Table of Contents
Overview
Note: Anti-dystopian Diana is not a limited unit.
| PVE | PVP | Fiend Hunt/Guild Raid |
| B | A | A |
| Last Night | Tower of Pride | Tower of Salvation |
| F | C | B |
＋ Low SP cost: Only 1 SP from +1 onwards.
＋ Works fine at lower levels, but at +5 with magic buffers like Helena, it is the most powerful team energy guard skill in the game (significantly outclassing Red Hat Rou)
＋ Base costume is already top tier, so this makes Diana even better
＋ Very large coverage with potential upgrades
－ Short aura duration (1 enemy turn), so it needs to be timed carefully
－ Very few game modes where energy guard buffs are required (other than Lv11+ fiend hunts)
－ Like all energy guards, Diana's buff gets removed by buff removers like Schera
－ Skill is based on M.ATK, which requires you to invest in M.ATK gears Diana (who is a supporter and wouldn't otherwise need much M.ATK)
Diana for PVE
Diana's base costume, Adventurer of the Unknown (AOTU), is one of the best supporters in the game. She is a staple for a lot of hard PVE content, and works for both magic and physical type teams.
AD.Diana costume significantly improves Diana's toolkit by making her not only one of the best end-game offensive supporters, but also one of the best end-game defensive supporters. Let's look at how she compares against other energy guard buffers.
At +5 full potential, RH.Rou gives an energy guard to the whole team equal to 150% of her own HP. We'll take 10,000 HP as "moderately geared" baseline for Rou. This equates to an Energy Guard of around 15,000 HP.
In comparison, AD.Diana at +5 full potential gives an energy guard based off 1100% of her M.ATK. Diana has a pretty low base ATK at 176. For comparison purposes, we'll take 900 M.ATK as a "moderately geared" baseline. Since Diana can benefit from M.ATK buffs such as B.Helena, Elpis and MC.Teresse), we'll also compare her skill power with buffs applied.
| Costume | Energy Guard (+0) | Energy Guard (+5 full pot) |
| AD Diana (assuming 900 M.ATK, no buffs) | 4800 | 9900 |
| AD Diana (with 115% M.ATK buff) | 9675 | 21285 |
| AD Diana (with 225% M.ATK buff) | 14625 | 32175 |
Overall, you can see that Diana and Rou's energy guards have comparable power without supporters, but Diana has much higher potential if boosted by magic buffers. Although Diana's energy guard only lasts 1 enemy turn (compared to RH Rou, which lasts 2 enemy turns), Diana also costs a lot less (1 SP, compared to Rou's 2 SP).
One additional minor advantage in that Diana's energy guard refreshes once at the end of the turn it's cast. This means that Diana has better performance against DoT attacks (burn/bleed damage at the end of each turn).
For completeness, PWB.Refi also has an energy guard, but it's only 50% of target's maximum HP. Since you mainly need energy guards to protect your weakest low HP allies, the power level of PWB.Refi's energy guard is very low.
Using AD.Diana in PVE
Right now, there are very few game modes where you need defensive buffs. Defensive buffs are really only used in very late game content, like Lv11+ fiend hunts. It is not necessary to have defensive buffers to clear any other kind of content released so far.
Even where defensive buffers are required, you can also see that Diana's energy guard is already pretty decent even at +0, especially once buffed. Fiends and guild raid bosses usually only queue up a very strong attack once or twice pre battle. As long as your allied are properly geared, even +0 should be more than enough to keep your team alive against those one-off attacks.
On the other hand, +5 seems to be overkill right now for PVE: presently, there's no content that can make use of her massive energy buff.
Diana for PVP
Diana is fairly unique because she is one of the few viable defensive skills for Turn 1 PVP.
Especially when boosted with a M.ATK buffer like B.Helena or Samay, she can allow your team to effectively start with well over 10,000 extra HP on the first turn. This is a very strong T1 opener, as long as you don't meet buff removers on the defending team.
It is also worth noting that Diana is very tanky. She has 4011 base HP: compare that with Lecliss, one of the highest HP tanks, who has 4515 base HP. On top of this, Diana's exclusive gear comes with a 54% HP bonus stat. This means that Diana can potentially fill both the support role and the tank role in a PVP team.
Despite this, AD.Diana's main shortcoming is her lack of useful follow up on your second turn. Although AOTU.Diana is one of the best PVE buffers, it is very low impact in PVP. This makes AD.Diana very difficult to use in PVP: even though AD a strong opener on your first turn, she's a deadweight on your second turn. It's therefore hard to justify running Diana over Rou: even though Rou's Red Hat costume costs more SP, it comes with a powerful 50% crit rate buff, as well as a powerful set of S-tier costumes to use on your second turn. For this reason, Rou remains far more popular than Diana in PVP.
Conclusion
AD Diana offers great defensive support, but she somewhat feels like a solution to a problem we don't have yet: there's hardly any PVE content right now where big energy guards are required.
Nevertheless, the AD Diana costume makes Diana, one of the best supporters in the game (if not the best supporter), even better. For that reason, having at least 1 copy is a good idea. Anything more than that would be a luxury, as you are unlikely to have very much use for a stronger energy guard in the immediate future (unless you are going for very high fiend hunt levels).
Again, AD Diana is not limited, so you don't need to be worried about missing out if you miss her on the current banner.
