Longyan - Divine Fox
Longyan - Divine Fox
Released in:
Version 3.6 - "Winds of Warmth"
Note that v3.6 also introduces Fritia - Sparkdrive.
Each have their own article.
This article is about how Divine Fox affects the games meta. If you only want details on Divine Fox herself - how to play and build her, then view her article here.
It's hard to discuss v3.6 without discussing the 66-day Maintenance period.
(Also, yes, from now on I will refer to that period as "Maintenance", with a capital-M.)
The game is now back online, but is heavily censored.
All outfits have been modified to be less explicit
A lot of the games animations have been removed, including for example menu animations and victory animations
Interactive Scenes have all been removed
The Archive has been removed
The Photo Booth has been removed
etc...
The list goes on and on.
There is a lot to say about the censorship, and whilst pre-release media of Longyan was leaked several months ago, and Longyan herself appeared in the previous events story well before the Maintenance occured, other than the difference between her leaked pre-release outfit and her actual outfit on release, the censorship isn't really related to Longyan.
As such, I'll make this article about Longyan herself from now on, and there is a separate article on this site about my thoughts on the censorship, so go read that for my thoughts and opinions on it.
This is like the fourth(?) time I've started to write an article about the new operative, only to start talking about Bubu - The Geomancer instead.
... and today is no exception, as Longyan does play extremely similarly to Bubu.
With Bubu, you'd hold down the trigger to just continually shoot bursts from her gun, with Bubu automatically reloading when needed, and you'd use her standard skill whenever her Energy was empty, and use her ult whenever it was fully charged from her standard shots in order to shoot higher-damage shots, with Bubu doing small hops between her bursts of shooting.
Mia - Starchaser was a variation on Bubu's design, offering a very similar playstyle, with the same bursts from her gun, the same auto-reloading, the same ultimate taht was charged by her standard shots that boosted her damage (altough by increasing RoF rather than per-shot damage), the same hopping between bursts of shots.
Mia did differentiate herself from Bubu in several ways, mostly notably by dealing Electric-damage rather than Bubu's Thermal, and her ult shootinga fixed 8-shots instead of Buub's charge-mechanic, but Mia played very similarly to Bubu.
Now we have Longyan - Divine Fox, who is the third variation on Bubu's design.
On the surface, Longyan plays very similarly to Bubu, in that you can just hold down the trigger, and Longyan will continually shoot, will automatically reload, and you can use her ult whenever it has been charged by her standard skill in order to rapidly shoot 8 shots that do more damage.
Longyan even deals Thermal-damage just like Bubu, and she somehow manages to have even worse mobility than Bubu.
Whilst Longyan can be pretty easily compared to Bubu - The Geomancer and Mia - Starchaser, just two patches ago Bubu got another variant; Bubu - Specular Soul, who used Dual SMGs, being the first operative to use a weapon that was otherwise exclusive to just one operative.
Longyan now copies Bubu's style there as well, as she's also using Dual SMGs.
Like all of the recent operatives, Longyan has an alternative way of playing her that allows her to deal AoE damage, which in this case is done by using her ADS, Standard Skill, and Ult.
Single Target:
Use her ult whenever you can, and otherwise just hold down the trigger.
Multi-Target:
Use her ult whenever you can, Spam her Standard Skill off-cooldown, and otherwise just spam the ADS button.
Pretty simple rotations, but there are a lot of effects going on underneath that, which... quite frankly don't really matter.
Unlike the previous DPS operative; Acacia - Chrono Echo, with Longyan you don't need to keep track of any of her effects or how many stacks she has of things.
This is a good thing, as she has a lot of different effects going on, but it does also simplify her playstyle a lot.
Personally, I think Longyan's simplicity works really well.
She feels complex, due to all the effects she has, but also very simple to play.
This might sound like it's a "Easy to understand, but difficult to master" sort of thing, but it really isn't - just do the above rotations and Longyan will perform really well.
There are some caveats to her design though.
So, for starters, Longyan's in-combat mobility is catastrophically diabolical.
Like Bubu and Mia before her, she can't move whilst shooting, however Longyan's Dual SMGs have a large magazine capacity, and she regains ammo naturally as part of her post-shooting finisher, so she doesn't need to reload.
This means that the amount of time Longyan has to actually move around is tiny, and if you want her to move any significant distance in combat then you'll need to either stop shooting for a while or do a few dodges.
Thankfully, dodging doesn't mess up her damage rotation, and all of her stacks remain and work as normal even after a few dodges.
This means that Longyan has by-far the worst mobility of any operative in the game by a significant margin.
I'd clowned on operatives like Bubu and Mia for their terrible mobility, but Longyan makes them look like Olympic athletes with how much they move around and how static Longyan is.
