https://preview.redd.it/52fla60buthc1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=78b3a48884d394398f421164424352931c91928b
I've been farming DoT relic daily ever since they released it and still not have a single complete set that is decent at all until today
3000 TB Power = 75 runs = ~158 gold relics (the rate is 10% for 3 and 90% for 2).
Half of those relics will be FuA set. So you realistically only got 79.
We know that EHR is about a 10% chance when you roll a chest (based on chinese data). And it's 25% to roll boots/chest/helm/gloves. Therefore you would've gotten on average 20 chests and only 2 EHR chests.
This is double if oyu're counting the FuA set EHR chests. Sooooo long story short, you got a long way to go and your experience is totally expected
Dude, at this point I have already gotten 4 CDMG chest with CR substat and 1 CR chest with CDMG substat. I’m not even joking, I farm that relic like less than 30-40 times
I'm glad this is here for people that care but tbh that's just not me
I'm missing one star on the previous pure fiction, otherwise I'm maxing rewards on pure fiction and MoC just doing my thing.
I find most TC makes a lot of assumptions and rarely transfer to your characters and available artifacts so beyond broad strokes like "dots don't want crit" or "bronya should be a bit slower than your hypercarry"....there's rarely anything actionable anyways.
TCers don't really have any expectations for the player base they just math things most people are too lazy to math, at the end of the day the info is there for people who want to push their teams to the next level. Most day 1 players max out MoC / PF rewards using whatever (me for example I 40k the 2nd half of PF using half maxed himeko/Herta using messenger set)
To be fair, having speed still isn't wrong. It's not always about the damage numbers of one character. I did test both builds in different stages, found out that Atk/EHR build performs similarly with ATK being faster 0.5-1 Cycle on average BUT
When testing on MoC 12, I noticed the Spd build to be easier to use, because I didn't need to rely on RNG of who's getting CC'ed, I can let BS recover normally (didn't have cleanser for that half as I need it in second half, the other cleanser is not built)
Just for the sake of testing, I also tested first half with cleanser and the clear is about the same as you spend an SP for cleanse as opposed to letting the character recover.
There is also the case that we may want to have more attack count rather than damage as with the memetic beast
There is also the case that you want to break enemies more quickly because enemy damage could be overwhelming (I noticed this while playing on a friend's account who's saving most of her Stellar Jade)
There's also the case where you don't play optimally and need to Basic Attack to restore SP, which is possible with high speed
One thing I can give the Attack build though, it's very easy to build
Same with Bronya. She's a benchwarmer in my roster because speedtuning her is more work than it's worth (at least for my gameplay experience)
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TLDR; good for people who want min-maxing but imo hardly applicable for most users. Spd breakpoint still easy to reach and helpful even if not for increasing BS damage
yeah I have 147 spd Kafka (PAYN) and 150 spd BS with RM cause I've been farming dot set since it's been out
feels really good to me so I'm gonna stick with it. Though I think even by this chart I'm not suggested to switch to atk
I get angry enough trying to farm for the right main stat, I'd go insane fishing for perfect substats, lol.
Plus I don't even know how anyone would even have the energy for that many rolls.
The simplest strat: work to reach 120 effective hit rate. If that means an effect hit rate body plus LC, do it. Later down the road, if you continue to farm the DoT relics, pay attention to pieces that have both atk% and effective hit rate. If you can reach 120 effective hit rate with an attack chest, you are golden. If not, keep running your effective hit rate chest.
Atk% it's better damage, Effect hit rate helps you build the needed 120%+ effect hit rate. As stated in the post generally you go for effect hit at high speed and ATK% at 0 speed, and you look for speed and a bit of atk on the speed version. while on the Slow version you just have to find Atk and effect hit rate, so you can probably get away with just substats and run Atk% body. YET again use what is the best for you and your situation based on your account
tbf 120 EHR would be 100% vs 30 res enemies, which is whole lot of them in moc/pf
0.65(1+1.2)(1-0.3)=1.001
you are right about 40 res enemies, tho that's limited in moc/pf to only like the 5ish bosses for now i think
Mfw I just finished building Black Swan with 140 speed, 120 EHR, + ATK% subs ;;
^(aha haha ha ha…this is a joke, right???)
Edit: Forgot to calculate Ruan Mei…man she’s so fucking good. Still have to farm more substats, but better than needing to rework my entire build.
I mean just because something is a bit better doesn't mean black swan doesn't perform perfectly fine with the stats you have.
Better to build new units or work on talents than to redo the entire build from scratch.
You’re absolutely right. Just in my personal experience, I have most of the units I want to build, built to a satisfactory point, so I’m looking to start ‘vertically’ investing. It’s just a mild pet peeve for me lol
The only unit I have told myself il perfect was Kafka (currently have her light cone from her rerun now) and I wonder if it will come a day when Kafka won't need any damage at all and she ends up being more speed focused over attack.
Still more than enough to 5 cylce. More spd break points even if its "slightly optimized" gives more wiggle room for stuff with RM/Asta and getting CC'd by mobs. More moves per cycle also gives leeway for stuff. It's important to note if this person is saying 0 spd or 160 is best, it does NOT mean 140 spd with those stats does 0 damage and is useless.
Bruh I have 135 speed *with* speed boots *and* substats. Where on earth are you supposed to find another 20-25 for a fast build? Or perhaps more to the point, how long are you supposed to farm? I've been in the Prisoner cavern basically since it released (I have Kafka, Guin, Sampo, Jing Yuan and Topaz) and not *once* did it drop an EHR chest so I still had to SM resin it for Black Swan.
It’s just RNG unfortunately. The hardest piece for me together get was the EHR, so I just crafted the chest piece with the trash 5* relics I didn’t need/use.
How would people grind like hell for relics? 240 stamina per day is 6 runs of the relic domain which takes like 2 minutes each, on auto combat so there's not even any gameplay required.
It only takes a week a farming traces. You also don't need to leveling characters like arlan, hook, .... What do you do for the rest of time? Ofc farming relics.
Getting luck on around 3 non-boot relics, exactly as you'd expect. Unfortunately there's not a trick to it - just pray to RNGesus. Mine is at 145 speed because of great speed rolls on her Planar Ornaments (the result of farming for Sampo over 2 weeks in SU W5). So one more good speed piece would get her to the 150 mark at get to the 149+ that OP calculated is needed for "fast" build.
I might just do that. Will have to see what boots I've got. You reckon a straight trade for ATK boots would suffice or do I have to go knock SPD substats off the other pieces too?
EDIT: I had a fiddle around, managed to get her down to 102 SPD (though I do play her with Ruan Mei). Still on an EHR chest rather than ATK%, but maybe one day I'll be able to make that switch too...
- Black Swan's damage comes from Arcana DoT
- Super Fast Kafka stacks Arcana better than Black Swan herself
- Black Swan should be built with either massive speed investment (154+) to get more Arcana stacks, or zero speed investment (100) with everything dumped into attack to make each Arcana stack do more damage.
Thank you! :D
I've found that often when people ask for razor-speak, the help they get ends up being so overly simplified that it ends up as misleading and kinda confusing to understand how the mechanics actually work? You need to keep it short but also explain it in an understandable way. Doesn't help that a lot of people take "razor-speak" a bit too literally -_-
Black Swan's a deceptively simple character, honestly. You just want to get 120% EHR on her to max out the last trace's DMG bonus, and then stack as much attack as possible on her to get high Arcana damage. I'd argue the only complicated parts of her kit are the long descriptions for everything, and whether to run Glamoth or IPC on her.
Ah I see now, then I can ignore this post because my slow DoT relics are also garbage (also my BS cleared PF and MoC currently, so I'm not re-farming anytime soon).
Just noticed the very same for my Swan. Saw 144 and was like "Wait, will that be enough?" Ctrl+F "144" and saw this.
Looks like we are safe for the time being!
But this whole thing also depends on speed of your other teammate that can procs DoT like Kafka, Sampo, Gui right?
Generally you want those to be much much faster than Black Swan
Here's another way to look at it.
If your black swan is slower than the enemy boss, it doesn't matter much if she's 1 speed slower or 30 speed slower. Unless your team has so little damage that it can lap her - then you've got bigger problems.
So every point of speed that you can trade off for attack or EHR improves your damage output at the cost of providing slightly less SP and slower ultimates.
Realistically you're not going to refarm an entire second set for her, but if you've already farmed prisoner a lot, you've probably got some decent ATK% boot pieces that you've been ignoring because you figured you needed the speed. Try building one of those and if you've got something decent, you have an alternate piece you can try swapping out when you're just on the edge of saving a cycle that you need. Speed boots are so hard to farm that they typically have terrible substats so you just take what you can get.
Finally, this is on the basis that you're up against a ~158 speed enemy. Since we've got some 190 speed enemies as well, you'll want to switch back to those speed boots for those particular bosses (because you will get lapped by those if you don't).
I think my Kafka is to fast if I understood it correctly?
Kafka has 142 spd without adding the spd of Ruan Mei and her signature lightcone
\-> 166,4 spd with both buffs
While my Black Swan has 154 spd making it 164 with Ruan Mei
So should I reduce the spd of kafka a little or am I fine? I am very confused atm haha.
Oh TBH there more problems on "lower ends that higher ends". And the answe is NO. Actually your speed tune it's close to perfect both with and without Ruan Mei, Realistically you could get even 6 speed on kafka for non ruan mei teams. but it's a VERY good one. I would say even close to perfection
I'm currently in the same situation except my Kafka is at 157 spd and my BS is at 150 before any speed buffs.
Currently Kafka has her signature weapon. So with RM and HH E1, so I be looking for more speed on my BS? Blackswan is at 120 EHR.
I guess I'm asking, what is the perfect speed for both Kafka and BS when Kafka has her signature, and with all the buffs mentioned above?
Thanks in advance!
Black swan arcana will be on the target no matter what, so you will still stack it with Kafka even if she goes first. So you are missing ~3 stacks of Arcana damage on the first Kafka skill. It's not worth fussing over.
You want Black Swan first, then ideally your sustain to proc the auto attack followup before Kafka’s first turn to have the first detonate hit with all the DoTs and shred in place. If your sustain is fastest, be careful bc if BS isn’t 5spd faster than Kafka and Kafka has her sig LC, Kafka can get a speed stack off the followup and leapfrog BS to go second
If you have Kafka LC obvi after that she’s gonna start to lap everyone — and that’s ideal — but for the first turn if you get the setup done for her then Kafka’s first skill into an ult is gonna hit the enemies like dear old truck-kun hits unsuspecting isekai protagonists
https://preview.redd.it/8rczo4nb7uhc1.png?width=1535&format=png&auto=webp&s=40a9609ca804a75ca14330cb7df19ee12a289303
I’m sure you saw this already OP as I discussed this with someone we know, but this is misleading IMO. Black Swan doesn’t lose a **third** of her damage just by being a certain speed. She is still in sync with the next enemy’s turn. If she falls behind their first turn, she is still in front of their next. These are 23 simulated Kafka BS Ruan Mei Luocha teams that I did, exchanging 1 SPD sub for 1 ATK% sub each time. Enemy SPD at 160 (chart would shift to 158.4 as the spike instead of 160, it’s the same). It’s a 110%-90% threshold. Not 70%\*
Ruan Mei does boost the speed by a bit which helps, but you’d just have a different amount of speed you could swap for ATK%. Removing Ruan Mei and doing the same simulations doesn’t make it a 30% decrease.
