Sun, sand, beaches - sounds like a perfect place for Snowbreak's resident idollic diva to show off her new exosuit.
Whilst Fenny does love showing off for her beloved Adjutant, does she have what it takes to show up the SCZ meta?
Similarly, can Fenny only shine with the reflections of Siris - Freefin behind her, or is our idol as brilliant as even if her backup dancer forgets to turn up?
If you just want a TL:DR:
Is she good at endgame? Yes, she's very strong.
Is she as strong as Jade Arc? No.
What role does she fill on a team? Main-DPS - she is literally incapable of supporting her team.
How is her teambuilding? Meh. Pureheart is a massive step up from the last operative we had, but given how low Clarina set the bar last patch that says nothing.
There's more to that (which is what the rest of my analysis below is) but if you just want to know the basics then there you are.
As I mentioned in my rant analysis about Clarina last patch, SCZ has been in an odd place regarding its operatives for some time, with basically all new dps operatives being purely skill damage (Clarina, Nerida, Tempest...), which is annoying as most of the recent specialized supports have been for ballistic damage (Phantasia, Nightglow, Starshine...).
Clarina, Nerida, Tempest never actually shoot their guns, and even characters that use their guns like Rhapsody do still have to spam their skill quite often and interrupt their shooting.
Other than Bubu and...
*glances at the bin that I threw Fritia - Turbo in after realizing she was useless without her 5* weapon, which I didn't get*
maybe one other other operative, SCZ has been pretty much skill-dps dominated for well over a year now.
Our beloved Fenny has always been a ballistic operative though:
Lionheart is a fantastic early-game operative that I've always though was extremely fun - to the extent I've always wanted Seasun to add an upgrade token that upgrades a 4* operative to 5* and makes them usable and competitive with the 5* operatives for endgame content.
Running around blasting everything with her shotgun is also great fun with Coronet, even though she isn't what she used to be any more.
Whilst she's not the best main dps, she's still ok as a ballistic support though as well, as well as being a good Parts Breaker too.
Even Starshine was a purely-ballistic support.
So whilst Clarina was a coquettish tease who only fired her gun as a part of her visual animation and was a purely-skill-dps only, I had actual expectations upon seeing that Fenny was the new operative this month that we'd be getting a purely-ballistic operative.
... and boy, was I disappointed.
Whilst new Fenny is fun and competent and I don't have anything against her, having her be yet another skill-dps makes her feel sort of stale before the analysis has even begun.
In-fact, Pureheart has two ways of being played: One is a sort of hybrid (but not really - it's mostly skill) dps, and the other is a pure-skill dps.
Yes, she has two ways of being played, and neither of them are a purely ballistic dps.
It seems Seasun just can't escape the appeal of skill-only dps operatives...
Pureheart's Standard Skill leaps her towards the target, deals some AoE damage, and then she enters "Aerial Purity" state.
Whilst in Aerial Purity state, you can either LMB to shoot, or RMB to throw bombs, both of which have auto-seek, automatically hitting enemies near your crosshairs.
If using her LMB shots, then after shooting 10 shots, her next shot is a souped up supershot that deals like 20x the damage of a normal shot.
Landing that shot generates 1 charge for her ult.
Once she has 3 charges and is on the field, she can use her ult, which is a big AoE.
She also has a lockout that means that she falls out of the sky after using her supershot, so you need to do something else - ult, RMB, dodge, or standard skill, to keep her in the air
This creates a decent gameplay loop:
Standard skill + Shoot 11 rounds
Repeat the previous step until she has 3 charges for her ult
Ult
Repeat.
This deals roughly 50-50 ballistic-skill damage.
Edit: Either this was an error on my part or this was patched mid-event. Pureheart's supershot is skill damage, not ballistic, meaning Pureheart deals mostly skill damage.
That ratio will vary depending on things like her crits and skill haste, but it's a good baseline ratio.
If using her RMB bombs, she can never generate any charges for her ult.
This means her gameplay loop for her RMB attacks is just using her standard skill to go airborne, spamming her RMB bombs, and using her standard skill again to stay airborne.
