Ainikki
Basic Info:
Rarity: Legendary
Race: Elf
Gender: Female
Type: Fire
Personality: Good
Starting Class: Silver-Haired Nun
Base Traits
| Strength | IQ | Piety | Vitality | Dexterity | Speed | Luck |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 16 | 13 | 12 | 14 | 13 | 11 |
Portraits
Skills
Inheritable Skill
Invokes a pillar of fire in a moderate fire-type spell attack on 1 enemey row based on the caster's Divine Power. Has a chance based on Divine Power of inflicting Fire Resistance Weakening for 2 turns. Damage and Fire Resistance Weakening effect are reduced if learned by someone other than Anikki. Damage increased and Fire-type Resistance weakening effect is further increased based in skill level.
Unique Skill (Not Inheritable)
When attacking with a one-handed blunt weapon, a portion of Divine Power is added to Attack Power. When placed in the front row, the user's Attack Power/Defense Power are increased during battle. When placed in the back row, the user's Divine Power/Magic Defense are increased during battle.
Discipline Skill
Continuously increases each stat, with HP, MP, Attack Power, and Divine Power increased even further. HP, MP, Attack Power, and Divine Power increased even further based on skill level.
Adventurer Reviews
TheAxolotl's Analysis
As our latest collab adventurer Ainikki has an interesting hybrid kit that, if I were a betting man, would say teases what the Lord class will eventually look like - some combination of Knight + Priest, emphasizing a combination of defensive/support abilities while simultaneously having Div contribute towards Attack Power, similar to how the Samurai utilizes both Attack and Magic Power. Time will tell for sure, but enough about that - let's talk about her kit!
First, let's touch on her passive skill, Priest Overseeing Life and Death. This works similarly to how Iarumas works, increasing Attack and Defense while in the front row, and Div and MDef while in the back row. It also allows Divine Power to contribute to Attack Power when equipping a 1h mace. I personally haven't tested this out yet, but in theory, this would allow you to build a front line priest with a heavy Div focus and have 1h mace do better-than-garbage damage. That being said, this component of the passive doesn't mesh quite as well with the rest of her kit.
Her inheritable active spell, LITOKAN, deals moderate row-range fire damage based on Divine Power, not Magic Power. It also inflicts a fire resistance down debuff, which could get annoying to deal with when it comes to the 3 debuff limit, especially since there really aren't many, if any, folks running around with fire-heavy teams. I'm not entirely sure how the damage works on this one, but in general, Moderate damage is generally fairly respectable for a caster, however spell scaling in general is not that great.
She also has a second signature, non-inheritable spell, and this is where her kit really starts to interest me. MAPORFIC is a row-level buff that shares a slot with Knight's Defense, which means it does not conflict with the 3 buff limit. Early testing points to this buff reducing damage dealt to the row by approximately 15% and lasts innately for 8 turns. This means if you have her first two turns be to cast MAPORFIC on both rows, Ainikki can provide a party-wide 15% damage reduction for the entire duration of most battles. The downside to this? Well, MAPORFIC costs 40 mp to cast. Luckily, this is reduced by Way of the Priest, which...she does not get by default. A single inherit, though, will take the cost from 40 mp down to 36 mp, which is quite noteworthy.
The other thing I really like about her kit is that she gets access to MAKALKI. If you've ever talked to me in Discord, you'll know how much I love this spell. As of now, this makes her the only adventurer that can provide row-wide ailment immunity while simultaneously providing row-wide damage reduction to both rows (remember, both MAKALKI and KD are class-specific abilities). She also gets Recovery, which is definitely one of the better Knight passives out there. Alt Alice is able to do similar with MAKALKI + her signature passive, but that is locked to the row she is in.
The other thing I'll touch on with her kit is her offensive abilities. She gets access to Guardian Blow and Fortified Strike, which are relatively underused and expensive skills, however they enable a unique way to build Ainikki. By focusing her blessings on ASPD, Divine Power, Surety, and MDef/Def, she can be in a unique spot where she could use SP to contribute offensively and MP to contribute defensively to a fight, while picking up gear that up until now would largely be tossed out as useless. To top this off, she's able to wear Heavy Armor, which already has a lot of base Defense to fuel those Guardian Blows and Fort Strikes. This is in no way a meta build, but it's definitely a unique one, and it's something I'm excited to play around with.
Also, she does get access to 2h swords, but that really doesn't mesh well with the rest of her kit.
All in all, I actually really like what I'm seeing here. If Ainikki really is the teaser to Lord the way Iarumas was the teaser to Samurai, her kit makes me very excited for what Lord will bring, and I actually like her kit as it is - the combination of MAPORFIC and MAKALKI alone is exciting to me. That being said, many folks will struggle to find a place for her on their team, especially if they're already running Alice and/or a Knight.
