Savia
Race: Beastfolk
Gender: Female
Type: Dark
Personality: Evil
Starting Class: Knight
Class Change: Currently None
Role: Support, Damage
Portraits
Skills
Unique Skill (Inheritable)
Increases own Evasion and makes 1 row of enemies easier to target. Counter attack that penetrates Defense Power when evading an attack. Evasion increases amount and Defense Power penetration rate are reduced if learned by someone other than Savia. Evasion, efficacy, and Defense Power penetration rate incrementally increased based on skill level.
Unique Skill (Not Inheritable)
Increases Evasion when equipped with a two-handed spear and light armor.
Discipline Skill
Continuously increases each stat, Evasion greatly increased in particular. Evasion increased further based on skill level.
Adventurer Reviews
TheAxolotl's Analysis
Savia gets a nice boost due to the change to Alice's Blessing of Agora skill and the availability of Way of the Warrior through a skill inherit, but I'll touch on that in a bit.
To dig into her skills, Black Beast Feint is a very interesting mechanic. It's an evasion self-buff that also acts as a "taunt" with a counterattack. Like Attract Hit and Defensive Provoke, this is not a guarantee that she gets attacked if a single target physical attack would be used. It's possible that it has a higher chance that the aforementioned skills, but that's hard to confirm. It's still nice even though it's not a guarantee, but unfortunately there are two other main limitations.
First, this is a skill and is not treated as a basic attack, which means it is going to be subject to the logarithmic nature of active skill damage and cannot trigger Follow-Up Attack. Second, it will only work for single target, physical attacks. It will not protect at all against MA or LA level attacks, and it will not protect at all against spells.
By default, the "taunt" portion of Black Beast Feint lasts for 2 turns (the turn you cast it and the following turn), while the counterattack portion lasts for one turn. If you combine Black Beast Feint and Blessing of Agora, however, both see a single turn increase, leading the "taunt" to last for 3 turns and the counterattack to last for two. This puts Savia in a very unique position of being able to use Black Beast Feint on the first turn, then defend on the second turn. Her Defending will activate the Opening status, while her counterattack will cause Opening damage from her skill. This combination makes her extremely potent for dealing with heavy single target attackers like Cyclopses, as well as groups of single target attackers like Chimera.
An added benefit is that this skill can act as a one point wonder inherit for any adventurer you want to put in the position of being an Opening activator, as there is no reduction in counterattack chance when inherited to someone other than Savia.
Her Soaring Beast Knight skill likely is similar to Wandering Lana's skill in that the buff is relatively minor at just a few points, and only considers the weapon slot and the chest armor slot.
Her Discipline skill is a decent defensive boost, but not having any extra offensive boost is less than ideal.
Overall, she's received quite a bit of indirect love since she was released, and she's certainly more viable now. Her longevity will depend quite a bit on how many future encounters rely on single target physical attacks and how many incorporate regular spell damage and MA/LA targeting physical attacks. In addition, she's still a Knight and will be fairly SP-starved.
Frobro's Analysis
What a sick-looking unit, right? Is she a cat; a wolf…who knows? Well, that’s almost it for the pros, now to the cons. Knight isn’t in a great place as I write this. Their 1 claim to fame is Knight Defense and she’s not much better at using that than any other knight. She can still be salvaged with a solid secondary class, probably fighter, but that doesn’t exist yet.
Black Beast Feint is like a better Defensive Provoke. Better in that the evasion buff is better than a defense buff, and the counter-hit has def-penetration, but it's still whack because the aggro effect doesn’t feel particularly potent and a good chunk of named enemy attacks can’t be countered at all.
The Soaring Beast Knight passive feels like a waste. Incentivized to use a spear for an evasion boost when you could run a 1-hand sword + shield and get that same evasion bonus from 1 solid Eva blessing and still have an extra 3 blessing slots left over. You either stick her in the back row with a spear or walk around with 1 less passive than every other character. Her discipline focus is interesting. That “greatly” increased evasion is no joke; I forget the exact numbers, but it’s something absurd at the high end.
This chick is an easy skip right up until they give her fighter or something like it. Then she’ll be able to put up big numbers while getting Dark/Evil synergies from units like Alice, Rinne and Milana. Just wait til they put def-penetration or nimble-strike on a spear.
Adventurer Pull Plans
TheAxolotl's Pull Plan
Savia was a pass for me on release. The broken kit didn't help things, but her signature skill, while occasionally powerful, was a bit too situational for my tastes. If I were to run her, most of the time I would probably end up using a skill other than her signature, and that's not enough incentive for me to want to pull on her.
I've contemplated giving her a chance when her banner reruns, but I'm not sure yet. To me, Savia looks cool, but that's really it. While her skill is unique, she doesn't bring anything universally strong to the party.
Lynd's Pull Plan
I pulled for collection because she looked cool but tbh honest, she worked pretty well in the backline enough for me to bring her in occasionally so maybe I should've thrown a couple more for discipline.
Duplicate Usage
- Inherit to MC if you want him to abuse the Opening strategy
- Inherit to Savia if you want to increase her counterattack damage
- Discipline if you want to boost her evasion