On your journey to get William Wallace Bagpipe, you may have encountered a few Utage and Sesa. You are wondering how good each of them is, especially Sesa because many have already pointed out how good Utage is. Maybe it is time someone make a better detailed post about him? Welp good luck finding someone to do it…

SYKE imma do it cuz I’m crazy enough (to do this while doing CC lel). Welcome to this week “underrated operator highlights”, we’re going back to our main purpose of this series again. (Not like I made a lot of posts about meta ops though)

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Two dragons, one older brother, one little brother, who is the real Sesa? (harezora's theory)

Overview

Sesa is an AoE sniper, the 4th one in the game (5th if we count Executor), and the 2nd 5* AoE sniper (3rd if we count Executor), along with Meteorite, which is why he is often compared to her. Sesa’s kit, however, lean more into supportive role than Meteorite’s, even though she also has a supportive skill. Sesa has a kit that increase the effectiveness of all physical-oriented allies, but also a defensive kit that benefit melee allies (is it?). Because of how supportive he is, he is definitely considered weaker than Meteorite by most people (probably everyone by now), since they have fewer offensive stats as a compensation, and people values damage more than anything (otherwise the enablers except Shamare would be used more by people instead of “bring more dps lul”).

Stats:

- Offensive stats:

When it comes to a sniper’s base ATK, the hierarchy goes (from highest) Wide-range sniper, Rosa, AoE snipers, Close-range snipers, and then AA snipers (Catapult and Executor are exceptions). Sesa is an AoE sniper so his base ATK is quite high. True to what I said earlier enough, Sesa has less ATK than Meteorite. Fortunately their attack speed is the same, 2.8s per attack, which is 0.1s slower than Wide-range snipers, and 0.1s faster than AoE casters.

- Defensive stats:

In contrast, Sesa has higher survivability stats than Meteorite, in addition to the fact that AoE snipers are tankier than most ranged unit too (Sesa and Shirayuki are on the higher end, Meteorite got cut down a bit because balanced or something). Furthermore, is there even any male in this game that are squishy for their respective archetype? (Ansel doesn’t count lalalalalala) There probably are a few tbh xD

- Cost:

The cost is also typical for a 5* AoE sniper, 24 at E0, 26 at E1, and 28 at E2. I said typical but there's only Meteorite and him so far. They gains extra cost at E2, which is the same as Close-range Snipers and Defenders, except this time there is a justification for it, which we will get into next.

Range:

This is about the only archetype in the game that has their range change with every promotion level, rather than just once at E1. Their base range is equal to an AA sniper, but at E1 they gain 1 extra tile of range in front, and at E2 they gain 2 more, for a 3x5 range in the end.

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The only archetype so far to gain extra ranges at E2

I personally value the 2 corners at E2 more than the extra range at E1. Mainly because the way ranged unit tends to be place, they also tend to be using the side edge of their range rather than the front, because they stand on the side of the road, not in front. But not all maps are like that.

Trait:

Deal AoE physical damage. It’s a splash damage around the impact area, with a radius of about 0.6 tile to 0.8. I don’t honestly know the full detail, and it's not like it will be matters anytime soon...........................

If the target dies when the projectile is in midair, the projectile disappears, but the explosion happens anyway. This is easiest to see with Meteorite. Doesn't work for AoE caster because they do instant attack and not through a projectile.

Talent:

Available at E1 – Vulnerability Deconstruction: When on the field, all blocked enemies received +7% physical damage.

At E2, the amount increases to 14% extra physical damage.

We have been comparing Sesa to Meteorite for quite a while, but this time, we will have to compare to his magic counterpart, Skyfire, who has the same talent but for arts damage. Everything functions exactly the same for both of them, one boost physical damage and one boost magical damage. ^(Quick sellout to my old) ^(Skyfire) ^(post.)

Just like with Skyfire, the talent synergizes really well with who Sesa is at the core, AoE damage dealer. AoE archetype is usually “blessed” with low attack rate, which lead to easily passed enemies before they can fire enough shot to kill them, the best way to deal with that is either slow, or to simply block them, at which point the talent kicks in. To further utilize the AoE-ness of his attack, it is best to clump enemies together, and the easiest way to do that is to also use defenders/guards to block them. Meteorite bypass some of that by having a large blast radius to hit more enemies and more damage so they die in fewer hits, that is why a comparison between her and Sesa was never going to do well (for Sesa, that is).

