Kirara, The Best of the "Worst"

[@BloopsArknights]

NOOOOO KIRARA DOES 6640 TOTAL DAMAGE DURING HER S2 NOT 6400!!!! I WAS A FOOL! AN EARLY VERSION OF THE SCRIPT HAS KIRARA'S ATK AS 800 NOT 830 CUZ I LACK POTS ON HER!!!! I FORGOT TO CHANGE IT!!!

[@Zinras]

A minor inaccuracy in a YT video? Your career is over.

[@chaomah7]

I'm sorry dude, it's over. You've gotta delete your channel now 😔.

[@Lendario0X]

It'souver

[@randx1075]

Damn, guess i unsub😢

[@MeltCat_Amy]

Kirara actually just broke my ability to play Arknights normally. It turns out that having access to a nigh-immortal mook shredder causes its own kind of brain rot. I love that stupid gamer god squid or whatever she is.

[@MeltCat_Amy]

Tho she should definitely have a Mod Y that gives her a taunt talent or something istg

[@mkah4776]

Rather than talent, just change her trait from reduced taunt to increased taunt.

[@MeltCat_Amy]

@@mkah4776 That'd be fine, but since Mizuki has already established the baseline effect of the ambusher Mod Y, we'd need to either change it for him as well (which is less than ideal) or just give Kirara the taunt via a talent change/addition.

[@sb18wlc]

Am I the only one who actually thinks Mod X is perfect for her. I love putting her on tight passages together with Mostima on a further range and have their ms down to very slow speeds while she chips their HP away while tanking every hit.

[@MeltCat_Amy]

​@sb18wlc gosh no, I love the mod X effect on her, I like to stack all four ambushers together (with mostima and/or ines) to just quicksand enemies down, and Kirara is still the target if deployed last. I'd just love a mod y with a taunt effect for her _as well_, so I can use her in more situations

[@thatonepersonnoonecaresabo3163]

Personally, I think that the reason why people dislike mixed damage skills isn't even about the matchups of the damage type itself, but rather because of specific operator perceptions that just get transferred over to other operators. Early into the games lifespan, there was a pretty notable skill that dealt mixed damage: Ch'ens S2. She was one of the first "panic button" operators back then, as she could cast her skill instantly upon deployment. And back in the day, it dealt quite a lot of damage. One of her more notable uses was during the original run of Code of Brawl, where she was capable of cheesing particular stages with the help of Liskarm. And something that played in her favor was that there weren't really many enemies that had good mixed defenses back then (enemies had either high defense or high res, rarely both). But as more enemies were introduced, it also introduced enemies with high defense and resistance. At that point, a major thing became clear: Dualstrike guards (as they were called by people at the time) are one of the worst classes for mixed damage skills! But why? Because the more enemies with mixed bulk came into the game, the solution to bulky enemies went from "use the damage type they are weak to" to "punching through their defenses with high physical DPH/ res shred". And that is relevant because swordmaster guards are one of the classes designed to have high multipliers with their skills that deal physical damage. What it meant in practice was that Ch'ens S3 started to gain relevance to deal with difficult enemies and even bosses (notable performance in Break the Ice for example), while her S2 started to hit for way less, because the loss of damage due to the presence of an arts damage instance becomes an increasingly bad tradeoff the higher the multipliers are on a skill. But then, Ch'en started to be seen as very outdated when new, better damage dealers were released, especially because of her on hit sp generation (it's basically just strictly worse than auto recovery in regular content). Thorns faced similar issues later down the line because while he had an arts dot, his DPH couldn't keep up that well which diminished his role as a laneholder quite a bit. What is the lesson that the community learned fron these "fall from graces"? Mixed damage on carries is bad! So mixed damage kind of got a bad rep. It is also the reason why most operators with mixed damage nowadays have either overtuned numbers (Kirin R Yato, Mlynar), try to fulfill more functions (Qiubai with her CC), or have their additional instance of damage be true (or elemental) damage (Mlynar, Hoederer, caster delta modules, etc.). And with the dominant strategy of punching through defenses, it is also the reason that meta centric players insist that all arts damage dealers should have res shred in their kit. To bring it back to Kirara, I believe she is a bit caught in the crossfire in this situation. Mixed/arts damage doesn't really diminish her in the role she is trying to fill and doesn't really hinder her damage as much as operators in other roles, but because of that association, she will always be labelled as "bad". I hope my reasoning is understandable and is relevant to the topic at hand. I wrote way more than I intended, but oh well. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk

[@daidai_kawaii]

It's not fair that Skadi doesn't have a huge slappy Orca tail, same for Specter and needing a shark tail. Good vid

[@Gaiou0331]

Literally a missed opportunity. Like the first time I walked into this game I saw Skadi and there was nothing that led me to believe she had any relation with sea life.