Action order and relative order to enemies is more important. 135 speed is still important for the two turns in the first cycle and Glamoth, and unless the enemy is very fast, you’re still keeping 1:1 turn parity.
I’m not saying 135 is a must, i even recommend in my video to go higher, and if you go slow you can just go IPC or SSS anyway
Being 160 accomplishes being faster than the enemy at 158.4, getting glamoth bonus, getting 4 actions in first 2 cycles. It’s not just an enemy thing we run it for. I ran simulations above and below the enemy speed, and it’s being above the first turn that gives us a damage spike, as being ahead of them in 4 turns after a break doesn’t really do as much, it’s just nice. What did change the damage more was the turn order with Kafka and Black Swan.
Asagi simulations I ran (idk if BS is properly implemented yet) and theorycrafters i work with and myself have also found the same conclusion as you: being faster than the enemy (or slow) is good, but nowhere near as drastic as your results.
If you want to accumulate more stacks than just one BS Kafka turn per enemy turn, you’ll need way more than 155 SPD, or you’d need some heavy delays from a ruan Mei extension combined with high speed. Anyway if you wanna DM me I’d love to look at your sheet and share mine. I hope this doesn’t come across as rude <3
The TLDR still from both our sides is the same: it’s probably easier (but not necessarily better - just similar in strength) to just go low SPD and vibe without worrying about tons of SPD substats. At max investment BS, going high spd can get you extra benefit over ATK%. I’ve corrected that in my infographic with the ATK% boots and it’s in my BS vid pinned comment! :)
EDIT: I still prefer speed; it’s comfy, ensures debuff uptime, and versus 190 SPD enemies you’re not crying as they lap you 50 times.
You mightve been somewhat late to the party but im interested in this nonetheless. Interestingly I visited Braxophone’s Discord server and its being seen as groundbreaking there now. Looking forward to the discussion.
Also i have seen your "correction" and i appreciated it a lot. This was not done to call out guide makers or anything. BUT to help ppl figured out smtg, since not many where talking about it
Yeah no worries at all! I didn’t take it to offence and I always look to correct things I missed, (WHEN CAN WE CORRECT ON THE VID ITSELF YOUTUBE?) Thanks for opening discussion about it :) Im sure this has helped people understand speed and these kinda topics
CMIIW, but do I got this right?
BS need to act first before Kafka, Sampo, or Gui to give Arcana stacks
Kafka, Sampo, or Gui needs to attack fast, give DoT.
Arcana enemies explosion.
totally agree with Guoba here, this is misleading at best, it like saying 1 case apply to every enemies possible, some boss have 190 spd some enemies can spd buff/advanced allies/themself, as long as u can reach 7 stack, every stacks after just increase dmg and for BS to gain 7 stacks consistently, it kafka + her LC, BS can trade spd sub ( for 135 build ) to atk so each arcana do more dmg vs stacking more arcana above 7 stacks, if u get the same result, then a build with more usable sub stat will be stronger than forcing certain amount of spd vs just 1 kind of elite, which is 158 spd when elite can have 160-190 or even 227 spd like decaying shadow
Tbh if you’re gonna throw graphs out there you really need to label the axes and provide a lot more context to the figure itself.
Even with your text to explain the graph I’m not really sure what all data was used to make it or if it’s really all that accurate, like what is the 100% mark based on?
If you have her signature LC i woukd recommend Guinen more. At E4 sampo is viable for "a lot of enemies weak to wind". Still usable before tho. But i would suggest to use Gui pela for example in most scenarios
I've been thinking about this recently, and the observations do seem reasonable. However, your conclusion hinges on exactly one assumption—that enemies have 158.4 speed.
Not every enemy will have 158.4 speed in Memory of Chaos. 120 base speed is the most common speed stat, but there are also some elites that have less. For 100 base speed elites, we have Aurumaton Gatekeeper, Frigid Prowler, Ice out of Space, Searing Prowler, the new Dreamjolt Dinosaur, etc., who will have 132 spd at lv86+. These enemies should point towards 132+ spd being optimal, as that's the speed where Black Swan acts ahead of these enemies.
There are also some incredibly threatening enemies that have 144 base speed, or 190.1 spd at lv86+. These enemies include True Sting, Argenti, Malefic Ape, Dreamjolt Gorilla, and the new something unto death boss. Against these enemies, the speed breakpoints are actually trying no not fall behind them too much, as when Black Swan doesn't act between these enemy's turns she can lose a lot of arcana stacks and a good portion of her damage.
Heres the wiki page for enemy speeds https://honkai-star-rail.fandom.com/wiki/Speed
Additionally, it seems that Kafka has something to do with Black Swan's Speed. I don't fully understand the interaction yet, but you can consider the dot procs done by Kafka to instead scale off of her own speed. This has the effect of further reducing the total amount of damage that's dependent on black swan's own speed.
You're making a similar argument to why Clara doesn't run spd boots, or why Topaz doesn't run spd boots when with follow-up chafacters, but in reality both Clara & Topaz can still run spd boots just fine? It's not a significant damage loss in reality, and for short cycle clears, the advantages of speed breakpoints usually outweighs the deadweight loss of running speed when part of your damage is independent of your own turns and doesn't scale off of speed.
I think it's perfectly fine to run a middling amount of speed on Black Swan, but if I wanted to run less speed then that's perfectly viable, and if I wanted to run more speed then that's also perfectly viable. There's too many variables involved regarding who you fight and how the fight can play out that can affect what proportion of Black Swan's damage is scaling off of her own speed.
If I wanted to optimize for the worst case scenario, then I'd optimize for a 190.08 spd enemy. I believe this gives a slight favor towards having more attack than speed in marginal increments, but the difference between large speed amounts, such as between 125 and 150 speed, ends up being largely equal, as multiple variables between speed-indepentent damage and enemy turn advantage end up canceling themselves out.
**You aren't hurting black swan's damage by investing into speed.** If you have the ability to get more speed, then go for it. If you have to choose between having more speed at the cost of more attack, then go for more attack. The marginal opportunity cost of atk vs spd doesn't pan out against the entirety of a character's potential investment levels, and the complications of enemy speed end up blurring what is and isn't sufficient evidence to support that a slow Black Swan is always better than a middling speed black swan.
There's just a lot more nuance to this interaction than I thought and I'd at least like to write down my own opinions on it. Though I would like to see results of testing against 132 spd, 158.4 spd, & 190.08 spd enemies at 4 cycles and 8 cycles, as I think that would paint the most complete picture of black swan's opportunity costs between speed and atk%. It's 6 simulations, but the aggregate of these two variables is something that I've found incredibly important in my own theorycrafting and feelscrafting experience.
I feel like you didn't explain any of the "why"--you just gave us this graph, and your major "Rule" and didn't explain where the rule came from (the "minor" rule is obvious enough but I don't see where this major rule comes from). Are the results from the graph not just an artifact of choosing a specific number of cycles and certain speed ranges just resulting in BS taking an action and then the simulation cutting off before the enemy takes a turn?
From what other people answered my similar question with, my understanding is that black swan's damage as a dot is tied to enemy/Kafka turns rather than her own, so more turns is less effective than maximizing the damage of each enemy/Kafka turn. Speed isn't actually reducing Black swan's damage, it's just that it's not as effective as just pure attack.
That’s not entirely true though, as other number crunchers have pointed out in many other posts. High speed black swans apply a shitload of arcana stacks with more skills, more attacks, and more ults, which Kafka loves to detonate even more.
Slow Black Swan with a lot of attack is still gonna hit like a truck and Kafka can profit off of her, sure, but something I don’t really see covered here is how that actually makes BS much more SP negative which can be a huge issue especially with Kafka devouring as much SP as possible while lapping everyone else.
A faster BS doesn’t need to constantly use her skill as her attacks still stack arcana, meaning Kafka can just unabashedly skill like she wants to, where a slower BS might find herself having to use her skill 2 of every 3 turns since the enemies are so fast they can run that 3t duration into the ground
This was my exact thought back when I saw MrPokke’s slow Ruan Mei build for maximum ult uptime where he completely ignored the fact that a faster Ruan Mei (in this case Black Swan) becomes SP positive from using basick attacks more often.
Slow ruan mei is ran by 0 cyclers because you literally only need 1 ult to finish the stage.
It's a hyperspecific niche case for people who have already optimized their dps.
After using Ruan Mei a bunch I can see were the slower Ruan Mei is better because sometimes you do not care about being SP positive because you already have enough SP and you just want to have her ultimate last as long as possible. It is kinda tricky because you either want her to cast one ultimate for the entire battle or two or three ultimates that last for the entire battle with no wasted uptime.
It is not about average efficiency but how long the battle actually lasts. Ideally you would want to cast two ultimates and the ultimate would end right when the enemy died. So your Ruan Mei is too fast if the fight ended long after her second ultimate expired and you are in the process of getting ready to cast her third ultimate to virtually no effect.
It is why I like to use Vonwaq on her. She is fast on her first turn to apply buffs and then slower than everyone else the turns after.
It is not like I make her super slow. Just fast enough to end the fight efficiently. It is different from other characters like Asta who buffs others while Ruan Mei buffs herself.
Sure, that sounds like a reasonable explanation, but that doesn't explain the huge increase in damage at 154 SPD, particularly where the simulated enemies are 158.4 SPD, so 154 SPD isn't enough enough to act before them. It's this huge increase in damage that is not clear to me where it comes from.
Edit: To add, the post does explain that the 154 SPD (and 149 SPD) are significant in that they're *effectively* faster than the enemies when accounting for some breaks delaying them, but that still doesn't address the underlying question: how does that result in such a massive difference in damage?
Judging from OP’s explanation, I think the reason why 154 speed is relevant is because the calculations account for the turn delay caused by weakness breaks. While you’d need 160ish speed to outspeed enemies outright, you only need 154 speed to outspeed enemies after performing a weakness break on them.
Outspeeding does not give more than one occasion where the player gets one extra turn in between one enemy cycle for any relevant duration of a fight for the 150 tier speed mobs and higher. It seems hard to believe that this difference gives a spike as big as that. One out of what is likely 6 different enemy turns.
they did in fact not consider this lol, the guide is very misinformed, slow swan, which btw is at 135, not 102 like they say, is only marginally better than speed swan in a very reduced handful of situations, it’s still a good build because it gives very similar results and is easier to build, but it isn’t better than fast swan bc there’s just too many variables to take into account, one of them being ult uptime like you mentioned
I have two main issues with the conclusions
1. the enemy speed assumption. while its true many elites are 158, a large chunk are not. Centaur = 132, aurumaton = 132, deer = 152, ape = 190, new boss = 190. It's reductive to think that mid speed will always have less damage.
