Summertime Iseria Review – Bombs Away!
The long-awaited Summertime Iseria has finally released as a limited unit, and she’s… well, she sure is something. It’s actually pretty hotly debated as to whether or not she’s good or bad. With the end of Summertime Iseria’s banner and being able to test her out for about a month, I’ve decided to talk about her – if she’s any good, how to gear her, where you can use her, and so on and so forth.
Although the regular Iseria is basically guaranteed to continuously be useful throughout the game’s history as long as her kit stays untouched (thanks to the full cooldown reset on her s2 and the defense break, strip and unbuffable debuff on her s3), and Briar Witch Iseria sort of a niche unit, Summertime Iseria is a different story.
There’s a lot that holds her back from being some new unit that redefines the meta like Seaside Bellona did, but she also has some pretty neat mechanics in her kit. I wouldn’t say she’s a bad unit, but she’s not like Rem is these days. In case this line ages poorly, Rem’s a super meta unit right now, especially when paired up with Violet, due to how they seem to counterattack if you so much as breathe funny.
With that said, let’s begin!
Table of Contents
Introduction
“Iseria is at Levulin beach for a summer vacation but she’s finding it hard to unwind between Cermia, who keeps forgetting why she’s supposed to be there and keeps trying to escape, and Alexa, who seems to have misjudged their relationship and is focused solely on keeping Cermia on her best behavior.”
Class: Ranger
Element: Fire
In a nutshell, Summertime Iseria’s skillset is:
- S1: Attacks an enemy, with a 75% chance (when fully skilled up) to remove two buffs. (Soulburn for an extra turn at the cost of 20 souls.)
- S2: Her very first Soulburn doesn’t take any souls to activate. Makes her unable to land a critical hit, but increases her Attack by 50% when she’s fully skilled up. After one of her teammates uses an attack that hits all allies, she’ll activate Suppress!, which only hits once every 3 turns. Suppress!: Increases all her allies’ Combat Readiness by 15%, and then plants a 2-turn Bomb on 2 random enemies.
- S3: Attacks all enemies, decreasing their Attack for 2 turns and then increasing her own Speed for 2 turns. After that, she detonates all bombs on the enemies.
Analysis
On paper, her kit looks really good – after all, she has a free soulburn, increases her ATK by 50%, plants bombs on her passive, dispels two buffs on her s1, and detonates all bombs with her s3. However, once you take a closer look at Summertime Iseria, you’ll start to notice a few flaws in her kit that makes her not the best unit.
Her s1 only has a 75% chance to dispel two buffs when skilled up fully, which makes her dispel chance unreliable at best, on top of having to go through the whole Effectiveness-Resistance check. On top of that, her bombs in her s2 are randomized – you can’t control who gets what, meaning that she could try and put a bomb on a unit that still has Immunity on them, making it all but useless.
I will admit, though; Bombs are a pretty good debuff. You can’t cleanse it off, and the Stun that it leaves ignores Effect Resistance; when the bombs detonate, the damage is also really good, too. When Summertime Iseria detonates bombs, they will detonate even if she lands a Miss, and as mentioned the Bomb stun will ignore Effect Resistance.
Although Bomb teams are still pretty rare as of September 2021, it’s not the fault of the debuff itself, unlike Injury. (Seriously, can SmileGate stop trying to put Injury in every kit now?)
In short: Summertime Iseria is a unit that needs a team built around her, and is pretty niche, but she can pop off if you play your cards right.
Where to Use Summertime Iseria?
Summertime Iseria, as you can guess, has only one place she really shines – PvP. PvE is way too situational for her to be able to use her skillset to the fullest, plus a good chunk of bosses in PvE are straight-up immune to bombs. However, Summertime Iseria needs the perfect team in order to shine, and you better hope that the whole 15% Effect Resistance thing doesn’t screw you over.
Surprisingly, despite being one of the only other units with Bomb on them (as of this writing), Roaming Warrior Leo still isn’t any good, and pairing him up with Summertime Iseria isn’t very common. She can hold up her own, but you really do need to build a team around her; you can’t just slot her into any team and expect that to work.
Most importantly, she needs an opener to go first ahead of time and set her up. Usually, either Mui or Cerise can do the job well. Cerise decreases buff durations and plants Restrict on the enemy, while Mui is a reliable buff dispeller and increases everyone’s Attack for three turns – which directly helps Summertime Iseria’s bombs. Because both Cerise and Mui have AoE attacks for their s3, it then in turn sets up Iseria’s bombs.
