Aubade Ludwig

Aubade Ludwig is a 5-star Ice Ranger built around banking his team's Soul and cashing it in for a massive team-wide strike. His basic attack strikes with moonlight, and while he holds Dawn — an undispellable buff that doubles the Soul his team acquires and gives his attacks a chance to stun — it triggers Light of Condemnation, a once-per-turn extra attack that hits all enemies and consumes the entire Soul pool for up to 25,000 bonus damage. His passive raises his Defense and pushes his own Combat Readiness forward at the end of allies' turns whenever the Soul pool is full enough, keeping his turns coming. His signature skill, White Night, dispels two buffs from every enemy, then has a chance on each of them to inflict Block for 2 turns and Silence for 1 turn — Block leaves them unable to receive buffs or be cleansed by their allies — while granting himself Dawn and a barrier scaled to his max Health for 3 turns.

Counters

• Immunity-protected teams — White Night strips two buffs from every enemy before Block and Silence are rolled, so granted immunity comes off first and the debuffs still get their chance to land. Teams that lean on a pre-battle immunity blanket lose it in one cast.
• Buff-reliant offense — A landed Block makes an enemy unable to receive any buffs — and their allies cannot cleanse it off them — for 2 turns, while his opening dispel tears away attack buffs that are already up. Carries that need attack and critical buffs to threaten anything spend the fight swinging unarmed.
• Barrier and stealth defenses — His team-wide dispel rips barriers and stealth off all enemies at once, and Light of Condemnation hits every enemy anyway, so hiding a key hero behind stealth does not keep it out of the blast.
• Slow-ramping cooldown carries — A landed Silence keeps a hero from using its skills with cooldowns for a turn, delaying the big payoff cast, and Block stops the ramp-up buffs from ever being applied. Heroes that need a few turns of setup fall behind his Soul engine.

counterEye of the Abyss Fumyr55%counterZio52%counterHecate54%counterCeline51%counterAki52%counterAram49%counterFallen Cecilia53%counterLast Rider Krau53%

Countered by

• Soul denial — His entire damage output hangs on a banked Soul pool. A hero like Belian who shuts off Soul acquisition starves Light of Condemnation, and the up-to-25,000-damage payoff simply never comes online.
• Hard crowd control — At 115 base Speed with no self-cleanse, he is easy to catch with a stun or fear before he acts. Locking him down stops both Light of Condemnation and White Night, and every turn he loses is a turn the Soul engine sits idle.
• Early burst and assassination — He needs turns to matter — the team has to accumulate Soul before his extra attack hurts. A fast assassin that deletes him in the opening exchanges denies the whole engine before it starts paying out.
• Enemy dispel on his barrier — The max-Health barrier from White Night is an ordinary buff and can be stripped, leaving a squishier Ranger exposed to focus fire. Dawn itself cannot be removed, so the Soul engine keeps running, but he becomes much easier to kill through.

hard counterBelian56%hard counterDisciplinary Prefect Aria57%hard counterSea Phantom Politis53%counterShepherd of the Dark Diene64%counterLady of the Scales60%counterFrieren56%counterSchool Nurse Yulha57%counterGenesis Ras56%counterLittle Queen Charlotte47%Vildred56%Notos61%Tactical Archetype Coli56%

Who counters Aubade Ludwig? — full guide ›