by Windgesang

So you want to use Platinum. Plentiful reasons to do so, one of the top 3 Anti-Air (AA) snipers, beautiful arts, strong but slightly hard to use. Often competing with Blue Poison, another top AA sniper, she is slowly rising in popularity. So let’s ride the bandwagon and join with her. Kappa

Overview

One of the best AA snipers in the game. Long range, high damage, and the ability to somewhat able to deal with high armored enemies if she happened to face one, AND the ability to counteract attack speed reduction debuff to an extend (like in Chap 6). She also looks beautiful too, especially at E2, when she shows off the sick curve… of her bow, and the slender legs… of the horse. She charges up her skill slowly, but unleashes destruction once it’s up, and even boasts the highest range for an AA sniper.

Stats:

– Offensive stats:

Among the AA snipers, Platinum has one of the highest base ATK, but compared to the other 5* (and 6*) snipers, she actually has the lowest. But then again, it’s like 8 less than her next higher competition anyway (Greythroat), so it’s not that bad… right? We’ll get to that later. As for attack speed, it’s the same with every other AA sniper (assuming no talent), 1 attack per second. Again, something else later will affect this again, but for a baseline sniper with nothing else, Platinum does better than most.

– Defensive stats:

Platinum’s HP is on the higher end, but she’s still a sniper, so in the grand scheme of things, it’s still not that high. Well, at least high enough to tank the Art drone + Turret combo in Anni 3 anyway, something BP need much much more investment to do. However! There are few reasons to put your snipers/ranged unit to danger in the first place, with the exception of, of course, the map-wise hazard like poison or the aforementioned Turrets, or AoE attacks. Her DEF stat is not that bad either, and in fact she ties for the 4th highest DEF with Meteor out of all snipers (CN included, and assuming maxed stat, and strangely the 2 horse archers have the same DEF). Now, the difference is actually not that huge, like 40 at best, so in reality it’s not that impressive, but it’s good to keep in mind sometime. All snipers have no RES, except for Blue Poison who have 5, for some reasons (poison affinity I guess)

– Cost:

The cost to deploy is also nothing special, and it’s the same with the other 5* AA snipers out there, 13.

Range:

Again, she has a baseline range that is typical of AA snipers. 3×4 and is on the middle tile of the 3 tiles edge. But there’s something else in her range that set her apart from the other AA snipers, but we’ll get to that point.

Baseline range for all AA snipers at E0 (left) and E1 (right)

Trait:

Attack aerial enemies first. Well I mean that’s why she’s an AA sniper. This is as basic as pawn to e4 opening.

Talent:

All-out attacks: The longer the interval from the last attack is, the higher the ATK multiplier of the next attack will be. Maximum of 2.5s for 140% multiplier at E1, 180% at E2.

So what does that mean? It means that, from the last time an arrow left her bow to the next time it does so, if it passed a certain duration, Platinum will gain an ATK multiplier to that shot. The important part is the moment the arrow is fired, not whenever she decided to attack someone, which actually is not important from all the data presented yet, but it will be later.

In game, they said it’s “the higher the ATK of the next attack”, which is not wrong, but still not fully true. By saying it’s an ATK multiplier, it’s implied that it also multiplies any ATK buffs, which Platinum herself has some, but also any buffer like Warfarin or Sora as well. So it’s something like Base ATK * (total % ATK boost) * this talent.

Now, she attacks once every second, isn’t that like 40% of 2.5 seconds already? Does that mean she always get 40% of the talent every hit? Well of course no, the devs wouldn’t want anything that broken am I right? It’s not like they wanted a Single Target caster to be able to beat the DPS of all AoE casters or anything, that would be stupid.

The actual formula is tested and drafted by KeyCog in a separated post which I will linked here. The short and sweet is that, of course there is a minimum time for the talent, and it is exactly 1s for the talent to begin the calculation. So if Plat is constantly shooting at 1s interval, the boost from the talent is 0% (or in other words, the scaling is 100%, basically just a normal attack).

This is the main reason why I said she can counteract attack speed reduction debuff (or heck, even stun and freeze). If you increase her attack interval, sure the amount of shot is reduced, but the damage per shot increases, and quite heavily at E2 as well. The thing is though, it’s still a net loss in DPS, even at E2. Think about it, she deals 100% of her damage every 1s, and with just the perfect attack speed slow, she’ll deal 180% of her damage every 2.5s (which is not 250%) so she’ll deal less DPS, BUT, in this same setup, everyone else is stuck with 100% every 2.5s, so she still fares better against attack speed slow than most, and that’s the reason she counteracts attack speed reduction debuff. However, the maximum time between arrow fires is still 2.5s, so any further reduction to that is just a total unrecoverable loss. Wait a minute, does this mean that any attack speed buff will essentially weaken this talent? Well yes, but in the same vein as the previous part, she’ll deal more DPS thanks to that attack speed increases.

However, because of how DEF works in this game, past a certain amount, her talent will boost more than what attack speed can give her, so be mindful of who she attacks. BUT, past another certain amount of DEF, where even her talent still only gives her 5% of her ATK per shot, then attack speed start to be better again, though we’ll scarcely meet anyone with that high of a defense stat.

