Overview
Sandrone is an on-field DPS that utilizes her Charged Attack and Elemental Burst to deal Stellar DMG. Using her Charged Attack will generate 'Decoding Power' for Sandrone, an Overheat mechanic. At 100 Decoding Power, Sandrone's Charged Attack will power down. Sandrone can clear this Overheat by using her Elemental Skill, which will deal Stellar DMG in turn. This forms her basic gameplay loop.
Sandrone’s kit is built around the Stellar-Conduct reaction; Sandrone shouldn't be played outside of Stellar teams. Stellar-Conduct is a modified version of the Super-Conduct reaction, which is performed by applying Cryo on an Electro aura or vice-versa. Normally, Superconduct deals a bit of damage scaling on EM and reduces the Physical RES of enemies affected by it. When Sandrone is on the team, this reaction becomes Stellar-Conduct, which deals no damage and instead spawns a ‘Polestar Field’. The mechanics of the Polestar Field form the basis of the Stellar-Conduct archetype.
Stellar-Conduct & Polestar Field Explained
The Polestar Field is a zone that spawns around an enemy when triggering Stellar-Conduct. It has a duration of 6 seconds, and will refresh itself when triggering Stellar-Conduct again within that duration. Enemies within the field will have their Physical RES reduced by 40%, but the Stellar-Conduct team archetype itself is not focused around Physical DMG; it deals Cryo, Electro, and Stellar-Conduct DMG instead.
Stellar-Conduct focused characters like Sandrone or Yae Miko will enter the “Radiance: Stellar-Conduct” state while within a Polestar field, which unlocks the Stellar-Conduct parts of their kits.
While the Polestar field is active, it will ‘record’ all Cryo and Electro Elemental Applications in intervals of 4 seconds. After the recording phase is over, it will immediately begin the next one, and for the next 4 seconds (same as the next recording duration) provide stacking buffs to the team as long as they're inside the field. This buff will scale with the number of Cryo and Electro applications recorded. It is worth noting that Stellar-Conduct DMG does not apply Element and so won’t count for the Polestar Field’s stack recording.
The buffing values are as follows:
- At 0 stacks: there is no Stellar-Conduct multiplier buff, but the team gains 20 Electro and Cryo DMG%.
- At 1 stack: All Stellar-Conduct DMG gains a 1.45x multiplier. This multiplier is entirely separate from other multipliers. At 1 stack, you deal 45% more Stellar-Conduct damage. Additionally, all characters within the field gain 29% Cryo and Electro DMG Bonus.
- For each stack afterwards, these values are incremented; each subsequent stack gives 1% DMG Bonus and adds 0.05x to the multiplier. There is a maximum of 12 Polestar Field stacks, for a total of a 2x multiplier and 40% DMG Bonus. Sandrone’s teams should expect to average roughly 5-8 stacks, depending heavily on teammates. Sandrone and Yae Miko by themselves will generally account for 4-5 stacks.
With these values in mind, each stack will be worth about 1.5 - 3% of team damage in Sandrone’s current teams, giving units with decent Cryo / Electro application an advantage over other units, and lowering the value of supports that cannot apply Cryo or Electro.
Charged Attack & Decoding Power
Sandrone’s Charged Attack is similar to
Neuvillette’s: after a short wind-up, Sandrone will begin attacking enemies within her indicator. Like Neuvillette, Sandrone is freely able to move while in this state; unlike Neuvillette, you have to constantlyhold the button down. Sandrone is able to use this Charged Attack at any time as long as she's not Overheated.
This Charged Attack will perform 3 smaller Cryo hits followed up by a larger hit, which is Cryo by default but becomes a Stellar-Conduct Cryo hit while Sandrone is in Radiance: Stellar-Conduct. Sandrone is able to do this up to 3 times within the duration of a Charged Attack for a total of 9 Cryo hits and 3 Stellar-Conduct hits per full cast.
While Sandrone is performing her Charged Attack, she will accumulate 'Decoding Power'. When Sandrone reaches 100 Decoding Power, which she will after a fully cast Charged Attack, she will enter an Overheat state. During this state, she attacks much slower and deals reduced state.
Reducing Overheat & Elemental Skill
Sandrone will reduce her Overheat automatically while not using her Charged Attack. This automatic reduction will be significantly faster while Sandrone is off-field. Sandrone can also reduce her Decoding Power through her Elemental Skill.
Sandrone’s Elemental Skill has her get on her hoverboard and immediately decrease her Overheat. On cast, Sandrone will reduce her Overheat by 70, and for every 0.1s she is on the hoverboard, she will additionally reduce it by 10. This means it will require a quick 0.3s flight to fully reduce Overheat. A Charged Attack + Elemental Skill loop will take approximately 4 seconds and change for Sandrone to perform. This Skill also has a cooldown of 4 seconds, making you able to use Sandrone’s Charged Attack → Elemental Skill sequence indefinitely.
On casting her Skill, Sandrone will deal 2 small hits of Cryo Damage if it doesn't reduce any Overheat. However, through her Ascension 1 Passive, if Sandrone has accumulated over 50 Decoding Power, it will instead perform a small Cryo hit and a decent Stellar DMG hit.
Energy Generation & Elemental Burst
Sandrone will generate 1 Cryo Particle when she hits an enemy with either her Charged Attack or her Skill, on a 2.5s cooldown. You can expect 4-5 Cryo Particles at C0, and 5-6 Cryo Particles at C1.
Sandrone’s Elemental Burst costs 60 Energy on a 15 second cooldown. While not expensive, it does require some Energy Recharge to use on every rotation on most of her teams. Teammates like Escoffier and Qiqi significantly alleviate this, with Qiqi being Sandrone's premier battery teammate.
This Burst deals a smaller chunk of Cryo damage on cast, followed by a much greater chunk of damage after a bit of time post-cast. This second hit will become a Stellar DMG Hit when Sandrone is in Radiance.
Additionally, through her Ascension 1 Passive, whenever Sandrone reduces her Overheat by 10 points, she will gain a ‘Refined Tactics’ stack. These stacks last for 60 seconds, and there is a maximum of 10 Sandrone can hold at a given time. Sandrone will consume all stacks when using her Burst, and each stack consumed will increase this Burst's damage by 10%, for a maximum of 100%. This means Sandrone wants to perform at least 1 full Charged Attack before her Burst Cast. A fully stacked Burst cast will deal damage roughly equivalent to 5 Stellar-Conduct hits from her Charged Attack, making it very powerful.
General Gameplay Loop
Sandrone’s on-field combo will typically look like this:
- Charged Attack
- Elemental Skill until Decoding Power is 0
- Repeat the above steps 3 times in total for most teams; can be less or more depending on the rotation
- Use Elemental Burst either in-between Charged Attack uses or right after the final Elemental Skill. Keep in mind that Sandrone is able to act relatively fast after casting her Burst.
This will take roughly 15 seconds of field time when done optimally, and makes the best use of Sandrone’s various mechanics.
Sandrone’s damage is almost exclusively Cryo Stellar-Conduct damage. Stellar-Conduct damage can be either Cryo or Electro, but it does not scale with regular DMG%. Stellar-Conduct DMG scales on
Elemental Mastery; EM directly converts to Stellar-Conduct DMG%. Because of how EM scales, it’s very powerful when at low EM values and loses potency the more of it you have. Sandrone gives herself 160 EM through her Ascension 4 Passive, making EM and
ATK % fairly close in value. ATK% will typically be a little stronger if a decent amount of EM or Stellar DMG Bonus buffs are present.