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A complete guide on playing as a Viessa character in The First Descendant, including her class skills, role, and everything you should know.
Viessa Character (Class) Overview
In the First Descendant, Viessa is a basic support character who can inflict debuffs on enemies and produce crowd control effects. Her abilities are all centered around the element of ice, and her cold effects can often freeze targets in place. Players will need to familiarize themselves with the Ice Shackle mechanic and status effect. Building “stacks” increases Viessa’s effectiveness in combat and is core to the character.
Viessa Character (Class) Features in The First Descendant:
- Role: Debuffer
- Feature: Viessa has the ability to freeze Vulgus using water in the atmosphere.
- Battle Concept: She immobilizes enemies with cold air, and occasionally freezes them up herself, going around the battlefield.
- Pros: Crowd control and Enemy Debuffs
- Cons: Low Damage Output
- Passive Skill: Ice Sphere
- Active Skills: Frost Shards, Frost Road, Ice Wave
- Ultimate Ability: Cold Snap
- How to Unlock: Chosen as a starting character, bought in-store, or crafted
In The First Descendant, characters are your classes, and each possesses unique skills, passives, and ultimate abilities. You have three base game characters: Viessa, Ajax, and Lepic. Moreover, as you progress, you can unlock additional characters through research and crafting them.
The First Descendant class system resembles games like Destiny 2 and Warframe. You will have three standard abilities with cooldowns based on their power. Additionally, you can also use multiple guns and accessories to develop your build. Furthermore, each class has its pros and cons and optimal usage. In this First Descendant guide, we will describe how to play the Viessa character, how to unlock her, and who would enjoy this class playstyle.
Should you play Viessa in The First Descendant?
Players will enjoy using Viessa if they like ice theme characters with crowd control and status effect damage. Viessa could be a fun support character if you already have a friend or two to group up with for the leveling progression. However, if you’re getting into The First Descendant solo, then playing through missions, leveling, and acquiring mods will be a more difficult grind. As a supporting character, Viessa’s primary function is to debuff enemies. She can also provide a lot of crowd control for a group.
Consequently, she can help boost the damage other party members are producing. Which is great if you have a solid team to play with. However, Viessa doesn’t deal much damage on her own. This means if you are playing her solo, encounters will last longer, and bosses will be difficult to burn down.
Who is Viessa? – Story
Viessa was once part of a smuggler organization, but the group was caught and disbanded by the Albion Posse. As punishment, she was sent to the Snowfield of Dawn. To be reinstated as a citizen, she would have to work as a digger there for an unspecified amount of time. The Snowfield of Dawn was the location of buried Colossi, which were being unearthed to study them.
However, tragedy struck when one of the Colossus there awakened and buried everyone in a deluge of snow. Viessa was the sole survivor, barely rescued in a weakened state. Afterward, during her treatment, her Arche was triggered and she began to transform. Consequently, she is now a valued member of the Descendant Corps.
How to Play Viessa – Character Gameplay
The best way to play Viessa is by building stacks of Ice Shackles and then releasing the Ice Shackles with Ice Wave for massive area damage. Viessa can buff her running speed and zip around the battlefield, engaging in close-quarters fights to trigger Ice Shackle stacks. Releasing them for the most damage and AOE possible at max stacks produces the best results.
Viessa’s gameplay centers around building stacks of Ice Shackle on enemies. Ice Shackle is a condition that decreases an enemy’s speed, and the more stacks you build the slower enemies get. Additionally, built-up stacks of Ice Shackle will cause the effect to last longer. However, Ice Shackle does not affect all enemies, including boss monsters, making Viessa much less effective in certain scenarios.
Area Damage and Single-Target Damage: use your Frost Road skill and come in contact with enemies to increase Ice Shackle. Once at max stacks, release via the Ice Wave or Cold Snap skill for the most AOE possible. Next, use Frost Shards beam on a single target.