Very simple, although the lack of ult means it's not as satisfying as I feel it should be.
The astute readers among you will have noticed that her LMB combo deals ballistic and skill damage, whereas her RMB combo deals only skill damage.
Similarly, her LMB combo can use her ult, whereas her RMB combo cannot ever use her ult.
This creates... many problems.
As for why Pureheart has two very different ways of playing, I have no idea.
If I had to guess, somebody designed her LMB combo first, then the decision was made to add her RMB attack onto that existing design to give her some AoE, as without access to her RMB bombs then her only spammable AoE would be from her standard skill, which isn't ideal and probably wasn't how she was intended to be played. She can use her ult, which deals decent damage but takes a while to charge and doesn't have great dps by itself, and whoever added her RMB attack on either forgot or didn't know how to make them work with her ult.
This means that Pureheart can come across as a very clunky operative, both to play, but also to learn how to play.
Realistically, I think that Pureheart would work better if she didn't have her RMB attack, and instead her ult was a more focussed attack - that way Pureheart could work as a single-target dps operative, using mobility and aerial-ity to survive groups of enemies until she could defeat them.
Alternatively give her SMG shots AoE, akin to Starshine's forward-dash special magazine rounds, that way she can do AoE damage without needing the RMB bombs tacked on to her LMB design.
As it stands, the only time you'll ever want to use her RMB attack is against a group of enemies that includes at least two strong enemies:
Against a group of trash mobs, you can spam her standard skill, spam her RMB, or use her LMB combo until she can ult, all of which should be fine.
Against a single strong enemy plus any amount of trash mobs, you can just do her LMB combo targeting the boss - it deals good single-target damage to the boss, whilst the standard skill itself and the ult have some good AoE damage that can probably clear the trash mobs to a good degree.
You wouldn't want to use her RMB combo here as you'd want the better single-target damage of her LMB comgo to deal with the boss.
Even against large groups of tough enemies she could still have just spammed her standard skill.
It's not ideal in her current form, but if she didn't have her RMB her standard skill could have been buffed to be a bit better against groups.
(If her standard skill charged her ult a little, that would have been ideal)
Her RMB attack just feels unnecessary - the core design of how she plays would probably feel basically complete even without it, and with a few tweaks here and there (mostly standard skill charging her ult and AoE on her LMB shots) would probably feel better than what we actually got.
Don't get me wrong - it's nice to have the option of bombing enemies, and it can be very fun, but it doesn't need to be there, and I feel it makes her feel more clunky than she needs to be.
Now that Siris - Freefin is out we know that Freefin works as a strong skill damage support, with a bit of extra buffing for operatives that frequently deal thermal skill damage, which includes Pureheart.
Freefin can basically just use her support skill and stay off the field, continuously providing skill damage buffs.
Pureheart's second support can be one of a variety of good options: Celestial Swan, Eatchel, Kaguya, Shadow Ka... there are many good options.
Similarly, many of the cope options like Nightglow, Phantasia, Agave, etc will all work just fine alongside Freefin, which actually gives Pureheart a wide range of possible support operatives [again, provided you have Freefin], for both strong ideal options and cope options.
Pureheart's best supports are Freefin and Celestial Swan.
Freefin doesn't do anything special, she just buffs [thermal] skill damage, which means that Freefin doesn't buff, affect, or be affected by the shots from Pureheart's LMB chain, which makes her skill-only RMB chain a little better if using Freefin. Not enough to make it deal more DPS than her LMB chain, but it's a little better comparatively.
Last patch we had Clarina, who's pool of good supports was more akin to a shallow puddle.
Pureheart is... not much better, as is actually quite typical of pure-skill-dmg dps operatives.
Pureheart is a little better, but not much.
Pureheart doesn't shoot bullets at a particularly high rate, she doesn't technically use skills very much at all, she doesn't use her ult much, she cares not for S-Energy, and U-Energy isn't that useful to her either. Ballistic buffs aren't that effective on her as most of her damage is skill-only.
Much like Clarina, what Pureheart really wants are actually quite generic buffs: ATK, DEFpen, ResPen, and Skill DMG.
