[Diene] Review: Should You Pull? (+ Other Alternatives)
![[Diene] Review: Should You Pull? (+ Other Alternatives)](https://epic7x.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/diene.jpg)
Table of Contents
Overview
Saint of Ezera, received the Goddess’s divine revelation and fearlessly led the world to victory against the Archdemon, even without the Heir of the Covenant. Afterwards, she became Ezera’s queen. She overcomes hardship through her deeply pious faith.
Class – Soulweaver
Element – Ice
Awakened Stats
- Hp – 5254
- Def – 694
- Attack – 649
- Speed – 104
- Eff resistance – 18%
- Effectiveness – 0
Skills:
- 15% CR push, doubled while buffed.
- Barrier and dispel one debuff from team, AoE
- Atk buff, Crit Resist buff and 50% CR push.
Analysis
Diene is incredibly slot efficient, covering many roles in a single character. There are few characters who bring the kind of flexibility that Diene provides.
Defensive and offensive buffs; she can single target heal or heal whole the whole team depending on your artifact setup. She can cleanse or push combat readiness and being a ice-element character is always a naturally strong pick in pvp.
Pro’s –
- Diene is naturally fast due her combat readiness pushing abilities
- Stronger in small group pvp (GW)
Con’s –
- Overlaps with many other units, as we have more barriers, more attack buffs, and more cleansing heroes.
Recommended Builds
- Speed Set Primary
- Effect Resistance secondary
Diene is most potent when she can’t be crowd-controlled. Due to her natural ability to remove debuffs and CR push herself, on defense she can crank up the turn counter very quickly if left unchecked, and you may end up fighting max damage Protector’s Proc.
Your most optimal main stats will be Health% Necklace, Health% or Effect Resistance% Ring, Speed boots.
Immunity set is a suitable substitute for Diene and offers her some synergy by way of keeping her status free until she is able to take her second turn and use her 2nd skill for cleanse.
Speed and Immunity sets come from two of the more difficult hunts, so if you’re looking for some starter options, health and effect resistance sets are are also suitable. Ideally, you’ll still aim for speed main stat on the boots, but to compensate for not using speed set, having speed as a sub stat on as many pieces as possible will help bridge that gap.
As you can see from the picture above, the differences in these builds are comparable. Each are able to achieve similar outputs and this is only at level 50 with four of her 5 awakenings. Continuing to promote and awaken Diene will grant an additional 12% effect resistance and 6% base hp.
Recommended Artifacts
Magaraha’s Tome and Wondrous Potion Vial are powerful artifacts to put on her depending on what you need her for in your compositions.
Provides combat readiness push after using non attack skills. So the 30% push from this artifact, combined with Diene’s 3rd skill will give her a whopping 80% push.
Magaraha’s tome will make it so that Diene will combat readiness push on each of her abilities since she naturally pushes 30% combat readiness while buffed from her 1st skill.
Another extremely powerful 4* artifact that removes one debuff from one ally at the beginning of Diene’s turn. Combined with Diene’s ability to cleanse, this will help keep your debuffs regulated. In pvp, this is particularly useful against teams that only have one or two key debuffs they want to land.
This artifact also allows Diene to be a strong secondary support in Banshee hunt, where you’re constantly being poisoned or silenced.
Also, with the return of Diene’s banner, a new artifact called “Unfading Memories” has been released. This artifact will heal all allies, for 4% to 8% health (based on the level of unbinding) after using a non attacking skill.
This artifact, along with Rod of Amaryllis give Diene the ability to off heal allies. So it’s worth noting that if Diene is your only soulweaver these options continue to make her very flexible as she two non damaging skills.
For PvE content
Diene is a versatile character who brings a lot to the table in PvE content. She is incredibly slot efficient, with her stand out buff being her crit resistance.
As a general rule of thumb, buffs are better than debuffs as they don’t require you to have enough effectiveness to land and don’t have an activation chance.
She’ll increase the damage of your team, while simultaneously reducing the damage received, and excels in content where the number of debuffs that can be placed are restricted or simply don’t work because the boss is immune.
She’s a strong candidate in raid, in Wyvern and Banshee 11.
For Wyvern hunts, Diene’s primary job is just going to be for buffing. Hunt 11 only targets the character in the forward most position, so Diene will help extend their longevity while bolstering your attacking units’ output. For tanking, it’s recommended to use Montmorancy or Angelica.
As previously mentioned in the artifact section, Diene is a good secondary support for Banshee hunts. Another strong healer or cleanser with her will make this battle much more consistent. Lots, Destina and Montorancy, are good partners for her to cover debuff removal and healing.
With these things being said, it is worth noting that Diene’s viability is challenged almost directly by Tamarinne, another powerful, multi-faceted Fire-type soulweaver.
