Karenina Scire: A Somewhat Comprehensive Analysis
Basic details
Name: Karenina - Scire
S rank Omniframe
Element/Class: Dark Tank
Weapon: Sledgehammer
Memory: Boone
Coming to global on Friday, 14 July
Don't roll on the 100-pity banner unless you're retarded
I heard I should skip her?
This is the whole reason I'm writing this post, to address in full what nina offers so that you can make the decision yourself.
We'll start with what her role is and how she plays, then move to why people say what people say, and end off with her auxiliary items.
Think for yourself, schmuck.
Role
Karenina is a Dark element Tank. As a Tank, her class passive lets her reduce enemies' Extra DMG Reduction just by damaging them. Take note of the wording. Extra DMG Reduction is a stat that is most commonly hit by your Tank units, which is the main reason you should always have a Tank in your Omniframe squads, even if they're not very damaging. Just by QTEing, they will apply this shred, also known as "tank shred".
Nina's QTE:
Karenina hammers the ground, dealing 300% Dark DMG to enemies in range and applying Chain Fusion (reduces the target’s Dark Resistance by 15%) for 12s.
So on QTE, nina will also shred the target's Dark resistance by 15%, ie, she makes your dark attacks hit harder. Dark shred is separate from tank shred.
Karenina also has a decent amount of damage and can function as a sub-dps. More on this later.
Playstyle
Karenina has red, yellow and blue orbs, and generally you don't give a shit what the orbs do.
Karenina's core passive Wandering Deep Space is where her kit is. I'll give the summary of the core, because the text is really long.
Press and hold basic attack, and nina will eat up to 2 sets of 3-pings. Once she eats what she can, she will do an upswing (Soaring Strike), leap into the air, and start spinning (Radiant Spin). You mash basic attack to spin harder. She slowly drops to the ground and bounces off once. Second time she hits the ground, your core's down. While spinning, a perfect dodge will give you more air time.
Also the spin will charge a number on your core gauge, up to 999. The higher the number, the more damage your ult will do.
Her ult is just damage with timestop, no fancy effects.
The entirety of her kit is built around eating orbs to power the upswing, spin2win, then ult. That is the entirety of her rotation.
Her 6* signature memories Boone emphasise that too.
Boone
2pc: Increases Dark DMG by 10%.
4pc: Doubles the base DMG boost for Star Shatter Horizon provided by Kinetic Energy. Doubles the base DMG multiplier of Soaring Strike and Radiant Spin.
First effect of the 4pc is to double the damage buff from your core (the 999) to your ult.
Second effect doubles the damage of the core upswing and the spin.
What people say
"S Karenina is an expensive sidegrade to S Tenebrion/SSS 21"
"Karenina needs SS3+weapon+CUB to be a dps"
Sound familiar?
Fundamentally, when people talk about meta or viability, they're talking the character's worth in Phantom Pain Cage and War Zone. Both of these, being content where timing is key, means that the key consideration is "doing the most dps in the shortest possible time".
With that in mind, let's start with the first claim.
"S Karenina is an expensive sidegrade to SS Tenebrion/SSS 21"
In what sense do people mean this?
They are primarily taking the view that at S rank, Karenina's sole purpose is to be a QTE slave. The only consideration for a QTE slave is how much shred she can inflict, because it is presumed that the bulk of damage dealt will be done by your main dps in a single window. This also has the presumption that the main dps either stays on the field most of the time or can finish the fight in that window. The QTE slave's own damage capabilities are thus considered irrelevant. In case you didn't know, the dark team's main dps is Luna (for now).
How much shred do the three dark tanks (Karenina, Kamui Tenebrion, 21) do on QTE?
S Karenina: 15%
S Karenina + weapon: 25%
S Tenebrion: 10%
SS Tenebrion (while in ult form): 25%
SSS 21: 10%
So in case you can't count, the hierarchy of shred is
S Karenina + weapon = SS Tenebrion (while in ult form)
S Karenina
S Tenebrion
SSS 21
You might ask, why do people say that nina is a sidegrade if baseline nina is better than baseline Kamui at shredding without needing one more rank?
It's because Kamui is a launch character (obtainable by the newbie S selector), and most non-newbies who have him probably have him built to SS by now.
Does that mean nina isn't worth it if I'm an f2p only going for S rank?
Not true.
If you're f2p (and not a day-1 player), you probably don't have any characters at SSS, only some characters at SS, and very few signature weapons. That means that for PPC, you won't be clearing the harder stages in one burst. You will be switching off your main dps when she runs out of orbs, which means Karenina's own damage is relevant too, not just her shred %.
"but Luna is a field-hogger, so I won't need to swap off her"
If you don't have Dead Line Timing, you may find that she runs out of gas after the first core rotation (and a ping or two more). Her core passive lets her stay on the field much longer than others, but she will still run out of gas. If the content you're doing is remotely challenging, the fight won't be anywhere near over before she's out of gas.
If you don't have Luna, Astral runs out of gas even faster.
Regardless, Karenina will have room to do her damage.
