Looking for some tips on how to play Carmilla

[A Wild Slut]

I read through her kit, tried it out, and it's really fun, but there's gotta be a way I'm missing on how to maximize not draining my hp so badly.

I was starting to wonder if there was a particular order her abilities should be used in to help me out here if anyone has been playing a lot of her at all.

[Aetemes]

Chapter 1, a lot of two bites/AAing in between till blood bar ideally full or above 75%?, then get ready to trait, then fly somewhere safe (can use defense to fly across enemies to bait their attack animations), then cast the ball to kill everything - hopefully.

I don't use up my hp at all, unless there is a ez fountain nearby or go for bloodboil/healing antics, but that'll take a while to pick up. I just wait for trait to come back up and do it over again, even if I didn't manage to get a good cast of power. The "ball moves faster" talent is super value for chapter 1.

Playing around that special will be your main damage source through its own talents or the injection talent utilising all your power upgrades, or a combination of both, is probably the safer way to go.

Getting things that give special charges/cd reduction helps with the "sluggishness" of building blood, or eventually not needing blood at all.

Channeling power gets harder as you progress through chapters, and spamming special doesn't actually require blood/hp mechanics to work, and gives you intangible frames...too much win imo in comparison to going for trying to spam channel power imo.

If you get the Distortion talent, this makes defence a pretty good offensive tool, I'd take this up the minute I see it, very worth to max this fast. The damage can be used to fill the gap while trait is on cooldown, and if you get defence charges/cd reduction it can be your main source of damage the entire run really, not needing anything else.

Defence releases Bats -maxed- is also a good option, damage while intangible, but they can aggro stuff like crazy that are far away, and require long channels of defence, fun, but wouldn't use unless comfortable with randomly pulling stuff. Definitely more of a problem if playing coop (unless you're strong enough to kill everything by yourself anyways).

Blood Boil maxed with Mermaid Tears is an approach if you want to ignore building blood, but it's two things that don't actually "add up" to your damage, which is not a great idea, especially on chapter 1 lol, good sustain though, but also yoyos your health bar. This works goes well with a spam defence bats/distortion build, cause you're mostly safe while in defense form, so you can abuse your hp and ignore needing blood, or even special.

[A Wild Slut]

Originally posted by Aetemes:

Chapter 1, a lot of two bites/AAing in between till blood bar ideally full or above 75%?, then get ready to trait, then fly somewhere safe (can use defense to fly across enemies to bait their attack animations), then cast the ball to kill everything - hopefully.

I don't use up my hp at all, unless there is a ez fountain nearby or go for bloodboil/healing antics, but that'll take a while to pick up. I just wait for trait to come back up and do it over again, even if I didn't manage to get a good cast of power. The "ball moves faster" talent is super value for chapter 1.

Playing around that special will be your main damage source through its own talents or the injection talent utilising all your power upgrades, or a combination of both, is probably the safer way to go.

Getting things that give special charges/cd reduction helps with the "sluggishness" of building blood, or eventually not needing blood at all.

Channeling power gets harder as you progress through chapters, and spamming special doesn't actually require blood/hp mechanics to work, and gives you intangible frames...too much win imo in comparison to going for trying to spam channel power imo.

If you get the Distortion talent, this makes defence a pretty good offensive tool, I'd take this up the minute I see it, very worth to max this fast. The damage can be used to fill the gap while trait is on cooldown, and if you get defence charges/cd reduction it can be your main source of damage the entire run really, not needing anything else.

Defence releases Bats -maxed- is also a good option, damage while intangible, but they can aggro stuff like crazy that are far away, and require long channels of defence, fun, but wouldn't use unless comfortable with randomly pulling stuff. Definitely more of a problem if playing coop (unless you're strong enough to kill everything by yourself anyways).

Blood Boil maxed with Mermaid Tears is an approach if you want to ignore building blood, but it's two things that don't actually "add up" to your damage, which is not a great idea, especially on chapter 1 lol, good sustain though, but also yoyos your health bar. This works goes well with a spam defence bats/distortion build, cause you're mostly safe while in defense form, so you can abuse your hp and ignore needing blood, or even special.

This was an amazing help, and I'll keep this in mind for my practicing. I kind of got the power down after a bit, but the build was really throwing me, so this will definitely be worth looking back on when I start my next run as her lol

Thanks so much!

[Plumber]

in addition to what Aetemes wrote, she also has some absolutely GRIMY dash attack potential lategame once you've ranked her up a bunch. Take the dash normal finisher talent, bleed on normals, bonus crit damage on bleeding targets, then stack crit chance and dash/defense cooldown / charges with either of the Lv10 ult traits that extend your normal combo. Hits like a freight train even with poor luck with damage/crit stacking, ESPECIALLY the whip version. Makes a cakewalk of Chapter 3 as soon as you hit Lv10 since you combine absurd burst damage with mobility and area of effect, and you don't necessarily need to amass a pile of Eternal Roses for it to be a win condition (stacking them anyway makes it ridiculous!). All the challenge is in getting there with enough time left over to steamroll with it once you've got everything assembled, and it doesn't really matter how you do it...

The best part is that trying to go for this style doesn't interfere much with her normal M.O. of praying for Special-related talents. The only one that would directly conflict with this is Onslaught, and if you ask me that talent's a mixed bag in and of itself, since it can interfere with some movement tech with her normal attacks...