Table of Contents
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there’s been a death in the Containment Zone. Who killed Acacia - Kaguya, the universal support that’s been a meta staple for so long? It’s a murder mystery for the ages, and we’ve got a detective on the job. After Vidya’s directorial debut produced mixed reviews, she’s changed careers into solving crime instead - and she’s hot on the trail. Let’s check in on the investigation.
Abilities
Standard Skill
The first step of any investigation is to collect clues, and Vidya brings her own mystery machine of holographic clones to help out. Deployed on skill usage, you can also hold down the skill to launch them further away, letting the gang split up to cover more ground. When an enemy gets too close to a clone, it detonates to deal AoE Chaos damage and let you know of a suspect in the area. You can also shoot them to blow them up manually, but keep in mind that each clone also scales up its damage and explosion radius every 1.5 seconds (up to three times) as it inspects a larger area around itself. Vidya can bring up to five clones to the scene of the crime at a time, and all deployed clones detonate when she leaves the field for a group debriefing.
If you haven’t deduced it yet, this is Vidya’s main damage ability. It’s competent enough damage to serve as self-defense in most gameplay scenarios, but as far as Vidya’s usefulness goes, this is a bit of a red herring.
Support Skill
After scoping out the scene, we next move to interrogate our suspects. Vidya’s support skill comes in handy here, though the process might sound just a bit convoluted going by how Seasun words it. To simplify, Vidya marks an enemy and reduces their defense, also applying a stack of Exposed Secret every two seconds after that enemy takes elemental damage, reducing the enemy’s resistance to that element. These stacks get reset when damage of a different element is dealt, which means that you won’t be getting maximum effectiveness if you’re constantly hitting an enemy with different types of elemental damage. If you avoid this pitfall though, you’ll find that the resistance shred actually almost instantly stacks up, as this skill’s neuronics instantly provide four of the maximum five stacks the first time that the elemental resistance debuff is applied. Combined, the double dosage of debuffs provides a very potent damage boost for your main DPS to exploit. Neural Sim runners will also be very relieved to know that the in-game timer stops during the lengthy cast animation, a bit of quality-of-life that I'm sure many would like to see on other support operatives. I'm looking at you, Tess.
Running an investigation like this is tiring work though, and keeping Vidya’s support skill active will cost you 1 S-Energy every 0.2s, for a respectable base duration of ten seconds. This skill has a pretty short cooldown, and refunds your S-Energy back to max when the cooldown completes too, so you’re never too far off from your next session of good-cop-bad-cop.
Ultimate Skill
At this point in our investigation, Vidya is just itching to name the individual responsible for the crime, and her ultimate skill lets her do just that. Casting this ability marks the targeted enemy, quite fittingly, as a Prime Suspect. Once marked, Vidya will consume all available U-Energy to instantly execute them when their HP reduces to a certain point as long as they are unshielded, acting as the judge, jury, and executioner. The execute threshold is based on Vidya’s own Attack stat and further increases based on the amount of U-Energy available, but even with a perfect build, it’s too low to actually be useful most of the time, with the required HP being lower than the damage you'd get via a fully-charged clone from Vidya’s own standard skill.
While the execute itself is a bit of a gimmick, Vidya’s ult still has its uses. Namely, the 10% Defense down debuff that applies thanks to one of her ult’s neuronics. Notably, the Prime Suspect mark doesn’t actually expire unless the execute triggers, which means that you can keep it on for the entire fight. Yes, this translates into a permanent Defense debuff that you can sic against one specific enemy for free, and the benefits of that should be quite elementary, my dear Watson.
Deiwos Passive
Rounding out Vidya’s sleuthing skills is her Deiwos Passive, which adds on to her already-excellent support skill. As long as she has a Chaos weapon equipped, she’ll provide the rest of the team with an Attack boost as long as her support skill is applying its resistance reduction debuff. This boost is based on Vidya’s own Attack stat, and the scaling is increased based on her Alignment Index stat. This buff isn’t super big in practice, but it certainly never hurts to have a little extra utility. Do note that if the Exposed Secret debuff changes elements, you lose this buff for ten seconds or until Vidya starts up a new support skill, whichever comes first.
Assessment
Look through that magnifying glass and you’ll find that Vidya - Celestial Swan lives up to the high expectations you’d have from Seasun’s first patch in over a year to feature a solo support as the headlining operative. Making use of her is simple and straightforward: mark whatever it is you want dead with her ult and follow it up with her support skill in quick succession to deploy a strong set of debuffs while the rest of her kit provides additional offensive oomph to nab your perp and take them back to the station for questioning.
