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Upon launchingThe First Descendantfor the first time, you’ll be asked to select from one of three starting characters. Each Descendant comes with their own unique abilities, passive bonus, and endgame mods that vastly alter their abilities. You can always earn these starter characters later in your journey, but when first starting out, you’ll want to pick the one that best meshes with your playstyle.
Fans of debuffing foes and shattering targets should pick Viessa. She serves as a support role that can debuff foes with the power of ice. She’s easy to play, deals solid damage in the early levels, and can become a devastating support character in the endgame. Read on to learn how to craft Viessa, maximize her abilities, and create the ultimate build for her.
How To Unlock Viessa
Viessa isone of three starter charactersin The First Descendant, available immediately upon launching the game for the first time. Selecting her as your tutorial character will unlock Viessa permanently on your account.
If you didn’t select Viessa as your starter, then you can unlock her by completing activities such as Void Intercept Battles and Fusion Reactor events in the open world. Her main crafting blueprint may be obtained from the Executor, Devourer, and Swamp Walker Void Interception fights. Each activity will drop one of four components: Catalyst, Enhanced Cells, Stabilizer, and the Descendant’s Code.
Once you’ve obtained all of her blueprints, you’ll need to research each component at Anais in Albion before you’re able to unlock Viessa as a playable Descendant. Her exact drop tables can be found below, along with all of Viessa’s component requirements.
Viessa Abilities Explained
Passive
All of Viessa’s powers inflict a debuff calledIce Shackle, which is more or less a typical slow debuff seen in other ARPGs. Each stack reduces an enemy’s action speed, lowering their fire rate, movement speed, and cast animations.Enemies can have up to four stacks of Ice Shackleat a time; inflicting additional stacks will refresh the debuff timer.Bosses can also be slowed with Ice Shackle, albeit with reduced efficacy.
If you use a skill on a target affected by Ice Shackle, you’ll gain oneIce Sphere. This is a floating device that willfly towards the closest foe and explode, dealing a moderate amount of ice damage. Enemies hit by your sphere drone are debuffed with one stack of Ice Shackle, allowing you to loop this passive if you continue to use your skills.
Applicable Modules
Descendant modules impact the strength of Viessa’s passive. Duration affects Ice Shackle’s duration, while Power affects the damage of her Ice Spheres. Range also affects the area of effect (AoE) of her Ice Sphere projectiles.
Frost Shards
Fires Frost Shards that detonate on impact, dealing burst damage to nearby enemies. Inflicts Ice Shackle on hit enemies.
22 MP
800% Power as Cold
Affects shard blast radius
Affects MP cost
Affects shard damage
Viessa launches an ice shard that travels roughly 20 meters before detonating, damaging foes caught in the blast radius. It also detonates on impact. Anyone damaged by this skill will suffer from one stack of Ice Shackle, reducing their action speed. You can then damage this debuffed foe with another one of Viessa’s skills to trigger her passive.
This is your core spammable skill and should be used to trigger Viessa’s passive effect.Frost Shards greatly benefit from range and cooldown reduction.Try to slow targets with your second ability first, then hit any debuffed targets with Frost Shards. This will spawn drones through Viessa’s passive and greatly boost your overall damage output. Bear in mind thatthis skill’s damage doesn’t scale well in endgame, so avoid speccing for Ability Power unless you’re farming world content.
Frost Road
Viessa chills the ground she walks on, creating ice sheets in her path. While in this state, Viessa gains increased movement speed. Enemies that touch the ice sheets are debuffed with Ice Shackle.
24 MP
1.6 Meters x 2 Meters
Affects buff duration
Affects ice sheet size
N/A
Frost Road gives Viessa a temporary buff that greatly increases her movement speed. While she has this buff,grounded movement will create ice sheets that linger for a few seconds.Enemies who touch the ice sheets will be debuffed with Ice Shackle for each second they’re on the chilled ground. This makes Frost Road the most cost-effective means of inflicting Ice Shackle.You can further enhance this skill with duration, range, and cooldown reduction.
You can shoot SMGs and handguns while sprinting. Both weapon types synergize well with Frost Road.
While the ability doesn’t sound flashy, this is Viessa’s bread and butter.You should always have Frost Road active while playing Viessa.This is the best skill for rapidly inflicting Ice Shackle onto targets, and all you need to do is simply run near enemies. You can then damage those targets with your first ability, Ice Shards, to trigger Viessa’s passive with ease.Spec for duration and cooldown reduction to achieve 100% uptime on this skill.
Cold Snap
Launches a wave of ice that damages foes. Enemies hit by Cold Snap are debuffed with Ice Shackle.
