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 occurred, 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.
Suffice to say that Longyan herself is completely overshadowed by the Maintenance and censorship, but the following is just about Longyan herself.
I've written quite a few articles on new operatives by now, and a surprisingly high number of them seem to start with me 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 S-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 that was charged by her standard shots that boosted her damage (although by increasing RoF rather than per-shot damage), with 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 shooting a 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 9 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 Longyan also uses Dual SMGs.
Longyan does take further inspiration from Bubu - Specular Soul, because Longyan also has a gauge in the centre of the screen, which charges up as you shoot, which when full allows for a stronger shot. With Longyan though this extra shot is done automatically, so you don't need to actively use it like how Specular Soul worked.
With Longyan, you really can just spam your ult and hold down the trigger, but Longyan does also feel like Acacia - Chrono Echo from last patch, in that both Longyan and Acacia have a lot of things going on, with effects constantly proc'ing, with many effects leading into others. The difference is that Longyan is entirely passive, whereas with Acacia you needed to actively use all her abilities in the right order when you had enough of their respective counters.
Longyan does also have a tutorial instead of a Trial, just like Acacia did, however Longyan is so simple to play that I don't really feel a tutorial was needed.
Like basically all recently-released operatives, Longyan has a damage rotation that has AoE naturally built into it.
With Longyan, her regular shots from her gun are all single-target, but her ADS, Standard Skill, and Ultimate Skill all deal damage to multiple targets
Longyan's ADS instead causes her to deal AoE damage - she doesn't actually Aim-Down-her-Sights.
This means that Longyan has a decently simple rotation for both single-target and AoE damage:
Single Target:
Use her ult whenever you can, Spam her Standard Skill off-cooldown, and otherwise just hold down the trigger to shoot.
Multi-Target:
Use her ult whenever you can, Spam her Standard Skill off-cooldown, and otherwise just hold down the ADS button.
Longyan does a "Chain Finisher" after the gauge in the central part of the gauge in the centre of the screen fills, and that finisher refills all of Longyan's ammo, so she ideally doesn't ever need to manually reload. This Chain Finisher has a very strong homing effect, so you don't need to be aiming directly at an enemy to land it.
This charge fills even if Longyan doesn't hit an enemy - she just needs to shoot the shots, regardless of what they hit.
In order to refill the gauge, Longyan needs to shoot 20 shots, three times, for 60 shots total.
Longyan's rotation is very simple to play, 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:
A large part of Longyan's DPS comes from her Ultimate, which is charged by shooting, however a large percentage of her charges come from her Standard Skill.
Specifically, the charges are given after Longyan finishes her Standard Skill, which means that if Longyan gets interrupted during her Standard Skill, then not only does her Standard Skill not do much/any damage, but she also doesn't get the Ultimate charges at the end of it either.
Since Longyan can be interrupted during her Standard Skill, this means that Longyan can feel absolutely terrible to use in many fights, simply because her Standard Skill is constantly being interrupted and it doesn't do much damage and doesn't give her any charges.
As I have played with Longyan more, this has become the most annoying thing about her design, and is probably the main reason I won't want to play Longyan much in the future.
Since Longyan's Standard Skill also basically teleports her next to the enemy, she will find it hard to stay away from enemies, as her own skill frequently teleports her back near the enemy, making her more likely to be interrupted than if she was able to stay at range.
This makes a lot of the range of her Dual SMGs basically useless, and if she instead had a shotgun that had half the range she likely wouldn't feel or play any different.
Frequently teleporting herself next to enemies just exacerbates the problem that her Standard Skill can be interrupted though, as she's much more likely to get hit due to her proximity to enemies. If her Standard Skill teleported her back to where she started the skill from, then it would work a lot better. It wouldn't fix the issue, but it'd help.
Snowbreak has had several operatives who can shoot literally indefinitely without ever needing to actually reload: Katya - Dawnwing, Katya - Rhapsody, Katya - Blue Bolt, and the recently-released Marian - Aquila, (although Aquila is a support not a dps, but still - she's not Katya), among some operatives who automatically reload, like Bubu and Mia.
