Milk (Treasure) Guide & Review

We would like to start this guide with a disappointed tone toward ShiftUp. The whole point is that these Favorite Items are supposed to make units more usable or at least baseline usable. Unfortunately, SU has failed to do that with Milk.

Can you give a brief summary about her changes?

Milk has received an okay-ish upgrade to her kit. While from the get-go we weren't really expecting much out of her due to her low popularity, the changes, in the end, have been positive—although she still remains underwhelming.

The most noticeable changes were the reduction in her Burst Skill CD from 40s to 20s and the added CDR bonus for all allies for every 10 Full Charge(s). A low Burst Skill CD is a step in the right direction, but what's its use if the rest of her kit provides literally nothing?

Her intermittent ATK buff makes it hard to synchronize with characters' DPS windows, and her 2.83s CDR pales in comparison to more performant B1 CDRs like Liter or Rapi:RH. Her HP Potency is fine, but it is often significant in PvE. In PvP, however, its impact is more debatable.

Should I get her Favorite Item?

Absolutely not. She's somewhat garbage. Investing in her can only mean those things: she is your waifu, you have questionable resource management skills, or you just want A LOT of unneeded flexibility in PvP, or you just want her for collection. Her Treasure is likely just a filler to prevent players from feeling drained after upgrading Helm and Drake, done to fill up the yearly quota. Otherwise, you will have no resources left. It's a good thing, is it not? Milk fans would disagree.

For PvE, Milk only requires Phase 1 + 2 because healing is often dispensable, but for PvP, she requires Phase 3 for the lifesteal + HP potency.

Skill 1

■ Activates every 20 sec. Affects 3 ally unit(s) with the highest ATK.

ATK ▲ 31.83% for 10 sec.

■ Activates at the start of the battle. Affects self.

Cooldown of Burst Skill ▼ 20 sec continuously.

Phase 1

This skill unlocks after you have attached an appropriate SR 15 Doll + completed all the prerequisites.

Milk's ATK buff now applies to 3 units simultaneously instead of 2, making it more viable in 1-1-3 setups with 3 DPS units. However, its intermittent uptime makes it difficult to synchronize with DPS windows such as Alice's or SBS's Burst Skill. Stable damage dealers won't feel this downside much, but the overall buff value is still too low to be worth using. Perhaps increasing it to more than 40% would be a good start.

That said, predictable Burst buffs like this do have an advantage when it comes to buffing certain types of damage, as long as the timing aligns. This is because their low uptime is often compensated by a higher buff value (see Yulha). If you can time SW's Burst, for example, to hit when this skill is active, the damage dealt is higher than it would have been with a permanent 5% ATK buff.

In addition, the ATK buffs can be triggered off-burst, so you can run a 2-1-2 with Milk being an off-burst unit, but unfortunately there are better and more consistent options.

This skill also has a second component that reduces her Burst Skill cooldown from 40s to 20s, which is an acceptable change, knowing that her Burst Skill is weak. This allows her to support 1-1-3 comps as mentioned earlier, but that doesn't automatically make her a better choice than her competitors. The rest of her kit will decide whether she will be useful (spoiler: she won't).

Skill 2

■ Activates when above 80% HP. Affects all allies.

Critical Damage ▲ 11.13% continuously.

■ Activates when attacking with Full Charge for 10 time(s). Affects all allies.

Cooldown of Burst Skill ▼ 2.83 sec.

Phase 2

This skill unlocks after you have collected 50 matching Favorite Item(s) material.

Milk's second skill now applies a universal CDR every time she lands 10 fully charged slots. Now, this is a good change as she now has a purpose as a CDR instead of nothing. However, who thinks 10 fully charged shots for just a measly 2.83s CDR at max level a good deal? That is one entire rotation. Compared to Rapi:RH's ~7.5s reduction, and D:Wife's and Rouge's 7s reduction, Milk's CDR is simply nonexistent. Sure, it's a welcome change but far from enough...

Skill 3

■ Affects 1 enemy unit(s) with the highest DEF.

Deals 367.34% of final ATK as damage.

Attack Damage ▲ 20.9% for 10 sec.

■ Affects all allies.

Recovers 16.16% of attack damage as HP over 10 sec.

Potency of HP restored ▲ 75.5% for 10 sec.

Phase 3

This skill unlocks after you have collected another 110 matching Favorite Item(s) material.

Milk's Burst Skill now applies a teamwide HP potency, boosting teammates' recovery by 75.5% for 10s. This synergizes with her lifesteal, making her an ideal candidate for survival-focused B1 CDR. However, In PvE, survivability is rarely the concern, and her lack of offense is a more serious problem. In PvP, though, the healing + potency can possibly be a game-changer for stall comps. At max level, the healing should be around ~50% of Helm's healing solo across 2 FB. That is fairly low, but her HP potency is huge, so the ideal play is to pair her with other healers such as HelmTr.

Campaign (LD) - B | Campaign (HD) - B

Theoretically only worth using if you don't have other CDRs, but if you are at High Deficit, own Milk, and have enough resources to build her Treasure, you should already have a built Liter. Just use that Liter. Period. Oh, and Liter is technically free because you can get her from ordinary pity!

