Arknights: W in-depth gameplay analysis

The second limited unit in Arknights has arrived! As an Artilleryman Sniper, which is my 2nd favorite archetype, she's one of my favorite units. Her kit is also interesting, with excellent utility and top-tier AoE crowd control. In this article I will be attempting to fully analyze the entirety of her kit, so you can see how can W can fit into your squad, and if you would want her to be a part of your team.

AoE Snipers aren't recommended for general use for a variety of reasons. That does not mean they cannot be used for general use if you wish for it, and they certainly have their specific strengths. With long range, splash damage, high evasion, damage amplifier debuff, hard crowd control, consistent damage, and a big burst capable to wipe nearly everything, W entered the Arknights world as a playable operator (despite still being hostile to us, the Doctor).

Of all snipers, Artilleryman Sniper’s base ATK is one of the highest, losing only to Deadeye Snipers and Besieger Snipers. And because W is a 6* unit, she will have the highest ATK among the AoE Snipers. (Just ignore Shirayuki's talent.)

As with high base ATK units though, their Attack Rate is often is reduced to compensate: AoE Snipers attack once every 2.8 seconds, which is one of the slowest intervals in the game.

Despite that high ATK, their HP isn’t massively shafted to balance it out (which is a very common thing that HG does). Artilleryman Snipers’ HP is actually among the highest of the Snipers, but W’s HP isn’t necessarily notable among her kin. She loses out to Shirayuki, the 4* of her archetype, by 25HP at max. As for DEF, she’s average among the sniper, if not below average. In the grand scheme of things though, most ranged units don't have great defensive stats.

Now that’s for base stats only, W has something else to offer her even more survivability with her kit, which we will get into later on.

As with any AoE unit in this game, their Deploy Cost is higher than average, and for the Artilleryman, it’s extra bad because they get +2 DP per promotion. For W specifically, as she’s a 6* unit, the highest rarity in the game, she gets higher DP cost.

Starting at 25 Deploy Cost, she can get as high as 29, with those 2 extra DP per promotion. Being a limited 6* also means that getting her potential to reduce her DP cost is very difficult.

Artilleryman Sniper is one of the few archetypes that gain additional Deploy Cost at E2, but there are justifications for it, which we will get into it right now.

AoE Sniper has the third longest range in the game, losing to Blast Caster and Fortress Defender, and tied with Deadeye and Besieger Snipers, excluding the side range. They are also the only archetype so far to gain extra range at E2, which is one of the main reasons for the extra increased cost at E2.

The extra range at E2 is the more important part, at least in my eyes. The little range at E1 rarely comes into play, as it is rare that you would be able to deploy a range unit facing straight into an enemy lane (thanks Ifrit). Usually, the range tile will be on the side of the route, and so the range on the side matters more often than the middle one. If you can use that middle range at E1, it’s either an Ifrit spot (Aak put that medicine gun down), or you’re looking in perpendicular from the path and the extra range at E2 still help you cover the area much further and/or easier.

Deal AoE Physical damage.

Whenever they fire their projectile, at impact it explodes and deal damage in a certain radius around the impact location. This radius is 1 tile.

Available at E1 – After being deployed for 10 seconds, gain 40% Physical and Arts Evasion, and become less likely to be targeted by enemies.

At E2, upgraded to 60% Evasion.

The first talent is amazing for her survivability, and adding to all of her defensive stats earlier, which turns it from average to good. 40% is admittedly low enough to make the chance inconsistent, but 60% is more than enough. Additionally, W also reduces her target priority from the enemies, which means that they will only target her if she’s the only one in her range (or if she’s deployed last along other people with the same lower priority). So with the two of them combined, where W is less targeted by the enemies, AND also dodges 60% of the attack that do come her way, W becomes “tankier” than her stats suggest. Like this meme I made.

Now, it may sound like some stupid anti-synergy, since enemies will target her less, making the Evasion redundant. But fear not, as you can also place her closer to the enemies, take the hits as the enemy approaches, and then become safe once the enemies find your other allies. That way, it puts less strain on your frontline blocker. Or it can be used to solo a lane with less healing needed. 

