I think Hsin is one of those units where there are a lot of small things to talk about. The gist of it is "Hsin is a strong DPS". If you are worried about her strength or something, don't be.

Outside of her strength...I feel a bit responsible for providing additional context for the other things going on with her kit and teammates. I will separate the post into General, Electro Flare, and Unison. Since this is going to be a long one, feel free to skip portions of the post and look at the highlighted segments you are curious about.

1. General

Did Kuro nerf Hsin's quickswap?

It's not an uncommon occurrence that beta changes lead to people misunderstanding changes. Especially noticed how a lot of AI summaries cannot actually tell the nuance of what has been changed.

No, Hsin's quickswap has not been nerfed.

https://preview.redd.it/3cmaatxs7yqh1.png?width=735&format=png&auto=webp&s=500e56dc0103631943021032d4afacd51dbf71e9

In this example, Heavy Attack - Answering Form: Reign at Ease got the added desc of "Switching to another Resonator ends the skill action immediately, " which many, including the AI summaries, picked up as a quickswap nerf but...it was already the case from V0.

Moreover, a held attack like this was never quickswappable in the game outside of Camellya's held attack.

So was Hsin nerfed at all?

No, but yes. They removed some of the dodge/break cancels that players used in private servers to do 5 Lib2 rotations easier. BUT

- 5 Lib2 is still possible.

- If you don't care about tryharding in this game, it doesn't affect you.

While it is unfortunate that those cancels were taken out, this happens in beta all the time, and people find more cancels anyway. Sometimes they are awarded more cancels (like Hiyuki gaining her UBA3 cancel)

So how good is Hsin's quickswap capability really?

Average? "Kinda annoying" is the best way to describe it. Hsin and Suoming have a new qs restriction of not generating forte when an inactive character. There are ways to play around it, eg swap back before big hits of an attack. Unison also loses inherent buffs on swap, so generally I would not go a high swap route with Unison.

Flare has a bunch of issues, but she is a bit less restricted in swaps.

Are her sequences weak?

No it's just alright. I guess being the first playable Sentinel Resonator made her have high expectations. But she doesn't break any mold. HOWEVER, it's important to note it's not weak either.

What are Hsin's two modes for?

Before trying to figure it out, let's start with Aemeath. According to Kuro

https://preview.redd.it/6m8fuw1giyqh1.png?width=1518&format=png&auto=webp&s=ec2777b832daf1a44bea54c95be38f3f07fdf655

There is a clear separation of intended roles. And for the most part, Aemeath follows this. I would generally suggest Aemeath's rupture mode over FB in ST, and I would most definitely suggest her FB mode over rupture in Whiwa.

Hsin does not have this separation.

https://preview.redd.it/x3u1oakdiyqh1.png?width=1480&format=png&auto=webp&s=928d46edeab493356705bb95dbc6a9e8d9942c63

There is no actual clue as to what Kuro intended these two modes to be. Unison mode's damage is split between Hsin and Suoming, and as such it should be helpful in Whiwa as opposed to having all her damage in one hit.

So while you can say Unison is the Whiwa mode, it's not spelled out for us that "This mode is for whiwa, this mode is for ST"

Future Electro Flare sub DPS, if they exist, might even make Flare be better in whiwa depending on how Kuro designs them.

Some people said Electro Flare is her "F2P friendly" mode, but.....that's also a weird notion because something like Hsin Suoming Buling will "cost" the same as Hsin ERover Suisui/Chisa while being similar or better even.

So which mode is good for you?

Simple really.

Go for Unison if...

- If you like Suoming

- If you want Hsin to do as much damage as possible without banking on if and when an electro flare sub DPS might arise.

- Find ERover, Suisui, or Chisa clunky.

- Want a new team for Jinhsi

Go for Flare if...

- You don't like Suoming

- You have a team slot left for Suisui in matrix (with an asterisk, more on that later)

- You like ERover

Is Hsin reliant on her signature?

Yes. I would reconsider pulling Hsin without her signature if you care about endgame performance.

Phrolova's signature is a decent 2nd option, but even that is already taking signature away from an already sig-reliant unit. Moreover, it's not *that* good for Hsin either.

Signature is almost a \"2nd sub DPS\" for her, if you are using Cosmic Ripples

Does coordinated attack (coords) do anything for Hsin?

No, it's purely there to throw Jinhsi a bone. You can run Empyrean Anthem for Hsin, but generally speaking it's a waste.

2. Electro Flare

Is Electro Flare mode weak?

It's....fine. I mentioned earlier how there isn't a clear separation of modes. It's hard to say what Kuro is planning to do with Flare. One silver lining is ERover Buling is a very competent team and uses 2 less-used units (unless Rover is on Carte or Zani duty)

Chisa vs Suisui (+problems with Suisui Rover, long segment)

On paper, Chisa and Suisui are 4% of each other. With very similar field time, played casually.

Within 4% of each other which I would call below a noticeable threshold.

In practice, however, Rover and Suisui have...problems. To a point, I would lowkey call it antisynergistic. This is due to how Suisui was designed (spoiler alert: very poorly) and decisions in Rover's kit that make it worse. I can make a whole post about Suisui and her problems but I'll try my best to keep it short

This is what I have in my calcs as \"simple explanation of Suisui outro

Visualise this outro as a baton pass. Suisui after her outro, essentially dances. 6s after dancing, she gives a "baton" to your active character (usually the sub DPS). Now this sub DPS passes this baton to the main DPS after its outro. This baton then activates when the MDPS consumes a negative status.

Notice how I said 6s after doing the dance instead of 6s after the outro. This is a very important distinction. If something interrupts (or pauses) the dance, let's say, a swap in. Then Suisui the 6s is extended.

