Arknights: In-depth Review - Specter the Unchained

Specter the Unchained is the future Limited 6★ Dollkeeper Specialist featured in the Abyss Corrosion banner, which will run alongside the Stultifera Navis event. Specter the Unchained is likely one of the most anticipated Operators due to her intriguing backstory and ties to the Abyssal Hunter faction. With this new alternative version, Specter the Unchained can tap into the power of an “alter ego” to stand for her in combat when she goes down. Let’s see how well she performs when compared to her regular version!

Harnessing the power of her Seaborn blood, Specter the Unchained is able to draw from her own HP as a source of strength, with all three of her Skill allowing her to modify her HP in some way or another to activate powerful effects in combat. As with the regular Specter, a definite highlight of her kit is the ability to prevent her own HP from falling to zero for a period of time, which lets her block even the most dangerous enemies with ease, all while delivering powerful attacks. The only enemies able to bypass this must instead force her retreat, with the only examples so far being 'Emperor's Blade', Pursuer and FrostNova, 'Winter's Scar'.

While this part of her kit very closely resembles her standard form, it is necessary to highlight how Specter the Unchained is affected by the specific gimmicks that are employed by her new archetype. Dollkeeper Specialists do not retreat when their HP falls to zero, and instead swap to a Substitute version of themselves with the same stats but zero block count, different abilities and ranges, and permanently on SP lockout. If these Substitute versions are knocked out, the Operator retreats. Otherwise, they swap back to their original form with full HP and, very importantly for Specter the Unchained, 0 SP.

Compared to other Operators of her archetype, Specter the Unchained is definitely a step above everyone else. Even at the same investment, she very comfortably beats both Bena and Kazemaru in both the HP and Attack departments. She even beats Specter on that first benchmark, and practically has the same Attack values as her. In regards to Defense, Specter the Unchained is average for a Dollkeeper, only having slightly more because of her higher investment cap, which still leaves her with 30 less Defense than Specter.

Probably the most important aspect of her stat spread is that, as a Dollkeeper, Specter the Unchained only has a Block count of 2 instead of the 3 her standard version has.

Specter the Unchained’s Substitute cannot attack, but instead inflicts a 40% Movement Speed reduction and deals 40% of her Attack as Arts damage per second to all enemies within the 8 surrounding tiles.

This Talent is… quite mediocre. When compared to other Operators, you will find that both of these abilities are better taken care of by Operators even of lower rarities. The Movement Speed reduction aspect can be handled much better and more consistently by the 5★ Ambusher Specialist Manticore, and the Arts damage is so low that its average DPS is barely above Ethan’s Fancy Maneuvers’ Arts DoT effect.

Overall this Talent is not incredibly helpful, as the values for both effects are rather low and other Operators can take care of them more efficiently. Still, do not forget the effects of this Talent as we will be coming back to it soon.

When Specter the Unchained is present in the party, all Abyssal Hunter Operators get a 20% (+3% at P5) Max HP boost, including Specter the Unchained herself.

This buff is obviously designed to incentivize players to use Specter the Unchained in conjunction with other Abyssal Hunter Operators such as Gladiia and Skadi for massive boosts of HP and permanent Regeneration, but as a standalone boost to Specter the Unchained it actually works quite well. When fully maxed out, Specter the Unchained can get Max HP values to rival some Protector Defenders.

Specter the Unchained’s Substitute gains +15% Attack.

Specter the Unchained’s Substitute gains +15% Attack.

Talent 1: Substitute’s Movement Speed reduction is increased to 50%, and Arts damage is increased to 60%. Grants 8 SP when swapping back to Specter the Unchained.

Specter the Unchained’s Substitute gains +15% Attack.

Talent 1: Substitute’s Movement Speed reduction is increased to 60%, and Arts damage is increased to 80%. Grants 15 SP when swapping back to Specter the Unchained.

The basic branch of this Dollkeeper Specialist Module is somewhat mediocre. Taking into account how low the multipliers are in her first Talent, it will not help the Substitute do any substantial amount of damage. However, this Module effect compounds over its Stages 2 and 3 benefits, which are amongst the best in the game, making it a must-have even if the original effect is not incredible.

The advanced stages of this Module are amongst the best we will ever see, and perhaps even the reason why we have Module Upgrades in the first place. Specter the Unchained used to be thought about as a linearly worse alternative to her standard form, due to her archetype severely worsening her Skill uptimes (particularly on her main Skill) due to the Substitute entering SP lockout. These Upgrades not only addresses this issue by granting Specter the Unchained 75% of the SP she would’ve gathered were she not on lockout during the swap, but also doubles the Arts damage dealt by the Substitute and substantially improves the Movement Speed reduction effect to more than respectable levels. If you want to use Specter the Unchained, having this Module is imperative, as it boosts her viability very significantly.

Specter the Unchained’s Substitute gains +10% Max HP.

Specter the Unchained’s Substitute gains +10% Max HP.

Talent 2: Now grants 25% (+3% at P5) Max HP and +0.3 SP per second to all Abyssal Hunters.

Specter the Unchained’s Substitute gains +10% Max HP.

Talent 2: Now grants 30% (+3% at P5) Max HP and +0.5 SP per second to all Abyssal Hunters.

The basic branch of this Module doesn’t really benefit Specter the Unchained all that much. Not only does she already have the highest HP out of all Dollkeepers, but her second Talent increases it by a significant degree, making further boosts redundant as she’s already very unlikely to die.

