BEST SKILL POINT GENERATORS

Every operator in Arknights: Endfield is gated behind two separate skill resource bars, and the gap between the fastest and slowest generator is bigger than most new players realise. Laevatain can fire her Ultimate after a single complete combo. Endministrator needs ten cycles to do the same thing. That gap is the difference between an operator who feels broken on first contact and one that feels frustrating, and most of it lives in numbers the in-game tooltip never shows you.

This guide ranks every operator currently in the game by two distinct metrics: Ultimate Skill Points earned per skill cycle and Battle Skill Charge earned per skill cycle. Both numbers describe what each operator earns directly from firing their own Combo, Battle, and Ultimate skills — they are the cleanest possible "raw generation" benchmark for comparing how fast a roster fills the two bars.

What you do with the ranking is the more interesting question. A character at the top of the Skill Points chart is a self-sufficient Ultimate spammer. A character at the top of the Battle Skill Charge chart is usually a team battery — they pour charge into allies who would otherwise sit idle. Most of the roster sits at the long-tail baseline, which means they need to be built around the few outliers covered below. The same logic that drives team composition and gear priority bottoms out at these two charts.

This guide does not cover passive talents that fire outside the skill itself (Pogranichnik's Vulnerability triggers, Perlica's debuff bursts), the Ultimate Skill Points Gain stat on equipment, or any team buffs that grant resources externally. Those add on top of the headline numbers shown here, and we call out where it matters; for the full per-character rotation math, check the individual operator pages.

Quick Answer

By Skill Points earned per cycle, Laevatain leads at 90 (her three combo stages grant 25 + 30 + 35), followed by Zhuang Fangyi at 64, Rossi at 45, Yvonne at 40, and Last Rite at 31. Everyone else sits around 5–10 Skill Points per cycle from their Combo Skill alone — a 9x gap between the top and the bottom of the active roster.

By Battle Skill Charge earned per cycle, Pogranichnik leads at 83 via tiered grants on every one of his skills, followed by Alesh at 70 (self-refund up to 40), Akekuri at 65.5 (her Ultimate dumps 58 charge into the team), Tangtang at 40, and Arclight at 38. These are two separate resources: strong in one does not imply strong in the other, and the only operator in both top 6 lists is Last Rite.

The Two Skill Resources

Every operator in Arknights: Endfield has two skill resources you'll watch fill up while you fight, and both are critical to how often they can deal damage or support the team. They look similar on the HUD, they refill at similar rates for most operators, and the in-game tutorial does not draw a sharp line between them — which is why so many new players treat them as one bar with two flavours. They are not. Understanding the difference between them is the foundation everything else in this guide builds on.

Ultimate Skill Points fill the long bar above your operator's portrait. The bar tops out at 100 Skill Points, and your Ultimate — the most powerful skill in the kit — costs 100 Skill Points to fire. Once spent, the bar empties and you start charging again. Most operators earn Skill Points by using their Combo Skill and (for a small "Big Five" subset) their Battle Skill in combat. You'll often see this resource shortened to "SP" in tooltips and community guides — same thing.

Battle Skill Charges fuel the three yellow bars below the Skill Points bar. Each bar holds 100 charge, and firing your Battle Skill spends one full bar — so you can hold up to 3 charges at once, or 300 total across the three bars. Charges refill passively over time, plus from special grants and self-refunds — some operators dramatically speed this up for themselves or the team. The game's internal data files call this resource ATB (Action Time Bar) — same thing, just a shorter name, and it is the term you will see in any community spreadsheet that pulls from the game's data tables directly.

The most important fact about the two resources is that they generate independently. A character can be a strong Skill Point generator but a weak Charge generator (Zhuang Fangyi) or vice versa (Pogranichnik). The two rankings below show how fast each operator fills each resource on their own, before any team buffs or equipment bonuses — and the gap between them is exactly where team composition decisions live.

How These Rankings Work

Both rankings track what each operator gains directly from firing their own skills. We total a single skill cycle — one Combo Skill plus one Battle Skill use — and add up the Skill Points and Battle Skill Charge each operator earns from the activations themselves. The cycle math comes down to two simple equations: Skill Points from Combo + Skill Points from Battle = total Skill Points per cycle, and Charge from Combo + Battle + Ultimate = total Battle Skill Charge per cycle. Multiply the per-cycle Skill Points by however many cycles you need to reach 100, and you have a rough Ultimate cadence; same logic applies to Charge but with the three-bar pool.