[@januszpolak254]

Ellen from ZZZ look more like Aegir than Abyssal Hunters because of that tbh.

[@shikatsu_ch]

@@Gaiou0331 i legit thought she was a sword fish because of her pointy hat

[@Gaiou0331]

@@shikatsu_ch Completely understandable. Abyssal Hunter designs are weird.

[@astrid2432]

She gets a orca in her skin Close enough

[@idontbelieveinmagic]

I think something that fundamentally separates Kirara from other bad operators is the reason that she's bad. Kirara is not bad because she's inadequate. in fact, she's absurdly strong at exactly what she wants to do. this is unlike many other bad operators which are bad at even what they want to do.

[@MeltCat_Amy]

This is a great point. Kirara excels at her niche role, it is simply the case that her niche role is viewed as being irrelevant. However, after forcing her into squads for a long time, it turns out you can get a ton of mileage out of an operator who does what she does.

[@TheSaraphic]

I think that description kind of fundamentally describes an ideal 5*. Hyper focused on doing something extremely well.

[@LNRspeaks]

On the reason she has AMB-X is that, HG forces all units of an archetype to get modules at the same time, so during the Gavial Summer event when AMB-X was avaliable, but AMB-Y was not avaliable until the Firelight Casts event, all Ambushers were forced to get it

[@frosted-flaky]

i don't see why they wouldn't just delay ambusher modules if they ever intended for kirara to get Y... it seems kind of phoned in tbh like they just wanted to give mizuki *something* for a second mod and used up all their good ideas on the first one. i think ascalon is getting X for her first mod as well

[@ikasushi1989]

as a lover of both octopuses and overlooked operators this makes me incredibly happy

[@mash_002]

Another interesting use for Kirara is tanking Talulah’s fireballs

[@mrfrog1794]

man i did this in my first ever clear of the stage, it was epic

[@hyperbladezplayz2004]

Ambushers in general are useful but I used Mizuki and durin for those

[@kray-kray0]

10:00 probably because the amb-y module wasn't created yet when they made the ambusher modules, and when they *did* add it with mizuki, it was already too late haha, i wish the non-six-stars could also get second modules though for stuff like this...i mean, both of fartooth's modules as well as two of ebenholz's modules boost one talent, so you can't use the excuse of "they only have one talent to buff!", they already buffed a talent twice XD that aside, good video! kirara is definitely underappreciated, and i feel the reason why is that lightning rods like her and verdant just, aren't very appealing to most players who could just as easily use defenders, phalanx casters, tacticians, gravel, etc. ranged tanking doesn't come up very often, and when it does, it's usually not too huge of a threat, so when operators like kirara are made specifically for that kind of thing, they get neglected, myself included 😅 enjoy your cute gamer girl! your outtake at the end was very funny LOL

[@BloopsArknights]

Yeah many comments have told me the same. I had no clue Kirara's module predated AMB-Y's existence.

[@GlebSeva]

10:46 You have adressed the actual gripe with her, but it is something that should still be said for people to understand While Ethan provides sticky damage and bind utility, Mizuki does what Mizuki does, Kirara is a good survivalist without AN EFFECT to go with. And that's OK 👍 Her module should get reworked tho 😐

[@awesomesauce980]

Kirara wins with gamer girl bath water. Anyway, this is giving me inspiration to make a team made up solely of OPs that people think are bad, since when laid out like this Kirara sounds pretty good. Probably helps that this is an audio/visual explanation and everyone know EN can't read.

[@theguywhichismessingaround]

Shitknights already exists It includes anyone that gamepress Wiki puts in B- and lowers tiers, afaik

[@IrvineTheHunter]

Playing off meta is quite fun, I soft banned my 30 strongest ops [a bit over 10%] because I got so used to using my "shitty" trust farm ops in grinding stages. That said it's a soft ban because I'm not doing EX/CM, IS 10+, CC without my best I just don't have the time/brain power. But ya Kia is pretty good I use her a lot to bait ranged where their is no off square for doll-keeper*, and her S2 can make up for my weak DPS in the end rush. *Dollkeepers have 4k~ health and "heal to full" after hitting 50% for 20 seconds, as pointed out in the video Kia effectively similar with slower healing, so unless you can keep doll keepers fully offline to take advantage of their double health bars they tend to really suffer under sustained fire. AAAALSo, because her health is EFFECTIVELY doubled, healing effectiveness is also doubled, global regen from Perfumer, Bards, or Angelina all greatly help her suitability if you don't get screwed by RNG. But ultimatly this is why I prefer using Saria 900~ def 15RES with 15% DR, over Hoshie 1000 def and 30% dodge, Hoshie is a blank room upgrade vs. physical and equal for arts but more RNG is always a headache.

