A Brief Look at Sol Badguy Post-Rework

For the past three years, we’ve gotten rerun after rerun of the Guilty Gear collab. With it, none other than Sol Badguy himself has always tagged along and landed in Heirs’ accounts. I’m sure a lot of veteran players already have him SSS-ranked and fully built (maybe even two or three at this point), so some people may be wondering why I’ve chosen to talk about him.

The thing is, Sol has gotten some reworks to his kit semi-recently. Some may see this rework as good, some see it as bad. Personally, I’m more neutral towards it, however I figured it would be best to talk about them, now that we’ve had a little while to mull it over and fully test him out.

With that said, let’s begin.

Introduction

“A Gear-killer and bounty hunter who roams the world capturing wanted criminals. He boasts incredible fighting power, and while capable of harnessing all elements, he mainly sticks to Fire. He has a blunt and harsh way of speaking and prefers to use actions over words.”

Class: Warrior

Element: Fire

In a nutshell, Sol’s skillset is:

• S1: Attacks an enemy, increasing the damage dealt whenever the enemy isn’t buffed. If he’s at 100 Fighting Spirit afterwards, he activates Roman Cancel, which extends the duration of all the buffs he has on him, and then gives him an extra turn. Roman Cancel doesn’t trigger on passives or counterattacks now. [Acquires 20 Fighting Spirit]
• S2 [Passive]: Increases his Combat Readiness by 20% and gains 20 Fighting Spirit whenever an enemy uses a nonattack skill. Also counterattacks and inflicts Silence when attacked by an attack that targets all of his allies. Counterattack damage is proportional to his enemy’s max HP. (Combat Readiness and Counterattack reusable every 2 turns).
• S3: Attacks an enemy with damage based on their (the enemy’s max HP), dispelling all buffs, making them unbuffable for 2 turns. After he attacks, he always inflicts additional damage, whether the attacked landed as a Miss or an actual hit. (Reusable in 4 turns when skilled up) [Acquires 60 Fighting Spirit]. Soul-Burn: Unbuffable ignores Effect Resistance.

Analysis

Before his changes, Roman Cancel was on his passive (could trigger on his s3 or s1), and he counterattacked whenever anyone used a non-attack skill (or was hit by an Elite/Boss monster). There was no Combat Readiness increase; he just straight up ate anyone who did non-attack skills. Additionally, his s2’s multiplier took a huge hit; meaning he counterattacks less and does less damage.

Sure, he has the additional damage on his s3 now, and he doesn’t need to land a Critical Hit to gain Fighting Spirit, but the fact his passive alone took such a hit was enough to diminish his usability for a lot of people. Some people just saw him as a PvE-only unit, but others used to use him to counterattack units like Top Model Luluca, or other units that generally needed to take a turn to set themselves up with buffs before attacking.

It’s also worth noting that Sol revolves around his damage being based off the enemy’s Max HP. Well, that’s not the best thing in PVP; it works in PVE, since a bunch of boss monsters have a ton of HP, but in PVP, you’re not going to be getting that.

In short, Sol is a unit that is now at his best in PVE, but doesn’t do well in PVP, especially after his changes that nerfed his multipliers, made him unable to activate Roman Cancel on counterattacks, and put it in his s1. The only thing you can use for him in PVP is to counter Kayron, but that’s about it.

Where to Use Sol?

Sol’s usability in PVP just got shot, no doubt about that. He was already a pretty niche pick before, and now you aren’t really going to see him anywhere in PVP. So, that leaves one area for him: PvE. And I gotta say, he does a pretty good job of being a boss-killer unit.

Now, I’m not going to say to take him into Wyvern or Banshee (both dungeons will blow him up before he has a chance to move). He’s not the best in Azimanik Hunt, since he’s solely a single-target unit. Caides Hunt… well, he’s not good there either, but who even farms Caides? This leaves him the Golem Hunt, and by god, he’s a great boss-killer in Golem Hunt. Thankfully, the Golem always hits with an AoE attack, so his passive still procs.

Seriously, Sol is one of the best units to use in Golem Hunt. He’s a fire unit, scales off of the enemy’s max HP, removes buffs, blocks buffs, and so on. I mean it when I say that a ton of people use him as their go-to unit when farming Golem (which is kind of rare in itself, because a lot of the sets in Golem are useless). I use him myself, and it’s very satisfying to see him take out a huge chunk of HP on the boss with minimal gear.

He’s also usable in a couple of Abyss floors once you get to the lower levels – Floor 98 is one of his best places – and… that’s about it. The only places you can use him now is Golem Hunt, random Abyss floors (specifically floor 98), and countering Kayron.

