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NTE Team

Zankou's Hexed Team

Zankou

Lacrimosa

Iroi

Sakiri

Daffodill

Featured

By elnawawi

Updated on Aug 31, 2026

Aug 31, 2026

Overview

Zankou has many playstyles, as she can slot in any Discord or Scorch team. However, the unique new team she brings is a Hexed team, with Incantation and Anima on top Chaos elements to emphasize on thee Scorch stacks Zankou enables, and replicating all Incantation damage through Hexed.

It's one of the few teams in the game that doesn't rely on Zero, so it doesn't compete over the most demanded support.

Team Overview

CharacterZankou

WeaponEmpty

CartridgeCrimson: Twin Butterflies (S)

CharacterLacrimosa

WeaponThe Last Rose

CartridgeDiabolos (S)

CharacterSakiri

WeaponGood Boy's Grand Adventure

CartridgeSpeedy Hedgehog (S)

CharacterIroi

WeaponThe Wrong Gate

CartridgeCrimson: Twin Butterflies (S)

This team combines three elements:

Incantation: Zankou, Sakiri
Anima: Iroi
Chaos: Daffodill (or Lacrimosa)

Zankou will take ownership of all Scorch reactions in the team. She raises the Scorch instances to three, and apply a Scorch every time team applies a DoT. That on top of Zankou's own DoT, the teams maxes out Sakiri's DoT multiplier buff easily. Sakiri also offer ATK buff, and crowd control against small enemies.

Daffodill will entertain an easy quick swap style, adding some break damage, but picking Lacrimosa would add more DoT and take more field time.

Iroi is a good DPS and survivability gain, with her ATK buff and healing. But there are a trick to make Iroi help the team gain energy as well.

The best character to hold the Speedy Hedgehog (S) support Module is Sakiri, for a team-wide ATK buff, and faster Ultimate gain. While Iroi can also use Speedy Hedgehog (S), she instead can use Incantation se Crimson: Twin Butterflies (S) similar to Zankou.

How to Play

Overall Concept

Zankou doesn't require constant field time to perform her rotation. She can easily adapt quick-swap playstyle, and keep going on-field and off-field to give either Daffodill or Lacrimosa chance to deal damage. Her own DoT lasts longer than Lacrimosa, and she refresh the three stacks of Scorch constantly.

Unique Esper Meter Refill of Zankou

Zankou's passive gives a single free Esper Meter refill at start of battle, which lead to instant Scorch very early and saves build-up time. So the team has no downtime of Scorch unless you are facing waves of enemies.

Natural Esper Meter Refill

Subsequent Esper Meter refills happens through normal rotation, after using enough skills and normal/charged attacks.

These can be used to Trigger Hexed instead of Scorch, as Zankou takes cares of re-applying Scorch through her passive. Hexed increase team DPS by a lot, since all Scorch and Zankou's DPS count as Incantation, which Hexed replicates.

Ultimate Energy Gain

Iroi can help team gain energy by charging her attack then swap out. She will keep shooting for couple seconds while off-field, and this charged attack regenerate energy for the team.

Maximizing DPS of Scorch

Zankou force triggering Scorch at start of battle, then keep re-applying Scorch when team apply any DoT. With ownership of all Scorch going to Zankou, so she builds CRIT DMG and Cycle Intensity to maximize Scorch DPS.

Maximizing Zankou's Heartwrench DoT

Heartwrench is Zankou's unique DoT, and it has the longest duration of all DoTs in the game (30-second). Zankou can apply up to ten stacks, and each stack refreshes the duration. So enemies virtually have permanent 10 stacks.

Not only that, but Zankou's normal attacks spread any DoT enemy has to nearby enemies. So in AOE, Zankou can rapidly fill all enemies with all DoTs.

Heartwrench DoT damage scales with Incantation DMG%, Universal DMG%, and CRIT DMG. It has a fixed 50% CRIT Rate as all other DoTs.