Short of cope supports like Agave, you're limited to basically just Eatchel, Celestial Swan (and maybe Kaguya), Shadow Ka, and Freefin as good supports.
Pureheart's best supports are Freefin and Celestial Swan.
Since Pureheart's LMB combo deals some ballistic shot damage, which supports Pureheart can use depends on whether you want to use her LMB combo or just her RMB attack.
Many supports that work fine with Pureheart regardless of which playstyle she picks, but many only work with one or the other, or work much better with one than the other, and other than Eatchel and Freefin basically all of the strong support operatives have a caveat when used with Pureheart:
Vidya - Celestial Swan is great, but would require a Thermal or no-damage support, which basically limits you to just Pureheart and Eatchel as there really aren't any other good Thermal damage supports.
The only other Thermal support Pureheart could go with is Little Sunshine, but that's a dangerous level of cope.
Celestial Swan + Freefin are Pureheart's best supports, but if you lack Freefin then Celestial Swan isn't ideal due to the lack of non-Freefin thermal supports that aren't terrible
Acacia - Kaguya is still good, but has the usual problem that she's not quite as good as Celestial Swan, whilst also being mutually exclusive due to being Frost damage.
Mauxir - Shadow Ka is Chaos damage (so no Celestial Swan) and her utility is wasted, so she's basically just her extra linked damage plus the usual support buffs you'd give want to give a support (E.g. Frigatebird, Twilight squad, etc.)
Enya - Exuvia only works with her LMB combo, as her RMB combo doesn't deal any shot hits at all, thus making Exuvia useless as a support for RMB-only chains.
Pureheart's very low freuqnecy of skill usage means that Pureheart isn't a great operative to pair Exuvia with.
Yao - Nightglow's ballistic buff only affects her shots, which are only a fraction of Purheart's damage, on her LMB combo only
Skills can't crit, and Pureheart's gun has a 0% Crit Rate, so Yao's crit mods are only useful if Pureheart is shooting at an enemies weakspot (since weakspot hits always crit)
Whilst Yao's ATK buff is still good, for a lot of Pureheart's rotation that's all Yao brings to the table.
Tess - The Magician works fine, and does buff Pureheart's ult by a good amount, but Tess doesn't add that much to Pureheart's overall sustained dps, so whilst she's good for Neural Sim, she's not very good in Supreme Battleground.
Similarly, the extra damage Pureheart gets to her ult isn't really enough to justify taking Tess over other good supports like Celestial Swan that buff her entire rotation, unless you have enough investment that one ult would finish the boss (at which point Pureheart is just Tempest)
Tess - Phantasia is still fine as Pureheart does shoot quite a bit, but her average RoF is quite low in comparison to almost any other full-auto ballistic DPS, whilst also preventing Celestial Swan due to Tess being Frost damage.
Marian - Riptide gets some Tidesong from Pureheart's standard skill, but Pureheart's LMB and RMB attacks not counting as standard skill uses means that Riptide has very little Tidesong generation, and thus generally performs very poorly as a sub-DPS for Pureheart, although the slow Tidesong generation means that Riptide can work quite well as a skill DMG buffer as her Tidesong being slow to generate can spread out her M2 buff over a longer period. Still not an ideal support though.
I could talk about even more cope supports like Coronet or Agave, but suffice to say there's issues across the board.
If Pureheart's LMB and RMB attacks counted as skill uses she'd fare a lot better in my mind.
Pureheart can't use her ult if she isn't on the field, as she can't generate the necessary charges without being on the field.
Her support skill just swaps her in and uses her standard skill.
As such, Pureheart is literally useless as a support operative - she is actually incapable of helping her team unless she is swapped in to be a main dps at some point.
Whilst 5* main-DPS operatives have basically always been useless as supports, it is surprising to see Seasun just make a main-DPS who is literally useless as a support.
I mean I'm not really complaining here as that doesn't really bother me, it's just surprising.
Operatives like Bubu or Jade Arc whose support skills just do a bit of damage (often with a CC of some sort) were fine, but not something that anybody actually ever used, and I'm fine with newer operatives having their support skills do something else.