Now what can pause the dance but not the timer? We call it a motion stop as opposed to time stop. Notice when you do intros, your teammates pause their actions. Yes, this will also pause Suisui's dance and consequently push the time when she gives this "baton" to the sub DPS

But intro isn't the only thing that pauses, introducing Rover. Whose forte skill has a motion stop.

Video demonstrating that even if you don't fancy swaps you can miss the \"Baton Pass\" of Suisui

Rover outro but Suisui has all 3 bars.

All this culminates in cases where sometimes you don't even get Suisui's buff on Hsin if you play Suisui ERover Hsin 123 "perfectly," and you have to wait on Rover before outroing.

TL;DR: If you have Chisa free and are willing to learn swaps, I might just use Chisa over Suisui to avoid the annoyance with the buff

With some swaps, Chisa Rover is most definitely better than Suisui without all the downsides of Suisui

Does this mean you should pull Chisa for Hsin and ignore Suisui?

Well, this is a tricky thing to answer. Because ERover might not be her final teammate. And the other teammate might be tailor-made for Suisui. Kuro can definitely push it a step further and have an indirect "if Suisui is on the team, get X" buff. Like they did with Denia (Strain) and Mornye.

On the other hand, it could simply be like Chisa vs Suisui for Hiyuki, where the difference is so small that it doesn't matter.

I would say, right now, there are no right or wrong answers. I simply prefer Chisa over Suisui. However, on the same note, Kuro has all the cards, and how well Chisa will age for the Hsin team is entirely up to them.

Does Buling have the same motion stop problem as ERover + Suisui?

Thankfully no, but Buling's 2nd slot kinda lowers a lot of her power budget. Especially if S6. But a lot of you don't have S6, and in that case, Buling is a "fine" 2nd slot.

Buling ERover is comparable to Buling Suisui

How good is ERover generally? (Personal Opinion Heavy)

He is... decent. But given his kit was tailor-made for Hsin, it definitely feels a bit disappointing to me personally. I don't think he needs a signature or anything, given Kuro has shown they can simply just...add Rover-specific buffs in Hsin's kit.

But his multi-colored attacks being useless and him generally having problems with Suisui definitely soured the excitement I initially had.

Will ERover perform better with his S6?

No. His S5 and S6 don't do anything for sub DPS rotation, and his S3 and S4 are not great increases. Around +50k DPR.

How good is Buling generally?

She is almost as good as or slightly better than ERover for Hsin's personal damage (using Chisa for both). However, she brings in no personal damage of her own. That being said. Realistically, most are not building ERover as well as their Hsin, so in practice the difference between Buling and ERover might even be lower comparatively.

It's just...Suisui strictly forces Buling into a 2nd slot role, which is the bigger downside.

3. Unison

What is Unison?

Unison is a repurposed mechanic from Jinhsi. It essentially lets you outro twice. While not a "feature" of Unison units, it also prefers that you intro twice onto them.

What are Unison Boon and Unison Response?

Unison Boon and Unison Response are new things attached to the old Unison mechanic. Unison Boon is essentially a stack that is awarded to the team when a unit with Unison outros onto a unit who can Respond to Unison.

That narrows it down pretty much to Hsin, Suoming, and Jinhsi having Unison and the recipient of the subsequent outro being Hsin or Suoming. Note: Jinhsi cannot respond to Unison, so Hsin having Unison and outroing to Jinhsi shouldn't give you a boon.

How valuable is Unison Boon?

By itself? Nothing much really. The English translation calls it "Total DMG," but it's actually an amp.

And when you have 100%+ amp on so many units, 6-9% amp is not as good. I suspect in the future we will have buffs scaling with the stacks of Unison Boon. And we already see something similar with Suoming outro and Hsin sequences

Hsin Sequence Unison Boon Scaling

Part of Suoming's needs Unison Boon to function

Do note, unlike strain, this stack is not lost when the enemy dies.

Does Unison Boon help Jinhsi?

No, Jinhsi Hsin can generate the boon, but you still need to be able to react to it to get its benefits.

Do I pick up Jinhsi as an alternative to Suoming (alternatively, can I skip Suoming if I have Jinhsi)?

Yes and no. First of all, if you don't have Jinhsi, who knows when she is going to come back again due to the iffy rerun schedules.

Secondly, Jinhsi's Hsin team is great. Especially with the inherent matrix buff for older characters, it's like 2.2-2.3M DPR, which is....quite good looking at the state of older characters. However...it is sacrificing Hsin's damage to be a coord provider weakens her personal damage. Which is especially noticeable if you are pulling Hsin dupes.

So all in all, for S0R1, Jinhsi is an acceptable downgrade for Hsin, but it's also a very noticeable downgrade.

On the flip side, if you were running Jinhsi without a sub DPS. Hsin is the best partner she could ask for, so there is that.

Is Suoming's or <3rd Slot> weapon important?

No.

Shorekeeper vs Mornye vs Suisui? (+Buling)

For non-tune and non-negative status teams, both Mornye and Suisui are fairly close to SK, so pick whoever you like. But for whiwa and, to a lesser degree, matrix, I strongly value units with 100% CR.

Buling Suoming is also one of her stronger options. Which is great because this kinda makes both her modes equally "Free-to-play"

What is the rotation order for Hsin's Unison team?

Healer -> Suoming -> Hsin -> Suoming -> Hsin (loop end) -> Healer

Lastly, who am I?

I'm just a random TC for Wuwa who occasionally speedruns. But make no mistake. None of this is fully my effort. There are a lot of other TCs like AntoCrasher, Riley, GG, Justice, Sbin, Yolitme0, Mane, Wind, and Rezagard who help me out and cross-check a lot of these numbers.

The Suisui Rover and Chisa Rover videos were recorded by Wind right before posting this when we found out about the annoyance with Rover's motion stop. So special thanks to him.