30 MP
10 Meters x 3 Meters
1,149% of Power as Cold
Affects wave size
Affects skill damage
Viessa launches a wave of ice in front of her, damaging foes in a rectangular area. Each enemy hit will gain a stack of Ice Shackle. It hits much harder than Ice Shards, but Cold Snap is nowhere near good enough to be considered a DPS skill. Similar to Ice Shards,this skill should be treated as a debuff tooland a way to generate drones through Viessa’s passive.Build for range to tag as many enemies as possible.Cooldown reduction is also recommended.
Blizzard
Deploys a sphere that generates a blizzard at the target location. Enemies caught in the blizzard take continuous damage and suffer from Ice Shackle. When the skill ends, the blizzard violently explodes and damages all nearby enemies.
38 MP
Blizzard:1,435% Power per second as Cold
Affects blizzard duration
Affects blizzard size and explosion size
Affects ability damage
After selecting a target area, Viessa will snap her fingers to create a temporary blizzard. Enemies caught in the storm will suffer fromcontinuous cold damage and receive Ice Shackle stacks. The blizzard will then explode after a few seconds. Damage from Blizzard is much higher than Viessa’s other skills, but it comes at the cost of a much longer cooldown of 60 seconds. Try to save this for bosses and tough combat encounters.
Blizzard is a great skill for destroying boss immunity orbs. The AoE is just large enough to reach above a boss' head.
Blizzard is a solid DPS skill for most content, but once you reach the endgame, you’ll want to use this skill as anAoE crowd control toolinstead. It rapidly inflicts Ice Shackle over a wide area, especially if youmod for range.Try to scale yourcooldown reductionstat as well to reduce the downtime between Blizzard casts.
How To Play Viessa
Viessa serves as adebufferfor the squad, slowing targets with Ice Shackle stacks to keep her team alive. While her damage output is much lower than more traditional DPS Descendants,Viessa’s slow debuff scales exceptionally well in endgame.Ice Shackle doesn’t lose effectiveness in harder content, so this debuff isalwaysuseful. You can even slow bosses, albeit not as effectively.
For most combat encounters, you’ll want tocast Frost Roadfirst. Use your enhanced sprint speed to get near targets and slow them.All enemies debuffed with Ice Shackle should then be damaged with Ice Shards.This will spawn drones around Viessa that will deal moderate damage and inflict even more Ice Shackle stacks. Play her correctly, and Viessa will keep every enemy slowed for your team.
Ideal Weapons
Viessa works best with close-range weapons. SMGs, handguns, hand cannons, and shotguns are all great options.
How To Mod Viessa
Her crowd control can be further enhanced withability range, cooldown reduction, and duration.Range buffs all of her skills, including her ice drones from Viessa’s passive, so we suggest leveling that first. Cooldown reduction and duration will then increase the uptime of your abilities. With a good mix of both, you should be able to permanently maintain Frost Road, giving youa sprint speed value that rivals Bunny.
Ideal Stats
Shields, Range, CDR, Duration
This build aims toincrease ability range, duration, and cooldown reductionto enhance Viessa’s crowd control capabilities while also maximizing the uptime of her second ability, Frost Road. you’re able to have permanent uptime for this skill by running Nimble Fingers and Skill Extension. This will lower the skill’s cooldown just under Frost Road’s duration. You now have a permanent sprint speed boost, provided you have enough MP to recast the skill.
Sub Modules
This build uses a Rank 6Storm Fistsolely to increase our capacity.Orange modsincreasecapacity; they don’t cost anything. Always have one installed on your Descendant, and upgrade them whenever possible to increase your maximum module capacity.
As for slowing targets, that comes easy.Skill Expansionwill greatly increase the blast radius of Ice Shards, Cold Snap, Blizzard, and even Viessa’s drones generated through her passive. Enemies should be easy to tag now to maximize the uptime of Ice Shackle, making boss fights significantly easier. Once youincrease your Mastery Rankand gain some more capacity, you’re able to also throw inSkill Powerto make your abilities strong enough to outright kill enemies in open world content.
Finally, we scale up our defenses throughIncreased ShieldsandIncreased Defenses.Viessa has above-average shield capacity and regeneration for a Descendant, so scaling her shield capacity is a sound strategy. The Defense stat provides a global damage resistance buff, so scaling this stat will make your shields much more effective. If you have any leftover stats, throw them into morerangeorelemental resistances.
To further optimize this build, keep your eyes peeled forReactors with Cold and Fusion affixes.These will substantially improve Viessa’s skill damage. Items thatincrease shield capacity and defense ratingare also highly recommended. The higher these stats are, the tankier you’ll be.