Longyan does also have this capability, as the first Neuronics buff for her Standard Skill fully refills her ammo whenever she does a Chain Finisher, which affects all her shots since her Passive effects count as being from her Standard Skill.
This is good, and if you just spam her ult and shoot things, then Longyan can't run out of bullets and need to manually reload.
With Katya - Dawnwing you could comfortably miss a few shots here and there and still be fine, and with Marian - Aquila you only needed to average hitting 20 out of every 30 shots, however with Longyan the margins feel much tighter, and I have found myself needing to manually reload with her many times just from occasionally missing whilst continually shooting with her.
The Chain Finisher that is what actually refills Longya's ammo is itself a shot and Longyan needs to have at least 1 bullet remaining to use it, so if Longyan is completely out of ammo, she needs to reload in order to use the Chain Finisher that refills her ammo, which can be quite maddening.
It's an issue that Longyan can potentially run into quite often.
Having her ult refill her ammo would make Longyan feel much better.
Longya's Chain Finishers and her Ult always crit, however her regular shooting damage does not always crit - her regular shots have the regular crit chance of 0%.
This means that a very large percentage of her damage does not crit, and the rest of it always crits.
This means Longyan can be spotty when it comes to being buffed by Crit Damage [Amplifier] buffs, as only some of her damage is buffed by them.
This means that you'll want to shoot at an enemies weakspot, as weakspot hits always crit, which allows Longyan to be completely consistent as she'll always crit when shooting at a weakspot.
If you aren't shooting at an enemies weakspot, then some of your damage will always crit and some will never crit, which feels weird.
Previous operatives have generally either always crit for essentially all of their rotation (e.g. Chenxing - Jade Arc, or Mia - Starchaser), didn't care about crits at all (e.g. Katya - Rhapsody, or any skill dps), or where the part of their rotation that always crits is the most important part and their non-crits are much less important (e.g. Bubu - The Geomancer) and Longyan fits in the latter of those, which is my least favourite of those three categories.
Compared to the rest of her issues, this feels almost negligible though.
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 (during which she also can't move), so she doesn't normally need to manually reload (during which she can move normally).
This means that the amount of time Longyan has to actually move around in during her rotation 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 whole bunch of 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, but dodging still takes time and Stamina.
This means that Longyan has by-far the worst mobility of any operative in the game by a significant margin.
I've clowned on operatives like Bubu and Mia for their terrible mobility, but Longyan makes them look like Olympic athletes with how much they move 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.
It isn't, of course, but it's so bad it feels like it should be.
Stated explicitly, Longyan's damage rotation should work like this:
Use Longyan's Standard Skill to deal damage and gain 2 Tail Flames [Total Tail Flames so far: 2]
Shoot 30 shots, proc'ing her Deiwos for an additional 250% Thermal DMG and gaining 1 Tail Flame [Total Tail Flames so far: 3]
Repeat one more time. [Total Tail Flames so far: 4]
Shoot 1 Chain Finisher, dealing damage and refilling Longyan's ammo.
Use Longyan's Standard Skill to deal damage and gain 2 Tail Flames [Total Tail Flames so far: 6]
Shoot 30 shots, proc'ing her Deiwos for an additional 250% Thermal DMG and gaining 1 Tail Flame [Total Tail Flames so far: 7]
Repeat one more time. [Total Tail Flames so far: 8]
[Optional] Shoot 1 Chain Finisher, dealing damage and refilling Longyan's ammo.
Use Longyan's Standard Skill to deal damage and gain 2 Tail Flames [Total Tail Flames so far: 10 (but really 9, as the max is 9)]
Use Longyan's Ultimate. [This uses all her Tail Flames, setting you back to 0]
The problem is that Longyan doesn't seem to work this way, at least for me.
For her first rotation this sometimes works properly, but not for subsequent rotations.
