Should You Summon: August 2021 Prize Summon Showcase Ft. Summer Chelle and Cat Sith

Welcome to another edition of the Should You Summon articles, an opinion piece to help you decide whether you should summon for the latest units or not. As is tradition, the second banner of a monthly event typically brings a new permanent dragon and adventurer addition to the game. In this scenario, the other Stranded Scion Chelle and her pactbound dragon Cat Sith receives a new summer appearance and element to try to take a name in endgame content which requires light-attuned units. After a one-month break, these two units are also tied to a Prize Summon Showcase, where players receive an additional prize on top of each summon performed. But as usual, these prizes should be seen as an gift on top of what you receive, and not the sole reason to summon for.

As many describe her to be an unrelenting summer beaty, the third scion Chelle dons a breezy summer outfit and take up wand to hopefully show her dominance within the light element. As an attack type wand unit, she has some stiff competition in Curse of Nihility content thanks to the rise of Amane, whose ability to apply paralysis and punish enemies during break state allowing for quick speedruns of the Lilith Encroaching Shadow fight. Outside of Curse of Nihility, the nearest wand competitor is Lucretia, who hasn’t seen too much play within Legend Tartarus as of this writing but provides great support utility with her energy generation, while still maintaining respectable personal damage.

The first thing that stands out from Summer Chelle’s kit is the resemblance to previously released units Summer Leonidas and Summer Alex. Both units possessed ability and skill sets which prioritised their ability to maintain the stormblight and scorchrend afflictions with ease against units with high resistances to both. They do this via a combination of skills which reduces the natural affliction resistance of an enemy by 20% and increase their own chance of increasing their affliction rate with skill and ability activation.

Summer Chelle is the equivalent flashburn version of this unit type, and it all starts with her first skill Sole Estivo. At a reasonable SP cost of ,2950, it deals 1 hit of 2,751% damage, inflicts flashburn, and lowers the flashburn resistance of any foe hit by this attack by 20% for 30 seconds (does not stack). Using this skill though activates one her unique passive abilities Stunning Summer Scion. This ability grants her a ravishing radiance gauge which fills each time the Sole Estivo skill is used (up to a maximum level of 3). Each time this gauge is increased by one level it provides additional bonuses to Summer Chelle as follow:

• One bar increases her chances of inflicting flashburn by 30%
• Two bars increase her chance of inflicting flashburn now by 50% and increases the damage of Sole Estivo by 100%
• Three bars reduce her movement speed by 50%

While the effects of the first and second gauge, particular the 100% skill damage bonus for her Sole Estivo, are excellent benefits, achieving three bars will provide her with a harsh penalty, which makes it harder for players to dodge incoming, purple-marked attacks that are undodgeable. To counter this the game provides two methods for her to successfully reset this gauge and remove this penalty:

• Shapeshifting into her unique dragon form Summer Cat Sith
• Utilise her second skill Estate Brillante

In the former case, her Summer Cat Sith dragon form has some relatively strong normal attack modifiers, while the dragon skill provides a nice 1,750% damage while granting all allies an increasing of inflicting flashburn by 50%. In the later case, her second skill Estate Brillante, at an SP cost of 6,300, will also restore her HP with a recovery potency of 40, and grant her 10% dragon energy (not effected by dragon haste effects). This puts her in an interesting situation where she could potentially be a decent dragon abuser with the use of additional dragon haste chain co-abilities on a team if they are ever released on excellent base co-abilities.

The final perk of her Stunning Summer Scion ability is that a defence amp is granted to her each time the Sole Estivo skill is used (maximum team amp of 2), which on a SP cooldown of 2,950 should not be too hard to generate relatively quickly. Her final unique passive ability is HP 70% = Flashburn Time +30%, which increases the duration of the flashburn affliction by 30% when her HP is 70% or above. Considering how easily she can inflict flashburn with proper use of her whole kit, to seems a bit wasteful of an ability choice when an additional damage passive ability could have been chosen instead.

Overall, Summer Chelle’s kit seems well attuned for any future endgame bosses which have high affliction resistances like the Asura’s Blinding Light fight. As such, it may be wise to summon for if you think having flashburn punisher activation will be important for you if future bosses have high flashburn resistance. Do note this this is purely an assumption, so you’ll have to decide yourself whether you need to take this chance or if your light element team currently possesses enough damage means to deal with new endgame bosses in the future.

Outside of this specific niche, Summer Chelle can bring the pain to her enemies with her decent dragon abuse capabilities, and her respectable Sole Estivo skill damage, particularly when used with two bars of her ravishing radiance gauge in play. Having access to a 5,552% skill at times has some excellent burst potential during the break phases of a fight if you can time it right, further adding her damage capabilities. Her ability to use dragon more often compared to other light adventurers can also make up for her lack of good damage passive abilities. Her only problem as of present is a lack of utility to relevant endgame content: this being a lack of dispel utility for both the Legend Tartarus and Lilith fights. As such, I can only recommend summoning for her if you are lacking good damage options in the light element, particularly for your solo team, or if you don’t possess a source of flashburn affliction to enable associated punishers.