Side note: Patriot's "further ally on ranged tile" target priority for his spear does not care about the priority change from W's talent, and is thus an amazing way to distract him. I did the math you know, 60% of the time, it works... every time.

It’s even more amazing when you consider the fact that, with W’s deploy cost, she’s more likely to be the second last or last unit deployed. Unless your vanguards can handle the enemy waves up until you have enough for both W and your dedicated lane blocker to shift the aggro from W to that blocker. Well, with W’s talent, now you don’t have to do that, as you can just plop W after anyone and she will still be the lowest priority target, just ensure that she lives for 10s first, and bam, problems solved.

You can’t play this talent quite like Firewatch’s S1 or April’s S2, as even though 60% Evasion is a huge number, it’s still ultimately a chance. You also can’t drop her directly down in the middle of a bunch of ranged enemies like April too, as her Talent needs 10s to activate, while Firewatch can just straight up avoid any attack if her skill is up. As said earlier, you can put her alone to solo a lane with minimal support though, like with someone who has global regen, or just time it in a way that she’ll end up with a little HP left, because it’s not like she has to stay at full health to deal full damage. The talent allows her to solo in a lane in that way, and you can practically save a healer slot when carefully calculated. (just reset the stage until you get the correct RNG roll lul)

However, if you abuse Artilleryman long range to its limit, their location is probably going to be away from the frontline by a large distance, a distance that not many enemies can reach without walking through the blockers, then the talent is admittedly not as useful. Of course not all maps are just 1 lane funneling type, so it doesn’t work like that all the time (it does work against large/global range enemy like Mortar or Faust though). Basically, all of that is just to say, this talent really covers most issues that come with her archetype.

The talent is also good at dodging everyone who is pulling for her though. cough

Available at E2: Stunned enemies in W’s range takes 18% extra physical damage.

Now the second talent is also amazing. It’s just like Sesa’s talent except more flexible/accessible. Any enemies that are stunned inside her range will take 118% of any physical damage during the stunned duration, and no spoilers intended, but W’s skills can cause quite a lot of stuns.

This talent is a Final Damage Multiplier, which is a multiplier that is calculated after all enemy’s DEF stat. Which sounds awful, given that the physical damage formula is (ATK – DEF) * Final Multiplier, which lessen the effect of the multiplication. The good news is all Final Damage Multiplier stack multiplicatively, i.e. if we have, say, E2 Pramanix talent working, that’s 118% * 130% = 153.4%. It can snowball fast, if we give Sesa’s talent with 14% as well, that’s 174.876% multiplier to the final damage. You’re not necessarily going to have all of that multipliers all the time, so we’re just having 18% for now. It’s still quite decent even if it’s affected by DEF though.

Considering that it’s a Final Damage Multiplier, it can increase the minimum damage from 5% to… 5.9% yay. But the more important thing is, this is a debuff to the enemies, which means all allies will benefit from W’s talent, making her a team player. Well, okay, just the physical damage allies, but the strong physical DPSes are more numerous than the arts ones. 

As spoiled above, W’s skills cause stuns herself, so this is where it gets even better. The stun is applied before the damage instance is dealt (just like any other debuff except for Suzuran's Fragile).

Which means, W's skills get the bonus damage by itself, so at E2 she basically has free bonus damage to all of her skills. It is still not a guaranteed damage buff always, as you need the enemies to be inside W’s range to achieve this, and those skills has quite a bit of an explosion radius.

Anyway, just know that this talent amplifies all of W’s skills if she hits enemies inside her range.

That was quite a lot for just 2 talents… now on to her skills.

Always available – Patience: When W is a trainer in the Training Room, increase mastery speed for all Sniper by 30%.

Upgraded at E2: if the training is for mastery 3, further increases the training speed by 65%.

Available at E2, separated skill – Insipid: When W is a trainer, increases morale consumption by 1 per hour when training a Sniper skill to mastery 3.

This is still a common misconception, but this type of base skill increases training speed, not reduces training time. Any unit in the training room already gains 5% training speed, so the number is actually 35%, which is about 25.92% time reduced.

