Marian - Aquila
"Vidya's Mirror"
Marian - Aquila
"Vidya's Mirror"
Released in:
Version 3.5 - Back from Bygone
Note that v3.5 also introduces Acacia - Chrono Echo
Each get their own article.
This article is about how Aquila affects the games meta. If you only want details on Aquila herself - how to play and build her, then view her article here.
Role: Strong general damage support [who deals Kinetic damage whilst supporting]
Decent main dps - mostly skill damage. How much skill/ballistic damage varies depending on how you use her.
Weapon: SMG
Damage Type: Kinetic
How good is Aquila?
As a DPS: Relatively mediocre, but for a support operative she's good.
As a Support: Very good - starting out a bit weaker than some of the current supports (e.g. Freefin) but gaining a bit more from her 5* weapon and Manifestations.
Overall, Aquila performs similarly to Freefin.
What distinguishes Aquila is that she's very versatile. As a DPS she can do single-target or full AoE, and as a support her damage buffs work with all operatives.
The old Marian - Riptide is still a pretty good skill damage buffer, but "pretty good" doesn't cut it for an Andreotti, so Marian's got herself a new exosuit, and it performs very well.
Interestingly though, Aquila performs both very well as a support, but also pretty well as a main dps.
Aquila works best as a support, so I'll do that first.
You use her support skill, and she'll just deal damage every few seconds (every 8 seconds, or every 4 seconds if you have her Neuronic).
Aquila also provides a slough of offensive buffs whilst her support skill is up, including some ATK buffs, but notably she also provides some completely generic DMG buffs, which allow her to be a good support for literally all operatives, even those that don't scale their damage off of their ATK (e.g. Nita - Pulse, or potentially even other operatives usually used as supports like Freefin or Nightglow).
Aquila can provide 30% increased DMG from her logistics, plus another 24% after a short period.
Her 5* weapon also provides another 30-50% generic damage, as well as applying a 15-25% increased DMG taken.
She can also apply even more generic damage buffs/debuffs with her Manifestations too, including:
another 12% damage taken, 12% All-Type ResPen, 20% generic damage buff.
Oh, Aquila can also provide up to +33.2% ATK as well.
and her Deiwos also provides an extra 10% more damage dealt. Plus some more for her Alignment Index, so up to +22.36% damage dealt.
When she's maxed, this adds up to +33.2% ATK, 12% ResPen, 37% total extra damage taken, and +146.36% damage.
The buffs Aquila provide are completely generic, and very strong, meaning that she ends up being a very strong support operative.
One immediate caveat to that is that her signature 4* weapon (Glorious Laurel) buffs Kinetic damage specifically, so you'll either want to use her with Kinetic damage operatives or else lose a bit of effectiveness. Thankfully her 5* signature weapon doesn't have that limitation, and provides generic damage buffs.
In practice, the rest of her buffs are still good, so she's still great with her 4*, even for non-kinetic operatives.
Her 5* weapon only provides the strong "damage taken" modifier for her support skill - Aquila herself can't proc it herself when used as a main DPS.
This means that whilst Aquila is a great operative, both of her signature weapons can feel like a bit of a let-down - her 4* doesn't buff the deployed operatives non-kinetic damage, and her 5* doesn't massively buff herself.
It also means that when used as a main dps, Aquila doesn't really get that much benefit from her 5* weapon - it's still better than her 4*, but the gap between her signature 4* and her signature 5* is much smaller for Aquila than it is for other operatives.
This is relatively par for the course for support operatives, but considering that Aquila can very easily do both single-target and AoE damage it feels like more of a let-down for Aquila than it has for previous supports, as she feels decent to use as a main dps, ignoring her lack of such key buffs.
Previous supports (e.g. Phantasia or Freefin) were generally good at either AoE or single-target, but not both, and hence you generally wouldn't want to use them as a general dps anyway, whereas with Aquila being a main dps feels much more viable.
Aquila also deals damage constantly, specifically Kinetic damage, which means she butts heads with Vidya - Celestial Swan.
Aquila is a great support nonetheless, and a generic one at that, so you should expect to see Aquila appearing on a lot of teams in the meta going forward, and potentially even alongside some of the dps operatives who previously haven't had many good/ideal supports (e.g. Bubu - The Geomancer).