For the Ultimate Skill Points ranking, the Combo Skill Points column counts the Skill Points earned each time the operator fires their Combo Skill. For multi-stage combos (Laevatain, Rossi) this is the total across all stages of a complete combo — Laevatain's 25/30/35 only lands if every stage connects. The Battle Skill Points column counts the Skill Points earned each time they fire their Battle Skill at peak conditions; for stack-based operators this represents the cap (Yvonne earns up to 30 Skill Points at full Solidification stacks, Zhuang Fangyi earns up to 54 Skill Points at full Sunderblade stacks).

For the Battle Skill Charge ranking, the Combo Charge column is the charge granted when their Combo Skill connects. The Battle Charge column is the charge that the Battle Skill itself returns or grants — Snowshine and Catcher refund 30, Tangtang and Alesh refund up to 40 at peak tier. The Ultimate Charge column is the charge granted when their Ultimate fires — Akekuri's Ultimate dumps 58 charge into the team, Pogranichnik's adds 30.

What these numbers don't capture is real-world generation outside the skill itself. Passive talents (Pogranichnik gains Skill Points whenever he applies Vulnerability; Perlica gains Skill Points on debuff bursts), Ultimate refunds, the Ultimate Skill Points Gain stat on equipment (a primary stat on Eternal Xiranite essence and several weapon affixes), team buffs (Arclight and Gilberta grant Skill Points whenever they apply their buff), and the universal 15–25 charge every operator earns from finishing their basic combo (excluded from the Battle Skill ranking because it's roughly equal across the whole roster) all add to the headline number. Use the rankings as a baseline for direct skill generation; check per-character build guides for full rotation math.

Ultimate Skill Points per Cycle

The table below lists every operator with at least one tagged Skill Points key on their Combo or Battle Skill, sorted by total Skill Points per cycle. The Combo column captures multi-stage combos as a single sum, and the Battle column shows peak-condition values for stack-based operators. Click any name to jump to the operator's full kit breakdown.

The shape of the table tells the whole story. The top five operators are the only ones who earn Skill Points from both their Combo and their Battle Skill, and the gap from #5 (Last Rite at 31 Skill Points) to #6 and below is steep. Everyone outside the top five is leaning on Combo Skill alone, which is why their numbers cluster tightly around the 5–10 range. If your DPS is in the top 5 of this table, you're set on Ultimates without any external support; if they're not, you'll need to engineer Skill Point generation through gear or team buffs.

Battle Skill Charge per Cycle

The table below lists every operator with tagged Battle Skill Charge grants on their Combo, Battle, or Ultimate skill, sorted by total charge per cycle. It excludes the 15–30 charge that every operator universally gains from finishing their basic combo, since it's roughly equal across the whole roster and would just shift every number up by the same amount. The L12 Total column shows the same total at max skill mastery — values turn green when ATB grants scale up with mastery levels (Pogranichnik 83 → 98, Akekuri 65.5 → 87.5, Alesh 70 → 85).

Not in the Battle Skill Charge ranking: Laevatain, Zhuang Fangyi, Rossi, Yvonne, Antal, Ardelia, Avywenna, Chen Qianyu, Da Pan, Ember, Endministrator, Estella, Gilberta, Lifeng, Perlica, Wulfgard, Xaihi — no tagged charge grants beyond the universal combo-finisher baseline. These operators still earn the universal 15–25 charge from completing their basic combo, which is the default engine for their Battle Skill cadence.

This ranking is dominated by supports and tanks, which is a deliberate design choice — Battle Skill Charge is a team-uptime resource, and the operators who generate the most of it are the ones who exist to keep everyone else's yellow bars filling. Note the L12 column: the operators built around ATB grants (Pogranichnik, Akekuri, Alesh) scale up significantly with skill mastery, so investing mastery levels into them returns more team-wide value than the same investment in a flat-output unit.