Movement and Speed: Viessa is agile on the battlefield, and can use her Frost Road ability to also increase her movement speed for a limited time. Using this at opportune moments will be a great way to avoid damage on the battlefield.
Bosses and Ultimates: Viessa can be an important part of a team when you effectively apply her debuffs and crowd control. However, this does make her less effective against bosses, which are generally taken down via high DPS burns. Additionally, Ice Shackle, her main debuff which can decrease enemy speed, does not work on all monsters, including some bosses.
Defenses and Survival Tips: Frost Road also increases her Energy Shield. Moreover, with its increase in movement speed, Frost Road makes for a great defensive ability overall. A great way to build protection and get out of trouble fast if needed.
How to Unlock Viessa in The First Descendant?
To unlock Viessa in The First Descendant, choose her as your starting character, purchase her from the store, or research her. If you pick another character at the start of the game, you can choose Viessa later to gain access to the character. Furthermore, to craft Viessa, you will need:
- Viessa Enhanced Cells
- Repton x422
- Semiconstant Plasma x290
- Fusion Plasma Battery x35
- Viessa Enhanced Cell Blueprint
- 200,000 Gold
- Viessa Stabilizer
- Compound Coating Material x239
- Monomolecular Extractor x499
- Common Carbon Activator x15
- 200,000 Gold
- Viessa Spiral Catalyst
- Superfluid x571
- Hardener x3867
- Synthesized Artificial Biometal x88
- Viessa Spiral Catalyst Blueprint x1
- Viessa Code
Furthermore, to research and craft Viessa, you must speak to Anais in the Albion Mountains. She will grant you access to the Research Institute, where you can choose to craft additional descendant characters. Additionally, there is an ultimate Viessa character to unlock, but it will require more farming and is an advanced character.
Viessa Passive and Active Skills
All characters in The First Descendant have one passive skill, three active skills and an ultimate to choose from. In this First Descendant: Viessa Character and How to Play the Class Guide, we’ll list all her skills and their effects.
- Passive skills: Passive buffs and bonuses are automatically applied or under certain conditions.
- Active and Ultimate skills: These are activated by a player (effects on demand) and vary by character. Each character has unique skills to match their role and playstyle.
Passive Skill
Ice Sphere – Upon using a skill to have an enemy enter a certain Ice Shackle stage, creates an Ice Sphere that flies around nearby. The Ice Sphere that is created flies at a nearby enemy, dealing damage to the hit enemy and AOE damage to nearby enemies. The hit target is inflicted with Ice Shackle.
Usage – you’ll want to be close to enemies to trigger this effect and create ice spheres that attack enemies on your behalf. These can only be triggered around every 15 seconds depending on gear. Moreover, you can reduce enemies’ speed and lock them in place for a massive AOE nuke.
Active Skills
Frost Shards – Fires Frost Shards to deal damage to hit enemies and AOE damage to nearby enemies. Inflicts Ice Shackle on hit targets.
- Usage – this is your single target ability that triggers shackle. It has a low MP cost and cooldown and triggers Ice Shackel effect, so it’s your primary ability.
Frost Road – When cast grants Frost Road state for a certain period of time. Frost Road increases own Movement Speed and Energy Shield, and creates Ice Sheets where her feet touch the ground. Inflicts Ice Shackle on enemies that come into contact with the Ice Sheets.
- Usage – Frost Road is your mobility and defensive tool to zip out of combat and get cover while imposing Ice Shackle status effect.
Cold Snap – Spews Chill towards the front. Inflicts damage and Ice Shackle on enemies that come into contact with Chill.
- Usage – Cold Snap is a good area damage tool that is increased based on your skill power.
Ultimate Skill
Blizzard – Creates a Blizzard that remains active for a certain period of time. Enemies engulfed by the Blizzard receive continuous damage, become inflicted with Ice Shackle, and their DEF decreases. When the Blizzard disappears, it inflicts AOE damage and Ice Shackle on nearby enemies.
- Usage – this skill is your main nuke which has a long cooldown but deals damage every 2 seconds during its duration.
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