tldr: Sakura: Bloom in Summer is an off-DPS that deals very solid damage against the priority enemy target without needing to burst. She is a solid complement to any AoE-based team, but only if you can figure out how to slot her in with her low burst gen.
SSakura, aka Sakura: Bloom in Summer, is a summer-limited bikini alt of her niche PvP OG self. She is a B3 AR attacker whose is, as with most recent units, meant for elemental Solo Raid usage, but as it turns out, has some interesting usage in PvP as well in the role of an off-DPS (something currently only filled by A2, Laplace+, Emilia).
SSakura’s kit focuses on two themes: 1) parts break and 2) sustained damage. Parts break is meaningless in PvP and usually sustained damage would be ignored as well if it weren’t for her very high multiplier. Sakura’s S2 here is key, dealing a impressively high 256% atk every second for 15s (pretty much the entire PvP fight) against the highest ATK target. With the +15.64% attack damage passive (also with her S2), this becomes almost 300% per second, scaling with attack buffs and Full Burst multiplier. Thanks to her S1, this “DoT” kicks off immediately at the start of the battle and locks on to a unit, ignoring taunt (Noise/Noah’s autos won’t cause a target switch, nor will any burst taunts).
There are a few very important things to highlight about this \~300%/sec DoT. The first is that it is “free damage” as SSakura does NOT need to burst or meet any kind of condition for this; she just needs to exist on the battlefield and stay alive. For most PvP fights, it takes \~3s to reach B1 (assuming a 3RL setup) and \~5 seconds to reach Full Burst. This means that by B1, SSakura will have dealt almost 900% damage to the highest ATK target, and by Full Burst, she will have dealt almost 1500% damage to the highest ATK target. In comparison, Pepper’s B1 deals 1237% while Rosanna deals 1310%, meaning SSakura is effectively a “free Pepper/Rosanna nuke”. Better yet, SSakura continues this 300% DoT even throughout Full Burst. In comparison, SAnis’ DoTs are 382.42% per tick (which happens at a slightly faster rate than 1/sec assuming you have 100% reload speed), so you can also think of SSakura as a “mini SAnis” in that sense.
Before getting all excited about all this free damage, however, there are a few things to consider. The first is that while this DoT cannot be taunted, it also won’t switch targets after the target is dead. This means that you cannot rely on SSakura to do “cleanup” or “stall wipe” the enemy team like SAnis does. And while her damage is very solid, its not strong enough to be your primary damage source; SAnis hits 2 targets at once for more and at a faster speed, while Alice/RedHood hits much harder and at a much much faster speed. SSakura’s Burst is also pretty bad in PvP; 457% damage to 10 random targets is extremely unreliable and much worse than just dealing 1000%+ damage to all 5 targets as most of the other AoE nukers do. This effectively means she can only fulfil the role of an off-DPS rather than the main DPS.
The other thing to consider is that, as an AR, she has extremely low burst gen. The extra hit from her S2 does add in a bit more burst gen (her regular 10 hits/sec now becomes 11 hits/sec) but its still dismally low and thus requires a burst gen battery in the same team to make up for it. In comparison, the other off-DPS units (A2, Laplace+, Emilia) all have decently high burst gen, making them more flexible picks. This makes team building a bit hard for her – not only does she need to be paired with a primary DPS, but the rest of the team needs to have high burst gen to support her. With our currently available roster, there’s very few setups that would meet this requirement (e.g. only Maiden AoE nuke comes to mind, but you can probably try to pair her with Emilia off-DPS) so she is likely not going to be a part of the Rookie Arena meta any time soon. Maybe SP Arena if people cook hard. Probably Champion Arena assuming its 5 teams.
All in all, she’s a recommended pull, but not a meta breaker. Pull her for her solid usage in PvE Solo Raid. Or pull her for her niche usage in PvP Champion Arena. Or pull her for her bikini booba, up to you.
>> Keripo’s PvP tier list rating: B(ikini)+ <<
Originally posted on Reddit