PS: Milk's healing will not help you survive longer at high deficit where everything oneshots you! So you need offensive buffs to counterbalance the stat penalty and kill enemies faster!

Bossing - C

Milk's low CDR and irregular buffs (one of them requires her being over 80% in HP) make her very clunky. Not only do you have to protect her from damage, you also need to bear with CD bottlenecks and low damage output. And even if you manage to do that, the buff is terrible. It's almost always better to use other B1 CDR if available, and if not available, then wait for them to be available. Do not invest in Milk just to have a CDR. A bad investment will brick your account in the long run.

PVP - C

Probably her best battleground at the moment. Lifesteal + HP Potency can make for some interesting stall teams (esp. with HelmTr). She's too expensive, however. We think that Nero + Moran are more performant than her, so if you are planning to build a stall team, go with them first before considering Milk. By the time you finish building Milk, a new challenger better than her would have come out.

Gear Investments

You do not need to OL her (or even level her gear) for Treasure because her ATK buff doesn’t scale off the caster's stat, but you can overload her if you plan to use her in PvP (for CP padding). Save your materials and especially credits.

As for the affixes, she doesn't need lines, or rather you shouldn't reroll her at all. However, if you insist, she may benefit from 1× Max Ammo line to ensure 10 Full-Charge(s) per rotation. You shouldn't need any Max Ammo lines in general, though, but one is handy. Aside from that, Charge Speed for PvP.

• Essential: -
• Ideal: -
• Passable: 1× Max Ammo, 3-4× Charge Speed
• Priority: Low

Skill Investments

Milk shines best in PvP, and the skill that governs her PvP performance is Burst Skill. Focus on that.

• Skill 1: 3~7
• Mainly for PvE because it likely won't trigger in PvP due to the long initial CD. -20s CD to Burst Skill does not scale either. A unit with such little presence is not worth maxing. You still want to upgrade for CP padding in PvP.
• Skill 2: 3~7
• If you insist on using her for PvE, then you will need some investments for the CDR, otherwise don't bother—CP padding only. PvP doesn't need such a low CDR for now.
• Burst Skill:3~10
• Mainly for PvP. Upgrade as needed. 10 for the highest lifesteal and HP potency. This is the key to achieving a proper stall team. At max level, it should be around ~50% of Helm's healing solo across 2 FB.

Suggested Progression Path

 

PVE Investment

PVP Investment

Priority

Milk (Treasure)

PVE investment

1/1/1 → 4/4/4 → 7/7/4

PVP investment

1/1/1 → 1/1/4 → 1/1/7

Priority

Very Low

Cube Investments

For PvE, you would want cubes that allow her to Full Charge more often. Resilience is your best friend.

For PvP, you would want cubes that increase her survivability, but Adjutant is also a passable alternative for extra Charge Speed if you want to FB faster.

Doll Investments

You need SR 15 to Treasure her. No additional information needed.

Team #1: Fire Team With Water

Burst 1

Burst 2

Burst 3

Burst 3

Burst 3

This team is a mono-Fire team with B1 Water CDR and a B2 CDR, probably useful for beginners who have trouble composing a suitable team for Water-Weak, Fire Weak, Wind Weak or Iron Weak Solo Raids. Rapipi can be substituted in as a superior B3 to any one of the 3 fire units. Dolla and S.Helm usually have less optimal CDR, but with Milk providing an extra push, they now have a competitive CDR rotation for this team. Alternatively, use Grave or something like Rapipi as B3 for more offense.

Team #2: SG Team But With CDR

Burst 1

Burst 2

B2

Burst 3

Flex

Flex

Burst 1

In this team, we utilize extended Full Burst + MilkTr to speed up SG team's rotation a bit. Milk, in the off-burst position, can buff the team's DPS periodically. Despite that, the acceleration is negligible and would instead cost damage due to losing 1 DPS/semi-DPS. However, since SG team is consistently outputting DPS, Milk’s ATK buff is very relevant for them. Not only that, but she can also provide the option of bursting with her once for healing the team if needed. Not the best of teams, but definitely a strong idea.

Team #1: Heal More, Stall Longer

Burst 2

Burst 1

Burst 3

Burst 1

Burst 2

This team uses Milk's lifesteal + HP potency to allow the team to survive longer. She synergizes well with B2 and B3 who fortify the team. Make sure to use HelmTr's B3 for insane lifesteal capabilities. Other stall ideas where more healers such as Maid Anchor, Trina are used may also net positive results.

Team #2: Simple 3RL Nuke

Burst 2

Burst 1

Burst 3

Burst 3

Burst 3

Lifesteal Sanis is insane, because she hits 2 targets with S2 + her auto attack alone making her dishing out tons of paper damage. Those damages will heal her back a lot even with just a moderate amount of lifesteal. Noted that if she hits Immune Nikke, she will heal 0. Noah can be replaced with Bay but then you need Emilia instead of Laplace/XMaiden.