Should You Pull on Avar?
(Still retired, people. This was the last review I had done in advance. Six months in advance… which tells you how late this guy is…)
Foolish Netease. They make a ginger apothecary, which is literally me IRL, and they didn’t buff him. CLEARLY the better choice would have been making him a gigachad, buffing him enough so that all of us forget about FFVI coming soon. But alas….
Avar is an “apothecary”, only called as such because he uses axes instead of sword to kill things with- this guy ain’t a healer. He hits sword/fire/dark with all his attacks, but otherwise lacks any actual elemental skills. Avar’s niche is similar to Signa Ex, in that he has low hit counts, but they hit fairly hard. Instead of massive cap up bonuses she gets, Avar gets several ways to do free follow-up attacks.
**Passives and Skills**
For Avar’s (sadly unbuffed) kit, click here.
Avar’s first passive allows all his attacks to exploit sword/fire/dark as mentioned above. His passive patk/axe damage bonus cap is raised to 50%, and when his LP is active, he doublecasts the skill in slot one at max boost for free. This can be potentially handy for his TP skill, which is a massive single-hit nuke that uses 300SP (why is SQEX in love with these 300SP nukes…)
You’ll note how Avar’s skills have pitifully low hit counts. However, with his sky-strike skill and TP passive FUAs, he’ll hit four times before you do anything else. With his LP giving doublecast, he can hit up to six more times, giving a respectable ten hits.
Avar does have damage cap problems- he only gets 100k, and only when his EX skill is active, which is usable once per fight. As it should be easy for Avar to ram the cap, he’ll benefit from all boosts you can get, especially if you’re using supports like Mydia, Ochette Ex, or Aviete.
**Ultimate and Awakenings**
Avar’s ultimate is integral to his kit. It boosts his potency by up to 150% based on his amount of current BP, while setting his BP to zero. His LP skill, when active, automatically doublecasts your slot one skill at max boost, which gets around that restriction. Basically, you want to use his ult the turn before you break, so Avar doublecasts during both break turns.
For awakenings, being a memory champion unit makes awakenings a luxury. With proper supports, Avar is going to ram the cap all day, every day, so he hardly needs A1. Like most dps units, A2 and A3 are also unnecessary.
His A4 is fairly decent. It gives 70k damage cap, patk/pdef for stats (ew, pdef) while reducing eatk/edef. When equipped by an apothecary, the wielder also exploits spear/bow weakness. 70k cap is good, but when free (and superior) damage cap A4s exist from units like Bargello/Agnea/Hikari/Elrica EX1 and later Yomi, to spend thousands of rubies for this A4 is a terrible idea for all but the most profound gigawhales.
If you happen to get a single dupe, I’d recommend going for AU over A1, as Avar easily hits the damage cap, making A1 of little benefit. You may as well get the second ult use in case you’re two-breaking a fight.
**So Should You Pull?**
Much as I want to suggest you pull for the all-powerful evil ginger, this one is a hard no.
Avar is late. *Very* late, so much that he was expected to be released on half-anniversary and buffed through the ceiling. As it is, his kit is now essentially DOA- physical teams will have their squads already, and the Xerc rainbow teams blew up the meta. While Avar would have had some use against mobs with multi-hit damage reduction, the current MDHR battles are already powercrept (Ryu 120npc), or he’s too weak to help out (Ouma Researcher).
And most importantly, *FFVI is literally next week.* FFVI is one of the highest value banners in the entire history of the game- are you really gonna waste rubies pulling Avar???
**Verdict for Avar:**
F2P: skip
Dolphin: skip
Whales: get the damage cap A4 I guess