by Windgesang

So you want to use Pramanix. You might have pulled/recruited her and want to know more about her, or you like her floof and thighs, or you just want to see a fellow Pramanix user (hi!). Regardless, you want to learn more about her game mechanic-wise.

Yes, I’m reusing the intro format as my last guide. Also I’m thinking of making this a series, writing detailed highlight on less used/popular 4-5 stars operators (that I also need to use a lot). I don’t know if it’ll be a good idea lul. (This is actually similar to a Disney cashgrabing sequel)

Pramanix is a debuff supporter, or in my favorite term, an enabler. The general consensus is that, why adding an enabler when you can just add MOAR DPS! But sometimes, depends on how much more she can boost your other allies, she can add more to the team than 1 more DPS operator. If you’re looking for a squad that work together and helps each other out instead of just each person being strong independently, this fluffy of an enabler is your thing.

Stats:

– Attack and attack speed:

Being an enabler, PMN (mind if I shorten her name to that?) doesn’t pack that much of a punch by herself. However it doesn’t mean she’s at the bottom of the DPS list, and she attacks faster than normal slowing support (just 0.3s faster though). She can deal somewhat of a decent damage, through different means than just her basic stats, which we will take note of it later. Unlike with FW last guide, PMN is actually pretty good at clearing swarm of weak enemies through her talents and debuff (though not like she can deal actual AoE damage so she can still struggle)

– HP and Defense (and RES):

PMN has surprisingly good defensive stats. Highest HP and RES among the Supporters (as of this post’s date), which means she’s pretty decent at taking magic damage (just don’t use her to block Art Guard in CE-5). Her RES actually ties with Angelina at E2, but PMN has potential upgrade for 8 more which by then she will have one of the best RES in the game (along with Matterhorn, and one other in CN I think). Plus, she also has another way to help her (and her allies) survives better with one of her skill, which we will look at later.

– Cost:

PMN is on the lower cost range of most supporters (10 at base, 12 at E1). This means she’s relatively easy to deploy. Her cost is only higher than Sora (cuz duh), Mayer, and Tentacle master.

So far, it’s been simple stuffs, but let’s keep going.

Range:

As of the date of this post and in global server, PMN’s range is unique for her type. It’s basically the normal slow support range, but with 2 additional tiles on each side. She can reach someone 2 tiles from her left or right, and 5 tiles horizontally in front of her (you can check her range here). Those extra tiles are actually my favorite, as I can place her facing a straight lane, and she will cover 5 tiles of distance, basically a horizontal Ifrit. And, just like with my FW guide, she can cover a place that is 2 tiles away from her side, and is great for a map that has 2 lanes, that is split by a middle high ground area, especially if said middle area is wider than 1 tile.

Trait:

Deals arts damage. That’s it. If you need help with this section, you might as well leave this post, and go check this site.

Talent:

Now we’re at a great section. PMN’s first talent is the first of the kind in the game, only Shamare later will have the same talent type as well.

First talent: Weakening

This talent applies a debuff to all enemies in her range continuously, which end after they leave her range. This debuff is actually applied all the time, but only active if the enemies are under 40% HP. When they are under 40% HP, they receive 1.15 at E1, 1.3 at E2, times more damage from all sources. From Gamepress, it is applies after everything is calculated (i.e. after defense or resistance is subtracted). Regardless, just like with Firewatch, the important idea is that this multiplier stacks multiplicatively with others, unlike with basic attack buffs where they just stack additively.

Now you may think this is unnecessary. Most enemies at 40% HP would dies in the next 1 or 2 hit already. But for the much tougher enemies, including bosses, the journey to take them from 40% HP to 0 might be strenuous for some, especially against bosses that enrages at 50% HP, or you know, the more dreadful one lately for some, the samurais. ^#GoJap! Sadly, this doesn’t increase the damage of the originium tile tick, I think, though it’s kinda hard to notice.

Edit: maybe it does increase the damage from the originium tile, it’s best to assume that they don’t and plan around it though.

PMN is lucky enough to be a 5* unit that has a second talent, but it’s not as amazing as the first one (still good though)

Second talent: Double Tinkle

It’s actually called The Bell Tolls Twice, but this was only after a recent patch (I think it’s the OF event patch), but screw that noise.

This is a simple talent, available at E2. PMN will now attacking 2 enemies at once.