Unlike Skyfire, Sesa can synergize with a lot more operators because physical damage is more prevalent, especially for the operators used to block them. Melee units that deal arts damage is significantly fewer than those that deal physical damage. Even Arts Defender like Dur-Nar deal physical damage when her skills aren’t active, and Ch’en has half each, or unable to block with her S3. The only melee physical unit that doesn’t work well with Sesa is SilverAsh, mainly because everything dies before they can touch him.

Because of that, this talent is slightly "nerfed" if you compare numerically to Skyfire’s talent, which gives 15%. It may seem unfair or weird at first, but it is better overall if you consider the rest of the squad, unless you somehow fully focus on casters and melee unit that mainly deal arts damage, of which you wouldn’t even be reading this post right now.

The most important aspect of this talent is that it is a final damage multiplier, one of the few in this game. It boosts damage after all enemies’ defensive stats are calculated, unlike ATK multiplier where it increases the damage before, just like Skyfire’s talent. Now for physical attack with Sesa’s talent, it is different. For magic damage, the ATK is reduced by multiply with (100-RES)% and then Skyfire’s talent multiplies it afterward, but it is all multiplication so the order doesn’t really matter. However, for physical damage, the ATK is reduced by subtract it with the DEF value and then be multiplied by Sesa’s talent, which means its effectiveness percentage varies with the percentage of your allies’ ATK over the enemy’s defense.

This may be unimportant, but I should mention it anyway. This talent (and accordingly Pramanix-type of talent) calculated after everything which include the minimum 5% damage threshold that all physical damage has. So if this talent is in play (with 14%), you can expect the minimum damage is increased to 5.7%, so... still wack. You can further increase that with Pramanix (with 30%) and get to 7.41%. Again, nothing important, but fun to think about. It’s not going to be like Red who has 25 or 35% minimum damage, but at least it can affect more people.

Speaking of Red though, her S2 actually is affected by this talent. In fact, there is a split moment after deploying her and before she actually stuns. I know for sure because my Red has died so much times in Broken Path due to the fire tile before even managed to stun (tks HG?). So if you drop Red right on top of someone, they’ll receive the extra damage, but only one guy will get it since Red can only block 1.

Same guy, different damage

Update: nowadays, while I still use Sesa a lot, I don't use him for the team support anymore, his S2 burst damage is amazing by its own right already, but the global damage amp for any blocked enemies is still amazing when the map require heavy blocking.

Skills:

- RIIC skills:

Always available – Pragmatic Minimalism: when in the workshop and making Elite Materials (the one used to upgrade operators and their skills), any recipe that consume 4 morales will be reduced to 2.

Available at E2 – Industrial Design: when making any Elite Materials, increases the by product rate by 75%.

This is the first operator I do that has a workshop ability, so let’s talk in general for a bit. In the workshop, you can set a recipe and consume certain materials in order to craft the selected materials. Typically they used a lower tier material but the same type/category to craft a higher tier material. You can do this without any operator. However, if you put any operator in the workshop to perform the process, the recipe will have a 10% chance to produce a by-product, which type of by-product depends on which recipe selected.

Accordingly, each recipe consumes a certain amount of operator’s morale, just like how they consume morale hourly when working in anywhere else. It depends on how much you are crafting with each operator, but they can only do a maximum of 24 times for any recipe that cost only 1 morale, which is the lowest you can get.

For Elite Materials, you’d use the lower tier materials to craft a higher tier material like usual, and the by-product will be on the same tier as the materials that was used to craft it, not the tier of the selected product, unlike Skill Summary.

For Sesa specifically, any Elite Materials recipe that cost 4 morales will be reduce by 2 (i.e. -2 cost), basically half, which means he can works twice as long compare to other operators working on the same thing. He also have the 2nd base skill that increases the by-product rate for these Elite Mats specifically by 75%, which increase that from the baseline of 10% to 17.5% (basically 10 * [100+75]% ).

If you want to know further, the Elite Materials recipe that cost 4 morales are the recipe that is used to craft Tier 4 materials (the one with a purple-pink circle around them). Sesa also only reduce the consumption for recipe with exactly 4 morale cost, it doesn’t do anything else for any higher cost recipes, unlike Magallan, but also unlike Magallan, he has a higher chance of byproduct, so it’s a bit of a trade off.

