Blemishine is here at long last, and as she's my favorite operator I'm certainly going to write a guide for her. She could use one too, since she has a lot going on in her kit, with obvious flaws and not-so-obvious strengths.

Basic Information

Blemishine is a 6* Healing Defender, though she plays very differently from other members of her archetype to the point where she's closer to being a Healing Guard. Her skills give her good dps, boost her survivability, are powerful heals, and have amazing uptime. However, they have drawbacks that make her less convenient and/or consistent as a healer compared to traditional healing Defenders. But in exchange Blemishine is not only a jack-of-all-trades but a master-of-some, and much like Ifrit's range you don't need to be making use of Blemishine's entire kit at once for her to be worthwhile.

Offensive Stats

Blemishine has low Attack, a 1.2 second attack interval, low dps, and a 1x2 range. Her offensive ability comes almost entirely from her skills, but her attack speed is actually rather fast, tied with AoE Guards. Her low dps without her skills also synergizes with the rest of her kit, to be discussed shortly. As for healing, she has the highest base Attack among Healing Defenders but Saria's Rhine Charged Suit gives her higher Attack in practice.

Defensive Stats

Blemishine has average HP and low Defense by Defender standards or high HP and very high Defense by Guard standards, has 10 Res, and blocks 3. She can tank normal enemies just fine, but she'll need her skills to tank elites and bosses.

Cost and Trust

Blemishine costs 22 DP, a relatively average DP cost for a 6* Defender/Guard, but cheap for how many roles she can cover. Blemishine's trust bonus emphasizes her focus on offense by giving her 90 Attack and 20 Defense, in contrast to Saria's 50 Attack and 60 Defense.

Trait: Can heal allies by using the skill

The generic Healing Defender trait, it's purely decorative.

First Talent: Knight of Sword and Shield

While Blemishine is on the field, operators with Defensive Recovery skills (charge by getting hit) gain 1 SP when attacking. This talent is very specific but very powerful; even on CN there are only 10 eligible skills across 7 operators at the time of writing. Given how rare they are and that Blemishine relies on them herself, I'll explain some of the details here.

They key advantage of Defensive Recovery skills is that they gain SP any time an enemy hits them, so more enemies means more SP, and all the operators with these skills can block 3. This means they charge very fast when under a lot of pressure. For example, an average grunt attacks every 2 seconds, so each grunt provides 0.5 SP/sec with 3 grunts providing 1.5 SP/sec. Ranged enemies also add to that, and rush enemies like dogs attack even faster. However, Defensive Recovery skills don't charge at all with no enemies around, and charge slowly against single powerful enemies who normally attack slowly.

This talent doesn't help with the first problem, but it does with the second, adding a more stable source of SP on top of the Defensive Recovery. In Blemishine's case her 1.2 second attack interval lets her recover an extra 0.833 SP/sec. This means that against a single grunt she would gain 1.333 SP/sec, and against 3 she would gain 2.33 SP/sec; as long as her opponent is attacking more than once every 6 seconds she'll be gaining >1 SP/sec. Since her s2/s3 already have low SP costs, this gives them extremely low cooldowns provided there's anything around for Blemishine to use them on. This is also where her low dps without skills comes into play, as it lets her farm more SP off of enemies before they die.

The other defensive recovery operators all gain a lot from this talent as well, since they too have mostly fast attack intervals and low SP costs. I'll talk about them in more detail later.

Second Talent: Mercy

Blemishine can attack and will prioritize Sleeping enemies, with a 140% Attack multiplier against them. Suspiciously named, this talent is for use with Blemishine's s2 as her other skills don't inflict Sleep. Sleep is a status effect that prevents enemies from moving or attacking (similar to stun), but also prevents them from being attacked, damaged, or blocked; in exchange it normally has a longer duration than stun, 10 seconds in the case of Blemishine's s2. This talent bypasses that protection, allowing Blemishine to butcher her helpless foes. Note that this only allows Blemishine to attack Sleeping enemies; your other operators will ignore them in favor of other targets, or just stand around if there are no wakeful enemies in range. Another thing to note is that while most operators will attack enemies they're blocking first even if they have some other targeting priority, Blemishine always goes for Sleeping enemies even if she's blocking other enemies. One last thing is that this only applies to Blemishine's damage; attacking a Sleeping enemy does not cause her to heal more.

