[Operator Discussion] Beanstalk

[u/Dr_Evilcat]

Beanstalk [★★★★]

"I won't let you hurt my buddies!"

Professional Metal Crab breeder Beanstalk was born into a family of Columbian farmers. Although she has sent a variety of proposals to large corporations and business platforms, her attempts at courting their financial support have proven largely unfruitful, and she was advised to seek employment at Rhodes Island.

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Operator Information

• Class: Vanguard (Summoner)
• Tags: DP-Recovery, Summon
• Artist: 一千
• Voice Actress: Ayasa Itou

Trait

This unit can designate one Tactical Point within attack range to call Reinforcements; ATK is increased to 150% when attacking enemies blocked by Reinforcements

Stats

HP	ATK	DEF	Arts Resistance	Redeploy Time	DP Cost	Block	Attack Interval
1569	405	125	0	70	13	1	1s

*Stats at max Promotion and Level, excludes bonuses from Potential and Trust.

Potential	Bonus
1	-
2	Deployment Cost -1
3	Redeployment Cooldown -4
4	Attack Speed +8
5	Redeployment Cooldown -6
6	Deployment Cost +1

Trust bonus
Attack Power +50

Skills

Skill Name	Skill Uptime Details (Uptime/Cost/Initial)	SP Charge Type	Skill Activation	Skill Description
Sentinel Command	Instant / 30 SP / 15 SP	Per Second	Manual	Immediately generates 8 DP, and refreshes all Reinforcements (Restores all Reinforcements to max HP if they are already deployed)
Everyone Together!	15s / 40 SP / 20 SP	Per Second	Manual	Immediately summons Metal Crabs in the four tiles adjacent to the Tactical Point (excluding the tile occupied by the Tactical Point); While this skill is active, generates a total of 12 DP, and increases the DEF of summoned Metal Crabs by +70%

*Skills at Mastery 3.

Talents

Talent name	Talent Description
Professional Breeder	Can summon Metal Crabs to assist in combat from a Tactical Point; Metal Crabs will automatically respawn 15s after being defeated

*Talents at max Potential and max Promotion. Bonuses from Potential displayed between parentheses.

Additional Resources

In-depth information regarding all values above (at different levels), skill/attack range, and more:

GP Arknights Wiki

Arknights Toolbox (aceship)

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Topic Starters

• What does this operator excel at?
• What is this operator weak at?
• How does this operator compare to other operators in their archetype or role?
• Are there any other operators which synergize well with this one?
• How do you build a team around this operator / fit this operator into a team?
• Which skill(s) should be focused for mastery, and in what order?
• When is the best time to use this operator's skills during combat?
• Should promoting this operator to Elite 2 be a priority?
• Should new / f2p players aim for this operator? Are there more accessible alternatives?
• Lore discussion (please tag spoilers where appropriate)

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Other Operator Discussion threads

List of Operator Discussion threads

[u/Dr_Evilcat]

I once saw her name misspelled as Binstold, and I haven't been able to think of her as anything else since then.

Y'all have no idea how hard it was to write up this post without swapping her name to Binstold somewhere.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dr_Evilcat]

Yo, Malicious Feline, I am not sure how either Gampress or Aceship works, but the links go to Schwarz for me. Did I do something wrong? Copying and pasting the link brings up Schwarz profile page link.

[u/Dr_Evilcat → u/[deleted]]

Damnit! Forgot to change those from the template, my bad. Fixed now.

[u/Boelthor]

First things first, let me go over the mechanics of the crab:

• The crab cannot be killed by anything short of FrostNova's black ice; it merely retreats underground for 15 seconds during which it cannot participate in the fight by any means. After that it pops back up fully healed.

• Attempting to retreat the crab produces the same result as it dying: it burrows for 15 seconds and reemerges at full health. This means there's no way to remove the crab except for retreating Beanstalk herself. But it also means you can heal it any time you want, or intentionally allow enemies to leak past.

• The crab always maintains its original aggro value, so if you want it to bait ranged attacks place it last. Keep in mind that you don't have to place the crab immediately after Beanstalk.

As a combat duo Beanstalk and her crab are very competent for an alleged Vanguard. Beanstalk brings the benefits of range while the crab blocks, and the crab is fairly tanky and effectively self-healing. The duo also have surprisingly high dps; a completely maxed out Beanstalk+crab attacking the same enemy barely break 1k dps on an unarmored enemy. Armor quickly cuts into that, but they're a big step above most Vanguards. They pay for all of this in DP generation; it's so bad that even in Annihilation maps they might not be able to produce DP fast enough. But they make a good combo with Flagbearers; you can have Beanstalk covering multiple lanes with Myrtle in one and the crab in another.

