Medicine can heal, but they can also hurt (Folinic’s guide)
A month ago, our schedule got rekt hard by… you know what, this may be the millionth time this is talked about, so I’ll stop. Anyway, with a twist of event, Folinic, the most unique healer in this game, came to us earlier than expected. She’s a free unit, so expect her to not be in a positive light by the people’s opinion. And that, makes her one of the best candidates for this series. How bad is she really? Or maybe is she just misunderstood?
Overview
Folinic is a medic that is capable of hurting enemies directly. No other medic in this game can do so. However, that doesn’t mean she can kill them fast, due to the rest of her kit and her original role as a Medic. As you may aware, operators who do a few roles at once doesn’t really do so well… right Saria? As a medic, their utility is more often sought after, rather than raw healing output, in the late game, as your units are now tough enough to warrant just an occasional refresh here and there instead. Folinic, as said in the first sentence, has the utility of a half-DPS unit while being a healer.
Stats
- Healing stats:
For medics, their ATK value is used to heal allies, so my old category of “offensive” stats doesn’t really fly. Most medics have a really low base ATK though, comparing to the rest of the ranged DPS operators, this will be important later. Within the medic class itself, Folinic has the 5th highest ATK of all medics, including CN at the time of writing. However, she’s a 5* Single Target (ST) Medics, and within those, she has the lowest ATK, and loses out to Sussurro, while only beats Myrrh by 4 ATK at max, and those two are just 4* units. All medics has a baseline healing rate of 2.85s, but some medics have skills/talent that can affect it though, so Folinic loses out slightly because she has none.
- Defensive stats:
To compensate, Folinic’s HP is the 2nd highest of all the medics, losing only to Breeze (yes, her), mostly due to her +200 HP trust stats. But while that sounds nice, her DEF is mediocre overall, but at the same time, the difference between the DEF value of the medics is overall small as well (except for Gavial), so I’ll assume that it’s usually fine. She has no RES though, since she’s not Nightingale nor a Wide Range Healer type, but once again, the difference is 5 RES (well except for Nightingale). Since they can heal though, that means they can heal themselves, which means their survivability is higher than just the Defensive stats here can show.
- Cost:
…...Well, most ST healers have a decently high cost, especially if they’re 5* or higher. Free event units are also higher cost than normal, to balance out the potential cost reduction they get from their uhhhh… potentials. Free event units have -3 DP cost from their max potential, which should be easily obtained if you were to participate in their event. Starting at 19/21 cost, Folinic can easily drop 3 to get down to 16/18, which is lower than the other 5* ST medics of 17/19. The problem is, from what I’ve seen in the megathreads during the event, I doubt many people have her at full potential, just so they can get some more money (damm capitalist).
Range
She has no special range, it’s the same as any ST medics so far.
Range at E0 (left) and E1 (right). Also similar to AA snipers and Aak
Trait
Restores the HP of allies. This is why they’re called Medics.
Medics’ healing prioritises ally with the lowest %HP currently. This will also be important later.
Talent
Available at E1 – Drug Inhibition Technique: Gain Status Resistance (reduces the duration of stun, chill, freeze by half)
Available at E2 – same thing but additionally reduces the damage of environmental effects by 40%.
Potential 5 increase the damage reduction to 50%.
What count as environmental effects? As of now, there’s only the poison haze such as the AP maps, H5-3, and the Defender/Medic chip stages. The damage goes from 25 per tick to 12 or 13 because of rounding and stuff. It also works for the volcano erupt in OF event as well.
However, it does not work for structure-type damage like Ballistae and the Gramophones which appear in her own event, I will assume that it goes the same for the structures in Chap 7 as well. It’s kinda funny because Folinic is confirmed to be a Mongoose, with one of their special traits is resist snake venom. And, the stage hazard in H5-3/AP map is called Poison haze. Coincidence? I think not.
The effect sounds pretty bad right? Well yes, but the permanent Resist is pretty lit by itself. As a healer, preventing the things that prevent her from doing healer things is great, though obviously almost everyone will benefit from permanent Status Resistance. Except for the fact that, you don’t really need Resist for about 90% of the time. It does do well in chap 6 stages, but even in there, there are very few maps where the presence of cold/frozen is a bigger threat than just a “nuisance”.
