Evanescia Best Build Guide

Evanescia is an extremely powerful Elation DPS character. She is very self-synergistic and provides a very strong and accessible way to abuse the power of Elation. She gains Certified Banger points at an absurd rate and can reach values high enough that the game stops counting, making her ramp up fast and stay ramped up indefinitely. She is great into AoE or single-target, and excels in multi-Elation teams, though can even find surprisingly good success outside of them. She's already likely the strongest DPS in the game on her release, but she has A Certain Potential™ that could see her grow even stronger down the line.

[Intro]

Another Emanator-level character? Already? And it's some pseudo-deific tree in the form of a bunny with the style of ? Well sign me up!

I love when characters are just simple and effective and you want them to do the thing and then you press a button and they *do the thing*. Do not be fooled by the text that describes a bunch of stuff that you don't really need to think about, that's all just stuff you don't really need to think about.

[Abilities]

Eva is an Elation DPS, so the overwhelming majority of her damage comes in the form of Elation DMG. She does have some ATK scaling actions, and this ATK scaling is technically non-negligible, but really it's not something you need to worry about unless you're looking to go above and beyond what's required to blow your foes away (which she does with ease).

Eva's Skill deals 300% ATK to one enemy and 150% ATK to adjacent targets. In addition to this, it'll also grant 10 Punchline. This is a very substantial way to boost Punchline generation, though it's mostly offsetting the fact that Eva is quite a bit slower than most of the other Elation units we've gotten. Even still, 10 Punchline is 10 Punchline.

Eva's Ultimate will deal 160% ATK to all enemies, followed by 5 Bounces of 120% ATK to one random enemy. We haven't gotten to the part of her kit that explains where the Elation DMG comes from, but trust me that this Ultimate rips things apart.

Also Eva has the new highest Max Energy in the game at a staggering 480 Energy. Good grief, it's so much. She needs 240 Energy to execute her Ultimate though, so it's more like you can hold up to that maximum, and makes percentage based restores even stronger.

Eva's Talent is very cool. She gains Elation equal to 20% of her CRIT DMG, updating dynamically. This is a very substantial boost to a stat that's otherwise quite hard to increase.

When Eva gains Energy, she gains an equal amount of Certified Banger. That's right, Eva is just naturally acquiring CB points without the need to go through the Aha Instant and use her Elation Skill first. This is from all sources of Energy as well, so the Energy she restores with her own actions, getting hit by enemies, or allies using some form of Energy Restoration, all of it counts and will give Eva a bunch of CB points. If you can somehow restore all 480 Energy instantly, you'll end up receiving 480 points of Certified Banger.

But wait! When Eva gains Certified Banger, she will gain an equal amount of Energy! So any and all sources of Certified Banger will also help fuel her massive Ultimate cost, and with how much Certified Banger can be generated on Elation teams, you better believe this matters a whole lot. It is capped at 100 Energy per CB interaction, but that is still a huge amount of Energy you can be getting, and it is very noticeable and important.

Naturally these two passives don't interact with each other or you'd just get infinite Energy and CB points, but even still, it's a hell of a good passive to have on a DPS whose whole purpose is Elation DMG and Ultimate usage.

For every 240 Energy Eva gains, her Master Fox will launch a Follow-up ATK, dealing 100% ATK to all enemies and restoring an additional 10 Energy for Eva. This accumulation shows as a percentage of Charge by Eva's portrait. The most that this Charge can be increased by in a single instance is 240, so even though it can overcap, you can't suddenly jump to above 100% from 0%.

Finally, the description of the Certified Banger state. When Eva has Certified Banger: her Skill will deal 16% Elation DMG to attacked enemies; her Ultimate will deal 24% Elation DMG to all enemies and a further 28% Elation DMG per Bounce; and Master Fox's Follow-up ATK deals 25% Elation DMG to all enemies.

Very worth noting is that the amount of Certified Banger accounted for the effects for the Ultimate is always at least equal to Eva's Max Energy, which is 480! This means the Ultimate is going to be hitting absurdly hard no matter what, and this is a fantastic boost to not just her power, but also her consistency.

Now you can see where the big damage actually comes from. For how good Eva's ATK multipliers are, they still pale in comparison to her Elation DMG contribution, and the absurd amount of Certified Banger and CRIT DMG conversion are to thank for this.

