Character Guide — Sylvia

Sylvia is a Physical Water DPS who doubles as a tank with her damage mitigation abilities. She is capable of punishing attacking foes with her vicious counters. All her costumes combined makes her a formidable character on the battlefield.
ATK352
HP1911
DEF0%
CR20%
CDMG50%
Base Stats [Level 100]

Sylvia is a Physical Water DPS who doubles as a tank with her damage mitigation abilities. She is capable of punishing attacking foes with her vicious counters. All her costumes combined makes her a formidable character on the battlefield.

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Strengths and Weaknesses

Sylvia's counters are really strong, making her performance less dependent on enemy formations.
All of her costumes are highly synergistic with each other, and her damage goes through the roof with all three combined.
She sees a lot of play in PvP, with Sword Queen being a great opener skill.

Sylvia requires proper defensive gear to be able to use her counters effectively, and she requires time to setup with her other costumes to perform optimally.
[PvP] She may be underwhelming if you don't have Sword Queen +2.
[PvP] Dispel units like Schera counter her counters.

Costumes

Sylvia currently has 3 costumes. The Desert Flower is a counter skill with a ton of damage reduction, Admiral is an attack that gives her massive Energy Guard, and Sword Queen is an attack that gives Sylvia a massive ATK buff.

Desert Flower

Me

The Sword Fortress
SP ◆ 4 — CD ● 5 Turns
Counter the target and deal Physical DMG based off of 200% of ATK when you get attacked for 4 turns. Decrease incoming DMG by 50% for 4 turns.

Skill Potential 1
Counter DMG +50%

Skill Potential 2
SP Cost -1

Skill Potential 3
DMG Reduction +25%

+1+2+3+4+5
Counter DMGCounter DMGSPCounter DMGCounter DMG
200% ▸ 265%265% ▸ 325%4 ▸ 3325% ▸ 380%380% ▸ 430%
Costume Designs

The Desert Flower is recruitable in the pub of Story Pack 5.

Sylvia's counters deal a lot of damage when well invested, and she can singlehandedly clear out entire enemy formations with just this skill. Of course, Sylvia needs to get hit before she can counter, thus both defensive gearing and utility is necessary for her.

Thankfully, this skill comes with 50% damage reduction, doubling her survivability, and the damage reduction from her skill potential doubles it again. The energy guard from Admiral also helps her against Fixed DMG.

Key Upgrades: Skill Potential 2, Skill Potential 3, Design +3, others are nice to have.

Admiral

Very Front

The Punisher
SP ◆ 4 — CD ● 9 Turns
Create an Energy Guard equal to 400% of ATK that takes DMG for 3 Hits. Attack 5 Times, each attack deals Physical DMG based off of 45% of ATK.

Skill Potential 1
DMG +15%

Skill Potential 2
CD -4 Turns

Skill Potential 3
Energy Guard +2 Hits

+1+2+3+4+5
Physical DMGEnergy Guard
Hits
SPPhysical DMGEnergy Guard
Hits
45% ▸ 67%400% ▸ 550%
3 ▸ 4
4 ▸ 367% ▸ 85%550% ▸ 700%
4 ▸ 5
Costume Designs

Admiral Sylvia gives herself an energy guard that scales off her own ATK. This helps Sylvia massively against enemies that deal Fixed DMG (although it does not help against Pure DMG), and because it scales off ATK, you can first buff Sylvia with ATK buffs like from Homunculus Lathel or from her Sword Queen costume in order to maximize her energy guard.

Admiral has the massive downside of having a hit-based duration, which is alleviated by her costume enhancements and her skill potentials. To compensate, her energy guard has no turn duration; so long as she hasn't been hit enough times, she gets to keep the energy guard.

She deals decent damage with this costume, and it also has the utility of chain stacking.

This costume is prohibitive at a 9 turn cooldown, which is why it is necessary to reduce it with her skill potentials.

Key Upgrades: Skill Potentials 2 and 3, Design +3, others are nice to have.

The Sword Queen

Very Front

Continuous Blossom Flying Sword
SP ◆ 1 — CD ● 5 Turns
Increase ATK by 100% for 2 turns. Attack 4 times, each attack deals Physical DMG based off of 25% of ATK.

Skill Potential 1
DMG +2%

Skill Potential 2
ATK Buff +25%

Skill Potential 3
DMG +2%

+1+2+3+4+5
Physical DMGATK Buff
Duration
Physical DMGPhysical DMGATK Buff
Duration
25% ▸ 30%100% ▸ 150%
2 ▸ 4
30% ▸ 35%35% ▸ 40%150% ▸ 200%
4 ▸ 6
Costume Designs

Sword Queen Sylvia has a massive ATK buff for her other costumes. The problem? This costume is unusable until +2, given that it only has a 2 turn duration at +0 (it only buffs this costume). At +2, she gets to buff a second costume, and with +5, she gets to have full uptime on her buff. However, once you do get +2 (and to some extent +5), this costume greatly increases Sylvia's damage potential.

This costume is a good in PvP, costing only 1 SP while also setting up her other costumes. It also has decent chain utility.

Key Upgrades: Design +2 and +5, Skill Potential 2, others are whatever.

Building Sylvia

Sylvia has slightly different gear depending on whether you're using her in PvP or PvE. In either case, you want to build her fully offensive, since you want to rely on energy guards and other damage mitigations for her to tank enemy attacks.

Primulan
Exclusive Stat — 45 ATK%
Correct Main Stats — ATK + CDMG
This exclusive weapon is a decent boost to Sylvia's DMG. It's definitely nice to have, but not strictly necessary.

Bond Potential

ATK52%
HP17%
DEF8.4%
Desert Flower
ATK80
DEF5%
CDMG47.2%
Admiral
ATK80
CDMG28.4%
Water DMG30%
The Sword Queen

The Sword Queen is Sylvia's best bond potential for PvE content against fire enemies. If you don't have SQ (or if you're not against fire enemies), Admiral is a good alternative.

Admiral is also Sylvia's best potential in PvP, since most of her defensive stats comes from Admiral's energy guard.

Optimal Build [PvE]

or

Optimal Substat Spread (Assuming BBS Refinements) — 3 ATK% substats + 12 CDMG substats

Use full DEF gear or full MRES gear depending on the enemies you're facing.

Optimal Build [PvP]

Optimal Substat Spread (Assuming BBS Refinements) — 15 CDMG substats

Use full DEF gear so Sylvia won't immediately die to counters. Venomous Touch is also a decent alternative accessory, provided that you change her substat spread.