Realistically, the only negative that Aquila has as a support is that she clashes with Vidya, however Aquila is a very good support, and the more supports the game gets, the less of a problem Vidya's type-matching becomes anyway.
When on the field, Marian spawns with a "Beacon" (basically a drone) that follows her around, which is invulnerable/untargetable, and Marian can tap her standard skill to order it to move to the targeted location, or hold her standard skill to have it follow the targeted enemy.
Marian can just shoot the Beacon herself, which charges the drone, and when charged the Beacon deals kinetic damage to up to 5 nearby enemies.
The single-target dps is poor, but the AoE damage can be decent, although getting the Beacon in the right spot can be tricky sometimes.
Shooting an enemy inside the drones PBAoE also charges the Beacon, and when charged the drone deals Kinetic damage to the enemy Marian is shooting, providing good single-target dps.
This gives Marian access to both good AoE damage and single-target damage, although the Beacon isn't that fast and I've found it to be a little unresponsive at times.
To me its movement feels like the drone from Yao - Quiet Quitter's Support Skill.
Overall it's fine though.
By-far the most interesting part of Marian's kit is the second Neuronic on her Standard Skill, which gives her +30 bullets back whenever the Beacon procs.
Since it takes 20 bullets to proc it (for both single-target and AoE), then provided she lands [most of] her shots, this gives Marian literally infinite ammo.
This is both a nice QoL feature, but it's also extremely fun.
As a DPS, Aquila can feel somewhat clunky due to needing to order her drone around, but beyond that she feels fine, and she doesn't have any extraneous bits of kit bolted on like so many previous operatives have gotten. Similarly, all her kit works with her core design, again with no extraneous bits that feel out of place.
I actually quite like Aquila's design as a main dps. It's not perfect, but that's due to the base design of what Aquila is (i.e. somebody who has to order a drone around), not due to a poor implementation of that base design.
Her drone being somewhat clunky/quirky and Aquila herself having completely average mobility means she's an ok pick for casual gameplay, but nothing special.
Aquila's ult is basically just a massive AoE blast in front of her, which also buffs the on-field damage she deals for 10s after using it.
This includes a 20% Standard Skill DMG taken increase. As usual, damage taken mods are very strong.
Having a damage taken effect on her Neuronic instead of her 5* weapon does make her feel somewhat similar to previous operatives in terms of buffs, but with less pressure to get her 5*. Given how 5* weapons are basically unobtainable for f2p players to any notable degree, having less pressure to get them is a good thing.
In practice you probably aren't going to use Aquila as your dps anyway unless you literally don't have any other 5*'s released in the past year or two, but it's nice that the option to do so is now much more accessible should you wish to use it.
Her ult has a pretty low cooldown of 20s, and a pretty low U-Energy cost of 40, so it's pretty spammable.
Due to its decent damage, you can use it to clear groups for operatives that otherwise struggle with that, giving them some good AoE, which is really nice.
Overall, her ult is very simple in what it does, but making it spammable does make it very compelling. It isn't that strong, but I like it.
If you did wish to use Aquila as a dps then it's pretty good, but you can't use her ult whilst her support skill is active though, so it's not something you'll actually ever use in practice.
As a main DPS, she's... fine.
She won't be breaking any dps records, but what she lacks in dps she makes up for in ease of use - having unlimited ammo really does make Marian very easy to play, provided you spend a second or two to set up the Beacon first, but that potentially only needs to be done once per encounter, regardless of how long that encounter is.
Similarly, Aquila has extreme versatility, being decent at both single-target and AoE, as well as being a fantastic support too.
Much like many recent supports (Fenny - Starshine, Tess - Phantasia, Siris - Freefin, etc.) Marian is a support operative first, and performs best as a support, but who also deals decent dps in her own right should you want to use her as a main dps. Her dps isn't amazing, but it's enough that she's perfectly fine for general content.
As a Support, Aquila is fantastic.
She has the advantage of being a generic damage buffer, which allows her to work with all possible dps operatives.
Since most operatives are fine with the usual ATK buffs, being able to work with non-ATK-scaling operatives is a niche position, but Aquila is the best option for buffing operatives that don't scale their damage by ATK, who have often found themselves drawing the short straw when selecting supports.
