Scarecrow (Protocol Assimilation)

Initial Stats -> Level 100 5★ -> Level 100 5★ Maximum Potential

Rank Up Cost

Unlike G&K Dolls, Ringleaders provide their Buffs to any unit in the Echelon that is tagged appropriately, making positioning less important. Instead, they operate via a series of 'Tags'. 

Team Building Notes

Scarecrows Tile Buff is relatively weak prior to Peak Value Analysis, and her coverage is rather limited, affecting only units flagged as 'T-Dolls'. While this does include many of the standouts from the early unit batches, including Jaegers, Aegis, and Dragoons, the low magnitude means that you can safely use units that she does not buff without fear of losing a great deal. 

Due to the generally higher Rate of Fire values amongst Coalition Units, certain combinations of units and Growth factors will not hit a faster frame with only Scarecrow's 6% RoF Buff. 

Scarecrow is the Ringleader rewarded by the tutorial for Protocol Assimilation, and unlike her story counterpart, SFcap Scarecrow offers both considerable power and utility, making her a surprisingly potent reward for clicking a few buttons. 

Scarecrow's stats look impressive at first glance but are relatively par for the course for Ringleaders. Her Damage in particular is somewhat less impressive than it looks, as her attacks deal a percentage per shot, as opposed to the entire value. The rest of her stats are almost exactly in the middle of the road for Ringleaders, but Scarecrow's strength is found elsewhere. 

While it can be slightly obfuscated, Scarecrow's Damage output against non-armored foes is surprisingly high, dealing 120% of her Damage stat to a target with no Armor in 40% chunks per volley, but this also means that she will suffer against Armored foes, as the Armor subtracts from each individual attack reducing her Damage quite a bit, so some care should be taken when picking Scarecrow's enemies, or if using her against Armor, allies with AP should be chosen. Her active Attack changes her targetting temporarily, allowing Scarecrow to engage the backline, or prioritize weakened enemies, but this is an auxiliary benefit as opposed to something you should build strategies around. 

Scarecrow's Skill 2, Shadow Predation, further sets her apart from other Ringleaders, allowing her to place a temporary allied Echelon on the field, extending swap chains, capturing nodes, blocking spawns, or luring enemies into position. This does cost 1 AP so some planning is required, but this is a powerful tool, made more powerful by a somewhat unusual quirk in the cooldown. Ringleader's map Skills operate much like Fairy Skills, and if the Echelon retreats, and redeploys, the Cooldown for the Skill is reset. Scarecrow cannot fully exploit this, as the number of Scouts deployed is limited to 1, but she can use this quirk to keep a Scout active at all times. 

Scarecrow's Skill 3 and 4, Curse and Ghost Step respectively, are smaller benefits when compared to Shadow Predation but are nonetheless meaningful contributions to Scarecrow's effectiveness. Fitting her lore as recon and scout unit, she operates best on enemy nodes, Ghost Step boosts the Damage of her entire Echelon by a small but meaningful amount, thanks to the overall higher stats of SF units. The boost scales only slightly with levels, making the investment high cost for a low return.