Builds
There’s really only one build to use on Summertime Iseria: the General Speed Build.
General Speed Build: Speed/Immunity. ATK%/ATK%/SPD. You can use Hit instead of Immunity, however that leaves your Summertime Iseria somewhat open to being debuffed at the start of the battle before she can get a turn.
She’s built similarly to Inferno Khawazu, with all the focus on her ATK%, SPD, HP% and DEF%; however Effectiveness% on her is a requirement, unlike with Inferno Khawazu where it’s just a nice bonus for his s1. The Crit Rate and Crit DMG stats are literally unnecessary on her, because she can’t land crit hits.
A good Summertime Iseria build looks to be about:
- 5000+ ATK
- 12,000 HP
- 250~ Speed
- 1,200 DEF
- 120%+ Effectiveness
Any more Effectiveness than that is recommended, but 120% is the bare minimum needed to squeak by.
Artifacts
Similarly to the builds, there’s really only one artifact that really works on Summertime Iseria, that being Star of the Deep Sea. However, I will still go over a few more artifacts, should you not have SotDS.
Star of the Deep Sea – [LIMITED ARTIFACT] This one’s the best – and pretty much the only choice – for Summertime Iseria, because it not only meshes perfectly with her s1, but also ensures that her Bombs are somewhat reliable. It’ll make her able to place Bombs on her s1, so you can at least kind of control where the bombs go; you don’t just have to rely on the randomized part of her passive. This artifact must be skilled up to +30, else it’ll be just as unreliable.
Unseen Observer – Unseen Observer works as a good artifact to use, should you not have Star of the Deep Sea. It’ll give her Combat Readiness whenever she uses her passive, along with granting her 10 Souls the first time she plants bombs with her passive. Now, although Unseen Observer does mesh well with Summertime Iseria’s passive, Star of the Deep Sea – as mentioned – is pretty much the only artifact to use with her if you have it.
Ms. Confille – [LIMITED ARTIFACT] Since Summertime Iseria’s s1 is a single-target attack, there is a chance of her being able to strip and land the defense break that Ms. Confille gives. Defense break, as always, is a very important debuff, so you can’t really go wrong with this. As always, though, if you can get Star of the Deep Sea and limit break it to +30, that’s the most recommended artifact for Summertime Iseria.
Star of the Deep Sea
Although I touched upon Star of the Deep Sea earlier, and how it’s pretty much the best artifact to use on Summertime Iseria, I still want to talk about it a little more in-depth as an artifact by itself.
“When a non-critical hit is made after using a basic skill, has a 100% chance to plant a bomb on the target for 2 turns. This effect is only applied to Single Attacks and is not activated by a counterattack, Dual Attack, or extra attack.” This is what it does when fully skilled up.
Although it was built primarily for Seaside Iseria, the fact it’s so tailored towards her means that there’s barely anyone else who’s even able to use this artifact. It relies on way too many things – must be a basic skill, must be a non-crit, and the s1 must only be a single-target attack, not to mention Star of the Deep Sea has to be leveled up to +30 in order to be reliable. You can’t even use it on a Dual Attack or something!
The only other unit I can think of who can maybe use SotDS and benefit from it is Roaming Warrior Leo.
Should You Build Her?
That’s a bit of a hard question to ask. Summertime Iseria has her strengths and flaws in her kit, and it’s difficult to give a once-and-for-all answer. I really do think she can be used to win in higher-level PVP, but it takes a lot of setup for her to do so, and that’s if she doesn’t get screwed over by a multitude of things going wrong – being unable to strip buffs off of units, bombs landing on the wrong unit, etc.
If you’ve got a solid plan in mind for what you want to do with her, then I say sure, go ahead! However, if you’re stuck on where to go next in PvP and think that she’ll be able to instantly rocket you up to top-tier, then I’d probably say hold off on that for a while. Summertime Iseria isn’t the meta or anything, but she’s one of those units who can take people off-guard if you know what you’re doing.
Of course, though, if she’s your waifu, then obviously build her. Waifu status takes priority over everything else.
I hope you were able to get a little bit of info out of this article that was useful! I’m Sara Ann, and I’ll see you in the next article!