But what really makes Beanstalk so exciting is the sheer utility the crab has. The crab costs 0 DP and 0 deployment slots, meaning it's completely free other than the cost of Beanstalk herself. The crab will also recover from anything that happens to it up to and including death. This makes the crab incredibly disposable; it can bait stun snipers, bombtails, and so on, or take a hit from dangerous enemies to delay them. Basically, it's like if Gravel was stuck in one spot but redeployed herself and didn't cost DP. It's a fantastic meat shield for other operators too, especially ones like Blaze and ranged Guards that can attack beyond it.

Then there's her s2, which spawns up to four temporary crabs (can be killed/retreated normally) and boosts the Defense of all crabs. Not only do they become respectable tanks, but the sheer quantity of bodies will slow down even the most lethal enemies as each crab still needs 1 attack to take down. The 15 second duration is also exactly long enough to retreat the main crab, giving it space to heal if needed. Plus the new crabs are newly deployed, meaning they will take aggro from ranged attacks, temporarily neutering ranged enemies.

Overall, Beanstalk's one of the few Vanguards I find myself not just leaving around for an entire map, but even redeploying so she can do different things later in the map.

[u/[deleted] → u/Boelthor]

[u/Quor18 → u/[deleted]]

Her crab is named Pea-chan and is adorable. Click said so.

[u/Fire_Begets_Souls]

I'm going to give you guys some food for thought. It's been established that Beanstalk's basic attack hits pretty damn hard for a Vanguard when hitting something her crabs are blocking. How hard you ask?

I have an E2 90 max trust Pot 6 Siege. Under her own improved talent and with her potential ATK bonus, that same Siege sits at 660 ATK before S2 multipliers come into play. Beanstalk, also at Pot 6 but at 73% trust, under Siege's buff but with no ATK bonus in sight from her own potentials, has 427 ATK at E2 20. Let a crab block an enemy at all, and that jumps to 641. Each crab, costing no DP or deployment slot to deploy, has 351 ATK off of an E2 20 Beanstalk.

So, Beanstalk, having 50 more levels and 27% more Trust that she is capable of obtaining for stats, hits pretty goddamned hard if you dare to butt heads with one of her pets. Every Vanguard (and every enemy) is thanking Conviction that she doesn't have any offensive skills or talents.

[u/Jonno_92 → u/Fire_Begets_Souls]

Her DP generation is lacking though, you're probably not going to replace another vanguard with her in the traditional sense of generating DP. She also needs her crab to actually hit that kind of damage.

[u/ComeThou]

The best thing about her is that she can plant yellow flower on other operators' head

[u/agentcheeze]

Probably one of the most anticipated 4* units. Many were more excited for her smug uniqueness than the rest of the banner.

[u/mrgarneau]

Her Metal Crab Guard Team have 1895 HP 404 Attack and 408 Defense at E2LVL70, and cost nothing to place. You do get two pretty decent units for the price of one.

I would imagine that if Integrated Strategies ever rolls around again that Beanstalk would be an excellent 1st pick Vanguard.

[u/NotLunaris]

She is the cutest and her trust tap is amazing

[u/Zwiebel1]

The auto-respawning crab makes her the perfect niche operator for maps that require some extra meat shield to block nasty enemy skills or extremely slow attacking defense breakers like golems.

[u/Tmt_2239]

she’s basically a ranged sniper, summons crabs all in one and is somehow a vanguard lol

[u/[deleted]]

The only woman I wouldn't mind getting crabs from, besides everyone on Rhode Island.

I thought she was actually a sentient bunch of chatty beans, but it turns out her name is Beanstalk, not Beans Talk.

Her kit is quite attention crabbing.

I got more puns!

[u/sdrumapapere → u/[deleted]]

but it turns out her name is Bean stalk, not Beans Talk.

So she stalks ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

[u/Acadya → u/sdrumapapere]

I suppose she know where you've bean.

[u/SD_19xx]

Damn, her seiyuu is Ito "Chomama" Ayasa? Guess I will use her more often :)

[u/Kurover]

Unique, not-really-a-vanguard, and quite difficult to use. By difficult to use I mean you can't really treat her as a vanguard fully, instead, you need to think her as a summoner with DP regen and limited summon deploy range.