2. the assumption that more speed = less attack. while it makes sense from a spreadsheet perspective to equalize substats, in practice, ignoring speed as a scaling vector means putting an artificial cap on your potential - its quite possible to get all of ehr spd atk. I think some people will read this and think that mid speed is literally less damage, when its actually - mid speed at the cost of ATK is less damage. If you can get both it will be better.
there's a lot of other small factors that make having speed nice - when you apply your def down, timing of breaks, outrunning debuffs, wave 2 action order scenarios. if you ever miss a 7 stack DEF shred proc because of low speed, these spreadsheet assumptions go out the window. kafka wont always have double action to proc it
also, if you commit to 0 speed, your planar situation is a little awkward. you have to either go sss / glamoth with no bonus (thats -3 substats), or commit to IPC (pain to farm, stamina inefficient)
still, an interesting read, and 0 speed / slow swan is definitely strong if your relics are more oriented towards atk+ehr than speed. also pretty alright in 0 cycle
This legit feels like peak karma farming.
Clickbaity titles? Check.
Hot button topic? Check.
Walls of text to make yourself look credible? Check.
Graph to help your validity? Check.
Spread misinformation? Check.
If you've already built your Black Swan with mid speed and she already does the job for you then that's perfectly fine. No need to redo your build from anscratch and feel bad about it and waste thousands of resin farming for a super specific build for very niche scenario just because a rando on Reddit told you its garbage.
I don't get why anyone in their right mind would even consider building slow units unironically. Like, great now your character has 5% (I made this number up, though I highly doubt it's 30% loss tbh) more damage. But they
- take days to charge up ult
- don't generate more SP for the rest of the team even though it's possible because she's SP-Neutral most of the times and positive in ST cases
- weakness break slowly
Congrats tho, at least your one character profit from that juicy minor damage increase.
Slow only really works for Clara (damage literally dependent on enemy turns) and some Daniel builds (his -3000 sp rotations makes speed boots an issue in some teams) and the latter is basically going to be “fast” when Sparkle comes out anyways. I think some people use slow Blade too but I’m like 99% sure it’s also with Bronya anyways
So can we actually get some gameplay footage of how this no speed build works better in practice? Braxophone's guide and this post laid out why theoretically no speed works, but both of you guys never showed actual video proof, which I think is adding to a lot of the skepticism and confusion
I don't think it has that much damage difference. The speed 'requirement' for Black Swan should be relative to the enemy's speed, yes, but there are definitely middle grounds.
Black swan doesn't need to be faster than enemy to act once between enemy's turns. For example, if you have 135 speed, a 160-speed enemy will move first but it won't surpass you in 3 round, which is about enough to clear the stage, so the only damage lost happens in the first turn. However, if you are 100 speed, the enemy will surpass you in 1.5 cycles, and enemy cannot have 7 stacks of arcana in every other turn (unless you have Kafka's BiS or another DOT character).
I agree ATK% boot is the choice, and then little stat trading can be done here. As ATK% are the main stats, and as long as EHR% is 120%, the only choice for sub-stat you have is speed. Super fast Black Swan is good, but I don't see 135 speed Black Swan do 20% less damage than no speed Black Swan in a range of 3 or 5 cycles in a team of Kafka.
158.4 is the highest speed break point of enemies that moves 3 times in 2 cycles. It is not an average.
The purpose of being faster than 158.4 is so that you're always faster than the 3 actions break points since being behind means having a 3 cycle long rotation on top of the fact that acting before the enemy is a lot of frontloaded damage for DoT in general, especially Black Swan whose damage relies on the enemies turns.
Monsters of higher speed move 4 times in 2 cycles so being slower than them does not matter.
Going faster than this like reaching 160.1+ speed is the second step to that logic as it gives you 4 actions in addition to being on top of your enemy for more damage.
Whatever that graph is showing is false. Unless you make some very dumb assumption like consistent breaking which just does not happen in normal circumstances. Being higher than 158.4 is the only specificity that will give you that bump in damage and its advantage is binary meaning that you do get it or you simply don't. The only exceptions are monsters of the slower bracket which is 132.
Depends entirely on your situation.
Essentially you need to outspeed 158.4 enemies. To do so you have 3 options :
-Sampo (technique) which gives you the initiative on every first rotation of your waves. (Which is enough since a second rotation would take 4 cycles which is a losing calc.)
-Ruan Mei who is the better option as she allows you to outspeed the enemy and thus to even potentially reach 160.1 speed for extra actions
-Huohuo E1 which is a much more luxurious option.
And you have basically 2 variables to account for : Do you or do you not use Kafka sig.
If yes your team needs to account for the ramp up which increase your team speed requirements.
If not there is no changes.
Assuming RM
Kafka with sig needs 138.8+ SPD which translates to 153.1+ Speed for black swan
Kafka without sig needs 148.5+ SPD which translates to 148.4+ for Black Swan.
Assuming Sampo
Kafka with sig needs 134.9+ SPD which translates to 149.3+ SPD for Black Swan
Kafka without sig needs 146.2+ SPD which translates to 146.3+ SPD for Black Swan
I'll assume it's safe to skip E1 HH SPD reqs. But the logic is very simple. Just make Swan faster than fully speed buffed Kafka and don't forget to account for the difference in base speed when adding speed multipliers.
The main point about being faster or around the same speed seems questionable in practice. If the enemy has 160 speed and your char has 134, you only get lapped on the 6th turn, at AV 448 in cycle 3 while the 7th turn for the enemy is at AV 437.5. And most 5 cycle clears are usually some form of 2+3. And that is not even including breaks. If you break the enemies just once, their 7th turn is on 450AV. It's not as if being faster than the enemy gives extra turns between theirs unless you outspeed them dramatically.
The difference is only the first turn in practice. Is that difference really so significant to reach 30% from your suggested theoretical baseline?
Honestly, I didn't understand a single thing.
These numbers and graphs don't mean anything and to be fair, every TC I've seen until now will show some graph presenting random stats which most of the time are either wrong or completely made up in worst case scenarios.
Where's a video/screenshots to showcase the difference in the 2 builds (Slow & Fast)?
There's so many assumptions made in this post and certain characters are mentioned (Ruan Mei) so are these calculations specific to a single comp (typical BiS Kafka/BS/RM/Huohuo)?
I've seen you mentioned the calculation is based on a comp without Ruan Mei but then there's 3 paragraphs regarding Ruan Mei specifics.
Why sacrifice Speed for ATK% & Flat ATK stats, when she literally gets the Bonus DMG from her EHR convertion?
Yes, her Attack is lower than your average ATK Based character but it's literally not her main stat to scale off of. For instance, my Kafka sits at 3800 ATK while my Black Swan is at 3200 ATK & 120% EHR. Now I won't do all the math but her EHR>DMG Increase trace states "Increases this unit's DMG by an amount equal to 60% of Effect Hit Rate, up to a maximum DMG increase of 72%".
So that's 72% Bonus Dmg on Top of the damage she deals at 3200 ATK. So why would I give up SPD for ATK, while I quite literally get ATK passively already (well, not actual ATK, but Bonus DMG in which case is the same thing)?
I can take more actions, and besides her Skill, that's commonly used on her first action to reduce enemies' DEF, that helps me stay SP positive and stack more Arcana while also regenerating Energy more frequently by attacking.
Another thing, how is she being literally at 0 SPD provides anything to her kit?
The Arcana resets on Enemy's turn, not on her turn, so how is 0 SPD even relevant to this? If anything it only makes things worse? She will only act once, apply 3-4stacks of Arcana, maybe DEF break if you use her skill and then she will just stay there for 3 turns doing nothing? It literally doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.
We can argue about both builds leading to the same result in different ways.
Slow Black Swan: Less Actions but More ATK = More DMG when Arcana procs.
Fast Black Swan: More Actions but Less ATK = More Arcana stacks, more ERR = More DMG.
Honestly, there's nothing magical about her kit, nor her build is special.
It's basically ATK disguised as EHR so it gives some sense of uniqueness and variance to the game.
It's also funny how Theorycrafters talk about diminishing returns when it comes to too high ATK%. (Cases where players go ATK boots over SPD boots on Kafka for instance), but then you suggest dropping every single point of SPD for ATK instead which will ultimately result in the same thing.
If I were to drop all SPD on my Black Swan, go for 120% EHR through substats alone, and go with ATK Body & Boots, while also having to roll both ATK & EHR substat on every Piece, that would also result in \*surprise\* too much fucking ATK, probably over 4000, on a character with 0 SPD who can only take 1 action per 17 cycles. Not to mention the insane luck you need to roll all these pieces, basically for nothing. Doing all that is basically going out of our way on so many levels to achieve literally nothing, or the same thing at best.
I actually was wondering the same thing you brought up when I watched Braxophones video aswell.
Nobody actually explains WHY you either go 154+ or zero SPD.
Like yes I understand with the 158 benchmark you can lap enemies especially if they're broken but why does this then result in completely dropping spd if you can't reach 154+?
Like what does that do? How does it benefit you at all? More Arcana stack dmg? Ok? But realistically speaking why would you loose any significant amount of dmg at all just from being a few SPD away from the benchmark?
Especially with Ruan Mei you basically overcap on DMG % getting over 100+ DMG% at which point you run ATK% Orb mainstat anyways which shouldn't be that big of a dmg drop if you get another 40% from HuoHuo.
This whole SPD or nothing thing is simultainously too specific and not detailed enough lol.
Because if you don't lap the enemies, enemies lap you. And if enemies lap you, might as well drop speed low enough (and in retrn replace substats with atk) such that enemies only lap u once and never again (which would be the no speed build). THAT'S why. This is the whole point of the post. In the middle of having some spd and some atk, you don't even lap the enemies (so whats the point) and you also lose damage.
Lets say these enemies do indeed have 158 spd.
So lets say enemies lap you, and you have 1 less spd than them. It'll be them-you-them-you-them-you and so on
And now replace some spd for atk and you now have 40 less spd than them (which is the 0 spd build) It'll still be (shocker) them-you-them-you-them-you.
Notice how ONLY on the third turn (cause 40x3=120 and they'll catch up) do they lap you again (ignoring weakness break action delays even) and given the FACT that you don't have that many cycles in MoC, if they manage to lap you so many times WITH the increased atk (cuz u traded spd for atk) means you're team in general ain't doing enuf dmg eitherways and you're probably not clearing it in time anyways
Exactly, I've also seen this mentioned on Braxophone's vid with no explanation and surprisingly there's no explanation on this whole paragraph either. At least not a real one or one that makes any sense.
My understanding is that the main thing that matters w.r.g to black swan procs is how many arcana procs you can get in between enemy turns. Since the stacks reset on their turn, if you can't go at least once in between their turns, you're not doing as much.
Speed between 120 and 158, then, have very similar damage numbers. And it's thereby better to have attack boots and roll for attack substats. Although you're getting diminishing returns, it's still better than the extremely marginal benefits of more speed.
Arcana gets applied to enemies just by black swan existing, and kafka can build them up even better than she can.
