Arknights: In-depth Review - Totter

Totter is the future 4★ Besieger Sniper featured in the Bearing and Sparks banner, which will run around the release of Episode 11. As a Besieger Sniper, Totter focuses on high attack values to pierce through the defenses of bulkier targets, utilizing his unconventional range to target enemies in awkward positions from relative safety, and even being able to target invisible ones. Can he break through the stigma of mediocrity that is often associated with this archetype? Let’s find out!

Much like Toddifons in their shared archetype, Totter’s kit is primarily designed around a high damage-per-hit boosted further by large attack scaling values to further chunk down any enemy that comes into his range. Additionally, he also has a special focus against enemies with Stealth, though his way of interacting with those is rather unique and will be discussed further in his Talents section.

It is also important to keep in mind that the archetypal trait of Besieger Snipers has them naturally target the heaviest enemy within range, which leads to them prioritizing the bulkier enemies (which tend to have higher DEF), that their huge Attack stats can actually deal with.

Other than these two aspects, Totter’s kit also offers his unique archetypal range, which gives him both a serious blindspot right in front and a rather extensive range further forwards.

Due to his archetype, Totter boosts a rather impressive Attack stat, easily beating most other Sniper archetypes even at higher rarities, with the exception of Deadeye Snipers. Other than this, his stats are unremarkable as he shares the characteristically low defensive stats of the class he belongs to, along with a long Attack Interval (2.4 seconds per attack in his case) that high-attack Snipers tend to have.

Totter is able to target enemies with Stealth, and his Attack increases by 17% (+3% at P5) when there are Stealthed enemies within range.

This Talent gives Totter an interesting niche due to the unique way it interacts with the Stealth mechanics. All other Operators that can interact with invisible enemies do so by directly removing it (most often via the use of a passive Talent or effect), but Totter is the only Operator in the game able to target enemies with Stealth without the prior removal of the effect.

Due to his large range, this gives Totter the ability to snipe away more “gimmicky” enemies in locations where effects like SilverAsh’s Eagle Eyes Talent may not be able to reach, sometimes bypassing the map-specific gimmicks and stage flows these enemies may offer.

Regardless, while this looks like an interesting niche on paper, in practice these specific situations are few and far between, given that Stealth enemies are already not particularly common, and when they are it’s often better to either remove the effect via the intended blocking or the additional effects of Operators such as SilverAsh or Horn.

The extra Attack boost is quite decent on Totter’s already inflated stats and benefits from simply having an Stealthed enemy within range and not specifically as a target, but keeping this up is a herculean task that heavily depends on the map and requires you to warp your strategy around Totter significantly. He needs to both be in a map where viable positions let him target Stealthed enemies, and where simpler, more direct methods of removing this effect aren’t more optimal. Totter struggles to find maps where both of these requirements are applicable outside of niche playstyles like Sniper only, as he will also lose the Attack boost from this Talent if anything removes the Stealth effect from the enemy.

The next attack that Totter fires off after this Skill automatically activates deals 220% damage and can target one additional enemy. This is an offensive SP recovery Skill with a cost of 3 SP.

This is Totter’s primary option for consistent DPS and for taking care of multiple enemies at a time (even though his multi-target performance is not incredible, don’t be fooled here). The non-conditional attack scale is quite decent coming off his Attack stat, and helps Totter both chunk down the heavier, tankier targets he prioritizes and pick off any stragglers. His aforementioned Attack values will let him put a dent or outright kill these secondary targets if they aren’t also heavy targets, which is a pretty decent bonus if you are having him snipe long lanes from a safe distance.

Overall this Skill is not flashy, but it provides Totter with a very decent, albeit basic,  average DPS

When this Skill is activated, Totter’s Attack Speed increases by 50 (reducing his Attack Interval to 1.6 seconds per attack) and he becomes able to target two enemies at a time. Additionally, if there’s only one enemy within range his attacks deal 225% damage. This Skill has an uptime of 30 seconds and an SP cost of 45.

This Skill may look good at a first glance, but it has some pitfalls that make its optimal usage really weird. The Attack Speed, target count and damage increase are all really good in a vacuum, but the problem arises from the conditional nature of the attack scale effect.

If Totter is making use of the dual targeting capabilities of this Skill, he doesn’t get any sort of direct damage boost, making both options completely exclusive. What is worse, the severe overlap of this effect with his first Skill (which can both dual target and get a damage boost) makes this one rather suboptimal to use in occasions where the target you want to burst isn’t completely alone within Totter’s range, which is not an easy task considering how huge of an area that is.

The high Attack stat that Totter has still lets him utilize this Skill in certain scenarios, but it is only really the better option in his kit if you want him to be taking out weaker mooks for the majority of the stage. Because of this and how stages usually flow, an uptime of just 42% doesn’t even cut it when the downtime is 40 whole seconds.

Overall this Skill is massively neutered by the conditionality of the attack scale, making it the worse option for Totter in most occasions even if it can still be used effectively sometimes.

So, should I pull for Totter? Can his massive Attack stat be put to good use to down heavier enemies? Is he worth the extra planning required for his unusual archetype? The answer is PROBABLY NOT. While Totter carries some unique features (particularly in how he deals with the Stealth effect), the situations where he will be an optimal pick are few and far between for the average player. Even for the anti-stealth niche that he has, advanced players are likely to prefer direct Stealth removal options, while newer ones will tend toward simpler strategies like just blocking the relevant enemy instead of investing into a very niche Operator.