Her Deiwos doesn't trigger after 30 shots, instead it can proc after a seemingly random amount - usually 31-32, but rarely 29 or even potentially 33 shots - you should get two Tail Flames per 60-shot burst, but instead I usually only get 1, getting the second tail flame at the beginning of the next 60-shot burst. This error then compounds, meaning that Longyan slowly de-sync's her Tail Flame generation with her Chain Finishers.
Also no, this isn't an accuracy problem - this happens even when every single shot hits an enemy.
Also also no, this isn't a problem with older Cinder Marks timing out - they only last 5s, but whilst that's awful design, it's not the issue I am having.
This can end up with Longyan having her Ultimate becoming available at essentially random times in the middle of her rotation.
(and it also makes it very annoying for me to figure out an average-dps for her.)
I assume this is a bug, and thus hope it will be fixed soon - Seasun are always very quick to fix bugs, after all.
Even beyond this, a problem still remains: Longyan needs 9 Tail Flames to use her Ultimate, and she gains 2 per Standard Skill usage, and 1 per 30-shot burst.
This means that Longyan can need to use her Ultimate mid-shooting (which reduces the rate at which she can use her ult, thus wasting damage) or interrupt her shooting to use her ult, which means she'll start the next rotation with an unusual number of shots left to trigger her Chain Finisher, so her ult will end up in a weird position again.
Having her ult fully refill her magazine would help her rotation feel better and would mitigate this problem to some extent.
Longyan's rotations just do not work out cleanly, and you will very frequently have to interrupt your shooting or your Chain Finisher to use your ult, which feels bad.
Similarly, you'll sometimes have her Standard Skill become ready just as her Chain Finisher starts, which also makes her feel clunky.
I get that she needed to have her ult need 9 Tail Flames for lore reasons, but the rotation could have been designed differently to allow her ult to feel cleaner to use.
To be somewhat fair to her though - fixing her bug would help, and I am probably noticing the discrepancy due to having to spend so much time looking at her kit to try to figure out why it doesn't work the way it says it works, whereas if she just worked s intended this might just be an inconsequential footnote that might not bother me at all.
Longyan's other main downside is that she provides a huge damage increase to the damage of Aptitude effects.
All of Longyan's damage procs Aptitude effects, and all of her damage sources also increases the damage of any Aptitude effects they proc, increasing all Aptitude damage to 3x or 10x its normal amount.
Normally this would be 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 support operatives who can actually give her an Aptitude effect, which are:
Tess - Phantasia
Fritia - Little Sunshine
...which is a very short list.
Fritia - Little Sunshine is a 4* operative, but she still works quite well with Longyan, simply due to the very high damage boost that Longyan gives to her Aptitude bonus.
Sadly for Fritia, Longyan's Neuronic buff that gives Longyan ammo merely "replenishes bullets", which, technically speaking, is not a reload, and Longyan thus never proc's Fritia's M3 effect, meaning Fritia's buff last only half the time it ideally should.
Fritia does actually perform ok, and for a 4* she's incredibly good when used to support Longyan, but Longyan not proc'ing her M3 effect to double her buffs duration, as well as the fact that she's still only a 4*, means that Fritita doesn't work out as a great support for Longyan, and is instead pretty mediocre - i.e. worse than the usual 5* supports.
Longyan works with Vidya - Celestial Swan, however Tess - Phantasia adds so much damage to Longyan that Tess is the better support, and since Longyan deals Thermal-damage and Tess adds Frost-damage, you can't use Longyan+Tess+Vidya together.
Vidya can still work well when paired with Fenny - Starshine, Eatchel - The Cub, or Fritia - Little Sunshine, but overall Vidya is out-classed by Tess - Phantasia.
Since the Special Clips from Fenny - Starshine block Aptitude effects, you can't use Starshine if you're using Tess - Phantasia or Fritia - Little Sunshine.