[@razor_Xochi53]

I want to know how many time you had to resay "Complete gamer move" to get to where you werent laughing. Good video though, Kirara is an operator that Ive wanted to use but I typically dont use ambushers all that often outside of Ethan (mainly for Invitation to Wine)

[@BloopsArknights]

sadly, everything shown in the video was the entirety of my outtakes for that line lmao. glad you enjoyed the vid

[@byeguyssry]

Kirara is an operator that feels like she has a high floor but a low ceiling. Her design covers for every situation, but fails to focus on any one situation. She mixes both Physical and Arts damage to ensure that she doesn't get completely screwed over by high DEF or high RES enemies, but it also means that she fails to take full advantage of enemies with low DEF or low RES. She has insane survivability but she's selfish as it comes at the expense of your other operators taking the hit. Her S2 has pretty decent numbers but the downtime is bad; and the numbers aren't as good as it could be as part of the power budget is allocated to her tripling her healing, but this is kinda just overkill considering her lowered Taunt. Her S1 works better with her design, being able to "duel" stationary enemies, but faces a bigger problem of not excelling against either low DEF or low RES enemies. She feels like she should be a 4 star operator for new players rather than a 5 star one. Edit: Just thought of this, but Penance also does hybrid damage. But no one really complains because unlike Kirara, Penance S3 does insane Physical damage against even high defense enemies. But Penance S2 does suffer from this

[@teaktree4428]

the kirara video is reaaaaaaal

[@VCE4]

Also like her VA, as I originally thought she would have much higher pitch when I saw her, but she managed to surprise me. Gamers gaming.

[@BladeRabbit]

Kirara is pretty great for those mechanics that require someone to be standing on something randomly on the map. I got great use of her for the Degenbrecher event which had the furnaces that needed someone to keep them lit.

[@MeltCat_Amy]

The drawback to a lot of those "stand next to a thing" mechanics is that oftentimes they will count as "allies", and hence reduce her regen. (I don't remember if those furnaces were one of those cases, but I know that a lot of things that show up in integrated strategies will count, as the condition is the same as Superspeed, which is much more noticeable when it's not working).

[@kotyara85]

Kirara is actually one of my favourite characters (not waifu but like a daughter or a sister) and I use her in combat very often. Very glad to see a serious analysis of her kit, because I've had to deal with it quite a lot!

[@He4vener]

Complete gamer move

[@mrfrog1794]

here for the kiraraganda

[@QEDmirage]

this video got me to raise Kirara, and she's now part of my RA2 "kill this raid early" team. I use three ambushers, Kirara, Manticore, and Ascalon, and Kirara's effortless survivability puts her in the front of the team shredding all the enemy ranged units while the others are further back. AMB-X is useful to my approach because you really just want to extend The Slow Zone so long and wide that enemies spend a minute getting to your box. Really all the ambushers rule at RA2, True AOE is a godsend against waves of 120 mice, but being tanky is important for the huge piles of ranged units that get sent at you as well. Ascalon hasn't hit E2 but her healing is really only during S3, while I prefer to use her S2 for its slow zone and arts damage.

[@weaselprime8654]

I've gotten a lot of use out of Kirara within her specific niche of being off in some forsaken corner of the map mulching scrub enemies unsupported and baiting boss attacks that follow alternate targeting rules, but let's be honest with ourselves - her effective HP isn't twice her stated HP, it is exactly her stated HP. RNG dodges can be relied on to turn unreliable when you need them.

[@hijiriyukari]

I have a lot of fun with her with the synergy of trinkets at IS4

[@raimundopilotto2675]

Loved the Professor refference!!! A nice view on one of the most "controversial" operators, to say.

[@heffil0]

kirara graaaaah

[@imtoolazyforaprofilepic4961]

She's a 0 block unkillable mountain, nuff said. Useful in RA2, in fact i build her because of RA1.