Karkarov's Analysis
Well other than Garbage Ainikki seems to be the character everyone wanted the most for the new Blade and Bastard Collab, so how is she? Is she the "actually a Lord class 2 hand sword DPS god who also does everything a priest can" people were predicting? No. Not at all. So what is she really? Well lets get into it.
First off like all other collab characters she has a unique class, in this case it is "Silver-Haired Nun" and there is your first big clue. Ainikki is mostly just a Priest. Gear wise she has some interesting additions. Namely she can in fact use one and two handed swords, can use heavy shields, and can use heavy armor. Beyond that she has the standard Priest Class gear options. So this means she can be tankier than other priests (not that normal priests aren't already tanky) and has more options if you really want to use her as front row DPS.... but you absolutely should not do that. Why?
So As the gear suggests Ainikki has dipped her tows outside Priest in her unique class, but which class did she dip into? Well it wasn't Fighter or Samurai, it was Knight. This creates a big problem for her on the front row, she can hang there and surive for sure (honestly any correctly set up Priest can) but like Priests despite the razzle dazzle she does not bring any meaningful DPS which means you are losing a better DPS option such as Fighter, Samurai, dagger Ranger, or even a plain old front row Knight to run her there. Like Priest she is really meant to be in the back row as a support. This is made evident by her unique skills and what exactly she brought from Knight...
From Knight she gets ... Stun Bash, this is not a DPS skill it is meant to be used on enemies weak to Stun. Self Healing, again more of a sort of tanky self support sustain skill. Fortified Strike.... a bad DPS move based only on your defense stat. Lastly from active skills it is Guardian Blow, the best Knight DPS move yes but it's damage is based on defense and magic defense and requires you to equip a heavy shield to use it. The only Knight passive she learns is also Recovery which only helps you get over status effects. So yeah, there went your two hand sword DPS queen dreams Ainikki gooners. Her own unique passive "Priest Overseeing Life and Death" does give her divine power added to attack power... but only when using one handed maces. Which if you ever look at her character art or any of the Manga pages that aren't memes Ainikki's go to was always a spiked one hand mace. This makes sense and fits the character, but also means if you want to use her as front line DPS she will be totally reliant on very robust skill inheriting as she has no DPS passives (in fact only 3 passives total and the other one just boosts Div Power on ambush) and no actual DPS attack skills that aren't based on defense stats.
But what about her discipline surely it is god tier! Not really, she gets attack power, which for reasons already outlined above has no synergy with her base skill set, and divine power. It isn't god awful but action speed or especially MP would have been a lot better than attack power for her. So this is a big shrug of a discipline that doesn't really do anything impressive or help any weakness she may have.
What about the priest side.... well here is where things look up. If you look at Ainikki's skills it is obvious she is a support caster. Her unique non inheritable skill is actually one of, if not the, best defensive spell in the game. It is Maporific an 8 turn damage taken down buff for 1 party line that reduces damage taken by 15%. It does have some problems... first it does not stack with Knights Defense. It is a one or the other situation, longer duration but lower damage reduction or barely any duration but crazy high damage reduction. So situationally KD will be better, but in general Maporific is the better choice. What's the other drawback? It costs 40 freaking MP. That's right, 80 MP to put it on your whole team for one fight. Meanwhile Ainikki is MP'd like a Priest, not a MAge, so even at 70 this is a huge percentage of her casting reserves.
Her other unique spell which is inheritable is Litokan, a line aoe fire element spell that claims it does moderate damage based on divine power and may reduce enemy resistance to fire damage by 10% based on divine power for chance proc. In reality this should read does dog water damage where you will probably need level 2 or 3 at level 70 to do damage on par with a level 1 mage Mahalito. (ok it isn't that bad really, but this spell has no DPS to it, it does not do much damage). This is pretty much only useful as a "I am running a fire team using fire element weapons and attacks lets hope to get lucky and debuff the enemies to buff my teams damage" spell. So it is basically a pure team comp gimmick skill. So I can't say this skill is really all that "hot". cwutIdidthar dad jokes and puns lol
Ainikki has also lost a few Priest spells like Badios for example but who cares? The key skills are all there. Makalki, Abit, Dios/Madios, etc etc. What is not there, just as mention before, is passives. She only has 3 passives not counting her discipline, and they are not great ones. To be a good support caster for real she will still need inherits, just not as bad as it would be for a DPS role where she has to start from all but scratch. At minimum she REALLY needs way of the priest and some passives to boost her MP desperately.
In closing she is a good alignment elf lady of fire element. That about sums up the issue, fire element isn't good for casters, elf lady is better for mage than priest, good alignment doesn't play well with Alice buff and you do want Ainikki on the back row. There just isn't much synergy on this character.
Shiro's Analysis
So… we finally got Ainikki who a lot of people wanted to get into the game. My first impressions of her were in lines “why doesn’t she have a fighter kit with a priest, she's a backlane unit so why good?”. But that was pretty much me being stupid and not understanding the kit at all. Also I had high hyped expectations because I like the character… But moving on to actual review.
