tl;dr: Ein is an interesting hypercarry DPS who dishes out continual high DPS during Full Burst to all enemy targets but has no self-sustain/protection so she needs babysitting via Blanc/Noah/etc. Weaker than SAnis/Scalter/SSakura but without any obvious hard or soft counters.
Joshikousei banzai! Eins the blonde haired (not) delinquent highschooler is here. While she’s definitely a stellar B3 SR attacker PvE unit (who can out DPS Scarlet against bosses), it turns out she actually has some potential use in PvP as a viable “secondary” DPS carry pick (e.g. after the “primary” Scarlet, SAnis and Emilia comps, alongside other “secondary” picks like Maiden, MPrivaty, Scalter, 2B, Kilo, Red Hood, SSakura etc.).
Ein has two themes: 1) True Damage, and 2) Feathers. True Damage is a damage attribute that lets you ignore DEF values. This is very important in PvE content where bosses have very high def values, but pretty insignificant in PvP where DEF values are less than 1% of unit total HPs. It does let you take advantage of True Damage buffers… if there were any relevant ones for PvP (Clay’s True Damage buff is not strong enough to justify using in PvP and Frima’s buff requires some buff stacking that won’t happen in time in PvP).
Ein’s second theme is Feathers (e.g. Gundam Funnels/Bits) which are summoned and fly around hitting random targets for a limited duration of time. These Feathers operate independly from Ein (e.g. they keep operating even when Ein is stunned) and, deal True Damage, and are impacted by buffs to Ein. Its important to note that the 4 Feathers summoned at the start of battle from her S1 operate differently from the 6 Feathers summoned during her Burst. The 4 Feathers summoned at the start of battle effectively act as bonus passive slow DPS – during a typical 3RL PvP fight, you can expect to just get 1 extra hit from them (nothing much but hey, its something) so you can ignore that. The 6 Feathers summoned from her B3, however, are the real deal. For the entire duration of Full Burst, then will lazer spam (Gundam style) very rapidly also against random targets in a way that is effectively a very fast-acting DoT on all enemy targets. They can be taunted by taunts like from Noah/Noise (if Noise hits Ein with her auto-attack) but because they continue spamming throughout the entire Full Burst duration, they can potentially kill the taunter, then continue on destroying the rest of the team. To do this would ideally require your team to run 2 buffers (e.g. B1 RedHood/Liter/Miranda/XMica + B2 Blanc/XAnne/Crown/SRosanna/Poli) but you may be able to get away with just 1 buffer as long as you aren’t fighting against a team with high sustain (e.g. Noah comp or SAnis-Biscuit comp).
In addition to her Feather damage, her Burst damage also does do an AoE hit against all targets (the skill description says 10 enemy units but since PvP only has 5, it just hits each of the opposing targets). The damage multiplier on the skill is a bit low at only 300% so it won’t be able to AoE nuke 1-shot your enemy targets (even with the +70% self attack buff from Ein’s S1 skill and even if you stack 2 more buffs from B1 and B2) but it does add in some decent damage which will let your Feathers finish things off.
Despite all this goodness, Ein has one major shortcoming; she has no self-sustain even though she is a sustained-damage unit. This means that she needs support from the rest of her team to stay safe/alive while she beam spams. The ideal setup for her would be with Blanc, who both functions as a buffer (or rather, debuffer to the enemy team) and gives Ein a 10-second indom buff to let her do her thing. Ensuring Ein gets that buff, however, is a bit tricky so you would likely also want to use Jackal to ensure Ein’s HP is low at time of B2 but also paired with a Vigor cube on the other linked unit to ensure the buff goes to Ein and not the other linked unit. Another option is running Ein with Noah who taunts the entire enemy team and gives Ein a 3s invuln buff. 3 seconds is not ideal, but it might be enough depending on your opponent. You can also run other general purpose taunters (e.g. Noise, Makima, Ludmilla + Biscuit, Diesel, etc) but your mileage may vary.
When it comes to sizing her up against other DPS units, the obvious comparisons here that come to mind would be SAnis, Scalter, and SSakura, all of which are also damage-over-time DPS units. Ein is generally not as strong as SAnis who hits harder and more focused and whose Burst only gets partially taunted (since there’s 2 missiles) but as a SR she doesn’t have SAnis’s soft counter of Jackal-Scarlet. Compared to Scalter and SSakura, her damage is lower and slower but she does not get hard countered by OG Sakura, making her viable on defence. But because of her requirement for babysitting, her team comp flexibility is a bit more restrictive.
All in all, Ein is a recommended pull but not a meta breaker. Highly recommend pulling her for PvE usage but if you are lacking a solid 3rd SP Arena defence team, she can fill that role. She will likely also have a spot in Champion Area as well, whenever we get that. But most importantly, she is a joshikousei and JK banzai, so you should pull for her.
>> Keripo’s PvP tier list rating: A+ <<
Here’s a quick showcase video of Ein in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbBhTY55V9g
Originally posted on Reddit