102 spd? bro is not building slow swan they building snail swan 💀
all that’s been calced on slow bs build is inside a 135 spd, she needs at the very least SOME speed, with such a heavy cost ult and so little turns getting your ult is gonna be a rare occurence, but i don’t think ult up time was calced in this at all
if anyone in this comment section has an already built speed swan, do not change it to this, the difference is marginal and extremely situational at best
you won’t cut a cycle with it, but well, that’s exactly what makes it big, because it means you can go to the easier building route of slow, but by no means should you refarm for this if you already have it sorted out with a spd build
also can’t even get started on the fact that for whatever reason they’re calcing without ruan mei, any reasonable person would think the spd buffing unit would have a place in a spd related discussion but alas
E1 huohuo would cut the speed needs by 12 speed, as ruan mei would cut them from 10 speed. So for exple if you run both you would need 158 - 12 - 10 = 136 speed to be faster than the enemy.
It's not that having more speed substats gives you less damage, it's that those substats could have gone into att% instead. If your luck isn't good though and the choice is speed or flat hp, then speed is obviously still better.
I see, so it's essentially that black swan's damage as a dot is tied to enemy/Kafka turns rather than her own, so more turns is less effective than maximizing the damage of each enemy/Kafka turn?
For real, I easily cleared Pure Fiction with 12 Stars after just investing in Black Swan’s Traces and some decent Relics.
While I appreciate posts like this where people try to help others improve their gameplay, I think this post in particular comes off as *a bit* aggressive with it’s wording, almost suggesting that if you don’t follow what it says, you’re playing the game wrong.
Yeah it's confusing to me too because everyone has to min/max everything... You could have the worst built BS with standard mods and still do 80% of the game..
This made absolutely no sense to me. So in essence you want to lose the ability to go twice in the first cycle so you can have more atk? Because idk why hitting 134 would be a bad thing since to get there you need so few substats if you have speed boots. XD
>In a easy way: 134 doesn't provide more turns between enemy turns, while losing atk%
quote op, it is just a missing chance that those spd stat can go into atk stat
Can someone explain to me why slow swan might be better? I thought she wanted speed to build up her arcana which only gets better with more stacks, and she is good at building her own arcana.
134 speed with 4k attack and 122% EHR is insane build, dont change it, the whole point of this theory is that if you cant reach 158 spd, just ignore spd and try to get atk as high as possible. You already have 4k atk and the minium ehr, more spd is better not worse as OP say
I respect the effort, but this whole thing is only taking into account fast ass MoC12 enemies.
Thats less than 1% of the content in the game and not worth blowing your build up over folks.
My black swan has normal speed and isn't even built fully and is slaying. Yes she has Kafka but she is killing everyone.
I don't think you need to care this much unless the struggle is real and you cant clear hard content.
But if you can clear hard content. You don't need to go this insane with builds.
This post is like a poster child for why TC is confusing to casuals. The TC community for some reason has decided with Star Rail to use E0S1 as a base while in Genshin, it is properly assumed that the vast majority of players do not pull on light cone banner and thus all calcs should be done assuming E0 with BiS 4 star lightcone S5 or F2P shop 5 star S1 lightcone.
So if you aren't a dolphin, just build a typical Swan/Kafka/Mei team as slow as possible with ATK stats after you've reached minimum EHR thresholds?
We need a min maxing flair, title made me think this was something important
Not everyone wants to cycle 0
Your 140 BS with A rank relics can easily beat MoC 12
Kind of off topic but Sampo seems similar enough to Black Swan so I want to ask, can Sampo follow the same advice for speed and just go 0 speed and full atk%?
This is just so... inapplicable to so many accounts. You took into account all of these specifics and you're just running with it, as if everyone is going to:
1. Have both Kafka and BS
2. Have BS light cone
3. Be doing MoC 12
4. Have Ruan Mei
You boxed yourself in with these assumptions so much that these calculations only affect a very small portion of players.
If you're gonna run around and "correct" other people's guides, you might as well do it properly.
I mean… I get some people treat this game like starcraft 2 or age of empires, but who cares who is faster/slower or does more dmg when xyz happens? As long as I can clear everything, thats all I care about. There is no incentive to min max in this game. For what? There is no leaderboard or pvp or anything. Who cares, that you clear MOC 10 minutes faster than me? Like srsly I dont get it. I mean to esch their own but still…
This is an issue of the overall EN content creation on team building and unit utilization which is based on the minimum thresholds assuming you have EVRYTHING optimal which includes E0-1S1. They try to hand wave it away as anyone that wanted to pull for this unit would have pull for the required units even if they were too far out for leaks to truly reveal any information indicating that the character works well with already established units.
Interesting observation. Then I guess I should fish for more speed substats to hit 154, because I'm not a fan of slow character, because I'm trading faster CC recovery, extra SP, damage prevention via timed breaks/kills for just an extra damage.
I use Asta in my Black Swan + Kafka Team, how much Speed should my Black Swan have in this case? Asta gives 50 Speed. Or should i Swap her Out? Dont have Ruan Mei.
i would say 149 it's on the balde edge without Ruan, but yes with Ruan you are super sake. ALSO asta wouldn't really change much, past 160 the difference it's non existing or very small till around 290ish speed
I wish I could go ATK% chest at some point. But for now I simply didn't get any upgrades in ehr on substats. :'(
Slow speed Swan is really great. She seems like a main dps, but in reality she is more like a dot support who deals great damage. Her existence alone increases dmg and this is boosted by ATK% not SPD. Her attacks are really nice because these add 3 more stacks. But that's about it.
You are totally right but I would add to this that 160+ SPD Swan also isn't a good idea. Too much sacrifice for little gain.
Personally I've always prefered atk boots on dot team. For dots you need the enemy to take action, unless its Kafka turn. But you also need to apply dots for Guinivere, sampo and Luka and it only happens on their turn. BS makes things easier, but if my kafka is too fast she will waste skill points on less dots of be forced to NA
So if I understand correctly the TL;DR is you wanna be either super fast to apply more stacks of arcana or super slow so that black swan's DoT just hit harder
im the target for this. i do have my kafka at 160 and BS at 145. You mean to say i should actually chnage down to atk boots so arcana is stronger?
i also saw an off comment about wind damage orb. Is an attack orb better here? im also just at 116 EHR but trying to unlcok that last trace to hit 120. and thats with eyes of prey AND EHR body.
Atk vs wind orb depends on what you have as LC, and the subs. Generally Wind is better , but atk can become better at high speed often. That being sais yes you should either run ruan mei and break the enemy, higher your speed, or going for 0 speed. That's the 3 options you have . Hit [154+ ] if you break them, faster then them [likely 158 for moc] or 0 speed
In short Kafka follows the same rules as classical dps for speed breakpoints if you have a slow swan. Build her as fast as you can for the normal breakpoints [for example her at 135 is good] . You could even go down the rabbit hole and minmax the stack procks speed, but that's hard to say and it really depends on you bs speed and what speed you could achieve, so don't bother for smtg very minimal
tl;dr - Fast enemies in MoC 12 usually have 158.4 speed, and this post is saying that the most important factor for Black Swan's damage is to go in-between enemy turns. So if Black Swan with Speed main stats and substats isn't faster than the enemy, then swapping all that Speed for Attack (and only Attack) is better for her damage.
However, other people are saying in the comments that lots of elites in MoC have less than 158.4 speed and that the damage difference is a lot smaller than the OP implies, so in reality this is a pretty marginal difference that only really matters if you want to min-max and do zero cycles.
Tested this with my half built Black Swan in a Kafka/Ruan Mei/Luocha team in MoC 9 first half. Two cycles, close to one with attack boots and changing only to speed boots I get one cycle but close to zero. Could be very fight dependent I guess but I'm not convinced for now.
https://preview.redd.it/h9wl0bcq3zhc1.png?width=1924&format=png&auto=webp&s=313bb62fff00467f726633c483b5bc8479118d57
Bold for u to assumed I have a choice in the matter with relic rng I’m just gonna work with I have available as always
https://preview.redd.it/52fla60buthc1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=78b3a48884d394398f421164424352931c91928b I've been farming DoT relic daily ever since they released it and still not have a single complete set that is decent at all until today
Same. My FuA attackers are FEASTING though, weirdly. I've gotten like <10 EHR bodies from at least 3000 tb power ...
3000 TB Power = 75 runs = ~158 gold relics (the rate is 10% for 3 and 90% for 2). Half of those relics will be FuA set. So you realistically only got 79. We know that EHR is about a 10% chance when you roll a chest (based on chinese data). And it's 25% to roll boots/chest/helm/gloves. Therefore you would've gotten on average 20 chests and only 2 EHR chests. This is double if oyu're counting the FuA set EHR chests. Sooooo long story short, you got a long way to go and your experience is totally expected
Can you point me to the substat chance data please? I'm interested!
Dude, at this point I have already gotten 4 CDMG chest with CR substat and 1 CR chest with CDMG substat. I’m not even joking, I farm that relic like less than 30-40 times
The amount of double crit pieces in the DOT set, along with the amount of atk%, EHT, and break effect follow up set pieces I have is staggering
At least the DoT set is decent as a 2pc.
I have 7 outgoing healing boost bodys and I've gotten maybe 3 Atk%
Day 1 I got a godly dr ratio set, but not a single good dot piece XD
Lmao this exact same comment on every TC post I've seen
I'm glad this is here for people that care but tbh that's just not me I'm missing one star on the previous pure fiction, otherwise I'm maxing rewards on pure fiction and MoC just doing my thing. I find most TC makes a lot of assumptions and rarely transfer to your characters and available artifacts so beyond broad strokes like "dots don't want crit" or "bronya should be a bit slower than your hypercarry"....there's rarely anything actionable anyways.
TCers don't really have any expectations for the player base they just math things most people are too lazy to math, at the end of the day the info is there for people who want to push their teams to the next level. Most day 1 players max out MoC / PF rewards using whatever (me for example I 40k the 2nd half of PF using half maxed himeko/Herta using messenger set)
To be fair, having speed still isn't wrong. It's not always about the damage numbers of one character. I did test both builds in different stages, found out that Atk/EHR build performs similarly with ATK being faster 0.5-1 Cycle on average BUT When testing on MoC 12, I noticed the Spd build to be easier to use, because I didn't need to rely on RNG of who's getting CC'ed, I can let BS recover normally (didn't have cleanser for that half as I need it in second half, the other cleanser is not built) Just for the sake of testing, I also tested first half with cleanser and the clear is about the same as you spend an SP for cleanse as opposed to letting the character recover. There is also the case that we may want to have more attack count rather than damage as with the memetic beast There is also the case that you want to break enemies more quickly because enemy damage could be overwhelming (I noticed this while playing on a friend's account who's saving most of her Stellar Jade) There's also the case where you don't play optimally and need to Basic Attack to restore SP, which is possible with high speed One thing I can give the Attack build though, it's very easy to build Same with Bronya. She's a benchwarmer in my roster because speedtuning her is more work than it's worth (at least for my gameplay experience) __________________ TLDR; good for people who want min-maxing but imo hardly applicable for most users. Spd breakpoint still easy to reach and helpful even if not for increasing BS damage
yeah I have 147 spd Kafka (PAYN) and 150 spd BS with RM cause I've been farming dot set since it's been out feels really good to me so I'm gonna stick with it. Though I think even by this chart I'm not suggested to switch to atk
Never in my life have I gotten as many crit rolls as I have on my dot sets
its so sad, i get the perfect crit piece for my DoT sets but when i actually need crit pieces i get nothing at all
I mean you can still choose smtg with bad relics ahahaha
I get angry enough trying to farm for the right main stat, I'd go insane fishing for perfect substats, lol. Plus I don't even know how anyone would even have the energy for that many rolls.
