SoukakuBuild and Guide

Soukaku is an A-Rank Melee Ice Support Agent having a versatile kit with focus on self and teamwide damage increase. As a powerful Support unit, while she boosts all types of allies via her buffs, Ice based characters are particularly benefited, allowing her to be run as a good all rounder or very strong specialist.

Her kit revolves around generation and usage of “Vortex Stacks” , a resource exclusive to her. These stacks enhance her Signature ability, Fly the Flag (also referred to Special Attack: Rally! In her kit). Doing so enhances her personal and teamwide buffing abilities significantly and should be a priority to do so in combat.

Despite being primarily played as a support, she has decent personal damage when built, and can be played as DPS if you can acquire multiple mindscapes for her.

Lets kick off her skill analysis with her most important ability as mentioned above - Fly the Flag. This ability is present all over her kit and can be accessed in myriad of ways but always keeps the same functionality. Upon its execution, Soukaku slams her flag into ground and channels an Ice Storm, giving herself an Attack buff from her Core Passive and immediately triggering a Quick Assist for next teammate. Many of her Passives and attacks interact with this ability and will be covered later in the review, but first here is the list of all ways in which Fly the Flag can be activated:

• Press and Hold Special Attack.

• Press and Hold Special Attack after EX Special Attack: Fanning Mosquitoes.

• Press and Hold Special Attack after Assist Follow-Up: Sweeping Strike.

• Automatically cast as a part of Chain Attack: Pudding Slash.

• Automatically cast as a part of Ultimate: Jumbo Pudding Slash.

Before Fly the Flag is activated, aim at achieving 3 Vortex Stacks (Only 2 required if activating Fly the Flag with her Chain Attack or Ultimate skill) to trigger both of her Passive Abilities. Her Core Passive is the more powerful of the two and reads as: “When Soukaku uses Fly the Flag, her ATK is increased by 20%, up to a cap of 500. Consuming 3 stacks of Vortex during Fly the Flag doubles this bonus to 1000.” This self buff can be transferred by Soukaku to an ally of choice via a Quick Assist or Chain Attack, offering a tremendous boost in their damage. A point to note, When transferring via Quick Assist, the ally buffed will be the one directly after Soukaku in turn order, whereas with her Chain Attack, simply continuing the Chain with intended character after her will suffice.

Her Additional Ability, while strong, is much more specialized, increasing Ice Damage by 20% for 22 seconds, consuming 3 Stacks of Vortex Stacks. You will earn this bonus regardless, but it is only relevant for her personal damage unless running an Ice team.

As discussed, in order to maximize her kits benefits, You must execute 3 Vortex Stack infused Fly the Flags often, thus making it important to build and spend Vortex Stacks efficiently as fast as possible, with that said - Lets dive into her kit!

Her Basic Attacks are divided into two forms, first being a Physical damage variant, and second being her Frosted Banner form - only accessible after 3 Vortex Stacks consumption. While neither is used when playing her as a Support, here are what they do in case you are planning to play her a DPS.

Physical damage variant, features low multipliers and should be never used. Frosted Banner attacks on the other hand feature high damage multipliers but at the price of having limited Charges per Frosted Banner state - 6 attacks, 12 if she has Mindscape 6. Thus, with such high damage multipliers, gaining and maintaining her Frosted Banner state is vital if planning to deal damage with her outside of her basic Support rotation.

Her un-enhanced Special Attacks are not worth using, but energy consuming enhanced EX Special Attack is. Her EX Special Attack has two parts: Fanning Mosquitoes and Rally! (being Fly the Flag discussed above). Fanning Mosquitoes launches an Air Current in front of her that deals decent damage and applies Ice Anomaly at cost of 30 Energy per cast. It can be used for a total of 3 times in succession and provides her with Vortex Stack every cast. Additionally, for the duration of attack, she takes 40% reduced damage and increases her Anti-Interrupt level. An interesting point is that regardless of total casts, she will always end this attack with an overhead smash, unless the Special Attack button is held down by the player at the end of combo. This attack is by far the best way to generate Vortex Stacks for her, depending on your playstyle for Soukaku, you will want to execute at least 2-3 uses of this skill. If desired, she can also cast the Fanning part of her Special Attack, before enemies have spawned in Shiyu Defense mode to save time required to build Vortex Stacks in the middle of combat for first Fly the Flag usage.

Her Assists are similar to other Melee Agents, providing decent Daze, damage and Anomaly application. However, her Assist Follow-Ups can trigger Fly the Flag, making it a valuable tool to prevent buff downtime and reduce reliance on long EX Special Attack sequences, Chain Attacks or using her Ultimate.

Her Ultimate deals some damage and increases her Critical Hit Rate but generally isn’t used when run as Support with other DPS, limiting its usage to when Soukaku is played as main DPS, where it can be quite strong.

Her Chain Attack, deals moderate damage, Daze and also generates Vortex Stack, something only her EX Special Attack and Ultimate do at baseline usually. This means as long as she can gather 2 Vortex Stacks, she can gain the third via Chain Attack to trigger full power Fly the Flag alongside all her buffs, making it one of most effective methods to provide the 1000 Attack boost to her teammates. With this in mind, the most common combo used when playing Soukaku as Support is:

• EX Special Attack: Cooling Bento (Generates 1 Vortex Stack).

• EX Special Attack: Cooling Bento (Generates 1 Vortex Stack).

• Chain Attack: Pudding Slash (Generates 1 Vortex Stack and then immediately consumes all 3)

• Team Mate Quick Assist.

When executing the combo above, it is best to briefly remain on field to execute two EX Special Attacks, before Swapping to other teammates until Soukaku’s Chain Attack is ready.

Soukaku thrives in both Ice-based teams as well as general compositions thanks to her universal Attack buff. Her gameplay primarily revolves around managing Vortex Stacks and maximizing her Fly the Flag ability. Understanding her rotations, timing her EX Special Attacks and making full use of her Quick Assists is key to mastering Soukaku. As such, whether as a Support or a DPS, she offers exceptional utility that elevates overall performance of her team significantly when played correctly.