by Dr_Evilcat

Traits / Archetype Overview

Trait: Does not attack normally, massively increased defense & magic res when not attacking. Deal spell damage on all enemy in range while skill is active

More specifically, this trait multiplies her DEF by 3 and grants 20 RES during skill downtime. Beeswax is first in a brand-new archetype of Caster, the Pillar/Modal Caster. She deals true AoE damage, hitting every enemy in range with her active skill. During skill downtime, she becomes a ranged tank, boasting high DEF and RES. Her E0 range is a 3×3 square centered on her, and gains an additional tile in the middle of each edge at E1, as shown here. It’s a very unique range that targets all tiles around her, but doesn’t reach very far forward. The combination of this range and her trait encourages extremely aggressive placement, though I’ll go over specific strategies for her once I’ve gone over more of her kit.

I like to think of this archetype of as a ‘frontline caster’ in terms of utility. Both Beeswax and the upcoming Mint offer means of alleviating damage taken by your frontliners, via a combination of drawing aggro from ranged attacks and CC-ing enemies with their skills. Their true AoE can be used for clearing spread-out crowds before getting clustered up on a defender, or use their skills to crowd-control enemies when your ground defense is about to leak.

The Numbers

At all levels, she has a RES of 15 (boosted to 35 with her trait active) and a 2s attack time. For comparison, Mostima’s DPS at E2 30 is 230, compared to Beeswax’s 335. However, since Beeswax can’t attack during skill downtime, I’ll compare overall average damage output in the skills section. Trust gives Beeswax an extra 70 attack and 20 DEF.

Talent – Shambhala’s Sanctuary

While skill is not active, recover 2.5%/4% (E1/E2) Max HP every second

This talent grants Beeswax self-sustain on top of her already-high tankiness from her trait. Remember what I said about her range encouraging aggressive placement? This talent enables her to survive when placed beyond the range of medics, which really opens up options for her positioning. She can be used to cover a wider area in front of your main cluster, help handle an off-lane without needing any healing (so long as the tank itself has some sustain), or just ease the load on your medics if acting as a ranged tank for your frontline. There’s a huge caveat for this talent, though – remember this regen is disabled when one of her skills are active, so if she’s taking many hits and doing fine during her downtime, she can drop dead pretty quick from a careless skill activation.

RIIC Skills

Caster Specialisation·β, a training room increase for Casters. 30% at E0, 50% at E2. Don’t think there’s much more to be said here.

Skills

Skill 1 – Growing Sandstorm

Increase attack range, Attack + 40%/50% (SL7/M3). SP Cost 24/18, Duration 17/20 Seconds.

This skill can generally be viewed as her main DPS skill. Her new attack range with this skill is significantly wider than her original. This can either be used to make her positioning significantly easier, or utilised on the right stage to simultaneously damage enemies in multiple areas of the map. The attack boost is very significant, too – a maxed Beeswax goes up to 1176 damage per attack, or 588 damage per second. I’ll use Angelina as a reference point, who gets up to 1355 damage per attack on a shorter interval, with a similarly wide range, plus the utility of slowing. So, not as good as Angelina unless you’ve got over 5 targets, but not negligible either. Beeswax has the advantage of a slightly faster skill rotation and no target limit (plus being a lower rarity), but even so she isn’t the best option for crowd clearing Arts, with the existence of Eyja and Ange. The average DPS at E2 30 S1M3, including downtime, is 254 – still slightly higher than Mostima’s auto attacks, but much lower than Angelina’s 315 average at this level. If you skimmed over these numbers, Angelina is better for AoE Arts with partial uptime (unsurprisingly), but Beeswax is still decent.

There’s an additional downside to this skill, too – using her primarily for burst DPS hurts her as a ranged tank. If she’s positioned to just ease the load on your main tank, then she’ll likely survive her skill uptime and regen health during downtime. However, if she’s being used for any heavy tanking, activating her skill can make her melt away – without some form of damage mitigation.

Skill 2 – Guardian Obelisk

Summon an obelisk that can block enemies in a melee tile within attack range. When appearing, the obelisk will deal 230%/300% magic damage to nearby enemies and stun them for 1.5/3 Seconds. SP Cost 24/20, Duration 17/20 Seconds

This is my preferred skill on Beeswax by a wide margin, because it allows her to function as a unit with incredible utility, instead of one with alright damage output. Before I go into detail about her usage, I want to go over some of the mechanics of the Obelisk she spawns.

Fun Facts About The Obelisk

The Obelisk functions as a block-3 melee unit

The Obelisk cannot regain HP, even under the effect of regen effects such as Sora’s

The Obelisk will help draw ranged attacks from Beeswax – since it is deployed after her, it will have a higher ranged targeting priority

The Obelisk’s placement will follow normal targeting priority, spawning on the enemy closes on their path to the blue box. If there are no enemies in range, it will be placed on a random tile within Beeswax’s range

The Obelisk will not be spawned if there are no free deployable ground tiles within range – but the skill still activates as normal and allows Beeswax to attack

The Obelisk can be affected by enemy debuffs, including becoming frozen or stunned. I do not know how you stun a pillar of solid stone (sand?), but here we are. Being stunned will reduce block count to zero and allow enemies to wander on past.

