Kal'tsit Esperanta banner

Should you pull

Kal'tsit makes her extremely predictable return to Rhodes Island with an annoying non-standard character in her name¹ that isn't on my keyboard and... is still a Medic that does True Damage. I'm not sure what I expected. In any case, her new form is incredibly powerful, albeit in a slightly subtle way. I say subtle because while AoE True Damage isn't exactly subtle itself, the total value of her kit including that True Damage, strong AoE healing, control, permanent Take-Off that makes her immune to most damage and mechanics, and an Advanced flex skill, come together in a very powerful and flexible package that tends to be even more than the sum of the parts. Especially considering Medics tend to be fairly rare, Kal'tsit dot Esperanta should be meta for a good long while. As with many units with a lot of parts and flexibility, she has two key skills with differing usage. However, in Kal2’s case, one skill has a significantly more valuable Mastery, her S2. With it, she gains 10 shots, each of which deals a wide swath of AoE True Damage to enemies, and big healing to allies. Then add in a long 5 second Slow that will keep enemies in range snared for the entire duration, while permanently floating, and you have an extremely powerful all-in-one skill that can solve a *lot* of problems. There is some mechanical "fiddliness" to it due to her prioritization of enemies, but unlike the now ancient Folinic, the splash range is wide enough, and the impact per shot big enough, that an occasional misplaced shot doesn't really matter much. Mastery on it is quite valuable as well since it double dips on increases to both damage and healing, which in turn both double dip off of two different ATK increases. The damage per shot increases by 20%, while the healing per shot increases by over 30%, which is a staggering total gain! Many units who have this level of gain can have Masteries that feel “essential”, but in Kal2’s case, the effect is already really good at SL7. That’s a pretty nice feature because it means Kal2 is still great in IS before her E2 promotion, or for just starting rosters! But S2M3 really amps the skill up to another level, and is thus among the highest priority Masteries. Next, her S3 is one of the real "highlight" skills. It can pull off some really crazy stuff, and can be a key solution to a lot of really tough mechanics. She can entirely reposition herself while pulling back two allies to the bench to be redeployed for free. Since she has permanent Take-Off, this can be done at the start of certain dangerous thresholds, keep herself safe, then redeploy her allies when it's over. Or it can be used to reset long cooldowns. Or it can be used to rapidly adjust between phases. Or a number of others! It's really the kind of skill where the sky is the limit (get it, because she floats) in terms of creative play. However, the weird thing with it is that her S3 Masteries aren't all that essential to that function. They do matter and do have an impact, but often not in a way that more casual Story centric players will care about, especially for an occasional use skill. Mastery represents a 15 SP improvement to her initial wind-up, a 10 SP cycle time improvement via reduced SP cost, plus some additional healing. The initial SP is probably the most notable part since it is a rather large amount, but it's not often a skill that's helidropped. The cycle time via SP cost is also quite strong, especially given the high base cost, but it's also rarely the kind of skill that gets activated immediately off cooldown. Finally, the healing on it is actually pretty strong, and can very much matter, especially in the high pressure situations the skill is used in, but isn't the key aspect of the skill. These are all things that absolutely will matter in min-maxed scenarios, but may not matter at all in casual gameplay. So whether her S3 Masteries are worth pursuing or not depends on the kind of player you are, and for many with limited resources, it may be a skip entirely, at least in the short-term. Last, probably pass on her S1. The interval reduction on her S3 means that the healing difference between the skills is comparable, so the main difference comes down to SP cost and the extra block count vs aerial enemies. The former doesn't justify an expensive 6★ Mastery, especially when her S2 is a far better daily driver, and the latter, like so many similar skills, just isn't valuable with the current design of the game. ¹ They removed the dot from the EN version so now this doesn't make sense. Oh well.

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