Vulcan

“Only weapons that are never in use will remain undamaged. Therefore, leaving a weapon spotless is actually the worst sacrilege for it.”

The single-minded blacksmith who takes care of all of Rhodes Island’s weaponry and tactical gear, Vulcan rarely gets close to anybody. However, if you’re able to find her through Recruitment (the only way she can be obtained,) she’ll fight for you as a 5★ Enmity Defender of uncommon strength and skill, excelling in both Defense and DPS.

A quick note about getting Vulcan: She can only be gained through Recruitment, and she is very rare and hard to get. See our Operator Recruitment Guide or Recruit Tag Filter for more details. 

Vulcan’s body has been replaced with so many prosthetic parts that she cannot be healed by other Operators (except some very rare cases like Perfumer’s Talent). Don’t worry, though; she takes care of herself with her sky-high stats and her Talent, Self-Defense, which regenerates her HP and (at E2) gives her Physical Dodge while either of her Skills is active. Guardian Mode is her Skill 1, increasing her Block number, her DEF, and the amount of HP she regenerates. This Skill is incredible for defensive purposes, not just for the survivability but for the rare and much-coveted “Block +1” quality. However, her Skill 2 is no less tempting: Combat Mode increases her ATK, restores HP when she attacks, and allows her to hit as many enemies as she can Block. (It also sets her hammer on fire, which is hardcore.) Though this Skill also has the downsides of reducing her Block by 1 and slowing the attack interval of her hits, it’s still a massive increase in DPS and well worth using.

Vulcan’s main draw is her self-sufficiency, but keep in mind that it’s not a bonus: it’s a necessity. The fact that other Operators can’t heal her is a big drawback for a Defender Operator who’s meant to soak damage. If you trigger Vulcan’s Skills at the wrong time and waste her healing, you may end up watching her die without being able to do anything about it. She is also one of the most DP-expensive units to deploy in the entire game, and you won’t be reducing her DP cost with Potential anytime soon because of how rare she is. Since she is only accessible through very specific tag combinations in Recruitment (or incredible luck), plenty of Doctors never even realize she exists, let alone pull multiple copies of her. 

However, if you’re fortunate enough to stumble across her required tags, don’t let her slip away from you! Vulcan is a positive steamroller of a unit, and she’s capable of herculean feats if given the right investment and team composition.

Skill	Mastery	Story	Advanced	Roguelike
	S2M3	None

Note: This unit does not have Mastery grades. This means the unit is generally not one worth spending the resources of Mastery on. However this write-up should help with skill selection, should you want to use the unit regardless.

It can be easy to overlook the flaws of an archetype when the 6★s (Mudrock and Penance) are so absurdly powerful. Unfortunately for Vulcan, that inability to be healed sticks out much more when you account for high SP costs and no available sustain outside of those skills. It makes her tough to use and even tougher to recommend. She is certainly not for the faint of heart.

That said, if you wanted to raise her , it's usually best to go with her S2. The archetype lends itself more towards solo adventures rather than stalling, and, as the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense. With S2, Vulcan can dish out some solid damage in tandem with really strong sustain. This can be pretty decent with only 10 SP initial windup at M3, but once the skill is over, the base cycling is abysmal. Her S1 is also pretty good, but with such low killing potential, it's usually not worth using over similar options that can actually be healed, like the much cheaper Cuora.