Released in:
Version 3.2 - Cerulean Getaway
Note that v3.2 also introduces Fenny - Pureheart
Like all double-operative releases, Pureheart and Freefin will be designed to work together, but it's also important to know how Freefin works on her own, so each will get their own article.
This article is about how Freefin affects the games meta. If you only want details on Freefin herself - how to play and build her, then view her article here.
Siris may have forgotten to show up at the beginning of her event, but she makes up for it by being free, having a great default outfit, a fantastic swimsuit in the shop, and actually being a skill-damage buffer - one of the first we've gotten in a long time.
Is that enough to take Siris to the top, or will she be quickly forgotten as a mediocre support?
As I mentioned in my article on Clarina last patch as well as Pureheart earlier this patch, Snowbreak is in the weird position that all the new dps operatives that come out seem to be purely or almost entirely skill-dmg operatives, whereas all the supports tend to be primarily for ballistic damage, which has created the problem that many of the newer skill-dmg dps operatives don't have many supports that work very well with them.
That problem is exacerbated for newer players who won't have access to many of the more generic support operatives or support operatives who haven't been available in a while.
We knew that Freefin was a more active support than previous supports, as Purehearts support skill simply swaps her back into the field, meaning that Freefin would have to be an on-field operative to at least some extent, which as it turns out, she is, sort of, but also not really in practice.
This actually gives Freefin quite a lot in common with Marian - Riptide, even down to the fact that both have their logistics sets give a 30% skill damage buff to the rest of the team.
Whilst Riptide has been one of the games better Skill-DMG supports for some time, again largely due to the lack of competition, Siris does finally give Marian some competition, albeit of the Thermal variety instead of Marian's Chaos damage.
The TL:DR is that Freefin basically fulfils two distinct team roles - one as a spammy thermal skill damage support, and the other as a Sub-DPS for Pureheart.
Unfortunately, whilst they are both played differently, they do both do the same job - supporting Pureheart, and not really supporting anybody else, which makes a large part of both Freefins and Purehearts kit basically useless.
Use her standard skill to have Siris ride her surfboard around.
This is actually a pretty good movement ability - for long distances Fritia - Turbo still reigns supreme, but Freefin is happy to take the silver medal in the speed category.
Freefin also doesn't need to spam her support skill to quickly travel long distances - she can just hop on the board and that's it.
This means that whilst Turbo remains the fastest operative, Freefin is a good option for quickly and easily moving around Star Master maps.
Since riding her jetboard uses 5 S-Energy per second, you won't really want to use it to actually move between groups of enemies, as going into combat with no S-Energy isn't ideal.
Similarly, her jetboard has no long-ranged attack, and she can't pick up herbs in Star Master, so whilst she's fast her fast movement doesn't really have any use outside of combat.
Whilst riding her jetboard:
Freefin can crash into enemies to deal some damage.
Using left click (that would normally do a regular shot) instead deals a PBAoE that deals a bit of damage and charges her Swell Gauge a bit for each hit.
Using her standard skill causes her to do a larger PBAoE for high damage that consumes all her Swell Gauge to do extra damage per Swell Gauge consumed.
If she uses her standard skill whilst at max Swell Gauge, she stays on her board and her standard skill resets its cooldown.
If she uses her standard skill whilst not at max Swell Gauge, she is dismounted and her standard skill goes on cooldown.
Using her standard skill whilst at max Swell Gauge is where most of Freefins damage comes from.
This means she can just left click to charge her standard skill, then when the gauge is full use her standard skill again for good damage.
Her ultimate skill deals damage in front of her, then explodes for more damage.
By-default the total is 27% of Siris' max HP, which is extremely poor for an ultimate, and is less than half the damage of her standard skill explosion when it's fully charged.
Siris also automatically rides her jetboard after using her ult.
The purpose of her ultimate isn't to deal damage though, it's to give her the "Tsunami" effect, which quickly refills her Swell Gauge, allowing her to rapidly fire off fully-charged standard skill detonations in quick succession.
