Aptitude is often seen as an odd term, as it generally denotes a broad skill or talent. However, in Snowbreak, this word takes on a distinct, specialized meaning-it refers to a weapon enhancement that adds an extra instance of damage when an enemy is hit with a gunshot, thereby enhancing overall firepower. Consequently, an operative could have the ability we call aptitude, but not simply “Aptitude.” Indeed, words’ meanings can be shaped by our own interpretations, don’t you think?

Fritia’s and Siris’s Aptitude abilities haven’t been particularly effective in Snowbreak. Fritia’s Aptitude is more beneficial for activating the Amarna Squad logistics set effects rather than for dealing damage, while Siris’s Aptitude doesn’t even do that. Furthermore, Fenny’s introduction with her bonus ammo mechanic that disables Aptitude buffs hasn’t helped its case either. Overall, Aptitude has not shown much success in Snowbreak beyond some specific game modes and a select number of operatives.

Tess – Phantasia is a character who not only functions as a Ballistic support but also aims to contribute as a secondary DPS. Instead of just boosting the main DPS, she can inflict Aptitude hits and potentially deal some substantial damage this time around. It’s going to be quite challenging for her to pull off both roles effectively, so let’s see how things unfold for her in the end.

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Abilities

Standard Skill

As a gamer, I’ve found Tess’ Magician alt fascinating due to its versatile party tricks. By hitting the skill button, I can toggle the color of the indicator, giving me control over which one I prefer. Once satisfied with my chosen color, I hold down the skill, activating that specific color’s effect. Each color has a unique action associated with it – three distinct tricks to keep things interesting!

The green apple restores Tess’ S-Energy over time while also providing her and nearby allies with a movement speed boost. For obvious reasons, the usual S-Energy cost of this skill is negated here.
The gold apple deals a hit of AoE damage to enemies, knocking them up and also marking them for five seconds. When Tess then shoots a marked enemy, all other marked enemies take Frost damage as well, making this kind of a diet version of Chenxing – Ethereal Cloud’s standard skill.
The red apple provides Tess with a Frost Aptitude buff, making her shots deal bonus Frost damage while the buff is in effect.

Typically, I comment on the basic abilities of most support agents being sufficient enough to avoid being a detriment in a main DPS role. However, Tess stands out and deserves more recognition due to her unique skills, particularly the Aptitude buff, delivering surprisingly high DPS output for a support character. If I were to create a tier list for support DPS, she’d likely be among the top or very close to it.

Support Skill

Tess essentially functions as a support character and her unique ability, Glimmerburst, can be thought of as Frost Aptitude. In essence, it’s just a name for this ability, and its primary function is to boost your damage output, or DPS. However, it technically inflicts the damage itself. It’s also worth noting that the power of the Aptitude depends on Tess’ stats, not the main damage dealer’s stats. Furthermore, with Neuronics active, Tess’ attack is increased, which is significant because the strength of the Aptitude scales according to her stats.

When you activate Tess’ ability, there’s an extended animation that moves the camera far away from your target. It can be quite distracting when I’m trying to aim at enemies, Tess. Although Vidya – Celestial Swan has a similar issue with its lengthy skill animation, Tess’ doesn’t pause the mission timer. Interestingly enough, this is just like her original alter ego. It seems that some aspects remain consistent. Sigh.

The paraphrased version aims to keep the original meaning while simplifying and making it more natural for easy reading.

By the way, there’s one more detail. Once Glimmerburst accumulates 100 Aptitude hits, Tess places a Frostbite debuff on the targeted enemy. This debuff inflicts minimal damage over two seconds, but its primary value lies in its interaction with her ultimate ability.

Ultimate Skill

Tess’ ultimate ability expands over a vast region, enhancing allied Ballistic damage and amplifying the power of her Glimmerburst Aptitude as well, for a duration of twelve seconds. However, one aspect of her ultimate’s neuronics extends its duration indefinitely until manually deactivated. The other neuronic feature causes the area of effect to track around you, providing a convenient advantage.

