Yanagi Best Builds, Teams Guide & Review

Strengths:

As a DPS, Yanagi main plan of dealing damage is by electric disorders and polarity disorders. the first one is achieved by overwriting Yanagi shock by another attribute by other teammate, while the latter is done with her EX Special Attack: Gekka Ruten and Ultimate: Raiei Tenge, which basically deals additional disorder damage based on the current anomaly applied on the enemy. Both types of this disorder use the same factor to determine the damage output:

• Yanagi stats: ATK, AP, PEN, etc. Similar as any DPS. Making sure every buff is up whenever Yanagi is building electric anomaly meter is important to maximize her damage!
  Example: Yanagi build 90% of the elec. anomaly meter while Rina PEN ratio buff is up, even though at the end Rina buffs ran out, the disorder damage later is still buffed, since anomaly damage snapshots the agents' stats, meaning it remembers Yanagi stat of when it is inflicted onto the enemy, not when it is triggered.
• Enemy stats: different than agents stats, Enemy stat is not snapshotted, meaning any debuffs needs to be present when disorders hit the enemy, like Nicole energy field, or Enemy stun multiplier, that's why its a good idea to save Yanagi energy for the stun window so that her limited amount ofEX Special Attack: Gekka Ruten damage will be increased by the stun multiplier.
• Time dependency: Disorder damage is based on the time its need to be procced since the start of the attribute anomaly.
  Example: Yanagi electric disorder damage will be higher if the shock is overwritten 3s after the shock hit, than if it is overwritten 7s after the shock hit. similarly, Polarity disorder damage will be higher if Yanagi EX or Ultimate hits early on the attribute anomaly.
• Attribute anomaly type: Polarity disorder damage is a percentage based on the current anomaly on the enemy. Generally, you want to hit polarity disorder when the enemy is just inflicted with shock to get the highest damage. If in the double anomaly team, then Yanagi can hit both her shock, and her disorder partner attribute anomaly, but avoid hitting a non-anomaly agent attribute!
  Example: Nicole triggered Corruption anomaly in the middle of the fight, if Yanagi hits polarity disorder on Nicole's corruption, the damage will be way lower than if Yanagi hits polarity disorder on her own shock, as Nicole is not built for anomaly damage on her kit.
• Anomaly dilution: Remember that the anomaly meter remembers the agent's stat from before? they also remember who applied them! In the case of Yanagi team with another electric agent minimizing the electric anomaly buildup of the other agent will be for the best.
  Example: A shock that's built 60% by Yanagi, and 40% by Rina will have a lower disorder damage than shock that's built by 100% Yanagi.

Weaknesses:

It may have been apparent from the previous part that Yanagi is not an easy character to master, there's is a lot of factors to remember how to maximize her disorder damage. Considering there's a limited number of disorders that can be triggered in a fight, making sure every single one of them is optimized might be important, and knowing about it will only be half of the process, as executing all of it into a proper rotation will require practice.

As an anomaly DPS with only disorder damage for her damage output option, Yanagi is also very dependent on being able to build anomaly on the enemy. Even on neutral weakness enemy, Yanagi anomaly buildup without outside buff is sometimes still dragging, and this could possibly be a problem since if she missed the 10s count of the previous attribute anomaly, there will be missed disorder, which means damage loss.

1. Core Passive
2. EX Special
3. Ultimate
4. Basic Attack, Dodge, Assist

• Yanagi Core Passive: Lunar Eclipse increased not only her own personal damage, but also the team personal damage as the 250% disorder damage is applied to any teammate. Leveling it to F is recommended.
• Polarity disorder damage scales based on her EX Special Attack: Gekka Ruten and Ultimate: Raiei Tenge level, hamster caging it is recommended to get the highest damage output from her.

Timeweaver

Her very own signature W-Engine custom made for her. 30% Electric anomaly buildup, 75 AP, and 25% disorder damage multiplier. All of these stats compliment her really well that its clear Timeweaver is her best in slot W-Engine, but this doesn't mean her alternatives is not comparable to it. The anomaly buildup buff will make Yanagi matchup against neutral weakness enemy become easier, but other than that, her alternatives is not that far behind

Fusion Compiler

Fusion Compiler Having PEN ratio substat is really good for Yanagi since she naturally wants to stack her PEN ratio. and at high refinement (R3 or above), the AP and combat ATK buff will gives damage output close to her own signature W-Engine.

Weeping Gemini

The best W-engine option for low cost Invesment, as Weeping Gemini is a craftable W-Engine. this w-engine gives a really high amount of AP for Yanagi, which is good since all of her damage source scales based on her AP. It is important to remember about the stack management of weeping gemini: proc at least 4 attribute anomalies before the stun window, and release all of Yanagi damage before the stun window ends, since the stack will be reset during the stun recovery.

