Pre-Outis Envy ResEnvy Res is now definitively a real team instead of being Charge in disguise, though it's currently incomplete without the Middle Nursefather Outis. This makes theorycrafting the team a bit pre-emptive and difficult, especially since Middle Outis could be a bad ID and she'd still change the team significantly thanks to [Outis] I'll Go fer Scissors. How 'Bout You?.
Double slot her if you can, she outdamages Heathcliff and you do want consistent access to her Skill 3 for Clashing. Why do you want Ishmael to Clash? 
Pink Ribbons from [Ishmael] Roseate Desire. This is an absolutely broken effect and the way the team functions means most of the boss's Coins will come after Pink Ribbons is applied for huge stacks of 
Bind. With Ishmael bringing the boss to 1 Speed the huge weakness of team being outsped ceases to exist. Wrath and Lust are not difficult resources to generate in the team either, Ishmael fuels both herself, though without Superbia this can be slow and impacts your Envy generation which is important for later.
Singlehandedly responsible for changing Envy Res from filthy Chargeslop to the way God intended. As mentioned before he surprisingly doesn't have the highest damage on the team, though this is likely because he's the only member of the team with Attack Weight so he'll perform much better in multi-target fights. Unlike other IDs we've seen recently, his ![Book of Vengeance [Heathcliff]](https://limbus-assets.eldritchtools.com/assets/statuses/Book of Vengeance [Sinclair].png)
Book of Vengeance [Heathcliff] doesn't actually care about how many Middle IDs you have, just how many attacks they receive. There's also a strong argument that you should deploy as close to 3 Middle IDs as possible so the SP generation from his Counter is focused instead of spread out. The combination of these factors means that Envy Res teambuilding is more fluid than you'd think, as long as an ID has reliable access to Envy it technically fits on the team. Kind of like the days when any ID with a Gluttony Defense Skill fit on 
Rupture.
It's also worth noting that unlocking Complete and Total Extermination does not care if you have 5, 6, or 7 Envy Res. While 
Vengeance Tattoo maxes out at 20, CATE is unlocked at 15 which always takes 3 turns at 5+ Envy Res.
A notable EGO he has is [Heathcliff] Binds. While it's currently really hard to fuel without Superbia or Scissors thanks to the team's difficulty generating Gloom and Pride, it's well worth finding a way to use it. The EGO passive applies 5 
Offense Level Up and 
Defense Level Up to the entire team if you have 4+ Absolute Resonance, which is what the team is doing every single turn. It's a really damn good passive, especially if you dip into non-Middle IDs to use the Offense Level Up.
This is our first flex slot on the team. You can either use Middle Don or [Don Quixote] Lobotomy E.G.O:: In the Name of Love and Hate and both have their benefits. Middle Don has the consistency and ease-of-use of the Middle but lacks the ceiling that QoH Don can reach. Middle Don is the ID that gets harmed the most by being outsped since her S3 only becomes Envy when used as a Counter so if she can't redirect she's much worse off. This is less of a concern if you're maintaining Pink Ribbons at least and one of the reasons the Ishmael double slot is so important.
If you're okay with QoH Don's rotation and smaller impact on the early turns she will outperform Middle Don. In more difficult fights she gets a lot more value since those fights typically want you to win Clashes for mechanics and Middle Don does not want to Clash. QoH Don also plays more nicely with random Envy IDs you pad the team with, since going for 6+ Envy Res every turn for Middle Don will not allow most of those IDs to work as well as you'd want them to.
You always want to deploy a Faust on this team. The 3 Envy Fragility from [Faust] Hex Nail's Corrosion is just too good to pass up and like Pink Ribbons it will apply before your Middle IDs start Countering for one of the most consistent damage buffs in the game. 9 Envy is simultaneously really easy to fuel and really hard to fuel. While you are generating 6-7 Envy per turn, you want to always keep 4 Envy on hand so Heathcliff's passive stays online so it functionally has a soft-cost of 13 Envy.
Multicrack isn't the only Faust you can use but she does have an Envy Guard and Skill 2 and technically has Envy Res synergy. [Faust] Lobotomy Corp. Remnant is a budget option with an Envy Evade and S3 but is much less ideal. You can technically use [Faust] Heishou Pack - Mao Branch Adept since while she lacks Envy she will be at 10+ Speed every turn so she won't break the chain. Her high Speed also means that she'll always be able to apply Hex Nail before Heathcliff's Complete and Total Extermination.
Just a really solid ID. He has both selfish damage scaling in Book of Vengeance [Sinclair] and party-wide damage scaling in 
Vendetta Mark so he just performs very well while supporting the team. There's nothing else really of note in his kit, except that his Counter is arguably better than Heathcliff's which is funny.
[Sinclair] Hex Nail has a great EGO passive to try and get since 
Defense Power Up scales Counters and the 2 
Protection makes him take very little damage when combined with Heathcliff's damage mitigation. However, like with Binds, Pride can be really annoying to get in this team.
The last 2 team slots are very open. This is because there are a plethora of IDs that technically work on the team because they have an Envy Defense Skill and a worthwhile Envy skill. However, as touched upon earlier, going for 6+ Envy Res every turn to support Middle Don, and to a lesser extent Heathcliff, can severely hamstring them and make them less effective than you'd want them to be. This is one of the reasons double slotting Ishmael is so good, Ishmael's second slot is simply better than most other options without breaking the team.
Middle Meursault is not good ID. Even with the support from Heathcliff he's still a black sheep of the team since his Counter is so unremarkable. While he does have some really neat debuffs like 
Plus Coin Drop the nature of the team makes applying it more awkward. He passively gives 6 SP to himself and a Middle ally, combining with Heathcliff's SP generation to give 16 SP a turn to the lowest SP Middle member, however by deploying Meursault you are diluting Heathcliff's targets. Benching Meursault for his support passive is often just better since it gives 10 SP a turn, becoming a whopping 20 SP a turn with Heathcliff.