With that being said, I don't think Pureheart's support skill really works.
Having her swap back in quickly is only useful if she actually needs to swap back in at all.
Currently, the only reason you'd swap her out at all is for Marian - Riptide, as Riptide is the games only Sub-DPS, but Riptide doesn't really work well with Pureheart so that's not really a good reason.
Hopefully Siris - Freefin makes good use of Pureheart's support skill allowing her to swap back in quickly, as if Siris doesn't care for Pureheart's support skill then it really is not something that we have any use for at all. Whilst Bubu's support skill was terrible, it did at least did something.
Edit: Freefin can be swapped in via her ult, but that's not something you'd actually want to do as Pureheart deals more dps, and Freefin being on-field loses her support buffs.
The only real way to use Pureheart as a support is to use a main dps who doesn't use U-Energy, such as Lyfe IS, and have her generate U-Energy, then use Pureheart's ult to use the U-Energy they can't use. Whilst a nice idea in theory, there's no real reason to use a second dps instead of just taking a support that buffs the first dps.
Pureheart does put out some very nice DPS numbers, but the length of her rotation means that she really can't match the DPS put out by Jade Arc's significantly shorter rotation.
Purehearts rotation does deal a lot of damage, but it also takes more than twice as long as Jade Arc's rotation.
With that being said, Chenxing - Jade Arc is brokenly-OP, and she is not a fair benchmark to judge against.
The better question is whether Pureheart joins the ranks of the other very-high-dps characters like Dawnwing, Styx Envoy, Lyfe IS, Geomancer, or Crimson Moon.
The answer is yes, Pureheart does put out some very strong damage numbers, and she can throw hands with the other dps heavyweights.
Like the other meta dps operatives, whether you use Pureheart will depend on the bosses resists and effects that week.
Most of the other high-dps characters generally have some distinguishing traits beyond just their dps
Dawnwing has her mobility, and her hybrid playstyle allows her to make use of aptitude and per-shot buffs as well as skill buffs
Tempest has her AoE and burst potential
Styx has her mobility, AoE even at long range, and invuln-bypassing
Clarina has her self-healing
Pureheart has the potential for some mobility and some AoE, with the option to deal lots of AoE if needed.
I feel she does offer enough of a difference that she doesn't really clash with any existing high-dps operative in what role she fills, although time (and Siris - Freefin) will tell for sure.
With that being said Pureheart does fulfil a very similar team role to several existing operatives, notably Tempest, with Pureheart and Tempest being very similar in their designs.
So, is Pureheart as good as the games current top-dps: Chenxing - Jade Arc?
As mentioned in the TL:DR earlier: No, she isn't.
Whilst Pureheart does have some very strong skills and her Passion Sparkshot means her shots average a lot of damage too, there are a few things that Jade Arc has going for her that Pureheart does not:
Jade Arc's entire rotation is ballistic, and deals double damage to shields
... while most of her damage also counts as skill damage, allowing her the benefits of both skill and shield damage.
Whilst for most content this isn't something that benefits her, in some cases Jade Arc will be dealing double damage just due to her inherent ballistic buff, whereas for Pureheart only half some of her LMB combo is ballistic and thus deals extra against shields.
Jade Arc's rotation takes about half the time of Pureheart's (11 seconds vs 5, roughly)
Most of Jade Arc's rotation has a 100% guaranteed crit chance
The only part of Pureheart's rotation that can crit is her LMB attacks, and due to her 0% base crit chance, her LMB attacks can only crit if shooting at a weakspot.
Jade Arcs bows have a 100% Crit DMG value.
This means she gets a lot of extra damage out of her insanely high crit rate
It also means she gets a lot of value out of Crit DMG Amplifier mods.
A Jade Arc with 3x Crit DMG Amplifier mods is having most of her damage rotation crit for 231.8% of its base damage.
By comparison, Pureheart has a base 0% crit chance (meaning she can only crit with her gun when shooting at a weakspot), has a 30% crit damage mod (meaning crit dmg amplifier mods are terrible for her), and most of her rotation is skill damage that can't ever crit in any way.