→ This is why I said earlier that PMN can deal with a swarm of weakling, as her lower ATK doesn’t really matter (yet) against weak enemies, her first talent that increase more damage as they get to lower HP, and now her second talent granting multi-target attack. Combine with the last idea in the Range section, she can attack both of those lanes at once, which is kinda nice.

Skills:

As a debuff supporter, all of PMN’s skill obviously cause debuffs. One notable thing is that, both skills have relatively low duration, even after masteries (though you can argue that her S2 might have decent duration at M3, just not high uptime)

Also funny thing is that, both skills has the same cooldown of 40s (30.77s with E2 Ptilopsis, 28.57s with E2 Suzuran), and both skills also do 2 things differently each for PMN.

Another detail that I’m not sure is important or not is that, both skills convert PMN’s attack from a projectile to instant hit, which means PMN will now instantly hit someone when she performs an attack animation.

RIIC skills:

– Karlan Saint: Restore +0.5 Morale/h for 1 operator that isn’t full and doesn’t stack. Additionally restore Morale/h for self by 0.25. (always available)

What I like the most is the combination of both self and other morale increase recovery. She can increase morale recovery of both herself and one other operator at once (which other single morale recovery booster like Shining or Ansel couldn’t). Durin, Myrtle, and a couple more can increase recovery to all other ops, but for a smaller amount. PMN can go work somewhere in the base, and then quickly restore her morale in the base, leaving space for other to come in to rest faster.

– Supporter Expert β: Increase supporter training speed by 50%. (available at E2)

This effect reduces skill mastery duration of supporter by a third. Remember that trainer cannot train themselves (for some reasons).

First skill: Echolocation

Contrary to what it’s called, this skill does a different thing. First, the skill allows PMN to attack two targets at once. If it sounds familiar to you, yes it is exactly her 2nd talent. The most stupid thing about that is that, they don’t stack, PMN can only ever attack 2 enemies at most. Which means, if you E2-ed her, you effectively removed one of the effects of this skill. (Hypergryph pls fix/buff)

This sounds bad so far, but the 2nd effect of this skill is a doozy. It cuts attack speed of all enemies in her range by a substantial amount. At level 7, this skill has a 16 second duration, and cut all enemies’ attack speed by half (-50), and has 20 initial SP (the SP given when first deploy)

This attack speed reduction is amazing. Most enemies can’t ever perform more than 3 hits during the duration (mostly because either they die before that, or the one that can survive usually has much lower attack speed to begin with). I always considered attack speed reduction to always be better than attack damage reduction, or at least there’s only a few cases where damage reduction is better. High damage doesn’t really matter when you can’t deal it (recall FW’s attack section on my previous post). A specific example is against Defender Crusher without counting Lappland’s talent, you can reduce their damage all you want, they will still stun your melee operators after 3 hits. But stopping them from attacking and they wouldn’t be able to both dealing damage and stunning your ops. This will also stop Faust from making a lot of attack, which is ultra-powered every 4 shots in 5-10, and every 6 shots in H5-4. Taking much more longer to make an attack means that those purple shot will come out much less often, leaving more breathing room, though since Faust is invincible for a long part after spawning, it doesn’t really matter in those time.

However, considering how physical damage is calculated in this game (atk – def), if the attack damage reduction is enough to push the enemies’ attack to near your ally’s DEF, that’s much better than attack rate reduction since they now deal far less damage. As for art damage and magic casters, attack slow still performs much better.

Sneaky post chap 6 edit: Aside from Def Crusher, there’s also a new enemies with a special effect every few attack (yeti caster), slowing their attack means that their special freezing bolt come out much less often. AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, this skill slows FrostNova’s (only test with her second life so far) basic attack rate so much that she cannot perform any during the duration. Because her attack rate is now much slower than her skill’s cooldown, and since performing those skill reset her attack, FN can no longer perform normal attack under this skill’s influence. Effectively, this skill remove a third of FN’s skill set (basic attack, AoE attack, and Ice drop thingy).

Note, be careful when you have a defensive-recovery-skill operator nearby, since making enemies’ attack weaker is better than slowing their attack speed, which slows our allies’ SP recovery rate.

Extra/miscellaneous info:

– Because of the attack speed slow, ranged enemies will start move “faster” than usual, since they stop much less often to make an attack. (remember that molotov guy in GT-EX-2 CM map that attack so fast that he couldn’t move?). To follow up from an earlier example, since Faust cannot be blocked, it may be a disaster to make him attack less often, since he’ll move more often, depends on how you look at things. Here’s more example for this.