The reason you'd actually want to deploy Meursault is because of [Meursault] Electric Screaming. Applying 2 
Envy DMG Up to the entire team is another damage multiplier the team gets to abuse and its EGO passive is nothing to complain about either. With Binds + Electric Screaming active people on your team are getting 7 Offense Level Up and Defense Level Up every turn which is really nice. This is enough of a stat swing to not need Morositas for overlevelled bosses like Rien, though that's replaced by a dependance on Superbia. Save us, Scissors Outis.
When deploying Meursault there's technically an argument to use any Envy Meursault since Middle Meursault's personal contribution is so minimal outside Electric Screaming, but the other options like [Meursault] R Corp. 4th Pack Rhino or [Meursault] W Corp. L2 Cleanup Agent really aren't any better. There's a fun argument for [Meursault] The Thumb East Capo IIII in a Mao Faust-esque way since he gets so fast, but he takes longer to get to that point than Faust does.
While [Hong Lu] R Corp. 4th Pack Reindeer is the more generally applicable Hong Lu since he passes the sniff test and provides a crumb of SP control, there's some really novel interactions Lord Hong Lu has with the team that make him a bit more interesting to mention. Since Heathcliff uses a free Hair Coupons when he tags in, you can use Heishou Keenclaw to bring him in on turn 1. Lord Hong Lu's Skill 1 also applies Defense Power Up which scales Counters and 
Leash-holder of All Heishou means he'll be fast enough to not break the chain. Even if you do get Speed rolls that would make him break the chain you can cope on [Hong Lu] Soda. The first time Soda has been usable in its life.
One big problem R Corp Hong Lu has is that Mind Whip can hit your allies which will cause them to Counter him, otherwise he's probably the best 7th slot at the moment if you don't want to faff about.
Shout out to [Hong Lu] Liu Assoc. South Section 5's Support Passive if you can get it though. The team already applies a good amount of 
Burn Potency, especially with [Heathcliff] Move-in Reg., so getting the Burn Count to support it is just free damage.
An oddball tech choice. He helps in a number of small ways like 
Guardians of the Forest further bolstering the SP generation of the team, 
Sinking application for SP control, being able to bust out a good Clash when needed, etcetera, but he's mostly valued for his EGO resource generation. Since he's permanently 1 Speed he'll rarely, if ever, break the chain so he's free to do whatever he wants which gives us vital access to Gloom and Pride. It's very slow going though so he's still not that good, just very worth mentioning.
The only Outis ID with Envy until Middle comes out. Unfortunately she doesn't have an Envy Defense skill so you're stuck with her infrequent Skill 2 to try and maintain Envy Resonance. The only reason to deploy W Outis is [Outis] I'll Go fer Scissors. How 'Bout You?. This is a strong healing EGO that the Middle appreciates, but almost more importantly it converts excess Envy resources into other Sins. The big issue with Envy Res as a team is that it struggles to fuel EGO and Scissors mostly fixes that. I say mostly because you're not getting around to fuelling expensive off-Sin EGO but this will shore up needing like 2 Gluttony for something. This is not a spammable EGO unless you're willing to give up using other Envy EGO (i.e. Hex Nail) since the 3-9 Envy cost can add up quickly. This presents a problem for W Outis since she is pressured to use an Envy EGO whenever she doesn't have Skill 2 and her only other Envy EGO, [Outis] Dimension Shredder, is also expensive off-Sin.
We're deep in the cope with this one. Rodion only has 2 IDs with an Envy Skill and Defend and they're both poison. So why bother? They gave Rodion THE Resonance-based Envy Healing EGO with [Rodion] Hex Nail and forgot to give her an ID to use it on Envy Res. There's a legitimate argument to just run like [Rodion] The Ring Fauvist Docent or [Rodion] Lobotomy E.G.O:: The Sword Sharpened with Tears and deal with the fact you only have Envy Skill 2s to work with if you want to use Hex Nail.
LCCB Rodion at least has an effective Support Passive against bosses like Ricardo or Lei Heng who use a Defend pretty much every turn. Even when deployed she technically has synergy with Middle IDs since Skill 1 and 2 will get their Blunt conditional and she's likely to use Skill 3 early enough for its conditional. Don't do this though.
I don't want to rewrite the above but I just remembered that [Rodion] R Corp. 4th Pack Reindeer does not apply self-Sinking on her Guard like I assumed. So she's less cope than LCCB but I still would not really advise a Rodion currently.
While we're solidly out of Sinners with IDs I think are notable, as evidenced by Rodion's scraping of the barrel, I will mention REAP Ryoshu for her support passive. Heathcliff + Ryoshu + Meursault total 23 SP per turn to the lowest SP Middle member. That's kind of nuts. KJH please make Middle Faust so this supports Hex Nail spam.
If you were to really wanted to deploy a Ryoshu, Contempt Awe is a notable Superbia option for the passive EGO resource generation if you're that down bad.
Envy Res is a really simple and fun team with cool tech options. Since its biggest strength is consistency it aligns very well with what I value in teambuilding so I really personally enjoy it, however it does still feel like an incomplete team with the Outis-shaped hole in it. I actually haven't tested the team much on newer and harder content since I fear boss mechanics will counter it super hard, because of that I don't feel the team will really survive the honeymoon phase. At the same time when this team clicks it feels Talisman Rupture levels of ignorant, so it may be for the best that it's kept on a short leash. We'll see how Outis changes things!
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