Banner Guide – Acting Archbishop Michaela

Exclusive Gear

Official Patch notes

Overview

PVE	PVP	Fiend Hunt/Guild Raid
A	A	S
Last Night	Tower of Pride	Tower of Salvation
C	S	B

Damage analysis

Michaela's theme is "power for a price": her costumes all deal very strong damage with good AOE, but they also come with punishing drawbacks.

Her Queen of Signatures costume deals 3x390% (1,170% before chains, one of the highest in the game), but at a cost of draining 6 SP from your SP gauge. Her Beachside Justice costume boosts her M.ATK by 200% and deals 400%, but at a cost of 80% of her HP.

We now have her base costume, Acting Archbishop, which at +5 full potential gives a huge 500% crit damage buff for 6 turns and deals 200% damage. Since the buff lasts for 6 turns, it greatly improves the damage of Michaela's other costumes on subsequent turns.

Crit damage buffs are interesting because the magnitude of their effect depends on how much crit damage you have before buffing. For example:

• If you have already geared Michaela to have 400% crit damage (i.e. she hits for 5x normal damage on crit), then a +500% crit damage buff effectively doubles her damage (because she goes from 5x to 10x damage on crit).
• On the other hand, if you have Michaela geared to 600% crit damage (i.e. she hits for 7x normal damage on crit), then a +500% crit damage buff makes her go from 7x to 12x damage on crit, which equates to an improvement in damage of only around 70%.

In other words, the lower gear crit damage from gears, the more power you will get out of AA.Michaela's crit damage buff. It is therefore recommended to gear Michaela with a M.ATK/M.ATK% weapon and to prefer M.ATK or M.ATK% substats over C.DMG substats.

Michaela for PVE

Michaela is incredibly strong for late game content against dark bosses. However, piloting her in late game content takes both skill and a mature costume roster, because you constantly need to be able to work around Michaela's negative skill effects.

Firstly, you need to have both of Michaela's other costumes (BJ and QOS) to reach her full potential. AA.Michaela is not bad on its own, but it has a long cooldown, and its main role is to pump up the damage of Michaela's other costumes.

Secondly, Michaela will usually need to be paired with Diana for late game content. After Michaela burns off her own DEF and M.RES from her Acting Archbishop skill, AD.Diana's energy guard is one of the few skills that can keep Michaela alive against late game bosses. Refi's damage reduction and energy guard skills will not be enough.

Thirdly, Michaela will usually need to be paired with Helena. Not only does B.Helena boost M.ATK, B.Helena's heal helps you get around BJ.Michaela's 80% HP loss, and TI.Helena helps you get around QOS.Michaela's SP loss (just make sure you play TI.Helena after QOS.Michaela).

Michaela is exceptional for dark fiend hunts and guild raids. She is also great for Tower of Pride, especially Floor 2 which has dark enemies with high DEF. In other PVE modes she's not bad as a 3x3 AOE attacker, but not particularly special given that there are many other characters now with strong 3x3 AOE attacks.

Michaela for PVP

Thanks to her QOS costume, Michaela is already one of the best characters for PVP attack teams. QOS.Michaela is a very strong attack team opener due to her long range, cheap 2 SP cost and high damage. When buffed by B.Helena and Zenith, QOS.Michaela has enough damage to take out a fully geared Granhildr.

AA.Michaela makes Michaela even stronger for PVP. AA.Michaela is only the second costume in the game to have a 2 SP 3x3 AOE attack (the other one being Blood Glutton Justia).

One way to use AA.Michaela is as a Turn 3 followup to Turn 1 QOS.Michaela. Another way to use AA.Michaela is on Turn 1 after Schera for a big AOE nuke: e.g. B.Helena (1 SP) + PP.Schera (2 SP) + AA.Michaela (2 SP).

AA.Michaela is not very good for defense teams though, because she relies heavily on B.Helena (or RH.Rou) to ensure that she will crit. In an attack team, you can be certain that you will open with B.Helena, but on defense teams, there's no guarantee that B.Helena would survive the first turn. Without crit, AA.Michaela's damage is extremely low.

AA.Michaela's -90% DEF/M.RES penalty will of course hurt, but it actually doesn't make a huge difference for PVP. Michaela is so squishy that she already dies from most attacks anyway, with or without the resistance penalty. The key is to keep her out of harms way for as long as you can. Gearing for HP/HP% may slightly improve her survivability.

Exclusive Gear

Michaela's exclusive weapon gives her an extra +67 M.ATK. This is nice to have to maximize her damage, but not needed to make good use of her.

Unless you are aiming for ranked high scores, pulling on her exclusive weapon is not necessary. Note also that you will have another opportunity to get her exclusive weapon when her other costumes have rerun banners.

Conclusion

AA.Michaela enables you to reach astronomical damage if you have Michaela's other costumes AND a roster of good supporters to compensate for her penalty effects. Her main role is to apply a huge 500% crit buff that endures for 6 turns, which greatly increases her damage output over the next 2 attacks.

If you don't have Michaela's other costumes, AA.Michaela is not very good on her own due to her high cooldown, unremarkable damage and very punishing penalty effect (-90% DEF and M.RES).

She is not recommended for new players.