First Skill: Surging Brilliance

At m3{m0} Surging Brilliance has 0 initial SP, costs 4{5} SP, recovers SP over time, lasts for one attack, can stack up to 3{2} charges, and activates automatically. It gives the affected attack a 260%{220%} Attack multiplier and causes it to heal an ally within a 3x3 square centered on Blemishine by an amount equal to 150%{120%} of Blemishine's Attack.

This skill is effectively a cross between First Aid and Power Strike. Unlike First Aid it doesn't hold charges until allies are under 50% HP and can only heal when attacking an enemy, in addition to not healing as much. But unlike Power Strike it charges over time and stacks charges, so she can ready a burst of damage (and healing) during downtime.

Blemishine's s1's main draw is its simplicity--it lets her dps, heal, tank, and provide her SP battery without any further interaction and without the drawbacks of s2/s3. And while s2/s3 charge very fast they are still burst skills rather than sustained, so s1 can provide a more stable healing/dps output if needed. Much like First Aid it gains reduced SP cost at m1 and an extra charge at m3, though the extra charge is less useful since it won't hold charges until allies need healing. Mastery on this skill is a very low priority since s2/s3 see much more use, especially in hard content, but if you really like her Blemishine is one of the few operators for whom m9 is justifiable for gameplay reasons.

Second Skill: Deterring Radiance

At m3{m0} Deterring Radiance has 0 initial SP, costs 12{16} SP, recovers SP by getting hit, lasts for 10 seconds, and is manually activated. It gives Blemishine +110%{+70%} Attack and causes all allies within two tiles to regen HP equal to 20%{17%} of Blemishine's Attack per second. At the instant the skill is activated, any enemies currently on Blemishine's tile (including enemies she's blocking) are inflicted with Sleep for 10 seconds.

As mentioned above, Sleep is a double-edged sword: it prevents enemies from moving and attacking, unblocks them to free up block count, and increases Blemishine's damage; but it also prevents anyone but Blemishine from harming or even targeting the Sleeping enemies. Thankfully Blemishine is very good at harming Sleeping enemies, as between this skill and her talent she gets 294%{238%} Attack; at e2 30 that's 1532{1240} Attack with only a 1.2 second attack interval. Her talent doesn't apply to wakeful enemies, but she still deals decent damage to them. On top of this s2 also provides a lot of healing; at e2 30 it heals 219{151} HP/sec for a total 2190{1510} healing over its duration. That's enough to fully heal all equally leveled operators except Defenders and some Guards, and it still heals them for a lot, with Blemishine herself recovering 83% of her HP. Being regen-based it can affect normally unhealable units like Hellagur and summons, it's true AoE so everyone in range gets the full effect, and it also has enough range to reach across lanes. Tying it all together is its insanely fast rotation--in combat Blemishine is almost certainly gaining more than 1 SP/sec and at m3 it costs only 12 SP, so it has a single-digit cooldown in practice. Between the sleep and the self-healing this makes Blemishine very hard to kill, as unless enemies can kill her in seconds flat she'll just heal right back up. But since Sleep is only applied at the instant s2 is cast Blemishine can still be attacked by enemies that arrive later, and if too many pile up they may leak--though a lot of the potential problems caused by s2 can be solved with more s2.

Blemishine's s2 and s3 are about equally strong overall. Compared to s3, s2 focuses more on defense and self-sufficiency, can heal unhealables, and has a faster rotation. S2 is a high mastery priority, as the lower cooldown means a lot when it's already so short, and it reduces the hits/damage she needs to take before she can heal. The heal itself scales hard with mastery, as both the Attack boost and % of Attack used to heal increase.

Third Skill: Divine Avatar

At m3{m0} Divine Avatar has 15 initial SP, costs 25{28} SP, recovers SP by getting hit, lasts for 30{26} seconds, and is manually activated. It gives Blemishine +110%{+70%} Attack and +60%{+30%} Defense, causes her attacks to deal additional Arts damage equal to 100%{70%} of her Attack, and causes her attacks to heal a single ally other than Blemishine herself within two tiles for 100%{80%} of her Attack.

