Should you pull Corvus?

• Do you not have Lucy, or a team that’s good in Mane’s Bulletin?
• Are you not planning to pull for Brume?
• Do you like her design?

Holy textwall.

Despite the unholy amount of text in her kit, Corvus herself is pretty simple on the surface and slots into the Dynamo Archetype. Her kit revolves around ramping damage by generating stacks of [Electric Arc] and then transforming them into [Flickering Arc]. Both of these are stackable ATK buffs with a maximum count of 60 and 240 respectively. Both her basic Incantations work towards ramping these buffs, but Corvus only transforms stacks of [Electric Arc] into [Flickering Arc] when a [Pulsing Field LV.3] Array ends.

“Arc-Threaded Shot” is a simple damage tool that generates [Electric Arc] and inflicts [Breaking Point], a key debuff in her kit. This stacking Neg Status is consumed when “Sew It All Up” is cast as part of Corvus’ Ultimate or Channel to generate additional [Electric Arc].

“Rosy Cracks” causes Corvus to enter the [Stitchting] Channel and inflict [Welding] on the target. This Channel makes Corvus cast “Sew It All Up” at the end of the round, scaling with the level of [Pulsing Field] present. The [Welding] debuff, on the other hand, reduces Mental DEF up to 50% and grants Corvus extra [Electric Arc] on-hit.

Her Ultimate, “Stitch the Fleeting into Eternity” is a single target nuke that inflicts [Breaking Point] and then immediately casts an instance of “Sew It All Up” for big damage.

There’s a lot of moving parts in this kit, so let’s break the stitches down and see how it unravels:

• Corvus banks on her [Electric Arc] and [Flickering Arc] ATK (and Ultimate Might) buffs (which scale up to 18% and 72% respectively) as her only form of self-buffing. The only way to generate [Flickering Arc] is when a [Pulsing Field LV.3] Array ends.
• The second part of her self-support is [Welding], which can only be applied to a single enemy and starts at -1% Mental DEF, further reducing 1% Mental DEF with every hit up to -50% total on a single enemy.

With the seams undone, the problems with Corvus’ kit rise to the surface.

To get the full effect of her [Flickering Arc], you are required to wait 3 rounds for [Pulsing Field] to end several times to cap out the stack count. This forces you to ramp for over 15 rounds just to get the full effects of the buffs. Most stages have 15 rounds as their max amount of turns, meaning you exclusively get to use the maxed out [Flickering Arc] in content like Mane’s Bulletin.

Make no mistake, when you have [Flickering Arc] and [Welding] fully stacked (and while in a [Dynamo] team) Corvus comes close to hitting the current damage ceiling in terms of output. The other part is that you’re never actually going to achieve this in standard content. She is even harsher than on-release Windsong in this, who at least dealt significant damage even on short rotations; Corvus doesn’t do this, and will not really deal damage until you stack her buffs.

The flip side being that she still does respectable damage in shorter content, and that if you manage to fully attend to her needs that you will have one of the strongest Carries on your hands (so we can’t really rate her low). She, however, is designed for endless-mode content.

Gameplay

At this point just wait for Brume, who deals more damage than her.

Corvus, despite her faults and loads of text, is a very simple Carry. You set up her Channel with “Rosy Cracks”, pick the target you want to ruin with [Welding] and start hitting with “Arc-Threaded Shot” and “Sew It All Up” EAs in between while upkeeping the Channel with recasts until you get 240 stacks of [Flickering Arc]... After which you just continue casting as you would do normally.

An opening rotation in her BiS team would likely be:

1. “Advice From The Dead” (Charon) > “Rosy Cracks” > “Scanning Mode” (Ulrich) > Brown Noise “Ulrich”
2. “New Blooms of Life” (Charon) > Ulrich Incantation > “Rosy Cracks” > “Arc-Threaded Shot”

From there the idea is to upkeep the team’s Channels and cycle between Ulrich and Corvus casts (given priority to Corvus if you want her damage optimized). Your sustain unit should be someone who can get by on little to no AP, so look for things like Marsha, Kiperina and Ezra Theodore.

Corvus is quite AP-negative, as you realistically want to cast as much as possible with her to avoid having to wait 3000 years just to stack her [Flickering Arc].

Pros & Cons

Corvus is complete at Portrait 0.

Vertical investment is only recommended if you really like her, as there are limited viable Portraits (though the ones that are useful are very good).