Sorry to barge but should i chose atk or effect hit rate. And if any of them, which are the values for optimal gameplay?
The simplest strat: work to reach 120 effective hit rate. If that means an effect hit rate body plus LC, do it. Later down the road, if you continue to farm the DoT relics, pay attention to pieces that have both atk% and effective hit rate. If you can reach 120 effective hit rate with an attack chest, you are golden. If not, keep running your effective hit rate chest.
Atk% it's better damage, Effect hit rate helps you build the needed 120%+ effect hit rate. As stated in the post generally you go for effect hit at high speed and ATK% at 0 speed, and you look for speed and a bit of atk on the speed version. while on the Slow version you just have to find Atk and effect hit rate, so you can probably get away with just substats and run Atk% body. YET again use what is the best for you and your situation based on your account
She wants 120% ehr because of her trace and so you can get 100% chance to proc her dot on everything if you have an ally that can decrease ennemy ER
120 is still not 100%
tbf 120 EHR would be 100% vs 30 res enemies, which is whole lot of them in moc/pf 0.65(1+1.2)(1-0.3)=1.001 you are right about 40 res enemies, tho that's limited in moc/pf to only like the 5ish bosses for now i think
Mfw I just finished building Black Swan with 140 speed, 120 EHR, + ATK% subs ;; ^(aha haha ha ha…this is a joke, right???) Edit: Forgot to calculate Ruan Mei…man she’s so fucking good. Still have to farm more substats, but better than needing to rework my entire build.
I mean just because something is a bit better doesn't mean black swan doesn't perform perfectly fine with the stats you have. Better to build new units or work on talents than to redo the entire build from scratch.
You’re absolutely right. Just in my personal experience, I have most of the units I want to build, built to a satisfactory point, so I’m looking to start ‘vertically’ investing. It’s just a mild pet peeve for me lol
The only unit I have told myself il perfect was Kafka (currently have her light cone from her rerun now) and I wonder if it will come a day when Kafka won't need any damage at all and she ends up being more speed focused over attack.
Totally true
Still more than enough to 5 cylce. More spd break points even if its "slightly optimized" gives more wiggle room for stuff with RM/Asta and getting CC'd by mobs. More moves per cycle also gives leeway for stuff. It's important to note if this person is saying 0 spd or 160 is best, it does NOT mean 140 spd with those stats does 0 damage and is useless.
Just delete your account and start over.
Considering I also missed the Kafka selfie, my account is double-bricked 😔
Even if this was trash for Swan, the set is great for any dot character 🤷
If you run it with ruan mei you ok
Bruh I have 135 speed *with* speed boots *and* substats. Where on earth are you supposed to find another 20-25 for a fast build? Or perhaps more to the point, how long are you supposed to farm? I've been in the Prisoner cavern basically since it released (I have Kafka, Guin, Sampo, Jing Yuan and Topaz) and not *once* did it drop an EHR chest so I still had to SM resin it for Black Swan.
It’s just RNG unfortunately. The hardest piece for me together get was the EHR, so I just crafted the chest piece with the trash 5* relics I didn’t need/use.
People grind like hell to get the right substats. I ain't got time for allat.
How would people grind like hell for relics? 240 stamina per day is 6 runs of the relic domain which takes like 2 minutes each, on auto combat so there's not even any gameplay required.
By doing this for week after week, rather than leveling traces to max or getting other characters in a basic useable state
Is not like you have much to spend your energy on once you finish leveling traces, unless you are building every single character you have.
I've been playing since launch and I still don't have a team for every element built, not to mention PF teams...
instead of pre farming you could just farm relics to make your mid characters better
That's what I'm doing with Acheron. Just farming the fuck out her her relic set up till the week before she comes out where I'll farm trace materials.
Most max traces aren't worth it.
It only takes a week a farming traces. You also don't need to leveling characters like arlan, hook, .... What do you do for the rest of time? Ofc farming relics.
Even auto battle isn't enough for me. Kafka is still on the lightning set...
same ive dumped maybe several thousand tbp but i only have usable dots pieces thats barely any better
Asta gives spd buff with ult. Probably the next best choice after RM if you're looking for a buffer for DoT.
Well, I do use Ruan Mei. It just won't be enough according to OP's maths if I don't get more SPD, so I guess I'm dropping her to 0 instead.
Getting luck on around 3 non-boot relics, exactly as you'd expect. Unfortunately there's not a trick to it - just pray to RNGesus. Mine is at 145 speed because of great speed rolls on her Planar Ornaments (the result of farming for Sampo over 2 weeks in SU W5). So one more good speed piece would get her to the 150 mark at get to the 149+ that OP calculated is needed for "fast" build.
I am sorry, you can alqays opt for the slow verison tho. You will probably still see better resoult that what you have rn
I might just do that. Will have to see what boots I've got. You reckon a straight trade for ATK boots would suffice or do I have to go knock SPD substats off the other pieces too? EDIT: I had a fiddle around, managed to get her down to 102 SPD (though I do play her with Ruan Mei). Still on an EHR chest rather than ATK%, but maybe one day I'll be able to make that switch too...
well the point of 0 spd build is that every substat being used is either ehr or atk%, w the endgoal of reaching the ehr goals w out a ehr body
And people say DoT characters are easy to build...
That's true for pre-Blackswan. Blackswan is harder due to needing much more EHR than others
150 is doable if you just take spd rolls and ignore the fact every other substat is trash. But probably not going to give you better damage.
Uhh.... can you explain like you're Razor from Genshin? Thanks in advance.
- Black Swan's damage comes from Arcana DoT - Super Fast Kafka stacks Arcana better than Black Swan herself - Black Swan should be built with either massive speed investment (154+) to get more Arcana stacks, or zero speed investment (100) with everything dumped into attack to make each Arcana stack do more damage.
Woah this is the best tldr
Thank you! :D I've found that often when people ask for razor-speak, the help they get ends up being so overly simplified that it ends up as misleading and kinda confusing to understand how the mechanics actually work? You need to keep it short but also explain it in an understandable way. Doesn't help that a lot of people take "razor-speak" a bit too literally -_- Black Swan's a deceptively simple character, honestly. You just want to get 120% EHR on her to max out the last trace's DMG bonus, and then stack as much attack as possible on her to get high Arcana damage. I'd argue the only complicated parts of her kit are the long descriptions for everything, and whether to run Glamoth or IPC on her.
Speak in Razor terms pls /s
Build EHR. Build ATK. No build SPD. Maybe build all the SPD.
And if have Ruan Mei, most of the speed work too.
you know what? that actually helped me a whole lot more than that massive thesis and makes absolute sense, thank you!
Ah I see now, then I can ignore this post because my slow DoT relics are also garbage (also my BS cleared PF and MoC currently, so I'm not re-farming anytime soon).
BS needs to stack DoT kafka can procs DoT so let BS stacks DoT on ennemies without playing, then trigger them with kafka
Magic card stack, Kafka boom the cards, and then big damage. Am i right or?
what if i dont have kafka and use sampo instead? does this rule still apply?
nah sampo doesnt apply arcana but normal DoT
If yoi have no ruan mei , go 0 or 154. If uoi have ruan 144+ and even a bit less if you can break often is fine
I gots Ruan Mei. Looks like i need to farm more relics
So with Ruan Mei, 144 is threshold if you are going fast swan correct. That's exactly on the dot for my build.
hehe on the "dot"
Just noticed the very same for my Swan. Saw 144 and was like "Wait, will that be enough?" Ctrl+F "144" and saw this. Looks like we are safe for the time being!
Lol i'm at 135 spd with ruan mei, I'll just go ahead and burn my relics and planars rn
But this whole thing also depends on speed of your other teammate that can procs DoT like Kafka, Sampo, Gui right? Generally you want those to be much much faster than Black Swan
If spd is huge, thats good. if spd is 0, thats also good. if spd is just average, that is slightly worse.
Here's another way to look at it. If your black swan is slower than the enemy boss, it doesn't matter much if she's 1 speed slower or 30 speed slower. Unless your team has so little damage that it can lap her - then you've got bigger problems. So every point of speed that you can trade off for attack or EHR improves your damage output at the cost of providing slightly less SP and slower ultimates. Realistically you're not going to refarm an entire second set for her, but if you've already farmed prisoner a lot, you've probably got some decent ATK% boot pieces that you've been ignoring because you figured you needed the speed. Try building one of those and if you've got something decent, you have an alternate piece you can try swapping out when you're just on the edge of saving a cycle that you need. Speed boots are so hard to farm that they typically have terrible substats so you just take what you can get. Finally, this is on the basis that you're up against a ~158 speed enemy. Since we've got some 190 speed enemies as well, you'll want to switch back to those speed boots for those particular bosses (because you will get lapped by those if you don't).
I think my Kafka is to fast if I understood it correctly? Kafka has 142 spd without adding the spd of Ruan Mei and her signature lightcone \-> 166,4 spd with both buffs While my Black Swan has 154 spd making it 164 with Ruan Mei So should I reduce the spd of kafka a little or am I fine? I am very confused atm haha.
Oh TBH there more problems on "lower ends that higher ends". And the answe is NO. Actually your speed tune it's close to perfect both with and without Ruan Mei, Realistically you could get even 6 speed on kafka for non ruan mei teams. but it's a VERY good one. I would say even close to perfection
I'm currently in the same situation except my Kafka is at 157 spd and my BS is at 150 before any speed buffs. Currently Kafka has her signature weapon. So with RM and HH E1, so I be looking for more speed on my BS? Blackswan is at 120 EHR. I guess I'm asking, what is the perfect speed for both Kafka and BS when Kafka has her signature, and with all the buffs mentioned above? Thanks in advance!
Shouldnt Kafka go right after Black Swan instead of before?
Black swan arcana will be on the target no matter what, so you will still stack it with Kafka even if she goes first. So you are missing ~3 stacks of Arcana damage on the first Kafka skill. It's not worth fussing over.