S3 boasts an impressive damage output; at e2 30 she deals 2188{1506} damage with every swing, split between physical and Arts. This split is a mixed blessing--against any given enemy it would be better to be 100% physical or 100% Arts, but in exchange few enemies can completely tank her. Either way it's one of the highest dps skills in the Defender class (beaten only by Eunectes s3 and >!Blitz s2!<, the latter of which has a very short duration), and can even hold its own when compared to Guards. The Defense boost makes Blemishine about as tanky as a hard Defender, with s3m3 Blemishine's Defense being on par with s2m0 Hoshiguma. This may not sound too impressive, but it's enough to let her tank nearly any physical enemy that isn't enraged or a boss. As for the healing, s3 has the highest single-target hps in the game, nearly twice that of s2 Ptilopsis; however, it can't heal Blemishine itself and only heals when she attacks an enemy. This means it can be hard to make use of the healing since someone else has to be doing the tanking while Blemishine is still in range, but like s2 it has enough range to reach across lanes if needed. And s3 has even better uptime than s2, with just over double the SP cost but triple the duration.

Blemishine's s2 and s3 are about equally strong overall. Compared to s2, s3 focuses more on offense and teamwork, and has a longer duration. S3 also has a high mastery priority; uptime isn't quite as big a concern, but the arts damage and healing both scale twice with mastery like s2.

Detailed Information

Now that I've given an overview of Blemishine's entire kit, it's time to focus on some of the specific elements that are more complicated: the drawbacks of her skills and how to deal with them.

S2 and Sleep

Sleep is a mechanic nearly unique to Blemishine, and given how it can interfere with your other operators it deserves to be covered in more depth. The primary benefits of sleep are nearly identical to those of stun, except for not triggering effects that specifically rely on stun (notably W2's talent). Blemishine is particularly good at stalling; every s2 is 10 seconds of the affected enemies not attacking, and with its low cooldown Blemishine can keep an enemy occupied while other operators recharge their skills. She can also use s2 to halt unblockable enemies like Wraiths, giving her a chance to kill them with all of s2's Attack boosts.

What makes sleep special is that it prevents affected enemies from being blocked, hurt, or targeted at all (except by Blemishine), taking them completely out of the action. Thus, if used carelessly, Blemishine's s2 will end up causing more problems than it solves, which come in two major varieties. The first is wasting the duration of burst skills like Exu s3 by putting enemies to sleep in the middle of it. The second is causing enemies to pile up, since even if Blemishine is a good dps she's still only one single-target dps, allowing groups to overwhelm her if she's not getting outside assistance. It's possible to mitigate these with experience, especially wasting burst skills, which can be avoided by simply not using the burst skills and s2 at the same time. Pileups are more a matter of getting used to what Blemi can and can't handle on her own. You'll still run into situations where these are obstacles, but not as much as you might fear.

However, this does have some upsides. One of the big ones is that because sleeping enemies aren't blocked they don't take up block count, so during s2 Blemishine can "block" more than 3 enemies, and as long as the excess die before s2 runs out she won't leak. This can be used to change who she's blocking; block count is first-come first-serve and sleeping puts enemies at the back of the line, so she can let cannon fodder go in favor of elites. For example, if Blemishine is blocking 2 Fanatics and a Bully is approaching she could use s2 to put the Fanatics to sleep, allowing her to intercept the Bully while a block 2 operator catches the Fanatics. Another trick is that you can intentionally make a certain enemy untargetable via sleep to make sure your operators don't waste attacks on it, such as putting a Heavy Defender to sleep while Exusiai mows down the unarmored enemies behind it.

In general, this is one of the most important things to keep in mind with s2--you have a lot of control over what does and doesn't get put to sleep, as long as you're proactive. You don't always want to save s2 in order to put more enemies to sleep, and often it's the right call to leave some enemies awake so that your other operators can attack them while Blemishine handles the Sleeping ones. You can also activate it early to avoid killing a weak enemy that would make a good SP battery for her. And at times it might also be better to let an enemy nearly leak past her before activating s2, as she prioritizes Sleeping enemies closer to the blue box given the choice, so this can be used to pick off fragile enemies trying to sneak past. You might even want to activate it with no enemies to put to Sleep at all just for the healing, or for the Attack increase against an approaching enemy.

