De Lacey
Archetype: Hashrate
Role: ST Healer/Buffer
Relative Power:★★★
Utility: ★★★★★
Special Niche: Hyper-buffing a melee carry
Usage Difficulty:
Usage Tips & In-Depth Analysis:
De Lacey is a new medic who released with the Divine Heresy event that runs from 12/28/2022 to 1/24/2023.
She actually heals for a lot, but only heals her tether target (and if the tethered target dies, De Lacey becomes literally useless since she won't re-tether). She is best thought of as a buffer & secondary healer, rather than a medic who can solo carry the healing (which Persica/Nanaka can do).
De Lacey's skillset essentially requires her to be linked to a meaty frontliner DPS (a warrior who both jumps to the enemy backline and can act as an offtank) to provide the most value. If you link her to a pure tank like Croque, then most of De Lacey's value is wasted and any other medic will outperform her. If you link her to a Sniper, the 40% buff can help your DPS, but the tether will never do damage and the healing is also wasted (since snipers don't tend to take a lot of damage).
While the upcoming warrior Hatsuchiri pairs very well with De Lacey, the bad news is that Hatsuchiri works just fine without De Lacey (and you'd often be better off without 2 medics anyway if using Hatsuchiri), so De Lacey can be thought of as a completely optional pickup. If you like her as a character or whale a lot, there's no harm rolling for her - she'll get an Arma Inscripta upgrade that makes her much more formidable in the future.
Evaluation
This stat buff is twice as powerful as Nanaka's (Nanaka buffs surrounding units' ATK/Hashrate by up to 20% at max rank, De Lacey buffs a single unit up to 40%). De Lacey is more suited for buffing a warrior, while Nanaka is more suited for buffing backline snipers.
The heal amount is similar to Nanaka's (120% of De Lacey's Hashrate every 2 seconds, vs. 60% of Nanaka's Hashrate every second), but only applies to her tether target. De Lacey can't heal anyone else (or even herself!)
Evaluation
De Lacey's auto skill has a 50% uptime with zero Skill Haste (6s duration, 6s charge), which is significantly better than Nanaka's (5s uptime, 12s charge)
While the damage looks passable on paper (600% Hashrate in an AoE), you will often need to manually teleport your warrior to the enemy backline for ideal coverage. Considering that Medic functions often proc based off their healing rather than damage, this skill's damage output really cannot compare to skills used by Snipers/Warriors with similar Hashrate ratios.
Evaluation
De Lacey's ultimate both damages enemies and shields allies, but isn't super great at either task. The shield does not stack (but will refresh to the max value), so unless you're taking lots of DoT damage, the shield amount will not feel significant since a lot of the shield ticks will be wasted.
Addendum
Aside from the fact that rolling for De Lacey means you're not pulling for Hatsuchiri (a much better unit that releases a week after De Lacey), there are lots of quirks with De Lacey's kit that may not be obvious at a first glance:
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Because she only tethers to units in the same row, on certain maps where the teleport tile is the only open tile on its row, you literally can't put your warrior on the tile and tether De Lacey to him/her at the same time.
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Even in a dream scenario where you teleport your warrior to the backline and the tether lines up perfectly to hit all enemies between De Lacey and your warrior, you still have the problem that the enemies are now attacking units that aren't your tether target, and De Lacey literally can't heal them (including herself!). Nanaka doesn't have this problem and provides a 20% AoE buff, so...
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De Lacey superarmors herself during her skill, which prevents the tornado skill from working (since it cannot be cast on units with superarmor), so if De Lacey gets targeted by a ninja wolf or a sniper shot, you have no way to save her without some sort of intervention like Nanaka's ultimate.
Arma Inscripta Upgrade:
De Lacey gets buffed tremendously with the future Arma Inscripta upgrade, which provides her with:
- 2 tether targets
- Passive buff increased from 40% to 70%
- The ability to heal an additional target she's not tethered to
The upgrade basically fixes all of her problems and a 70% stat buff to two units is massive in situations without function cards (the start of a stage, or challenge battles such as Black Hole without access to functions).
We don't know when her Arma Inscripta upgrade is coming, but for those of you who really like De Lacey, it's a very welcome change that you can look forward to.