This means her ult is basically just a battery to charge her standard skill.
If Freefin is off the field when she uses her ult, she will always be swapped in and automatically start riding her jetboard - she can't use her ult and remain off-field.
This means that Freefin's ult basically makes her a weird Sub-DPS of sorts - she can use her ult to swap in and supercharge her standard skill, then use her standard skill a few times to make use of her Tsunamis extra charging.
Tsunami lasts 12 seconds though, or up to 18 seconds with with her Neuronic.
As such, whilst Marian - Riptide swaps in and out very quickly, which allows your dps to quickly return to doing high dps, Freefins Sub-DPS role is more of a pseudo-dps role as she will be on-field for a long time.
Whilst her Tsunami is active, Freefin also gives the entire squad a minor shield.
With her Neuronic, hitting enemies can generate more shield, which can add up to quite a lot of shield over time.
TL:DR: For a support she's fantastic.
Compared to 4* operatives she's great
Compared to 5* dps operatives she's pretty poor.
For starters, her PBAoE attack can't hit airborne foes, so agains enemies that can fly (Esther, Teumessian, etc.) Freefin is literally useless.
She's not the worst, and you're better off using Freefin than all 4* operatives, but Freefin falls into the same category that Tess - Phantasia fell into - decent damage in her own right, but not enough that she is competitive as a main-dps.
On the surface, Freefins numbers do look pretty poor:
Crashing into enemies deals (1% +6).
The PBAoE that replaces her attack deals (2.1% +18), up to 4 times per target, for (8.4% + 72) total
Her standard skill release deals (30% +269 + (0.3% * Gauge)), so 60% when fully charged, which is the only time you should ever use it.
Critically though, all of those percentages are for Freefins Max HP, not her ATK.
Endgame operatives usually have around 5k attack and 30k HP, but you can't quite just multiply all the above numbers by 6 to get a more accurate comparison.
The 5k figure we normally use for ATK includes three logistics officers at 10% each, whereas the usual 30k HP figure doesn't include any logistics.
Without having any use for ATK Freefin can just go for max HP from her logistics, which can allow her much higher HP - over 50k is pretty easily possible with one of her signature weapons and the free logistics set.
I don't have Freefin maxed, but I calculate she has a max HP when fully invested of 63,426, which is phenomentally high.
As such, if you want to know how good Freefin's damage amounts are when comparing them to a normal operatives ATK percentages, multiply them by 10 - 12.7 depending on how much investment you have into Freefin.
Since you generally need two of Freefins standard attack to charge her standard skill, her total damage whilst spamming her standard skill is 76.8% + 557.
Her standard rotation tends to take around 3.75s, so this is around 20.5% of Freefins max HP per second, or around 12.5k/s base damage.
This does actually give Freefin ok damage potential, especially for a primarily support-oriented operative, although basically all of her damage is backlogged into her standard skill detonation - her standard skill and attack doesn't do much damage otherwise.
Similarly, whilst she'll have a high HP stat, her standard skill doesn't heal her or grant her any shield, meaning that the PBAoE nature of her skills mean her survivability isn't the best, as standing next to enemies usually isn't a great survival strategy.
Thankfully though Siris spends basically all of her time in combat on her jetboard, giving her incredible levels of mobility, which does bring with it some very nice survivability.
Her ult can also give her quite a lof of shield too, so overall her survivability is actually really good once you've gotten her ult up and running.
Overall, Freefin has good (albeit short-range) AoE capabilities, good mobility, and above-average survivability, which actually makes her a fantastic operative for casual non-endgame play.
When compared to 5* dps operatives, Freefins DPS is pretty poor, even at very high investment.
Freefin's Support skill deals pretty weak thermal damage - not enough damage for us to care about it beyond the fact it deals Thermal damage and Celestial Swan cares about that.
Freefins support skill grants the deployed operative two things:
20 Freetide stacks - each one of these gives +0.25-1% Skill Damage, plus 0.1% per 100 Alignment Index.
(Between 5% and 32.36% Skill Damage, depending on how much Alignment Index she has and her Deiwos level.)