I feel like Longyan should be able to move whilst shooting, and her mobility is so terrible that I almost want to say that her not being able to move whilst shooting feels like a bug.
Longyan's other main downside is that she provides a large damage increase to Aptitude effects.
All of Longyan's damage procs Aptitude effects, and all of her damage also increases the damage of any Aptitude effects it procs, increasing all Aptitude damage to 3x or 10x its normal amount.
Normally this is the part where I'd say something like "Longyan gives herself an Aptitude effect, so she always has one active"... but she doesn't.
Longyan significantly boosts Aptitude damage, but doesn't actually give herself an Aptitude effect, which means that she gives a massive damage bonus to the operatives who can support her with an Aptitude effect, which are:
Tess - Phantasia
Fritia - Little Sunshine
That is a very short list.
Whilst Longyan and Fritia both deal Thermal damage, and thus can work with Vidya - Celestial Swan, Tess deals Frost-damage, and thus can't be used alongside Longyan and Vidya.
Whilst on her own Vidya is generally a stronger support than Tess, in order for Vidya to work you'd need to have Longyan supported by another operative who either didn't deal damage, or who dealt Thermal damage.
This generally means Fenny - Starshine, Eatchel - The Cub, or Fritia - Little Sunshine.
Longyan's buffs mean Fritia performs vastly better here than she normally does, but she's still only a 4*, and this means that you'll generally want to forego Vidya in order to use Tess.
Not having to care about Vidya's type-matching requirement does mean that you can pair Longyan+Tess with whomever you want, which is nice.
Longyan deals Ballistic damage, so Yao - Nightglow is the next best pick, with Marian - Aquila also working very well.
This does actually give Longyan quite a lot of options when it comes to teambuilding, as Vidya+Starshine works well, and Vidya+Little Sunshine also works pretty well, but you'll ideally wanting to be using Phantasia + Nightglow, or Phantasia + Aquila if not.
Longyan wanting an Aptitude effect, but there not being many operatives who can buff Thermal Ballistic damage does mean that teambuilding with Longyan can be a potential headache, but she does have a decent number of possible supports, and overall teambuilding is fine, albeit potentially annoying.
The real problem with Longyan's teambuilding is that she works so well with Phantasia that not using Phantasia will result in a quite notable loss of effectiveness ragardless of who else you pair her with.
Her bet non-Phantasia combo is Celestial Swan with Starshine, and even then they're still notably worse than using Tess.
Again, some decent options, but kinda annoying in a way.
It's also possible that Fritia - Sparkdrive will improve Longyan's teambuilding options when she is released later in the patch.
Longyan deals Thermal Ballistic damage.
The only other operative who deals Thermal Ballistic damage is, you guessed it: Bubu - The Geomancer.
Bubu has been slowly powercrept in the many many patches since her introduction, and Longyan does comfortably out-dps Bubu.
Snowbreak doesn't really have much in the way of endgame content where dps actually matters, but Longyan is an extremely strong Thermal dps in endgame content.
...Although this does have the caveat that she'll probably be supported by Phantasia, who deals Frost damage, and then probably Nightglow, who deals Electric damage.
If you want a pure-Thermal damage team, you'll probably use Longyan + Celestial Swan + Starshine/Eatchel/Little Sunshine, which is notably worse than teams with Phantasia.
Even with the Tess caveat, Longyan does out-dps Bubu though.
Longyan deals Thermal ballistic damage, whereas the previous queen of Thermal dps; Fenny - Pureheart, deals mostly skill damage, so they're aren't always comparible.
Like the Acacia vs Clarina comparison last patch, the difference isn't that amazing, and Fenny is still good enough that if you already have a lot of investment into Pureheart then Longyan isn't going to offer a significant improvement.
For casual content, I feel like Longyan is a pretty poor choice.
Sure, she can do good single-target dps as well as doing well against groups, and she can swap between single-target and AoE dps extremely easily, but her in-combat mobility is so terrible that I don't really feel I can recommend her for casual content.
You don't need extremely high dps for casual content, so operatives that can move around very quickly can work a lot better, for example Katya - Dawnwing.
You can use Longyan for casual content - again she's good at both single-target and AoE dps, which means she's pretty easy to use, but I just feel that there are a lot of other operatives who are also very easy to use for casual content, but who also have much better mobility.
Longyan feels prety well balanced - Can easily swap between single-target and AoE, and deals good dps for both. Has some good options for teambuilding, but works much better with some operatives than others, and her mobility is terrible.
Much like Mia - Starchaser, she feels like she uses a lot of mechanics we've seen in previous operatives, but in a new way, and I feel the way they've been assembled does make her unique, and she is strong without being overpowered.
I think her mobility is so low that it does detract from the fun of using her, but I'll still use her when I need either a strong thermal dps or an operative who can effortlessly swap between single-target and AoE dps.