Help me understand Luna

[Inuakurei]

I tend to like dps-support characters like Luna and theorycrafting how to build them, so I've been trying to make her work, but I just don't see how shes supposed to function.

Her buffs seem terrible. They scale off of max mana, but her mana caps out at 600. The dps buff is just 3.5% (7.5 enhanced) of max mana to skill power, which with a base of 600 is god awful when we're running around with 15,000+ skill power in hard mode.

Ok so maybe we need to invest into making the buffs worthwhile? Lets find some good modules for her.

The only decent modules I can find that work well on her are skill range and Benefit Sponsor / Multitalented. Everything else seems to either be not worth using, or flat out doesn't work.

Her buffs scale (poorly) off of her max mana, but nothing she does makes use of said mana otherwise. Songs only cost 15mana, the gun is free, and she can restore her own mana anway. So its a pointless resource on her. It scales bad and she doesn't use it. Not to mention the max MP modules suck anyway so they're not even worth using in the best of times.

Ok so her normal buffs suck and trying to build off of those suck, so how about building to use enhanced versions of songs as much as possible? On paper, the dps buff's crit buffs are the only saving grace of her entire kit, so lets build around that. Using cdr song is how we build bar for enhanced songs. It's on a 45sec cooldown but can build a full bar in one use. So similar to Jayber, the plan is to lower the cooldown of cdr song and up the duration of dps song, for maximum enhanced song uptime.

Well CDR and Skill Extension flat out don't work on her. CDR does not reduce the cooldown of any song, and Skill Extension does not extend the duration of any song, only the duration of the buff given to allies. Making them both, also useless stats on her.

Ok... so at this point shes looking like a skill based character that doesn't scale with any of the modules skill based characters use. Fine, how about we just pump her full of Skill Power, crit, and play her like a dps that just happens to have a buff aura.

One problem, her dps is awful (without the transcendent mod). Not only does she only have one source of damage, her unique gun, but its single target only and tied to her beat minigame. Even so this has been the most effective path for her so far. Just ignoring all of her mechanics and slotting her as a pure dps.

Her transcendent at least makes her playable, but with that she's just Bunny 0.5. Same exact thing, but less effective, harder to execute, and requires a mod from the hardest boss in the game atm.

The only other thing I can possibly think of is rapidly switching from dps to mana buffs over and over to maintain both. They both have a duration of 5sec that does scale with Skill Duration. So in theory you can get the duration up enough so the buffs stay active as you switch. But then we're just maintaining two weak buffs.

I have to be missing something, there's no way shes this bad right?

Edit: I forgot to mention, she comes with a Xantic socket (the X one), but the mods for that socket are almost exclusively centered around HP recovery, which she doesn't use. Aside from those there's just a single dps module, and Mana Regen Modifier. Which we already went over that she doesn't make use of. This has to be a joke?

Discovered that Potent Collector (%chance to gain custom resources on kill) works on her even though her name isn't listed on the module and is an X slot. So while it isn't the best for her, might as well use it because everything else is useless.

Edit 2: Ok so did some more testing. It is possible to give teammates both the dps and mana buffs at the same time, provided you switch songs before the buff wears off. This means even swapping to mana song for 1 second, then swapping back to dps song, gives your teammate 5seconds of mana buff at 1% regen per sec. This means stacking duration on her might actually be the play, since every second added is an additional 1% mana regen. In theory we can keep it up permanently once the duration exceeds the cooldown.

Also she doesn't get the buffs from her own songs. Which is beyond stupid.

[Grimzy]

I have to ask, did you familiarize yourself with her skills? That skill power boost is nice but the skill 50% crit damage and 35% crit rate are more worth it.

Generally, regardless what you build her, only maybe a selective few other descendants will actually benefit from her boost, since rest dont really use much skills anyway.

[Teal V2]

Luna is a support.
The game does not support the existence of supports.

Therefore Luna is useless.

You're welcome.

[Inuakurei]

Originally posted by Grimzy:

I have to ask, did you familiarize yourself with her skills? That skill power boost is nice but the skill 50% crit damage and 35% crit rate are more worth it.

Generally, regardless what you build her, only maybe a selective few other descendants will actually benefit from her boost, since rest dont really use much skills anyway.

Ok so her normal buffs suck and trying to build off of those suck, so how about building to use enhanced versions of songs as much as possible? On paper, the dps buff's crit buffs are the only saving grace of her entire kit, so lets build around that. Using cdr song is how we build bar for enhanced songs. It's on a 45sec cooldown but can build a full bar in one use. So similar to Jayber, the plan is to lower the cooldown of cdr song and up the duration of dps song, for maximum enhanced song uptime.

Well CDR and Skill Extension flat out don't work on her. CDR does not reduce the cooldown of any song, and Skill Extension does not extend the duration of any song, only the duration of the buff given to allies. Making them both, also useless stats on her.