QX being our 2nd strain character, I have many thoughts about her and the strain archetype itself. This also allows me to talk about my calcs about her. However, in certain sections, if I do sound too hard towards her or Kuro themselves, know this. I don't take Wuwa seriously enough to discourage anyone from pulling a unit. Pull whoever you want. In fact, pull for "waifu over meta" because the rewards for following the meta are minuscule. As always, skip to answers you care about.

Also. Here are the abbreviations I will use in this post:

TB = Tune Break

TBB = Tune Break Boost (the buff Lynae and Strain Denia provide)

OBR = Off-Tune Buildup Rate (the buff Mornye provides)

FHA = Forte Heavy (in QX's case its the last attack of her Forte state)

Are Denia/Lynae and Mornye's weapons important?

No, unless you really like those characters or their weapon. For Mornye, keep her on Discord. For Denia, give her any weapon. It doesn't matter. While for Lynae, try to aim for static Mist

How important is Mornye?

Mornye is usually very important for tune units. But QX's off-tune buildup is set up in a way that losing Mornye isn't *that* bad even if Denia's TBB buff is based on OBR from Mornye.

That being said, I would definitely recommend Mornye if you want to make Qingxiao stronger/get her sequences.

How important is Denia?

If you Lynae + Mornye, on paper, Qingxiao performs very close to that of the Denia Mornye team.

What Denia provides in terms of Strain QoL, though Lynae simply doesn't have. Listing it here:

• Denia refreshes Strain duration: Strain typically lasts for 30s; this timer refreshes with a TB, which is usually enough. But some bosses do have TB immune phases where you will tend to lose stacks. And Kuro may introduce more bosses with "anti-tune" phases.
• Denia is simply faster: Denia is actually one of the faster sub-DPSes we have had. She, in fact, is over 1s faster than Lucilla and Lynae. This helps 5 lib setups. If you want to squeeze more damage out of her.
• Denia makes enemies start with half of the off-tune bar built up: I doubt this needs an explanation; faster TBs = faster strain stacks. However, there is a caveat to this which makes it not as useful against ToA/Matrix content, and it's how QX's off-tune build-up values are assigned. (More on this later)
• Denia's outro lasts for 16s instead of the "traditional" 14s: This is purely QoL because QX can rotate below 14s, but this is something I wish Kuro adopts for all sub DPS outros.

If you go for QX sequences, I would strongly suggest Denia. But on the flip side. If you don't like Denia or like Lynae better, QX isn't suddenly unusable with her. In fact, the Lynae team is quite strong in and of itself.

When do I TB in QX + Mornye teams? (+ more on Qingxiao's buildup spread)

I think for the basic 4 rotations over 120s I would suggest:

1st TB ASAP

2nd TB after Qingxiao forte heavy

Every subsequent TB after that should be right before Qingxiao's Enhanced Heavy (Stringblade).

In the previous section, I mentioned that Denia's 50%-off tune bar fill-up is not *that* insane on paper. And I would like to go into detail as to why.

Taking Luuk for example. Luuk and QX both have around a similar amount of break value. Luuk is a tad higher. However, QX's break buildup is focused on one hit, while the rest have mediocre buildup.

QX and Luuk's offtune buildup values (roughly plotted against time)

What does this mean and, more importantly, is it bad? Not really. Well, it depends. It means it's harder to break within QX's rotation. But it also reduces the risk of you missing the high break attack buildup due to the buildup cooldown.

What it does, however. Is diminish the value of the extra off-tune buildup of Denia because you are not getting 2 breaks before/middle of QX's first rotation, unlike what you get with Luuk. This is part of the reason why Lynae sheets "better than expected". Because both Lynae and Denia get their second break after QX's opener rotation,

Addressing the mechanic of Strain (Damage ramp up)

Strain follows a very common RPG archetype of "getting stronger the longer the battle is". In fact, even Wuwa already did something like this with Phrolova. The general concept is it starts off with low DPR, and then it increases by a decent amount towards the end. Each break gives you strain stacks (up to 4), and each Strain stack gives a multiplier to damage (this is multiplicative to every other buff)

So does QX's damage ramp up too slowly? Quite the opposite, in fact.

A look into how QX's damage increases per rotation.

By the 2nd rotation, she has (almost) all her damage. Her damage ramp-up isn't that big of an issue.

Addressing the mechanic of Strain pt 2 (Strain stack loss)

This section mainly tackles my personal grievances with Strain. Though, this is something every Luuk haver is probably familiar with. Strain....is a debuff.

Imagine playing QX is R1 or R2 of Matrix, and you suddenly lose your damage because you were playing "too well", killed the boss, and then the next boss has no strain stacks on him, no interference marker, nothing.

&#37; loss of damage from 4 stack 15 Mindlock if you kill the boss. Each colomn represents the number of stacks the new boss has.

This is what every strain character has to deal with. But I have to quickly play the Devil's advocate here. Think about *how* it affects you.

For example, this makes her not so good at whiwa as she "should be". But outside of that,

Let's say in Matrix, if you are an average player only dealing with 0-1 boss switches *at worst*, you are losing 483k damage over 120s. Realistically it's closer to 363k. That's around 3-5% of your total DPS.

In ToA, the only floor that might negatively affect her is 2-3. I wouldn't say anyone "shouldn't be upset", but it's definitely worth keeping in mind

Addressing the mechanic of Strain pt 3 (+my personal complaints)

While the previous segment was about the silver lining, this is where I am going to rant a bit. I will talk mainly through the perspective of QX's Matrix performance, but this is also applicable in whiwa.

Essentially, the single most debilitating thing to any team's DPS is enemy switching. In Matrix, you are stuck with boss spawn delay. In whiwa, you are stuck with wave spawn delay. This affects every team; however, Strain gets disproportionately punished more.