At E2, the speed remains the same for any masteries except the third one, where it is boosted to 95% (+ that 5% base), but receive double morale consumption. You can complete mastery 3 in half the time (12 hours), by then she will lose exactly 24 morale without the Control Center morale reduction. She'll have about 3 morales left with a full CC though.

I shouldn’t diddle around much with base skills, so let’s continue.

Immediately launches a grenade dealing 310% AoE physical damage, stuns for 2.1 seconds,19 SP cost, 0 initial SP.

Auto Recovery, manual activation.

M3 increases the damage to 350%, stun duration to 3s, 16 SP cost.

This skill functions essentially like Meteorite S2. Upon clicking the skill, she will launch an attack with the stats mentioned above. This attack does not affect attack interval… in a way.

W (and Meteorite), performs an attack every 2.8s with no other ATK SPD buffs. Using W’s S1 or Meteorite’s S2 will not change that interval but will interrupt the normal attack that comes with those intervals. Let me put it this way, after they launch an attack, you can wait about 2.5s, use the skill, and W/Meteorite will immediately launch the next attack that comes at 2.8s. It will cancel any attack animation currently ongoing, however, so be careful with that. The clip below will hopefully clarify what I mean.

The explosion has a radius of 1.2 tiles.

Don’t.

Let me backtrack though. The skill is actually just fine, good even. You can think of it as if W is shooting out Projekt Red’s S2. A bit of a spoiler, but it is the only skill in W’s kit that is a near instant AoE stun.

The problem is, if you need this skill from W, something has already gone wrong. The delayed stun from S2 and S3 don’t matter most of the time. Her S2 has less stun duration, but also less cost, her S3 has longer cooldown, but is stronger, and so, the time where you need her S1, is when you need to deal with a clump of drones (will explain in S2 section) constantly. For that, a suggestion to replace W with a Marksman sniper is valid, and this is one of the few cases where Meteorite is better, since her S1 blast damage is just too good at not caring who’s in the radius and S2 is just as powerful (especially with crit).

If you are in IS#3, this skill is good for exactly what I just said: needing to deal with drones, and constantly. Because this mode is full of Hovering enemies. These Hovering enemies once stunned will be brought down to the ground and become much less threatening, making a consistent deHovering ability exceptionally powerful. M3 is probably not needed for just dehovering, but you do you. (But then again my suggestion of replacing with a Marksman is still valid, but limited to just Kroos2 and May.)

The other case is when the near instant damage+stun is needed, for example, something like Desolate Desert with the bunch of slugs. If you watch a couple Sniperknights gameplay, occasionally you will see W get used with S1. Again, that's because sometime they need the stun+damage combo fast, and not necessary more damage from her third skill and/or don't want to deal with the RNG of her second skill.

The next attack set a mine that last 2 minutes in a deployable tile within range; The mine detonates when an enemy is nearby, dealing 250% physical damage to all enemies in an area and stun them for 1.8 seconds, 10 SP cost, 0 initial SP.

Auto Recovery, auto activation.

M1 reduces the SP cost to 9, damage to 260%.

M3 reduces SP cost to 8, damage to 280%, stuns duration to 2.2 seconds.

The mine can only be placed inside W’s range, and only on deployable tile. If there are no enemies in range, W will place mine randomly on any valid tile. The mine can be “retreated”, if you don’t like the random targeting because it’s blocking an important spot for your other operator. Just click on the mine, then retreat it like any other operator. (It also works for Silence’s drone and Shamare’s doll).

The priority for placing mine goes as follow:

1. If there are multiple enemies in range, prioritize placing a mine directly below the enemy that has the least path left to blue box (normal priority).
2. If the tile the enemy is on are not deployable (banned, someone else is on it) and there are no one else in W's range, prioritize placing a mine in a random 4 adjacent tiles to them
3. If there are 2 enemies and one of them is on an unavailable tile, always prioritize placing mine directly below the enemy on an available tile, even if the other guy has less path to blue box.

In the CN wiki, they also said something about if there are 2 enemies in range that is the same priority (least path left to blue box), then it goes to the one with higher HP (if I’m reading the google translate correctly).

