice, however, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Kafka’s burst comes after a 5 second delay, and she must remain deployed for this duration in order to be able to attack.

In the end, Kafka’s first skill spins all around those invariable five seconds of Sleep. Even if she is retreated, those enemies will remain asleep for two more seconds than a S2M3 Projekt Red would have been able to stun them. And that’s not all, since not all enemies can be stunned, but all can indeed be put to sleep. This is specially of note for boss-type enemies.

And this opens yet again another conundrum with this weird unit. If what puts her apart from other units is her 5 seconds of sleep, present even at Skill Level 1, should you even raise her at all? Wouldn’t she be better kept at E0, where her cost is even cheaper than that of an E1 Gravel? There is, sadly, no correct answer to this. There has been no endgame on any server tight enough for those two deployment points you’d be saving to even remotely matter, but there’s no guarantee it won’t happen in the future. If you ever intend to use Kafka as a bona-fide combat operator, whether to raise her or not is completely up to you.

As it was to be expected from Kafka, her second skill only gets a tiny bit simpler. This time, her weirdness comes from her new attack range: two tiles in front of her. No more, no less, and not even the tile she’s standing on.

Upon deployment, Kafka will deal 400% of her Attack as Arts damage to all enemies in the target tile, then proceed to attack whichever enemies remain with Arts at her regular attack interval for the 15 remaining seconds of her skill. And that’s it, just a questionably-ranged arts beatstick with 603 Attack with a nice enough burst at the very start.

If you couldn’t tell by now, Skill 2 is not Kafka’s selling point. While it is undoubtedly strong, her unique range makes it harder for her to get any hits in and makes her very reliant on how the stage is set up to even have the option to do anything, let alone if not supported by someone who blocks enemies. At that point, why not use a unit that doesn’t need to retreat every 15 seconds, such as a ranged guard? Bizarre Scissors will remain an extremely niche skill only really usable against long ranged enemies you can’t even get close to without suffering the consequences, as she’ll still remain invisible due to her talent. Who knows, maybe she can shine on that one Acid Slug map in Contingency Contract?

So, should I pull for Kafka? Do her unique skills balance her unfortunate shortcomings? Do I even want another fast redeploy if I already have Projekt Red maxed? The answer is, in a nutshell, YES. Kafka’s powerful yet unorthodox kit gives her a unique niche that no other unit can really step into. Even if you can’t use her in every single way you would a traditional fast-redeploy, she’s still worth at the very least looking into. Whether you decide to skip or use her, and in the case of the later, if you even want to level her up, is all up to you.