How the Skill Points Top 5 Get There

The "Big Five" stand out from the rest of the roster because they gain Skill Points from both their Combo Skill and their Battle Skill, while most of the roster only earns Skill Points from the Combo Skill. The shape of each operator's contribution looks different though, and understanding the difference is what tells you whether their headline number is realistic in your team.

#1 Laevatain — 90 Skill Points per cycle

Her combo skill grants 25 / 30 / 35 Skill Points across the three combo stages — visible in the in-game tooltip. A complete combo refunds nearly her entire ult bar, which is why she can chain Ultimates so reliably during AoE waves. The catch is that you have to land all three combo stages: the per-stage values do not add up unless the full combo connects, and an interrupted combo at stage two leaves you with 55 Skill Points instead of 90.

#2 Zhuang Fangyi — 64 Skill Points per cycle

10 Skill Points from her combo, plus up to 54 Skill Points from her Battle Skill at full Sunderblade stacks. That 54-Skill-Point ceiling is the highest single-skill payout in the game outside of Laevatain. She is heavily stack-dependent though — she gains 6 Skill Points per Sunderblade stack on her Battle Skill, capped at 54 Skill Points total (about 9 stacks). If you don't keep her stacks up, her real number drops closer to the 10–16 range.

#3 Rossi — 45 Skill Points per cycle

Three-stage combo (10 + 10 + 10) plus 15 Skill Points from his battle skill at full layers. The multi-stage combo is unique to Rossi and makes him the most consistent Skill Point source in Physical teams. Unlike Zhuang Fangyi there is no stack maintenance — what you see is what you get, and Rossi remains the most reliable mid-tier Skill Point engine for players who don't have Laevatain.

#4 Yvonne — 40 Skill Points per cycle

10 Skill Points from combo, plus up to 30 Skill Points from her Battle Skill at full Solidification stacks. Stack maintenance is what fuels her Ultimate cadence — pair her with Cryo supports who keep stacks up reliably. Her Ultimate cadence ultimately depends on team support holding Solidification stacks; without it, her Battle Skill contribution drops sharply and her per-cycle total slides toward the 15–20 range.

#5 Last Rite — 31 Skill Points per cycle

15 Skill Points combo + 16 Skill Points battle skill — a clean profile for a single-target burst DPS. Her Cryo Infliction lock translates the Skill Points bar directly into ult uptime when supported by Yvonne or Xaihi. Her Ultimate also grants 10 Skill Points back when it fires (rare!), and she's the only operator who appears in both the Skill Points and Battle Skill Charge top 6 — uniquely self-sufficient on both axes.

How the Battle Skill Charge Top 5 Get There

The Battle Skill Charge top is dominated by supports, tanks, and utility operators — the team-uptime resource. Each of them generates charge through a different mechanism, and the difference between "self-refund" and "team grant" decides whether they belong on a hypercarry team or a sustained-DPS team.

#1 Pogranichnik — 83 charge per cycle

Tiered grants on every single skill, scaling with the Vulnerability stacks he applies. His Combo Skill grants up to 23 charge at peak tier, his Battle Skill grants up to 30 at peak tier, and his Ultimate grants another 30 on trigger. This is why he's the meta anchor for Physical teams — he keeps the whole squad's yellow bars topped up. Note that he sits at rank 20 on the Skill Points ranking (baseline 10): his own Ultimate is slow; he exists to buy skill uptime for everyone else.

#2 Alesh — 70 charge per cycle

Her Battle Skill returns up to 40 charge at peak tier — almost half of a full Battle Skill cost back instantly. Add 10 charge from her Combo and 20 from her Ultimate, and she effectively spam-casts Battle Skill once she's rolling. A fully-tiered Battle Skill cast effectively costs 60 instead of 100, so her own rotation snowballs once the first cast lands.

#3 Akekuri — 65.5 charge per cycle

Her Ultimate dumps 58 charge into the team in one moment — the largest single-skill charge grant in the game. A small contribution from her Combo rounds it out. This is what makes her viable as a 4★ Vanguard support: when she Ults, everyone else's Battle Skill rotation lights up. Because the charge is element-agnostic, she slots into virtually any team that needs a burst of skill uptime around an Ultimate window.

#4 Tangtang — 40 charge per cycle

Her Battle Skill returns up to 40 charge to herself — a pure self-refund. No Combo or Ultimate contribution, but the refund alone enables her own burst rotation. She is a DPS by role, but the structure of her charge generation matches the "self-sufficient burst" archetype rather than the "team battery" pattern her ranking position might suggest.

