Roana Review – Holder of the Vigilant Eye
Table of Contents
Introduction –
A shaman of Rekos and Luluca’s friend. Born with the Vigilant Eye, she is able to perceive the true nature of other beings. She visited Straze to confess her feelings for him, but in a tragic twist of fate, she was killed at his hand.
Class – Soulweaver
Element – Earth
Awakened Stats:
Pros – High health pool, high defense, Barriers, AoE healing, Reraise and good gear flexibility.
Cons – Incredibly low base speed. Basar exists….
Skills:
- Barrier to lowest health ally.
- Passive: Heals the whole team when an ally gets attacked by dual attacks, triggered abilities, or counter attacks. Pushes 5% combat readiness for the whole, per ally attacked.
- AoE heal and Reraise, not revive.
Analysis:
Roana arrives as a playable character in Epic7 shortly after her story debut and she is packing a set of…. Heals! Really BIG heals! In a world where every game mode is loaded with RNG, counter attacks, dual attacks and plethora of trigger effects, this is the hero we needed, and deserve!
The second 5* Earth Soulweaver brings a ton of great tools to help. Roana has a barrier on her skill 1, which will cover the lowest ally and scales of her Hp, so the bulky the better.
Her Skill 2 is a passive which triggers an team-wide heal and combat readiness push of 5% per ally attacked. This is the main appeal for Roana since, as previously mentioned, all games modes in Epic 7 have some sort of dual attack, counter attack, or triggered attack happening, which means Roana will get tons of mileage and extra healing from her passive.
The icing on the cake is that she comes with a team heal and RERAISE on her skill 3. I can not emphasize this enough, as many have already made the mistake of calling this ability “revive”, and this is not revive. If your character is already dead, she can not help you.
This is the same buff that Maid Chloe has, and will revive them only if they died while the buff was active. It’s a preventative ability, not a corrective one. However, it is a welcome one since as stated above, only one other character in the game had this buff and she is a moonlight 5* hero.
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!
But with that said, Roana is incredibly well rounded and I strongly encourage pulling for this character, beginners and vets alike!
Usually, I would wait til closer to the end to give my verdict on a character. But I think It’s very plain to see that Roana is an ace for all forms of content. While I will continue to detail her uses in the upcoming sections, if there was any doubt in your mind on whether or not this character is worth having, she is.
And with that out the way, let’s jump into the gear selection…
Recommended builds:
Utility build: Speed set + Immunity set
As with many characters this is going to be a powerful combination in PvP. I don’t think this is going to be Roana’s Best in slot set, but this is a commonly built set that might make it easier to put her together.
She’s still going to need some effect resistance if you can squeeze some into the build so stop characters like Melissa from stripping her reraise buff. However, in most cases, she’ll need all the Health she can afford and overly stacking speed will cut her ability to make a decent barrier.
In this image, Health neck, defense ring, and Health boots are the main stats. As you can see, even as a 5* Roana has incredibly bulk, and it will only get higher with her 6* Awakening.
I believe a counter set will be her best in slot, but counter sets are a little harder to put together. Roana’s kit is focused on punishing retaliatory behavior. As such, a counter set increases the reward she receives once she’s taken damage.
This set is Health neck, Heath ring, and speed boots for the main stats:
At first glance, you’ll notice that the counter set is faster than the speed set. It’s because of Health as the main stat on the speed boots. Speed main speed boots would put her at 197 speed, but at the cost of her health pool and then you’d have to adjust the defense ring to a health ring.
The focus for how you build your Roana, is making sure there’s a balance in her ability to survive, the quality of her barriers, and how often she gets an opportunity to do those things. My speed set Roana build is significantly bulkier than my counter build, but my counter build might get 1 or 2 more barriers when they matter.
Recommended Artifacts:
Stella Harp:
Stella harp is a great option for Roana because it gives her the ability to dispel when being attacked, further increasing her reward. The issue is, unless you’re fighting something with a lot of debuffs, this could be extremely niche and unreliable due to the 60% activation chance.
It’s a strong tech option if you know there’s both debuffs and you’ll get hit a lot. Alternatively, you can use Wondrous Potion Vial, but that’s only 1 debuff at the start of Roana’s turn, that may or may not be enough depending on how you build her.
