Q build, teams and tier

Overview

Q is a character that tries to do a little bit of everything, but doesn’t excel at anything in particular. He’s primarily a tank with a currently unique ability to avoid attacks while attacking himself, with decent damage and break numbers to boot. Unfortunately, he doesn’t excel at anything in particular, and has stiff competition in more easily accessible and F2P options. Characters who are more dedicated at damaging or breaking will easily outperform him, and his tanking is hard to apply due to his heavy reliance on manual operation because of his extremely terrible AI performance. If you’re looking for a more aggressive, damaging tank and don’t mind piloting him yourself, Q does his job quite well.

Primary Attack

Typical 3 stage melee attack. A bit slow with a decent frontal cleave radius. Normally, that’d be the end of it, but because of Q’s unique Berserk state, his primary attacks gain counter attack properties at the cost of one Madness when it activates. The first two attacks gain evasive properties, allowing Q to attack through enemies. The third attack gains deflect properties, letting Q “counterattack” while attacking. This is actually pretty important, as Q lacks a normal deflect counterattack. Unfortunately, the first two hits make this generally unrealistic to do, and the evasive property on the first two attacks is completely outclassed by his strategy skill. Outside of niche situations, you’re only really doing this to recover stamina while attacking.

Secondary Attack

After a brief pose, Q leaps towards the target and makes lightning strike around him. This attack sucks, don’t use it. No really, it’s genuinely awful. It doesn’t leap very far forward, it takes an eternity to come out, and it does less damage than just using his primary attack string.

Counterattack

Dodge counterattack (can avoid any attack). Very unique for a melee character, and a tank to boot, to have one of these. Q leapfrogs the enemy on a successful counterattack, which also makes it fairly consistent on its damage and keeps him right where he wants to be.

Strategy Skill

Character defining. After a brief charge up Q enters a Berserk state, applying Attention to ALL enemies on the field and gaining 5 stacks of Madness, a limited resource that is spent by either his primary attack string when their counterattack property activates or by his temporary new strategy skill, Frantic Impale. While in the Berserk State, reactivating his strategy skill will instead perform Frantic Impale, an attack that sends Q flying towards his enemy before striking them. If Q is close enough, this attack hits twice. This attack has evasive properties, allowing Q to “dodge” an attack if properly timed and continue performing Frantic Impale. In most cases, you’ll want to just dump all your Frantic Impales out ASAP due to their speed and decent break values, but in more drawn out fights timing your Impales to the enemy attacks is important to activate his second passive.

Ultimate Skill

Costs 2 Tension Bars. Q performs a souped up version of his secondary attack, with a larger AOE and an even bigger explosion of damage. Actually a very good ultimate for AOE damage but still nowhere near as damaging as dedicated DPS ultimates. Does give Q a generous amount of invincibility while performing the attack.

Chain Skill

Above average damage for a chain skill, but otherwise standard.

Combos (If Operating)

Q is fairly simple to play. Enter Berserk state, use his Frantic Impale to stack his second passive, rinse and repeat. Primary attack when you need to recover stamina. Alternatively, avoid using his Frantic Impale and time your primary attacks to unleash a consistent barrage of attacks. Or mix it up between the two, it doesn’t really matter. Just make sure to try and time his attacks to evade the enemies attacks to stack his second passive up.

Tips

1. Very unique to Q: if you have madness stacks, your primary attack string CAN COUNTERATTACK EVEN IF YOU HAVE NO STAMINA. This usually won’t come up but if you happen to be running the very strong All Out tension card, you can safely attack without worry while this is active.
2. Empty attacking the air to enable his deflect counterattack is an important “tech” you should know about. You don’t have to actually land his attacks to advance his primary attack string, so you can just “empty attack” the air to enable access to the third deflecting attack. Certain bosses are punished by deflect counterattacks but not by dodge counterattacks (for example, Red Series Backgammon has an aerial dive bomb attack that causes an extended stun if you deflect counterattack it, but not if you avoid it through other means including dodge counterattacks).

Potential

Maxing his second passive gives Q the highest damage output, but it relies heavily on how aggressive the enemy is. If you’re facing enemies that don’t attack consistently, consider maxing his Fighting Instinct instead for slightly lower but more consistent damage. If you plan to nuke the boss with a built main DPS, maxing his first passive makes the most sense, since you’ll likely spam his strategy skill charges on cooldown.

If none of that really matters, or if you don’t care about Q’s middling damage, put your points into Survival Instinct for more stamina.

Dupes

Q’s dupes are unfortunately pretty bad. Transcend 1 gives his terrible secondary attack slightly more damage, which you’ll never have time to use if they’re actively attempting to attack you. Transcend 3 gives him 2 stacks of Madness when an enemy is defeated, which is cute but it’s not that hard to reenter Berserk state anyways. Potential gems are actually pretty good for him, so T2/T4 are pretty good. T5 gives him a third hit on his Frantic Impale, which makes it do slightly more damage and break so it’s technically good, but at T5 it’s underwhelming.

Operating Character

Unfortunately, Q MUST be manually operated. Q AI is infamously terrible due to the lengthy start up on his strategy skill and running into attacks constantly due to mistimed Frantic Impales. Also Q AI can just reactivate Declaration even while in Berserk for some reason? Basically, don’t bother unless you’re just that desperate for a tank and for some reason don’t want to run literally any other tank.

Conclusion

Q tries to do a lot, but doesn’t do anything well. Unfortunately, this damns him to be only OK at best. Being a tank that relies on player control to do his job when other tanks in the game are far more AI friendly is a huge downside to him. Still, his damage output is quite good for a tank, and his naturally evasive playstyle makes him pretty stylish if you like him.