Again - she's better off just getting the 5.3% ATK from Alignment Index instead of bothering with crits.
Jade Arc has two essentially perfect supports already.
Nightglow gives Jade Arc a huge ATK buff, which is great, a nice ballistic buff, which is great, and causes enemies to take more crit dmg, which is incredibly strong given how absurdly high Jade Arc's crit dmg actually is.
Similarly, basically all of Nightglow's effects stack multiplicatively with Celestial Swan's DEF and ResPen effects.
Whilst Freefin could be as powerful as Nightglow, I would be very surprised if Freefin buffed Pureheart's dps by as much as Nightglow buffs Jade Arcs, although even if Freefin was as strong for Pureheart as Nightglow is for Jade Arc, that still wouldn't make Pureheart better.
Edit: Freefin is great. Not better than Nightglow, but certainly on-par.
Pureheart is good, but Jade Arc still reigns.
Overall, Pureheart feels like a great design that had a few extra bits tacked on that ruined her:
Her standard skill feels fun to use.
Her dodge feels fine, but I feel like it would have been better if I could dodge upwards to gain height, although I understand why the level designers might not want to give us that much verticality. Then again Pureheart already has a lot more verticality than other operatives, so I am not sure she'd break more than she already does...
Her RMB bombs feel fun, but since they don't charge her ult they feel kinda weird to play, and her LMB chain deals more single-target damage, which is what all endgame content is concerned with, so her RMB attack is going to be largely useless for endgame content.
Her LMB attack feels kinda clunky to me.
Her standard damage rotation involves shooting 10 rounds, her special shot, then using her standard skill again, but since her standard skill refills her magazine anyway, and her 4* and 5* weapons have 45 round magazines, why did we need auto-aim? Surely we could be trusted to hit 10 shots out of 45?
Auto-aim makes her rotation faster as we can't miss, sure, but with a 45-round mag we'd almost certainly hit the 10 shots needed before we ran out of bullets anyway, and you could change her numbers to account for that.
Pureheart would probably be less fun if we actually had to manually aim all her shots, but she'd probably also feel more involved and satisfying to play as well.
Her ult feels very generic - just a big AoE.
Her ult not interacting with her standard skill or RMB attacks does feel very weird, and makes her AoE capabilities feel inconsistent, sporadic, and unreliable.
If I had to describe Pureheart in a single word or phrase, I'd go with "Beta Test" or "Clunky".
She has had a lot of good ideas go into her, and many of them work well, but they just don't all come together properly, and the bits that don't work are enough to make the bits that do work less fun than they should.
I suspect the reason we haven't gotten any ballistic dps operatives for such a long time is that accurately aiming is harder with a controller, and much much harder on mobile.
To us PC players it's not an issue, but without auto-aim a ballistic operative would become much more difficult to use for controller and mobile users.
I feel this is why Pureheart plays the way she does - she was designed to be fun, but also to not need much in the way of accuracy, so mobile users could still use her.
I don't know what percentage of Seasun's revenue comes from mobile, but it's almost certainly enough that making new operatives that require precise aiming would kill a good chunk of their revenue, as a lot of mobile players just wouldn't be able to use them and hence wouldn't invest into them.
(Although I would hope that most of their revenue is coming from outfits by now, which should be more resilient against that...)
If that's true, then Fenny - Pureheart is both good and bad - good because she's fun and the ideas behind her are solid, but also bad because her implementation just doesn't quite work despite the good ideas that went into her.
With that being said, a few updates could improve Pureheart without actually buffing her dps:
Make her standard skill and her RMB attack charge her ult a little.
Instead of each Passion Sparkshot generating 1 Passion Propulsion and her ult needing 3, have each Sparkshot generate 80 and her ult need 300, and then have each RMB attack generate say 40, and each standard skill use also generate say 20, that way her RMB can also use her ult, but it should still be less damage overall than her LMB combo.
That would make her feel much more natural to play, as well as specializing her RMB attacks into AoE, whereas her LMB attacks would still be primarily for single-target damage.
Overall, I think I like Pureheart - she seems like a fun operative to use for casual content, and will be usable for endgame content, but she isn't perfect.