S3 and Healing

S3 may have the highest hps in the game, but in exchange it can be hard to bring that healing to bear. It can only charge/heal if Blemishine has a supply of enemies (that don't die too quickly to s3) and it can't heal Blemishine herself, making it necessary to position both Blemishine and her patient so that they're in contact with enemies and in range of Blemi's s3. And Blemi herself still needs to stay alive; if this involves another healer it might make s3's healing redundant. Now, even ignoring the healing Blemishine's s3 is still very good with high uptime and high dps on a tanky block 3 operator, but it still pays to know how to use the healing as well. There's also a small silver lining to not healing herself: Blemishine will never steal a heal you'd rather go to her patient(s).

The first thing to worry about is positioning (which also applies to s2 thanks to sharing the same healing range). The simplest solution requires the lane to be at least two tiles wide (or have an alcove on the side), allowing you to place them facing the same tile. This is especially good when one of the lanes is under higher pressure (such as boss fights), allowing Blemishine to attack whatever is causing the need for healing. Another possibility is to have the operators in two close but separate lanes, with Blemishine and her patient fighting different enemies entirely. This has the advantage of flexibility, since most maps have a spot where this can work, like this or like this or like this. A third approach is to put Blemishine behind a block 1 operator, in expectation of enemies leaking. This ideally results in Blemishine mostly fighting weaker mobs while the other operator duels elites. Yet another option is to have Blemishine heal a ranged operator, as a single swing of her sword will heal most of them by 75%+, allowing them to survive almost anything that can't ohko them. This can pull off some crazy stunts, such as activating Blemishine's s3 and then helidropping s3 Eyja into the thick of the fighting.

As for keeping Blemishine alive, one option is to simply trust in her innate durability--she's a Defender, s3 boosts her Defense, and s3 helps kill enemies before they kill her, so she might not even need healing. A safer approach is using off-healers like Angelina who prevent her from dying to attrition. You can also rely on Blemishine's s3 to complement a utility-focused healer, like s2 Warfarin or >!Whisperain!<. Another possibility is alternating burst heals between Blemishine and another healer such as Ptilopsis or Sussuro. And since Blemishine is a durable melee operator she can be used to reach tiles that a Medic couldn't (safely) cover while still remaining within range of a Medic herself.

Usage

With her flaws covered, it's time to focus more on Blemishine's strengths, and why you should bring her in the first place.

Lane Tank

Blemishine needs to be on the frontlines to effectively charge/use her skills, which often means using her as the main blocker for a lane. Compared to other lane tanks, her advantage is the role compression she provides--she's a dps, tank, and healer all rolled into one. She may not be as good at any given role as a more focused operator, but she's often good enough to fill at least one of those roles, providing extra help with the others in the process. Both s2/s3 are good for this, depending on what balance of roles you need from her. If tanking is the priority s2's sleep and self-healing are good for keeping her alive, while if dps is the priority s3's higher dps and lack of sleep are more suitable. As for healing that depends more on your team composition and the map, with both skills having pros and cons.

Healing

As a healer Blemishine is very powerful but very inconsistent, so getting her to heal effectively often requires more than just placing her down. Beyond her high hps and high uptime it's good to keep her positioning advantages in mind; while other healing Defenders can only replace a tank, Blemishine can replace a dps too. And the extra range from her skills lets her reach across lanes, without the low hps of Saria's s2 or the long rotation of Saria's s3. Of course, the main question is which of Blemishine's skills to use. Blemishine's s2 tends to heal best in large groups of operators; not only does it heal more targets that way, but the presumed extra dps can make up for potential interruptions caused by sleep. It's also good against constant pressure due to faster rotation, and when she is the sole source of healing due to healing herself as well. Because s2 is the only one of the two to heal unhealables, it wins by default there. Her s3 heals better against spikes of pressure due to higher hps and longer duration, and when there's another healer to heal Blemishine, cover her downtime, and double up on heals for others. And it's obviously better for focusing on healing a single target; with the highest single-target hps in the game it lets you put operators in far more danger than is normally sane.

Soloing

Being an all-in-one dps/tank/healer Blemishine is pretty good at soloing lanes. Not as good as the likes of Blaze and Thorns, but she can reliably hold most side lanes and some main lanes. S2 is highly preferred for this, as it is the best at keeping Blemi alive, better than s1 for dps, and Sleep's downside becomes irrelevant with no nearby allies. Sometimes s3 is a better choice, as the extra Defense goes a long way if the lane is low on Arts damage and heavy hitters, and s3 has higher dps with better uptime to kill dangerous enemies faster. Either way, another benefit is that Blemi's heals still have enough range that she can potentially help other lanes while soloing her own, and her SP battery has a global range as long as you're using an eligible operator.