The Obelisk does not count towards the deployment limit, and can be manually retreated.

The Obelisk will be automatically dispelled at the end of Beeswax’s skill duration

So, on skill activation, you can get 3 additional block in the lane Beeswax is covering, with a stun to catch wraiths or units that are already past the Obelisk, that baits ranged attacks while Beeswax is vulnerable, with controllable placement by timing it right with enemy positions. It’s very handy.

The most use I’ve made of Beeswax’s kit thanks to this skill was when clearing H6-4. I could place her forward from the frontline so mortars were only hitting the one unit, and draw a lot of ranged damage from the mages and bombtails I forgot about away from my actual frontline. Kept both defenders and my ranged units alive longer. I was using her obelisk to: keep Icecleavers off my defenders, bait mage attacks if Beeswax was about to be frozen, get large crowds of enemies to hold up before leaking, and interrupt sneaky spiders before they reach the main crowd. Oh, and this was before I took her to Elite 2. I don’t think any other single unit could have improved my team’s survivability that much.

Now, there are some things to watch for with her kit. At M3 you’ll only be getting the obelisk to stun enemies/refresh health/reposition every 40 seconds, so if you need it for stuns you’ll have to be careful with timings. Also, if the obelisk spawns on an enemy at the edge of Beeswax’s range, it can hold enemies outside of where she’s hitting. This is a horrible nuisance, but can be mitigated with careful skill timings – assuming there are free spaces to deploy it. If Beeswax is deployed adjacent to your defensive line, it’ll very often block enemies out of her own range due to the limited placement options. Fortunately, the obelisk can be manually retreated when no longer needed. It’ll feel like a waste, but if it’s done the job of catching a leak there’s no reason to have it stay around if its acting as a detriment to your team.

Pay attention to the open space within Beeswax’s range, and make sure there’s room for useful Obelisk deployment in it – if you clog her range with ground units too much, she’ll lose a lot of the utility from this skill

Oh, and average DPS for this skill at M3, including downtime, is Beeswax’s attack stat / 4, so 168 at E2 30 – below Mostima’s auto attacks. It deals damage, but this ain’t a DPS skill. Now this isn’t a completely fair comparison, because Beeswax can time her skill activations to line up with crowds and doesn’t need enemies to bunch up like Mostima does for multitarget, but the damage is more an added bonus than the reason you bring her.

Should You Build Her?

She’s not a high priority to raise if you’re still getting your DPS core established, but she’s almost completely irreplaceable for the utility she offers – I absolutely recommend getting her to at least E1 40 for her utility. Masteries shave 6 seconds (23% reduction) off her S2’s skill cycle and give an extra second (50% increase) to her stun duration – I reckon it’s worthwhile, but again, not a big priority. Her S2M3 is something I’ll do eventually, but not before a lot of other masteries I’ve got in the queue.

Where Do I Use Her?

Her basic use cases are where there’s a lot of ranged damage causing problems, or where you need high block in bursts. 7-3 is a perfect example of where a Beeswax just standing there menacingly can almost completely nullify a threat to a stage, but she can be worth having on just about any stage with heavy ranged damage. She doesn’t have to activate her skills to be useful – sometimes that’ll get her killed when she’s there specifically to be a tank.

One big use for her obelisk is plugging leaks. Stage with occasional Bullies that’ll sneak by from a random dog on your defender? Slap an Obelisk down on them to hold them up. Defender stunned by a Crusher? Now there’s an obelisk in the way to keep the lane shut. Using a ranged team comp because you hate Defenders? Here’s a defender you can use 50% of the time and it isn’t cheating.

She makes a good option to duo a lane with Vulcan (or similar operators). Beeswax has built-in self-sustain, and acts as great caster bait – one of Vulcan’s biggest threats. Beeswax deals multitarget damage to keep crowds from building up, and her obelisk’s block can help prevent Vulcan leaking when activating her S2 in certain situations (or can hold up an enemy for Hellagur to kill if he’s taking his time with it).

I’d rarely use her S1, honestly – there are too many other options for simply killing a large number of weaker enemies, especially given that she’ll only be hitting them about half the time. If anyone’s got use out of her S1, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, but personally I find it hard to pass up on S2’s utility.

And to reiterate an earlier point, ideally she’ll be dropped a tile or two ahead of your frontline, otherwise it can be very challenging to make proper use of her skills/attacks – often her obelisk will just hold enemies outside of her range if she’s alongside or behind your frontline, and that aside you’d be wasting half her range. Her tankiness and self-sustain mean that it’s not an issue if she’s taking hits, or out of your medic range, but there are some stages that just don’t really allow this placement due to limited ranged tiles.

Closing Notes

I can’t promise that Beeswax will be a part of your default team – she certainly isn’t a part of mine. What she will be is incredibly useful on the stages where you need her particular utility, and in those situations she makes enough of a difference to justify building her. No other operator can do quite what she does, and I’m including the future unit of her archetype in that statement.

If you’re after some videos of her in gameplay, 777ucky has done showcases of her here and here. Also, if you’re interested, this post looks into some of the references to ancient Egypt within Beeswax’s design – makes an interesting read for anyone interested in some further details on her character with a side of some IRL lore.