Each time an enemy gets Frostbite, the duration of Glimmerburst gets extended by three seconds. If you manage to apply Frostbite frequently, the Glimmerburst bonus can last indefinitely (a useful tip: it does!). It’s worth noting that her ultimate ability also produces a significant amount of visual distraction, which can be frustrating at times.

[Screenshot]

On several instances while playing Snowbreak, I’ve noticed noticeable lag or frame drops. It seems this could be the trade-off for boosting your Damage Per Second (DPS).

Deiwos Passive

the damage boost is multiplied by two in their case.

…There’s not much more to add on this topic. Was I supposed to extend the text for some reason?

Assessment

Employing Tess in battle is quite straightforward. Activate her ultimate ability, follow up with her supportive skill, and essentially, she’ll take care of herself until you need to utilize her supportive skill again (if the situation arises). It doesn’t get much more simple than that. However, it’s crucial to use her ultimate skill first, which I will discuss in detail later on.

Regarding her abilities, Tess offers a distinct method of assistance, differentiating herself from both traditional supports like Vidya – Celestial Swan and non-traditional damage dealers such as Marian – Riptide. Unlike Vidya, she doesn’t amplify the team’s power significantly, but neither does she require on-field time to inflict damage like Marian. Instead, her strategy revolves around leveraging the main DPS of the team to boost her own damage output by capitalizing on their gunfire with a subsequent strike. This approach allows the main DPS more screen time compared to traditional support characters, although it does have the downside of limiting the number of operatives who can effectively utilize Tess due to the need for synergy in terms of gameplay mechanics (as Aptitude requires shooting) and team composition, as historical design choices impact her efficiency.

Weapons

As a seasoned gamer, I’ve noticed that Tess’ iconic weapon, the Valiant Heart, truly outshines the free-to-farm alternative, the Confetti Chroma. But here’s where things get interesting – it’s not for the reasons you’d typically expect.

In terms of primary damage-dealing enhancement potential, Confetti Chroma stands out by offering an Attack and percentage Ballistic Damage increase. Notably, Valiant Heart lacks the Attack buff that Confetti Chroma provides. Instead, Valiant Heart offers a teamwide percentage Ballistic Damage boost, percentage Ballistic Defense penetration, and yet another percentage Ballistic Damage boost. To summarize, Confetti Chroma specializes in Attack and multiple Ballistic Damage enhancements, while Valiant Heart focuses on team-wide Ballistic Damage and Defense penetration enhancements.

…full squad’s Ballistic DMG and Frost aptitude DMG dealt to the target increases by 18/30%…

In simpler terms, the damage buff you’re seeing isn’t the usual one provided by a character’s signature weapon. Instead, it’s a common type of damage increase, not the percentage of damage taken reduction that you might anticipate. Interestingly, Seasun used similar wording in the past with Enya’s signature weapon, Abyssal Light, but there it referred to a damage taken reduction. Quite intriguing, isn’t it?

In simpler terms, while Valiant Heart and Confetti Chroma both boost damage, they do it differently. Valiant Heart’s boost accumulates additively instead of multiplying, meaning its overall strength isn’t significantly greater than that of Confetti Chroma. To put it into perspective, at T2 (second tier), Valiant Heart offers a 12% lower boost compared to T5 (fifth tier) Confetti Chroma. At its lowest level, T1, the difference in boosting power narrows down to only 1-2%.

Although Valiant Heart may not be as strong in boosting main DPS, it compensates by enhancing Tess’s Aptitude damage. This enhancement includes bonus damage and defense penetration percentages, along with a more robust stat line, making Tess’s Aptitude deal significantly more damage than with Confetti Chroma.

Valiant Heart works such that when an enemy gets hit by an Aptitude effect, they receive Frostbite. The same Frostbite effect as Tess’ support skill, and one that prolongs the duration of said support skill whenever it’s applied. This implies a potential infinite duration for Tess’ support skill, which is quite advantageous. Confetti Chroma can also inflict Frostbite, but only once every 200 Aptitude hits, clearly not as effective. Essentially, while Valiant Heart doesn’t offer a substantial buffing edge, the enhancement to Tess’ personal damage and skill availability makes it a wise choice.