[stonking.com]

Support characters seem to be mostly useless in this game, that's all you need to know

[Inuakurei]

Originally posted by Teal V2:

Luna is a support.
The game does not support the existence of supports.

Therefore Luna is useless.

You're welcome.

Nah. That's a smooth brained take, dps-supports can be fine. They need to either provide enough of a damage buff to be worthwhile, or enough resource regen to let the dps, dps harder. She just does neither.

[Duskyer]

Originally posted by Grimzy:

I have to ask, did you familiarize yourself with her skills? That skill power boost is nice but the skill 50% crit damage and 35% crit rate are more worth it.

Generally, regardless what you build her, only maybe a selective few other descendants will actually benefit from her boost, since rest dont really use much skills anyway.

She gives THAT much crit boost and people are saying she's bad? That's huge.

[Inuakurei]

Originally posted by Duskyer:

Originally posted by Grimzy:

I have to ask, did you familiarize yourself with her skills? That skill power boost is nice but the skill 50% crit damage and 35% crit rate are more worth it.

Generally, regardless what you build her, only maybe a selective few other descendants will actually benefit from her boost, since rest dont really use much skills anyway.

She gives THAT much crit boost and people are saying she's bad? That's huge.

Thats what I thought. But the problem I ran into is it isn't sustainable. To do that you need to build her bar to 14 stacks. You get 1 when you change songs and 1 per shot when in her CDR song. So the fastest way is to use CDR song. But the CDR song she uses to build bar is on an, unchangeable, 45sec cooldown. Otherwise its super slow to build, even if you spam change songs.

[Grimzy]

Originally posted by Duskyer:

Originally posted by Grimzy:

I have to ask, did you familiarize yourself with her skills? That skill power boost is nice but the skill 50% crit damage and 35% crit rate are more worth it.

Generally, regardless what you build her, only maybe a selective few other descendants will actually benefit from her boost, since rest dont really use much skills anyway.

She gives THAT much crit boost and people are saying she's bad? That's huge.

The thing is, the game focuses more on guns than it does on individual descendant traits.
That is especially visible in colossus fights. You will not see Blair, Freyna, Valby keep on spamming skills for damage where a gun can do 2x as much in that animation time Luna to be honest only really benefits lepic at them moment for obvious reasons and maybe as a mana battery for Bunny.
Other than that her kit is easily replaced with modules.

[Delphinus]

She has cake dont you like cake o.O

[Duskyer]

Ahhh okay I understand why people are saying she's iffy. Looking at her kit it's entirely skill focused. If her 2 also increased gun crit she'd be cracked. She'll only be good for mobbing support it seems.

[Inuakurei]

Originally posted by Duskyer:

Ahhh okay I understand why people are saying she's iffy. Looking at her kit it's entirely skill focused. If her 2 also increased gun crit she'd be cracked. She'll only be good for mobbing support it seems.

I'm beginning to think the devs don't play their own game.

[Duskyer]

Ehhh. She's good when paired with Lepic, Valby and Freyna. Lepic because obviously. Valby needs MP so she can keep dropping her water for Supply Moisture which is her best in slot. Freyna needs MP if you build her towards skill damage. That's bout it though.
Though you are correct in the fact that she's overall useless in a game where all your damage comes from guns and the fact that she doesn't even get to use regular guns for most of her time is sacrilege.

[EmperorVolo]

Originally posted by Grimzy:

Originally posted by Duskyer:

She gives THAT much crit boost and people are saying she's bad? That's huge.

The thing is, the game focuses more on guns than it does on individual descendant traits.
That is especially visible in colossus fights. You will not see Blair, Freyna, Valby keep on spamming skills for damage where a gun can do 2x as much in that animation time Luna to be honest only really benefits lepic at them moment for obvious reasons and maybe as a mana battery for Bunny.
Other than that her kit is easily replaced with modules.

........I don't think you've been playing this game 2 the fastest boss killing builds are just abilities.

[Grimzy]

Originally posted by Volo:

Originally posted by Grimzy:

The thing is, the game focuses more on guns than it does on individual descendant traits.
That is especially visible in colossus fights. You will not see Blair, Freyna, Valby keep on spamming skills for damage where a gun can do 2x as much in that animation time Luna to be honest only really benefits lepic at them moment for obvious reasons and maybe as a mana battery for Bunny.
Other than that her kit is easily replaced with modules.

........I don't think you've been playing this game 2 the fastest boss killing builds are just abilities.

They are but even tehn those work just as well without Luna in the mix, so shes essentially jsut a pretty key chain you can dangle for more fashion points.

[eZudo]

I feel like she's only really viable right now with her Noise Surge module, which when used turns her into a quite potent AOE dps.