I should stress that Certified Banger is one of the few properly diminishing stats in this game (not just internet jargon 'diminishing') so after a certain point, more CB points don't increase your damage by anywhere near as much as early points do. Even still, more is in fact better, and since it costs you nothing at all to accumulate them besides playing the team properly, seeing 999+ CB points on Eva is really not uncommon (you'll see why soon).

This also comes with a less appreciated benefit that Eva pretty much never ramps down, and is quite literally never outside of her Certified Banger state, meaning she'll never suddenly 'switch off'. I'm sure more than a few people who've been enjoying SW999 know what it's like to suddenly lose Certified Banger at an important point in your rotation, and this is simply not an issue that exists with Evanescia.

And of course, to cap this section off, her Elation Skill. It's Judgement Cut. She took lessons from Vergil and it's just Judgement Cut. She deals 110% Elation DMG to all enemies and gains an additional 5 points of Certified Banger. This has a Participant ID of 146, so it's quite late in the sequence, which is also an important detail to note.

[Bonus Traces]

A2 increases Evanescia's CRIT Rate by 30%. This is an out-of-combat boost, by the way, meaning this'll show on the stat screen. This is a tremendous way to increase her CRIT Rate, especially since her Talent incentivises building a lot of CRIT DMG. You lose out a lot less by doing that, and accounting for the 19% CRIT Rate she gets from Minor Traces, Eva is already sitting at 54% CRIT Rate without literally any investment on your part.

The second part of this Trace is that Eva's Ultimate will gain extra Bounces depending on the number of enemies on the field; 3 or more enemies will grant +1 Bounce, 2 enemies will grant +2 Bounces, and if there's only 1 enemy she will get +4 Bounces. This results in a large increase to damage against singular enemies, and it helps to equalise Evanescia's performance in AoE and single-target (she's still slightly stronger in AoE).

The THIRD part of this Trace (because obviously) is that whenever a teammate with an Elation Skill Participant ID that is lower than Eva's gains Certified Banger points, Evanescia converts 50% of it into her own Certified Banger.

This isn't exclusively tied to the usage of the Elation Skill by the way, someone like the Elation Trailblazer can be getting CB points directly through their normal Skill and Eva will still get 50% of it.

This really is converting 50% of it. Eva straight up steals 50% of the CB points that the ally was going to gain, meaning that same example of the Elation Trailblazer using their Skill, ordinarily they would get 20 CB points, but with Eva on the field, the Trailblazer gets 10 and Evanescia gets 10. Since Evanescia is a hypercarry, this isn't that big of a deal since stealing from support allies doesn't really matter for them that much, but it does help Eva get even more CB points and break the counter faster.

A4 will make Master Fox's Follow-up ATK inflict a 12% Vulnerability onto the enemies it hits for 3 turns. Vulnerability is one of the few ways to boost Elation DMG further, so this is very appreciated, and the rate at which Eva gains Energy means that this should be possible to maintain at 100% uptime, unless you're fighting something exceptionally speedy (like insanely and unreasonably speedy). Also, while not quite as potent as DEF stacking, the Vulnerability provided stacks nicely with other sources of Vuln.

Lastly the A6. Whenever a teammate's Certified Banger duration ends, Evanescia converts 50% of it into her own Certified Banger. This is per instance of Certified Banger, importantly, so this means that Eva will be picking up 50% of what was about to be lost from each individual 2 turn duration of Certified Banger for herself. These then also become their own duration Certified Bangers on Evanescia, and you can see why I said 999+ was pretty easy actually.

And if some of you might be thinking something like 'Yao Guang's A6 bricks her for Evanescia!', no it doesn't, not at all. Yes, it'll take a little bit longer to start converting Yao Guang's used CB points due to her A6 extending the duration to 3 turns, but that's it. After the initial slight delay, you'll still get the steady influx as normal. Spoiler for later but Yao Guang is extremely good for Eva, and this tiny interaction is not a valid argument against the pairing.

[Eidolons]

The usual disclaimer: you do not need Eidolons in order for this character to function, she's plenty powerful on her own, already bordering on 'best DPS in the game' territory at least as far as raw performance goes. These are a nice boost to Eva, you may go for them if you choose.

That said, this E1 is an actual certified banger for real. Eva's All-Type RES PEN is increased by 20%. After Master Fox uses an attack, Eva will immediately use her Elation Skill once at no cost. In addition to this, the Elation Skill will not grant an additional 10 CB points, meaning the Elation Skill is granting 15 Certified Banger points each time it's used.

