Ains

2-Turn Stun

Being able to Stun an enemy and stop them from acting on their next turn is powerful enough. Slamming them with a Stun that disables TWO of their turns with just one activation is even better. Other than Wanda, Ains is the only hero with a Stun that lasts for 2 turns, making him a perfect choice for disabling enemy targets like Angelica, Luna, or Seaside Bellona.

Natural Crit and Counter Without Gear

Ains' S1 has a flat 50% chance to be an automatic critical hit, regardless of how much crit chance Ains has. His S2 passive, meanwhile, gives him a 40-50% chance to counterattack when attacked (depending on Skill Enhancement). Both are powerful and useful stats to have, and Ains gets them for free without needing to hunt for them on gear.

Good Element for Role

Ains is built to be a PvP unit who Stuns the most dangerous opponent at the start of a match, then racks up DPS over time with his attacks and counterattacks. At this point in the Epic Seven meta, the most dangerous opponent on the enemy side is usually going be either Ice-element, Light-element, or Dark-element. Being Earth-element gives Ains an advantage against Ice and leaves him neutral to Light and Dark, which is helpful for landing his Stun and increasing his damage.

Limited Use Outside of Stun

Ains' Stun can be rendered useless by a host of factors. It can be blocked by Immunity or Effect Resistance, cleansed by any Soul Weaver with Wondrous Potion Vial, or even just miss on its own. Without his Stun, there is very little Ains can do that another hero couldn't be doing better than Ains.

Slow

Because the entire point of a Stun is denying enemy turns, a hero who is relying on Stunning wants to move first so they can Stun before their target gets a turn. Ains is way too slow to be acting first reliably without a lot of help from his team. In particular, his comparable rival, Wanda (the other hero with a 2-turn Stun), is noticeably faster than Ains.

Difficult to Gear Lategame

Bizarrely, Ains actually becomes more difficult to build lategame. Because he has a flat 50% chance to turn his S1 into an automatic crit, building him with 100% Crit Chance on his gear means those substats will be wasted half the time. However, building him with less than 100% Crit Chance means he won't always crit (on the times he uses his normal S1 instead of his critical-hit S1). So then:

• Do you build Crit Chance on him, even knowing it will either be wasted or unreliable?
• Do you build Crit Damage on him, even knowing he won't crit 100% of the time unless you waste some of his substats?
• Do you build Atk%, even though the damage ratio on his S1 is very low and doesn't scale well with Atk?

There is no satisfying way to build Ains efficiently, and that becomes a real problem endgame where every substat and stat point matters.