The skill converts W’s next attack into planting a mine, and so she will not perform her normal attack for that interval when the skill is up. It is important in a sense that, if the skill is done charging when W just finished her normal attack, she will have to wait for that 2.8s interval to pass before using it. It can be important at times, especially considering that…

The mine takes 1.5 seconds to explode after triggered. It’s a considerable amount of time in conjunction with that attack time earlier.

The triggering range is 1.35 tiles radius from the center. Incidentally, the explosion radius is also 1.35 tiles. This means 2 (or 2.5) things.

• The mines can trigger on someone who’s diagonally away from the tile but not too far. It’s not exactly like 8 tiles around itself like Waai Fu S2 or Phantom S3, but it’s close enough. Quick clip to see how stupid it can potentially be.

  

• That also means fast enemies can outrun the explosion as well. To outrun a mine in the longest route, they need to cover 2.7 tiles in 1.5 seconds. Only Sarkaz Lancer so far in this game is able to do so, and only when they gained max speed.

• But the more important part of fast enemies is that, if they are just slightly fast enough, they can run enough distance to reach a different mine and thus triggering more mines than needed in order to kill them. Especially if 2 mines are close together, as someone can just go up to the first one, trigger it, go to the second one, trigger that one as well, and died from the first mine because it was delayed. That means if your other DPS is not enough, you can easily waste a lot of mine after all those times spent stacking them up. The enemies only need to cover at maximum 1.35 tiles per 1.5s, that’s a movement rate of 0.9. Do you know how many enemies have at least 0.9 mvm spd? A lot. That of course doesn’t matter if there is no mine stacked and W is just using each one as it comes.

Another important part of the trigger radius is that, despite being confined in W’s range only, it can still be triggered by enemies outside her range. Effectively, with this skill, W has an extra layer of damaging range outside of her base range, which is nothing to scoff at, especially considering that she can use this skill with or without enemies.

Or, if you want to be cheeky, you can find maps where there are non-deployable tiles and point W to that area. This forces the mines to be in a few specific locations only, with some working from your other operators. That way you can guaranteed that there is always a mine in your selected location. And speaking of which, if there are no valid tile in her range at all and she gain a charge for the mine, she will just hold it forever, until a valid tile shows up (see more in the section below). That can be good or bad, depends on how you play your cards (no not the King of Heart card).

If you still remember what I said back in her first skill, you’d be asking why her S1 is used for drones. Well, it’s because the mines cannot hit drones. They cannot be triggered by drone, and they cannot damage drone if triggered by someone else. An explanation is that since the mine is on the ground, its explosion cannot hit drone. Which is a bad explanation, because Sesa’s S2 bombs also stay on the ground, and they hit drones just fine. Sesa is good confirmed???

Some miscellaneous infos about the mines:

• The mines actually have stats, apparently. None of the stats matter though, since it’s invincible, cannot be attacked, cannot block, and all damages are calculated using W’s ATK.

• You can see if a mine is triggered or not. When triggered it will start flashing red.

• If W is retreated, all of the mines instantly disappear, without any damage (same for the 2mins timer).

• Once a mine is out, it is instantly ready and can be instantly triggered, though with that delay.

Best for when you want to deal with constant wave of enemies that is a little bit stronger than trash mobs without paying your mind to W. Since, if they are just trash mobs, her auto attack couple with other operators would be more than enough to clean those. The stacking mines strat doesn’t work that well either given the waste usage against enemy’s speed, but it still works fine more often than not, and is a great way to make use of downtime between wave regardless.

The trigger/explosion radius can be used to extend her range, true, but it should not a strategy to be based around, while still worth it to remember when you’re trying to find space to put W. And speaking of space, since the mine need a deployable tile to work, sometimes you may find W not able to bunch up mines together due to the map’s layout, and so it is map-dependent. Technically her allies are also fighting for location as well, but as the commander, you should be able to plan around it.

Regarding the extend range through the mine’s explosion radius, if a mine is at the edge of W’s range, the enemy that trigger it has a chance to be damaged and stunned from outside of her range, and thus not receiving the damage amp from her E2 talent, so it won't be as strong as it could be.