This is an absurd boost, and may very well be the single best E1 for a DPS in the game so far. Everything that Eva already does well gets amplified even more, and the ramp-up is higher, and the rate of Elation Skill usage is also higher. Absolutely excellent E1, if you have any intention of vertically investing in Evanescia, this is such exceptional value.

E2 continues the trend of E2s being good. CRIT DMG increases by 36%, which is nice, but then also, when triggering the Certified Banger gain from her A2 and her A6, she gains extra CB points based on the amount gained in this instance, 50% for A2 and 100% for A6.

Awful wording aside, this is basically 75% and 100% conversion for the A2 and A6 respectively. The Elation Trailblazer example again would see the Trailblazer get 10 CB points from their Skill while Evanescia gains 15 points; and similarly the Trailblazer losing this instance of 20 Certified Banger would grant Evanescia exactly the same amount of 20.

This is really overkill because Eva already gets a silly amount of CB points, but it does ramp her up even faster, and will be giving her even more Energy over time thanks to her Talent's effects. Not as amazing as other DPS's E2s but with the crazy E1 Eva already has, that's a worthy trade.

E4 is a permanent 15% DEF Ignore on all damage dealt by Evanescia. Honestly pretty good by the standards of E4s, but you're still never stopping here if you're this far already.

Lastly, the E6. Evanescia's Certified Banger is extended by 1 turn, for a new max of 3 turns per instance. The Elation DMG of Evanescia merrymakes by 15% (a true 1.15x final multiplier). For every 100 points of Certified Banger held, it additionally merrymakes by 2%. Up to 1000 points of Certified Banger can be taken into account, which provides a final multiplier of 1.35x.

In addition to this, after using her Ultimate for the first time in combat, Evanescia will regenerate a fixed amount of 120 Energy. This can be triggered once again for every 4 Ultimates used by Eva.

I don't need to comment on this.

[The Rest]

It's actually pretty surprising that a character like this has come about so early in the lifespan of the new Path of this Planarcadia saga. It's very refreshing to see a DPS character in their niche actually be largely self-sufficient.

Obviously I don't mean this in the Evernight or Anaxa way, relax, I mean it in the sense that within the proper team setup you're encouraged to run, there's very little else you need to do. There's not really any kind of super specific things you need the supports to do, not really any kind of super specific speed tuning that's needed (unless going for speed kills or specific thresholds but that's not unique to Eva either), and Eva herself is pretty simple to play as well.

As mentioned before, Evanescia doesn't have the issue of needing to micromanage her Certified Banger, and it's not really something that can potentially become a problem for her either; for SW999 you're somewhat encouraged to clear off a wave within the first two turns of your Ultimate for the CB extension you get at the start of the next wave, and failing to do this can potentially result in you not having any Certified Banger points at all on the third turn, rendering you functionally useless for said turn.

This... I think this might genuinely not be possible with Evanescia. She's just built that way, and it's really damn good that she is. Even if Eva was to get infinite turns and could never make use of her A2 or A6 to siphon CB points off of allies, she still gains upfront CB points for just gaining Energy by any means, so that's still at least 30 points per Skill usage, meaning it's quite literally impossible to ever NOT be benefitting from Evanescia's Talent.

This is a kind of security that's actually quite rare to find, especially on DPS characters. Only the absolute best of the best have this type of consistency, and so it shouldn't be too surprising to find that Evanescia finds herself right at home amongst that crowd.

Even better is that she's extremely competitive in both AoE and single-target scenarios, something the game is now capable of flipping between quite easily even within one singular encounter. That also helps Eva out a lot since she's not suddenly losing a tremendous amount of viability purely because of the number of enemies on the field, and it also contributes to her actually FEELING powerful which is just as important I think.

So what teams does she have? Well, she's Elation, so naturally Elation teammates are her best pick right now. This does include Yao Guang, so if you were someone without her and hoping that Eva won't have Yao as her best-in-slot, you're going to be rather disappointed.

Yao does everything Eva wants, granting more Punchline, more Elation Skill uses, and an excellent damage boost through Yao Guang's own Talent; Yao's Certified Banger state does an additional instance of 20% Elation DMG to one random hit enemy, and this is of the corresponding type, so Eva gets to abuse her absurd self Elation boosts to deal yet more damage on top of everything else. The RES PEN is also very appreciated from Yao's Ultimate.

More Elation Skills for the team means more Certified Banger for the team, which means more and more and more Certified Banger for Evanescia. It's just really damn good, and accelerates Eva by a very significant amount.

