flins team & gameplay help! (returning player)

>can you explain in the easiest most childish way to me how lunar works

You use a Nod Krai character in your team. A certain element reaction matching that chacacter gets pretty letters and functions differently. Said character likes that and does more damage since they like pretty letters

The argument for Ineffa vs Columbina is pretty difficult. The damage of the Lunar-Charge reaction does scale from EM stats but also there is a built in scaling with both Flins and Ineffa. Ineffa is good for Flins main team because of the shield she gives.

If you are running Flins, Aino, Sucrose, then Ineffa fits this team as a best in slot due to her shield. But you can run Fischl instead of Ineffa making the team still deal good DMG, Fischl batteries Flins as well as Ineffa and gives Hexerei buff with Sucrose. Sucrose may have to use Prototype Amber for healing though.

Columbina is a universal unit for all the Lunar reactions; Charge, Bloom, and Crystallize. Personally I'd say Columbina is worth getting as she opens so many more teams for you to play around with, compared to Flins and Ineffa who are fixed with Lunar-Charge only.

when it comes to lunar reaction you can think of them as a team buff. you know how your team gets a buff when there are two characters of the same element on the team, right? that’s the same thing but with Nod-krai characters. As long as you have 2 Characters from Nod-krai the lunar reactions will just work automatically without you doing anything extra for it

now as for Flins specifically, i personally thing Ineffa is a better option for you. What Flins lacks a lot is not dmg but survivability and Ineffa makes his gameplay more enjoyable thanks to her shield

I will start with Lunar Charge. What it does over electro charge is it allows you to not stress so much about who is the one proccing it.


Electro Charge damage is based on the EM of the character that initiates it. So a Kuki with 1000 EM proccing Electro Charged will do more damage than a Raiden with 75 EM proccing it. Even if they are both in the team as long as Raiden is the one applying it Electro Charged will only scale off of her EM.


Lunar Charge changed this, instead it calculates the damage contribution from everyone that contributes to proccing it. The character that does the most contribution (so Kuki in the above example) would take the top spot. Let's say our Hydro has 500 EM so they take the second spot. And Raiden and our placeholder 4th take the last 2 spots. Kuki contributes 50% of the damage, Hydro contributes 25%, and the last 2 contribute 12.5% each. The other difference is that Lunar Charge can crit while EC cannot.


In practice as far as raw reaction goes in a vacuum, they do the same damage. This is where Nod Krai characters come into play.


1. Most Nod Krai units have a boost to their respective reaction's damage. Like Ineffa boosts the damage of Lunar Charge.


2. Ascendant Glean (resonance buff for having 2 Nod Krai units) can provide up to 36% increase to Lunar reaction damage so long as you have a non-Nod Krai unit that reaches the stat breakpoints.


So. What does this mean for Flins?


In a Flins comp majority of the damage is done by Lunar Charge. This means that in order to maximize Flins comp damage you want to optimize the amount of damage Lunar Charge is doing. The best way to buff that is with character passives. Flins, Ineffa, and Columbina all have passives that boost Lunar Charge damage so you want all of them.


Next you want resistance shred since unlike Electro Charge, Lunar Charge doesnt ignore defense (I believe could be wrong on this), and Flins also likes it to boost his on field damage. This slot is usually filled by Sucrose because she gives a ton of EM which all of them like having, but don't want to go too far out of their way to build.


As for who is best to get between Columbina and Ineffa:


For a Flins team it is always Ineffa. She does most of the comp's damage. Flins + Columbina is significantly worse than Flins + Ineffa. Both of them can be worked around, Columbina can be replaced by Aino especially if Aino is C6 (but C0 and C1 are both fine). Ineffa can be substituted by Fischl.


Another note about Lunar Charge is because the crit rate scales off the biggest contributor (so in Flins comp it would be Ineffa) this means that your Hydro doesn't need to build crit to proc Fav. As long as Lunar Charge crits after the Hydro procs and the hydro is still on field, then you will proc fav and get the particles. So with my Ineffa with 97% crit when I switch to my Fav Aino and use skill I proc Fav every time even though my Aino only has 10% crit. This is very powerful for the Aino variation of Flins. Columbina can get around this with Prototype Amber.


Kit wise for Ineffa and Columbina in a Flins team they just skill and burst if they have it and then switch off. You want to try and have both bursts every rotation and the bursts should only be held if you can single cycle without them, like an artifact domain. Ineffa's kit has a shield on skill and she does off field damage. So if you replace her with Fischl cause you went for Columbina that is even more value for P Amber.

The youtubes I've watched are all suggesting that Ineffa is always option 1 with Flins, where as Columbina is just useful on almost every team.