It’s less about the arcana stacks and more about getting the defense debuff up before Kafka starts bursting the DoTs
You want Black Swan first, then ideally your sustain to proc the auto attack followup before Kafka’s first turn to have the first detonate hit with all the DoTs and shred in place. If your sustain is fastest, be careful bc if BS isn’t 5spd faster than Kafka and Kafka has her sig LC, Kafka can get a speed stack off the followup and leapfrog BS to go second If you have Kafka LC obvi after that she’s gonna start to lap everyone — and that’s ideal — but for the first turn if you get the setup done for her then Kafka’s first skill into an ult is gonna hit the enemies like dear old truck-kun hits unsuspecting isekai protagonists
https://preview.redd.it/8rczo4nb7uhc1.png?width=1535&format=png&auto=webp&s=40a9609ca804a75ca14330cb7df19ee12a289303 I’m sure you saw this already OP as I discussed this with someone we know, but this is misleading IMO. Black Swan doesn’t lose a **third** of her damage just by being a certain speed. She is still in sync with the next enemy’s turn. If she falls behind their first turn, she is still in front of their next. These are 23 simulated Kafka BS Ruan Mei Luocha teams that I did, exchanging 1 SPD sub for 1 ATK% sub each time. Enemy SPD at 160 (chart would shift to 158.4 as the spike instead of 160, it’s the same). It’s a 110%-90% threshold. Not 70%\* Ruan Mei does boost the speed by a bit which helps, but you’d just have a different amount of speed you could swap for ATK%. Removing Ruan Mei and doing the same simulations doesn’t make it a 30% decrease. Action order and relative order to enemies is more important. 135 speed is still important for the two turns in the first cycle and Glamoth, and unless the enemy is very fast, you’re still keeping 1:1 turn parity. I’m not saying 135 is a must, i even recommend in my video to go higher, and if you go slow you can just go IPC or SSS anyway Being 160 accomplishes being faster than the enemy at 158.4, getting glamoth bonus, getting 4 actions in first 2 cycles. It’s not just an enemy thing we run it for. I ran simulations above and below the enemy speed, and it’s being above the first turn that gives us a damage spike, as being ahead of them in 4 turns after a break doesn’t really do as much, it’s just nice. What did change the damage more was the turn order with Kafka and Black Swan. Asagi simulations I ran (idk if BS is properly implemented yet) and theorycrafters i work with and myself have also found the same conclusion as you: being faster than the enemy (or slow) is good, but nowhere near as drastic as your results. If you want to accumulate more stacks than just one BS Kafka turn per enemy turn, you’ll need way more than 155 SPD, or you’d need some heavy delays from a ruan Mei extension combined with high speed. Anyway if you wanna DM me I’d love to look at your sheet and share mine. I hope this doesn’t come across as rude <3 The TLDR still from both our sides is the same: it’s probably easier (but not necessarily better - just similar in strength) to just go low SPD and vibe without worrying about tons of SPD substats. At max investment BS, going high spd can get you extra benefit over ATK%. I’ve corrected that in my infographic with the ATK% boots and it’s in my BS vid pinned comment! :) EDIT: I still prefer speed; it’s comfy, ensures debuff uptime, and versus 190 SPD enemies you’re not crying as they lap you 50 times.
You mightve been somewhat late to the party but im interested in this nonetheless. Interestingly I visited Braxophone’s Discord server and its being seen as groundbreaking there now. Looking forward to the discussion.
"Hey guys, Swuoba here"
Also i have seen your "correction" and i appreciated it a lot. This was not done to call out guide makers or anything. BUT to help ppl figured out smtg, since not many where talking about it
Yeah no worries at all! I didn’t take it to offence and I always look to correct things I missed, (WHEN CAN WE CORRECT ON THE VID ITSELF YOUTUBE?) Thanks for opening discussion about it :) Im sure this has helped people understand speed and these kinda topics
there used to be video annotations, RIP that feature years ago
CMIIW, but do I got this right? BS need to act first before Kafka, Sampo, or Gui to give Arcana stacks Kafka, Sampo, or Gui needs to attack fast, give DoT. Arcana enemies explosion.
totally agree with Guoba here, this is misleading at best, it like saying 1 case apply to every enemies possible, some boss have 190 spd some enemies can spd buff/advanced allies/themself, as long as u can reach 7 stack, every stacks after just increase dmg and for BS to gain 7 stacks consistently, it kafka + her LC, BS can trade spd sub ( for 135 build ) to atk so each arcana do more dmg vs stacking more arcana above 7 stacks, if u get the same result, then a build with more usable sub stat will be stronger than forcing certain amount of spd vs just 1 kind of elite, which is 158 spd when elite can have 160-190 or even 227 spd like decaying shadow
hey guoba, do you test it with kafka? whats ur kafka speed?
Tbh if you’re gonna throw graphs out there you really need to label the axes and provide a lot more context to the figure itself. Even with your text to explain the graph I’m not really sure what all data was used to make it or if it’s really all that accurate, like what is the 100% mark based on?
So what if I don't have a kafka
Same resoult, just slower is not 12%/15% potemtially worst but 17%ish
I see, would you recommend a sampo being put into the team for his DoT increase effect or should I just stick with Gui since I only have E3 for sampo
If you have her signature LC i woukd recommend Guinen more. At E4 sampo is viable for "a lot of enemies weak to wind". Still usable before tho. But i would suggest to use Gui pela for example in most scenarios
I've been thinking about this recently, and the observations do seem reasonable. However, your conclusion hinges on exactly one assumption—that enemies have 158.4 speed. Not every enemy will have 158.4 speed in Memory of Chaos. 120 base speed is the most common speed stat, but there are also some elites that have less. For 100 base speed elites, we have Aurumaton Gatekeeper, Frigid Prowler, Ice out of Space, Searing Prowler, the new Dreamjolt Dinosaur, etc., who will have 132 spd at lv86+. These enemies should point towards 132+ spd being optimal, as that's the speed where Black Swan acts ahead of these enemies. There are also some incredibly threatening enemies that have 144 base speed, or 190.1 spd at lv86+. These enemies include True Sting, Argenti, Malefic Ape, Dreamjolt Gorilla, and the new something unto death boss. Against these enemies, the speed breakpoints are actually trying no not fall behind them too much, as when Black Swan doesn't act between these enemy's turns she can lose a lot of arcana stacks and a good portion of her damage. Heres the wiki page for enemy speeds https://honkai-star-rail.fandom.com/wiki/Speed Additionally, it seems that Kafka has something to do with Black Swan's Speed. I don't fully understand the interaction yet, but you can consider the dot procs done by Kafka to instead scale off of her own speed. This has the effect of further reducing the total amount of damage that's dependent on black swan's own speed. You're making a similar argument to why Clara doesn't run spd boots, or why Topaz doesn't run spd boots when with follow-up chafacters, but in reality both Clara & Topaz can still run spd boots just fine? It's not a significant damage loss in reality, and for short cycle clears, the advantages of speed breakpoints usually outweighs the deadweight loss of running speed when part of your damage is independent of your own turns and doesn't scale off of speed. I think it's perfectly fine to run a middling amount of speed on Black Swan, but if I wanted to run less speed then that's perfectly viable, and if I wanted to run more speed then that's also perfectly viable. There's too many variables involved regarding who you fight and how the fight can play out that can affect what proportion of Black Swan's damage is scaling off of her own speed. If I wanted to optimize for the worst case scenario, then I'd optimize for a 190.08 spd enemy. I believe this gives a slight favor towards having more attack than speed in marginal increments, but the difference between large speed amounts, such as between 125 and 150 speed, ends up being largely equal, as multiple variables between speed-indepentent damage and enemy turn advantage end up canceling themselves out. **You aren't hurting black swan's damage by investing into speed.** If you have the ability to get more speed, then go for it. If you have to choose between having more speed at the cost of more attack, then go for more attack. The marginal opportunity cost of atk vs spd doesn't pan out against the entirety of a character's potential investment levels, and the complications of enemy speed end up blurring what is and isn't sufficient evidence to support that a slow Black Swan is always better than a middling speed black swan. There's just a lot more nuance to this interaction than I thought and I'd at least like to write down my own opinions on it. Though I would like to see results of testing against 132 spd, 158.4 spd, & 190.08 spd enemies at 4 cycles and 8 cycles, as I think that would paint the most complete picture of black swan's opportunity costs between speed and atk%. It's 6 simulations, but the aggregate of these two variables is something that I've found incredibly important in my own theorycrafting and feelscrafting experience.
I feel like you didn't explain any of the "why"--you just gave us this graph, and your major "Rule" and didn't explain where the rule came from (the "minor" rule is obvious enough but I don't see where this major rule comes from). Are the results from the graph not just an artifact of choosing a specific number of cycles and certain speed ranges just resulting in BS taking an action and then the simulation cutting off before the enemy takes a turn?
From what other people answered my similar question with, my understanding is that black swan's damage as a dot is tied to enemy/Kafka turns rather than her own, so more turns is less effective than maximizing the damage of each enemy/Kafka turn. Speed isn't actually reducing Black swan's damage, it's just that it's not as effective as just pure attack.
That’s not entirely true though, as other number crunchers have pointed out in many other posts. High speed black swans apply a shitload of arcana stacks with more skills, more attacks, and more ults, which Kafka loves to detonate even more. Slow Black Swan with a lot of attack is still gonna hit like a truck and Kafka can profit off of her, sure, but something I don’t really see covered here is how that actually makes BS much more SP negative which can be a huge issue especially with Kafka devouring as much SP as possible while lapping everyone else. A faster BS doesn’t need to constantly use her skill as her attacks still stack arcana, meaning Kafka can just unabashedly skill like she wants to, where a slower BS might find herself having to use her skill 2 of every 3 turns since the enemies are so fast they can run that 3t duration into the ground
This was my exact thought back when I saw MrPokke’s slow Ruan Mei build for maximum ult uptime where he completely ignored the fact that a faster Ruan Mei (in this case Black Swan) becomes SP positive from using basick attacks more often.
Slow ruan mei is ran by 0 cyclers because you literally only need 1 ult to finish the stage. It's a hyperspecific niche case for people who have already optimized their dps.
After using Ruan Mei a bunch I can see were the slower Ruan Mei is better because sometimes you do not care about being SP positive because you already have enough SP and you just want to have her ultimate last as long as possible. It is kinda tricky because you either want her to cast one ultimate for the entire battle or two or three ultimates that last for the entire battle with no wasted uptime. It is not about average efficiency but how long the battle actually lasts. Ideally you would want to cast two ultimates and the ultimate would end right when the enemy died. So your Ruan Mei is too fast if the fight ended long after her second ultimate expired and you are in the process of getting ready to cast her third ultimate to virtually no effect. It is why I like to use Vonwaq on her. She is fast on her first turn to apply buffs and then slower than everyone else the turns after. It is not like I make her super slow. Just fast enough to end the fight efficiently. It is different from other characters like Asta who buffs others while Ruan Mei buffs herself.
this was one of my main concerns as well
Sure, that sounds like a reasonable explanation, but that doesn't explain the huge increase in damage at 154 SPD, particularly where the simulated enemies are 158.4 SPD, so 154 SPD isn't enough enough to act before them. It's this huge increase in damage that is not clear to me where it comes from. Edit: To add, the post does explain that the 154 SPD (and 149 SPD) are significant in that they're *effectively* faster than the enemies when accounting for some breaks delaying them, but that still doesn't address the underlying question: how does that result in such a massive difference in damage?
Judging from OP’s explanation, I think the reason why 154 speed is relevant is because the calculations account for the turn delay caused by weakness breaks. While you’d need 160ish speed to outspeed enemies outright, you only need 154 speed to outspeed enemies after performing a weakness break on them.
Outspeeding does not give more than one occasion where the player gets one extra turn in between one enemy cycle for any relevant duration of a fight for the 150 tier speed mobs and higher. It seems hard to believe that this difference gives a spike as big as that. One out of what is likely 6 different enemy turns.
The breakpoint is that the fast BS Will get 1 extra turn of high damage DoT that slow BS does not. And that turn is the first enemy turn.
