Masteries for People, A People#
Full Articles#
Zima the Raging Tide#
Zima the Raging Tide is one of those units whose priority will be highly variable, depending on your roster and how you like to play. She has two very different usage scenarios between her S2 (AFK laneholding) and her S3 (wave clearing nuke), but there are considerations with both that ultimately mean a variable priority. Some players will find her S2 to be one of the best skills in the game. Others will never use it at all and instead prefer her S3. And still others won’t find either worth particular attention, which is rather surprising in a 2026 6★!
Her most famous use is as an AFK laneholder with her S2. That’s likely the starting point for a large majority of players as well, despite this guide typically not favoring such skills. However, this is a case where Zima2 is really good at it, while her S3 is comparatively flawed, which tends to make it her best use case regardless. Newer players with weaker rosters will find it especially valuable! It’s a pretty simple skill too, basically being a new-age version of Thorns’ S3, with stats more appropriate to the modern meta of the game. It even has some additional defensive bulk that gives her more DEF than many Defenders. After the second activation, it becomes infinite duration, and you don’t even need to press the button to activate it!
There’s two important things to know before you invest though. First, if you’re unfamiliar with her, you may come away from reading her skill with concerns about her SP cost. After all, 50 SP is a shockingly high cost, infinite or not! The key here is to know that the Talent 1 trigger that’s a part of the skill applies for each high-ground tile, and the tile doesn’t need to be deployable either. Tiles that are just “decoration” to the map generally count, as do map boundaries. The result is her S2 charges extremely fast, despite the cost! More to the point of this guide though, is that infinite duration skills tend to have lower gains over Mastery than others since their multipliers don’t tend to be as high. Mastery only represents a below average 11% improvement to DPS and DEF, and an inconsequential amount of SP cost, due to how fast she charges. Those stats certainly aren’t nothing, especially considering the infinite duration, but it’s also far from essential, and Zima will work pretty well at S2SL7, which suppresses her grades a bit.
Skills like Zima’s S2 also tend to be fairly “low ceiling”. It’s a good skill with a place in the game that will carry many players through a lot of stages, but it will never be a premiere CC or high-risk IS skill. Those cases require a bit more finesse than the set-and-forget raw power of her S2 provides. More Advanced players may not find her S2 to be worth pursuing at all, especially given the relatively low gains! One could be forgiven then for thinking that means her S3 is the Advanced skill instead, and indeed Advanced players probably will use it more, but it unfortunately tends to be a bit flawed which complicates the suggestion.
When using her S3, she slams five times in a row, even if there are no targets. Each slam further increases the power of the next slam, and expands the zone that her Talent 1 aftershocks hit. The result is high DPS and DPH, doled out very rapidly, but this comes at the expense of total damage due to the lower uptime relative to more typical DPS skills. This leads to the first problem. Although these types of skills have value and can be better in some cases, in many situations, they’re inferior to more typical and higher total damage skills. Worse is that most of the damage is only on the primary target, and despite how wide the aftershocks can get, that always remains only in the single tile ahead of her. Outside of that, enemies will generally only be hit by her Trait aftershocks, or worse, just her Talent aftershocks, for far less damage. Then the way her kit is designed also means she doesn’t do much between cycles, so if the enemies can’t be killed in a single cycle, she’s extremely vulnerable.
This all means her S3 is far less effective than the splashy animation may appear. For people with already stacked rosters, neither skill may end up all that appealing. Of course, none of this means her S3 is bad either. Far from it! Strong rapid nukes like this do have a place in the game, it cycles fast, and her range can get pretty ridiculous too, depending on the stage. Not every player has every option available to them, so Zima2’s S3 can still be a high priority consideration for many. Mastery on her S3 is more valuable than her S2 as well. The DPS, and importantly, the DPH, increase by more typical values, and the drop in SP cost is a meaningful improvement.
So there is no one-size fits all answer with Zima. While many modern units have clear recommendations due to their power, or at least have some special uniqueness no one else can fill, Zima doesn’t quite fit into those molds. She has a high base level of power, and for many people she will be simple (do her S2), but just ends up being more replaceable than a large majority of recent gacha 6★s.
The last note with her, pass entirely on her S1. There’s virtually no reason to use it over her other skills. It slightly out DPS’ her S2 on the first activation, but falls far behind after, and if that mattered you’d use her S3 instead.
Ukusik#
A 5★ Medic is one of the worst rarity/class combinations a unit can be. When it comes to healing, the value problem becomes the driving factor. This is made even worse by how many of them just blend together. But there are 5★ Medics that stand out, and almost universally it’s because they have some sort of special utility attached. Fortunately for this little child soldier, Ukusik has such a utility. While Camouflage/Invisibility isn’t exactly rare these days, the ability to grant it to others still is. Ukusik can grant camo to herself and three other allies (don’t forget the extra bounce from her Talent) which can help mitigate some extremely dangerous mechanics. While she does share this niche with Heavyrain, Ukusik tends to be better at it since she cycles faster, is less range restricted, and isn’t forced into blocking, which disrupts the camo. So as far as the raft of 5★ Medics goes, Ukusik is a rare solid addition with some very legitimate usage!
Don’t rush to invest into her, however, and especially be wary of spending the extra on her Masteries if you don’t know what you’re doing. There’s a few factors at play here. First, while her utility is valuable, it’s extremely situational. On one stage, camo can feel like the best mechanic ever, but on many, it does nothing. This means Ukusik is more of a tool to break out occasionally instead of an every day type of unit. Second, using her ideally is no simple feat. Managing the timing and bounces are not trivial tasks, especially when more straight forward solutions often exist. Last, and more relevant to this guide, her S2 Masteries are simply not necessary to achieve this. In many cases, she will do this camo job just as well at E1 SL7 as she would at E2 S2M3, and the former is much much cheaper!