Skills

– RIIC skills:

Always available: Sniper Expert α: Increase the mastery training speed of sniper ops by 30%. At E2 this becomes Sniper Expert β and increases the speed to 50%.

This is like the third time we have someone with this set in the base for this series already. Anyway, this is training speed increases, not duration decreases, so it’s actually just a 23.07%/33.33% decrease in duration. But it’s actually a little bit more than that, because any operator as a trainer already increase the speed by a small amount, regardless of base skill.

Anyway, onto her signature.

First skill: Pegasian Sight

…Hold up I gotta take this call from my editor(s)™. Hello? Uh huh. Yeah? What do you mean that’s not her first skill? Platinum has two skills???? WHAT THE FUCK!?

Alright whatever we’re going to skip it, it’s just a myth anyway pfff.

It’s not a bad skill it’s just heavily overshadowed by her second skill and give nothing but extra attack for a fix duration so it’s kinda lame. It also doesn’t allow her to use her talent at all and no other benefits, which we’ll be talking about right after this.

Second skill: Pegasian Sight

Now this is her signature skill. The skill when active, give Plat everything, wealth, powers, do her laundry, make her breakfast, pushes back the Ottomans… idk what was I saying. It first gives her massive ATK boost, from +50%, up to +100%. This boost stacks additively with other ATK boost, like Warfarin or Sora, and her talent just multiplies all the damage afterward. But of course that’s not all, the skill also extends her range by an additional 1 tile range, pushing that from 3×4 to 3×5 range, matching with E2 AoE snipers, and bring her to having the longest range for any AA sniper (even in CN as of the posting date).

But there are more benefits from this skill, it also reduces her attack speed stat by 20. This is a slight benefit because now Plat’s talent works with every single shot she does. With 20 less attack speed, Plat will now attack once every 1/((100-20/1)/100) = 1.25 seconds. But, according to KeyCog in their post again, the game run at 30FPS (insert PC master race comment), which make an attack interval of 1.25s impossible and is actually at 1.2(6) seconds instead. Since the scaling of her talent is calculated from 1s to 2.5, every Plat’s attack now receive 0.2(6) / (2.5-1) = 17.(7)% of her talent. This translate to (oh god 4 years of engineering for gaming math again) 17.(7)% * 40% = 7.(1)% multiplier per shot at E1, and double that at E2, 14.(2)%. Since her talent is multiplicative, that means the bonus ATK from the skill itself benefits with every shot as well, which also boosts other ATK buffs from outside sources as well.

Although, since her attack speed is reduced, the total DPS wouldn’t be as high as if this skill just not give the attack speed reduction, it’s a bit of a mix between a benefit as it gives more Damage Per Shot, but less Damage Per Second. It depends on how you view each of those two.

Something the game never told you, but is very apparent if you use Plat even just for a little bit, is that, the skill also increases the wind-up time before she attacks as well. This windup time is 1s, that is to say, from the time she starts the attack animation, to the time the arrow is fired, needs 1 second, which is the same as Ambriel with her S2 for outside default range. This is actually not important most of the time but remember that her talent calculates from when an arrow leaves her bow.

The final benefit this skill give to Plat is the duration. It’s infinite. Or well, more like, there’s still an orange bar running for 3150 seconds, but the actual duration is still infinite, even if it runs out. There’s nothing else to say here, except it’s i n f i n i t e.

Of course there will be drawbacks for how amazing it sounds so far. And for most infinite duration skills, the drawback is the charging time. Plat needs around a minute of game time in order to activate this skill. Do you remember what I said about Plat having lower attack than AA snipers of the same rarity? Well it’s even worse now, because without her skill, her talent doesn’t really work, and she’s generic af without this skill. Other snipers, even the one with lower rarity, can actually outpace her without her skills. Well I mean it makes sense right, having skill to use > no skill to use. Most other snipers can drop down and after like 25s max, can already use their skills, especially the one with Attack Recovery skill that do stuff every 3-5 hits.

Let’s summarize a little bit. At level 7, this skill gives +70% ATK, expands 1tile of range to 3×5 area, reduce attack speed by 20 (which is unchangeable), last forever, and need 63 SP to charge, or 63 seconds without any help, and 48.46s with E2 Ptilopsis. Various factor like Liskarm, Saria, Hung Warfarin cannot be mathematized so… wack.

If you want to push this further, at M3, the ATK boost increases to +100%, which means double, and need only 50SP to fully charge, which is a yuuuge improvement. And remember, this ATK boost is once again affected by her talent. For some quick number, at E2 lv30, 0 trust, and this skill at M3, Plat will have 894.8 ATK, and attacking constantly will push it to about 1022 per shot, or if the talent reaches max duration, then it’s about 1610.64 per shot to a 0 DEF target. If she has full trust, that goes up to 1193.4 and 1880.64 respectively. Pretty nifty stuff.

Another thing with this skill at M3 that they never told you is that the full duration actually DOUBLES at M3!

