Awakened RayInformation and Guide

Summary

Awakened Ray (Ray) is a PVP-oriented frontline tank designed to break through enemy teams by smashing their positioning. His kit is a strange combination of a counterattack on special and self-buff on ultimate.

Distinguishing himself from other counterattack characters, Ray’s counterattack comes with a unique trigger that protects his backline. While interesting, it suffers from poor uptime and lack of self-synergy.

Most of Ray’s power budget was allocated to his Ultimate Skill. His combination of surefire basics, ultimate self-buffs, and special targeting all synergize to create a kit with potent pushing power. If not dealt with, Ray can win games on his own.

PVE Review

Although Ray is predominantly a PVP unit, he has niche applications in PVE (i.e. Britra) Notably, he was used in Danger Close against Knight of the Lake to bug his phase transition for a significantly faster clear speed.

Ray’s ultimate struggles to find value in PVE. As a general frontline tank, Ray struggles to distinguish himself from the pool of stronger, cheaper alternatives (e.g. Rearm Kaci, Rearm Alex).

PVP Review

In PVP, Ray functions as a frontline tank who specializes in busting through the enemy team with his ultimate. He also provides some utility in the form of his counterattacks, but the focus is largely on the pushing power he gains from his ultimate skill.

Ray’s ultimate generates value in a number of ways:

• Destroy positioning: Positioning is one of Counterside’s core mechanics. This covers where you place your units, how you space backline units to keep them safe, and how you position your team relative to your opponent on the map (see also: https://www.prydwen.gg/counter-side/guides/rta-concepts). Ray gains ultimate level hitstun on his basics for the duration of his self-buffs. Paired with his surefire on basics, he can pump out an obnoxious amount of knockback. Ray can expose the backline by pushing back the frontline tanks and left unchecked, he will squeeze the entire enemy team under their own ship, destroying their positioning and opening the enemy team up to devastating followup through splash damage from AOE attacks.

• Massive boost to survivability: Ray heals himself for 20% HP and gains invincibility while moving. The invincibility makes it difficult to deal damage to Ray as he has to be stationary to take damage, and he will only be stationary if he is stopping to knock something back (and obviously, he won’t be stationary for long in this scenario). This can be paired with healing from Ray’s own backline. It can be difficult for the enemy backline to make damage stick.

• Gain tempo: Ray’s ultimate cooldown starts when he casts his ultimate, not when the ultimate buffs time out. On high end gear (i.e. Swift movements), he could be halfway to his next ult cast by the time the first ultimate expires.

If at any point Ray wedges himself under the enemy ship, it can be impossible for the opponent to recover. In a sense, he can be considered an ASSR sidegrade to base Horizon; Ray costs more, needs more support, and has a less immediate impact, but he brings consistency.

Ray’s counterattack has some funny interactions such as stopping Rearm Elizabeth, but since Ray is never played specifically for the counterattack this stuff is more of a bonus than a point to be emphasized.

While Ray’s ultimate skill is powerful, it can be incredibly difficult for him to get there. Ray has little to no defensive utility and his stats are fairly middling. Ray can be managed through a combination of:

• Killing Ray: Ray’s survivability issues are exacerbated by his gearing; he desperately needs skill haste to get his ultimate sooner, but this comes at the expense of losing survivability from set and (if using Swift movements) substats. For a frontline tank, Ray is pretty squishy.

• Stacking frontline tanks: If Ray is unable to touch the backline with his ultimate skill, it will effectively have done nothing. Stacking frontline tanks is an easy way to keep him occupied. This can be taken a step further by playing a heavy stall comp to tank the whole thing; if Ray is unable to secure a lead with his ultimate skill, he will effectively have ruined his own team’s positioning.