Good Saturday to everyone! For some perhaps already sunday, but if that's the case you should seriously go to bed instead of reading about Onion Knight.

Onion Knight is a pretty interesting unit who brings a new mechanic with his release, which is accuracy drop.
I'll go over that mechanic, his damage potential and other roles that might be fitting for him and hopefully you'll enjoy the reading process!

With that being said, let's get on with it!

Thanks again for Sinzar helping me out with understanding the accuracy debuff mechanic! <3

Unit Review: NV Onion Knight Onion Knight -Neo Vision- NV Onion Knight (BS) by Memel0rd

Trust Master Reward : Chosen by the Wind Crystal (Materia) - Increase physical and magic damage against reapers (30%)
Increase equipment ATK (50%) when dual wielding

STMR : Onion Sword (Sword) - 188 ATK, 22 DEF/SPR, 30% fire, water, wind and earth resistance

Vision Card : Crystal's Revelation:
Lvl 1~10: 40~80 ATK
Lvl 4: 15% ATK w/ Sword & Katana ; 10% fire, water, wind and earth resistance
Lvl 7: 15% ATK w/ Sword & Katana ; 10% fire, water, wind and earth resistance
Lvl 10: 20% ATK/DEF/MAG/SPR ; 10% fire, water, wind and earth resistance

Overview:

I'll just call the broski Onion Knight as his old version seems to remain old for a long time.

In his normal form, Onion Knight has really good base stats in everything. Good HP, high DEF/SPR, high ATK, and while his defensive passives aren't the best of the best, him being a TDW unit immediately patches a few issues up. With a combined innate 190% ATK, 150% TDW as well as 80% HP with 50% DEF/SPR, he's neither anything special nor underwhelming in either. Many meta units have around 220~240% ATK passives, but oh well. He'll still cap his ATK quickly. Additionally he has a great guts passive.
Onion Knight also has useful resistances through his innate fire, ice, wind and earth 50% resistances! The poison, blind, silence and petrification immunity aren't groundbreaking considering neither poison nor silence are really... a big deal.

Onion Knight can T-Cast all of his abilities except for his Chocobo's Wrath, a Grandis ability that has an extremely weird hybrid contribution and we'll leave it at that.

Before I want to talk about his damage, I'd rather focus on all of his buffs, which make up his entire kit except for two on-demand chains. Which means we don't have to spend a ton of time talking! Yey!

Onion Knight is somewhat self-sufficient in his base form, but moch more so later down when we get to his Brave Shift form.

In case you either like to turtle fights or us getting longer fights, the longer the fight goes the more self-sufficient he becomes. At Turn 5 he can grant himself perfect accuracy, he can grant himself a permanent (but dispellable) 100 MP refresh. If it takes even longer, at Turn 7 Onion Knight can even grant himself a permanent 50% mitigation that CAN'T be dispelled.

Twice per battle he can also buff his own damage against reapers by 150% and resistance towards their damage by 50%. Which is a hefty damage resistance buff IF applied, stacking nicely overall with his other innate 150% reaper killer.

Aside from that, he can buff his own ATK by 300% for 4 turns every 5 turns, so no perfect uptime but good regardless. Somewhat unnecessary later down the road though.

Then he has two buffs that apply to your entire team and the first one is... quite weird to say the least.
Onion Knight introduces accuracy buffs and debuffs, which I'll go more over about later on, but for now he has an AoE 50% accuracy buff to your entire team. Which I can't vouch for if necessarily useful as we so far had no issues with accuracy for that matter.

The second buff though is actually really nice to have on a damage dealer as he has a quadruple 80% elemental resistance buff that lasts 4 turns while having a 6 turn cooldown. He has this in both forms and even later, when presented with other roles, definitely has its uses.

Aside from that, his two on-demand chains are quite interesting.

His first one, True Onion Chopper, is rather weak and thus not as desireable as a damage dealer. It's an AoE Aureole Ray chain but also a slight MP battery. With T-Cast, you can recover your party's MP by a total of 90. And as we all know, AR chains are extremely desireable in Dark Visions as only two casts of them get you up to that juicy 100 chains threshold.