I have S Tenebrion, do I roll?
Personally, I'd still say yes becauses of how god-awful Kamui's moveset is. He needs to be in ult to do his stuff, and his orbs are so clunky that it often misses.
If you really like him, sure, you can keep him.
Broadly speaking, it's better to have more characters than fewer. PGR likes to have character-locking content.
I have SS Tenebrion, do I roll?
Maybe. It depends on what else you'll be using that 15k BC on. There is the anniversary 100% rateup at the same time, so you can choose whoever. This is probably the prime consideration of whether you should skip nina.
YMMV.
Alright, on to the next claim.
"Karenina needs SS3 (and weapon+CUB?) to be a dps"
SS3 refers to SS + 3 nodes in the rank up screen, which is 27 shards. The most efficient way to attain this is to roll for 2 copies of nina, then buy the last 27 shards from PPC store.
Starting from nina, Kuro starts having these intermediate rank-ups on new characters. It's a way of giving dolphins something to spend on, without having to go all the way to SSS.
Let's look at her rank-up abilities.
Rank passives
S5
Every set of 3-Pings consumed while charging gives Karenina an Anti Gravity shield equal to 10% of her maximum HP.
SS
Applies Chain Fusion (reduces the target’s Dark Resistance by 15%) for 3s upon dealing DMG. Rearranges Signal Orbs in the order of red, blue, yellow during charging mode.
SS is pretty great because is auto-rearranges her orbs to slot into her core. I'd say it's near-mandatory for ease of use.
SS3
Allows Karenina to consume an additional 3-Ping while charging (up to 3 sets of 3-Pings in total). Charging with 3 sets of 3-Pings increases the base DMG of Soaring Strike by 400% and base damage of Radiant Spin by 75%.
Star Shatter Horizon generates a Heat Field for 15s, dealing 75% Dark DMG one time to targets that enter the field and applying Chain Fusion for 10s.
Translation: core now eats 3 sets of 3-pings, and increases her core's upswing from 950% to 1350% base damage, and her spin damage from 10% to 85%. Her ult will also apply her dark shred automatically, boosting the damage.
It's a huge dps spike. That's why people say SS3 is """""mandatory"""""" for her to deal damage.
It's totally true that if you have a competitive streak, SS3 is where it's at.
But you know what? Even without SS3, you're still doing decent damage. It's not like without SS3 she does no damage. She'll still hit harder than Tenebrion and 21. And you're f2p or a low spender if this is a consideration at all, so that damage will be relevant for your gameplay.
She's already doing damage, it's just at SS3 she starts doing retardhueg damage. That's probably the most accurate way to think about it.
Auxiliary items
This is the section for people considering spending, but are unsure of how much they want.
Weapon comparison
Signature
Increases the effect of Chain Fusion applied by Karenina: Radiant Daybreak by 10%.
Karenina gains 1 Signature Move energy every time Radiant Spin is used.
Increases the Extra DMG Bonus of Soaring Strike by 20%.
Translation: Increases her dark shred to 25%, gives her a ton of ult energy while spinning (so that you can ult as soon as you hit 999), and increases the damage on her core upswing.
5* weapon
Dark DMG increases by 10%.
Signature weapon is a huge leap over the 5*, I'd totally recommend it.
CUB
The CUB is a sulking bunny. Its active launches enemies and renders them useless (if they're not super armoured).
Apart from that, the CUB has a unique passive for Karenina:
When Karenina: Scire is carrying Ming Yue and activates her Signature Move, she will hit Ming Yue to increase the Base DMG of her Signature Move by 100%; when Karenina: Radiant Daybreak enters the charging mode by holding the Basic Attack button, Ming Yue pulls in nearby enemies and activates Moonfall Zone to support Karenina.
Translation: Increases ult damage and gives an AOE succ + stasis when she's using her core.
Pretty decent, but I would prioritise her weapon first, then her CUB.
Whether you choose to go for SS3 first or her weapon is a matter of how much you're willing to spend. SS3 is certainly a stronger buff, but it costs another 15k BC, while weapon costs 7.5k BC (ish, since there's no true weapon guarantee and the rates are higher).
Conclusion
Karenina is overall pretty decent, with a simple playstyle. If you're reluctant to get her because she "needs" SS3 and you're not getting SS3 because you don't want to spend, meta is basically irrelevant to you anyway. The top of the leaderboard will be SSS and beyond, with 3 weapon resonances and SSS CUBs or more.
Think about what bracket of spending you want to compete in, and optimise based on that.
why didn't you mention her SSS?
because if you're happy to spend that much, you should just do it
tl;dr: increased damage, more tank shred, activates QTEs on core, auto-spins so you don't have to mash it
And if you're considering anything beyond SSS, you're a big enough spender not to worry about little things like these.
"I'm skipping Karenina for SS3 Bianca/SS3 Alpha/Bianca's skin/because I want to use 21/etc"
Sure. The point of this post is not precisely to convince you to roll for Karenina. The point of this post is for you to make a clearer and more informed decision.
Think for yourself, schmuck.