Now let’s talk about the actual combat skills that he has.

First skill: ATK Up γ

His first skill is the generic ATK up skill. It basically just gives him a simple but strong attack boost for 30s. At level 7, it inreases ATK by +60% for 30 seconds, at a cooldown of 35 seconds (or 26.92s with E2 Ptilopsis), and an initial SP of 10.

It is a pretty amazing generic skill, but it’s not that great on Sesa. He can only attacks for about 10-11 times during the skill. He does have a high base ATK to be increase further with the % boost, but he lacks the attack rate to make the most out of it.

It is still a generic skill so… next. Just remember that if you don’t like his 2nd skill but still like using him, this is the alternative.

Second skill: Delayed Concussive Parts

This is the second part of his kit that gives him more team support, but that does not mean this skill is weak offensively. As the name suggested, there’s a bit of delay for his attack now. The skill converts all of his attack into a time-delayed bomb that explodes a short time after landing. This explosion deals extra damage and applies a debuff on all affected enemies that reduces their attack speed by an amount for 3s. At level 7, each of his attacks now deal 210% physical damage, decreases ATK SPD of all hit enemies by 10 for 3s, lasting 27 seconds, for a cooldown of 44s (33.85s with E2 Ptilopsis), and an initial SP of 14.

There are quite a few aspects of this skill, so let’s go through one by one.

As described, when this skill is active, Sesa doesn’t fire his normal attack that doesn't immediately explode on contact. Instead, he fires a bomb that stays at where he aimed, and only explodes after 2 seconds. This is both a curse and a blessing. First, the curse part, this bomb doesn’t move, so if the enemies just keep moving forward, they could escape the explosion range, which doesn’t change with this skill. However, the enemies need to have a movement speed of about 1 in order to escape by themselves (the Dual Swordman, in 4-5, has a movement speed of 1.1 and they can easily outrun it).

\"Dualstrike Guard\" has a movement speed of 1.1

SV-4 update: At some point, enemies will be too fast that, when Sesa aim this delayed bomb to the first guy, the bomb actually hit the 2nd guy coming up next instead, since they arrive in a steady pace, which is hilarious because he wouldn't waste his shot on the first guy anymore if he dies before the bomb goes off (see below)

Two possible solutions are using slow operators, or to simply block them. Block them is the “better” solution, because then his talent will kick in, and the ATK SPD reduction would help those blockers survive better(?). Both of that solutions though, requires an outside source, which means Sesa’s own effectiveness is dependent on allies, which he is kinda designed to do. The delayed explosion does help by letting some enemies have enough time to walk into blocking range of operator, but it also helps by letting some enemies have enough time to walk into the explosion range from further away. Which, if combined with the few enemies already blocked, means he has the potential to hit more enemies from 1 explosion. It still couldn’t beat Meteorite’s expanded explosion, but as established, Sesa isn’t designed to match Meteorite’s potential.

A hidden thing this skill doesn’t tell you is that, it also increases the wind-up time for his attack as well. Usually, he needs only 1s from beginning the attack to actually fire it, but when this skill is active, it goes up to 2s, which is twice as long. What that means is that from the time he decided to attack someone to the time he actually fires it, 2 seconds have passed. Wind-up time doesn’t account for his total interval, so it just shifted, instead of 1s wind-up + 1.8s waiting, it’ll be 2s wind-up + 0.8s waiting. Unfortunately, this is a huge curse for him, or more accurately, the devs put a huge curse on him. Normally, if the target enemy die during the wind-up time, they will restart it and find a new one. For Sesa though, he does not do that. If the target dies during his windup time? FUCK IT WE SHOOTING AT THE GROUND ANYWAY. This also applies for enemies that die by his own S2 attack, because he already aimed at them to begin the attack animation.

The guy actually died even before the nuke hit lul

There is a reason for that though, proven by the fact that the bomb stays on the ground regardless of who he aims, which includes drones (but the explosion can still hit drones). They programmed him to aim at the enemy’s location rather than any specific enemy, which means he doesn’t care if the “target” dies during his windup time, because the “target” physically cannot die. There is one other operator in this game that does the same thing, try to remember who she is before I compare Sesa to her a couple paragraphs later.

