Lacrimosa A6 Nova Nova Team (Hotori + Haniel)

Overall Concept

The focus is triggering as many Nova reactions as possible without taking away Lacrimosa’s field time. It’s a very similar concept to the Nanally and Hotori Blossom Team. With A6: Morning Spell, Lacrimosa can trigger instant reaction after using her skill, without consuming or filling Esper Meter. Then Hotori replicates the skill for more Nova reactions.

We don’t seek to trigger any other reaction, so we build the team for only Chaos and Psyche characters, plus Hotori who’s Cosmos and has no reaction in this comp. Without a grouping skill (From Sakiri), this team is more suited for boss encounters. 

We give Lacrimosa maximum field time, to deal direct DPS all the time, while building Esper Meter quickly. All other allies in the team can use skill and Ultimate and swap out.

Instant Esper Meter Refill

We instantly refill Esper Meter through:

• Using Lacrimosa’s skill then switching her out and back within 1 second (A6)
• Replicating Lacrimosa’s skill via Hotori’s Ultimate
• Parries

Since Beyond the Rails has bosses on both sides in the highest stages, this team will gain many Nova triggers from parries alone. In an average 32 seconds rotation, you may trigger two Nova from Lacrimosa’s skill, and one from Hotori replicating one of them.

Repeated Nova triggers

When using Hotori’s skill, she records all allies skills used within 5 seconds. After Hotori uses her Ultimate and stops time, a specter of each character replicates all recorded skills. So you can trigger one Nova from Lacrimosa's skill, then another after Hotori's Ultimate by swapping immediately without pause:

• Hotori > Lacrimosa > Haniel > Lacrimosa 

When a Nova from replicated skill hits a target already affected by Nova, the older Nova detonates immediately, dealing its damage earlier, and the new Nova resets the 5-second countdown to trigger. This helps frontload some of the damage instead of having all Nova delayed.

Natural Esper Meter Refill

With Lacrimosa attacking enemies all the time, she will refill Esper Meter fast enough to trigger one or two extra Nova in one rotation. 

Note that parrying enemy attacks with Lacrimosa wastes some of the Esper Meter she has built, so it’s better to swap-parry with Haniel instead if possible. This way Haniel instantly refills her Meter and triggers a Nova, while Lacrimosa keeps her Esper Meter build-up to trigger another.

The instant reaction from A6: Morning Spell doesn’t interfere with natural Esper Meter refill.

Stacking HP drain from Fadia

Fadia’s passive become very relevant in a dedicated Nova team, as it allows repeated Nova and several passive procs early on. Each proc drains Max HP from the enemy equal to 200% of Fadia’s base Max HP, with a drain cap of 5 times.

2 × (13,705 at level 60, or 14,833 at level 70) = ~150k HP drain after the first 5 Nova triggers at level 70 (unascended)

The drain is decent against bosses and deadly against smaller enemies. It’s frontloaded damage because we trigger Nova quickly at the start of battle. It reduces the stagger bar the team must break as well.

Stacking ATK Buffs from Haniel

In a Nova team, Haniel’s buffs are very competitive. At full stacks, she provides:

• Team-wide ATK buff equal to 20% of her base ATK (AT max level Ultimate)
• Team-wide ATK buff equal to 20% of her base ATK (At max level skill)
• Team-wide ATK buff equal to 16% of her base ATK (After triggering Nova twice)
• 10% ATK buff to active character (from her Arc)
• 8% ATK buff to active character (after Haniel’s turret hits 4 times while off-field)

To better visualize these buffs: at level 70, Haniel has 877 base ATK, Lacrimosa has 1,052 base ATK, and 2,200 total ATK. So buffs translates to: 

• 491 team-wide ATK 
• 189 active character ATK
• Total Lacrimosa ATK = 680+ 2,200 = 2,880 ATK
• Total DPS multiplier = 2,880/2,200 = 1.31x

This multiplier affects all of Lacrimosa’s DPS (both direct hits and Nightmare DoT). It also affects Hotori’s DPS to greater extent, since she deals her DPS while on-field and has lower base attack (gaining a higher percentage). Thanks to Nova pushing Haniel’s buffs up, making her competitive with even Sakiri in a fully optimized Scorch team.

Scaling Lacrimosa Damage

As the main on-field carry, a major part of DPS comes from Lacrimosa. Her scaling is split between:

• Direct hits: scales with the four DPS stats (ATK%, DMG%, CRIT Rate, CRIT DMG)
• Nightmare DoT: scales with only three (ATK%, DMG%, and CRIT DMG), while it has a fixed 50% CRIT Rate (like every DoT in game). It can also stack up to ten times, so attack with Lacrimosa frequently to reach full stacks.

Unlike the Scorch team, we don’t need Cycle Intensity on Lacrimosa. Just focus on pure ADC stats. With Lacrimosa, we prefer the CRIT Rate to CRIT DMG ratio to lean more toward CRIT DMG if not achieving the golden 1:2 ratio.

To maximize the field time for Lacrimosa, we have the option to change to a fast-casting Monster skill, such as “Headless Rider”. This one has the best Motion Value (MV) so it has the best cast speed to damage ratio. It justifies either staying on the field and resuming Lacrimosa’s rotation immediately, or performing a very short swap.

Scaling Nova Damage

• AT level 70, the base Nova burst deals 28,000 damage after 5-second delay
• With maximum Cycle Intensity on Haniel’s main and substats, she can reach 360 Cycle Intensity. These translates to:
• • Nova damage gains a 60% multiplier.
  • Nova burst damage hits for 44,800. 
  • This applies to every Nova Haniel involved in, by swapping her in or out
• With minimum 3 Nova per rotation (from instant refills alone), Nova deals ~134k DPS
• With an average 5 Nova per rotation (can be more with parries) we get ~224k damage
• • On average, this achievable in 30-second rotation
  • This is worth almost double the damage from 30 ticks of Scorch in a similarly invested Scorch team.