Helidrop

Not the most obvious choice, but with how fast her s2/s3 charge and s3's high initial SP Blemishine is ready to go very shortly after deployment. She can be dropped alone to fill her usual tanky dps role, or alongside another operator as a healer. If she's being dropped alone s2 is probably preferred for the same reasons as when she's soloing normally, but s3 is also worth considering for dps. If she's being dropped as part of a duo, you almost certainly want to use s3 with her partner taking aggro, as its sheer hps allows them to be dropped into positions that would normally be lethal.

Synergies

With so much packed into her kit Blemishine has a lot of possible interactions with other operators, with her talents in particular leaving a lot of room for future possibilities.

Defensive Recovery

Blemishine's talent gives her obvious synergy with Defensive Recovery operators. While they're few in number her SP battery has a huge effect on them, as they characteristically have low SP costs (the highest is Liskarm's s2 at 34 SP but she has her own SP battery; Dur-nar's s2 ties Blemi's s3 for second at 25 SP) and short attack intervals (1.2 seconds like Blemi for most, 1.6 seconds at worst). If you're seriously using any of these operators, it's worth considering whether you can fit Blemishine into your squad, and if Blemishine is already in your squad these operators get a big advantage over possible competitors.

>!Mudrock!<

!Blemishine's most famous partner. Mudrock herself is a Juggernaut Defender, with the second-best overall stats in the game but also healing immunity, and regenerating shields that negate damage and heal her when broken. She has a Defensive Recovery s2 with a mere 4 SP cost that makes her next attack true AoE (covering a 3x3 grid centered on herself), with a large damage multiplier and some self-healing, plus a chance to stun. On her own Mudrock is capable of holding lanes like Blaze and Thorns, with less damage in exchange for being nigh-impossible to kill. Blemishine's talent provides a lot of extra dps; against a group Mudrock is still 1 SP short after getting hit by 3 enemies so she may only be using s2 every 3rd or 4th attack; with Blemishine she usually uses it every 2nd attack. Blemishine also greatly increases how often Mudrock can use s2 against single slow attackers, who normally don't provide much SP. And Blemishine also offers the benefit of healing Mudrock with s2, though Mudrock rarely needs that kind of help. Even without help Mudrock is already an amazing operator, but having Blemishine around makes her even better. Mudrock's ability to solo lanes also works well with Blemi, as Mudrock can hold a main lane while Blemishine holds a side lane, and together they can duo clear quite a few maps.!<

Estelle

Shameless shilling aside, Estelle is another big winner from Blemi's talent. As an AoE Guard specialized in clearing hordes Estelle occasionally has trouble charging her s2 due to killing enemies before they reach her, and gaining SP by attacking fixes that, making her more reliable against elites. Estelle also becomes unhealable during her own s2, so Blemishine's s2 can possibly add some extra survivability.

Hung

Hung gets a bad rap, but he's quite good if you're looking specifically for a tank that has self-healing. He's a healing Defender with Defensive Recovery on both skills, so Blemi's talent kicks his healing into overdrive. He won't do much beyond taking hits but he makes a great wall, and he'll still heal others sometimes.

Liskarm

Liskarm loses some of the benefit of Blemi's talent due to her skills being balanced around her own SP battery. On the other hand Liskarm's range lets her get in more hits (and SP) as enemies approach. This makes her auto-activating s1 much more reliable as a Defense boost, or lets her use her s2 more often for extra dps.

Dur-nar

A fellow DPS Defender, Dur-nar relies almost entirely on her s2 for damage. She's already pretty good for a 4*, and reducing her downtime covers one of her biggest shortcomings.

Croissant

Croissant's s2 isn't a great skill to begin with, but if you like it Blemi can charge it.

Nukers

Blemishine's s2 excels at clumping enemies into tightly packed groups, so operators with instant or short duration AoE skills can be used to clear them all at once. The main beneficiaries are s3 W and s3 Weedy, whose 33 second cooldowns make their nukes very spammable for how strong they are. Others include s2 Firewatch, and to a degree s3 Eyjafjalla.