Touch of Rekos:
This is Roana’s featured artifact and it just lets you double up on the healing if you need more raw healing. If your goal is just to not die, this is the artifact you want.
If she gets hit, she’ll heal and if someone else gets dual attacked, countered, or hit by a triggered ability, she’ll heal. The main downside of this artifact is that it’s already doing something Roana is going to do, which is heal, and you may find it’s not the most optimal slot depending on how strong your team is.
Celestine:
This is the real winner, especially if you’re planning on building Roana for counter. If you have this artifact, it will let her double down on the “Ally with the lowest health” part of her Kit. Celestine gives her a heal on all three of her skills and she not only heals the recoverable part of the lowest allies health, it gives them her extra thicc barrier.
This setup can be for PvE but will absolutely be a force to Rekos with in PvP! Heh…. Rekos.
For PvE content:
Roana is going to excel at raid and every hunt except Wyvern and Banshee. Raid is filled to brim with triggered attacks, counters and the like. As such, she will be the beacon of your survival if you take her.
As for hunts, I do think she’s serviceable in banshee, but Banshee doesn’t do anything to trigger her skill 2, so you’ll be relying solely on her skill 1 and skill 3, and that will vary based on how you built her.
However, Golem and Azimanak both have frequent triggered attacks and significantly boost Roana’s value while running them.
For PvP Content:
Roana is clearly going to be a great choice for defense as she is problematic for all the counter characters to deal with. SS Bellona, Charles, ML Ken, Champion Zerato and anyone holding Elbris Ritual or using a counter set will think twice before challenging a Roana comp.
You can also take her on offense if you want to siege compositions that use those champions.
I see Roana having a lot of potential in both guild war and in arena, but I would avoid using her in RTA. As we’ve learned, healing and max health both decrease as time goes on, so even if she could stall you long enough to live, her potency will decrease tremendously with each frenzy stage.
That’s not to say, “Never” bring her, but make sure the match up is favorable before attempting to stall the clock.
Bad match-ups:
We’ve discussed who Roana will be for dealing with, but here’s a list of some characters you should be prepared to face while using her.
Basar has been a huge threat to the game since he got his buffs. If you’ve played Arena, Guild War or Real-time Arena at all, you’re probably sick of seeing this character. He strips all buffs, has 30% combat readiness suppression, unbuffable, blind, attack break and debuff transfer.
He also has access to most powerful artifacts in the game, being a mage, so you could run into anything from Abyssal Crown for aoe stun procs or Tahagel’s book, which is the primary enabler for big soulburn combos and strong cleave compositions.
This guy single handedly ruins Roana’s day. He blocks her reraise buff and pushes her further down the line. If you’re a counter build, then her barrier won’t work on whoever took the most damage.
I’m aware there’s no “Counter” for Basar yet, but pairing her with heroes who make Basar’s life a little more difficult are preferable. Kayron, Lilias, or Assassin Cid are good choices.
Both these heroes are packing the slowly rolled out, but very powerful “Extinction” debuff, which prevents characters from being revived if killed by that move. Roana’s buff can be completely ignored should they choose to just remove a character from battle permanently.
And lastly, you’ll need to make sure she’s paired with a cleansing unit. Roana has the heals per turn, but basically becomes crippled by the unhealable debuff.
Meta considerations and conclusions:
Roana is a character I think a lot of players, including myself have been waiting for. The retaliation meta has been a heavy contender since the arrival of Seaside Bellona, and It’s nice Smilegate has created a unit to finally alleviate some of the pressure from those compositions.
As previously discussed, she’ll also be a welcome addition to PvE content due to the large number of extra attack types that can trigger her passive and I imagine her value will increase as harder content continues to get released.
Very similarly to when Lilias got released, I think Roana is one of those characters who you look at and realize you’ll be missing out if you skip a character like this. Even though her kit is very straight forward, she provides healing for a condition that’s met very regularly in all modes of play, which is what makes her such a strong addition to anyone’s roster.
Hopefully, she’ll begin to curb the appearance of some of the aforementioned characters just a little bit since she was clearly designed to slow down Seaside Bellona’s rampage. Promoting team diversity is important and I think Roana will shake up some of the previously established norms once players have had time to fully explore her strengths and optimize where she excels.
