Icarus

Glorious no more

Basic Info

• No: 74
• Ship: Icarus
• Affinity: Armor Piercing
• Type: Offensive
• Main Weapon: Inferno Laser
• Aura: Vorpal Lance
• Zen: Teleport
• Rarity: Rare
• Price: 1500
• Main Description: Very thin, forward firing, sustained laser that does not follow your ship once fired.
• Upgrade Info:

Level	1	2	3	4	5	Ult
DPS	30.00	31.50	33.00	34.50	36.00	37.50

• Test Results:

Main	Aura	Zen	Survival	Survival Tier	Speedrun	Speedrun Tier	Fun	Fun Tier
102.27	110.18	98.18	44.18	A	37.64	A-	33.82	B

APEX1	APEX2	Base Score	Base Rank	Low Score	Hi Score	Apex Rank	Final Score	FinalRank
45.09	68.36	310.64	12	355.73	379.00	12	494.64	12

• Main Weapon Illustration:

Comments

• Dark骑士: The combination of the asymmetrical structure and the Vorpal Lance skill is interesting. However, like the Wraith, the main weapon interval greatly reduces the experience. It is more difficult to shoot a few sparrows than a heron. How to use the main weapon well requires a lot of effort. If you have time to practice, it is a good ship in itself.

Survival

• Icarus is able to rapidly pop off turrets. One shot of the main instantly takes out turrets, which means quickly destroying the deadliest turrets.
• VL also quickly destroys invaders at the back of the wave. In daily missions, this also means wiping the field clean very quickly.
• TP handles the clean up, accounting for all the bullets produced.
• You should wipe out Ravens the moment they enter the screen with well placed VLs as their random quick movement (especially for lasers) and 2 turrets poses a huge problem when not dealt with quickly. This is especially so in MIRV/Shuriken missions when the mass wavefront of MIRVs actually come from them, quickly flooding the field.
• Don't wait for the backline Vulture or Eagles to arrive before doing firing VLs. The VLs take care of the front invaders so that you can start to focus your main on dangerous turrets on the Vulture.
• The way most waves are set up should allow you to almost pre-fire a VL and score multiple Ravens in one VL. Just milliseconds before the Ravens fully arrive, you can already fire off the VL.
• Icarus has so many destructive and disarming means that lasers are hardly even a problem. At least half of the screen can be wiped of Ravens that may contain either spread or tracking lasers since the previous wave would almost definitely give you enough particles for at least 2 charges of VL. This is regardless whether they are in front or behind Eagles or a Vulture.
• Bigger invaders such as Herons move slower and are less of a threat in terms of lasers. The main will do very well to destroy them.
• Due to the highly damaging main that travels in a straight line, the main weapon is sometimes a pseudo VL in that it can destroy 2 Ravens in a column when properly lined up. (In fact, if you are really lucky, 3 Ravens can be taken out too!)
• In fact, the "Tele-frag" technique even applies for the main - you can wait for the main to almost fire (the front of Icarus will have many bunched up rings) and then TP over to give the invaders a surprise attack!
• Thus, partitioning of invader columns is very important for Icarus. Assign one column for the main, another column for VL, and so on. Partition based on the layout of Ravens on field, otherwise if there are no Ravens, partitioning isn't quite necessary.
• Knowledge of the main timing is important in this partitioning aspect. If you know the main is still going to take some time to fire, you should immediately use your VL to clear off one column before quickly heading over to destroy the next column. TP over to the next column if you have to.
• Even Eagles can be wiped very quickly. A burst of the main, as well as one VL kills an Armored Eagle. 2 bursts of the main, which doesn't take terribly long, and the most threatening Eagles are gone. There's no need to spend 3 VLs down the middle of Eagles unlike many VL ships.
• However, in the most heavy and dense wave of daily missions, you would still want to throw 3 VLs down the middle to eliminate the Eagles, which can amount to 4 or more of them. If most of them line up well, they will all disappear with 3 VLs.
• Icarus against mass dart streamer Sparrow waves is extremely annoying. Sometimes, you may wish to reserve a VL or 2 in such waves such that you can use Vorpal Wake to do an emergency cut-through of darts since the response time can often be pretty short. However, it is still best to use TP to get out of it where possible.
• While it is possible to look at the way Icarus' wings fill up in order to determine how long more is it going to fire or when is it going to fire, I do not recommend doing this, since it is more important to dodge bullets or check your alignment against invaders to fire VLs. It is better to understand the interval of Icarus' main to know how to position yourself to align with invaders.

