Kayron Guide for PvE and PvP Content

Overview

This guide will cover the uses of Kayron for all content, primarily focusing on his usage in PvP content. Kayron has become to make a comeback into the meta after new content, especially his exclusive equipment, and changes in the meta with development of the player base at higher levels of play. To note, if you are unfamiliar with multipliers and how damage is calculated please read this guide: https://epic7x.com/skill-multipliers/ clicking ‘Show Glossary’

Kit/Skills

S2 is the defining factor for Kayron. The passive allows Kayron to stay alive after fatal damage granting him the immortality buff for 1 turn (cannot go below 1HP). This gives him the buff required for an AoE S1 attack and keeps him alive to scale his damage (15% on S1, 30% on S3). The cooldown is extremely long and is unlikely to trigger more than once in a pvp battle.

Kayron’s S1 comes with an AoE 50% blind chance when buffed which definitely creates RNG pressure on your opponent and is the best anti-offensive debuff bar hard-cc. It has somewhat reasonable multipliers (ATK*0.85*1*1.871) considering the 15% scaling and after soulburn becomes a solid AoE attack (1.35 costing 10 souls).

S3 carries a huge amount of utility being a very damaging single target nuke (ATK*1.7*0.9*1.871 with up to 30% scaling) with self buff and buff extension on kill which allows him an additional turn of immortality with his S2. His passive resets the cooldown so if the enemy has not targeted Kayron, he is free to spend the long cooldown without repercussions.

However, there are problems we need to overcome so as to not have Kayron invalidated. Even given his survival, if Kayron is debuffed he will do far reduced damage and is unlikely to be able to extend his immortality.

In turn, it is essential for any slower Kayrons to take an immunity set retaining his potency when his turn arrives and if he kills, for the following turn due to his immunity being extended.

The major counters to Kayron have been the denial of his immortality by 3 different methods. Buff block which prevents his immortality coming online, but we hope to offset this with immunity as the only dispel followed by buff block at the moment is Basar who has a 50% miss chance due to elemental advantage.

The stall, ice meta prevented Kayron from extending past his first turn of immortality as without extremely good gear he is mostly not able to kill tanky units and has elemental disadvantage against much of the meta, e.g. SSB, Montmo, Dizzy etc.

The biggest weakness does remain and that is simply having his immortality dispelled leaving him vulnerable. Luckily, the 2 most effective and prevalent dispellers are earth heroes, being Basar and Charles which gives him a 50% chance to dodge.

Base Stats

As you probably already know, Kayron boasts the highest base speed in the game with an incredible 129 speed growing to 161 after speed set. While Kayron tends to be built slow on full damage gear, many have adopted a turn 1 build utilising the lowered gear requirements and silence of new exclusive equipment mainly targeting the fun, interactive Basar meta. This indirectly helps slow Kayrons by creating uncertainty for your opponent with your build since outspeeding even with a speed imprint could be tough e.g. he has a 21 speed advantage on ML Lots.

1119 attack is serviceable but slightly below average attack stat for a damage dealer but is very good considering his speed, outclassing both assassins (Cidd and Coli). As for his survival stats, they are somewhat irrelevant but he has a good 5340 base hp but a dismal 483 defence.

Exclusive Equipment

The exclusive equipment has been pivotal in his return to viability and plays a major role in feeding his stat hunger. The main stat of up to 12% crit rate offsets the forced immunity set and is weighted disproportionately highly compared to other stats being 2.5 max 85 rolls > 1.75 for attack%. Building damaging turn 1 characters has always been extremely difficult and being able to essentially have speed set and 2 crit ‘sets’ is game changing.

So, which one should you take? My advice would be to take silence for speed kayron and 10% additional damage on S3, or silence depending on your gear and what heroes you tend to see, for slow Kayron. The reason behind the additional 10% damage is because Kayron’s effectiveness is very sensitive around the kill boundary and we aim to kill not to cut our losses and silence.

Gearing Slow Kayron

Immunity set is a must and irreplaceable. It is better to have immunity and lose out on a lot of stats then to exclude it.

As for the remaining 4 slots, destruction is ideal for damage maximisation but attack is basically as good. However, personally I do not think the stat boost is worth giving up speed. Some people use lifesteal to allow Kayron to fight extended fights and it is a reasonable choice, but in pvp it doesn’t hold enough value to justify itself as he is too squishy and it can even lower his damage output.

We all know speed is king and even on supposedly unneeding characters e.g. arbiter vildred, we will always want speed to be a relevant threat before the battle is decided or ML Cecilia has told Kayron to sit down so I advise using a speed set, should your gear allow, for a crazy 161 base. For comparison, this is as much as Crimson Armin with speed set AND 85 speed boots.

Maximizing damage is your highest priority with a standard 85-100% crit rate, 250+ crit damage, 4000+ attack, but you will probably want more as you climb higher in arena. Having a splash of effectiveness is very useful, especially if you have taken silence, just to negate any season 2 gladiator gear.