Aquila's buffs are also great for everybody, though.
Vidya - Celestial Swan debuffs enemies to such a horrific degree that Vidya is by-far the strongest support operative in the game, and there are only a few specific circumstances where any other support even comes close to her performance.
Question: Is Aquila stronger than Celestial Swan?
Answer: No.
Vidya is extremely strong for many reasons:
Powercreep has meant a lot of the older supports just don't have the numbers of the modern supports, so there really aren't many supports who are any good by modern standards to begin with - many supports have just been left behind by the meta, and again - there weren't that many to begin with.
Vidya doesn't do anything you don't need.
A lot of other supports do stuff like deal damage, which never amounts to much - Vidya doesn't waste her kit on stuff like that - everything she does is something you want.
That a lot of other operatives do deal damage means they can't be used alongside Vidya, which limits some operatives.
For example, if Vidya didn't have her type-matching requirement then the ideal supports for Bubu - The Geomancer would currently be Vidya herself and Yao - Nightglow, however since Nightglow deals damage and doesn't type-match Bubu, you can't use Bubu with both Yao and Vidya, meaning Bubu has to make do with a weaker support instead of Yao.
A part of Vidya's strength is just because Snowbreak has teams of three operatives, and Vidya herself limits how useful some of the other support operatives are when paired alongside her.
Vidya is a perfectly generic support - she works with everything.
Kinetic, Thermal, Frost, Electric, or Chaos? It doesn't matter for Vidya.
Ballistic, Skill, or Aux Unit damage? It doesn't matter for Vidya.
Your damage is based on your Max HP instead of your ATK. It doesn't matter for Vidya.
Does your dps operative cause the enemy to take damage? If yes, then Vidya is a perfect support.
Vidya debuffing enemies means that she essentially always scales multiplicatively with support operatives that buff your own damage - which is basically all of them.
This means Vidya's support effects really aren't affected or diminished regardless of who she is paired with.
For other supports, since many damage buffs stack additively, in a team of three they don't scale quite as well as Vidya.
Vidya works without much investment - Get Vidya to Lvl.80, give her her signature logistics set, give her one of her signature weapons, and... that's pretty much it.
That's all Vidya needs to be the best support in the game.
You can give her more investment to make her even stronger of course, but she doesn't actually need anything else to work well - she works incredibly well with just that.
Vidya just works.
Aside from her teambuilding issues, the main problem with Celestial Swan is that there's only one of her (ignoring her holograms...), so in dual-team content (e.g. Neural Simulation) you can only use Vidya on one team, and thus your other team is always free to use Aquila.
Since she was introduced, Celestial Swan has occupied a permanent spot on meta teams, and having Vidya and not using her would be classified as insanity.
The reason you wouldn't use Vidya would be because:
You don't have Vidya.
Vidya is already used in another team, and hence can't be used. (For example in Neural Simulation, where one bosses team members can't be used for the other boss.)
That's basically it - Vidya is just so strong that you just always uses her.
Aquila's best teammates are thus:
A kinetic DPS + Vidya.
Whichever operatives Vidya isn't paired with.
Aquila just provides buffs to your operatives - in that regard she isn't overly unique - other than Vidya all operatives mostly just buff your operatives - very few mainly focus on debuffing enemies in the same way that Vidya does.
Compare Aquila and for example Siris - Freefin and you'll find that the main difference isn't really the magnitude of their buffs - it's that Aquila's buffs are all completely generic.
Much like Vidya, Aquila's buffs are completely generic, and as such you can pair Aquila with basically any operative, and Aquila will be a good support for them.
Aquila does constantly deal damage whilst her Support Skill is active though, which means that in order to use Marian and Vidya on the same team, you'll need your main dps to deal Kinetic damage. This narrows down Aquila's list of ideal teammates very dramatically.
Obviously, the recently released Acacia - Chrono Echo fits the bill perfectly, as does the juggernaut that is Clarina - Crimson Moon and the whirlwind of destruction that is Enya - Tempest, with Lyfe - Infinite Sight getting an honourable mention too. Even Haru - Absconditus works, if anybody still remembers her.
Heck even Fenny - Lionheart or Nita - Hands would work if you're a new player and they're all you've got (although you're better off just using Aquila as the dps at that point...)