[@eidoll965]

I've always liked Kirara, even enough to max her out, but I really understood using her in the first Harold stage, being able to tank harold blasts like nothing.

[@lebanana151]

If I could cope this hard with maths I could prove any operator good, good video I like it

[@GlebSeva]

4:14 solution. Skills disable her trait talent

[@GlebSeva]

Probably would've never happened

[@Nazuiko]

Well no, the 3.5% isnt enough to justify losing the dodge chance on its own, it just needs a +1 taunt, like Ascalon's +2 taunt on her s3

[@LiterallyLozyl]

As a Lowstep player I find many lower rarity providing stuff 6 stars cant, like Kirara in this vid, Heavyrain giving people camo, Erato having long range crowd control, Meteor having big def debuff, Totter revealing invis,... all while having AFK skills. This is a strategy game to me, not an action game requiring 400 cps

[@tanphamnhat969]

Ok, something lol appeared in my mind, the upcoming 6* ambusher Ascalon have a skill that make her taught the enemies to attack her. Why would they never do that in Kirara's design

[@Alphagammabeta]

still better and more fun to play than Tsukinogi :) WHAT!? Tsuki has a second skill!?!? Blasphemy! and yes, I do main Deer-knights, I like to suffer 💀💀

[@sandscribe7460]

Kirara my G

[@almondbread8255]

5:58 Why did eathan block the enemy ?

[@razor_Xochi53]

one of the buffs of the Little hand in the event that was shown has it to where your operators gain +1 block

[@AquaticIdealist]

The Handy from Stultifera Navis can get a +1 block buff, which applies to Ethan too

[@hollyleaf3941]

little hand buff that gives all operators +1 block, you see Kirara blocking earlier too

[@Dustfired]

And then Ascalon comes by and takes a dump on all current Ambushers. Except Ethan.

[@goukagrimm8773]

Seeing this honestly has shown me that- for some reason- I blindly listened to what other people said about specifically Kiara. Glad to know what she actually does now. I am curious what you'd have to say about Tsukinogi, I am convinced she's better than the community gives her credit for and whenever I have brought up good points for Tsukinogi being good, they get brushed off.

[@frosted-flaky]

dodge module might fit her design intent more, but imo the 20% slow is making up for something that should be in her base kit. like i don't need her to be manticore or ethan levels of stall (especially not with that cycle time) but her S2 really seems like it should slow i finally raised the gamer octopus to complete my non-AH aegir squad (as well as her gorgeous E2) and surprise surprise she actually kind of fills a necessary niche in that squad. like my other tanking options are akafuyu (who's great but can't be healed and also reliant on skill uptime) or... thorns S2 lol. initially i was pissed that her module only gives 0.5% healing in total but i guess it's technically 1.5% with S2... still, perfumer got 2% unconditional healing for the whole map :/ and personally i don't count module base stats as part of the talent upgrade since everyone gets stats. in the end i agree she doesn't deserve the flack she gets, at least her kit is unique and mostly coherent lol. also, i didn't actually realize she was an octopus until i looked at her E2 properly... kinda crazy that we technically still don't have a proper squid operator though

[@nawfalmisconi1287]

The video took a long time to make because of all this math. Trust.

[@zomfgroflmao1337]

As someone that uses her exclusively for her S1 in my auto on atk teams I actually appreciate that she got the slow module, it gives my team some much needed time on target and given Ch'en and Angelina her skill has very decent uptime.

[@burntrobot4850]

Hey, dude, i just want to say, that game is very fun now. Thank you

[@InfernusFlamesKaito]

Spoken like a true gamer

[@redgopnik2227]

ok but on the other hand silence drone

[@sharky9405]

The other day, while i was playing the integrated strategies, i was given a E2 Kirara to play with. I have her, but i didn't use her never because i prefer to play with low rarity operators, and i was atonished by the vertasitility and usefulness of her. (Just to clarify, i didn't picked any specialist related items so she had natural stats) Why is she considered has a bad operator?

[@theguywhichismessingaround]

Low damage and no CC Yeah, sure, she can deal damage to filler Mobs and what not, but she struggles to make a dent in any other enemy. Her lack of Crowd control also means she can not keep enemies in her range for longer to deal more pathetic damage to them if they have even a sliver of res. Also, she can't tank. Like, literally, she has lower taunt than other ops and no block, so she can only utilise her high survivability only in two scenarios - one, is when you want her to deal low damage to enemies that have just spawned from the red box or are stationary and ranged, or when an enemy has an ammo mechanic and you need them to waste those bullets on some random op. Do I dislike kirara? Yeah, absolutely, because while her niche of survivability is quite novel, she sucks to utilise it because all she can only do that one thing well, and that thing is not needed most of the Time. But did I build her? Also yes, because I love my gamer waifu. Tl;dr she is a one trick pony, and that trick is not needed most of the Time because she doesn't succeed in either of the two main things that an operator should be doing - she doesn't deal decent damage, and she can not stall properly.