Gearing Turn 1 Kayron

The silence exclusive equipment is essential to stop their booster if you don’t manage to kill. Obviously take speed set, with crit set prioritising speed substats followed by as much offensive power as you can manage with again a little effectiveness.

For any newer/lower elo players, this build is not for you and will require 250+ speed on top of strong offensive stats to be effective.

Skill Enhance and Memory Imprint

S1 – 13 mola, 11 rare catalysts, 2 epic catalysts for +30% damage dealt and +15% effect chance

S2 – 7 mola, 8 rare catalysts, 3 epic catalysts for -3 turn cooldown

S3 – 13 mola, 11 rare catalysts, 2 epic catalysts for -1 turn cooldown and +40% damage dealt

Max S3 then max S1 to push the damage output. Enhancing S2 will basically do nothing in pvp and should be ignored, even if it procced at 7 mola and catalysts you are better off spending your resources elsewhere.

Kayron’s Memory Imprint is 4 man HP% or self attack% using an Ego fragment. Don’t waste you slates here but if you happen to have spare Kayrons, 90% of teams will want imprint concentration.

Artifact Selection

Dust Devil – This can trigger a double cleave on S1 and can do an insane amount of damage 7/10

R&L – Trap artifact as it can just spend you immortality, not that having the turn earlier is bad but it also has a low proc rate. Can be incredible on speed Kayron when it works. 4/10 or 8/10 on speed

MLDB – Can be good paired with Assassin Cartuja and has that high roll potential especially against earth heroes 7/10

Alexa’s Basket – Good choice that can give Kayron the damage he needs on a 40% greater attack buff. Probably optimal for fast Kayron. 7/10

Violet Talisman – Could be an option for speed Kayron. Has the high roll miss potential which will build to up to 30% which is quite significant. 7.5/10

Pure Damage – (Tonfa, Portrait, Elyha’s) All solid options as they give him more offensive power everytime 7.5/10

Midnight Bloom – Kayron with his immortality is a good holder. Lowers stat requirements even more which is great for speed Kayron 5/10 to 9/10 depending on your team

PvE Usage

Kayron is a great Golem 11 damage dealer as his single target nuke will significantly damage the golem on a defence break. With immortality he is also very safe in all content.

https://youtu.be/MySuDxo_Wfg

For farming, using immunity set and skills off he will always trigger his S1 AoE for the FIRST turn in EACH wave. He is a good fire farmer if you can kill the wave in a single attack but is clearly overshadowed by both vildreds.

He is a safe dps for raids and abyss with his immortality but his morale is below average and has long cooldowns so is quite mediocre.

PvP Usage, Synergies and Team Compositions

On arena offence, Kayron is fine but struggles against SSB and many extremely tanky teams and you would much rather use some form of cleave to climb arena. As the attacker you do not want to take 50/50s attacking Basar and slow Kayron should see almost no arena offence but he does work excellently against defensive speed cleave.

Speed Kayron can most definitely be used to target Basars and other speed defences. Here is a clip of him being used in legend arena:

Arena defence is where Kayron can shine. Unlike Arbiter Vildred, Kayron’s immortality does not care about BBK or J. Kise’s extra turn and will survive standard cleave. He definitely will deter attackers as they may fear speed Kayron and Basar players will often dodge you as they risk missing Kayron.

Kayron has great synergy with Elena due to her ability to give him invincibility which can be extended by his S3 then still have the immortality passive remaining, which resets his cooldown for S3 allowing him to have another single target nuke into buff extension. Elena can also cleanse buff block should that ever occur.

Immunity set with Elena makes Kayron into an unkillable, undebuffable death machine. In fact, 2 players in the top 100 arena as of Christmas Day run this duo, one being ranked #10

He also work effectively with Maid Chloe by extending the revive buff which helps him protect himself over a longer turn count. The revive buff will allow him to AoE on S1 and in addition to the attack buff given by Maid Chloe, Kayron will output significant numbers.

The same sort of principles apply in GvG but he does his best work in arena. Good attacks will be easier to find due to the lack of arena damage meaning a lesser stall meta as well as the focus on killing units to deny further attacks e.g. assassin coli.

GvG defence remains strong but is not optimal compared to other meta defences as it can be ground out and does not have that vital extra member for support or arena damage to punish slow grindy battles. However, if your guild is not competitive or GvG focussed, he is an excellent choice.

I speculate Kayron to be an amazing pocket pick for (the upcoming at time of writing) World Arena / RTA. With the reduced healing and increased damage timer on matches, he will see more favourable matchups, and being a draft, he can be taken at opportune moments to target squishy enemies.

Kayron again can be or feign speed threat on your opponent and depending on their visible composition, of which one can be banned, countering a late picked Kayron will prove to be quite difficult. As a result, he will see an essentially guaranteed 1 or even 2 single target nukes and a blinding AoE attack which has an easily buildable 10 soul burn when picked at a good time.

Conclusion

In closing, Kayron shows himself to be viable in high level PvP despite being in a somewhat disadvantaged meta and is effective in almost all PvE content. His exclusive equipment has given him the stats he needed to become a great unit and Kayron looks to be a beast in RTA, perhaps even top tier.