Glaicad of the Meltwater

Glaicad the Meltwater was added to the game during Update 8.60 as a much-needed Support Legendary Champion for the Sylvan Watchers faction, who up until this point had been sorely in need of ways to support their faction of high-damage, low-durability Attack legendaries. Considered by many to be "Force affinity Duchess Lilitu" the similarities are indeed there, but is Glaicad more than just a switch in Affinity, Faction and skin?

Already Glaicad features a better SPD stat, boasting 112 to Duchess' 103, along with slightly better DEF but slightly worse base HP and RES. Their Auras are identical in being +19% SPD in all Battles, and the A2 of Duchess Lilitu "Shroud of Souls" and Glaicad's "Meltwater Cloak" both supply [Increase ATK] and [Perfect Veil] in the same way but Glaicad trades the [Block Debuffs] for a 15% [Turn Meter] boost - which may just prove beneficial if intended for use in the Hydra encounter where a player may be concerned with the Head of Mischief stealing [Block Debuffs] before giving it to everyone else as an early Christmas present.

Again similar to Duchess Lilitu, Glaicad's A3 "Lifestream" is a full-team revive on a 4-turn cooldown, although the similarities end there for the most part - since the A3 is usable even without dead allies and will instead grant an Extra Turn to allow Glaicad to cycle through to his A2 faster, which is just as well since while Glaicad's A1 "Boreal Bolt" is able to [Freeze] a single enemy without needing Accuracy if the target is low on HP, Bosses are immune to [Freeze] and therefore the A1 is of little use there. Between "Meltwater Cloak" and "Lifestream" it makes Glaicad the only champion in the game apart from Belletar Mage-Slayer to provide [Increase ATK] [Increase DEF] and also a full team revive. In total, Glaicad can supply his team with 4 different buffs at any one time with no conditions - therefore making him the Protection set highly valuable on him especially at 9-piece, where he can provide up to +20% damage amplification to his entire team.

To compare Glaicad to Duchess once more, while Duchess' Passive "Ethereal Ways" defends her team somewhat, the "Thaw-might" Passive of Glaicad instead provides an additional 10% damage amplification in addition to anything else, which is very strong on anyone who does a great deal of raw damage but for Champions whose damage output is mostly fixed or capped in some way (Warmaster, HP Burn, max HP% damage) they may end up preferring "Ethereal Ways" if survivability is a concern. However, Hydra eventually becomes a challenge to do as much damage as you can instead of attempting to survive the whole 1500 turns, which means Glaicad eventually comes out on top. A shared weakness between the revive of Duchess Lilitu and Glaicad of the Meltwater is that allies are revived on little to no Turn Meter, making him less suited for PvP challenges due to how revived allies may find it difficult to take a turn before they are struck down again.

With both of Glaicad's A2 and A3 being non-damaging skills, he is unlikely to find value in anything that grants him offensive prowess, instead wanting to focus on the Defense and Support mastery trees, although in terms of Blessing, Brimstone may still be acceptable due to supply fixed damage with the 4-turn cooldown of Brimstone being little of an issue when Glaicad will spend the following 2 turns after placing Brimstone performing non-attacking moves anyway. Otherwise, Glaicad is somewhat of an anomaly in terms of not having any particular go-to Blessing for overall gameplay, coming down to personal preference or where a player primarily intends to utilize him.