Table of Contents
Pros
- The only "full row" knockback (3 wide range, 5 wide with potential upgrade)
- Tanky stats
Cons
- Knockback doesn't go as far as WC.Rou
- No other costumes with offensive skills
- Synergy is not great with her other costume (Medical Club)
- Hard to justify the investment when Kry is a cheap F2P alternative
Teresse for PVE
Knockback skills are not very useful against bosses (who are usually immune to knockback), but they are often useful in PVE against mobs of enemies. Knockback skills can give you access to cheap high damage very early in the game, which is especially helpful for newer players. There are also a lot of levels where you need to push enemies into position with knockback skills to make the most out of your AOE.
For almost all PVE battles where knockback is required, you will most likely find that Teresse is not necessary because 4-star Violent Student Kry is good enough. We'll compare Kry and Teresse in terms of knockback positioning and damage.
In terms of knockback positioning, Kry knocks back two adjacent units back two squares. Teresse's advantage is that she can knockback 3 units at a time. There is hardly any content in the game where you really need to knock back a full row of units to clear the level. Teresse's range advantage is therefore very niche, though in the very rare situations that you might need a full row knockback, grabbing one free copy of Teresse from the pub would be enough.
In terms of damage, Kry+5 does collision damage equal to 100% of the target's max HP (which can crit), and then 130% ATK burn per turn to the target. The collision damage of 100% max HP equals up to 20,000 physical damage before crit. This damage is not dependent on strong gears, so it is very helpful for newer players.
Now compare this to Teresse. At +3 (no potential), AOD.Teresse deals 75% HP collision damage and 125% burn damage. You can see that her collision damage is worse than Kry. At +4 and +5, Teresse finally surpasses Kry and gets to 125% collision damage (150% with potential), but that requires a huge investment for a pretty small improvement over a F2P 4-star.
Teresse can do better burn damage than Kry, but let's face it: the whole point of using a knockback skill is to reposition the enemy and to deal collision damage. If you really need high ATK based damage, that's what your attackers are for.
Overall, although Teresse at full power is an upgrade to Kry, it's pretty hard to justify the investment when Kry is a perfectly good substitute 99% of the time, and is much more accessible for F2P beginners.
Teresse for PVP
AOD.Teresse's cheap and wide knockback can be useful for the "surprise factor" in PVP, and her tanky stats allow her to have decent survivability. Unfortunately though, she is a long way away from the power of other top-tier characters.
Firstly, WC.Rou is still the best knockback for PVP. WC.Rou's knockback pushes further (3 squares back instead of Teresse's 2 squares), Rou deals much higher collision damage (200%/212% with potential, compared to Teresse's 125%/150% with potential), and most importantly, Rou's skill comes with evasion (which makes her overall much tankier than Teresse).
Secondly, Teresse has no good follow up costumes. Unlike Rou who has an arsenal of powerful costumes to choose from. Teresse's only other costume is Medical Club, which is too expensive to play on Turn 1, but a relatively weak followup skill for your second turn.
Conclusion
Teresse's design is strange because her in-game skills do not match with her lore at all. In the story, Teresse is an incredibly strong axe-wielding berserker, yet as a playable character, she has no good offensive costumes. Instead, Teresse plays more like a support character, with one knockback costume (Angel of Destruction) and one team buff costume (Medical Club).
Unless she gets a strong offensive costume, AOD.Teresse is just nice to have, but not a high priority investment.