It also scales with Attack, but the ratio is 1.5% of ATK, so it's not the most impactful stat.

Maximizing Hexed Reaction

Hexed reaction scales with three factors:

20% of the total Incantation and Anima damage dealt within 12 seconds from the reaction.
Cycle Intensity of the character dealing damage.
Buffs: Follow-up dmg bonus/Def Ignore/Resistance Ignore

So unlike Scorch which takes the highest CI among the two characters participating in the reaction, each character participating in Hexed contribute their CI to the portion of damage they deal.

So between Zankou and Iroi, the incantation portion is affected by Zankou's CI, and the Anima portion is affected by Iroi's.

Another perk of applying Hexed is that it gives bonus damage to any follow-up attacks. Zankou has a lot of her attacks counting as follow-up attacks, so doing her rotation inside Hexed duration enable Zankou to do both: increase her own DPS, and increase Hexed damage.

Rotation Guide (Beyond the Rails)

At the beginning of combat in Beyond the Rails mode, all characters start with:

Empty Esper Meter
Fully charged Ultimate

Except for Zankou, who starts the battle with full Esper Meter, meaning she can immediately proceed to trigger Scorch. Then her passive will keep refreshing and triggering new Scorch whenever the team apply DoTs.

Zankou's Rotation

Start with Zankou's charged attack to turn her skill golden
Use golden skill to enter Illusion form and gain first buff
Spam normal attacks until her skill turn golden again
Use golden skill to return to Reality form, gain second buff, and refresh the first buff.
Use the purple Ultimate.
Use the standard Ultimate (now buffed)

This is the rotation that deal most damage for least complication. It fits her Hyper carry style, but can squeeze in dual DPS style as well. But for more optimal play, you can use more complicated combos where you swapZankou in and out to allow allies to deal more DPS.

On other hand, with Zankou playing a DoT support with Lacrimosa, you can use even a simpler rotation to not take field time from Lacrimosa, or stick to this rotation all the time.

Allies rotation

The team's rotation will vary depending on which characters you use, Lacrimosa requires constant field time so her short-duration DoTs don't expire. While Daffodill prefer swapping in and out after using Ultimate to use her Phantom Step.

Iroi is nice as she uses her skill and swaps out. Or use her skill into charged attack and swap out (to generate energy for the team)

Sakiri also uses Ultimate into hold skill and swaps out.

Advanced Rotation Tips

You can swap Zankou out between the two Ultimates, use team's burst DPS and refresh DoTs, then use Zankou's second Ultimate.
- This is especially helpful when using Lost Radiance (S) Module set to refresh the Def ignore duration and have it up permanently.
Use charged attack on Zankou's third attack for more DPS
Swap out Zankou during charged attacked to use a skill or apply a DoT, then swap her back in just as her animation is completed.
To avoid triggering Hexed too early, don't switch immediately from Zankou to Anima character after Zankou finishes her rotation.
- Instead, switch to Sakiri, who's an Incantation character and doesn't react with Zankou
- After finishing allies rotation, return to Zankou, swap to Iroi to trigger Hexed, and back to Zankou to do her rotation inside Hexed duration.

Additional Notes

Linko can replace Iroi in Zankou's Hexed team when she releases, as Linko gives bonuses to follow-up attacks, and can shred Incnatation resistance.

At A0, Scorch and allies DoTs will deal more damage while Zankou is on-field, because her CRIT DMG buff will expire when she's off-field. With A1 allocated, this buff doesn't expire and stay while Zankou if off-field.

For hyper carry Zankou, Daffodill is a better Chaos character pick. Because Lacrimosa's DoT lasts very short time, and she relies on being on-field much longer, while Daffodill swaps ina nd out flawlessly.

However, with A6 on Lacrimosa, you unlock totally different Discord team that maximize Lacrimosa's passive Tomato Banquet, as well as spamming Nova. But that team deserves a dedicated guide.