Costume Guide – Pool Party Angelica

Official Patch Notes

Potential upgrade details

Overview

Pros:

• Very high magic damage that delivers reliable lethal damage with critical hits.
• High base HP with 75% damage reduction skill.
• High base crit damage (100%, most units have 50%).
• Easy to hit multiple units with “T shape” AOE.

Cons:

• SP cost is expensive (5 SP base costume, 4 SP at +3 onwards)
• HP based damage means she is weak against units with hp shields, damage reduction and high magic resist.
• Does not benefit from buffers that boost M.ATK.

Angelica for PVE

Angelica is one of the most universally useful characters in PVE, because her damage scales off enemy HP. However, for damage calculation purposes, "Max HP" is capped at 20,000HP. This hidden limitation is not clearly explained in the skill description, but it applies for all skills that are calculated based off Max HP (including Angelica's other costumes).

Therefore, against enemies with 20,000HP or more, Angelica deals damage as follows (including chain damage, but before crit):

As you can see, without crit, Angelica cannot deal lethal damage. However Angelica's true power lies in her crit damage. Since her skills do not scale off M.ATK, and crit rate can be buffed easily (e.g. Arines + Diana), in PVE she can focus all of her gearing into boosting crit damage. Unlike most units that have a base crit damage of 50%, Angelica's base crit damage is 100%. She also has a unique UR weapon which increases her crit damage by 90% on the bonus stat. This means that with full UR gears, it's not difficult at all to build Angelica to have maximum crit damage (capped at 700%).

Especially for newer and intermediate players, a reasonably well-equipped Angelica will carry you through a lot of tough PVE content. She bulldozes both mobs and bosses in normal and hard mode, and she can be your main damage dealer to break through a lot of the early-mid game levels of the Evil Castle towers. Her "T-shape" AOE comes in handy often to take out 3 or 4 units at a time. Even if you miss the crits on her attacks, since its PVE, you can always retry.

Although Angelica is very strong, her main shortcoming is that she does not benefit from ATK/M.ATK buffs. This means that, after you get access to the strongest buffers at +5 (e.g. AOTU.Diana, H.Lathel, GC.Rafina etc), Angelica starts to taper off in the very late game compared to the very hardest hitting costumes that are fully buffed.

Angelica for PVP

Angelica is a great all-rounder for PVP, because she both tanks and deals great damage (especially when paired with a crit rate buffer like B.Helena or RH.Rou). At lower ranks, she's quite effective when used after your first turn. However, in the higher ranks, the current competitive meta is so streamlined that there is not a lot of room for an all-rounder like Angelica to shine.

Firstly, Angelica is weak against Energy Guards (HP shields), damage reduction and high magic resist. Sadly for Angelica, these attributes are commonly seen in high ranking PVP. RH.Rou, CI.Granhildr and AQ.Lecliss all generate big Energy Guards. 90%-110% magic resist gear builds are also extremely common.

Secondly, as a pseudo-tank, Angelica is pretty tough with her high HP and 75% damage reduction. Sadly for Angelica, she cannot tank against many of the most popular PVP attackers. Eclipse and Eleaneer are both dark-types, which deal bonus damage against Angelica's light-type. Justia also easily cuts through Angelica's damage reduction with her fixed damage.

Thirdly, PP.Angelica's cost is really high at 4 SP, which crowds out the rest of your team. A 4 SP skill must have high impact to justify the cost, but for the reasons above, the impact is not enough.

Conclusion

PP.Angelica is getting a rerun because she is one of the most universally useful PVE costumes. Even with power creep on newer units, she remains a great costume, but she's no longer as dominant in PVE as she once was. If you missed the opportunity to get her to +5 on the previous banner, now would be a good chance. If you don't have her already, you might want to skip and save.