ML Crozet Review: Where Does He Stand?

Introduction

Crozet’s Moonlight Shade who does as he pleases with no consideration for anyone around him. As a result, he has started causing a lot of trouble, leading the original Crozet to come looking for him. 

Class – Knight

Element – Dark

Awakened Stats

Pros – Very tanky and Flexible. Difficult to play around due to having so many combinations

of exclusive equipment and artifact combinations.

Cons – semi reliant on buffs to excel, low chance to stun unless skill is soulburned. Dark units are neutral to all damage types, so there’s no potential to have crippling debuffs miss.

Skills:

1. 40% chance to stun, 100% chance with Soulburn.
2. Passive: Shares 38% of the damage with the ally in the back row. 35% to counter attack
   When any ally is attacked.
3. Removes all debuffs from himself and one other ally. Self defense buff

 And applies a unit buff to the cleansed ally depending on class.

 
Soulweavers and Knights receive a barrier.
Thieves, Warriors, and Mages receive a critical resistance buff.

Analysis

Troublemaker Crozet is an incredibly strong and flexible character. This Hero will bring lots of versatility to your team because he can remove debuffs, counter, stun, buff, and share damage with other units will be a high priority in your team. 

As previously mentioned, Crozet has built-in Aurius and built-in Elbris ritual sword. Both of these artifacts are incredibly efficient in pvp, and he gets both of them natively. Crozet also has high base effect resistance due to his sign. This combination opens up many other possibilities for Crozet as a defensive tank. 

These traits collectively make Crozet a difficult hero to prepare for in pvp, since his artifact selection and recently released exclusive equipment further diversifies his options in combat. Well built Crozets will be a terror to deal with in all pvp formats. 

Alternatives:

Due to the sheer amount of utility Crozet offers, there is no real replacement for him. You can run multiple knights and have each one use Aurius, Elbris, etc, and while still very effective, it doesn’t offer the slot efficiency of Crozet. Additionally, Crozet can still participate in multi-knight setups, but different artifacts are required and I’ll address those in the meta considerations section. 

Usually, I would discuss whether or not I think a unit is a good investment before pulling for them, however, since Crozet is in the moonlight summoning pool, I will just briefly say that if you pull him, you should be thrilled! He is among the stronger of the moonlight 4* units you could pull.  

Recommended builds:

Primary build: Speed set + Immunity/ resistance/ defense set

As with many characters this is going to be a powerful combination in PvP. You want Crozet to get a fair number of turns to keep his cooldowns cycling and disrupt your opponent’s heroes. 

In any variant, Health % Neck, Health% ring, and Speed boots are recommended for main stats. Aim for as many speed, defense, effect resistance and effectiveness sub stats as possible. Although it’s worth noting if you have great health % sub stats on other pieces, you could forgo health % on the ring in exchange for effect resistance, further bolstering his ability to resist debuffs, and opening more build options that don’t rely on immunity set. I.e. hit set for landing stuns, hp or def sets for additional bulk.   

As you can see, even with mostly level 70 gear, you can obtain a decent amount of bulk. The Major losses are the difference in speed, slightly less health and effect resistance. But this image is compared to the build above, and instead of relying solely on effect resistance, features a 2-piece immunity set which allows the prevention of debuffs on opening Salvos. 

Molagoras

I briefly want to cover the usage for molas on this character because Crozet’s options, particularly his skill 2 are, are kind of unique.

Starting with his skill 3, this is a no brainer. Using molas to reduce the cooldown by one is important to his ability to cycle, especially in combination with two of his exclusive equipment options. 

Crozet’s skill 1 should be mola’d for the 40% base effect chance, however, this can be the last thing you mola, unless you are using him actively in RTA and plan to soulburn his S3 for a guaranteed stun (assuming they don’t resist it). If you’re using his counter rate increase exclusive equipment, you’ll always want to prioritize this before his passive. 

And lastly, his passive skill 2. Crozet when fully invested can share up to 38% damage with the ally in the back row, making his shared-damage ability the strongest in the game to date.

Maxing mola investment on this ability is NOT urgent, because you don’t want to overload your Crozet. So consider what composition you’re trying to build first, then assess if you need more or less reduction. There are two ways to utilize his passive, and the investment only increases how much damage Crozet shares, it doesn’t affect his rate of countering.  

Having a higher mola investment is great for protecting healers who can help sustain Crozet and this makes him and his protected ally, extremely difficult to remove from the battle field. 

And having a lower investment or no investment, allows for some gimmicks to still function normally.

For example, Crozet and Kayron have excellent synergy because Crozet provides protection, cleansing, and buffs for Kayron, activating his AoE skill 1 if/when needed. The base 20% shared damage lets Kayron’s health fall low enough to increase his damage output, but without the opponent popping his immortality passive before you are ready. 

So again, just consider your team comp as his passive is does not require immediate full investment. You can gauge how much shared damage is right for your team by trial and error, but of course, mola investment can not be reversed so once you increase it, there’s no going back. 

Exclusive Equipment

Crozet is the most recent addition of exclusive equipment to be added to the game and all of his options are strong.

1. Addtional 15% chance to counter on his skill 2. (Total of 50% counter chance)
2. Recover a portion of health when using skill 3. (Approx. 25% of his max Hp)
3. Push an ally’s combat readiness 40% when using skill 3. 

Each of these EE’s are unique and very powerful. Going forward, I will explain in the upcoming sections where I think each EE excels and how to compliment them. 