The aspect of reducing attack speed is quite small before masteries (it goes up to -20 at M3). However, over the whole duration of the skill, it is enough to reduce 2 or 3 attacks, especially the slower dudes. It lasts for 3 seconds which may sound short, but it is higher than his attack interval, so a permanent debuff is achievable during the skill. It shouldn’t be relied on before M3, so you can typically ignore it, but it is something to remember. As many have pointed out, or more correctly, as many people automatically default to, this aspect of the skill is to maximize his talent, because your blocking operators can potentially survive longer. That’s just one aspect of slowing attack speed, there is one more. What do I mean by that? Not much actually. I have already mentioned that the amount isn’t much so keep in mind that what I said next will still not be that great. Okay ready? The other aspect is to counter ranged enemiesPlease don’t click off this post. Hear me out. Everyone has been saying that enemies can walk off the explosion range if they are fast enough. What if the enemies decided to stand around for a short while every couple second? Lowering their attack speed means that they will stop less often, but we have established that it’s not by a large amount, but if said ranged enemies start moving more often because they attack less often, they will move forward much faster, which can either be good or bad, I think you can imagine why for each case. Sesa has a long range so he can reach those enemies easier as well. However, Sesa doesn’t prioritize ranged unit, and ranged units rarely approach solo so it’s hardly a great strat so idk what I have been saying for the last few sentences.

Each bomb also deals somewhat massive damage per explosion, and it is considered an Attack Multiplier (i.e. also multiply ATK boosts). Since it applies to any attack Sesa make for the duration, it is technically a burst skill, and even if the delayed aspect make the first explosion come out much slower for the first attack, the time between all hits still doesn’t change, so in the long run it remains the same except slightly shifted forward (like moving from sine wave to cosine wave or something idk I’m not smart). The duration of the skill at level 7 allows him to have a maximum of 9 attacks (2.8s interval over 27s duration). Using the skill will reset his attack animation but the windup for the initial fire won’t be enough to reduce it to 8 so it’s fine. At M3, it will be 11 hits with each explosion deals even more damage, but it’s quite a huge investment.

M1 is actually important to get the 10th attack, and M3 will give the 11th.

One more problem is that this skill has a decently long cooldown. 44 SP cost with the fact that he can only restore SP when his skill is not active means there’s a long wait between usage. It's not a long cooldown like all of the busted skill with 70+ seconds, but the effect of this skill isn't stellar to worth the relatively long cooldown either.

I don’t know if you noticed yet, but Sesa’s kit is extremely similar to one other operator in this game. People often compare him to Meteorite because she is another 5* AoE sniper, but those two are not the best comparison. I said this in the operator discussion made by the mods here and hinted slightly in the Talent section, but his best comparison is Skyfire. They do the same things, but one does physical and the other does magical damage. Both have the same talent, affecting all blocked enemies. Both have the same generic first skill. Both have a skill 2 that is functionally the same thing: increases windup time for their attack, aiming at the location of the target instead of aiming directly, dealing the same % damage per shot at all skill level, inflicting a small debuff that is negligible until M3. If that’s not enough to convince you guys they are 2 sides of the same coin, I don’t know what will. (inb4 all the comments about range or survivability or the fact that Skyfire has no delay for her explosion, has expanded AoE, a longer interval, less cooldown, and longer duration kappa)

People talks about Sesa a lot, mainly negative things. It’s true or not, I’m not here to debate that. Well, I said "a lot", but the Operator Discussion post for Sesa by the mods get considerably fewer comments (about a fifth) than for Leizi, who is also generally accepted to be not good, but Leizi do have more leeway to talk about (archetype, ST vs AoE comparison, art/waifu, gameplay dynamics,…). Poor Sesa lul.

If anything, do always remember that Sesa leans more into support, unlike Meteorite who is full on offensive oriented. So comparing them together just because they are both 5* AoE sniper is a disservice (to Meteorite).

That’s all I can manage to scrounge up for Sesa. He’s not in a nice light by people, but I hope this post can help shift your focus a bit, if at all. Thank you for reading this far, and hope I can get Sesa soon (pls it's been 70+ rolls send help I even got >!3 Bagpipes !<and I can't complain because of that). Oh and hope to see you next time too xD