First of all she’s a priest. That’s what you need to set in your mind. And she's a frontline priest, using her in the backrow means you’re wasting her potential because you either are used to “caster backrow only” and the idea of having a caster in front doesn't sit there. I get it, but she’s more like Gerulf or Abenius case where she wants to sit in the front row and take damage, keep your team alive and do damage… and honestly? She’s really good at all of those.
Starting from gear choice, unlike normal priests she has access to heavy armor and once you hit copper ranks you’ll want her to run with heavy shields at very least for Guardian Blow. But hey does that require a lot of def to actually work? Not really if you have silver gear. Basically from what I’m seeing and testing so far Ainikki can focus purely on divinity and aspd like a normal priest while filling usually dead slots with surety and accuracy. If you have access to heavy silver armors getting defensive blessings isn’t that needed.
Basically what I’m trying to say is that her having access to the most important priest skills along with Guardian Blow or Stun Bash as options synergizes well with her kit. And it doesn’t get in the way of how you would build her but instead it fills her kit well, making Ainikki a really solid priest who can definitely be around one of the better picks. (No, she’s not rivaling Alice.)
Going for her inheritance it’s AoE fire damage skill, but like everyone is aware spells have terrible scaling for now and spells are pretty much the worst option for damage even for AoE losing massively to Rinne’s inheritance, Henrico secret inheritance or even Samurai Odacchi options. The second issue is fire res down goes against the limit of 3 debuffs so unless you need fire res down which from my testing is around only 10% you probably won’t use this skill realistically unless in specific cases. At least it outdamages MAHALITO as an option but sadly it also costs more.
Now to go to the interesting part. Her personal skill is 8 turn 15% DMG decrease. It shares a slot with knight defense so you’ll be able to use only one but the thing is… 8 turns are much more stable than every turn spam ability. And even with big MP cost knight defense is also heavy SP costly while being needed to be recasted every turn not once per battle. And honestly from what I’ve tested? That 15% is enough to survive pretty much any fight where you need this extra bit of survival. But my recommendation is to give her Way of the Priest to cut the cost to 36 so you’re using only 36 or 72 mana for whole fight stable coverage. For me? Sounds like a great deal.
Her discipline is also great! It offers HP, SP and MP all the resources she needs as frontline priest. It would be perfect if ATK would be replaced with SUR but it’s what it’s. It’s still an amazing option for discipline and while it could be a bit better it definitely could be a lot worse.
But there are also weird decisions in her kit which I don’t get. Good start is her passive which offers ATK on front and % of your DIV to ATK on mace… That just doesn’t work. Mace are terrible damage options and even if that would be 100% DIV transfer the fact alone it’s a 1H mace negates any possible damage from it. But let’s ignore mace and assume you actually use a useful weapon for damage. You have ATK up on front and more ATK from discipline. Will you do dmg with fighter inheritances and build? Sure. But it’ll be much lower. Even if you inherit DTS or Astral for damage purposes the damage will be just low and not worth the effort. So my point is… why? That design choice makes no sense for now but opens a gate for future rework of damage formulas I guess? As for now just go along with heavy silver gear and Guardian Blow and do actually good damage.
So to finally close the case. Ainikki is in my opinion one of best priests in the game and I will definitely use her in my team, so far she helps me to trivialize content even more and negate any leftover RNG I had in fights. While she doesn’t offer as good a supportive side as Marianne or Sheli as priests she definitely does more for my team than those two ever could. Because like one person told me let’s be honest, if you’re later in the game you’re using mages only for BATILGREF and in my opinion for Malefic Wind… but realistically people with lvl 2 Dissipation don’t care about it. Lack of porto or some knight specific tools like covers surely don’t make Ainikki as strong as I’d want her to be but I can as well not care that much because she's a really strong option for the team. Other passives like Way of the Priest or Knight can be inherited so that’s not an issue. So ending up what I mean is, sure she lacks PORTO and stuff like Behind Cover, Cover Defense or All-Around Cover, but thanks to all the tools she already has I don’t feel like she needs those. I dislike her having fire element over light element but at least she's an elf which is the best case for priests, and thanks to her being designed as frontliner she works well with Lana’s buff.
Adventurer Pull Plans
TheAxolotl's Pull Plan
I'm going to probably pull a few copies of her - I want to experiment with the MAKALKI + MAPORFIC combination.
Karkarov's Pull Plan
I ended up with 2 copies because she is actually in all versions of the B&B Collab bones, but to be real, I was only pulling to get an Alt Berkanan Costume. My advice is hard pass on this character unless you are a huge B&B fan or just goon for Ainikki. If her inherit were Maporific and not Litokan that story might be different, but it isn't. Gandolfo with fighter / priest Alt class can do anything you would ever want to do with Ainikki other than cast Maporific and he is just one example. He just doesn't cost gems or real world money and is a whole lot easier to discipline. Like Maporific is a great spell, but it is being gated behind a character that brings nothing to the table other than that one spell.