This skill is usually compared to Meteorite’s S1, and in the general calculation, W wins out by a little bit (W slightly loses out in ideal conditions for Meteorite, which rarely happen). Technically, Meteorite is still better to deal with drones, as her massive splash doesn’t really care who she’s targeting. But, Meteorite S2 is her better skills so...

Remember what I said about holding a lane solo back in her first talent? This skill is the best to work with it. Well, when I'm talking about solo-ing a lane, it’s assumed that the enemies’ density will be light. Enemies will be appearing in a small amount over an amount of time. The evasion chance then is helpful for not needing much babysitting, maybe for even the whole run, and the fact that the lane has low density means that W will have all the time to stack up mine, and so the extra loss of mine per enemy doesn’t matter either.

For running alongside with other ops, do remember the limitation of deployable tile. To maximize the amount of available mine, it’s generally considered best to place W as forward as possible, as her long range will cover more area. In that case, her first talent will be fully used. As a ranged enemy approaching, they will attack her, since they see her first, where it will miss 60% of the time, but as those enemies move a little further, they will face other operators, by then they will stop attacking W due to the lower priority. It can spread the damage out to multiple operators, making them less likely to be in a low enough HP that they’ll die in the next hit.

If you want to use the long range to push W in the backline to save space for shorter range unit, this skill still works, but in a different way. If there’s no available tile in her range left, but a mine is in 1 of those tiles, you can chain stun the enemy that triggers that mine. Since W has to hold her charge until a space is available, once a mine is gone, W will instantly replace it. Effectively, you get double the stun duration (well it depends on her attack interval at the time, but still), and double damage, making it a pseudo burst damage of sort.

This skill gives consistent and automated damage for an operator that lacks said consistent damage (because of her innate stats). However, covering weaknesses is for the weak-minded fool! Okay calm down just a joke. But if you’re not familiar with Artilleryman Sniper, or any archetype with slow but powerful strike, consistent DPS skill is the way for you to start stepping into learning how to use them, and this skill gives you the most stun uptime for all of W’s skill (note: not stun duration, stun uptime).

Addition after Robin release: Robin (and Frost) is amazing at allow W to place S2 at where you want it to be, since you can just place her trap at any melee spot that you don't want W to put S2 on. Robin's traps don't consume deploy slots and can be deployed up to 10 traps so it's the best for this.

There are more issues with S2 than you’d expect, but nothing too major individually. And hey not like every other operator have no issues with their consistent skills. 

But if you want a little more explosive, you’ll come to love her third skill, which is intricated, interesting, and is what I’d recommend to master (for both mastering M3 and mastering at using), for a variety of reasons.

Places bombs on up to 3 enemies in range, prioritising highest HP; after a delay, the bombs detonates and each one deals 280% damage in an area and stuns for 4 seconds, 39 SP cost, 17 initial SP.

Auto Recovery, manual activation.

M1 target 4 enemies, 290% damage, 37 SP cost, 18 initial SP.

M3 deal 310% damage, stuns 5s, cost 33 SP, 20 initial SP.

This skill has the longest delay from skill activation to stun of all of W’s kit, about 3.5s from tapping the skill to when it explodes.

The bomb has an explosion radius of 1.2, just like her first skill.

Once the bombs latched, it will explode. If an enemy with a bomb attached die before 3s is up, the bomb immediately explodes and deals the damage and stun. It’s quite hard to actually force it where it matters, because it targets enemies with highest current HP, so one of the enemies has to have the 4th lowest HP among them, but also higher than all of the non-selected enemies, and to be easily killed from that HP amount too.

Regarding her E2 talent, since there is a 3 seconds delay, you’ll find that W may plant a bomb on an enemy, but then they walk out of her range before it goes off. Fast enemies are one thing, but it also applies for cases where W is facing perpendicular to the enemies’ path, where her width of range is only 3 tiles, unlike the amazing 5 tiles of length.

All of the damage stacks completely, if all 4 bombs are close together, all 4 affected enemies will take 4 times the damage (or 3 each before mastery). That is a yuuuge burst of damage that not many will survive. If someone survived, they will proceed to be stunned for a long duration afterward, and this skill has the longest stun of all of W’s skills. And, while stunned, they are taking more physical damage.