• Portrait 2 increases the frequency of “Sew It All Up” casts, significantly boosting her damage output even while not fully stacked.
• Portrait 5 significantly increases her [Electric Arc] generation, and raises the stack caps of [Electric Arc] and [Flickering Arc] from 60 to 80 and 240 to 320 respectively. This decreases her ramping time while significantly her damage potential. However, it is a 5th Portrait.

Corvus synergizes with AP-positive characters and falls into the Dynamo category.

• Core: Charon
• Bloodtithe: Ulrich, Brume, Ezra Theodore(E1)
• Other: Flutterpage, Argus(E)

On the Hand of Time

Bitter March of the Living

Stray Off the Path

Balance, Please

Never-Ending Q&A

• On the Hands of Time is the best option for Corvus. [Stitching]'s basically permanent uptime means she gets 14%/28% Penetration Rate the whole battle. At P0, she needs to cast her ultimate a couple times to stack up all 18%/36% Critical DMG, as she only casts [Sew It All Up] once per turn with her channel (P2 speeds this up considerably).
• Bitter March of the Living is Corvus' signature psychube and offers 16% Critical Rate, 12/24% Ultimate Might, and 8.4/18% DMG Dealt. This is a decent substitute if you want to keep On the Hands of Time on Ulrich. Additionally, if you’re in a fight where you’re actually going to ramp up to the cap of [Flickering Arc], this becomes her best chube.
• Stray Off the Path offers its full benefits since Corvus and Argus share a few traits: a guaranteed end-of-turn extra action and a purely 1-target kit. 16% Critical Rate, 12/24% Incantation Might for [Sew It All Up], and 18/36% Critical DMG are great for Corvus, though she benefits from Ultimate Might more. This is also a good alternative if you have it built.
• Balance, Please grants a solid 18% Ultimate Might and 12–24% DMG Bonus in most scenarios. Kind of a pain to switch out when you're up against a Spirit Afflatus enemy, though.
• Never-Ending Q&A can grant as much Ultimate Might as her signature (12–24%), but it requires 4 Ultimates to stack up, so this is better for long stages. The 10% ATK is good, but starts running into diminishing returns since Corvus has so much ATK in her kit.

Resonances

Pattern (Elucidation): ATQANAI+ID4wKRUqBEAkOEI7UCpAQlVEVPQ0

No Pattern: AADQANAI+ID4wKRUqBEAkOEI7UCpAQlVEVPQ0

A few suggestions are listed below. 3-People teams are highlighted, with the 4th slot added at the side to provide a 4-P variation of the same team or even insights on possible variations of the 3-P team.

Standard Teams

Thomas the TANK Engine[GLB]

Damage Dealer

Support

Sustain

TEAM EXPLANATION

• 4th slot options: Ulrich
• Euphorias: None
• Generally a Mane’s Bulletin team due to Corvus’ focus on her long ramp up time, this is a fairly standard Dynamo set-up focused on stacking [Pulsing Field] to level 3 as quickly as possible. This is especially important on Corvus, who only generates [Flickering Arc] when a maxed out [Pulsing Field] ends. With Ulrich and especially Charon generating more than enough Dynamo with her to accomplish this, it frees up the Sustain slot for someone like Fatutu to help optimize Corvus’ damage with her FUA debuffs.
• Charon is pretty simple here. He doesn’t really require any AP investment, which is good because everything will be going to Ulrich and Corvus (who need it, both of them are greedy). Beyond that he offers [Fear of Death], one of the best debuffs in the game, and [Peaceful Soul] for additional damage.
• Ulrich’s placement is also quite obvious, but he generally gets swapped out for Brume once she releases (though Brume on her own is a whole different beast). This is mostly due to Brume dealing way too much damage and also being less restrictive in her rotation than Ulrich is.
• Fatutu is mostly there because Corvus benefits from AP-positive units and because [Spirit Shell] considerably buffs “Sew It All Up”. If you don’t have either Ulrich or Charon (if you have neither, I don’t recommend pulling Corvus to begin with), it is possible to swap one of them out for an AP-positive support and then putting Ezra Theodore(E1) as Dynamo supplement.
• Other useful supports that can flex into this team are:
• Mercuria because of her tendency to AFK (and provide buffs free of AP).
• Flutterpage through her synergy with FUAs and easy access to [Continuous Action I] for extra AP.
• Brume for her damage output, Dynamo generation and generally her versatility (though genuinely you’d probably throw her into the Damage Dealer slot over Corvus at that point).
• Kassandra for her relatively AP-positive buffing and decent personal damage.
• Kakania because Kakania.