Arknights: In-depth Review - Irene

Irene is the future 6★ Dualstrike Guard featured in the Abyss Corrosion banner, which will run alongside the Stultifera Navis event. Irene’s skillset showcases her proficiency in swordmanship with heavy Burst-oriented Skills and a new (and rare!) status ailment, Levitate, to which most old enemies were not retroactively made immune. Is this enough to push her to the top of the Dualstrike Guards archetype? Let’s find out!

Irene’s main comparison point is Ch’en, a fan-favorite Operator that has slowly been left behind as the game has evolved against her kit. Both of their skillsets are incredibly similar, sporting identical ranges in all of their Skills and similar effects and usage cases. As we will see through this review, Irene’s design attempts to fix some of Ch’en’s core issues by granting her effects that help her overcome some of the archetype’s weaknesses, or at least make the payoff worth the hassle.

Irene’s most unique feature is the introduction of the Levitate effect, which as of this article’s release only herself and future Core Caster Qanipalaat have access to. This status effect is amongst the most unique in the game, as it can turn any susceptible enemy into an aerial unit (like drones) for a short period of time, which also means they are unaffected by terrain hazards and don’t count as occupying tiles for Trapmaster Specialists. Enemies affected by Levitate are also unable to act, essentially being stunned for the duration of the effect.

As enemies are immediately treated as aerial units when they are inflicted with Levitate, most melee Operators will be unable to target them. This can of course be a huge negative and result in a loss of DPS if your Operators are not ready to deal with it. It can also be beneficial, though, as these enemies will be unable to act for a while and trigger effects that specifically target aerial enemies, such as special buffs like Cutter’s and targeting priorities like Marksman Snipers’s.

Finally, the duration of the Levitate effect is dictated by the specific Skill used to inflict it, but it will be halved against enemies with a Weight value of 4 or more.

Compared to Ch’en, Irene sports significantly higher stats in both Max HP and Attack, and even has a lower Attack Interval through her second Talent. The only aspect in which she does not beat the other 6★ Dualstrike Guard is in Defense, as Ch’en’s Trust bonus spread is more balanced compared to Irene’s, which focuses mostly on Attack. Despite this, Ch’en’s second Talent can bring her Attack stat close enough to Irene’s that the difference is essentially negligible.

All of Irene’s attacks have a 50% chance to ignore 50% of the target’s Defense. If the target is an aerial unit, this chance is increased to 100%.

This Talent massively benefits Irene’s overall damage output significantly. Despite not being able to target aerial units with her regular attacks, two of Irene’s Skills can still hit them, including her main burst Skill. As a result, Irene suffers way less from increases in enemy Defenses than all other Dualstrike Guards, whithout the need for mixed damage options to beat over bulkier enemies.

Irene’s Attack Speed is increased by 18 (+3 at P5). If there are Seaborn enemies currently in the map, this effect is doubled.

Any Attack Speed increases are more than welcome for Dualstrike Guards, as all of their Skill have Offensive SP recovery types. For Irene, this small boost greatly shortens the downtime of her third Skill, her most commonly used one, by slightly under 5 seconds under optimal circumstances.

The secondary part of this effect is a nice bonus considering how Seaborn and Aegir-related events seem to be somewhat “seasonal” (including many stages of Integrated Strategies 3 - Caerula Arbor), but for the sake of comparison and consistency it will not be taken into account for the rest of this article, instead just factoring the base Attack Speed increase.

Irene’s attacks ignore 70 Defense.

Irene’s attacks ignore 70 Defense.

Talent 2: Now grants 21 Attack Speed (+3 at P5) and +3% Attack. Both effects are doubled if there are Seaborn enemies in the map.

Irene’s attacks ignore 70 Defense.

Talent 2: Now grants 21 Attack Speed (+3 at P5) and +5% Attack. Both effects are doubled if there are Seaborn enemies in the map.

The basic branch of this Module is extremely disappointing for Irene, considering how her first Talent is already leagues better at dealing with Defense. Even if she didn’t have this talent though, 70 Defense is an incredibly low value, resulting in a minimal increase in DPS.

The advanced stages of this Module are also not much better. Even though the DPS increase is going to be more noticeable than a Defense ignore, the values are so low that Irene’s DPS will barely increase, and it will be more efficient to get her those last few levels she might be missing. Still, the buff in burst damage is definitely there, so if you want to make the most out of Irene it will just waste the opportunity cost of other, potentially better Module Upgrades.