Unlike Firewatch, you can easily aim all bombs close together, because it doesn’t have the 1 bomb per tile restriction and enemy tends to clump together when blocked by your frontline. But like Firewatch, I will advocate that stacking all the bombs together is not the only way to use the skill. You can just as well drop this to a scatter group of enemies and expand the stun area massively, split up between 2 lanes (check the enemies’ HP first though) and basically cover 2 lanes at once. 

The bomb’s damage is actually determined on cast, not on hit! What that means is, if you are buffing W in order to get one of those orgasm-worthy explosions, you need to buff W first before using the skill. Then the bomb’s base damage is finally determined, and thus dealing that damage after the 3s delay. This may be why the bomb do not show any red number when exploded, unlike the other skills that also has a high multiplier, like Firewatch, Meteorite, Sesa… This video will make it clearer. Thanks to 777ucky (again) with the W nuke video that helped me realized this. I know, it won’t matter most of the time, since people seem to associate buffing with meme-ing, but it’s worth remember it if you are going for the buff strat.

Also, you can also see the effect of W’s E2 talent, as staying on the field will obliterate the Defender, while going off field will only kill the middle guy. Yes, if it’s calculated before DEF, then it’s going to be even more destructive, but as a team support debuff, this is probably the only way it would work with how HG code things.

As you can already guess from the description, the skill is best for annihilating a group of enemies close together. It can kill even the tankiest of enemies, or at the very least, badly wounded them. 

But I have also said that you shouldn’t feel like you can only use the skill that way. The cooldown is pretty long before masteries, true, so if you just want to delete big group of things, keep doing it. I usually do that too. I just also wouldn’t hesitate to use it for other cases where I really need it. Example cases like where you need this guy down faster, but he’s not with 3 other enemies, or even if he’s alone inside W’s range, you can still use this skill for a 4-5s stun after a 3s delay. (This might be another case where S1 is worth using.) 

When you have a scattered group of enemies and you need to deal with them all, S3 works better than S2. When you want to hit and stun someone that isn't currently being targeted by W herself, S3 also forces W to attack that guy, since it's a multi-target. The fact that there is a 3s delay also works for priming the nuke too. You can start using S3, then while the 3s countdown is going, either the enemies would start clumping themselves in front of your blocker (which is very easy to do), or you can start the pushing/slowing shenanigans.

Because of the manual activation, you can be in control of when you want to blow enemies up, as with the many cases to use this skill I have presented. A controllable burst of damage and long duration stun is just that amazing. What that really mean is, this skill is more flexible to use than people give it credit for. The only problem is the long cooldown before M3, and even at M3, it still has a long enough cooldown to force you to calculate a little bit. (maybe an E2 Ptilopsis will fix that.)

You can combo with other allies to make a huge explosion too, you don’t have to time it yourself with enemies’ waves. The best allies are one that can easily clump enemies together, like Magallan, Suzuran, FEater, Weedy S2 (not S3 because enemies will just die). DEF reduction allies also work, like Pramanix and Shamare. But the real best ally is Ash, who deals a massive amount of damage to stunned enemies. W amplifies damage to stunned enemies, and can added extra stun for Ash to unload her full magazine as well. (Ok another case where S1 would have been okay as well.)

ART–Ⲭ:

• Stage 1:

HP +130

ATK +54

Trait upgraded: Deal AoE Physical damage. Attack increases to 110% when attacking blocked enemies.

Analysis: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh why? They put what should have been "Sesa only" to a unit that don't really fight against blocked enemies to begin with. Feelsbadman. At least the +ATK is fairly good. To be fair, if you are clumping enemies with a blocker, it is a fairly noticeable boost. My bigger question is why not 115% like what DRE–Ⲭ or SIE–Ⲭ have?

• Stage 2 (stats boosts do not stack, only replace):

HP +180

ATK +68

Talent improved: Stunned enemies in W's range take +21% physical damage, gains 1 SP after killing an enemy. (new effect and number improved from 18%)

• Stage 3:

HP +210

ATK +78

Talent improved: Stunned enemies in W's range take +24% physical damage, gains 1 SP after killing an enemy.