Operators that take a lot of damage

A vague category, but Blemishine's s3 has the highest hps in the game, and much like Shining/Nightingale's respective s3s can keep operators alive in situations that really ought to be fatal. There are a couple operators that especially stand to benefit from this, though nearly anyone can in the right circumstances.

Surtr

Surtr's massive damage output is "balanced" by ramping HP drain that kills her without a squad full of healers. Blemishine alone can't sustain Surtr indefinitely, but assuming Surtr has no other incoming damage/healing she can be kept alive for the full 30 second duration of Blemishine's s3 when both are e2 90 s3m3, nearly doubling her lifespan. The main issue this faces is that their combined onslaught is very likely to outright kill the enemies well before then, leaving Blemishine with no way to heal.

Eunectes

Eunectes is the toughest tank in the game with her s3 active, and pairing her up with the best healer in the game allows her to survive things nobody has any right to. When both of them are e2 90 s3m3 they can even tank phase 1 Patriot, nearly killing him in the process.

Attack buffers

One of the less obvious benefits of Blemishine's nature as a dps healer is that she gains huge benefits from Attack buffs, as both her damage and healing scale off of Attack. Buffing a healer isn't common because usually you'd rather buff a dps instead or bring a second healer, but Blemishine allows you to have your cake and eat it too. On top of that, with her heals being so strong already a buffer can make them reach even crazier heights. Both s2/s3 benefit from this, though s3 generally gets a bigger benefit due to its dps scaling better with Attack.

Warfarin

Being a Medic herself, Warfarin easily solves the problem of keeping s3 Blemishine alive. She's also an SP battery, capable of charging Blemishine even faster. As for her buff, she grants +90%{+60%} Attack for 15 seconds on an effective 45 second cooldown, which if both she and Blemishine are m3 works out to a relative ~43% increase in Attack. Warfarin matches better with s3, as it makes her healing Blemishine more meaningful, has better dps scaling, and a long enough duration to make use of Warfarin's entire s2.

Sora

Sora is at her peak when there are a lot of operators in her range, so a multirole operator like Blemishine who frees up tiles for others is even better. And Sora's range is identical to that of Blemishine's s2/s3, so they both appreciate the same kinds of formations. Her passive healing helps keep s3 Blemishine from dying to attrition, though it's not much help if Blemi's in serious danger. Thanks to Blemishine's naturally low Attack Sora's flat Attack buff works out to be pretty big; when both are m3 and at equal levels it's ~32% more Attack. The buff's 30 second duration is very long, enough to cover 2 casts of Blemi's s2 or the entire duration of s3, and being true AoE any nearby operators get the benefit as well.

Aak

Aak's constantly losing HP, so he appreciates having someone to heal him instead of relying only on his talent, but he can do even more for Blemishine in return. Blemishine is a Defender so she can easily survive his friendly fire, and her s2/s3 gain 15 SP instantly since his attacks count for Defensive Recovery. For s2 that's an instant full charge, allowing her to give 20 seconds of near-continuous sleep. Aak's s2 can be used to buff Blemishine up to hard Defender levels of tankiness, which generally works better with s2 for the self-healing. On the other hand, Aak's s3 pairs well with Blemi's s3 because the attack speed buff also increases her heal speed, more than doubling her hps when it was already the highest in the game.

Unhealables

Blemishine's s2 is one of the few ways to heal normally unhealable operators, and generally the best. There aren't that many unhealables though (Estelle with s2 active, Vulcan, Hellagur, Utage, >!Mudrock!<, and summons), and most of them have some way of healing themselves, so you shouldn't go out of your way to use them just because you have Blemishine. But Blemishine provides on-demand burst healing that they lack, and summons can't heal themselves at all, so she's still helpful to have around if you already make frequent use of unhealables.

Sleep

While it seems an obvious synergy thanks to her talent, the situational 40% extra Attack for Blemishine is rarely as good as a second dps operator, and Sora's s1 is almost entirely outclassed by her s2 for supporting Blemishine. A couple future operators bring more to the table though, and it's possible they'll eventually make even more Sleep-related operators.

