The One Who Lives Amongst The Shadows (Schwarz Guide)
Overview
“Lady Ceylon may be merciful, but I am not.”
Schwarz is a close range sniper that focuses on extremely consistent damage against armored targets. Schwarz won’t be melting low defense bosses in seconds like Exusiai, but she will deal significant damage per shot to targets, even those with the highest defense.
Stats
^((All stats & talents at Pot 0 E2 90 + Trust))
Schwarz's most prominent stat is of course her 940 attack, but her health and defense are also quite high when compared to other snipers. In fact her defense is currently the highest in the sniper category, so she can take more hits than other snipers if necessary. >!(Until Rosmontis)!<
Talents
Armor Penetration Arrow:
When attacking, 20% chance to increase Attack to 160% and decrease the target's Defense by 20% for 5 seconds
Possibly the most important part of Schwarz's kit, her skills all utilize it on it and her peak damage relies on it. Even when not using any skills, this talent will aid Schwarz's passive damage output significantly.
Crossfire:
When Schwarz and at least one other Sniper operative are deployed, all Sniper operatives gain Attack +8%
Well like, I don't know who thought Schwarz would have a talent based on teamwork but, hey the buff is pretty nice I guess?
Skills
(All assuming M3)
Skill 1: Charged Shot
The next attack has 220% Attack power and talent activation chance increases to 80%
- SP Cost: 3
- Automatically Activated
This skill doesn't see much use because its simply outclassed by S2 and S3, if you need to deploy Schwarz and have her skill up so fast that the 10-13 seconds from her other skills is too long, you're probably better off changing your strategy. However this doesn't mean its bad/unusable, with a pretty good DPS and great consistency it isn't a bad choice, but other skills outperform it.
Skill 2: Sharp Eye
Attack +130%, talent activation chance increases to 50%
- SP Cost: 30
- Initial SP: 20
- Duration: 40 Seconds
- Manual Activation
This is the skill you use when you need the standard range of Schwarz, if RNG favors you, it's average damage is comparable to S3's average damage. Obviously this skill is more luck reliant for her talent, but even if you don't proc talent it still has a 130% attack buff which is still a significant chunk of damage.
Skill 3: Final Tactics
Attack area changes to 3(4 at M1) tiles ahead of self, increase attack interval (+0.4 seconds), Attack +180%, talent activation chance increases to 100%
- SP Cost: 25
- Initial SP: 12
- Duration: 25 Seconds
- Manual Activation
Range of Final Tactics, Skill Level 1-7 (Left) Mastery 1-3 (Right)
Schwarz's famed boss killing skill. An incredibly effective 180% attack buff and 100% talent proc chance makes Schwarz's damage per hit one of the highest in game. The tradeoff for her increased range is that it becomes linear, so you'll have to place her with this skill in mind.
Schwarz's Role
When you pick up a Schwarz in your team, her role is to deal with high defense, high resistance or high health enemies...or all of the above at once. Unlike a caster, Schwarz's armor piercing isn't affected by resistance. There aren't many enemies in the game that have higher defense than Schwarz can hit for, even including Contingency Contract tags.
If you consider all of the above, Schwarz's role falls into a dedicated a boss/elite mob killer, in which I'd argue is more towards elite mob killer. Schwarz will excel at boss killing of course, but she can also remove high priority targets from attacking and killing your defensive operators which is often times more helpful.
Example 'Elite' Mobs that should take kill priority.
Tips
Schwarz's Skill 3 has a 50% downtime and only 25 SP cost, this fits pretty well into most waves of elite mobs that are thrown out in missions, meaning that whenever you face a hard mob Schwarz should have her skill prepared. If you still need her skill up faster, you can activate her skills before an enemy is in range, so that after the enemy is dead the duration will end and begin recharging sooner.
Schwarz is placed much in the same way Ifrit is, where you prioritize finding a tile that has a linear overlook of multiple enemy paths. Keep in mind, Schwarz is not AoE like Ifrit. Schwarz won't be hitting both lanes at once, but she will swap targets once her first one is dead.
A useful trick with Schwarz's S3/S2 is that when an arrow is fired, using the skill while it is in the air will buff the shot, regardless of if it's in the skill's linear range. S3 in particular will also reset her attack interval, meaning she can fire two buffed shots in quick succession, practically doubling the damage of her first shot or hitting two targets with a buffed shot very quickly.
Picture example of how this trick works
This can be done with S2 as well, it will receive the buff from S2 but is not nearly as useful with this trick as S3.
In Ending
Schwarz is a very potent solution to bosses and elite mobs alike, doing things no caster can do, and doing that very consistently even when faced with an RNG talent.
She is a very useful operator to add to your team, through support or actually acquiring her. And most importantly:
She got thicc thighs and tone midriff.
Posted Dec 28, 2020, 11:22 AM UTC · edited