Man, he really got the short end of the stick.

Builds

Counter Sol’s no more now, so we can’t talk about that anymore. However, even with that out of the question, there’s still a few builds he can use. Here’s a couple off the top of my head:

Speed/Immunity: You really can’t go wrong with Speed and Immunity. If you can’t think of what gear to put a unit on, Speed/Immunity works like a charm. Sol’s no different. He doesn’t flourish off of it, but it’s good. His right-side gear should be Crit DMG%/ATK%/SPD with this gear.

Destruction/Crit: The typical Sol build is cranking up his damage stats as high as possible. Sol works very well with Destruction, as the “enemy scaling off of Max HP” tends to deal more damage the more Crit Damage you have (vs. how much Attack you have). If you don’t have any good Destruction gear available, using the free Attack set is fine, but recommended to upgrade as soon as possible. Use Crit DMG%/ATK%/SPD with this gear. Alternatively, if you can get good enough speed with just substats, using ATK% boots instead of SPD works.

That’s… about it you can build Sol with. When you’re building him, you’ll want to mostly focus on his ATK%, SPD, CRIT DMG%, and CRIT Rate%. Pay special attention to his Crit DMG%. As mentioned, “scales off the enemy max HP” does better with more Crit DMG%. I’ve looked around for some Sol stats, and I’ve figured out that some decent Sol stats would be about:

• 3,500+ ATK
• 90% Crit Rate (100% is optimal)
• 300%+ Crit Damage
• 150~ Speed

Speed isn’t really something that Sol depends upon. He’s not meant to be a turn-one unit, mind you, and instead relies more on his passive.

Artifacts

There’s a few artifacts that Sol can use, but the most used one in PvE is Daydream Joker, due to it scaling off of the enemy’s Max HP as well. There are a couple other artifacts you can use, so let me just speed through them all real quick:

Daydream Joker – Honestly, the artifact to use on Sol. His PVP use is shot, so now all he has left is PVE. This, in turn, is the best PvE artifact, due to the high HP of the bosses (except for some areas that block Daydream Joker use). Daydream Joker will be one of the top Sol artifacts to use, and will greatly increase his damage. Need I say more?

Portrait of the Saviors – [LIMITED ARTIFACT]Similar to Daydream Joker, this artifact will increase the amount of damage that Sol does. However, note that this artifact is usually suited for more PVP use, and isn’t one the best damage-dealing artifact in PVE. If, for some reason, you’re still using Sol in PVP, then by all means, use this. Otherwise, I’d like to redirect you back to Daydream Joker.

Sigurd Scythe – Not the #1 artifact to pick for Sol, as Daydream Joker increases more of his damage and is easier to obtain. However, I’ve seen a few people pick Sigurd Scythe as his artifact (it’s a very good artifact in general, not just on Sol), as it’ll help increase his survivability once he hits below 50% HP. Again, though, Daydream Joker is the most recommended artifact for him if you’re going to be using him against high HP bosses.

What about Junkyard Dog?

Junkyard Dog is Sol’s own artifact. Like Sol himself, it’s a limited artifact: you don’t get it in the allotted period of time, you just don’t get it until the next rerun (and that is if it ever gets a rerun). It’s a Warrior-exclusive artifact as well.

“50.0% chance to burn the enemy for 2 turns after using a basic skill,” is what it does after being fully maxed out to +30. Now, Junkyard Dog is a great artifact on a few people (the first two that come to mind are Dingo and Gunther), but is it any good on Sol specifically? No, not particularly.

Sol doesn’t really have anything on his kit that would benefit from the enemy being burned or having debuffs on them. I guess the most that Sol can play off of it is the fact that Burns deal damage based off the caster’s max ATK? But as already stated, you’ll want to focus more on his Crit Damage!

In short: there are a bunch of other artifacts that are better for Sol than Junkyard Dog; don’t use it on him.

Should You Build?

…Probably not. Now that his PVP use is no more, a lot of people aren’t going to use him anymore, and his PVE use is pretty niche. As always, though, if you like him, then go ahead. However, do note that he’s pretty hard to build these days, and his usability is limited.

I’ve seen a lot of people trashing him after his nerf, and I’ve seen people saying he got better afterwards. So, again, it depends on your perspective. As mentioned in the beginning, I’m personally more neutral towards his reworks, if not leaning more on the “he got worse” side. (Seriously, they destroyed his S2 counter’s multipliers.)

I hope you all enjoyed this article, and that it helped give you some insight on Sol Badguy post-rework. I’m not going to be using my Sol any more or less than I used to, mind you, but I know a lot of people who have benched him after the balance patch. I’m Sara Ann, and I’ll see you in the next article!