>!Kafka!<

!Kafka is a fast redeploy with a 5 second sleep on deploy, which makes her a very spammable crowd control operator. She can be used with s2 Blemishine for ~70%+ uptime on sleep, good for keeping a dangerous enemy out of action but bad for actually killing anything.!<

>!Iris!<

!Iris is a new type of Caster that has a charged attack after not attacking; her s2 puts 2 enemies to sleep and turns them into Arts nukes once they wake up. Her charge means she doesn't lose dps while enemies are sleeping, so she and Blemi don't get in each other's way.!<

Others

Jaye

The other noteworthy dps healer, he makes a fantastic pair with Blemi so they can heal each other and any nearby operators (s3 Blemi especially). You can have them holding adjacent lanes, have Jaye in front of Blemishine so anything that leaks goes to her, or even helidrop them together. Or since Jaye's a fast redeploy, you can have him pop in occasionally to heal Blemi while using him elsewhere the rest of the time. Though nothing says you have to use them together at all; you can just take advantage of the fact that having two dps healers lets you use them in more places at once.

Base Skills

At e0 Blemishine's base skill is Careful Planning, a Workshop skill. Careful Planning removes the LMD cost when crafting elite materials.

At e2 Blemishine gains a second base skill, Passionate Tinker, also a Workshop skill. Passionate Tinker increases her byproduct rate when crafting elite materials by 40%, and decreases the morale cost of recipies that cost 8+ morale by 4.

u/PeterYR has already done the math on Blemishine's base skills, and as it turns out they're really good. To quote their findings:

• When crafting from tier 1 to 2, or tier 2 to 3, the value of byproducts is so low that Blemishine's LMD refund, even unpromoted, outperforms +100% base skills.
• When crafting from tier 3 to 4, +90% base skills outperform Blemishine, but +80% skills still fall behind E2 Blemishine. E0 Blemishine is useless.
• When crafting from tier 4 to 5, it's not worth using Blemishine at all.

Also, be advised that e2ing for a base skill is never worth it, taking literal years to pay off. But it is a nice benefit if you were going to e2 Blemishine already.

Closing

I could say much, much more about Blemishine, but I''m trying not to exceed Reddit's character limit this time. As usual, if you have questions ask away, but if you want to know whether to invest in s2 or s3 I probably won't know the answer. Since the next anticipated banner is >!Forget Me Not!<, expect a >!Mudrock!< guide next given my >!love of dps Defenders!<. As always, here's a link to the Operator Guide Repository maintained by u/LastChancellor.

In case you'd like to see Blemishine in action for yourself, here are some videos (only content EN has already gotten though, in case you're worried about spoilers). These are generally showing her performance in extreme scenarios and at max level, but they should give you an idea of what her upper limit is like.

• 3-8 CM, showcase of how you can use sleep to manipulate targeting
• AP-5, duo s2 Blemishine+Phantom
• 6-5, duo s3 Blemishine+Jaye
• 7-14, duo s3 Blemishine+Dur-nar
• H7-1, duo s2 Blemishine+Weedy
• H7-2, trio s3 Blemishine+Surtr+s3 Ceobe
• H7-3, actually 4 videos: trio s2 Blemishine+Saria+Blaze, trio s2 Blemishine+Nearl+Blaze, trio s2 Blemishine+Surtr+Thorns, trio s2 Blemishine+Surtr+Thorns (different strategy)
• H7-4, trio s2 Blemishine+Surtr+SilverAsh

And here are some videos from further in the future; there will be spoilers here but they'll show you how she holds up in even the hardest content.

• 7-18, trio s3 Blemishine+Eunectes+Mudrock
• S5-9, duo s2 Blemishine+Mudrock
• M8-8 CM, 4 man with s3 Blemishine+Jaye
• JT8-3 CM, 4 man Defenderknights with s3 Blemishine
• H8-4, 5 man with s3 Blemishine
• DM-8, trio s1 Blemishine+Mudrock+Texas
• DM-EX-6, trio s3 Blemishine+Eunectes+Mudrock
• CC#3 perma map Risk 26, s3 Blemishine+others; there used to be a Risk 30 video but it was taken down
• CC#3 perma map Risk 26, s2 Blemishine+others
• CC#3 perma map Risk 27, s1 Blemishine+others
• East Armory daily max Risk from CC#3, s1 Blemishine+others
• Transport Hub daily max Risk from CC#3, s2 Blemishine+others
• CC#4 perma map max Risk, s3 Blemishine+others