Ok let’s get real again, usually most people would probably not E2 her as a high priority, so if we count E1 max level, she would have 414 ATK, with this skill at level 7 pushes it to 703.8 ATK. If she attacks continuously, her talent pushes it further to 753.85 damage per shot to 0 DEF target. If the talent is fully charged, then it goes to about 985.32 damage per shot. Her talent certainly gets much stronger at E2 (in fact, it’s double!).

Remember what I said about her and “the ability to somewhat able to deal with high armored enemies”? Yea this skill is mainly why. It gives her huge damage to at least overpower defense because of the damage calculation of ATK – DEF, most other snipers don’t have this high of an ATK boost (well, May does have +90~120%, and she’s also a good option to deal with high DEF enemies due to the strong crowd control, and wait a minute this is a Plat highlight, I already did one for May)

If you want to compare her to other snipers and skill, there are a few posts out there already. For example, this post that is drafted by Null_Finger, listing all snipers’ DPS and an added comparison between Plat and some others, and this post that is drafted by Bagi_xX, comparing specifically between Plat and BP at M3, so a little less general.

As for the usual, this skill’s charge time is the biggest downfall. Anyone who uses this skill just a little bit can already know how bad it can be. The solution is to of course remove her from the squad place her a bit earlier to start the process, like people do with Blaze. Sad thing is, Plat isn’t that great without her skill, as she has no talent to boost her if the enemies are coming in steady. If the 4* snipers can use their skills, even they can do better than Plat during this charge time. So, if you put her early, you wouldn’t be able to put a different sniper, because it’s still the early phase and DP is in constraint. But if you delay her deployment, she would just charge at an even later time. But in the end it doesn’t even matter! Very few maps have so strong of a start that a baseline Plat wouldn’t be able to handle it along with some Vanguards, and if you have Myrtle, you can probably print enough so you don’t have to worry about the opportunity cost of deploying Plat at all. SP battery is also a solution, like Ptilopsis, Warfarin, Liskarm, Saria, Hung… but not all would have a few of them, and some may not even have any of them (well, some may actually have pot 6 Hung, but the condition to receive SP from him is a bit iffy). A different solution is to E2 her and then M3 her skill, reducing the charge time to a maximum of 50s, which is not that long…ish. Because of that long charge time, Platinum cannot really be used to switch place around in the map, and is a big hit to your lineup if she happens to get rekted.

But if you read the 2 posts I linked earlier, you’ll know that, aside from Exu, Plat has the most consistent DPS on 1 single target. The consistency is better than most other sniper who also do consistency stuff, especially if you count only when her skill is activated (and if BP can only hit 1 target).

I did say earlier that she can somewhat deal with high armored enemies because of how high damage per shot she can deal. It is certainly the case, proven with maths that other peoples provide, but that’s not the full story, because at a defense level that is so high (~1200+), BP’s talent may actually be much better against them, especially if you count her multi-target. Although, if you’re facing 2 super DEF enemies, I don’t think you should start preparing your snipers to deal with them (unless they’re Schwarz or Provence or Shirayuki or Ceobe…wait what). Also such enemies rarely exist and also rarely move in any number higher than 1.

The increase in range is really huge though. It may not massively help with DPS, which is what most people value the most. It certainly helps with DPS by allowing Plat to start attacking where other AA snipers otherwise couldn’t yet, which means she can deal more damage to an enemy as they approach one by one. This does not happen all the time, except for early phase, where Plat’s skill isn’t in yet, or when the one big guy coming in, who tends to have high DEF (most of the times). The end line is that, because of this extra range, she’ll have more opportunity to attack, which may or may not hugely improve her DPS. This extra range however definitely helps with positioning. If you read my posts about Firewatch or Ambriel, you’ll know I fucking love long range units. Plat’s extra range means that she can stand just behind a different AA sniper and they both will reach the same area, whereas 2 of any other AA snipers would need to compete for that. This is the most important aspect of the extra range, not because she can reach enemies 1 tile further, but because she can stand 1 tile back and still do the same thing as other AA snipers. This open up more flexibility in deployment location, if the map has less high ground to stand on, if you prefer using other short-range units, and so on.

The main reason I skip her first skill entirely is because it doesn’t exist is because it’s just worse than her second skill. At level 7, the first skill gives less ATK, less duration (duh), and nothing else, except for the fact that you can use it after 25s of deploy. But if you need to deal with things fast, you really need a different sniper. At M3, both skills actually give the same attack boost of +100%, but again, her S2 allows her talent to affect her damage a little bit every attack which means more damage per shot (less overall DPS though). Using Plat’s S1 means that you can’t use her S2 and that’s a big opportunity cost. Her S1 is basically “get $3 every 3 days” while her S2 is “nothing first week but $1.5 everyday afterward”. Bad analogy strikes!

A little miscellaneous info is that Plat’s S2 plays a small jingle when activated. That tune is a reference to this song (sorry not sorry).

That should be all I can think of about Platinum for now. I’m sure many people had talked about her before and probably know most of this already. I mean the eternal battle between her and BP is still on going, and maybe I’m just fighting for her with this post lul (said the guy that use both and went full sniperknights). Anyway, what’s your take on her? What do you think about this post?