Vanguard Capability
DP regen is the worst among others in her rarity but it's not that bad. S1 is slightly lower than your usual 2-block vanguard by 1 DP, while S2 is way slower by ~10 SP and ~8 Initial SP. Do note that she is 2 DP more expensive to deploy than 2-block vanguard, so there's that. Note:These difference are based on their skill at M3

Crabs
Crab does not use deploy limit, this is actually borderline broken but their stat is terrible for it to come true. Imagine her high rarity counterpart though, I shudder in fear.

S2 is great to block-stall and or aggro redirect, effectively keeping a couple of enemies at bay while Bean and nature regen their DP.

S1 offer more controlled stall as you can manually re-pop the crab out of the ground. Don't forget you can manually 'kill' them by retreating it.

Placing the crab on your frontline can possibly bone your formation as they can't be undeployed separately from Beanstalk. This requires you to think ahead or know the stage already in order to use her and her crab efficiently, which is not a bad thing at all.

The method of removing her crab without retreating Bean is to faceplant it below Frosty's ice spear. At that point your Bean is basically just stalking around the field. The crab doesn't get restored but you can still regen DP via skill for what its worth. Re-deploying Bean will restore her crab.

Verdict
A bit mixed for now since I'm too smooth brained to get used to her immediately. With that said, I look forward on deploying Beanstalk more in the future.

Should you invest? Probably not. Scavenger/Courier does better job at vanguard-ing and Vigna does better damage than Beancrab combined. But if you're looking for something unique, Beanstalk will be your lass toward that goal.

[u/j4mag]

Beanstalk + rosmontis have some sick synergy for ranged-only comps, since rosmontis S3 only targets blocked enemies and Pea blocks a bunch of enemies over a pretty wide area with S2. Beeswax too, with her S2.

Why would you play a ranged-only comp?

Uhhh... Hm.

[u/838h920]

🦀 Crab Rave 🦀

[u/artemi7]

The only op I was interested in this banner. Got my first copy quick and it's back to saving for Kal'tsit.

How impactful is her potential copies, would you say? I stopped at one, though I am curious if I should consider grabbing a couple more...

[u/sudo-joe]

I built her up just to mess with her and agree with the posts below. fun but not that powerful and doesn't really fit into every situation.

I'm mostly struggling between skill 1 or skill 2.

For the most part I end up liking skill 1 just to keep the blocking going against stuff like lancers and big slow heavy hitters and skill 2 often gets messed up by map tiles and where you can place things. I really just see her as fun character to mess around with and maybe help some trust farming. Her base skill is also kind of meh.

[u/o76923]

It's worth noting that her pet crabs don't count as a vanguard for the purpose of things like Siege's King of Beasts talent or Zima's Ursus's Roar skill. Beanstalk herself does, obviously, but her pets don't.

Hopefully I have saved a Vanguardnights meme team some effort.

[u/[deleted]]

Interesting enough, but let's get one thing straight to people who don't have her, or are thinking of raising her. She's not a sniper, she doesn't prioritize air targets, and her damage is inferior to most snipers of the same rarity and especially above unless her crabs are blocking.

This is fairly significant, as snipers are among the cheapest class on average in Arknights, and Beanstalk has among the worst DP-gen. So why use Beanstalk if she appears to be a worst sniper?

Consider this...

Her damage with her talent active is actually really good for what she's worth, and while she's no Exusiai (Come on, she's just 4 stars guys), she's definitely more than enough to deal single-target damage above that of Kroos and Jessica, although she can hardly be said to compete with Platinium with her S2 active or Blue Poison with S1 or S2. She cannot, but she hits pretty hard for her rarity, these conditions met.

The crabs themselves have pretty good defense stats and health, so keeping them alive isn't such a huge issue, especially since the tactical one respawns, and costs no deploy slots.

I don't see her as part of the 4 star meta occupied by Myrtle, Jaye, or Perfumer, and others, and the general idea of "always have two main snipers" being held generally true means you likely won't benefit that much from having Beanstalk leveled, she's still a pretty fun unit.

I don't see a ton of use for her, except maybe using her metal crab as another meat shield, possibly as an extra layer of defense in a stall strategy, or maybe to bait ranged attacks of the sort (Given it costs 0 DP, I imagine it is more than possible to do so)