Arknights: Should You Pull? Standard Banner: Saria & Siege

The new Standard Banner features the following Operators:

Featured Operators:

Rarity	Operator
6★	Siege Saria
5★	Cliffheart Blue Poison Warfarin

• Based on previous patterns, it is likely but not 100% certain that the Operators for purchase in the Distinction store will be Siege and Blue Poison.
• 6★ Rate-Ups have a 50% chance of appearing when pulling a 6★
• 5★ Rate-Ups have a 50% chance of appearing when pulling a 5★

If you urgently need one of these Operators to fill a gaping hole in your team, then YES. Otherwise, NO.

This banner is actually pretty good on its own, but it’s coming out alongside the “Joint Operation” banner, which features several of the most broken Operators in Arknights. Your pulls are almost definitely better spent on the “Joint Operation” banner instead of this one.

Despite that, it may be worthwhile to do Headhunt x1 on this banner until you pull a 5★ or higher Operator, since one is guaranteed in the first 10 rolls.

Healing Defender

+ Decent durability (including innate RES) and can Block-3

+ Healing Skills are strong and reliable enough for Saria to function as a main healer

+ Restores SP to allies when she heals them (E2 Talent)

+ Very powerful debuffs attached to her S3

- No damage-mitigation Skills to resist burst damage

- S2 charges a little slowly, S3 charges very slowly

Skill-DP-Recovery Vanguard

+ Very reliable both offensively and defensively, especially for a Skill-DP-Recovery Vanguard

+ Excellent AoE damage with S2 while still generating DP

+ Can use S3 to Stun enemies and negate a lot of damage while still dishing it out

- S3 doesn’t generate any DP, so you’ll have to rely on other Vanguards if you use it

Pull Specialist

+ Pulls enemies, resulting in instant death if pulled into a hole, changing movement patterns, etc.

+ Skills can do ranged Arts/ true damage, so she hits harder than you might expect

+ Can be deployed on ground or ranged grids

- More expensive to level than lower-rarity Pull Specialists, but not significantly better at the core role responsibility

Anti-Air Sniper

+ Prioritizes aerial targets and has fast attack speed

+ Talent inflicts Arts damage over time on her targets, which adds up (especially at E2)

+ Insanely low cooldown on her S1, resulting in lots of damage to multiple targets very quickly

- Doesn’t reach her full power until her S1 hits maximum Skill Level

- Extremely fragile, even for a ranged unit

ST Medic

+ Offers damage amplification and SP generation for random allies within range

+ Randomness of her buffs can be mitigated with good positioning

- You have to position her perfectly or she loses a lot of efficiency

- If she keeps only one target in range to funnel her buffs toward them, she can’t heal other allies

Saria is the premier Healing Defender, able to do both halves of her job with great effectiveness. She’s one of the most commonly-used units in Arknights simply because she does so much for her team: she blocks, she heals, she generates SP, she debuffs enemies…. Once you have Saria, it’s just hard to imagine building your frontline without her.

I recommend pulling for Saria.

Siege is one of the few Skill-DP-Recovery Vanguards whose stats allow her to stand on the frontlines without assistance. Most Skill-DP-Recovery Vanguards have trouble with either killing enemies or surviving them. Not Siege; the crazy AoE damage of her spammable S2 allows her to keep most enemies under control, and she’ll even keep generating DP while she does it.

I recommend pulling for Siege.

Cliffheart is a free Pull Specialist Operator who is given to new players as part of the starter rewards. Since players already have her, it makes her less appealing as part of a banner. While she is better than 4* Pull Specialist Rope, the difference isn’t that major, which makes spending Orundum to pull her even less tempting.

I don’t recommend pulling for Cliffheart.

Blue Poison takes a while to hit her stride as an Anti-Air Sniper. At first, she’s made out of talcum powder and her Neurotoxin Talent ticks at enemies so slowly you’ll barely notice it. Then she hits E2 and maxes out her S1. Suddenly she’s double-attacking every third hit and chunking down multiple enemies with Arts damage every second, and her defenses have even upgraded to “toilet paper” level so she can survive being sneezed on. That’s when you realize it was all worth it.

I recommend pulling for Blue Poison if you need another Sniper. Just be warned that she’s going to take a lot of investment before she can pull her weight.

Warfarin is a ST Medic who takes the “single-target” idea to an extreme. Her Talent grants bonus SP to a random ally in range when an enemy dies close to her, and her S2 offers a large ATK boost to a random ally in range. The most reliable way to utilize these potent buffs is to place only one Operator within Warfarin’s range. However, if you do this, Warfarin is only going to be able to heal that one Operator. If your other Operators have enough healing to make up for this (i.e., Saria!) then that’s not a problem, but if you need Warfarin to heal more than one person, you may have to make some careful decisions about where to place her on a given battlefield.

She’s tricky to use, but I recommend pulling for Warfarin. The payoff is usually worth the headache.