Late update: she does works fine as a stun bait in CC#1 Pyrite Gorge with that Resist and heal, and the arts damage somewhat help against wraith bois and Def Crusher, but sadly this is a way too late information for that eh?
!You know, why the free event Medics have terrible talent that doesn’t really works most of the time again?!<
Well, maybe her skillset is better?
Skills
RIIC skills:
- Always available: Toxicology α: When assigned to the workshop to produce Elite Materials, the by-product rate is increased by 75%.
- Available at E2: Meticulous: When assigned to the workshop to produce Elite Materials, recipe that cost 2 morales will cost only 1.
I’ve talked about the Workshop in the base before in the Sesa guide. So in the interest of not making this guide longer, I’ll just summarized what Folinic’s base skill do.
+ Elite Materials are the materials used to promote operators and to upgrade/mastery skills.
+ Recipe that cost 2 morales are the recipe that is used to craft T3 materials, signified by a blue circle around them. Reducing morale consumption from 2/recipe to 1 mean that she can works for double the amount of works, which, for recipes that cost 2 morales, usually you would have a surplus of the materials, which allows for mass conversion from T2 materials to T3.
+ By-product from these Elite Materials recipes are of the same tier as the materials used to craft them, so you’d only get T2 materials as a by-product. 75% chance sounds big, but it’s for the baseline of 10%, so 17.5% only.
Anyway for actual combat skills
First skill: Max-dosage Infusion
- Description:
Increase range and ATK for 40 seconds.
- Stats at level 7:
Range +1, ATK +50%, last 40s, cost 34SP (auto recovery), initial SP of 16, and manual activation
- Masteries:
M1 gives +2 range instead, ATK +60%, 33SP cost, 17 initial SP.
M3 gives ATK +80%, 30SP cost, 20 initial SP.
- Further details:
Folinic is one of the few medics that can extends their range, the others being Ptilopsis, Nightingale, and the most resemble to her, Ansel. Technically Silence counts, but let’s not do that.
The skill allows her to reach an ally that is up to 5 or 6 tiles away from her, which as said, not many healers can do. She also gains a huge increase to ATK, so she can both reach far and heal hard.
The duration never changes with skill level, but the downtime is shorter in respect. The bigger problem with the downtime is that, if you’re planning to abuse the extra healing range to put Folinic really behind but still heal your other operators, there will be time when Folinic is unable to heal your ally, which then requires timing to use this skill.
So why using the extra range then? Well, it’s not like all operators will die if they aren’t healed for 34 seconds (coughfuckingAakcough), especially if there’s a few small waves between the big one. A different reason to use this skill is when you need a healer, but the maps give you enough awkward ranged tiles to leave you not enough space for some short range DPS units. Sure you can get Silence, but she requires luck to get, while Folinic’s event is recent and most people would probably have her already… right? Ansel is a 3* units and does have a lower healing output with less skill uptime, but he doesn’t need mastery to get +2 ranges, while Perfumer’s regen may also not be enough at times (but mostly in the early game).
The utility of extra range is probably rarely used, since the healing itself is also rarely used. In late game where your operators are tough enough to only need a couple heal to not outright die, if you have a ranged tile that’s far enough to use this skill, more often you can just use Healing Defender and/or self-sustain units.
This skill is still for pure healing, and in the late game, the utility of medics tends to be in their second (or third) skill, as healing become less important while still remains essential enough. You’d still need some healing, regardless of sources (some people can get by difficult maps with aggro management and Angelina alone even). Basically Medics are used for their extra utility.
Second skill: Compound Drug Shell
- Description:
Attacks now fires a Compound Drug Shell which prioritises enemies, when it hits, it explodes, deals AoE Arts damage to enemies and heals allies at the same time.
- Stats at level 7:
Allies are healed for 120% of Folinic’s ATK, enemies take 160% Arts damage, 27s duration, cost 44SP (Auto Recovery), 16 initial SP, manual activation.
- Masteries:
M3 increase the heal to 150%, damage to 200%, duration 30s, SP cost 40, initial SP of 20.