Recommended Artifacts

Two of the most powerful effects in the game are rolled into his skill 2 passive; this allows Crozet access to even more artifact options, depending on your composition. 

Adamant Shield:

This is a strong 4* artifact which will reduce the damage your party receives from critical attacks by up to 16%. This is most likely Crozet’s best in slot artifact as allows him to effectively mitigate damage on your whole team, in addition to the ally he’s protecting in the back row. 

Prophetic Candle:

In truth, candle is a niche pick but with the recent addition of exclusive equipment for Crozet, It is worth noting that two of his exclusive equips enhance the effects of his skill 3. This means in addition to being able to self defense buff, cleanse, and provide a class specific buff to an ally, he would also be able to frequently self heal or combat readiness push the ally in the back row.

This setup, further enhances the punishment crozet will dish out, since hitting his ally will result in him potentially counter stunning you and hitting him will result him recovering or pushing combat readiness.

Bastion of Perlutia:

Bastion is a 5* artifact that was released with Lilias’ event. This starts the battle with a barrier on the ally with the highest attack. This artifact, paired with another knight to hold Adamant Shield creates an extremely powerful defensive setup. 

In epic 7, defensive abilities can not be stacked if they mitigate similar damage types, regardless of the source of the damage. For example, Crit damage reduction from Adamant shield and Elena’s 15% AoE damage reduction do not stack, because both directly reduce damage, even though they are from different sources. 

Barriers and damage mitigation do stack however, because barriers do not directly reduce damage, but they buffer damage as effective health points. This allows Crozet to shield the highest attack alley, share up to 38% of their damage, and further mitigate incoming damage while being paired with other heroes who can directly reduce damage to the team (like Elena, Otillie, or other knights holding Adamant Shield.)

In addition to all that, having a 2-piece immunity set and crozet’s crit resistance buff (Thief / Mage/ Warriors), makes the ally in the back row almost uncleavable, barring fights with Basar, who’s a very powerful meta unit. 

The icing on the cake here, is that Bastion also pairs well with heroes who want to use Proof of Valor. Proof and Bastion, combined with Crozet’s passive is the strongest, single target mitigation in the game. 

Holy Sacrifice:

At the time of writing, this artifact has not been buffed, but will provide a barrier upon reviving effective Feb 20th, 2020. The addition of the barrier to Holy Sacrifice makes this a reliable option for Crozet, post buff. Ideally, Crozet will already be tanky, and the addition of his new exclusive equipment which heals him when using his skill 3, could be incredibly potent.

When your opponent finally takes down Crozet, he will revive with low Hp, and a barrier. Assuming you have immunity, that greatly improves his ability to recover from Holy Sacrifice, and continue being disruptive, healing, and buffing any remaining allies you may have. 

Just be wary that if you’re going to use a Holy Sacrifice on Crozet, you’ll want to have a few unbinds, if not a fully unbound copy for this strategy. Holy Sacrifice is not guaranteed to activate if it’s not fully limit broken and leveled, which greatly diminishes the potency of this setup.  

For PvE content

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot to say here. All of Crozet’s abilities are centered around pvp. You can still cover one other hero, but you minds as well use Aurius if that’s a priority for you. He can still counter, but he can’t stun bosses. He still has his single target cleanse on his Skill 3, but again, you’d be better off bringing someone else who can just cleanse the whole team. Destina, Achates, Montmorancy and Lilias all fill that role just fine. 

For Pvp Content

Pvp is Crozet’s bread and butter. Crozet excels in all pvp formats, arena, guild war, and real time arena. 

Arena:

Arena defenses are always changing and Crozet’s kit is perfect for deterring your opponent from attacking you. As previously discussed, his setups are flexible and can be changed around easily. Crozet is great for stalling since he’ll counter stun to waste turns and alleviate pressure from high priority targets. 

Additionally, he has good anti cleave potential if he successfully procs a stun and reverse some of Basar’s momentum if equipped with his combat readiness pushing exclusive equipment. He’ll cleanse the unbuffable status off himself and the ally in the back row, then proceed to move them forward in the line if they were just pushed back.  

Guild War:

This is the format where Crozet will be the strongest. His heavily loaded kit makes him great for defending towers, and he pairs very nicely with other slot efficient units like Diene, for example. While guarding her, she’ll receive additional barriers from his skill 3, while providing Crit resistance and attack to the whole team. A strong DPS being protected by these two can lead to powerful combinations on defense.

Real time arena: 

Real time arena is certainly no place for stall teams, however, in spite of this fact, Crozet performs well in this mode. While he doesn’t do anything distinctly different, his counters, mitigation, and overall flexibility can be difficult to deal with if left unchecked. 

For all the same reasons provided in the Arena section, Crozet is capable of stealing turns from your opponent and just being generally disruptive, which is valuable in RTA. Your opponent may purposely try to avoid Crozet, and still end up triggering stuns they weren’t prepared for. 

And while I would not recommend his healing exclusive equipment in this mode due to the frenzy stage mechanic, the extra counter chance and combat readiness push combined with his wide artifact selection creates uncertainty for your opponent. 

Meta Considerations and Conclusions

So how does Crozet fit into all this? 

He’s an amazing unit. As previously mentioned, if you happen to obtain this unit, I would strongly encourage you to build him if you’re invested into pvp. He creates a lot of opportunities for unique team compositions and is very easy to gear to start being effective. 

I see this hero posing a real threat in all pvp-centric game modes and fits well into many already established comps, as well as creating new ones!