His other focuses much much more on damage, even if not yet presenting itself as that.
It's a chain with.... 4 different parts. 1800% for each, thus a total of 7200% per se, which isn't that strong. I mean it's not half bad, but obviously since it has four parts, it'll get a modifier boost later down the road. You just know it'll happen.
Oh and it's an AMoE chain, which is also another common chain family, but at this point almost no chainer gets access to bad or unpopular chain families. Almost.

Onion Knight's normal Limit Burst isn't really desireable. Neither its base LB damage with no LB damage buffs / passives at all is, as it's only 8000% when we already see 12500% modifiers, and neither is the AoE 50% physical accuracy buff.

Brave Shift:

Now with his Brave Shift, Onion Knight changes from a pretty standard DPS that changes the powercreep curve to an actually interesting meta unit.

Onion Knight's Brave Shift is available at Turn 1, has only one turn of swapping back but then going back to Brave Shift a 2 turn cooldown, still extremely quick though and you can make good use of it.

In this form, Onion Knight gains a TON of base ATK but loses a ton of base SPR as well as his 50% DEF/SPR passives, making him naturally much squishier.
Then again, he gains two other 150% killers with insect and even more importantly, human, an extremely common archetype.

Also, he gains a second guts passive. He can't proc both guts passives at the same turn as they have the same HP threshhold of 1, but he doesn't have to die to regain a use.

Now, what actually changed?
Well, he got the 500% break damage ability, but only gets that boost with... a throwing weapon. Shouldn't be too hard, just grab Rising Sun from, nice and easy 188 ATK, too. Or 182? You be the fact-checker on this one. Great to use on anything with break gauges.

Well... let's talk about the most interesting changes at last, otherwise there'd be no unnecessarily dramatic build up for a unit review.

Just Kidding! Let's talk about it right now.
Onion Knight through an on-demand ability gains Stardust Ray chains instead of AMoE, which is extremely useful considering that Faisy is also a Stardust Ray chainer, or Cecil for that matter. The damage isn't bad either, 7600% modifiers still deal good damage, but it also has a 3 Turn ST 80% fullbreak! Now that's neat! On-demand 80% at any time? Hell yes!

But his Limit Burst contributes even more to that. I didn't mention it early, so I will now:
Onion Knight gains his Limit Burst from the start... just like Vaan.
And Onion Knight also has a 85% fullbreak. It's only ST, but almost all bosses are going to be ST either way, so it's not a major loss. If there are more enemies, you can still T-Cast your 80% break.
And his Limit Burst also DECREASES the enemy's accuracy by 50%.

This has really interesting outcomes. If the boss does an AoE attack with no accuracy on it, all of your units suddenly have a 50% chance to evade that attack, which is quite massive to have just by himself.
Bahamut will have an attack that has 70% accuracy. So if you had 100% evasion on a unit, they would still have a 70% chance of getting hit. The 50% accuracy drop, while not making it reliable, drops that down to an effective 20% chance of hitting. So 4/5th of the times your evasion provoker will still dodge it.

And the accuracy drop proves to be useful even in JP, despite some bosses, most importantly the new Asura, buffing their own accuracy by e.g. 150% to completely nullify that effect, the newest boss does not have an accuracy raise buff. Doesn't mean they won't give it to no more bosses anymore.

Similar to Bartz, Onion Knight now has the ability to Level Up his job classes. On Turn 2 he can level up once and on Turn 3 he can level up twice.
I won't go over the single steps and will simply tell you what your Onion Knight will end up on Turn 4.
On his 7600% breaking chain he will now have a 9600% chain, making it strong already.
He will also have an undispellable 250% all stat buff. Sadly that's not worth stealing anymore with Xon as other units provide similar buffs.
His Aureole Ray also gets a slight buff, but in case you want to use Onion Knight as a damage dealer, his Onion Sword chain, the one that's split in four parts, now gains a 2100% modifier boost.
Now, quadruple that boost and boom, 16400% on-demand chain that you can T-Cast. Nasty? Nasty! But you'll have to change back to his Normal Form in order to use it.
Which, unless dispels happen, can easily be fit in. One turn of breaking, then swapping back for damaging and just when the break expires, swap back to unleash the Limit Burst on them.