For most of these, Aquila isn't particularly novel:
For Acacia - Chrono Echo, Aquila is a great support, but since Chrono Echo deals pretty much entirely skill damage, Aquila is basically the same as Freefin.
For Clarina - Crimson Moon, the problem is the same - Clarina deals entirely skill damage and thus can make use of both Freefin and Celestial Swan already.
Clarina can also make excellent use of Eatchel - The Cub too, so she has even less need for Aquila.
For Enya - Tempest, the problem is the same, as Enya also deals entirely skill damage, so Aquila will perform about the same as Freefin.
Haru - Absconditus also deals mostly skill damage, and hence can generally use Freefin just fine as well.
Fenny - Lionheart or Nita - Hands are both so weak that you're better off just using Aquila as the dps.
For Lyfe - Infinite Sight, Aquila is one of her best supports after Celestial Swan, performing similarly to Fenny - Starshine.
(Aquila provides more buffs, but Starshine allows you to not reload and thus shoot more, so Aquila's higher numbers don't necessarily translate into more dps than Fenny)
One of the Kinetic-damage dps operatives supported by Aquila and Celestial Swan does make for an absolutely incredible team, but since almost all the Kinetic-damage operatives deal skill damage, you could use Freefin instead of Aquila and get pretty much the exact same result for all of them, with the only exception being Lyfe IS who can just use Starshine - Aquila is a bit better than Starshine, but not having to reload is pretty strong, so the difference isn't amazing.
The game has a lot of operatives who just really don't have a second ideal support to use alongside Vidya, which can mean that getting the most out of them can be difficult.
Earlier I gave the example of Bubu - The Geomancer, who fits this bill perfectly:
Imagine it - You don't have Aquila, but there's a boss who you really really want to use Thermal Ballistic damage against, and as such you decide to use Bubu - The Geomancer, who is the obvious choice against such an opponent, as Bubu deals the most thermal ballistic damage of any operative.
Naturally you pair Bubu with Vidya - Celestial Swan, as she is the games best support.
... but who else do you pair with Bubu?
Yao - Nightglow constantly deals Electrical damage, and hence will negate the debuffs from Vidya, so you won't use Bubu + Yao + Vidya together.
Tess - Phantasia also deals Frost damage, and hence can't work with Vidya. You can use Tess' ult only, but not using her support skill makes Tess vastly less effective.
Fenny - Starshine only gives useful buffs whilst her Special Clips are active, but Bubu's ok RoF and tiny magazine capacity means Fenny runs out of S-Energy and Support Skill charges extremely quickly, meaning she performs very poorly in fights that last more than like 5 seconds.
Fritia - Little Sunshine does work perfectly from a technical perspective, but as a 4* she is extremely weak, as adding a small amount of Thermal damage to each shot isn't overly useful for Bubu, due to her low-ish RoF and Bubu already having very high damage-per-shot, as well as Fritia's mediocre uptime on her buff.
For me personally, I've been tending to pair Bubu + Vidya with Eatchel - The Cub. Eatchel does heal, which is nice, but Eatchel provides a nice ATK buff which provides a decent (and passive) buff that is still decently strong. Eatchel isn't a perfect support for Bubu, but she is one of the few supports that does work perfectly with the Bubu + Vidya combo.
This isn't a problem unique to Bubu - many of the games recently-introduced and best supports constantly deal damage, and hence can't work alongside Vidya for most dps operatives.
Siris - Freefin bucked this trend, dealing damage once when her support skill was used, and then just providing passive buffs without dealing damage, and that made Siris usable alongside Vidya for all skill-damage operatives. Being usable alongside Vidya and providing good skill damage buffs has made Freefin the go-to support for skill damage buffs.
What made Freefin great was not just that she was strong - Freefin wasn't really any stronger than some of the previous supports like Nightglow or Phantasia, but it was that Freefin could always work alongside Vidya.
In truth, what Snowbreak needed (and still needs) is for Vidya to have her debuff changed so that it applies an All-Type damage resistance debuff, which would allow her to be used alongside all operatives, and not need to have the dps type-match the other support, as that has proven to be a harsh restriction for many dps operatives.
