LEGEND REVIEW: Strong World: Red-Haired Shanks

Captain Skill: All Heart Units gain ATK based on your current Health; Increase the Occurrence of [PSY] orbs. *this boost goes from 2.75x to 2x

Special: Deal PSY Damage equal to 35x this Character’s ATK; Reduce all enemies’ Defense to 0 for 2 turns

 One of the Four Yonko of the New World. Red-Haired Shanks.

Red-Haired Shanks boosts all Heart Units by a nice 2.75x ATK at 100% health which gradually drops to 2x ATK at 1 Health. As such, this Legend is tagged with a health-restriction and will need help maintaining his Health or suffer a massive ATK cut. Unlike Boa Hancock, Bandai gave Shanks an aggressive “bonus” to his Captain Skill rather than a conservative one. Shanks can increase the appearance of [PSY] orbs which effectively can double your damage fairly easily. This orb boost should not be underestimated since it is quite large. This can cause Shanks to out-damage other 2.75x Captains overall and burst down enemies easier/easily.

*SPOILERS FOR FUTURE CONTENT*
In the future the game has preemptive abilities called sockets which give the characters epic abilities like increased rate of matching orbs and anti-lock, anti-gloom sockets which reduce lock duration by 3 turns all the time etc. These abilities will be farmable whenever there is a same character bonus while powering up a character. This means that abilities for legends like Log Luffy would be easy to farm (because of isle's like Halloween Strawhats Part 1). Similarly there is a young Shanks and young Buggy isle coming soon to global which would mean easier farming for SW Shanks Sockets. This makes this legend amazing as well.
*SPOILER FOR FUTURE CONTENT ENDS*

Unfortunately, Shanks is very focused/homed-in on a single color and is rather inflexible. While Shanks could be used as a PSY Slasher for Slasher teams, you’ll rarely see him in this position as a mainstay. But this does not hamper his Practicality, Shanks teams can clear a wide range of islands (even outside of INT-based islands) without much difficulty. While Shanks will suffer in most Raid Bosses and Training Forests, Shanks is still usable for almost everything else and shouldn’t be looked down on. Shanks isn’t that difficult to use either… with a high rate for [PSY] orbs, a high ATK boost and the ability to use Golden Pound Usopp, there shouldn’t be anything you can’t burst down quickly.

As a Crew-member, Shanks has solid numbers with a fairly lackluster Special. While the 0 Defense may have niche uses, many bosses are employing the “Debuff Blocker” which blocks such a thing. In addition, many of the hardest bosses have fairly negligible defense (which is why Burst Teams have no issue just bursting them) and hasn’t become a big issue. While the King of  Turtle Island, outside of that… Shanks doesn’t contribute much as a sub outside of stats.

Practicality: Medium

Ease of Use: High

Sheer Power: Extremely High

Flexibility: Low