Table of Contents [Show]
Overview
| PVE | PVP | Fiend Hunt/Guild Raid |
| A | A | S |
| Last Night | Tower of Pride | Tower of Salvation |
| A | B | A |
＋ Sylvia is the best physical water attacker, and one of the best water attackers in the game
＋ Great synergy with all of Sylvia's costumes
＋ Quite tanky with her energy guard, which has no turn limit
＋ Strong in PVP if you can manage to pull off her Sword Queen + Admiral combo
－ A lot less powerful without her Sword Queen costume
－ Long cooldown, even with potential upgrade
－ Countered in PVP by some popular meta units.
Sylvia for PvE
Costume Synergy
Sylvia has some of the best costume synergy of any character in the game.
Sword Queen Sylvia at +5 full potential gives a huge 225% ATK buff for 6 turns. Although Sword Queen's own damage and AOE is not very high, it makes for an excellent setup for Sylvia's next 2 attacks.
Sword Queen is usually followed by Admiral Sylvia for a perfect combo set up. Admiral Sylvia's 5x100% is pretty good on its own, but when combined with Sword Queen's 225% ATK buff, it becomes extremely powerful. On top of that, the two costumes have even more synergy because Admiral Sylvia's energy guard power is based off her ATK. If you have a well geared Sylvia with 2,500 ATK, then Admiral Sylvia on her own gives an energy guard of 2,500 x 700% = 17,500 HP. On the other hand, Sylvia is buffed by Sword Queen and DS.Liberta, then Admiral Sylvia's energy guard is 340% x 2,500 x 700% = 59,500 HP. As you can see, this makes Admiral Sylvia able to withstand almost any damage for 7 hits.
Finally, Sylvia's Desert Flower costume deals strong counterattacks when Sylvia is attacked. Again, the synergy is strong with the other two costumes. Sword Queen's ATK buff increases the power of Desert Flower's counterattacks. Admiral Sylvia's energy guard keeps Sylvia alive and protected from damage while counterattacking. Bear in mind that Sylvia's base HP is quite low, so she is not well suited for tanking hits without help from defensive buffs.
All of Sylvia's costumes have a 5 turn cooldown (after potential upgrades). Sylvia is therefore designed to be played by cycling her 3 costumes, e.g. Sword Queen > Admiral > Desert Flower.
PvE Game Modes
Admiral Sylvia works fine on her own as a good water attacker, but she works best when you have at least 2 turns to set up the 1-2 punch with Sword Queen > Admiral. When the two are combined, she is one of the best water attackers for fiend hunts and guild raids. Since she is a high chain physical attacker, she works very well with Refi + Liberta.
She is also a strong pick for Tower of Salvation thanks to her good AOE, good damage and self energy guard.
Note however that Admiral Sylvia's own damage (without Sword Queen buff) is not that impressive. Admiral Sylvia was first released around 2 years ago, so newer costumes are overall stronger thanks to powercreep. For example, compare Admiral Sylvia with Wild Dog Luvencia: Luvencia has better AOE (6 tiles v 4 tiles), better chains (8 chains v 5 chains), and a lot better damage (800-880% v 500%). The only advantage that Sylvia has over Luvencia is her costume synergy.
Sylvia for PvP
Sylvia is a strong choice for PVP, who is held back mainly by some unfortunate meta matchups.
Sword Queen Sylvia is a strong opener for attack teams because she deals high damage for only 1 SP. She is one of the only attackers in the game that costs 1 SP. With DS.Liberta, Sword Queen Sylvia can have guaranteed crits to take out most enemy targets. If Sylvia then survives to Turn 3, Admiral Sylvia then does very high AOE damage and becomes very difficult to kill with her big energy guard. This makes for a strong combo in PVP.
Sylvia's main drawbacks are that there are a few common matchups where she performs poorly.
Firstly, Sylvia struggles against Lecliss. Lecliss has high HP, high DEF and is also wind type so she takes only half damage from Sylvia. It's therefore very difficult for Sylvia to get past Lecliss. What's more, Admiral Sylvia's high hit count attack suffers against the counterattacks from Android Queen (which deal bonus damage against Sylvia due to the elemental advantage).
Secondly, Sylvia struggles against Zenith. Again, Zenith is a high HP wind type character in PVP. Although not as tanky as Lecliss, a Zenith geared for DEF is a tough wall for Sylvia to break through. In addition, RH. Zenith's 0 SP 6-hit skill easily breaks through Admiral's energy guard, which only lasts for 7 hits.
Thirdly, Sylvia's high hit count skills do not fare well against Seir. Seir has high damage reduction, and easily heals back when attacked by multi-hit skills.
Both Lecliss and Zenith are popular in PVP, in both attacking and defending teams. Seir also appears sometimes, but to a lesser extent. Unfortunately, these unfavorable match ups are common enough that it pushes Sylvia just out of the top tier for competitive PVP. Even though Sylvia has an excellent kit with overall excellent performance, those specific bad matchups are the reason that she sees relatively little play in Master rank and above.
Conclusion
Sylvia is all about the synergy between her costumes. Admiral Sylvia is not bad on her own, but really shines when combined with Sword Queen Sylvia.
If you are not already invested in Sylvia's costumes, now would not be a good time to start. There are limited collab units coming soon, so it would be wise to save up tickets for that. Admiral Sylvia is also a costume that was first released very early on (around 2 years ago), so she at greater risk of being powercrept over time.
Pulling is only recommended if you already own a high level Sword Queen Sylvia and you want to finish off your existing Sylvia build.