One boss switch is not the end of the world. But what if you had a bunch of additional buffs QX that make her go through multiple bosses? Let's say through matrix shill, floor shill, or even, and especially, with sequences.

In this case, it's a negative feedback loop where you get more damage to kill the boss, faster to lose your strain stacks faster as well. This "problem" is further enhanced with QX's offtune buildup. As I mentioned in the previous section, QX's offtune buildup is backloaded on her FHA, which is her biggest nuke.

If the boss dies early in Luuk's rotation, he can (with Denia's passive) realistically get his strain stacks back before his big nuke. QX's entire buildup is on her big nuke. This makes her run into the problem where if you kill an enemy early in her rotation, you might not have strain stacks during her FHA even with Denia's passive.

This essentially makes every QX sequence calc perform worse than intended, especially at S6 where you have a lot of damage that you gain so you have even more to lose from strain stacks falling off. Is there a solution to this? Well...kinda, and it's linked to Denia herself.

Denia's passive triggers more often if you kill more often. And Denia S2 bypasses this issue entirely; it's giving you a free break on a new enemy.

So do I suggest Denia S2?

For low spenders and people who have S0, not really, no. Denia S2 is still pretty niche in terms of use case. For people who want to spend on QX. I would keep Denia S2 in mind, but first try QX as is with Denia S0. If her performance feels satisfactory to you. I would just keep her at S0.

But I would definitely recommend at least considering Denia S0 if you are going for her sequence.

What about other teammates?

QX doesn't really scale off of anything specific, so you can use both Mortefi and Sanhua (with Mornye) with some amount of success. Having mid-2.x amount of damage output with a 4* unit is fairly good, all things considered.

Qingxiao's Damage Profile is fairly spread out.

I wouldn't bother with Aalto, however; Ciaconna + her signature is an interesting option. Ciaconna can replace both the third and 2nd slot for a fairly decent performance. Especially since her field time is on the low end.

A bit more about QX's rotation (her Clarity buff, Mindlock Stacks, and why you should Ult at the end of her rotation)

Mindlock is a stacking buff QX gains from doing breaks and enhanced heavy under Clarity.

At maximum Mindlock, she gains 65% dmg and 65% amp at S0. Mindlock bonuses have a diminishing return after 7 stacks, where the dmg and the amp increase by 7 for the first 7 stacks and then by 2 from 8 to 15. This ensures she gains the biggest benefit of mindlock from her opener rotation

Clarity...is essentially something QX needs all the time. It

• Increases her Forte gain in normal state
• Lets you gain Mindlock while doing enhanced heavy
• Doubles the FHA damage.

Essentially, Clarity helps her throughout her rotation. You gain Clarity by doing Ult (or at the start of combat) and lose it while doing FHA. What does this mean essentially? It means after doing FHA, when you lose Clarity, I suggest saving the ult around there so you gain it back. Over time, people might find different timings for doing ult, but it's a solid rule of thumb to start with.

Lastly, who am I?

I'm just a random TC for Wuwa. But make no mistake. There are a lot of other TCs like Riley, GG, Justice, Sbin, Yolitme0, Mane, Wind, Freya, and Rezagard who help me out and corroborate with me in terms of these numbers.

When my calcs get shared, I feel a bit responsible for giving added context to them. Jingran is pretty straightforward, and there haven't been that many questions, so I can keep it short. As usual, skip to the sections you are interested in.

How much does the 0 defense clause in Jingran's kit affect him?

He roughly takes double the damage that a normal resonator would. His shields are also not really that great for survivability.

Crown of Valor vs Lamp of Nether Road, which set should Jingran use?

I would generally suggest Lamp of Nether Road. It simply gives more stats that Jingran cares about more.

The only reason to use Crown of Valor is that you have a set farmed from Augusta and you want to use that while farming for LoNR, or you don't care about the extra damage LoNR provides.

Crown of Valor vs Moonlit Clouds, which set should Iuno use?

For Iuno, I would suggest Moonlit Clouds, and make sure you quickswap the Heron cast. Not only does it provide energy that Iuno loves. It avoids situations where you are fighting an Aero Res enemy and the team is doing worse than intended because a lot of the damage the team would have is being gated by Iuno.

That being said, its generally not a big deal if you are running Iuno on Crown of Valor because you dont want to deal with Heron cast.

What build should I go with?

Without Signature Weapon: Go with 41111 with 4 HP 1c.

With Signature Weapon: Go with 44111 CD/CD (for SK) or CR/CD (for non-SK teams). All three of the 1c being HP.

Try to aim for 120+ ER. If you get really lucky (highly unlikely) with your rolls, you can swap one 1c HP for 1c ATK%.

But generally the rule is to get as close to 50,000 HP. Because everything in Jingran's kit scales off of HP up to 50k. Do note that Jingran buffs are per 1000 HP, so it's better to be slightly over 50k than be slightly under.

Besides that, aim for as close to 100% CR without massively overcapping. This should help him in places like Whiwa.

How reliant is Jingran on his signature?

Jingran being highly signature (or at least a limited weapon) reliant is quite well known by now. Even his next best limited option aka Augusta's signature, is not *that* great due to him needing investment to reach the 50k HP threshold.

I do not want to take away from how signature-reliant he is, but as a silver lining, a sigless Jingran is still at the level of late 2.x teams. He is significantly weaker, but he is not "worthless" without his signature IMHO.

How reliant is Jingran on Iuno?

In general? Not much. Fusion and Heavy units have a good support system, unlike most other attributes and damage types (mainly due to Lupa and Mortefi and recently Rebecca). This opens him up for multiple team options.

That being said, I have to mention 3 things here.