Speedrun

• The insane DPS of Icarus makes it insanely fast.
• VL allows for a very quick sweep of smaller invaders and heavily damage larger invaders. Particularly, when large invaders start to overlap, the potential of VL is nearly limitless.
• The only issue with Icarus is with Sparrows. While VL takes care of a couple of them, the remaining survivor Sparrows have to be dealt with, which wastes time.
• However, with good RNG, Sparrows can line up nicely, reducing some time for killing the remaining Sparrows. This can be very frustrating unfortunately.
• The sheer DPS however, more than makes up for the Sparrows due to Icarus still begin able to deal with Ravens quite effectively. If the mission does not contain a lot of Sparrows, Icarus can go really fast. The main is able to act as a VL in some sense that it can destroy a column of Ravens quite effectively.
• If you have excess VLs in early Acts from tons of Ravens, you can use them to kill Sparrows (try to use them immediately when 2 or more bunch together) to avoid chasing them down with your main and put more haste to your speedrun.

Fun

• The main weapon is quite satisfying when it hits. It sounds like barbequing the invaders for a tasty meal from its sizzling impact sound.
• VL is definitely fun to use, in conjunction with the main which punches through many invaders quite well.
• Unfortunately, chasing down Sparrows to hit with your main is the biggest frustration of Icarus. With their rapid random movement, it is hard to predict where they are going to go and sometimes even following them to attempt to hit them will miss.

Trivia

• Icarus was only introduced into Phoenix 2 at v3.4.
• Icarus is one of the only 5+1 ships which are asymmetrical (NC-271, Widget, Icarus, Monsoon, Disaris, and Corsair not noticably asymmetrical).
• Icarus' 4 wings start to glow, filling up from bottom to top as the main starts to charge its next shot, and fires when it reaches the top. It then depletes the glow in the same way after the main fires.

APEX 1

• Name: High Capacity
• Type: Aura
• Description: Vorpal Lance can store more energy, adding an additional Counter.
• Interpretation: The max volume increases from 4 to 5.
• Form: Delta
• Price: 20000
• Score: 2.82 / 5

This apex only helps in very crowded missions with lots of Ravens, where there is less risk of particle overflow, due to the fact that a few VLs is usually more than enough to take out almost all of the Ravens. You can use the excess VLs to unload them on Sparrows that happen to line up nicely to reduce frustration on chasing them down with your main. The extra VL can also help in the extra push for heavy waves with lots of larger invaders, such as Quad Eagle formations, where you can take them out before they flood the field with bullets. However, there is no reason to get this apex over the Sigma Apex which is clearly superior in everything this apex can provide.

APEX 2

• Name: Explosive Arrival
• Type: Zen
• Description: Arrival EMP has been modulated to also deal damage to Invaders in its range.
• Interpretation: Deals 30 damage to Invaders within a range of 50 from the arrival point.
• Form: Sigma
• Price: 35000
• Score: 4.27 / 5

This APEX is what makes Icarus truly capable of speedrunning. The Icarus main weapon is very unfriendly to targeting sparrows, and the Vorpal Lance is not worth using alone to kill sparrows, so Teleport with a fast cooldown rate is very suitable for killing lone invaders. When you are in the first three acts and the invader density is not that high, you usually need the main weapon to kill a column of invaders, and then use Teleport to destroy the remaining ones. When using it, you need to pay attention to the cooldown time of Teleport. If the time is too long, the benefits of Teleport will be reduced.

Video Illustration