5 Wavehunt Stacks - Each one of these gives +1% Thermal Skill Damage
Dealing skill damage als grants 3 Wavehunt stacks, up to a max of every 0.5s, with a max of 20 Wavehunt stacks at a time.
If an operative has at least 10 Wavehunt stacks, also give +1% of Siris' Max HP as an ATK buff.
Freefin will usually have around 55-65k HP, depending on investment.
Freefins support skill also inflicts enemies with a "Wipeout mark", which reduces their ATK by 10% for 5s.
Freefins support skill does have a 5s cd, but that starts when all the stacks have been lost, which takes time, so on its own you can't maintain 10)% uptime on this debuff.
With her Neuronic, simply dealing Skill DMG is enough to re-apply the mark, giving it 100% uptime very easily.
This basically means that you can use Siris' support skill once, and provided you keep dealing skill damage, you'll maintain Siris' support buffs and the enemy debuff.
Her 4* weapon gives a +24-40% Skill DMG bonus after using Siris' support skill, which lasts until Siris' is deployed to the field, which is a very nice support buff for a 4*.
It also gives 12-20% Max HP.
Her 5* weapon gives 21-35% Skill DMG whilst Freefin is off the field. After using Freefin's support skill, Freefin also gives the deployed operative a +15-25% ATK buff.
Whilst both effects are active, enemies damaged by the operatives also take 12-20% more skill damage
It gives Siris herself a 21-35% thermal skill damage buff whilst she's on the field.
It also gives 18-30% Max HP.
Her weapons aren't very strong for her own damage, but they are excellent for supporting other operatives.
They also give the squad generic skill damage and ATK buffs, meaning she is useful for non-thermal operatives just fine.
Her logistics squad gives a +25% ATK buff whilst her Freetide and Wavehunt buffs are active, and +30% Skill DMG when Siris is off-field.
Yes*.
Her passive Deiwos and Alignment Index buff gives a nice passive skill damage buff for any operative that can deal skill damage decently quickly.
Her support skill maxes the skill damage buff provided by her passive, and easily maintains it provided the operative has any Wavehunt, which isn't too hard to maintain, whilst the Wavehunt itself gives thermal skill damage.
Her logistics squad gives a strong ATK buff whilst her support skill is active and you're doing regular skill damage, and a nice skill damage buff whilst Siris is off-field.
She's also very easy to use - just use her support skill once and then maintain the buffs by dealing skill damage continuously.
Overall, this makes Siris extremely easy to use - just use her support skill and keep her off-field, and provided you are dealing regular skill damage you'll maximize Siris' buffs.
Freefin is only useful as a support for skill damage users though.
She does provide some ATK buffs, but they're not large and can be finicky, so would never want to use Freefin as anything other than a skill-damage support.
Firstly, her Wavehunt stacks grant Thermal damage, so she works best as a support for operative that deal thermal damage, although since Wavehunt is her only support buff for Thermal damage, the difference isn't large.
Whilst Freefin is an excellent support, that is only true whilst she is maintaining her support skill, which requires that you are dealing skill damage frequently.
Similarly, since Freefin only deals damage on using her support skill, she works decently as a support for non-thermal operatives alongside Celestial Swan, as you can just start with Freefin's support skill, and then Celestial Swan works perfectly as long as you can maintain Siris' buffs.
If you can't deal skill damage frequently enough to maintain Freefin's buffs, then needing to re-apply Freefins buffs makes Celestial Swan a weaker support partner.
The requirement to deal skill damage isn't actually that often - you gain 3 stacks when dealing skill damage, and lose 1 stack per second you don't gain any.
This means that quite a lot of operatives deal skill damage often enough to work with Freefin.
Freefin doesn't really provide any buffs at all to operatives that only deal ballistic damage, such as Turbo, Blue Bolt, or Coronet.
Again she has a few ATK buffs, but not enough to make Freefin worth using for non-skill damage users.