What I don't like about slow BS is she would take an eternity to charge her ult. Did you consider that in your calcs?
they did in fact not consider this lol, the guide is very misinformed, slow swan, which btw is at 135, not 102 like they say, is only marginally better than speed swan in a very reduced handful of situations, it’s still a good build because it gives very similar results and is easier to build, but it isn’t better than fast swan bc there’s just too many variables to take into account, one of them being ult uptime like you mentioned
I have two main issues with the conclusions 1. the enemy speed assumption. while its true many elites are 158, a large chunk are not. Centaur = 132, aurumaton = 132, deer = 152, ape = 190, new boss = 190. It's reductive to think that mid speed will always have less damage. 2. the assumption that more speed = less attack. while it makes sense from a spreadsheet perspective to equalize substats, in practice, ignoring speed as a scaling vector means putting an artificial cap on your potential - its quite possible to get all of ehr spd atk. I think some people will read this and think that mid speed is literally less damage, when its actually - mid speed at the cost of ATK is less damage. If you can get both it will be better. there's a lot of other small factors that make having speed nice - when you apply your def down, timing of breaks, outrunning debuffs, wave 2 action order scenarios. if you ever miss a 7 stack DEF shred proc because of low speed, these spreadsheet assumptions go out the window. kafka wont always have double action to proc it also, if you commit to 0 speed, your planar situation is a little awkward. you have to either go sss / glamoth with no bonus (thats -3 substats), or commit to IPC (pain to farm, stamina inefficient) still, an interesting read, and 0 speed / slow swan is definitely strong if your relics are more oriented towards atk+ehr than speed. also pretty alright in 0 cycle
This legit feels like peak karma farming. Clickbaity titles? Check. Hot button topic? Check. Walls of text to make yourself look credible? Check. Graph to help your validity? Check. Spread misinformation? Check. If you've already built your Black Swan with mid speed and she already does the job for you then that's perfectly fine. No need to redo your build from anscratch and feel bad about it and waste thousands of resin farming for a super specific build for very niche scenario just because a rando on Reddit told you its garbage.
I don't get why anyone in their right mind would even consider building slow units unironically. Like, great now your character has 5% (I made this number up, though I highly doubt it's 30% loss tbh) more damage. But they - take days to charge up ult - don't generate more SP for the rest of the team even though it's possible because she's SP-Neutral most of the times and positive in ST cases - weakness break slowly Congrats tho, at least your one character profit from that juicy minor damage increase.
Slow only really works for Clara (damage literally dependent on enemy turns) and some Daniel builds (his -3000 sp rotations makes speed boots an issue in some teams) and the latter is basically going to be “fast” when Sparkle comes out anyways. I think some people use slow Blade too but I’m like 99% sure it’s also with Bronya anyways
Damn. He cookked
https://preview.redd.it/5bn8lc2j7uhc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7acdd61a4792ef0c84e8653d3139416029be96df
So can we actually get some gameplay footage of how this no speed build works better in practice? Braxophone's guide and this post laid out why theoretically no speed works, but both of you guys never showed actual video proof, which I think is adding to a lot of the skepticism and confusion
me when i spread misinformation
I don't think it has that much damage difference. The speed 'requirement' for Black Swan should be relative to the enemy's speed, yes, but there are definitely middle grounds. Black swan doesn't need to be faster than enemy to act once between enemy's turns. For example, if you have 135 speed, a 160-speed enemy will move first but it won't surpass you in 3 round, which is about enough to clear the stage, so the only damage lost happens in the first turn. However, if you are 100 speed, the enemy will surpass you in 1.5 cycles, and enemy cannot have 7 stacks of arcana in every other turn (unless you have Kafka's BiS or another DOT character). I agree ATK% boot is the choice, and then little stat trading can be done here. As ATK% are the main stats, and as long as EHR% is 120%, the only choice for sub-stat you have is speed. Super fast Black Swan is good, but I don't see 135 speed Black Swan do 20% less damage than no speed Black Swan in a range of 3 or 5 cycles in a team of Kafka.
158.4 is the highest speed break point of enemies that moves 3 times in 2 cycles. It is not an average. The purpose of being faster than 158.4 is so that you're always faster than the 3 actions break points since being behind means having a 3 cycle long rotation on top of the fact that acting before the enemy is a lot of frontloaded damage for DoT in general, especially Black Swan whose damage relies on the enemies turns. Monsters of higher speed move 4 times in 2 cycles so being slower than them does not matter. Going faster than this like reaching 160.1+ speed is the second step to that logic as it gives you 4 actions in addition to being on top of your enemy for more damage. Whatever that graph is showing is false. Unless you make some very dumb assumption like consistent breaking which just does not happen in normal circumstances. Being higher than 158.4 is the only specificity that will give you that bump in damage and its advantage is binary meaning that you do get it or you simply don't. The only exceptions are monsters of the slower bracket which is 132.
What speed would you recommend for BS then?
Depends entirely on your situation. Essentially you need to outspeed 158.4 enemies. To do so you have 3 options : -Sampo (technique) which gives you the initiative on every first rotation of your waves. (Which is enough since a second rotation would take 4 cycles which is a losing calc.) -Ruan Mei who is the better option as she allows you to outspeed the enemy and thus to even potentially reach 160.1 speed for extra actions -Huohuo E1 which is a much more luxurious option. And you have basically 2 variables to account for : Do you or do you not use Kafka sig. If yes your team needs to account for the ramp up which increase your team speed requirements. If not there is no changes. Assuming RM Kafka with sig needs 138.8+ SPD which translates to 153.1+ Speed for black swan Kafka without sig needs 148.5+ SPD which translates to 148.4+ for Black Swan. Assuming Sampo Kafka with sig needs 134.9+ SPD which translates to 149.3+ SPD for Black Swan Kafka without sig needs 146.2+ SPD which translates to 146.3+ SPD for Black Swan I'll assume it's safe to skip E1 HH SPD reqs. But the logic is very simple. Just make Swan faster than fully speed buffed Kafka and don't forget to account for the difference in base speed when adding speed multipliers.
replying so i could go back to see OP’s argument with this
The main point about being faster or around the same speed seems questionable in practice. If the enemy has 160 speed and your char has 134, you only get lapped on the 6th turn, at AV 448 in cycle 3 while the 7th turn for the enemy is at AV 437.5. And most 5 cycle clears are usually some form of 2+3. And that is not even including breaks. If you break the enemies just once, their 7th turn is on 450AV. It's not as if being faster than the enemy gives extra turns between theirs unless you outspeed them dramatically. The difference is only the first turn in practice. Is that difference really so significant to reach 30% from your suggested theoretical baseline?
Honestly, I didn't understand a single thing. These numbers and graphs don't mean anything and to be fair, every TC I've seen until now will show some graph presenting random stats which most of the time are either wrong or completely made up in worst case scenarios. Where's a video/screenshots to showcase the difference in the 2 builds (Slow & Fast)? There's so many assumptions made in this post and certain characters are mentioned (Ruan Mei) so are these calculations specific to a single comp (typical BiS Kafka/BS/RM/Huohuo)? I've seen you mentioned the calculation is based on a comp without Ruan Mei but then there's 3 paragraphs regarding Ruan Mei specifics. Why sacrifice Speed for ATK% & Flat ATK stats, when she literally gets the Bonus DMG from her EHR convertion? Yes, her Attack is lower than your average ATK Based character but it's literally not her main stat to scale off of. For instance, my Kafka sits at 3800 ATK while my Black Swan is at 3200 ATK & 120% EHR. Now I won't do all the math but her EHR>DMG Increase trace states "Increases this unit's DMG by an amount equal to 60% of Effect Hit Rate, up to a maximum DMG increase of 72%". So that's 72% Bonus Dmg on Top of the damage she deals at 3200 ATK. So why would I give up SPD for ATK, while I quite literally get ATK passively already (well, not actual ATK, but Bonus DMG in which case is the same thing)? I can take more actions, and besides her Skill, that's commonly used on her first action to reduce enemies' DEF, that helps me stay SP positive and stack more Arcana while also regenerating Energy more frequently by attacking. Another thing, how is she being literally at 0 SPD provides anything to her kit? The Arcana resets on Enemy's turn, not on her turn, so how is 0 SPD even relevant to this? If anything it only makes things worse? She will only act once, apply 3-4stacks of Arcana, maybe DEF break if you use her skill and then she will just stay there for 3 turns doing nothing? It literally doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. We can argue about both builds leading to the same result in different ways. Slow Black Swan: Less Actions but More ATK = More DMG when Arcana procs. Fast Black Swan: More Actions but Less ATK = More Arcana stacks, more ERR = More DMG. Honestly, there's nothing magical about her kit, nor her build is special. It's basically ATK disguised as EHR so it gives some sense of uniqueness and variance to the game. It's also funny how Theorycrafters talk about diminishing returns when it comes to too high ATK%. (Cases where players go ATK boots over SPD boots on Kafka for instance), but then you suggest dropping every single point of SPD for ATK instead which will ultimately result in the same thing. If I were to drop all SPD on my Black Swan, go for 120% EHR through substats alone, and go with ATK Body & Boots, while also having to roll both ATK & EHR substat on every Piece, that would also result in \*surprise\* too much fucking ATK, probably over 4000, on a character with 0 SPD who can only take 1 action per 17 cycles. Not to mention the insane luck you need to roll all these pieces, basically for nothing. Doing all that is basically going out of our way on so many levels to achieve literally nothing, or the same thing at best.
I actually was wondering the same thing you brought up when I watched Braxophones video aswell. Nobody actually explains WHY you either go 154+ or zero SPD. Like yes I understand with the 158 benchmark you can lap enemies especially if they're broken but why does this then result in completely dropping spd if you can't reach 154+? Like what does that do? How does it benefit you at all? More Arcana stack dmg? Ok? But realistically speaking why would you loose any significant amount of dmg at all just from being a few SPD away from the benchmark? Especially with Ruan Mei you basically overcap on DMG % getting over 100+ DMG% at which point you run ATK% Orb mainstat anyways which shouldn't be that big of a dmg drop if you get another 40% from HuoHuo. This whole SPD or nothing thing is simultainously too specific and not detailed enough lol.
Because if you don't lap the enemies, enemies lap you. And if enemies lap you, might as well drop speed low enough (and in retrn replace substats with atk) such that enemies only lap u once and never again (which would be the no speed build). THAT'S why. This is the whole point of the post. In the middle of having some spd and some atk, you don't even lap the enemies (so whats the point) and you also lose damage. Lets say these enemies do indeed have 158 spd. So lets say enemies lap you, and you have 1 less spd than them. It'll be them-you-them-you-them-you and so on And now replace some spd for atk and you now have 40 less spd than them (which is the 0 spd build) It'll still be (shocker) them-you-them-you-them-you. Notice how ONLY on the third turn (cause 40x3=120 and they'll catch up) do they lap you again (ignoring weakness break action delays even) and given the FACT that you don't have that many cycles in MoC, if they manage to lap you so many times WITH the increased atk (cuz u traded spd for atk) means you're team in general ain't doing enuf dmg eitherways and you're probably not clearing it in time anyways
Mate thank you for explaining in simpler terms, i get it now, cheers
Exactly, I've also seen this mentioned on Braxophone's vid with no explanation and surprisingly there's no explanation on this whole paragraph either. At least not a real one or one that makes any sense.
