Maestra NequitiaInformation and Guide

Summary

Maestra is a PVP-oriented ASSR whose kit lends her comps to a unique playstyle. She demands a dedicated team built around her to fully enable her kit. She also needs extremely niche gear to function. Played correctly, she can be incredibly oppressive.

Maestra’s power budget is entirely concentrated in her ultimate skill. She spawns at the ship and gradually moves forward, ignoring all enemies and stopping at the center of the map. Her ultimate, which can only be cast from the center of the map, applies crippling %HP drain debuffs that are all but guaranteed to wipe the enemy team.

PVE Review

Maestra’s DMG AMP debuff can reach impressive values but its abysmal uptime coupled with her unwieldy cost makes her too impractical to use in most situations. She can be shoehorned into Britra/ Inhibitor raid comps but she is suboptimal in both. There is no reason to use her over other debuffers in any existing content. 

PVP Review

Maestra applies a strong mapwide burn and has what is effectively a debuff that kills all on-field enemies when she casts her ultimate, so the premise is you would escort her to the middle, use her ultimate to kill everything, and finish your opponent off before they can re-establish their position. 

Maestra players can leverage the pressure of her ultimate to create a dilemma for their opponents by holding onto the ultimate once she stops at the middle of the map. If they overcommit their resources, there is a risk that the Maestra player will activate her ultimate to wipe the field; if they decide to hold their resources, it gives the Maestra player a big advantage as they can commit their own resources freely and grind out the rest of the match knowing their opponent is powerless to fight back. The pressure created by her ultimate is stronger than the ultimate itself. Players are heavily encouraged to use manual ult to maximize Maestra’s value.

While Maestra’s ultimate strongly amplifies the debuff effects and acts as a board wipe, it also incurs a significant momentum loss, rendering her useless for a considerable amount of time. This means that quite often, it is better to refrain from using her ultimate and maintain pressure if it can't secure a game-winning advantage. This is especially true for experienced players as the timing of her ultimate is very readable. Opponents may hold their resources to redeploy afterwards, or use Olivie operator to cleanse all her debuffs. Given that Maestra comps are heavily stall-oriented, the inherent momentum loss may leave them without sufficient damage to push back against the enemy team if the ultimate isn’t able to close out the game.

While gear is usually covered in its own section, Maestra’s gearing is unique enough that it warrants some discussion. Maestra needs to be in the middle of the map as the prerequisite to casting her ultimate skill. As mentioned above, she can/ will typically loiter at the middle of the map for some period of time. Depending on the week, the opposite may be true where she is heavily disadvantaged and needs to cast her ultimate as soon as possible to equalize the matchup. As such, it is important to strike a balance between her speed and her tank stats.

As a 7 cost defenseless ASSR, Maestra can easily become a liability to the team without adequate support. To this end, she is frequently paired with stall units, as teams built around her are inherently stall-heavy given the resources needed to keep her alive. Notably, she directly synergizes with other Philharmonic faction characters who benefit from the faction synergy integrated into their kits (i.e. Shena, Carmen, Luna). Maestra is typically paired with other strong ASSR damage dealers, both to serve as the follow-up to her ultimate and to provide pressure to split opponents’ attention between them and Maestra. 

Maestra has several weaknesses that can be exploited:

• Debuff immunity: Maestra’s debuffs can be cleansed by debuff immunity. Notably, Olivie operator provides on-demand debuff immunity from her command skill. As Olivie is one of the most prevalent PVP operators in the game, Maestra players should be attentive of their opponents’ operator proc progress, and if it is Olivie, they should be ready to wait out the operator proc.

• New Ohio: New Ohio has cooldown-related debuffs, which can be used to delay Maestra’s ultimate. This makes her vulnerable for a period and creates a window during which opponents may push to kill her.

• Awakened Na Yubin: As a tower, Awakened Na Yubin’s %HP burn applies to Maestra. This is one of CounterSide’s most miserable matchups to play.

Building Maestra comps involves juggling a number of objectives simultaneously, emphasizing the need for a well-balanced team composition.