[@carlossantana9645]

Deepcolor has been my assistant since I started playing, so of course I had to give a chance to her fellow octopus girl. While she's not garbage like tier lists want you to believe, she's very niche for a 5*. Having insane regen in an archetype that activelly avoids aggro is a weird design choice, but she can still help soften up mooks before they reach your ops so that's something. Being overall less useful than Ethan kinda hurts the perception people have of her too.

[@NikkiTheViolist]

tbh she's considered a bad operator because they look at her subclass and think "Oh so she's just like " then look at her kit and realize "But wait she can't do anything I'd use Ethan or the others for" and figure she's bad because of that. Plus, she's a 5-star and 5-stars have a reputation of being "Worse than 4-stars because more expensive and worse than 6-stars because not broken"

[@IrvineTheHunter]

First guy had it right, but also her and Ethen are a bit like Beanstalk vs. BK, Black knight has a niche with novel CC and alright DPS, stalling, and DP regen, but in the era of Mytrl you can you know, just bring out a better unit. Beanstalk works because she has has a bit of DP/damage and is a sudo/Gravel, Blackknight is a sudo/Kafka. Similarly Ethen is has DOT an amazing niche on it's own as well as bind one of the strongest CCs with 0 block and dodge meaning he can get thrown in the front lines and only has to worry about ranged enemies. Kia does the dollkeeper thing, a bit of stalling/phy/arts damage but while Ethen is a side grade to Skalters abilities, Kia is often a Kazimaru with an often redundant lo priority, and with mediocre burst. Like Kaz is ST but she'll hit twice with her S1 for more phys. than Kia TWICE for evey one of Kia's strikes, and on her S2 she's doing 2.1k arts burst and 1500x2 phys on that same faster attack cycle and when she dies she can till hit arial. It's not 1for 1 and might seem like a strech but when I need a stand alone for attacting damag and softening up enemies it's one of the two and Kaz has a much larger DPS niche. Even worse is when you consider Beeswax *exists* and just retaliates the roll of arts lightning rod with her regen/stat stick/strue AOE bust/summon combo.

[@selensewar]

Kiwawa.

[@TakeMyLunch]

I really want a windflit video. ;w;

[@minhtritranhuu748]

Aegir people design don't have animal feature like feline or lupo people tho? So I think that design still good for me. But Purestream is different case cuz she is a collab op.

[@NekousagiKorou]

i want versatile lightning rod with survivability i pick gravel

[@paancadeunwilled6656]

Dude, i've been playing this for atleast 3 yrs now and never knew kirara is the same archetype as ethan and manticore. Im really not adventurous arent i

[@saltytuna9259]

Ultimate unit

[@houston_co7769]

Purestream is supposed to be a dolphin??? I guess you learn something new everyday😂

[@Haz102938]

No she's actually a porpoise.

[@yukinohazuki9918]

Best of the Worst....That means she's better than Ho'olyehakkaka.

[@Nazuiko]

to be fair, thats not that difficult. Amiya is better than Ho'olheyak

[@IrvineTheHunter]

@@Nazuiko Their S2 function differently, Aimya needs something to hit/is PAINFULLY auto, and has no CC, but getting her was the firs time in a while Amiya seemed good.

[@NoName-dm1vs]

​@@IrvineTheHuntersad that amiya s2 damage is nice. But that fuckass stunt and auto hinder it a lot. I still love her sp talent and module tho

[@ScroteGoblin]

Who was this based operator at 5:30 though 🤔

[@HaniK9]

Hoederer S1M3

[@kael070]

i always thought kirara was male

[@calibriumm4604]

Hi bloop, do you have a discord server?

[@BloopsArknights]

used to. its privated atm

[@stripedgillette3580]

Funni script

[@moment5439]

Nobody realizes that Kirara is secretly meta, while she actually is better then Surtr!

[@maihung5512]

10:05 probably because AMB Ƴ.. didn't exist back then

[@luminproductions3927]

Complete gamer move

[@abstract7272]

Complete gamer move