Arknights: Should You Pull? Standard Banner: Blemishine and Mostima

The new Standard Banner features the following Operators:

Featured Operators:

Rarity	Operator
6★	Blemishine - Healing Defender Mostima - AoE Caster
5★	Whisperain - Wide-Range Medic FEater - Pusher Specialist GreyThroat - Anti-Air Sniper

• Based on previous patterns, it is likely but not 100% certain that the Operators for purchase in the Distinction store will be Mostima and FEater
• 6★ Rate-Ups have a 50% chance of appearing when pulling a 6★
• 5★ Rate-Ups have a 50% chance of appearing when pulling a 5★

Short answer: No.

None of these Operators are the best choices for their roles. Blemishine and Whisperain do have some niche usefulness—Blemishine has a lot of interesting quirks and Whisperain is debatably the best source of the Status Resistance buff—and FEater and GreyThroat can be decent if you don’t have the 6* versions (Weedy and Exusiai). All of these Operators together makes for a very lackluster banner, however.

At most, Doctors might consider doing Headhunt x1 on this banner until they pull a 5★ or higher Operator, since one is guaranteed in the first 10 rolls. Pulling beyond that is not really recommended, though.

Healing Defender

+ Causes all allies with [Getting Hit] Skills to also gain SP when attacking (Talent 1)

+ Can attack Sleeping enemies and gets an ATK buff when doing so (Talent 2); pairs well with Sleep-inflicting Operators like Sora, Iris, or Kafka because of this

+ One of the few Healing Defenders with a Skill that increases her own survivability (S3 buffs her DEF)

+ S1 deals bonus damage to one enemy, heals a nearby ally, and holds up to three charges

+ S2 causes Sleep to all enemies in the same tile as Blemishine and also regenerates HP for all nearby allies every second (works on “unhealable” Operators like Hellagur, too!)

+ S3 buffs Blemishine’s ATK and DEF; adds bonus Arts damage to her attacks; and heals a nearby ally every time she attacks

= Prioritizes Sleeping enemies (Talent 2)

= She has extremely high burst healing potential, but she’s not the most reliable healer, since she needs to be in combat to use her Skills reliably

- S2 and S3 are [Getting Hit] Skills; her Talent helps her charge them more quickly, but only by attacking enemies, so she still doesn’t charge them if not engaging with an enemy

- S1 and S3 only heal allies when Blemishine attacks, so if she’s equipped with either Skill, Blemishine can’t heal without an enemy present

AoE Caster

+ E1 Talent increases rate of SP gain for allied Casters

+ E2 Talent passively Slows enemies within her attack range

+ S2 Stuns all enemies within her attack range for several seconds and deals damage over time

+ S3 massively increases her damage, range, and crowd-control

- Usual archetype weaknesses: High DP cost, slow ASPD

- Long Skill cooldowns and short durations, leading to poor Skill uptime (her SP-gain Talent helps this a little, at least)

- Even for an AoE Caster and even for an AoE Caster focused on utility, her DPS is pretty bad

Wide-Range Medic

+ Archetype strengths: Larger healing range than other Medic archetypes

+ Talent regenerates HP for allies within Whisperain’s attack range who have the Status Resistance buff

+ S1 is an automatic Skill that charges quickly, increases the healing done, heals an extra target, and grants healed targets the Status Resistance buff (triggering her Talent for extra regeneration)

+ S2 is a permanent buff that increases Whisperain’s healing speed, increases the healing done by her Talent, and causes every heal she dispenses to grant Status Resistance (so every time she heals, she triggers her Talent)

= Very useful on stages where enemies are causing Cold, Freeze, or Stun because of her Status Resistance buff, but less appealing outside of this niche

= A lot of her healing potential is tied into the “healing over time” from her Talent; without it, her direct healing is not very strong

- Usual archetype weaknesses: Lower base ATK than ST Medics, healing is reduced on far-away targets

- S2 takes a long time to charge

Pusher Specialist

+ Usual archetype strengths: Block-2, attacks a number of enemies equal to her Block count, can be deployed on ground or ranged grids

+ Pushes enemies away; causes instant death if pushed into a hazard, changes enemy movement patterns, etc.

+ Slows enemies with her Skills, so it takes them longer to walk back into her range after they get Pushed away

+ Has passive Physical Dodge, making her an effective physical damage sponge (melee enemies have an especially hard time with her because she Pushes them away)

- More expensive to level than lower-rarity Push Specialists, who can perform the primary role of Pushing just as well as she can in most cases

- Usefulness falls dramatically when there are no pits/ deathtraps on the map

- Is vastly outclassed by 6* Push Specialist Weedy

Anti-Air Sniper

+ Skills allow her to fire multiple shots at once

+ Her multiple-hit Skills synergize perfectly with her crit-chance Talent

- Talent is very RNG-dependent

- S2 has the [Attacking Enemy] SP charge type, so it doesn’t charge between waves

Blemishine knows it’s not easy to be a knight. Her life has been littered with strange occurrences and dangerous experiences, and her kit is filled with strange features and risky choices to match! There aren’t many Operators more unusual than Blemishine: she’s a Healing Defender with massive damage potential who has to stab enemies to heal her allies. She gives allies who normally gain SP by [Getting Hit] bonus SP whenever they stab something. She inflicts the Sleep ailment, which normally makes enemies immune to being attacked, so that she can… stab them even harder. Yeah, there’s a lot of “stabbing enemies” in Blemishine’s kit.