It’s admittedly an unorthodox approach, but I guess you can’t argue with results.

Manifests

In simpler terms, Tess’ abilities primarily aim to enhance her own ability to inflict damage, but she also offers some supportive bonuses. Notably, her second manifest causes the enemies hit by her ability to take a percentage of the damage back, thus increasing both Tess’ and the main character’s damage output. This feature sets her apart among her abilities and is where most players might want to focus.

Absolutely, the remaining Manifests she has can continue offering increased damage potential for those who seek to deal even higher damages.

Logistics

Not surprisingly, Tess’ assigned squad, Arcane Squad, proves to be exceptional and is likely to attract most other supports in the game if not character-bound to her. It enhances Tess’ personal damage, boosting her Aptitude damage even further. Additionally, it offers a teamwide percentage Ballistic Damage buff that escalates with each successful Aptitude hit, providing supportive benefits. While her ultimate is activated, it also grants a teamwide percentage ATK buff, serving as an additional advantage and essentially improving upon Amarna Squad.

Concerning the recent attack boost, I advised you to activate Tess’ ultimate before her support ability because the boost doesn’t get applied to Tess if you use the support ability first, even after she uses her ultimate. It’s unclear why Seasun coded it this way, but remembering this can help you avoid an easy mistake.

In simpler terms, Tess doesn’t require shooting stats nor defensive stats due to not needing to shoot and having no issues with U-Energy or S-Energy. Moreover, her abilities have minimal cooldowns, which can effectively be zero if they never end. To me, this suggests focusing on increasing her Attack power and Alignment Index would be beneficial.

For a more detailed examination of various weapons and logistics sets, as well as a tool to assist you in fine-tuning your equipment, refer to the additional resources provided.

Team Building

In pairs as dual agents, Tess naturally works exceptionally well with her partner, Katya. That’s correct.

Tess, being designed to work effectively with Katya – Rhapsody due to her rapid-fire capability allowing for numerous Aptitude hits in a short time, enhancing Tess’s overall usefulness. This same logic extends to the older Katya – Blue Bolt as well. Interestingly, even Katya’s “middle child”, Dawnwing, works surprisingly well with Tess. Although Dawnwing is a Skill-based DPS, she needs to fire consistently to activate her Crystal Vanes for damage, creating an opportunity for Tess’s Aptitude to inflict damage. Although not many players use her nowadays, this synergy also applies to Lyfe – Wild Hunt, ensuring that Tess has at least one non-Katya DPS partnership.

In simpler terms, using Tess in conjunction with Crystal Vane offers a noticeable improvement in performance, but it’s important to note that the damage dealt by Crystal Vane itself isn’t significantly increased due to most of the boost originating from Tess’ own damage output. This means that during shorter battles where Dawnwing’s ultimate ability quickly activates Crystal Vane, Tess becomes less beneficial. However, for regular gameplay and lengthier matches such as Supreme Battleground, this combo is not a bad choice overall.

Unfortunately, Tess’ effectiveness tends to peak when the primary Damage Per Second (DPS) member of the team consistently lands shots. However, she doesn’t complement skill-based DPS operatives very well, such as Tess herself or Chenxing – Jade Arc. Chenxing primarily shoots to stack arrows on enemies for her ultimate ability, but usually, only a few stacked arrows are needed to eliminate an enemy. In most situations, even just the single arrow embedded by her standard skill is sufficient after it weakens any targets it hits. This less-than-ideal synergy between Tess and high-tier DPS Chenxing is unfortunately not in her favor.

In terms of team compositions, it’s worth noting that Tess faces two significant challenges. Firstly, she cannot be paired with Fenny – Starshine because Starshine’s bonus ammo temporarily disables Tess’s Aptitude effects. If Tess offered a more substantial damage increase, you could swap out Starshine for her, but there’s a problem: a top-tier detective character, Vidya – Celestial Swan, performs optimally in mono-element teams. This isn’t an issue with Starshine as she doesn’t deal direct damage, but Tess’s Frost Aptitude means that her effectiveness with non-Frost damage dealers significantly reduces the benefits you can get from Vidya in a team.