That would give some other operatives more room to shine, as dps operatives who didn't have a strong type-matching support were somewhat left behind by the meta after Vidya was released, and the game just doesn't have many generic supports who can work alongside Vidya for a lot of the games dps operatives.
This is what Aquila is - she's a mirror of what Vidya achieves.
Aquila may not be any stronger than some existing supports like Freefin, but that she isn't any weaker either means you can just use her with everyone.
In the past, your ideal team always had Vidya in it:
Team: DPS + Support + Vidya
From now on, if you have some investment for Aquila, then I suspect that your team will always have Vidya in it, and your second team will always have Aquila in it:
Team 1: DPS + Support + Vidya
Team 2 DPS + Support + Aquila
Alternatively if you are using a kinetic dps, then both of them on one team, and another team made up of whoever else you have, with all the other supports to choose from, with no type-matching to limit them.
Team 1: Kinetic DPS + Aquila + Vidya
Team 2 DPS + Support + Support
Regardless of which of the two you end up using, Aquila will end up allowing you to use more of your other supports, with less reliance on weaker or generic supports.
Aquila is a very strong but generic support that you can use to buff any operative.
Aquila does clash with Celestial Swan, but for a single team you can just use your main dps and their best support - Aquila doesn't need to be there.
Where Aquila shines is in two-team content, as you can use Aquila to facilitate dps operatives who previously struggled because they didn't really work with Vidya due to not having a second support that worked with Vidya, and Vidya's team often hoovering up all of the generic supports left many dps operatives with few supports to use.
If you just want a support to slot in-between your main dps and Vidya, then Aquila is only a decent choice if the main dps is kinetic, and even then she's not necessarily better than some other supports like Freefin.
Instead, Aquila is there to build your second team, to help your second dps get a great team, even though they don't have Vidya.
Alternatively: Aquila is there to build your second team, to help your second dps get a great team, because they don't have Vidya.
Given how generic Aquila's buffs are, I suspect this was the intention behind Aquila's design - Aquila is the support you use to help build your teams around Vidya's requirement.
Given that her buffs are both strong and generic, I'd say she succeeds at that.
One of the problems with Snowbreak's meta is that Celestial Swan is so strong that you're usually better off using one mediocre but generic support plus Vidya instead of two strong non-Vidya supports.
This has been a problem because Snowbreak doesn't really have that many strong supports, or that many supports at all.
This will be less of a problem as time goes on and more supports are released, at least assuming no new powercreep is introduced, however since Chenxing - Jade Arc was released we haven't have anybody exceed her as a dps, which is a trend that hopefully continues.
Similarly, on the support side, since Celestial Swan released, we haven't had any supports released that exceed Vidya - even Aquila's buffs are about the same as Freefin's.
It seems as though Seasun learnt their lesson about powercreep and why it's bad, and hopefully we don't see any more powercreep introduced.
What I also hope is that all the new supports and dps operatives maintain the current power level - this would be good for the players, because pulling the new waifu and having her be obsolete two patches down the road is a pretty soul-destroying feeling, and having to give up a waifu because she's utterly out-dps'ed by a new girl always feels bad, doubly-so if you've spent actual money on a premium outfit for a character that deals so little dps that you no longer want to use her.
So far, it seems as though Seasun are doing well to maintain the current power level, at least for now, however they have had powercreep in the past, so only time will tell.
What would be even nicer would be if we could see some buffs for older operatives to bring them up to the current power level - they all still have premium outfits available, so it's not as if making older operatives desirable again wouldn't be ok for the game or its bottom line.
What it would do though is give a lot more options for decent support operatives, which would help fix the problem that Aquila is trying to single-handedly solve - Snowbreak doesn't have many good supports, let alone generic ones that can always work alongside Vidya.
Aquila is a good support - a great support, even, and whilst she isn't much stronger than many existing supports, that she provides generic buffs rather than specific ones means you could argue that Aquila is the second best support in the game, but I feel that if a lot of the older supports were buffed to the current power level then a generic support like Aquila wouldn't be needed, and wouldn't be perceived as so strong.
Aquila is brilliant, but she only shines so brightly because of how much more brilliantly she shines when compared to all the old and formerly-brilliant gems discarded behind her.
With some polishing of old gems Aquila wouldn't feel so special, and every new gem placed next to her will make her blend into the shine we are getting used to.