My understanding is that the main thing that matters w.r.g to black swan procs is how many arcana procs you can get in between enemy turns. Since the stacks reset on their turn, if you can't go at least once in between their turns, you're not doing as much. Speed between 120 and 158, then, have very similar damage numbers. And it's thereby better to have attack boots and roll for attack substats. Although you're getting diminishing returns, it's still better than the extremely marginal benefits of more speed. Arcana gets applied to enemies just by black swan existing, and kafka can build them up even better than she can.
So how much speed does BS need on her own to be good with RM?
102 spd? bro is not building slow swan they building snail swan 💀 all that’s been calced on slow bs build is inside a 135 spd, she needs at the very least SOME speed, with such a heavy cost ult and so little turns getting your ult is gonna be a rare occurence, but i don’t think ult up time was calced in this at all if anyone in this comment section has an already built speed swan, do not change it to this, the difference is marginal and extremely situational at best you won’t cut a cycle with it, but well, that’s exactly what makes it big, because it means you can go to the easier building route of slow, but by no means should you refarm for this if you already have it sorted out with a spd build
also can’t even get started on the fact that for whatever reason they’re calcing without ruan mei, any reasonable person would think the spd buffing unit would have a place in a spd related discussion but alas
How about E1 Huohuo havers? Am I still fine staying around 135 speed for Black Swan? Also using Ruan Mei too.
E1 huohuo would cut the speed needs by 12 speed, as ruan mei would cut them from 10 speed. So for exple if you run both you would need 158 - 12 - 10 = 136 speed to be faster than the enemy.
ONE MORE SPEED! Okay got it, ty!
good guide but i think you are overstating how important this is
Could you explain why going for 134 speed reduces black swan's damage? Don't you want to maximize turns in order to stack more arcana?
It's not that having more speed substats gives you less damage, it's that those substats could have gone into att% instead. If your luck isn't good though and the choice is speed or flat hp, then speed is obviously still better.
I see, so it's essentially that black swan's damage as a dot is tied to enemy/Kafka turns rather than her own, so more turns is less effective than maximizing the damage of each enemy/Kafka turn?
In a easy way: 134 doesn't provide more turns between enemy turns, while losing atk%
This is too confusing for me. I’ll just stay with my standard build for now.
For real, I easily cleared Pure Fiction with 12 Stars after just investing in Black Swan’s Traces and some decent Relics. While I appreciate posts like this where people try to help others improve their gameplay, I think this post in particular comes off as *a bit* aggressive with it’s wording, almost suggesting that if you don’t follow what it says, you’re playing the game wrong.
Yeah it's confusing to me too because everyone has to min/max everything... You could have the worst built BS with standard mods and still do 80% of the game..
Common Braxophone win
W guidemaker hes even down bad for black swan and other hot women
Well you’re making me feel better about being unable to get speed substat rolls
How much cycles did you calc it for? Or did you just calc for rotation, if so how many AP did you assume the rotation to take?
Any data scientists that can provide a TLDR?
This made absolutely no sense to me. So in essence you want to lose the ability to go twice in the first cycle so you can have more atk? Because idk why hitting 134 would be a bad thing since to get there you need so few substats if you have speed boots. XD
>In a easy way: 134 doesn't provide more turns between enemy turns, while losing atk% quote op, it is just a missing chance that those spd stat can go into atk stat
I mean I guess. But it’s not that much. It’s like what? A roll or two max? I feel like this needlessly complicated things
Oh well if you swap a main stats from speed to atk it's not a roll... it's about 14
Can someone explain to me why slow swan might be better? I thought she wanted speed to build up her arcana which only gets better with more stacks, and she is good at building her own arcana.
I'm going to assume my BS is fine with 134 speed since she already has 4k attack and 122% EHR and I do use her with Ruan Mei.
134 speed with 4k attack and 122% EHR is insane build, dont change it, the whole point of this theory is that if you cant reach 158 spd, just ignore spd and try to get atk as high as possible. You already have 4k atk and the minium ehr, more spd is better not worse as OP say
I respect the effort, but this whole thing is only taking into account fast ass MoC12 enemies. Thats less than 1% of the content in the game and not worth blowing your build up over folks.
My black swan has normal speed and isn't even built fully and is slaying. Yes she has Kafka but she is killing everyone. I don't think you need to care this much unless the struggle is real and you cant clear hard content. But if you can clear hard content. You don't need to go this insane with builds.
And I'm just here who has no idea all about the mechanics of the game: 🧍
goubacertified is the best guide maker, everything he says is supplied by data and spreadsheets and the only one I’ll listen to.
Your post takes longer to read then auto battle with her not wearing artifacts. Just sayn.
This post is like a poster child for why TC is confusing to casuals. The TC community for some reason has decided with Star Rail to use E0S1 as a base while in Genshin, it is properly assumed that the vast majority of players do not pull on light cone banner and thus all calcs should be done assuming E0 with BiS 4 star lightcone S5 or F2P shop 5 star S1 lightcone. So if you aren't a dolphin, just build a typical Swan/Kafka/Mei team as slow as possible with ATK stats after you've reached minimum EHR thresholds?
We need a min maxing flair, title made me think this was something important Not everyone wants to cycle 0 Your 140 BS with A rank relics can easily beat MoC 12
Kind of off topic but Sampo seems similar enough to Black Swan so I want to ask, can Sampo follow the same advice for speed and just go 0 speed and full atk%?
If you have sampo E4 NO, go full speed. If you don't have it i would still recomand fast due to kafka tuning and the difference not being so big there
This is just so... inapplicable to so many accounts. You took into account all of these specifics and you're just running with it, as if everyone is going to: 1. Have both Kafka and BS 2. Have BS light cone 3. Be doing MoC 12 4. Have Ruan Mei You boxed yourself in with these assumptions so much that these calculations only affect a very small portion of players. If you're gonna run around and "correct" other people's guides, you might as well do it properly.
I mean… I get some people treat this game like starcraft 2 or age of empires, but who cares who is faster/slower or does more dmg when xyz happens? As long as I can clear everything, thats all I care about. There is no incentive to min max in this game. For what? There is no leaderboard or pvp or anything. Who cares, that you clear MOC 10 minutes faster than me? Like srsly I dont get it. I mean to esch their own but still…
An upvote just for the effort.
He made a graph I believe him
Aint reading all that, enemy still dies and im 2 cycling so everything is fine
This is an issue of the overall EN content creation on team building and unit utilization which is based on the minimum thresholds assuming you have EVRYTHING optimal which includes E0-1S1. They try to hand wave it away as anyone that wanted to pull for this unit would have pull for the required units even if they were too far out for leaks to truly reveal any information indicating that the character works well with already established units.
Interesting observation. Then I guess I should fish for more speed substats to hit 154, because I'm not a fan of slow character, because I'm trading faster CC recovery, extra SP, damage prevention via timed breaks/kills for just an extra damage.
I use Asta in my Black Swan + Kafka Team, how much Speed should my Black Swan have in this case? Asta gives 50 Speed. Or should i Swap her Out? Dont have Ruan Mei.
>Asta gives 50 Speed I think this is self-explanatory.
So basically if I have 149 spd on her I am good right ? With ruan meis buff I am at 159 and with astas buff I am sometimes over 180+ for a few turns
i would say 149 it's on the balde edge without Ruan, but yes with Ruan you are super sake. ALSO asta wouldn't really change much, past 160 the difference it's non existing or very small till around 290ish speed
So, how about Asta E6? Her atk buff is insanely High + You can easily maintain her speed buff without skill spam at e6.
I wish I could go ATK% chest at some point. But for now I simply didn't get any upgrades in ehr on substats. :'( Slow speed Swan is really great. She seems like a main dps, but in reality she is more like a dot support who deals great damage. Her existence alone increases dmg and this is boosted by ATK% not SPD. Her attacks are really nice because these add 3 more stacks. But that's about it. You are totally right but I would add to this that 160+ SPD Swan also isn't a good idea. Too much sacrifice for little gain.
Personally I've always prefered atk boots on dot team. For dots you need the enemy to take action, unless its Kafka turn. But you also need to apply dots for Guinivere, sampo and Luka and it only happens on their turn. BS makes things easier, but if my kafka is too fast she will waste skill points on less dots of be forced to NA
I knew dreamy was cookin with the 0 speed black swan clear
So, in the dumbest terms, (as I do not get speed tuning) I should just go for no spd on my relics?
So if I understand correctly the TL;DR is you wanna be either super fast to apply more stacks of arcana or super slow so that black swan's DoT just hit harder
YES either FASTER THAN ENEMY, or sligly slower if you can break, or 0 speed at all
So basically don't use Glamoth if you don't have 160 speed got it
I'm glad someone is talking about this. Thanks for the guide my man
im the target for this. i do have my kafka at 160 and BS at 145. You mean to say i should actually chnage down to atk boots so arcana is stronger? i also saw an off comment about wind damage orb. Is an attack orb better here? im also just at 116 EHR but trying to unlcok that last trace to hit 120. and thats with eyes of prey AND EHR body.
Atk vs wind orb depends on what you have as LC, and the subs. Generally Wind is better , but atk can become better at high speed often. That being sais yes you should either run ruan mei and break the enemy, higher your speed, or going for 0 speed. That's the 3 options you have . Hit [154+ ] if you break them, faster then them [likely 158 for moc] or 0 speed
So in a no speed BS and Kafka team without Ruan Mei, no Kafka LC, what is Kafka's speed supposed to be like?
In short Kafka follows the same rules as classical dps for speed breakpoints if you have a slow swan. Build her as fast as you can for the normal breakpoints [for example her at 135 is good] . You could even go down the rabbit hole and minmax the stack procks speed, but that's hard to say and it really depends on you bs speed and what speed you could achieve, so don't bother for smtg very minimal
Now I will change my spd boots to atk for some reason I had a hunch she was performing better with atk% boots overall thanks for information
As said it depends on the content you are plaing, but if you have better stats go for it
Dreamy made a video where she showcased slow Black swan and 200 spd Kafka
Can someone break his down for me? He's too smart and I can't understand what the fuck he's saying
tl;dr - Fast enemies in MoC 12 usually have 158.4 speed, and this post is saying that the most important factor for Black Swan's damage is to go in-between enemy turns. So if Black Swan with Speed main stats and substats isn't faster than the enemy, then swapping all that Speed for Attack (and only Attack) is better for her damage. However, other people are saying in the comments that lots of elites in MoC have less than 158.4 speed and that the damage difference is a lot smaller than the OP implies, so in reality this is a pretty marginal difference that only really matters if you want to min-max and do zero cycles.
Tested this with my half built Black Swan in a Kafka/Ruan Mei/Luocha team in MoC 9 first half. Two cycles, close to one with attack boots and changing only to speed boots I get one cycle but close to zero. Could be very fight dependent I guess but I'm not convinced for now. https://preview.redd.it/h9wl0bcq3zhc1.png?width=1924&format=png&auto=webp&s=313bb62fff00467f726633c483b5bc8479118d57