Analysis: Just an okay improvement overall. The SP gain can also bypass SP lock as well, meaning she can use S2 and chain to another one. Definitely a good buff for that. But the issue is that don't happen as much as you'd think. The increased damage amplification is kinda decent too, though it's a bit too low for the cost.

–––––– 

ON CN ONLY FOR NOW (Lone Trail event)

ART–У 

• Stage 1:

HP +160

ATK +45

Trait upgraded: Deal AoE Physical damage. Attacks ignore 100 DEF.

• Stage 2: (stats boost don't stack, just replace)

HP +180

ATK +65

Talent upgrade: After remaining deployed for 10 seconds, obtains 60% Physical and Arts dodge, and is less likely to be targeted by enemies; When no damage is taken within 20 seconds, gradually increase ATK up to +10%; This bonus is reset upon taking damage. {new effects}

• Stage 3:

HP +200

ATK +85

Talent upgrade: After remaining deployed for 8 seconds, obtains 60% Physical and Arts dodge, and is less likely to be targeted by enemies; When no damage is taken within 16 seconds, gradually increase ATK up to +20%; This bonus is reset upon taking damage. {upgraded from deployed for 10 seconds; from no damage taken in 20 seconds; and +10% ATK}

Preliminary thoughts: Theoretically sounds great because it's essentially free +20% ATK after 16 seconds. W has the long range and the 60% evasion to keep the "no damage taken" clause up. I don't think it's that great, especially with that video by that guy.

W's biggest W is her stuns, her plethora of stuns, not damage. Having more stuns along with more damage amplifiers actually benefits the things that makes W... well, W. I did say that the SP boosts aren't great, yes, but something is better than nothing. The 110% attack multiplier (calculate before DEF) also gives more damage overall than 100 DEF ignore because her damage is high enough to begin with, even if the condition rarely presents. And, the 100 DEF ignore doesn't even benefit S2 and S3, as S2 use the mine as its own attack, not "W's attack", and S3 is sourceless damage (unimportant for this guide).

Therefore, before I get to actually try ART–У out, I will say for now to just stick with Ⲭ, though the economical choice is neither.

Both her second and third skill are strong in its right, and thus, you can use whatever skill fit your style more. As stated, the first mastery for both skills have decent boosts, so you can leave it at that and see for yourself which one you prefer more.

Each skill has their own way to be abused to fit what you need, but remember, W alone won’t the only damage operator in your squad, so you can just adjust the team, and expands your tools’ variety, rather than adjust how a tool is used just to fit what you need. I'd still recommend learning how to use S3, as it is easier to control it, even if S2 always prioritize enemies.

If you are questioning whether or not to invest in W or other lower rarity AoE Sniper, just go with W. A 6* investment is costly, but it’s also worth the price more. There will be cases where Shirayuki, Meteorite, or even Sesa can be better, but before those cases show up, you would already use W enough time before that, and as said, W’s skill is still flexible enough to partially fill whatever you’d need of those lower rarity AoE Snipers. Just don’t be like me and build all of them, well unless you want to.

Artilleryman Snipers might not be great for general usage, but you can clear the game using most things because it's still fairly easy. So if you want to start using these Artilleryman, but are afraid of the learning curve, don’t be. You can just slowly learn about them by adding them to your squad that you're already used to play with. And, as said in the first talent section, it can cover a major and typical weakness of these snipers, and coupled with so many stuns and effects, W is a great starting location to begin using an Artilleryman Sniper, because of how lenient her kit is to mistakes (less likely to die, team support effect, low enough cooldown skills, stuns after explosion, target high HP enemies).

For those that have her, how do you find her? I personally like her S3 as a big nuke and her S2 as a consistent stunners. A strong addition to the team because she can crowd control nicely, though crumbled fast against stun-immune enemies.

Anyway, this is my first time making a post on Gamepress format so it feels a bit weird (though you'll probably noticed that I have edited the post multiple times with the modules updates and such). Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.