#5 Arclight — 38 charge per cycle

Battle Skill grants 30 charge plus 8 from her Combo. The data here looks modest, but her on-buff Skill-Point-grant passive (not visible in this table) makes Arclight a universal Electric-team support: she charges allies' Battle Skill and their Ultimate at the same time, which is rare.

The 10-SP Baseline and Slow Chargers

Look at the long tail of the Skill Points ranking and a pattern emerges: 19 of 26 operators sit at exactly 10 Skill Points per cycle — that's just the universal Combo Skill grant, with no Skill Points from their Battle Skill. 17 of 26 operators show no tagged Battle Skill Charge at all beyond the universal combo-finisher baseline. The takeaway is that most of the roster is not designed to self-charge; the outliers are deliberate, and the baseline assumes external support.

An operator with 10 Skill Points and no tagged charge is what the community calls a Slow Charger. They are not weak — many of them are S+ tier DPS units when their team is built around them — but they need three things to function. First, a Battle Skill Charge battery teammate (Pogranichnik, Alesh, Akekuri) to keep their yellow bars filling. Second, an on-buff Skill Point support (Arclight, Gilberta) or equipment with the Ultimate Skill Points Gain stat (a primary stat on Eternal Xiranite essence rolls) to land Ultimates at a reasonable cadence. Third, enough field time to land their basic combo finisher — every operator earns 15–25 charge from completing the basic combo, and that universal grant is the default Battle Skill engine even when nothing else is tagged.

Doing the cycle math makes this concrete. An operator who generates 50 Skill Points per cycle reaches 100 Skill Points in two rotations and can fire their Ultimate every two cycles. An operator who generates 10 Skill Points per cycle needs ten rotations — they will likely Ultimate only once per protracted fight unless supported by external batteries. Similarly, 40 charge per cycle effectively shaves 40 off the next Battle Skill's cost (100 → 60), which means you cast Battle Skill noticeably more often without any other change.

DPS Self-Charge vs Support Team-Charge

Cross-reference the two rankings and a clear design pattern emerges. The Skill Points top 5 are all DPS — Laevatain, Zhuang Fangyi, Rossi, Yvonne, Last Rite. They self-charge their Ultimate because their Ultimate is their damage payoff. The Battle Skill Charge top 5 are all Supports, Tanks, or utility — Pogranichnik, Alesh, Akekuri, Tangtang, Arclight. They generate charge to fuel the team's Battle Skill rotation, not their own Ultimate cadence.

Last Rite is the only operator in both top 6 lists, uniquely self-sufficient on both axes. Pogranichnik is the polar opposite: rank 20 on Skill Points (baseline 10), rank 1 on Battle Skill Charge (83). He is pure team utility — his own Ultimate is irrelevant; the team's skill uptime is everything. Tangtang technically slots into the support side of the Charge ranking by role-of-her-archetype but her contribution is a self-refund rather than a team grant, so she fits the "self-sufficient burst" archetype, not "team battery."

The table below makes the contrast direct. The most important takeaway is that high Skill Points does not equal high Battle Skill uptime — they are two separate resources with two separate top tiers, and most of the roster is strong in one and weak in the other.

The Pogranichnik-vs-Laevatain case study illustrates the split perfectly. Laevatain is a Skill Point Monster: she generates 90 Skill Points per cycle and exists to spam her Ultimate, but she has zero extra Battle Skill generation and relies entirely on the passive timer for her yellow bars. Pogranichnik is a Charge Monster: he generates 83 charge per cycle for the team and is the "battery," but he only generates 10 Skill Points, meaning his own Ultimate is very slow to charge. Run both of them on the same team and you cover both resources at the top tier — which is exactly why this pairing has become a meta cornerstone in Physical compositions.

What the Table Doesn't Capture

Real-world generation is higher than what's shown in the rankings above. The numbers count what each operator earns directly from firing their own skill — so anything that comes from gear, passive talents, stack maintenance, or the basic combo finisher sits outside the headline figure. Each of these is significant in its own right.

