Skinner

Malena Skinner is one of many damage-boost operators focused on increasing overall team DPS.

Contrasting other generic Command skill damage buffs, Skinner’s damage boost comes in the form of a massive DEF penetration buff.

In PVE, percent-for-percent, a percent of DEF shredded is typically going to represent a greater damage increase than a percent of any other offensive stat. As a quick mechanics refresher:

• DEF PEN functions identically to DEF shred, but whereas DEF shred is applied to targets, DEF PEN is applied to damage dealers. 

• DEF PEN is multiplicative with DEF shred, meaning players want to stack one or the other, and never mix the two.

DEF PEN is relevant in situations where you may not necessarily be able to field DEF shred debuffers (e.g. CCB).

On paper, Skinner provides a valuable Command skill buff. In practice, the buff decay leads to a massive damage drop after the first 3 seconds and makes her impossible to work with. Skinner’s value becomes increasingly dubious when considering her alternatives:

• 100% DEF PEN/ shred are already the norm in PVE content and can easily be achieved with the current tools available to players (e.g. Ciel)

• For damage purposes she is outperformed and overshadowed by other operators that fulfill the same niche (i.e. Vivian).

• For the situations where players would be setting up burst damage, Ciel achieves the same effect and is also incidentally a striker for Vivian’s operator proc. For burst damage purposes, Vivian + Ciel is going to do more than Skinner + whoever replaces Ciel.

Unfortunately, teams can be arranged in such a way that the value Skinner provides is not needed, and this means that even in her best case Skinner is mediocre at best.

Skinner serves no purpose in PVP.