Aside from that, he keeps his ATK buff CD, his AoE accuracy buff and his AoE resistance buff CD.

The only other new addition is a new Grandis ability, a two split 15400% Stardust Ray chain, which is nice to use in his Brave Shift form. Keep in mind though, despite being able to use it a total of 6 times, you can't use it more than once per turn.

How does he fare in the meta?

As a damage dealer, he's currently taking the #1 spot as a chainer somewhat easily. Madam Edel can still catch up to him, but her damage contribution is rather super weird and I'm not a big fan of her because of that, when we live in a meta where we want to get to our highest damage as quickly as possible.

Either way, that won't last super long. There's a good chance that we will see the new Kingdom Hearts units soon. The new Sora and Riku (new versions, not NVAs) will be much stronger than him and even the "troll" unit has fine damage, so if you want Onion Knight as a damage dealer he might be rather short-lived.

But I have another solution for you:
What if you have build a nice Vaan and you want to have an upgrade? Oh, here's Onion Knight!
Of course it's extremely expensive to gear him as a Provoke Evader and I only gave him Durandal in CASE you can do it. Otherwise I wouldn't. Onion Knight gains a ton from great evasion STMRs as he has 0% provoke and 0% evasion. You can still pull it off without, but you'll have to grab a ton of event gear.

As an evade provoker, he won't have a guaranteed AoE dodge every turn like Vaan does, but his accuracy drop has several other benefits, protecting even himself from the occasional accuracy raised attacks.

Additionally, the only thing he lacks compared to Vaan are either the nice fire imperils or the buff removal. But in return gains a ton of survivability since he's a NV unit compared to a 7*. He also gains SO much more damage to the point where he can actually contribute well even if built as evasion provoker. He also has T-Cast AR, SR and technically AMoE chains compared to a DW castable AR chain from Vaan.

If that didn't turn it around for you, I hope reminding you of the gauge breaking or ele resistances will do that.

He's also stronger than Loren with the same break numbers, so you do the math!

He doesn't replace Vaan as such a role but has many great features that make him interesting to use and in many scenarios an upgrade to Vaan. Sadly to really make it a great unit requires STMRs. He'll gain a ton of ATK from equipping Durandal for example.

His TMR is rather underwhelming. We've seen plenty of 50% TDW materias at this point, not having anything on it other than a 30% reaper killer won't fix it. It's not even 50%, what the heck?
His STMR is a good sword. 188 ATK is quite high and it also grants a touch of tankiness. 22 DEF/SPR and a 30% fire, water, wind and earth resistance is neat-o, but not o-m-g. If you get it, be happy about it, but don't use an STMR moogle or resources for it to desperately get it.
Which goes exactly the same for his VC. At max level, it grants you 80 ATK. Comparing to 100 ATK VCs, that can be quite a loss in ATK as long as your unit equipped with it hits the ATK cap. An initial 20 ATK difference and then another 80 coming from all the passives. Potentially even more due to % ATK buffs. Though if you need just a tiny bit more survivability, it'll do good. It also has 30% fire, water, wind and earth resistance as ewll as 20% DEF/SPR. So simply through his VC and STMR, you can give a damage dealer a ton of ele resistances for almost free.