4pc Drive Discs

Chaos Jazz is a really comfy build for Yanagi rotation, as she will be swapping in and out naturally throughout the fight, the 20% EX DMG buff uptime is pretty easy to remember, just make sure to use her EX only when she just swaps in.

Thunder Metal is considered as an alternative build, although sometimes calculated to be better than chaos jazz, it requires a lot more investment and specific rotation. First thing to consider is that your Thunder Metal discs need a lot of AP substat rolls to be able to surpass Chaos Jazz in terms of damage output (>20 AP roll). And another part is on the rotation changes, as you need to make sure Yanagi will only build electric anomaly meter when the enemy is in shock. In a double anomaly team, this might be troublesome sometimes especially with Burnice or Vivian as disorder partner where they can proc disorder off-field, turning Thunder Metal buff off, but it works great on Hypercarry Yanagi team.

2pc Drive Discs

• Freedom Blues is the best option most of the time as AP stat return of investment is the highest for Yanagi.
• Phaethon's Melody is viable if there's a scenario where Yanagi buildup dragged too much against neutral weak enemies. Sacrificing a bit of AP is better than missing disorders in the rotation.
• Puffer Electro is a good option for high mindscape Yanagi, as her M1 might already gives her enough AP, and M4 gives more incentives to stack her PEN ratio.

Stats

• AP Disc 4 is self-explanatory; there's no other stat that Yanagi ever wants other than AP.
• For Disc 5, PEN ratio might be the best option, except for in a DEF shred team with Nicole or Trigger, in which case she's better using ATK% or Elec DMG%. But the safest option is to choose any one of them that has the highest ATK% and AP substat rolls
• AM Disc 6 is best for double anomaly team so that she can proc disorder back-to-back with her partner fast, while ATK Disc 6 is best for hypercarry team where team will focus on only her shock proc.

Double Anomaly

A team consisted of Yanagi, a disorder partner, and a support. her disorder partner can be Piper, Burnice, Miyabi, Vivian, or Alice. While the support for the two anomaly agent can be Lucy, Astra Yao, or Yuzuha. Generally would be the best performing team of hers, with the base rotation of:

Yanagi shock > disorder partner attribute proc > repeat

With fast rotation to make sure there's plenty of disorder count outside of stun, and well placed EX Special Attack: Gekka Ruten while outside stun to build electric anomaly, and inside stun to maximize damage.

Hypercarry

A team with only Yanagi as a solo anomaly, and two agent supporting her damage output, with examples like Nicole Astra Yao, Trigger Nicole, Yuzuha Rina, or Rina Nicole. Most of the time this team only have one set of strict rotation that only works best on specific boss (Typhon), The main idea is to burst Yanagi electric disorder damage inside the stun window with Nicole or Yuzuha as the electric disorder detonator with her corruption proc. The rotation is harder to execute since support agent anomaly application is not as dependable as a second anomaly agent, but Yanagi damage output becomes really high as it is buffed by two other supporting agent.

Mono Electric

Has the same Idea of a hypercarry team, with a combination of Seth, Rina, and Trigger supporting Yanagi in the team. It is a good entry level team to play since the anomaly control for Yanagi is fairly easy, but the damage ceiling is not high. The con of this team is that this team can't proc electric disorder and solely depends on Yanagi polarity disorder for damage. because of this, there's way too much of loss potential from not playing two attribute team and only work decent for M2 Yanagi or above.

Mindscape 1

The 80 AP is a nice stat upgrade for Yanagi, but nothing amazing, and the invulnerability is not something that will be noticed outside of tower game mode. Timeweaver is still a better early upgrade option than this.

Mindscape 2

The best stopping point for early Mindscapes Yanagi. This mindscape increase her EX Special Attack: Gekka Ruten polarity disorder by considerable amount and might change yanagi burst rotation (from 3 EX to 2 EX with holding thrust). There's a neat interaction of this mindscape with Vivian where each EX special hold thrust will consume one of Vivian feather, making it possible to frontload all of her abloom damage in an instant and prevent overflow feathers.

Mindscape 4

16% PEN ratio not only for her, but also for any of her teammate, making it also a pretty good upgrade for a double anomaly team, but it's not as strong as a support agent early mindscape in that team.

Mindscape 6

Powers up and incentivizing to use the hold EX thrust from her M2 even more, you'll definitely want to save her energy and use 2-4 thrust of her EX inside the stun window for maximum damage. at this point, Yanagi EX Special Attack: Gekka Ruten will be the number one priority of her damage output and you want to build your rotation around it.

Just like other top limited agent DPS, Yanagi is a really strong agent at M0 that can perform well even at low cost, although has a learning curve at the beginning on the disorder damage optimization and anomaly meter control, and at high mindscape becomes a DPS agent that easily kill bosses without the player realizing it.