Tamarinne, although having a long initial cooldown for her 3rd Skill, brings much more aggressive options than Diene. She also has Attack buff, 50% AoE Combat readiness push, AoE full cleanse, and force dual attacks with the highest attack unit in your team, WHILE AoE dispelling any enemy buffs.
That’s quite the kit, but Tamarinne has to cycle in and out of her Idol form to perform these functions, and Diene is a character who is more geared towards being consistent and stable.
For Pvp Content:
Diene was clearly built to be a strong all-rounder, but in light of some of the new units that have been released, Diene stakes her claim in pvp. Her Crit resistance buff is unique and to-date, there’s only one other unit that has it and it’s a moonlight unit. Because of how important and powerful being able to crit is in pvp, she’s perfectly viable for Arena defense, but it’s clear that Guild versus Guild content is her specialty. The fewer characters your opponent can bring, the harder Diene is to deal with, especially paired with other high damage threats.
Versus Basar:
Diene’s biggest enemy is Basar, a powerful 5-star mage who excels at buff removal and crowd control. He was recently buffed and has the ability to soulburn his 3rd Skill for 100% chance to dispel all buffs, inflict unbuffable debuff, and combat readiness suppression all while ignoring your effect resistance.
On defense, this ability will prevent your Diene from applying her buffs from her 3rd skill, which in turn, may lower the damage output of your composition, or make your team more vulnerable to incoming damage. Diene can recover from this fairly quickly, all things considered, since she’ll still get her 50% combat readiness push and start cleansing on her second turn with her 2nd skill.
This is also where Wondrous Potion Vial is the strongest, if you suspect facing enemy Basars will compromise your setup. She’ll remove one debuff from someone on her 1st turn, and everyone else on their second, still allowing for barrier application.
Versus Yufine:
Another character that provides a substantial threat to Diene is Yufine. Yufine was also recently buffed, giving her increased damage on her second ability and made her 3rd skill dispel one buff before nuking a single target.
These buffs allow yufine to use Diene’s team buffs against her own team. Yufine gains 50% increased damage when attacking a buffed target, so she could potentially dispel the crit resistance buff and heavily punish a character with the remaining attack buff.
If she fails to dispel crit resistance and then fails to crit, it may not be the end for the character she’s targeting, but you should always consider that any buff diene provides allows Yufine to reach her maximum output. Even if she’s not going for Diene, she could potentially ruin your setup, attacking squishier targets.
Should you pull for this character?
First and foremost, if you like this character’s design, she’s waifu, or you have some other personal reason for pulling, you should just pull. Having fun is important. Diene is also limited, so there’s another small weight on the scale if you need incentive to be tipped.
However, If you already have Tamarinne, you could “possibly” consider passing on this character to save resources. And if you are looking for alternatives for the roles Diene fills here’s a few examples you could use.
Substitutes:
Armin – 4-star/ Earth/ Knight
Armin (who was also recently buffed) is a great partner for Diene, but also provides some competition for utility. Her 3rd Skill applies Barrier, has a small heal, and reduces 10% of all damage taken while on cooldown. Her 2nd skill is a self defense buff with area of effect blind and poison.
Armin, being a knight makes her a desirable choice for protecting the team, as blind is functionally similar to crit resistance. You have a 50% chance to miss while blinded, and attacks that miss can not apply debuffs, can not crit, and only do 75% of the base damage. This is a powerful follow up after her 3rd skill.
Armin doesn’t bolster the combat readiness pushing potential that Diene has, but does have access to exclusive equipment which allows her to dispel one debuff from the whole team on her 3rd skill and gives her up to 10 additional speed. This is all while having access to Aurius, a very powerful 4* artifact for redirecting damage. These options let Armin compete with Diene in a very strong way.
Angelic Montmorancy
3-star/ Ice/ Soulweaver
Momo is a 3* who you’ll probably see very frequently from the summoning pool, but she’s an extremely powerful character after completing her specialty change. She has a similar ability to combat readiness push herself, both passive and actively.
She can provide debuff removal and prevention from her 3rd Skill, which cleanses two debuffs and buffs immunity for a single target; this effect can be soul burned to apply to the whole team. Her 2nd skill removes one debuff from all party members, and has a 50% chance to reset if Momo has no afflictions on her. Each of her abilities heal based on the max HP of the target.
Momo trades flexible buffs shear healing and cleansing power. While more linear that Diene in function, if cleansing and healing is what you’re missing, she’s better than Diene in those categories, so if you already have a barrier or attack buffer, Momo basically covers the rest.
Meta Considerations and Conclusions
So how does Diene fit into all this? She’s still strong. Granted, Diene is not as powerful as she used to be when she was the first limited character released in Epic7, but power creep is a natural part of the game and other units have developed to share some of the same responsibilities Diene had.
Additionally, Diene has several dangerous match ups that threaten her now in the form of the previously mentioned Basar or Yufine. But in spite of these challenges, Diene still gives a lot of bang for your buck.