• ATK% and DMG% buffs, which are the most common of the buffs you can come across, don't work well with Jingran. Cutting down on the gain he would have gotten from these stacks. Iuno's buffs are not plentiful. But she gives pure AMP, which is very good for him.
• While many Mono fusion is a good team DPR-wise. Lupa cannot heal; Jingran cuts down his HP every ult and takes around twice as much damage. So healer-less teams like Mortefi Lupa or Changli Lupa are gonna be very hard to pilot
• Teams like Brant Lupa and Changli Lupa are fairly slow without Quickswap. Even the original monofusion of Changli Brant Lupa couldn't do 123 rotations in 25s. With Changli's double phoenix tech, I have seen it being cut down to 26s but only against very specific bosses. Jingran is also a unit with a long-ish rotation length of ~13s.

Does his S3 help close the gap with his intended team?

Yes, but only for hypercarry teams. In teams where you want both units to do damage. Like Brant + Jingran...the difference actually increases. Because Brant's personal damage cannot keep up with his lack of buffs.

Taking Lupa Mornye as a baseline; difference between S0 and S3

Moreover, even though Jingran gets most/all his stacks at higher sequences, the truth of him having too much DMG% and ATK% remains true. Jingran loves amp, and there is no unit that gives as much amp as Iuno.

That being said, he is still very strong with his non-BiS teams, especially with his sequences.

Should you get Iuno for Jingran?

First of all, pull whoever you want. Secondly, if you have at least one Jingran team with a healer, Jingran will be fine.

I wouldn't call any of the non-Iuno teams \"bad\". At WORST they are slightly underwhelming.

Is Spacetrek Explorer the goat? (+alternative SK build)

(Note: this section and calcs assume that Kuro doesn't arbitrarily let Spacetrek Explorer not work with Jingran's passive)

Yes for teams with units who cannot general shields by themselves. Assuming you have 50k HP, the Spacetrek Explorer can give him a 37.5% damage bonus per rotation. That's as much as Denia gives by herself through foam and her kit.

Both Chromatic Foam and Halo of Starry Radiance can use Spacetrek Explorer. Moreover, even SK can use Halo of Starry Radiance to get access to this echo. She still gives 20% atk vs 25% from the usual Rejuv + Fallacy combo but you get much more DMG% for Jingran.

Do note if you are going for spacetrek explorer main echo, both Mornye and SK would need +10% ER from subs.

Spacetrek Explorer simply provides a shield. Bonus points for it being a summon echo that does not cancel actions.

What about other echoes that provide shield?

Frankly, I am not a fan of those. They are simply too clunky for my liking.

Limitations of Jingran rotation

Jingran's intro activates his shield stack buff, which gives up to 125% dmg bonus (with Iuno) and is lost on swap.

This buff is roughly 62.5% in a non-shielder team and 100% in a team with at least one shield generation in his loop rotations.

What this essentially means is that double intro is generally off the table. You are missing out on way too many buffs.

Similarly, his quickswap is slightly limited in scope *if* you have to make use of his inherent buffs. Having him stay on partially while his buff is active is definitely encouraged if you have to go the quickswap route.

Lastly, who am I?

I'm just a random TC for Wuwa who occasionally speedruns. But make no mistake. None of this is fully my effort. There are a lot of other TCs like Riley, GG, Justice, Sbin, Yolitme0, Mane, Astrais, Wind, Freya, and Rezagard who help me out with TC.

When my calcs get shared, I feel a bit responsible to give added context to it.
I wanted to go through some questions about team comps, future speculation, and misconceptions about mechanics. Skip to the highlighted segments on questions you are curious about. One thing I would say is, it's very hard to divide Lucy and Rebecca so I will talk about both their potential in this post.

Are/Were there any missing values?

I have seen that said around a lot and mostly...no? The thing is, a lot of values that are not displayed in nanoka/encore. But they are still in the files. Thanks to gamergirl69420_ (great name, I know), we get things like missing MVs, cancels, and even frame data directly from datamining. He has probably been holding together a lot of TC calcs in general.

This includes the hack value. It was missing for those sites, but known to us for a while.

Can they quickswap?

They can individually quickswap, but I am not sure to what degree it would help them in a team. With Mornye, you are almost definitely locked into 123. With SK, Lucy, and Reb can preload their forte. But once Reb and Lucy intros there's not much reason to swap them. Regardless, lemme talk about a few optimizations you can make.

Optimization 1 (More Breaks)

Every break is just a ~200k + 60 (physical damage). In fact, breaking is a damage boost for all teams. But how realistic is it to do it consistently twice per rotation?

Well, you need ~78 offtune buildup while you do 82-83 buildup per rotation. Ofc this 83 is lossy due to buildup cooldown and overcapping on buildup with certain attacks. Interesting things to notice is Reb ult is like ~10 buildup all by itself. So in a Mornye -> Reb -> Lucy rotation you will break right after Reb's Ult.

Lucy can do her usual rotation + bit of extension + Mornye intro for the 2nd break.

Note: Break Values can still be tweaked upon release + I started calculating break values very recently, so there can be some errors.

But if all goes as expected, 2 breaks (with some rotation extension) should be doable. But its always better to take a number between 1 and 2 breaks for evaluating performance.

Optimization 2 (HP Tuning):

With Lucy's Inherent:

>While Botnet Mark is active, when a Resonator in the team defeats that target with direct damage, Lucy gains the Network Backdoor effect. If Rebecca is in the team, she gains the same effect.

Network Backdoor
Grants 10% All DMG Amplification and 10% additional Hack DMG Multiplier. This effect lasts for 2 min and stacks up to 2 times.

While I would not rely on this everywhere. In Matrix, you can keep any boss alive at very low HP and start with 10% amp and 10% hack once you defeat it early.

I would also generally not rely on high uptime for 2 stacks.