Of course, even the most airtight argument will have a few holes in it. Vidya’s full effectiveness requires some coordination in the rest of the team to ensure that her support skill can stay stacked up and her Deiwos active. Does this prove to be a fatal fallacy? Perhaps it might, but let’s look at the last few pieces of evidence before the jury makes its decision.
Weapons
Every murder needs a weapon, and Vidya has two options to choose from. The free Gearlock from the event shop provides a teamwide damage buff, as well as a one-time S-Energy refill to boost the uptime of Vidya’s support skill. Taking things to the next level, Starlit Truth from the gacha ups the buffs to also include a %Damage Taken buff, while also restoring S-Energy as well. However, its refill is continuous and at the same rate as the cost of sustaining Vidya’s support skill, giving it effectively unlimited uptime. In addition, the premium buff stick provides its full buffing power upfront while Gearlock’s buff scaling up over time.
Needless to say, this all sums up to a massive boost to capability, and one hell of a smoking gun.
Oh, and don’t bother with Deep Sea’s Call. While it technically will work, losing Vidya’s Deiwos and (more importantly) the resistance shred speed-stacking that her support skill neuronic provides makes it not even worth considering.
Manifests
For the past few support releases, there has been little if any reason to push for higher manifestation levels, making them relatively cheap operatives to build. Well no more, because line-go-up is back in season.
The boost per manifest is pretty much linear barring a slight underperformance from M4, so pick your price and stop there. And if you do choose to chase higher investment, you’ll have an extra reason to not use Deep Sea’s Call due to M2 requiring a Chaos weapon to be equipped.
Logistics
Providing a 35% teamwide damage buff on essentially the same uptime as her support skill, Nebula Squad is the obvious choice of logistics set. This is especially true when you consider that her support skill doesn’t actually do damage, locking her out of being able to make use of generic support logistics options like Amarna or Twilight.
As for logistics, you really only have two options. And considering that logistics pieces have two main statlines to fill out, you only have one option. Get Attack and Alignment Index, everything else is effectively a useless stat. Not even S-Energy regeneration is worth consideration as Vidya’s support skill comes with its own S-Energy refill once you run out. But with that being said, I actually wouldn’t worry too much unless you’re a super hardcore Neural Sim runner. The difference between the worst and best possible logistics set results in less than a 300ATK difference in Vidya’s Deiwos buff, which is the only thing that her logistics stats affect. Unlike an operative’s base Attack stat, flat Attack buffs from supports aren’t affected by Attack boosts, which means that even a half-decent logistics set is a lot closer in performance to perfect than you might think.
If you do want to optimize your logistics stats, see the supplementary material for a logistics calculator as well as more in-depth weapon and logistics set comparisons.
Team Building
Vidya has no real issues working with any specific DPS, being a pretty generic support. Rather, it’s the other support on the team that you should be worrying about.
Recall that Vidya’s support skill doesn’t exactly play nice with teams that do multiple types of damage. With that in mind, you’ll ideally want your other support to element-match with your main DPS if they put in hits of their own. For example, Enya - Exuvia should stick with Electric DPS operatives, while Fritia - Little Sunshine will want to only be paired with Thermal operatives. Read the support skill descriptions to check if they deal damage, or simply just look to see if multiple colours of numbers pop up in combat for a straightforward way to ensure optimal synergy.
Should You Pull?
After scoping out the scene of the crime, interviewing witnesses and suspects alike, and analyzing all the evidence, one might conclude that the culprit for the murder of Acacia - Kaguya is none other than the detective herself, Vidya - Celestial Swan. With exceptionally strong debuffing potential and even an Attack buff as a cherry on top, it certainly seems like she perfectly fills the donut hole within the donut’s hole. But we must look a little closer. And when we do, we see that the donut hole has a hole in its center.
Because, as it turns out, Kaguya’s fate was sealed by her own hand.
It’s true that Vidya loses a large portion of her supportive utility when used in a mixed-element team. In fact, her performance drops enough that Kaguya beats her out when both are equipped with 4★ weapons. But compare the two when factoring in their signature weapons, and the ultimate cause of Kaguya’s demise is clear to see.
Even in its specialist niche supporting a Frost DPS, Pine Aurora just can’t compete with what Starlit Truth brings to the table. And it’s not as if Vidya’s signature weapon is overperforming, either. To be blunt, Kaguya’s signature weapon sucks. This has been known for quite a while now, but Kaguya’s universal utility was always enough to make up for the shortcomings of her weapon options. However, with Vidya - Celestial Swan being just as versatile while having a much better weapon upgrade path, I think we can call it “case closed” on whether it’s worth hiring this detective for your next crime scene investigation.
Supplementary Material
Includes weapon and logistics set calculations, manifest growth calculations, full comparison calculations vs Acacia - Kaguya, and a logistics optimization calculator.
Cheat Sheet
