Look, let us be honest: ever since Laplace: Ultimate Hero (hereafter referred to as Wind Laplace) crashed the August Champion Arena for Goddess of Victory: Nikke, poor old Hwarang—wait, no, Hongren's standing has taken a rather bruising tumble. With Trina having skipped off with the new crowd, Hongren's uncontested reign at tier 0 of the Champion Arena is looking decidedly shaky. KookminTree has dutifully crunched the numbers on the August Champion Arena Nikke pick rates, so let us dive right in.

August Champion Arena Ranker Nikke Pick Rates

※ Based on a total of 640 squad entries from rankers who made it to the Top 64 of Seasons 35-36 in the Champion Arena on the South Korea server.
※ Please bear in mind that the aggregation groups shift with every single season.

Here are the pick rates for Nikkes among Champion Arena rankers this August. Is this the fallout from Hongren's plummeting pick rate? Jackal, who used to be Hongren's trusty partner-in-crime as a 1-Burst enabler, has finally lost her pristine 100% pick rate, wrapping up August in the Champion Arena at 99.2%. On the flip side, 2-Burst Noah and 3-Burst Favorite Item Helm stubbornly clung to their unbroken 100% pick rates once more.

It is not just Jackal feeling the pinch in the 1-Burst category; Favorite Item Peony and Noise saw their pick rates dip too, though their rankings thankfully stayed put. Meanwhile, Rosanna—fresh off receiving her Favorite Item—saw her pick rate edge up from 88.3% to 89.8%, a modest 1.5 percentage point bump. It seems even a mere stage 1 Favorite Item is enough to make Rosanna viable in the sweaty arena meta.

All-Burst Nikke Red Hood swapped places with Rumani this time around. Red Hood's pick rate climbed from 65.6% to 73.4%, while Rumani slipped from 74.2% to 68.8%. Rapunzel took a dive from 51.6% down to 41.4%, whereas Soda actually managed to bounce up from 17.2% to 21.9%.

The 2-Burst category is as crowded as a London tube at rush hour, coughing up a trio of joint fourth-place Nikkes: Trina, Nayuta, and Favorite Item Centi, all of which comfortably sat at a 95.3% pick rate. Centi's surge is presumably thanks to the developer recruiting her as a burst gauge battery for the Wind Laplace composition. Elsewhere, Arcana: Fortune Mate held steady at 14.8%—identical to July's numbers—while Eunwha: Tactical Upgrade slid from 14.8% down to 12.5%, capping off a rather humbling tenth place.

Over in the 3-Burst department, Hongren suffered the most dramatic nose-dive, shedding a painful 15.6 percentage points to drop from 96.1% down to 80.5%. The Wind Laplace effect was simply too brutal to ignore. Third place went to Besti: Tactical Upgrade (hereafter Besti Tech), who actually saw her pick rate slip by 1.6 percentage points from 85.2% to 83.6%, yet still climbed the rankings simply because Hongren's fall was so much worse.

As for other units enjoying a healthy spike, Neon: Vision Eye jumped 11 percentage points from 57% to 68%. Much like Besti Tech, she continues to turn heads with her ridiculous firepower, AoE presence, and conditional invulnerability. Interestingly enough, all top 10 3-Burst Nikkes cleared a 50% pick rate in this Champion Arena, suggesting the PvP meta is finally starting to lock into something resembling a solid shape.

August Champion Arena Best Composition: 'Anis: Sparkling Summer - Blanc - Privaty: Unchained - Biscuit - Maiden: Ice Rose (hereafter Cleden)'

Let us walk through the top 10 most popular Nikke compositions used by the rankers. Taking the crown at number one is the squad featuring Anis: Sparkling Summer - Blanc - Favorite Item Privaty - Biscuit - Maiden: Ice Rose (hereafter Cleden). Back in the July Champion Arena, this setup languished in fourth place with a 10.2% share, but a swarm of rankers rallied behind it this month to shove it straight to the top.

Other setups revolving around Anis: Sparkling Summer also squeezed into the top 10, specifically the joint fifth-place entries: Anis: Sparkling Summer - Blanc - Besti Tech - Biscuit - Cleden, and Anis: Sparkling Summer - Blanc - Anis: Sparkling Summer - Biscuit - Cinderella. Unsurprisingly, they are all built around empowering Anis: Sparkling Summer.

Even though Hongren's individual pick rate took a beating, her core composition still managed to secure second place: Hongren - Favorite Item Rosanna - Trina - Emilia - Jackal, bolstered by the extra firepower granted by Rosanna's new Favorite Item. The gap between this team and the number one spot was a razor-thin 2.3 percentage points.

A pair of Nayuta compositions also deserves a nod: Nayuta - Favorite Item Helm - Snow White: Innocent Days (hereafter SWID) - Emilia - Favorite Item Peony, alongside Nayuta - Favorite Item Helm - Anis - Favorite Item Laplace - Favorite Item Peony. The common thread here is the deployment of Nayuta, Helm, and Peony. The basic game plan seems to rely on Nayuta's burst to nuke the entire enemy team, while SWID, Emilia, and Laplace mop up the remaining hit points from the flanks.

Persona Characters Sticking Strictly to PvE

The fresh faces from the Persona series collaboration—Makoto and Yukiko—failed to make any meaningful splash in the arena. Their entire kit design forces the developer to run them together as a pair, and they only squeeze out 100% of their theoretical performance when squaring off against Wind-code enemies. Frankly, they just do not pack enough punch to displace established arena veterans or older collaboration units.

We will likely have to wait until new Nikkes roll out in September and October—not to mention the 4th-anniversary units—before we can truly gauge how much the arena landscape has shifted post-Wind Laplace. After all, concrete details on the next batch of characters are still under wraps. That being said, rumors swirling among commanders point strongly toward September's mystery Nikke being a Bunny Girl, given the recently teased bunny-themed costumes. If she arrives with a kit as practical as Soda: Twinkling Bunny, you can bet your bottom dollar we will see her running rampant in the September Champion Arena. Since details on brand-new characters rarely drop until right before a collaboration wraps up, we might as well sit back and wait for the next bulletin.