How important are Skill Ups?

[Unregistered]

I'm wondering how important skill ups are. Obviously all skills aren't created equal, but I'd appreciate your thoughts in general and in the specifc cases listed below. I've only listed units I have, use frequently and think the skill is attractive, but if you have another unit in mind that NEEDS those skill points, post it as well for the benefit of myself and future readers.

Thanks,

Bernice
Current Skill: 1/5 Increase defense by 40%.
Max Skill: 5 / 5 Increase defense by 80%
Skill Awakening: Spike Shield | 90% Defense increase for 20s| Attack Disabled| Counter Enabled(Deals half the enemies attack back as true damage on hit)
Reasoning: This is currently my main tank. As content gets harder, having a better skill activation seems helpful. A 10% boost with each skill up seems pretty solid from an ROI standpoint and I like her future awakened skill.

Iris
Current Skill: 1 / 5 Increase heal by 20%
Max Skill: 5 / 5 Increase heal by 70%
Skill Awakening: Kind Lil Sis's Prayer: 110%(2nd: 80%; 3rd+: 50%) Attack increase for 30s| Instantly heals all allied units once when activated
Reasoning: Currently my main healer. Increase of 12.5% per skill up seems pretty good. Again, like the awakened skill

Imelia
Current Skill: 5 / 10 Increase attack and def by 72%
Max Skill: 10 / 10 Increase attack and def by 100%
Skill Awakening: None
Reasoning: Now that I've typed it out, not sure I like the ROI. I've heard Imelia is necessary for tanking some of the bosses later in the game.

Others?

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself thinking about Skill Awakening already.

Cheers!

[lolix]

well , there are plenty of skills that are crap but have great SAWs. There are also very good normal skills (generally the ones that increas% of damage/defense ).

It just depends on how your team looks like (aka what units u have) and what do u you want to SAW in the future.

As for imelia , she is a really good duelist. She has a great skill , and barbarian stats.

[Tenhou]

I wouldn't say a lot of units explictly NEED their skill points to remain effective, nor are their skills required to be high to manage most of the game.

Units that are a great investment, aside from those that you want to SAW, are the ones that need their skill in order to remain functional. Solano is a good example of this as she only attacks when her skill is up, thus max skill is a great thing in order to make her usable longer as well as have a shorter downtime. Angels also fall into this category.

Gold units in general though might not be the first thing you should focus to invest in SUing. Plat units with good skills and blacks are the first ones you might want to focus on, especially if you are going to use rainbow fairies. Sure, the extra some golds like Bernice and Iris get from their SU's might be nice, but they're not exactly gamebreaking unless you seem to have a distinct problem in that department.

That said, if rainbow fairies are on the table, consider saving them for the future instead of using them instantly. Extra copies can be used at your own discretion.

[kayfabe]

Olivie is easily among the priority rainbow candidates. 20% can be frustratingly high when you're talking about the chance to be mashed by black oni.

I otherwise mostly concern myself with things that improve attack or defense directly since they generally scale well with skill rank whereas some other great skills like Triple Shot and Call Reinforcements only get you small increases in uptime/activation rate.

[Unregistered]

Olivie, Shizuka, summoners and angels in general are some units that are really dependent on skill lv

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All solid advice. Above all though, I'd just be saving all of my rainbows in barracks until we get SAW implemented and then use them on what your team is lacking for new maps. You might also have better units by then to spend them on.

[IvanLedah21]

Skill-dependent classes: Angels, Summoners
Skill-dependent units: Olivie (sort of, against hard hitting physical enemies that dodge rate REALLY wants to be 100%), Holy Awakening units (Maribel and Emilia but they're both farming event units)

Outside of the above, prioritize Blacks then Plats due to the extreme likelihood you won't be getting duplicates any time soon, or units with skills that are THAT good. Then you can look ahead to Skill AW

note: not all Blacks/Plats deserve skill up priority, a few are too niche for that (like Liana) or not enough ROI (skills that have locked effect/durations like Call for Reinforcements or Nanaly's Quad Shot only allow for reduced CD/initial timer for plats)