- Further details:
This is the skill that can make her directly hurts enemies. Before her, there are only indirect stuffs like Warfarin that boosts an ally’s ATK, and Ptilopsis that boosts Auto Recovery skill’s usage rate, and if we’re really stretching it, Wide-Range Medic that helps allies get disabled for less time.
The explosion has a radius of 1, and to clarify on how they work, at impact, it gives 2 overlapping areas of radius 1, with one do the heal and one do the damage. The radius of 1 means that, if the impact is at the very center of a tile, namely, if it target an ally, the 4 allies at the center of the corner tiles won’t receive it, because it’s a distance of sqrt(2). See below.
1 is less than the square root of 2 which is 1.414
While it says “prioritises enemies,” Folinic can still fire this shell to an ally, she just no longer prioritises them. So, if there are enemies in her range, any allies that is not nearby said enemies will no longer be healed by her, including, herself. If enemies are coming on different area of Folinic’s range, Folinic will not be able to heal anyone but the one close to her target priority, which can be a big issue at times, and is a major concern in most people’s first impression of Folinics’ kit.
That is, however, assuming that you’d want to use Folinic to primarily do damage to enemies, which is the wrong mindset for using Folinic. Yes she can deal damage to enemies directly, but she is a medic first and foremost, and medics come with one of the worse ATK stats in this game for a ranged unit, as said in the Stats section. The biggest factor though, is the attack rate of 2.85s, which is on par with AoE casters (2.9s), and I don’t think I need to tell you how well AoE Casters are doing. Especially if you consider the fact that Folinic has only about 60% of AoE Casters’ ATK stat.
So what, she still has the heal right, wouldn’t that be balanced out in the end as a hybrid between a medic that do the “minimal necessary heal” while also do a little bit of extra damage just like how Medics’ utilities are being considered more in the late game than their actual healing for about 90% of the time. I could probably do a quick comparison to Ptilopsis and Warfarin whose utilities also aid in more damage, but it’s probably going to quickly become a Folinic bully section so…
→ What you should do with Folinic is that, don’t rely on the fact that she prioritises enemies first, don’t even let her do it at all. What that does is that, when her skill is up and those allies in her range are pressured, Folinic will start to focus on healing those allies because there are no enemies in her range. By doing that, any allies in her range can still be healed instead of just the allies around the enemies with the least path left. This technique will still allow Folinic to attack enemies that is attacking your allies because of the AoE, and you effectively remove the “weakness” of prioritising enemies instead of allies. Because of the setup, she effectively has the 1 tile of range around her original range as a damage zone, which make it pretty big.
Just an example setup, it's not map-specific and I can give more if needed in comments.
If you can set her up like that, the way you’d use Folinic has to be changed, as a retaliating healer, rather than a damage-dealing healer. This is perfect for 1 and a half reasons:
- If a blocker in 1 of those lanes get a lower %HP than the other, Folinic will prioritise healing them. Then the AoE damage will take its care of hurting the enemies that are attacking said blocker, which helps reducing said threat. If 1 of the blockers get constantly below %HP than the other blockers, most of Folinic’s heal will go toward that one, which is great because that’s where the relative threat is higher than the rest of the lanes. That relativity does not change with more DPS units around, and it potentially even allows her to attack in the area that isn’t focused by your other DPS units, because the blocker in the area that is focused by your other DPS units will have less chance to get lower %HP than the other blockers. And if there is a really strong enemy, then the heal+dmg hybrid still contributes. If your other DPS units can clear up multiple lanes at once so fast that Folinic’s damage isn’t needed, well, then it doesn’t really matter anymore, and at that point probably even the 3* medics can still keep your ally up.
- If there is only 1 lane, you can still do the same thing, and that allows her to stay a little further back while still be able to damage the enemies, which then leaves her with an effective range similar to an AoE sniper. It does allow her to be place further than Warfarin in the same scenario, since Warfarin really want to have an extra range in front of the blockers to get her talent kicks in. You see, if your talent doesn't work most of the time, no one will want to abuse it.
https://reddit.com/link/kc52ch/video/c5au68pe4w461/player
For the first 6 shots, it is exactly as people has feared from her kit (prioritise enemies), but the last 4 is exactly what I talked about above where she can comfortably heal allies that are holding more than 1 lane.
