tl;dr: Cindy is an S-tier B3 AoE nuker who only needs 1 buffer to AoE nuke, 0 buffers at lower synchro levels. Expect to see her frequently in SP Arena and 100% in Champion Arena
Happy Thanksgiving all! Been pretty busy with work and other games so here’s a very overdue PvP review of the last 3 units we just got, starting with Cinderella.
Cinderella (aka Cindy) is the star of the 2nd Anniversary event (sorry Rapi!). Ironically she was originally intended to be just mid but due to a bug in her mechanics (the same charge speed bug that Harran had at launch), her damage output was drastically buffed. Due to being such a high profile unit and the general stigma against nerfing units after release, ShiftUp was forced to buff her to make up for the bugfix, resulting in an extremely overpowered DPS unit with a crazy high burst multiplier.
Cindy’s B3 burst operates in the same way as SSakura, hitting 10 times divided among the enemy units, usually resulting in 2 hits per target in a slightly delayed manner. The multiplier on the hit though is drastically different; compared to SSakura’s 457.14% per hit (resulting in 914.28% per target), Cindy hits for 1365.92% per hit (resulting in 2731.84% per target). So just from the raw multiplier, you can tell that her AoE nuke is drastically higher than that of any other AoE nuke unit we’ve had before (much thanks to the buff from her bugfix). Being multi-hit also means she can mostly get around Bay’s shield as the first hit should break it, then the remaining 9 hits go through as expected. One downside of her burst that its not instantaneous due to the multi-hit mechanism, which would mean Cindy would lose out in a sudden-death matchup when both sides are 3RL teams. Due to her lower need for buffs, however, her team comp has much more flexibility so you can potentially build faster teams for her.
Cindy’s S1 skill is also a very important part of her kit. Cindy is actually a Defender, not an Attacker, meaning she has higher HP and defence values and lower attack values. Her lower attack value, however, is drastically offset by her S1 buff which increases her ATK value by 2.71% of her final max HP value, very similar to 2B. There’s a couple important implications about this. First, while not as high a conversion value as 2B, the buff only gets applies at time of burst, so it cannot be countered by Rosanna’s buff removal ability that happens earlier in the fight (something that prevents 2B from being usable on defence). The second thing is, like with 2B, it is calculated based on final max HP, meaning max HP buffers like Noise and Mast can also be used for bumping up Cindy’s damage. While this might not seem to be necessary given the high multiplier, don’t forget that with the damage reduction that comes from Dolls and Tempering cubes and with the average player synchro level going higher and higher, more damage is now required to guarantee that 1-shot kill, so its still safer to run Cindy with 1 buffer if you can (ideally Noise as she also helps counter the enemy team should they burst first).
Cindy’s S2 skill also adds in some extra interesting points. The skill deploys a decoy (similar to non-Eva Rei). This decoy can screw up targetting logic (and unfortunately result in some target skipping shenanigans) so its best not to put Cindy in P1 to avoid getting target skipped (or worse, residual targetting) or P2 even to avoid giving your opponent extra burst gen. This decoy does, however, count as a hittable target, so it does keep her safe from the first hit of multi-hit nukes like from SSakura and Maiden.
Another extra note about Cindy is that even though she is a Rocket Launcher, her normal attacks do not act like regular rockets. Similar to Scalter, they only hit 1 target and sometimes dont even hit the cover. The result is Cindy has extremely low burst gen, effectively the same as MGs. Luckily she does not Jackal feed like MGs so you won’t have to worry about being easily countered by a Scarlet-Jackal team (thinking of Eva Rei) but it does mean that you will need to make up for it by padding your team with lots of burst gen batteries (luckily Rumani just got introduced recently to help with that!).
On the countering side, most of the standard AoE nuke counters apply to Cindy. Noah blocks her. Blanc invuln can save one unit from being nuked by her. Biscuit invuln applies as normal and, if paired with Jackal, can also help drastically mitigate the overall output. This means that, like with most other AoE nuke units, she can be stopped. What sets her apart from the other AoE nuke units however is her lack of specialized counters aside from the generic ones just mentioned (which applies to almost all attackers) and the fact that she only needs 1 buffer (or sometimes even 0 buffers) to be able to AoE nuke the enemy team, which gives her much more team building flexibility. This puts her way up on the tier list compared to other DPSs… except for the fact that she is still a one-trick pony. Unlike Scarlet, SAnis and Ein, all of which can continue dealing significant damage throughout the Full Burst period, Cindy doesn’t do much beyond her AoE nuke. So while Cindy is undoubtedly very string, Scarlet and SAnis are still the two top dawgs in arena (alongside arguably Emilia, but Emilia can be very easily countered on defence due to her slow timing).
\>> Keripo’s PvP tier list rating: S <<
Originally posted on Reddit