Build Maths:

Normal Build:
https://ffbeEquip.com/builder.html?server=GL#877c56a0-2c0a-11eb-8198-ed599324a7c5

Brave Shift Build:
https://ffbeEquip.com/builder.html?server=GL#62abe660-2c0a-11eb-8198-ed599324a7c5

Onion Knight -Neo Vision- Damage

[BS] ATK post 300% ATK buff: 4877
[NM] ATK post 300% ATK buff: 4983
[NM] ATK post 250% ATK buff: 4763
Assuming spark chains
Assuming external 120% imperil
Assuming external imbue (can just use any ele weapon of your liking)


Rotation:
[BS] Turn 1: Precooking   Ragnarok & Masamune   Shuriken
[BS] Turn 2: Ragnarok & Masamune   Shuriken   Level Up!
[BS] Turn 3: Shuriken   Level Up!!   Level Up!!!
[NM] Turn 4: Onion Sword x3
[NM] Turn 5: Onion Sword x3
[NM] Turn 6: Onion Sword x3
[NM] Turn 7: Onion Sword x3
[NM] Turn 8: Onion Sword x3
[NM] Turn 9: Onion Sword x3
[NM] Turn 10: Onion Sword x3


[BS] Turn 1: [ 4877^2 x 76 x 5.5575   4877^2 x 154 x 6 ] x 2.2 = 70451885089
[BS] Turn 2: [ 4877^2 x 76 x 5.5575   4877^2 x 154 x 6 ] x 2.2 = 70451885089
[BS] Turn 3: 4877^2 x ( 77 x 4.81   77 x 6 ) x 2.2 = 43555661216
[NM] Turn 4: [ 4983^2 x 164 x 4.15625   4983^2 x 164 x 2 x 6 ] x 2.2 = 144740099881
[NM] Turn 5: [ 4763^2 x 164 x 4.15625   4763^2 x 164 x 2 x 6 ] x 2.2 = 132241649180
[NM] Turn 6: [ 4763^2 x 164 x 4.15625   4763^2 x 164 x 2 x 6 ] x 2.2 = 132241649180
[NM] Turn 7: [ 4763^2 x 164 x 4.15625   4763^2 x 164 x 2 x 6 ] x 2.2 = 132241649180
[NM] Turn 8: [ 4763^2 x 164 x 4.15625   4763^2 x 164 x 2 x 6 ] x 2.2 = 132241649180
[NM] Turn 9: [ 4763^2 x 164 x 4.15625   4763^2 x 164 x 2 x 6 ] x 2.2 = 132241649180
[NM] Turn 10: [ 4763^2 x 164 x 4.15625   4763^2 x 164 x 2 x 6 ] x 2.2 = 132241649180


Average Turn 1-10: 112,264,942,635
-> 199% of Rain -Neo Vision-'s Damage ( 56,143,626,895 )
-> 196% of Cloud (FFVII REMAKE)'s Damage ( 57,334,002,032 )
-> 191% of NV Lasswell's Damage ( 58,610,034,955 )
-> 175% of NV Cloud's Damage ( 63,896,292,660 )
-> 162% of Awakened Dragon Akstar's Damage ( 69,099,512,095 )

Character Design: 8/10
Sprite: 9/10
Chainer: 9.5/10
Breaker: 9/10
Trust Master Reward: .5/10
STMR: 9/10
Vision Card: 8/10
Arena: 7/10
Limit Burst: 9.5/10
Future Proof: 9, but not as a chainer/10
Dark Visions: 9/10
Free 2 Play: 9/10
Pay 2 Play: 9.5/10
Personal Rating: 9.5/10
Optimal Rating: 9/10

Conclusion

Onion Knight is a neat unit if you do end up getting him.
While currently having the highest chain damage, he will fall off perhaps next week or the week after depending on when we will actually see Kingdom Hearts collab #500. He'll still be decent but by the time we get to Asura, his damage will have dropped off a lot.
That's where the evade provoker build comes into play as in many aspects he's an improved Vaan that also has the ability to actually participate in not only chains but also damage. More so than other tanks such as Gabranth, though his damage isn't insane.
Either way, you really don't have to pull for him, at no point is he required despite bringing an entirely new debuff with him, but you also shouldn't not pull for him because he sucks. Neither should be sad at all to get him if you do. I mean STMRs from 7*s are much easier to get now for many players and you can UoC them, too.
Hopefully you already got your hands on Butterfly Knives and Durandal!
Go out there and enjoy him!

Right on time... FOR THE WEEKEND!
Time to play some beerpong!
Love you all, see you next week :)!

Memel0rd out​