In simpler terms, Tess isn’t likely to make much impact in this situation because her primary advantage – the buff she gives – contributes only a minimal proportion of the total damage compared to Bubu’s significant individual shot damage.

As a fan, I find Lyfe – Infinite Sight, with its rapid-fire abilities yet moderate per-shot damage, to be a fantastic DPS choice for Tess. At lower investment levels, it even surpasses the combination of Vidya – Celestial Swan and Fenny – Starshine. However, once investments are made and signature weapons are acquired, this edge fades as Vidya’s raw buffing power becomes more pronounced.
Additionally, the absence of Starshine requires you to manually load Lyfe instead, an action that’s rarely enjoyable and inevitably results in lost time for simulation enthusiasts.

It’s surprising when top-tier support units lose their effectiveness in a team with mixed elements, making it challenging to build teams with operatives that don’t deal high damage. However, if Vidya isn’t present or you use her on another team, these problems vanish, and Tess becomes comparable to other supports. Regrettably, when both issues occur, at this moment in time, Tess is primarily useful when paired with Katya for a DPS lineup. Fortunately, there are three such characters available, I suppose.

Should You Pull?

Tess primarily operates within a unique niche, specializing in working with a particular kind of DPS operative. Additionally, she often aligns herself with Vidya – Celestial Swan, a circumstance that suggests compatibility with only one element type. It’s important to note that Tess is not easily adaptable and should be carefully integrated into a team for optimal results.

However, it’s important to note that when she is working, she excels significantly. The enhancement she gives Katya – Rhapsody currently positions Katya as a top-tier DPS in competitive play. As a result, Tess remains relevant at the highest levels of competition. Moreover, the damage boost she provides directly, rather than through buffs, reduces the impact of diminishing returns on her DPS pairings. This could potentially ensure their compatibility with future support updates, ensuring they remain effective in the long term.

Instead of Tess’ usual role being supported by the DPS operators, it’s more accurate to say she relies on them, making her appear more like an “accent” in the team. Compared to other recent support releases, she stands out as one of the most specialized, yet lacks unique features such as Mauxir’s shadow access or Fenny’s bonus ammo mechanics, and even the U-Energy battery that her original Magician exosuit provided. As a result, Tess requires a compatible DPS to support, ideally one that is currently in the meta.

To put it simply, if you’re a more relaxed player, Tess could be an ideal ‘set-and-forget’ support character. As long as she can effectively shoot enemies in Snowbreak, she will undoubtedly serve some purpose for you. However, for those aiming to achieve the highest DPS (Damage Per Second) and test their skills in Neural Simulation, it would be more beneficial to view her as an additional enhancement for a DPS character you already possess or intend to acquire. Her T1 signature weapon, Valiant Heart, is also highly recommended due to its skill uptime increase, so it might be prudent to consider this part of the overall package.

In the long run, it seems Aptitude might not be functioning as intended. Even though bringing up this point after the release of Katya – Rhapsody may seem humorous, it’s worth noting that the amount of gunfire in Snowbreak has significantly decreased over time. Operatives specializing in skill damage have gained prominence and shifted towards ability-based strategies almost exclusively. Some operatives can complete missions without discharging a single bullet from their weapons.

Among Ballistic DPS operatives, Chenxing – Jade Arc currently dominates the meta, often winning Sim battles with minimal shot usage, even before reaching the full Ballistic Damage buff potential offered by Tess’ logistics set. In most other content, she typically relies on her standard skill for victory. It seems that Snowbreak is gradually distancing itself from its initial third-person-shooter gameplay style.

In this situation, I believe Tess consistently performs well. She may not revolutionize the game, but she excels in her specialized niche as a competent Aptitude support. While she’s not a game-changing character like some supports of the past, she does exactly what you’d expect from her. For DPS operatives she collaborates with, she truly shines in her role and delivers an impressive performance that highlights her natural aptitude for it.

Supplementary Material

Link to spreadsheet

Features weapons analysis, growth projection modeling for manifests, extra damage comparison, and an optimized logistics calculator.

Cheat Sheet

2025-08-19 20:08

Tess – Phantasia: Ice, Ice, Maybe?