I've been mentioning the Elation Trailblazer a lot in my explanation examples, and that's no coincidence, the raccoon is one of the best-in-slot teammates for Evanescia as well. Being able to directly generate Certified Banger for themselves means that Eva also gets to siphon off that Certified Banger.

This goes doubly so for the Elation Trailblazer's Ultimate, directly giving Certified Banger and allowing Eva to immediately use her Elation Skill for free. The 50% CRIT DMG (54% accounting for the Trailblazer's Eidolons) is also significant because Eva also converts a portion of that into even more Elation stat for herself.

Most amusing about this pairing is that the Trailblazer's Certified Banger Elation DMG is calculated using the highest amount of Certified Banger in the team, so given that Eva is constantly sitting in the very high hundreds of CB, maybe even breaching the 4-digit mark, the Elation Trailblazer can actually end up contributing a very respectable amount of damage in this team.

Naturally as well, any time a character comes out with an absurd Energy Max, we have to talk about the sustain that lets you enable that: Huohuo.

It's fine. That's kind of the gist of it, the sustain portion of Huohuo is still somewhat unreliable depending on who you're fighting against, but in this team of three where all of their Ultimates are incredibly important (and expensive), Huohuo's teamwide percentage-based Energy Restore is invaluable to have.

In the event that you want to go without a traditional sustain, Welt is a naturally great choice, and becomes even better if he's at E4. You should still be aware that you will probably lose out on some Energy from enemy attacks due to Welt's great Delays. It's made up for by the rest of what he offers, but if you're relying on specific breakpoints, you may need to tweak them a little to make the pair function at its best (which is really high performance).

But a special mention to Cyrene must be given. I know, I know, you might be thinking 'what in the hell is he talking about' but it's actually an incredible pick for speed kills. Cyrene's Ultimate takes a bit of time to get to, especially without any Chrysos Heirs on the team, but being able to instantly activate everyone's Ultimates on the first cast is incredible, especially because it fully maxes out Eva's 480 Energy, meaning you can rip two Ultimates back to back. It falls apart if the enemy is still alive after that but if you're banking on killing the enemy before that, it's pretty damn good.

As for non Elation teammates, it gets a bit muddy. Realistically I think the only one worth mentioning at all is Sparkle (the old model). Being able to give more turns is nice, but the CRIT DMG buff as well as the RES PEN and extra Vuln on enemies is really valuable and can help offset the lack of another Elation unit. These are some of the few ways to actually buff Elation DMG from a non-Elation based support.

For this reason, Sunday is actually not a great pick. It can work, sure, but it's far lesser than using Sparkle if you're going this route. The lack of meaningful buffs to Eva is too damning, even though the Energy Restore Sunny provides can be good. He's better used elsewhere.

If you only have one thing to pick, the Elation Trailblazer is already more than enough to get started. You definitely want to get Yao Guang later to round it out, but the important parts are already enabled by just the Trailblazer.

The Energy gained by Evanescia's many passives is affected by Energy Regeneration Rate, so upping that can actually provide even more substantial gains, and in fact it's very optimal to go for the ERR Rope to facilitate this.

Eva herself actually has extremely high base ATK, so even though her ATK multipliers are typically a very small percentage of her total damage, it is something that you may want to consider building for at least a little bit if you want to maximise her damage output.

But again, it's a pretty small amount, and you don't deal any damage if you're dead — Eva has some of the lowest defensive stats in the game, so if you're really struggling to survive, you can actually opt to forgo the ATK stats and just go for things like DEF or HP. Sacrificing several percent of damage to survive longer is a good deal if it's really what you need, and it's more comfy to play too.

Now, there is some really funny potential for Eva in the future, especially because her ATK multipliers are actually pretty good. As of right now it's not really feasible and significantly worse than her proper Elation setup, BUT in future it could be really interesting to see how Evanescia's kit can be leveraged from multiple fronts. 

It's just a hunch of mine.

[Wrap up]

Eva is just a good character, with a great fundamental kit, and a lot of wiggle room in future. What is it with pink-haired characters and being unreasonably good?

She utilises the existing Elation roster very well, and even has some limited synergy with non Elation characters. Couple this with her wonderful synergy with the Elation Trailblazer, and you've got yourself an extremely competitive DPS who's honestly very accessible.

Whatever's coming out after is sure to be up her alley as well, and I am personally very excited to see what kinds of things people come up with for Evanescia.

I don't know what it is exactly, but there's something about her. Something in her potential. Something that gets me very excited.

And very, very motivated.