Hello everyone, /u/DefiantHermit here for another round of the Rate Up Banners, this time featuring Cress!

Cress

Element: Earth
Type: Sword
Role: DPS / HitGen

Overview:

One of the original Earth SSRs, Cress is the only one among his ele-mates to have a clear offensive focus. Yuri and Veigue dedicate themselves to generating hits, while Lloyd being… Lloyd! His statline also differs a bit from his companions: High HP, average HP and below average DEF (30,000 HP | 2,900 ATK | 2,500 DEF).

His awakening skill provides 10% ATK to all allies without restrictions and a 15% HP heal for sword-type allies when an enemy breaks. ATK buff being linked to no element and without a hitcount is great and the heal makes for some nice survivability boost for longer raids, which can definitely be appreciated.

Skill list is as follows:

Two offensive artes with above average modifiers, one with a shorter cooldown and the other with decent hit count and free burn chance to boot, at the cost of 5 turns CD.

His Mystic Arte closes out the kit, as a 237% -> 310% 14 -> 16 Hit ST skill, costing 180 OL. The cheap cost makes Cress a consistent 3-Turn MA user vs Wind without investments, which is great. Unfortunately his Ascension board only offers 6 OL per hit, so he’s 2 OL short of consistent 3-turn Cycles off-element (basically he needs a crit on turns 1 or 2 or external help, like the guild OL buff), which is a significant blow to his consistency.

That said, Cress offers not only decent damage output due to good modifiers, decent ATK and low turn count MA but also a relevant amount of hit contribution (26~28) if you time MA Arte. He’s clearly a very good option vs Wind content, even though his reliability drops outside of that.

Elemental Context:

All other Earth SSRs have a more defensive focus, but all of them are capable of providing high hitcounts and have different kit leans:

• Yuri is a strict ST hitgen, capable of generating 40 to 52 hits (depending on awakening)
• Veigue is an AoE focused hitgen, capable of generating 15 13 * number of enemies
• Lloyd is a mixed bad, but still able to output 23 to 27 hits

That said, these 3 units are all on a slower MA cycle, needing 4 to 5 turns to reach their high OL costs. They all need Ascension board investments, aside from dedicated OL gen Memoria stones to achieve a faster clock, which gives Cress the edge on several party compositions, more so while aiding raids.

Off-Element Context:

There are several units similar to cress in other elements: Leon, Jude, Stahn, Sorey, Zelos (and somewhat Kanonno/Sophie). These are all fast units, with low cds and 3-turn MA cycles while on-element, some also consistently reaching the 3 turn mark off-element as well.

Cress unfortunately has that stupid 2 OL gap needed for 100% consistency and imo that’s enough to not consider him as off-dps/hitgen for off-element raids, since his damage drop would be considerable if you take out an offensive stone for an OL gain one.

Memoria Stone:

To wrap things up, Cress’ Memoria Stone offers above average HP, average ATK and DEF, alongside the Mastery ability: 24% -> 48% MA damage with no type restrictions.

Mastery is an interesting offensive effect, but we have already seen how it compares to Crit Damage stones in the Yuri analysis. Here, Cress’ stone can be compared to a 36% -> 72% CritD stone during break turns, but also ramping MA damage during non-break turns.

With how much base CritD stones offer in terms of raw numbers, I don’t personally think this is a good option, unless your unit can’t align MA with break turns at all, but you still think their MA output is relevant over time, somehow. Not only that, but we have a free MLB SSR stone with this current event (Natalia’s) which should offer higher stats and effect simply due to being lv100 vs a base Cress stone.

Should You Pull?

Cress is a good unit. He can output decent damage and contribute with a significant amount of hits during burst turns due to a fast cycle and high hitcount MA. He’s very consistent in Wind raids, but is just a bit off on other elements, which makes him pale against competing units.

That said, he’s permanently in the summon pool and offers no groundbreaking utility/damage, so pulling in this banner is a very safe no. Save for more exciting units!