Like most of the light offensive roster, the light element boost co-ability either offered by adventurers Peony (+20%) or Persona’s Sophie (+15%), as well as a strength co-ability found on blade adventurers will further boost her damage output and help alleviate her lack of damage passive abilities. For the third slot, her best damage option here is to go with either a critical rate boost co-ability on dagger adventurers or above 10 hits = critical rate chain co-ability in non-Curse of Nihility content. You could also consider a skill haste co-ability as an alternative from bow adventurers if you wish to activate her skills and equipped skill share sooner.

Under the circumstance that both paralysis and flashburn afflictions are being applied to an enemy, the following wyrmprint setup will allow Summer Chelle to take advantage of both, while also running prints which further boost skill damage, strength, and critical rate under certain conditions:

• Spirit of the Season (+20% Paralysis Punisher)
• Extreme Teamwork (+25% Flashburn Punisher)
• Memory of a Friend (+20% Flurry Strength)
• A Small Courage (+20% Skill Damage)
• The Queen of the Knife (or equivalent +10% Flurry Devastation effect)
• Crown of Light (or equivalent +20% Skill Damage Rise of the Sinister Dominion Wyrmprint)
• Savage Hawk (Lance’s Boon) (Sword’s Psalm III)

In the scenario that the enemy has resistance to paralysis, consider switching the associated punisher print with Bloody Little Queen (+14% Critical Rate for wand adventurers), and then replacing flurry devastation print with Chariot Drift (+15% Critical Damage).

With the recent release of the Legend Tartarus fight, adventurers within the light element should consider taking advantage of effects which boost dragon damage or provide bonus effects per shapeshift. This is due to the frequent amount of dragon gauge you will receive thanks to the fight spawning draconic mines which provide gauge whenever an adventurer touches one. In this scenario consider swapping out the paralysis punisher print for either An Ancient Oath (Dragon Claws III) or The Red Impulse (Dragon’s Skill III), and then selecting the Dueling Dancers flurry devastation print to add to the dragon affinity bonus.

The second of two units on this banner, Cat Sith dresses to match the summer appearance of her pactbound partner and hopes to make as significant of a splash she did when she first entered the game as a shadow Gala dragon. Spoiler alert: this is a permanent dragon, you should always have your expectations set below the capabilities of any previously released Gala dragon. At the very least though, Summer Cat Sith comes in more towards the higher end of the spectrum of good permanent dragons in the game compared to the Styx end.

Starting with her passive abilities, she grants light attuned adventurers a base +50% strength boost, as well as the Tropical Troublemaker ability. This passive grants the equipped adventurer 100% skill prep at the start of quests, as well as a +25% flashburn punisher on the condition that the user has a team defence amp on them. As of now we currently only have two units who can generate this type of amp, so running neither of them makes this conditional useless. While we will probably see more defence amp units released in the future, it will be hard to maintain a team defence amp without running both Summer Chelle and a Gala Audric to have any decent uptime on maintaining this conditional.

To help her towards meeting this goal though, her dragon form skill Prankster’s Pleasure will deal 1,750% damage to surrounding enemies, inflict flashburn, and grant the entire team a team defence amp (maximum team amp level of 2). Combined this with a respectable normal attack combo, Summer Cat Sith can at least make some work to be on the higher end of light permanent dragon options in the game. However, she still will pale in comparison to the current Gala and limited dragon options in the game, either due to a combination of better damage passive abilities or dragon form attacks. As such, I do not recommend summoning for Summer Cat Sith, and instead continue saving to summon for any future light Gala dragons if you do not possess any as of now.

On Summoning Rates and Wyrmsigils

• Prize Summon Showcases possess normal 4% 5-star summoning rates but offer an additional prize per summon that is relegated to its own separate pool. Check in game as to the type of prizes you could receive and the associated rates on receiving them.
• Summer Chelle has an individual summoning rate of 0.5%, while Summer Cat Sith has a slightly higher rate of 0.8%.
• These two focus units are the only sparkable options available on this banner.

Final Verdict: Skip unless you require the specific capabilities of Summer Chelle.

Summer Chelle offers some competitive damage capabilities for a permanent adventurer in the light element, as well as a specific niche in ensuring excellent coverage of the flashburn affliction in endgame fights. However, time will tell as to how useful this will be while we currently do not possess bosses with high flashburn resistance as of present. Summer Cat Sith is another respectable permanent light dragon option with a decent dragon form and standard attacks. However, the restrictions of her conditional passive ability to activate, as well as the abundance of great limited light dragons in the game, makes it a pass unless your light team is in dire straights when it comes to damage output.