Table of Contents
Tier ranking overview
| Story | Evil Castle | Mirror Wars (PVP) | Fiend |
| B | S | C | S |
Pros
- Very high damage potential if you trigger her bonus damage
- Strong against the current season's Fiend boss
- Her unique weapon boosts crit damage (the best offensive stat)
- Useful for taking out taunting tanks (e.g. Glacia, Lecliss, story mode enemies)
Cons
- Bonus damage is very situational and requires set up (taunt or concentrated fire)
- Limited options right now to apply Concentrated Fire (only Robin Hood Zenith and Rignette so far)
- Very niche situations where her damage will be better than others.
Deep dive - how good is Ventana's damage?
In Brown Dust 1, Ventana's specialty was to do very high damage to the world boss for the best high scores. It looks like the devs have kept the spirit of her character and given her a similar skill set in Brown Dust 2 for the upcoming fiend boss. Snow White Ventana's skill allows her to deal heavy bonus damage against units that have the taunt buff or the "concentrated fire" debuff. At +5 costume level, her full damage is 700%. This is very high, but there are only niche circumstances where will it be the most effective choice.
Against single target bosses, Ventana does not have the best damage. Promise of Vengeance Lathel +5 has a 1000% multiplier with a 50% ATK boost, but hits only 1 unit. Putting aside elemental weaknesses, Lathel's damage is obviously better than Ventana's for single target bosses.
Against multiple targets, it seems that Ventana has a very important limitation in that her bonus damage only activates against the targets with taunt or concentrated fire. This usually means that the primary target will hit for 700% but the rest of the targets will only receive 350%.
Let's compare Ventana to some other similar "plus shape" AOE units:
- Steel Engine Rafina +5 does 625% damage plus barrier removal
- Gentle Maid Anastasia +5 has a 330% multiplier (with 3x chain damage) plus 200% crit damage, which (depending on your gears) can work out to be comparable with Ventana's 700% multiplier.
- B-Rank Idol Eleaneer +5 does 525% damage (with 3x chain damage) plus silence for 2 turns.
Overall, Ventana is not as good as these other units. Sure, she can potentially deal the highest damage against the primary target, but there are not a lot of situations where that extra bit of damage is worth the trade off for consistency and utility.
Ventana for PVP
Unfortunately, Ventana is not good for PVP. She costs 4 SP at +3, which is too high for the amount of impact that her skill has. Although her cooldown time is low, she has no second costume which means she can only activate skills every second turn.
If you're lucky enough to hit a Glacia or Lecliss on taunt you may get some utility out of her, otherwise her 350% damage multiplier is definitely on the low side. With the bonus In Season of Light, Ventana might see some play, but she is likely to drop off later.
Ventana for Evil Castle
In Evil Castle, scoring is dependent on your highest attack in a single turn. Ventana ticks many boxes for getting high scores, because:
- She is light type (there are currently two Evil Castle levels that give bonuses for using Light)
- She has a heavy damage multiplier
- She does AOE
- Importantly, she deals a single strong hit rather than multiple small hits. For Evil Castle scoring, overkill damage is counted, but not after the target dies (e.g. if you use a 3-hit skill and the target dies on the 2nd hit, the 3rd hit is not counted for damage scoring).
Ventana for the Fiend boss
The new fiend boss is a dark type enemy that is available only during this current Season of Light. This means that to deal the best damage, you will need to bring along light units. As far as light units go, Ventana is the best choice - but only because there are not many other choices.
- The only 5-star light attackers we have right now are Ventana, Justia and Angelica.
- Justia's highest damage costume is Kendo Justia. Kendo Justia's damage is 3x200% but it is fixed damage and can never crit. This means that against a zero DEF unit (like the fiend boss), Ventana with bonus damage is definitely stronger than Kendo Justia. Even Ventana without bonus damage is stronger that Kendo Justia if Ventana crits.
- Angelica's highest damage costume is Pool Party Angelica. Pool Party Angelica's damage caps at 7,500 damage before crit (or around 8,250 with chain damage). For comparison purposes, we'll assume that Ventana has 1,600 ATK, which is not too difficult to achieve with reasonably optimized UR gear. This means that Ventana at 700% multiplier would do 11,200 damage before crit to her main target and 5,600 damage before crit to other targets.
Putting aside crit damage, Ventana and PP Angelica have comparable base damage. However, Ventana has two important and unique advantages in the fiend battle.
- Firstly, she can hit all 3 weak points of the fiend boss, whereas PP Angelica and Kendo Justia can only hit 2 weak points.
- Secondly, the fiend boss takes amplified damage for the first 2 hits of each turn - Ventana makes the best use of this with a 1x hit skill, whereas PP Angelica and Kendo Justia less effective with 3x hit skills.
These advantages make Ventana the best choice for the fiend boss.
There is one important drawback though. In order to make use of Ventana's AOE in fiend boss mode (and reach those 3 weak points), she will need a concentrated fire set up. Ventana pairs perfectly with Zenith, who applies concentrated fire plus damage amplification to set up Ventana's bonus damage. Unfortunately, the devs have made a strange choice to defer the release of Zenith until after this round of banners. Therefore, until Zenith is released (25 October 2023), you are stuck with using 3-star Rignette as the "poor man's Zenith", because Rignette is the only other unit with the concentrated fire skill. This is fine for new players, but for veteran players with better team options, having to bring along 3-star Rignette is a pretty big handicap.
Conclusion
It's no coincidence that Ventana is being released at exactly the same time as the new fiend boss. Her skill set is perfect for maximizing damage against the fiend boss, and she's whale bait for those want to high score.
Each fiend boss level gives you 5 gacha tickets on clear, so if Ventana can manage to help you beat a few extra fiend levels then she could be well worth the investment.
Outside of the fiend boss, she is not likely to have much utility until her next costume releases. I would recommend pulling if a) you really need a Light 5-star for the fiend boss or b) you are prepared to whale on the Ventana+Zenith combo.