However, her Masteries aren’t completely useless, although Advanced players are far more likely to appreciate them than Story players. The Camouflage duration does not improve over Mastery, or this discussion would be very different. It remains at 12 seconds starting at SL7. But what does improve is her cycle time, via SP cost, and her healing. On the matter of her healing, it improves by about 50 HPS over Mastery. That’s not an amount that really changes the decisions considering raw healing isn’t why she’s used, but it’s actually a pretty decent improvement. Her healing is otherwise on the weaker side, so any addition is welcome in min-maxed scenarios. On the matter of her SP cost, that’s probably the more important improvement, but even then it only improves by 4 SP. It certainly can matter, but often will not.
This all means that Ukusik isn’t a bad investment, but she is one that leans towards Advanced players who can afford to spend their resources on situational tools rather than roster mainstays. If you’re a Story-centric player, or have a relatively young account, you’re best off avoiding her entirely, at least for now.
Although not Mastery related, a mechanical note worth mentioning is about why she has an HP loss built into her S2. Chain Medics (and most Medics) can’t actually initiate a heal if there is no one under max HP. However, the chain can bounce through full HP units once it is started. This is why Mon3tr has the Reconstruct, so that she can always apply her buff. Similarly, Ukusik’s HP loss means she always applies her camo, even if everyone is at full HP already. It also means she’s more likely to start the chain on herself, ensuring she gets the extra bounce from her Talent, which isn’t always guaranteed.
As for her S1, it’s only really useful if she’s a particular favorite you want to use over other units. The HPS on it is actually pretty decent, as is the cycle time, and the extra bounce can really extend her reach. However, it has no special value, which drops it into the ever growing pool of utility-less 5★ Medics that should otherwise be avoided. The only reason to Master her S1 is because you specifically want her to be on the team, even when her S2 isn’t called for. However, it could have some use for heavy IS players. She is drafted in some strategies, but her S2 isn’t as useful on every stage, so her S1 can be used along the way. But that’s a pretty fringe situation, and most players it applies to don’t need this article’s advice. If you’re unsure, pass on it.
Botani#
Botani is our latest Ritualist, and those are pretty tough to discuss. There’s about a billion different combinations of factors that have subtle influences on the promotion choices. Botani further complicates matters by being our first introduction to friendly Corrosion damage. So, while this guide rarely takes shortcuts, I’ll make an exception here. If you hadn’t already considered raising Valarqvin, you shouldn’t consider raising Botani. If you already raised Valarqvin, there’s a good chance Botani will be no different in practice, although there’s a good chance you don’t need my advice if you did. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can stop reading here. Don’t raise her.
If you are one of the few crazy Doktah’s still reading, I commend you. Welcome to the based club. To start, we first need to discuss Corrosion. This write-up isn’t meant to be a primer on the type, so you can find the mechanical details elsewhere, but it essentially joins Burn and Necrosis in the group of “not as good as NI” types. It does less damage than either, but cycles faster, and Botani can trigger more frequently per cycle than Bobbing or Valarqvin. These three have subtle differences that ultimately end up being entirely situational, but none of them, Botani included, are as good as Cairn! So the first question as to where Botani stacks up against her fellows at the rarity is a big ol’ unhelpful “it depends”. We’re off to a great start.
Next, we get into the value problem that unfortunately permeates almost all 5★ discussion. In Botani’s case, it’s even worse because she can’t stack with the other Ritualists, so that “it depends” hurts even more. However, similar to Standard Bearers, it’s hard to call any of them “bad” either. The exact nuances and details of the differences between them are well beyond the scope of this guide, so you’ll have to do a bit of homework on your own, but the key takeaway is that Botani is similar to the others in her valuation. The Elemental Damage she does doesn’t hold a candle to a meta unit, or even many 5★s, but the true-ish damage it deals and the debuff can still be very valuable in a variety of self-restricted scenarios.
So if you’ve decided that value might be worthwhile for you, Botani’s only Mastery worth special consideration is her S2 which simply does much more in total, in addition to her S1 being flawed. Determining the exact breakpoints with Botani becomes a fool’s errand. In addition to all of the permutations across Ritualists, her ASPD Talent further influences things, even changing within the same skill activation. Even if I were totally confident in the accuracy of all scenarios, communicating them all in this space would basically be impossible! So there is no one complete answer to how valuable Mastery is, however at its most basic, it reduces the number of attacks per burst required against bosses and regular enemies. In most (but not all) scenarios, the total triggers per S2 remains the same, but it does vitally improve vs bosses, in addition to just generally being faster. When it comes to Elemental Injury dealers, more is rarely worse! Yet, even at full investment, the most common scenarios remain at three activations per cycle, a feat she reaches at far lower investment levels, so Mastery isn’t as mandatory as it is on the others either.
As for her S1, it’s simply worse. In no scenario, even at max investment, can she reach a trigger in one activation (at least without some serious buffs). The Corrosion cooldown is also longer than the SP cost, so functionally, it often ends up being three activations instead of two, since one is often wasted during the cooldown. The situation looks even worse against bosses. Her S2 actually has quite a long cooldown, which sounds like it should give some room for her S1 compared to Valarqvin, but these unusual restrictions just mean it doesn’t really make sense. At three (or more) activations, it’s not economical, even against her S2’s 45 SP cost. That said, if you really love Botani, S1M3 is required to reach two activations per burst, so it may be worthwhile to a rare few waifu maximalists.