This guide aims to teach the basics of handling the Valkyrie. The ability to tackle higher difficulties depend on your personal loadouts and acquired advantages at present.
Core Playstyle
[Combo Atks + Ultimate]
- Whatever you do, you want to get into her Ultimate as soon as possible and make it reusable often. Her Graduation stack is where the power lies, and significantly raises the damage output of her Combo Atk to very high levels.
Usage Difficulty
Medium to Difficult. Kallen may be elusive but she isn't outright strong with natural offense or defence. Her AoE attack patterns are also very small and linear, making it difficult to handle scattered enemies. Being able to maneuver her Combo Atk is very important in order to optimise the short boost to her damage output.
Equipment
- Note: Signature equipment are assigned by the game. They can all be subbed by more advanced pieces that you own.
Special Adjustments
Exclusive Signets
[Finale -> Nocturnal Tides] -> Expiation / Raven Eye -> Tragedy
Despite both of them carrying a Graduation stack trigger, the way they work is vastly different. Finale's stack works after the Ultimate is used. This empowers all her shuttle attacks until duration ends. Whereas for Nocturnal Tides, the effect is temporary and only for one chain of shuttle attacks whenever the stack is gained. While there are more effects on Nocturnal Tides, they are all useless without Finale to plant a stack that sticks around longer.
- Minor Note: In the Demo video, I realised I used Nocturnal Tides by mistake. But as proof of concept, it still works under the right difficulties, but would have been more potent had I gone with Finale instead.
Expiation follows next by providing, of all things, an unusual HP mechanic based on Graduation stacks. The Combo Atk bonus also requires the aforementioned setup first to even matter, so without the pairing, Expiation would be a useless signet on its own.
The last two Raven Eye and Tragedy empower the Ultimate cycle, so that you can keep the Graduation stacks active for as long as you have SP to keep up. Their main purpose besides gathering, is to support the effectiveness of her shuttle attacks by restoring Nachtsicht quicker and a near constant gather via Ultimate.
Using Thorn Crown
1) Finale + Nocturnal Tides
- This pairing gives you access to both Graduation stacks for maximum offensive power. You will however not be able to use the Decimation set effectively without Expiation's effect.
Signets
Priorities
Key Signets - Discipline, Setsuna
Sub Signets - Vicissitude
- Decimation (Only with Expiation signet)
Since her strategy is Ultimate-dependent, SP is needed to ensure she can re-enter Raven Form more than once.
Core Contributions
Vicissitude (II)
- Optional set if you feel confident about your evasive maneuvers. Kallen has no defenses besides being impervious during the shuttle attack.
Setsuna (II) - (Bonus: Freeze)
- Provides a handy shortcut into the shuttle attack, as well as time control over enemies.
Discipline (II)
- Source of Breach and also SP.
Decimation (I) / (II)
- This method requires Expiation to work, and should only be picked as a late set.
- Core (I) makes use of the temporary loss to fuel BloodBath. The retained HP is a safety net for Kallen. Because the HP loss is only temporary, the standard choice of signets will not work well. Hence, another suggested selection may include:
- Letter... (Dmg Reduction) - An insurance
- Desireless... (Enemies take more Dmg) - You're likely to take damage anyway
- God... (SP regen) - Significant SP gain due to large amount of HP loss
- When picking Enhanced signets, absolutely do not take "Burden...", as you will have no way to recover that lost HP.
Any Questions? Go ahead and write in the comments below too. Thanks for reading!
