Unit Analysis by Team BethelFrankel
Class
Detonator with a potent but frustrating gimmick.
Overall
A-
Advantages
+Self chain-doubling is an incredibly powerful effect (see Benny and Curo, Azure)
+DEF-ignoring damage is increasingly relevant in hard content (worth 1-1.5k extra base damage on many high-end bosses)
Disadvantages
-Active is basically 2CD, and preemptive use is gated by BT2
-Stack building seems rather clunky, as does the set-up to maximize her Puppet trigger
-Incredibly stiff competition in her element
-Manae normals do not get elemental damage bonus, making the payoff for such a janky kit rather underwhelming
Explanation
If Sanae was anything like her fire counterpart (Benny and Curo), she’d be surprisingly potent, but only with proper play. Defense-ignoring damage and double-chaining are two of the strongest damage steroids in the game... but they’re tied to an otherwise janky kit which seems dependent on both BT2 and perfect-physics-world situations that not even thunder’s high-end tile management can account for. Which is to say she's closer to Patty and Patsy -- a unit with frustrating potential. This isn’t to say that she can’t be funny in the instances where you can get her to work, but we’re not sure that she’s close to competing with stuff that’s powerful in more straightforward ways like Tessa, or any of Thunder’s other wildly broken detonators. Keep an eye on this rating, though. This unit is weird, and weird units take much longer to truly evaluate.