Bosses killed can be 2-6&#37; increase. (Baseline being S0R1 all 1x Break).

Pull Priority

This would depend on the degree of investment you want to go into.

1. If you want a "premium performance," Lucy team:

Lucy S0+ S1 -> Lucy S2 -> Lucy S3 = Lucy R1 (depending on the pulls you have/want to spend).

Up to S2, Lucy should cost you a similar amount of pulls as a limited 5* team while also being similar in performance to current limited teams

2. If you want to at least "collect" everything in the collab

Lucy S0 + S1 -> Lucy R1 -> Reb R1 -> Lucy S2 -> Lucy S3

3. If you want to get a good performance in Matrix

Lucy S1 + R1 -> Lucy R1 (highly optional)

Frankly speaking, are they "bait"?

Short Answer: No. They are quite decent.

Honestly, things like Pull Cost and Pull Value are my least favorite things to talk about, so I kinda wanna refrain. I have noticed different sides of the argument, and I just am, frankly, too tired (?) to engage with it.

What I know is, at a similar asterite value, you will get a similar performance with Lucy Rebecca. vs a premium limited team. While at low investment, you are getting a performance between late 2.x and Aemeath. What this means is...for Matrix, they are a solid team, always being able to get 5k+, which will keep them relevant as long as Matrix's ruleset doesn't change.

Not only do I think they are just "good for collab characters," but they are also just good characters in general.

I keep using words like similar because I don't wanna go into a full analysis of cost vs performance. Because as you start looking into it, you realise how many random factors affect it. At the end of the day its a gacha after all. They want the cost to be as confusing as possible.

I had to calc a lot of levels of investment. From S2 Lucy, you get into a \"premium team investment\" territory.

Conversely, does Lucy need S2 to be good?

Also no. I know, keep saying how Lucy S2 is similar to current teams. And if you like Lucy and want her to be strong, I don't want to discourage you from getting S2+.

Now with that out of the way. Let me put this into perspective. At the current values, let's say, Lucy should be getting around ~9.8k in Matrix, at S1R1 Lucy. S2 would increase it up to ~11.3k. This....I wouldn't say it is "a need".

There are two ways of looking at this:

1. Collab is already a good team, and I use the extra character pull to start building a new one.
2. Collab might not rerun, so I should just invest more into Lucy.

Both are valid opinions IMO.

Do they proc Mornye's Interference Marker?

No.

Is Mornye S1 required/that good?

Mornye S1 is about 13-15% team damage increase without any rupture or strain applicator. People usually start noticing a 5% increase. So you will notice the extra power.

However. I think seeing discussions about her S1. The community has definitely overcorrected it from "it's a good sequence" to "it's the single best sequence in the game" or even worse, "Mornye is a bad support before her S1."

None of them is close to being truth. Kuro has shown time and again that they can create kits where even Mornye S1/S2 is an underwhelming pick. (Denia Aemeath/Hiyuki Lucilla).

The way I see it. If you like Mornye and you want her to be stronger, it's a very good pick. But if you can only clear, if you got Mornye S1 over S0....You will be gated by the end of next HP inflation. (Each HP inflation is around 15-30% jumps)

The asterites you lose to get Mornye S1, you wont be able to recoup within 1-2 years.

In short: "Pull for waifu/husbando not meta."

Rebecca on Moonlit vs Adam Smasher/Shadow of Shattered Dreams

Adam Smasher is slightly better for the team. At Lucy S2 they are similar. At Lucy S3, Rebecca S0, Moonlit becomes better.

However, there are two things to consider

- Lucy and Rebecca are a multi-attribute team. So they are twice as likely to be gated by enemy attribute resistance. Moonlit Rebecca softens this blow because against a electro res enemy you are trading Reb's electro damage to Lucy's Spectro

- Rebecca is more single-target than Lucy. So in a multi-target scenario, sacrificing Rebecca's damage vs Lucy's is the play.

- Without Lucy, Rebecca is better off having a decent moonlit set anyway.

How good is Rebecca as a general/heavy/Augusta buffer?

Rebecca's outro ramps upto 35% over 14s and ends at 14s. So in practice, you are getting less. It's sort of good for backloaded DPSes like Augusta, but nothing to write home about.

This does mean, though....as an F2P option in a 4 lib scenario, Rebecca should perform better than Mortefi. All this with static mist being a good option for Rebecca.

Pretty good? Expect around 12-14&#37; increase with Reb S2 (S2 not that good, but it's something)

While her heavy amp is not really that insane. There is a silver lining. For older, units, Rebecca's personal damage + buffs actually helps her be competitive with sub DPSes such as Zhezhi

Rebecca Carlotta sounds weird but it...works?

What if I don't have Mornye available?

While most of my calcs are done with Mornye. SK doesn't fall behind. Especially if you can't or don't want to do a 2x break, she is an upgrade. If not SK, then whoever else you have. Verina included.

What if I want to make Lucy a sub DPS (More about her BA amp)

In the above sections, I mentioned how I wouldn't bother with that. And it applies to other situations too. Camellya and Luuk have long field times, and honestly, Lucy would feel sluggish in the sub DPS slot of two already field time-hungry units. You can still run them, of course. I just don't think it will feel very nice.

Is Lucy S1 good for Whiwa?

The hack transfer is good. Or well decent-ish. It's not as OP as it sounds (to some). The best thing it would do is to instantly do *some* damage to the new wave. I could compare it to Chisa S1, where she deals fixed damage. Maybe somewhat less

Keep in mind the "cripple movement" quickhack, which does have the highest damage among hacks, also scales with the max off-tune level of the enemy and hence is fairly weak with 1 cost and 3 costs. Think of it as a stepping stone to S2.

Lastly, who am I?