The advanced stages of this Module are significantly better, granting her a better SP generation to compensate for the Substitute’s SP lockout, though the overall SP generation is worse than her first Module. The real kicker for these Module Upgrades is the Abyssal Hunter faction buff, granting them even higher Max HP buffs and very powerful SP regeneration tools (stronger than Ptilopsis!). Regrettably, all Abyssal Hunters bar Andreana already have very good cycling or don’t care much for SP boosts, somewhat wasting this boost. The monstrous values of Max HPs they are able to reach are quite good, though!

Regardless, unless you are going to use Abyssal Hunter squads extensively, this Module shouldn’t be a priority over the first one.

When activated, Specter the Unchained immediately exchanges her Max HP percentage with the Ally with the lowest Max HP percentage on the 8 surrounding tiles. Afterwards, her Attack is increased by 150% for 25 seconds. This Skill has an SP cost of 35.

When Specter the Unchained was first revealed, this Skill was given a lot of fanfare in the community as a way to further the uptime of Surtr’s Twilight with a single Operator, but nowadays this Skill is by far the least used for Specter the Unchained. The prospect of boosting Surtr even more was an enticing idea, but with no way to reset the ever-increasing HP drain of her Skill the little extra uptime you get from swapping a 100% HP Specter the Unchained really pales in comparison to what DPS boosters such as Suzuran, Aak or Saria could do, making the effect not incredibly useful in most cases. Since Specter the Unchained also has no regeneration without the help of Gladiia, she still requires a healer within range and cannot constantly swap HP to keep Operators like Horn working constantly.

As for the Attack boost, while powerful, it certainly is no match for other sources of quick, focused burst DPS such as Mountain’s Earth-Shattering Smash, which sports better Average and Burst DPSs even against single targets while maintaining a similar Skill cycle and uptime. Notably, this Skill also does not benefit in any significant way from her first Module.

When activated, Specter the Unchained receives a boost of 130% Attack and 50 Attack Speed, reducing her Attack Interval to 0.8 seconds per Attack for 20 seconds. Additionally, while this Skill is active, Specter the Unchained will not die, but will immediately swap to her Substitute when the Skill ends. This Skill has an SP cost of 35.

This Skill attempts to adapt the original Specter’s signature Skill Bone Fracture to the Dollkeeper archetype, replacing the 10 second long self-stun with a 20 second long forced swap to the Substitute. As it is, this Skill does a pretty poor job at replacing or even competing for the regular Specter’s niche, being worse in practically every single aspect.

The biggest reason why this Skill is considered worse than the “original” is, of course, the massive issues that come out of the forced SP lockout when swapping to the Substitute, which worsens this Skill’s uptime from what could be a 36% were this a Stun or similar effect, to a disappointing 26%. Regarding this SP issue, another downside is that Specter the Unchained takes twice as long to activate her Skill right after deployment compared to Specter due to their different Initial SP, making it much worse as a helidrop Skill as well.

As for the positives, this Skill comes with 5 additional seconds of immortality per activation, as well as a guaranteed full HP heal when swapping from the Substitute back to Specter the Unchained. It also has significantly better Burst DPS than her original counterpart, not like that’s what matters for this Skill.

All of this, of course, only applies when Specter the Unchained does not have her PUM-X Stage 3 Module. With it unlocked, not only does her uptime increase to a comfortable 33% but her Substitute phase actually starts outputting a very decent amount of Arts damage, making it so that this downtime isn’t completely wasted. Thanks to this upgrade, this Skill goes from a very mediocre, generally worse alternative to Specter’s own Skill, to an actually powerful option to consider instead, even if the helidrop capabilities are still significantly worse.

When activated, Specter the Unchained’s Attack Interval increases by 1 to 2.2 seconds per attack. She also receives a boost of 260% Attack and 200% Max HP, and can hit multiple enemies up to her block count. Additionally, when attacking enemies with higher or equal Max HP percentage than herself, Specter the Unchained will deal a secondary hit of 70% Attack to that enemy. Inversely, when attacking enemies with lower HP she will lose 3% of her Max HP.

This Skill seeks to turn Specter the Unchained back into a Centurion Guard by increasing her attack count up to her Block count, paired with a massive increase in Attack for a veritable burst of physical DPS at the cost of her own HP, which will constantly decrease naturally as she chunks off enemies’ HP to be under her own. While very rare, this could even end up killing her.

When compared to Mountain’s Earth-Shattering Smash, another short-but-sweet multitarget DPS Skill with a short duration and quick cycling (almost the same as Specter the Unchained in both aspects), Mountain still comes out on top until about 800 Defense, when Specter the Unchained overtakes him if she’s constantly triggering the secondary attack. If she isn’t, Mountain is still superior until around 1500 Defense.

Regardless, these values show that Specter the Unchained is only better against high-defense targets where Mountain’s Attack debuffs are not going to matter, and only if the target count does not exceed her Block count. While this Skill has undeniably strong Burst damage, I’d generally recommend other Operators while leaving Specter the Unchained to do what she does best, which is utilizing her second Skill.

As a final note, this Skill benefits quite a lot from her PUM-Y Module, gaining some really good uptime for this type of Burst Skill, getting to just under 50% uptime.

So, should I pull for Specter the Unchained? Can she replace Specter’s own undying abilities with her own? Can she sub for a Centurion Guard? The answer is MAYBE. Specter the Unchained is a strange Operator that needs significantly more investment than most others to properly function due to essentially requiring a max-stage Module Upgrade, but if she gets there she can be a sight to behold. The biggest issue with pulling for her is not that you may get something subpar, but that you will not have those pulls at hand for the absolute powerhouses that are coming a few months after Specter the Unchained, namely Pozyomka and Młynar, who are much, much more impactful.