At her best, Blemishine is an untouchable roaring blaze of justice, blasting enemies with huge Physical-and-Arts-damage hits while healing an adjacent ally to full with every strike. It’s not easy to get the stars to align so that this works, however. Blemishine is quite squishy without her S3 and can’t heal herself with her S3; she wants the damage bonus against Sleeping enemies for her S3, but she can’t cause Sleep with her S3; and that’s not even considering how Sleep can mess with the rest of your team, since only Blemishine can attack Sleeping opponents.

It takes a lot of work to get Blemishine to show her true value on the battlefield (I don’t envy Whislash for having to train her!) If you put in the effort, however, Blemishine can be a breakout star, pulling off an outstanding performance herself and also elevating the performance of everybody around her. Especially Sleep-causing Operators like Iris and Sora or [Getting Hit] Operators like Mudrock and Liskarm.

I don’t recommend pulling for Blemishine, but she’s well worth raising if you pull her, especially if you have other Operators who synergize with her kit.

Mostima uses her Originium Arts to control time itself: speeding up the SP gain of allied Casters, slowing down the movement speed of enemies, stopping enemies dead in their tracks, or even rewinding their movements back across the field. However, in addition to being her greatest weapon, time is also her greatest enemy, as she’s held back by low ASPD and long Skill charge times.

When it comes to CC, Mostima brings a lot to the table: Slows, Stuns, and Knockback all help impede enemies as they try to move across the field. However, high SP costs and short durations on her Skills means that her CC won’t be active as much as you’d like, and having to pick between a Stun (S2) or everything else (S3) further cuts back on her usefulness. It doesn’t help that Mostima’s damage is absolutely terrible, between low ASPD and low Skill uptime.

To add insult to injury, there are lots of other Operators who can provide comparable CC (and often better damage) at cheaper DP costs. If you’re not utilizing all of Mostima’s kit to its utmost, she may not be the most efficient pick for your team.

I don’t recommend pulling for Mostima, especially right now, while limited AoE Caster Dusk is available instead.

Whisperain’s influence on the battlefield is subtle and persistent. You know how a tiny stream of water can slowly erode away a boulder? Whisperain’s healing is kind of like that. On its own, it doesn’t look like much: Whisperain has low ATK and her healing is less effective on faraway targets. The magic comes from pairing her Talent with her S2. With both active, Whisperain heals an ally, places the Status Resistance buff on them (so annoyances like Freeze and Stun wear off more quickly), and then passively heals them over time as long as the buff lasts. The combination of wide healing range, increased ASPD, and potent regeneration turns Whisperain into a cascade of constant healing, keeping multiple allies alive and healthy much more easily than her stats would suggest.

This may sound like a dream combination for a Medic, but despite her strengths, Whisperain isn’t perfect. She lacks burst healing for dangerous situations and her only team utility is the Status Resistance buff, which is not useful when enemies aren’t inflicting status ailments on your Operators. Whisperain is certainly not well suited to keeping a Defender alive through boss-level DPS. However, she is good for providing solid healing across a wide area that other Medic archetypes can’t match, and Status Resistance can be a godsend when you need it (we’ve all faced Infused Glacial Originium Slugs, haven’t we?)

I don’t recommend pulling for Whisperain, but she’s worth raising if you pull her.

FEater is a Shift Specialist. Specifically, she’s a Pusher, meaning that she’s primarily used for pushing enemies into pits or other lethal traps. However, FEater has some nifty abilities beyond that: she has natural Physical Dodge from her Talent, and she Slows enemies that she Pushes. Combined with her archetype’s Block-2, FEater is a surprisingly good substitute Defender—she dodges her enemy’s attacks, shoves them away from her, and leaves them Slowed, making it harder for them to reach her before she charges up her next Push. Her Physical Dodge also makes her a good damage soak against ranged physical enemies.

Don’t misunderstand: FEater is still a Push Specialist first and foremost. She’s most effective on maps with lethal pits, and she loses a lot of her usefulness on maps that don’t have any. However, her additional perks can come in pretty useful on some challenge maps, giving her an additional dimension that not all Shift Specialists can boast.

I don’t recommend pulling for FEater. She might be worth investing in if you don’t have Weedy, but even then, Shaw should be able to satisfy most of your Pushing needs instead.

GreyThroat is basically a mini-Exusiai, focusing on spraying multiple attacks into a single target as quickly as possible. Her E2 Talent gives her a chance to crit on attacks, and both of her Skills cause her to fire multiple shots at once, presenting multiple opportunities to crit per attack. Because her Talent is RNG-dependent, she needs some luck to hit her maximum damage potential, but when things go her way, she puts enemies in the ground like nobody’s business.

That unreliability is the main thing holding GreyThroat back from being a stellar 5* Anti-Air Sniper. When her Talent is working with her, she’s quite effective, but when it isn’t, other Snipers can leave her in the dust. The randomness can be extra annoying when you’re running a stage multiple times, since GreyThroat might get a spate of lucky crits and kill a tough enemy on one run, but let that same enemy leak through on the next attempt. (This doesn’t impact Auto runs of stages, thankfully, but it can be a problem when you’re doing Practice runs.)

I don’t recommend pulling specifically for GreyThroat unless you desperately need another Anti-Air Sniper (you should have at least 2), but she might be worth raising if you don’t have Exusiai.