I'm just a random TC for Wuwa who occasionally speedruns. But make no mistake. None of this is fully my effort. There's a lot of other TCs like Riley, GG, Justice, Sbin, Yolitme0, Mane, Astrais, Wind and Rezagard who help me out and corroborate with me in terms of these numbers.

I think Denia is one of those units where my calcs cannot fully encapsulate what she can and cannot do. I feel a bit responsible for giving added context to it. I will separate the post into General, Fusion Burst, and Strain. Since this is going to be a long one, feel free to skip portions of the post and look the the highlighted segments you are curious about.

Also, for the next few sections, I will use certain abbreviations, namely,

FB = Fusion Burst

TB = Tune Break

TBB = Tune Break Boost (the buff Lynae and Strain Denia provide)

OBR = Off-Tune Buildup Rate (the buff Mornye provides)

1. General

Can Denia be a MDPS?

This question is very hard to answer. I often mention how Lumi could be and still sometimes be used as the main DPS in the context of Endstate Matrix to a decent degree. The question I go back to is, "Can an average person playing this game expect a performance close to any current MDPS?"

By rephrasing the question as such, I can simply say, "no". Denia can't be a main DPS of that level or even a level below. While her sub DPS damage looks very good. She cannot meaningfully extend her rotations to make this a "Iuno Situation".

For the record, when I say Main DPS, I mean 1 unit doing more damage than the two others combined and not "the unit that has the most field time."

What's stopping Denia from becoming a strong MDPS?

As I mentioned previously. As a sub DPS, Denia actually does decent personal damage. But here's where we find our first problem. Most of her high-value hits are cooldown-gated.

Most of Denia's damage is under cooldowns

In a team of Lynae Mornye Denia. Even after extending her field time to 13-14s. Only 1/3rd of her damage comes from attacks that are not cooldown-gated and hence extendable. Hits like ult1, ult2, core damage, and domain hits are all under cooldown *or* effectively under cooldown.

Compare that to Iuno in the same team.

Iuno can meaningfully extend her rotation with things that don't have cooldowns.

This is more of a 50-50 split, and Iuno can actually further push it towards the non-cooldown-gated side. While Denia lacks meaningful extension moves.

What's stopping Denia from becoming a strong MDPS (pt2)?

The second problem she faces is her modes. FB does next to nothing without Aemeath. Strain has its own problem, but also Denia's break values "as an MDPS" are low. (Her break values as a sub DPS are really good.

This also makes it hard to do 2x Rupture Denia. There is some TC around using Denia strain mode with Rupture Lynae, but Rupture itself will produce uptime issues. One of the bigger problems I have faced TCing it is....you cannot really break during Denia's field time. It won't cause a rupture reaction. And Denia's break values are not high enough (for now) to reliably break on Mornye Intro and Lynae outro like most 2x rupture setups.

All in all. If you want to MDPS Denia at S0, I would be conservative on the estimate of how good she is.

2. Fusion Burst

Is Lupa better than Chisa as a third slot to Aemeath Denia FB?

Generally speaking, no. If you already have Lupa and do not need any sort of healing, and fighting against a single target enemy: Lupa is strong in her niche and a decent alternative to Chisa.

However, the way I see it, if you don't have Chisa or Lupa and don't have any preference for either (just want the FB team to be stronger), I would take Chisa over Lupa any day. If there is more than one target, Chisa > Lupa, generally speaking. And I personally value Whiwa teams more than single-target teams.

This is simply because a good whiwa team is a good single-target team, but the opposite is not always true.

How good is FB Aemeath + Denia vs Tune Team?

There have been certain expectations of Denia to be strictly better than the TB team. Leaving that aside, going by just Kuro's wording.

>While in Resonance Mode - Tune Rupture, deal additional Tune Rupture DMG. This mode favors single-target damage output.

>While in Resonance Mode - Fusion Burst, Aemeath inflicts Fusion Burst. This mode unleashes Aemeath's area damage potential, which allows her to deal more DMG by frequently inflicting Fusion Burst.

Kuro kinda pointed towards Aemeath's 2 modes being for 2 situations. FB being worse than Rupture in single target. For better or worse, this statement....is false, but in Denia's favor. FB team, in theory, does almost as good a single-target damage as Rupture team. I wouldn't call it strictly better or worse, but just similar enough.

How good is Aemeath Denia in Whiwa (+quadratic scaling of FB)?

This is where I must concede because Whiwa performance is pretty hard to judge for me. The best thing you can do is wait for the release.

BUT, we can at least theorize some things. In Whiwa mobs spawn in 3 big waves

Wave 1:
7x 1cost, 3 times
Wave 2:
3x 3cost, 2 times
Wave 3:
5x 1cost + 2x 3cost, 2 times

At a given time, the maximum number of enemies on the field at spawn is 7, the minimum is 3. So potentially, if every mob is grouped up, you will get a damage of:

The maximum 32,426.24 (1 bane stack) x 7 x 1.45 (from Whiwa floor and token buffs) = 329126.33

The minimum 32,426.24 (1 bane stack) x 3 x 1.45 (from Whiwa floor and token buffs) = 141054.14

Of course, in reality, there will be some amount of loss, not every FB hitting every other enemy, or not everyone having an equal number of stacks. But even if 3-4 more enemies are within 3m of each other, which shouldn't be hard due to Denia's grouping, an FB proc potentially still clears any 1c mob that has a HP of ~210k while doing a chunk of damage to 3c that has a HP of ~500k.

This is outside the personal damage each unit brings to the table. So all this put together *ideally* should give you a very strong Whiwa team. I say ideally because sadly, I can't predict whiwa strength exactly.

Is Flaming Clawprint better than her own set (Chromatic Foam)? Especially in high-level play?

Short answer: No but it doesn't matter.