Hybrid DPS operatives like Lyfe IS can make use of the skill damage buffs, but since that's all Freefin buffs, it's generally not worth using Freefin to buff operatives that primarily or largely deal ballistic damage.
Operatives that deal damage often enough to permanently maintain at least 1 stack of Wavehunt include: Jade Arc, Dawnwing, Pulse, Enigma, Wild Hunt, Pureheart, Tempest, Styx Envoy, Crimson Moon, Rhapsody, Agave... basically all of the games skill-damage operatives, really.
As such, Freefin works as a fantastic skill damage support for basically all of the games skill damage operatives.
Operatives that deal Thermal Skill damage are: Pureheart, Pulse, Ksana, Hush, Big Sis, and Little Sunshine
Big Sis deals vastly less damage than Freefin, so there's no reason to use Freefin as a support for Big Sis.
Big Sis is so terrible though you should never really use her under any circumstance at all...
Little Sunshine deals a lot of ballistic damage, and like Big Sis is also out-damaged by Freefin, so there's no reason to use Freefin as a support for Little Sunshine
Almost all of Hush's damage comes from her ult, so just use Freefins Support Ability just before Hush ults and Freefin will work perfectly with Hush, although you will have to use Freefin's support skill before every ult as Hush doesn't do skill damage often enough to maintain Freefins support skill between ults.
An alternative way of using Hush+Freefin is to use Freefin as the DPS, and then swap Hush in once your U-Energy is full, use Freefins support skill, then use Hush's ult, repeat.
Freefin isn't the best main dps, and Hush is a very poor support, so it's not the best team, but it's the best way of using them together, and it can work well, and can be very fun too.
Ksana deals entirely thermal skill damage, and deals thermal skill damage frequently, allowing her to maintain and make excellent use of all of Freefin's buffs
Pulse deals thermal skill damage extremely frequently, and thus works perfectly with Freefin
Pureheart...
well....
Freefin works best with thermal skill damage operatives, but she does work just fine with any operative that deals skill damage, and she does so in a way that allows her to work alongside Celestial Swan.
As such, Freefin works well as a generic skill damage support, something I think the game has been lacking.
Freefin is a fantastic support operative, and works well with Pureheart.
The problem though is that Pureheart's support skill allows Pureheart to quickly re-enter combat should she not be on the field.
Freefins ult allows her to easily join the field.
Whilst these two things sound great when put next to each other ,in practice they don't work due to Freefin's ult requiring 60 U-Energy to use, but Pureheart can only generate that much through here entire LMB chain, meaning you can only swap Freefin in and Pureheart out if you already had enough U-Energy to just use Pureheart's ult and reset her chain.,
Why would you ever want to swap Freefin in using her ultimate ability, thus forcing Frefin to play the dps role for 12-18 seconds?
Freefin's damage is fine, but so is Pureheart's.
The obvious difference is that Pureheart does deal more damage than Freefin, Pureheart deals even more still if she is the dps and Freefin supports her by using Freefin's support skill to buff Pureheart.
As such,, Pureheart + Freefin do work well together, with Pureheart as the dps and Freefin as the support, but Freefin's ult is basically useless, as it forces her onto the field to act as a Sub-DPS, which isn't ideal as Freefin works best as an off-field support.
Similarly, Pureheart's support skill allows her to quickly re-jointhe field in case you had a Sub-DPS on the field, butsince Freefin works better as an off-field support there's never a reason why you'd have Freefin off the field in the first place.
The only time Pureheart's support skill would be useful would be if she's paired with Marian - Riptide.
In my page on Pureheart, I said she fels "strong but can feel clunky", a statement that feels more true now that we know how Freefin actually works.
Both Pureheart and Freefin do both work for their intended roles, and they work very well, but they just don't feel like polished and finished products.
With all of that said though, it is nice to finally have a pure skill-damage buffer who doesn't have any weird quirks like Riptide or Exuvia did.
As such, I think Siris - Freefin is an incomplete success.