– Another “issue” with this skill is that, despite being called Echolocation, it does not reveal invisible enemies (Hypergryph pls). Technology aside, if they were ever revealed once inside her range during the skill, they will get the debuff even if they go back to invi (and still in range). I noticed this in CC area 59 when YEeter yeeted them out after being blocked and their attack speed remains the same even after they went back invi (along with the symbol on their head). I will assume this info will also apply to her S2, but since invisible enemy don’t get damaged during invi anyway (except for lingering DoT like BP or Ifrit S2), it might as well doesn’t apply until they get revealed, either by being blocked or by a certain OP operator (as of global).

Second skill: Natural Deterrent

The first skill is a defensive-oriented debuff, but the second is a full-on offensive-oriented one. Again, this skill does 2 things, but this time it does 2 sides of the same things. The first effect reduces the defense of all enemies in range by a percentage, and the second effect reduces the resistance of all enemies in range… also by a percentage.

At level 7, this skill shreds 45% and 26% of the enemies DEF and RES respectively, lasting 18s. Note that more masteries level doesn’t increase the RES reduction until the third level, which capped at 30%. Which, at M3, the skill can cut 60% and 30% DEF and RES for 25 seconds, and has 20 initial SP.

Because it is based on a percentage of their stats, this skill can be either amazing or terrible depends on who you use it against. Obviously, the higher the enemies’ defensive stats, the better amount the skill can cut down. It can trivialize tough enemies, especially for your physical squad. (At M3, when it is activated, my Exu of E2 lv10 with S3 at lv5 went from tickling to destroying everything in Area 59 even with the +DEF and 2nd HP risks)

Note:

– The % reduction is calculated after any flat reduction, so this skill still cannot reduce all of their defensive stats to 0 by itself (unless it’s already 0, in which case it doesn’t matter).

– Because the skill reduce an enemy’s RES, it can boost PMN own attack, which means, more from the last time I mentioned this, she can further deal with a small mob of weak enemies (low cost, multi shot, decent range, somewhat decent talent debuff, relatively decent attack speed, and now RES reduction).

The best part about this skill is that since it reduces both DEF and RES of an enemy, PMN can be fit into any team comp with this skill and she will still be useful to them, i.e. both physical team and magical team, even hybrid team. Of course, the DEF reduction is much better than RES, and Ifrit can already reduces RES better. Plus, Ifrit and Eiyav can also reduce RES permanently, as long as the enemies are still in range. Even further, those two can also do DPS much better by themselves, including dealing actual AoE damage rather than hitting just 2 targets at once, but…uhhh… Pramanix cost less to deploy, and uhhh….… she’s……. cute.…..maybe?……..and uhhh…………….

Jokes aside, some people might not be lucky enough to get those 6*, so PMN might be a decent alternative to boost your other casters to be good enough to fill their void. Especially, if you draw her from the good ole exchange ticket way back in global server opening days (I got Red though, sorry fluffy). Bottom line is, you can consider that PMN can boost your other operators by half a rarity (a 5* ops will now be about as good as a 5.5*). Remember, an enabler job is to boost their allies in order to do well together. A mutualism symbiotic relationship between all of your operators, you could say.

This one is shorter than my last guide, because honestly, Pramanix is a little straightforward to use, or at least, more straightforward than Firewatch. I found a couple details that I think most people wouldn’t know or think about, but the rest can be pretty much decipher from checking online stats, I think. Hopefully the guide didn’t turn out too bad or worse, just showing things people already know.

Thanks for reading guys, and tell me what I missed, or got wrong, and what are the nice thing about this post (so I can know what to avoid or replicate for a possible next time).

Side extra: with the news of Shamare in CN, Pramanix starts to be a liiiiiiittle overshadowed by her new counterpart. In a technical term, Shamare can have a better debuff talent than PMN’s, or she can have both of PMN’s skill in one, albeit a lil bit of half each skill. I made an argument earlier about atk spd red > atk dmg red for this reason, but for PMN’s case, she can only bring 1 skill at once, which mean it’s either defensive or offensive and not both. The DEF reduction from Shamare is lower, and she can’t reduce RES so she cannot boost herself, since she deal magic dmg, but her debuff is global, as well as having more uptime. But let’s save the discussion for when she actually comes to global server.