Long answer: Due to her own set being "only" 15s out of 25s, which might create uptime issues. In quickswap/high-level play, you are often damaging with all 3 characters at all times. However, the rotation I found for high-level play still has all the strong Aemeath's moves inside those 15s. I can't account for every high-level rotation, but suffice it to say her set is looking the better option generally.

Do note that you can still use Flaming Clawprint if you have extra pieces lying around.

The rotation below is not displayed in the current calcs.

A look at how a Opener + Loop tryhard rotation can look like. Most of Aemeath's damage is under Chromatic Foam

Should you get Denia if you already have a good Rupture team for Aemeath and/or don't have Chisa?

I would generally say yes, BUT consider investing in Chisa or Lupa eventually. Teams like Denia Aemeath SK are just "decent," but I wouldn't count on it in the long run (say one or two HP increases), especially if you are casually playing this game.

This is Denia's main, so I doubt this will be the case, but even if you somehow are on the fence about Denia while having the Aemeath Tune tea,m I would say, freeing up Lynae herself is such a decent boost to your account

But the main thing is to remember, endgames don't really give you that many rewards to fuss over and pull whoever you want!

How good is FB Denia outside Aemeath?

Fairly decent. Again, as long as you are okay with giving up a healer (or playing Brant MDPS). Fusion has a good support system held together by Lupa + mono fusion archetypes.

Teams like Galbrena Denia Lupa or Brant Denia Lupa are looking strong. Denia's buffs also don't go away on swap, so it might create some unique rotations. One more positive point is. If you are not looking to invest in Denia weapon the teams don't really lose that much.

Good performance, especially since Denia's weapon doesn't affect either MDPS outside Aemeath.

3. Tune Strain

Addressing the nerf to non-Mornye teams

In V4, Denia's TBB buff has been changed to

>All Resonators in the team gain 10 Break Boost. When a Resonator in the team's Off-Tune Buildup Rate exceeds 100%, every 10% that runs over increases the Resonator's Tune Break Boost by 8, up to 40 points.

Essentially needing +50% OBR (exactly the buff Mornye gives) to give 50 TBB to the team. I would guess the main intention was to nerf the Luuk Lynae Denia team. Because strong non-healer teams are something Kuro has not been fully in favor of. Especially because "potentially" Luuk Lynae Denia was better than its non-healer counterpart by a sizeable chunk.

But it does make teams like Luuk Denia SK worse than it was.

Is Denia going to be an upgrade to Lynae and Sanhua for Luuk?

Most definitely. I have been slightly vocal about how Strain is a very weirdly designed/balanced system. I don't wanna yap about it too much here. But Denia, even at S0 takes some strides in fixing a few of those.

Problem #1: Luuk takes very long to rotate for most missing Lynae's 14s buff (without cancels or good inputs)

Denia has 16 seconds of outro.

Problem #2: Lynae Mornye takes too long to rotate, which limits Luuk's capabilities beyond 4 rotations + Lynae is intro reliant

Denia (without intro) can rotate within 4-4.5s (4.12 to be exact). Now you can do something like: Denia > Luuk > (Mornye > Denia > Luuk) x 4, giving better Luuk players access to 5 rotations.

Problem #3: Strain takes too long to stack up.

Denia starts you off with half the break bar filled. Bonus points if you are taking advantage of it 2+ times per rotation. Either through keeping the previous boss alive at 1% in the matrix to kill on your first break, or just playing floors like 1-4, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4 of ToA

Problem #4: Some bosses have TB immune phrases that expire strain stacks.

Each domain hit of Denia resets the duration of strain stack.

As you can see, Denia provides a truckload of QoL, some more situational than others. Overall, I feel, even beyond the damage increase, Denia will feel strong with Luuk given you have Mornye.

Just for the record I am not that good at playing Luuk so do forgive me for shoddy cancels.

A 19s? opener. I had to preload some concerto cause Luuk's tracking is bad in private server, but it should be enough as a proof of concept.

Should I get Denia if I want to make Luuk stronger but don't have/want Mornye?

Again, pull for whoever you want, but strictly numbers-wise, the short answer is no.

Both TBB and OBR are important for strain. OBR makes you break faster so that you can stack up strain faster. And as it turns out, Mornye is the only source of OBR in the foreseeable future.

So even outside the nerf to Non-Mornye teams for Denia, Mornye is really good for Luuk.

After that you choice is either Lynae or Denia, and as I have mentioned above, Denia should *feel* much better than Lynae.

Do I run Pact of Neonlight Leap (PoNL) or Reel of Spliced Memories (RoSM)?

Okay, there are no strict right or wrong answers here. PoNL is more applicable because it doesn't rely on high-number strain stacks (aka easier ToA floors or whiwa) while RoSM gets more value the more (and faster) stacks you have.

So while the calcs over 4 rotations make RoSM look ever so slightly better, my recommendation would be PoNL.

HOWEVER. Do note that in beta, Kuro has suggested people use RoSM for Denia. It is very possible that any future strain DPS would be made with RoSM Denia in mind.

How good is Strain Denia outside Luuk?

Strain is a new and fairly closed system (for now). As such, not many units have come out, outside Luuk, to make use of Denia's buffs in Strain mode.

I already talked about the limitations of MDPS Denia. So all in all, if I were making Denia a generalist fusion support, I would generally stick to FB mode. Unless, of course, the end game mode gives you buffs specifically for having strain/strain interfered on the enemy.

Lastly, who am I?

I'm just a random TC for Wuwa who occasionally speedruns. But make no mistake. None of this is fully my effort. There's a lot of other TCs like Riley, GG, Justice, Sbin, Yolitme0, Mane, Wind and Rezagard who help me out and corroborate with me in terms of these numbers.

Also while not exactly "theorycrafter", sidew often helps me out since he does clean looping rotations. (The Iuno DPS calcs is derived from his rotation)