When automatically activated, Irene’s next attack will deal 200% Physical damage and inflict Levitate on the target for 1 second. Immediately afterwards, Irene will fire an additional 200% Physical damage attack upon the same target. This Skill has an Offensive SP cost of 3.

This Skill is pretty generic and usually not worth considering due to its low usefulness as a laneholder, lack of burst, and general lack of support. While the on-Skill damage may be pretty decent for a Powerstrike-adjacent Skill there are definitely better options to fill this role even amongst lower rarities.

The one strategy this Skill does have is the ability to stall enemies for a long time by pairing the Levitate effect with Dorothy, an upcoming Trapmaster Specialist, to stall enemies for long periods of time. Enemies affected by the Levitate effect don’t count as occupying a tile, allowing Dorothy to deploy a mine with her Quicksand Generation Skill effect, which will inflict Bind for long enough to let Irene charge her Skill again, cycling status effects to shut down enemies for long periods of time. Of course, this is not a permanent stall as Dorothy will eventually run out of traps, nor is it a very effective strategy compared to simply nuking the enemies to shreds, but it is something this Skill can do that no other can.

When activated, Irene will deal an attack worth 400% Physical damage to up to 6 enemies within the range of the Skill (a Lord Guard range) and levitate the targets with Weight 3 or less for 4 seconds. This Skill can hold 2 charges and needs 8 Offensive SP to charge up.

This Skill is very similar to Bibeak’s Blade Swap, allowing for some crowd control of the enemies in front of her while delivering decent damage. While the damage and duration of the crowd control effect is much better in Irene’s Skill, it comes at the cost of not being able to charge the Skill by attacking enemies in range, as Irene cannot normally target levitating enemies. The effect is also limited to enemies with a Weight of 3 or less, ruling out most elite threats and bosses even moreso than natural Levitate immunity already does.

This is the Skill that will see the least use for Irene, as she will have to give the notable Burst damage of her third Skill in favor of a subpar form of crowd control with no viable gimmicks for long-term stalling.

When activated, Irene will immediately deal 300% Physical damage to all enemies in a 5-tile diameter diamond (like Texas’s Sword Rain) around herself and inflict Levitate for 4 seconds. Afterwards, she will fire 12 times at random enemies within range dealing 250% Physical damage in a small radius around the main target. This Skill has an Offensive SP cost of 24

This is Irene’s main Skill, bringing all of her burst DPS to the table with strong AoE capabilities to take care of multiple threats at once. It is extremely reminiscent of Ch’en’s own third Skill, having the exact same range and similar, high hitcount attacks. It also benefits massively from any sort of Attack buff, such as Warfarin.

For a direct comparison, Irene will almost always beat Ch’en in Burst DPS unless at really low Defense values, while always sporting higher overall on-skill damage. This comparison, of course, does not take into account the different ways they seek targets, which can be both positive and negative for Irene.

While Ch’en essentially focuses on one enemy at a time, Irene’s random targeting can result in splitting her shots between faraway enemies, essentially delivering half the effective damage of the Skill to each one. This is remedied by the splash area of her attacks, which encourage using the Skill against large groups of enemies to capitalize on its powerful damage multiple times over.

Generally this will be a much stronger alternative to Ch’en’s Chi Xiao - Shadowless, both in terms of raw damage and general usefulness, even if not every single aspect is linearly better. Irene’s Skill, for example, has a slightly higher SP lockout time as it takes a bit longer to dump all her damage on the enemies, while also leaving her vulnerable unlike Ch’en’s.

Finally, this is one of the best Skills in the game for the Stationary Security Service gamemode, where boosting Irene’s SP generation and Attack to ludicrous levels is incredibly simple, allowing her to take on hordes of heavily buffed enemies with ease, and even deal with the powerful bosses of the mode.

So, should I pull for Irene? Is she competent enough to be worth a slot in a general party? Is her burst enough to make her a prime boss killer? The answer is MAYBE. Irene is incredibly powerful at her role of raw burst DPS, and she’s certainly better than Ch’en at it, but this is also a heavily contested role where she will struggle to beat out certain top-tier Operators such as Surtr. Additionally, her banner is right before some of the most powerful upcoming Operators in the game, and she struggles to win the fight for your pulls when compared to powerhouses such as Pozyomka and Młynar. Irene is not a bad Operator by any stretch of the imagination and even shines enough in certain scenarios to eclipse most other Burst DPS options, but players need to decide if this is worth sacrificing their pulls for.