From what I’ve seen in DM-7, if the enemies run too fast, they can actually invade the tile that a blocker is on, instead of being blocked just outside of it. You can see more in my example clear of DM-7, where that happened a lot more than what I'd like to showcase with the strat I devised. But it is just a bit of a funny interaction, what I said hold true for far more often than not.
I believe that most people attempted to leave Folinic with at least 1 tile of range to attack enemies, which then they also concluded that Folinic can’t heal allies in 2 lanes at once, has limited Folinic’s capability more than it is already. What I said above doesn’t really work with Wraith and flying units, but the Wraiths are a rare occurrence, and the Drones can be dealt with by AA snipers. If it's a heavy drone maps, then I'd have to give up and suggest a different healer, or use her S1 for a high ATK boost instead.
When this skill is up, Folinic heal allies in an AoE for 120% of her ATK, essentially a +20% ATK buff, which is small compare to what other healers got with their skill (coughWarfarin with +90% cough). There is the nice AoE effect and the fact that Folinic’s base ATK is far higher than AoE healers, but unlike the typical AoE healers, it’s limited and rarely reach 3 allies at once. However, it’s not exactly +20% ATK buff, as this 120% is an Attack Multiplier, and so is the 160% Arts damage, which multiplies any ATK boost. Why would we ever want to buff a medic? Uhh… ummm… well… look what’s that behind you?
One thing remains true is that the damage Folinic can put out is low, comparing to other actual DPS units. But no actual DPS units have the healing output like her, so it’s the classic dilemma of a 2-in-1 unit or 2 separated units. Although, 1 busted medic and 1 busted DPS probably would do far better than 2 Folinic-type of units, because specialization leaves them more straightforward and easier to use than jack-of-all-trades but finnicky type. And if we’re talking about 1 offensive-utility medic with 1 DPS, we have to go back to Warfarin and Ptilopsis, 2 very strong units in competition with what Folinic can achieve. But then again, ToW is a recent event and maybe, not everyone is that lucky to be a chooser.
The cooldown and duration are also 2 factors to consider, with 44s downtime (33.8s with E2 Ptilopsis), but only a 27s duration. That’s quite a low uptime, especially when you consider the fact that Folinic only fires 10 shots while the skill is up, which are not that much. By M3 she can do 12 shots with even more damage, but that’s a huge investment.
Folinic is trashed pretty heavily, and if I were to be fully honest, some of them are pretty on point. I could be devising strategies to use her like Sun Tzu or something and the finnicky-ness of her abilities can still put people off, and in truth, her performance is actually pretty average. Not as bad as people would like to claim, but nothing amazing. Damage is king in this game, but sometime enhancing performance can also go a long way, which is why even though Warfarin can only buff allies, the improvement that that ally received can potentially be miles better than what little AoE damage Folinic can dish out.
By the way, Folinic may be the first medics that can deal damage to allies, but she’s not the first one to deal damage while healing allies. Healing Defender, sure, but there’s also Nightmare (Podenco switch state entirely so it doesn’t count), who doesn’t have the restriction of healing only the allies around where she attacks, which means you don’t have to block anyone from entering her range and as a fact, you have to let Nightmare attacks in order to heal allies, but unlike Folinic, she deals ST damage. Nightmare heals less per attack and needs M1 in order to heal 2 allies per attack, but she heals faster, so it evens out. Losing AoE damage to AoE casters and only tying damage+healing hybrid to Nightmare, how low can you even go? smh
But if you enjoy using Folinic, who has the proper rights to stop you? So then, for those that use her, how do you find Folinic? I’ve probably heard the general gist of opinion already, but it doesn’t hurt to see if there’s any Folinic’s fan out there. Also hope I didn’t leave out any critical informations and didn’t flood out any way-too-specific informations as well. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time for Tsukinogi, who’s considered one of the worst 5* in this game (yes another one of those), so that’s going to be interesting.>! but horrible for my sanity!<
Posted Dec 13, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC · edited