The Ultimate Skill Points Gain stat is a percentage multiplier found on Eternal Xiranite essences and certain weapon affixes. With +50% Ultimate SP Gain, Rossi's 45 Skill Points becomes 67.5; Endministrator's 10 becomes 15. The in-game tooltip calls this stat "Ultimate Skill Points Gain." It is effectively mandatory for "10-Skill-Point baseline" characters who otherwise cannot self-charge to a reasonable Ultimate cadence, and it stops being load-bearing once you reach the 30+ Skill Point operators where that gear slot can become a damage stat instead.

Passive talents generate resources through actions that aren't "firing a skill." Pogranichnik gains Skill Points whenever he applies Vulnerability — which is why his community guides quote 125 Skill Points instead of the 10 you see here. Perlica generates Skill Points when debuffs are triggered. Arclight grants Skill Points to allies when she applies a buff. Because none of these fire from a tagged skill, they don't show up in this data, but they're vital for high-level play and they're the main reason the headline 10-Skill-Point number on certain operators is misleading.

Stack maintenance is the asterisk on Yvonne's 30, Zhuang Fangyi's 54, and Pogranichnik's peak-tier grants — those numbers assume peak conditions. Drop a stack and you drop a tier, so a Zhuang Fangyi without stack support is closer to a 10–16 Skill Point operator than the 64 quoted at the top of the table. The same goes for multi-stage combos: Laevatain only hits 90 Skill Points if all three combo stages land; Rossi needs all three combo finishers; Pogranichnik's peak-tier grants only fire when his conditions are fully stacked.

The universal combo-finisher charge is deliberately excluded from the Battle Skill Charge headline because it's roughly 15–25 across the entire roster. Every operator earns this from finishing their basic combo, and it's your default Battle Skill engine even on the "no tagged charge" operators in the table. Treat it as the floor — it is what keeps a flat-output DPS able to cast Battle Skill at all, even without any tagged grants from their kit.

How to Use This for Team Building

The fastest way to translate these rankings into team-building decisions is to think of them as a checklist of pairings. Pick a carry, then check both columns for them. If your DPS has high Skill Points per cycle (Zhuang Fangyi, Yvonne, Last Rite), you're set on Ultimates and can focus gear on Attack or Crit. If they have a high Battle Skill self-refund (Last Rite, Tangtang, Alesh), you can spam Battle Skills without a charge battery. If they have neither (Endministrator, Avywenna, Da Pan), they need both a Skill Point engine and a Charge engine in their team — and the engine slots are not interchangeable.

The next step is identifying your Battle Skill Charge battery. Pogranichnik for Physical teams, Akekuri for everyone (her Ultimate dump is element-agnostic), Alesh for Cryo teams. One Charge battery transforms a "10 Skill Points / no tagged charge" carry into a viable hypercarry — and the difference between a fully battery-supported team and a flat team is measured in two-to-three extra Battle Skill casts per minute, which is enormous over a five-minute boss fight.

Then identify your Skill Point battery: Arclight for Electric teams, Gilberta for Nature teams, Perlica as a universal option. These run external Skill Point generation that this data doesn't see — they exist because the baseline is so flat, and they are the reason a Slow Charger DPS can hit Ultimates at all without losing a gear slot to Ultimate Skill Points Gain. Read the Battle Skill Points column carefully when planning team rotations — a high number there means stacks are required (Yvonne, Zhuang Fangyi), and that operator needs field time to ramp; don't rotate them out early or you waste their headline number.

One last pattern worth internalising: Last Rite is the only character who ranks high in both columns. This makes her the most "self-contained" unit in the game, capable of maintaining high Ultimate and Battle Skill uptime without needing a specific team built around her. If you're rolling on a banner and your existing roster lacks both batteries, she is the operator most likely to immediately stabilise your worst team. For the wider planning context, see the best teams guide and the build hub for the gear stat priorities that interact with these numbers.

Frequently Asked Questions

That is the full skill-generation picture: two separate resources, two separate top tiers, and a long tail of operators who depend on the outliers to function. If you want to dig deeper into how these numbers play out in specific compositions, the best teams guide walks the meta team archetypes; for the gear stats that multiply the headline numbers above, see the build hub; and for the broader gacha and pity context that shapes which of these top-tier units you'll realistically own, check the gacha guide.