Longyan deals Ballistic damage and a lot of her damage always crits, so Yao - Nightglow is the next obvious pick for a support, however whilst much of Longyan's damage is guaranteed to crit, her regular shots are not. These are a small enough percentage of her damage though that Yao still ends up workout out well for Longyan, although almost all of the benefit Yao brings is from her ATK and ballistic buffs, as Longyan has a paltry 30% Crit Damage value, so Yao's crit buffs don't actually add that much to Longyan.
Marian - Aquila works extremely well as a support, providing strong and generic damage bonuses that benefit Longyan.
Longyan almost seems to be built exactly for Phantasia + Aquila, with Longyan+Phantasia being incompatible with Vidya, and Aquila being perfect for teams that don't have Vidya in them, as I mentioned in my article when Aquila was introduced last patch.
As long as the other team isn't dealing Frost damage (and hence doesn't need Phantasia), then Phantasia+Aquila is the perfect support pair for Longyan.
The real problem with Longyan's teambuilding is that she works so well with Phantasia that not using Phantasia will result in a very notable loss of effectiveness regardless of who else you pair her with.
Her best non-Phantasia combo is Celestial Swan with Starshine, and even then they're still worse than using a Tess - Phantasia combo.
For reference, I went through and did the maths:
Longyan's total base damage across one full damage rotation is 10,588%.
Phantasia adds a total of 18,810% damage to that rotation.
Overall, Longyan deals 36% and Phantasia is doing 63%, so very roughly one third Longyan to two thirds Tess.
Note that this ignore all of the ballistic-damage modifiers that Tess provides to Longyan, although those still don't bring Longyan up to majority damage.
This is of course affected by various different modifiers, which will affect Longyan and Tess differently, but regardless, Tess is a huge part of Longyan's damage potential.
Vidya is horrendously strong, and swapping a good 5* support to Vidya and having your damage double is surprisingly common, but Phantasia is still Longyan's best support.
It's possible that Fritia - Sparkdrive will improve Longyan's teambuilding options when she is released later in the patch.
I'll update this article when Sparkdrive releases, but for now, Longyan should always be partnered with Tess - Phantasia.
Edit: Sparkdrive is a DPS operative, and does not support Longyan, so everything here still applies even after Sparkdrive's release.
Wanting to always be partnered with Tess means Longyan can have very restrictive teambuilding options, and she clashes with all of the other operatives who also want to be paired with Tess: Katya - Rhapsody, Katya - Dawnwing, Mauxir - Lotus, even Lyfe - Wild Hunt.
Tess is the best support for all Frost-damage operatives, and Longyan also wanting Tess can make teambuilding difficult in scenario's where you want a Thermal-damage and a Frost-damage team, as Longyan hoovering up Tess deprives your actual Frost-damage team of her, where she is probably more useful.
Without Tess, Longyan really wants Vidya - Celestial Swan, but so would a Frost-damage team using Tess.
Without Tess or Vidya, Longyan basically just has to rely on Yao - Nightglow, Fenny - Starshine, Marian - Aquila, and Fritia - Little Sunshine, none of whom are ideal, and all of whom are a major step-down from Tess and Vidya.
This wouldn't have been an issue if Longyan was a Frost-dps, and hence could be used instead of Rhapsody or Dawnwing or Lotus, but being a Thermal dps makes things complicated.
Similarly, if Longyan did technically reload, and thus could proc Little Sunshine's M3 buff to give it 100% uptime, then Longyan would be a good dps for new players, as whilst it wouldn't be her optimal team, she'd work really well with a 4* support operative, even at endgame.
I feel that having Longyan work properly with Little Sunshine would also give Longyan better teambuilding options, again especially for newer players, which would help her a lot.
It would also allow Longyan to be used in a purely thermal-damage team, which would be useful in many cases, instead of having her rely on Tess and always need favourable Thermal and Frost Resistances.
For endgame content, Longyan being so very dependent on Tess can put her in an awkward position, as a boss will generally need both a low Thermal Resistance and a low Frost Resistance in order for Longyan to really shine, and whilst new bosses in Snowbreak always cater to the new operative, in future patches where Longyan isn't given such special treatment, she may find herself not being ideal or even good for a large number of bosses, simply because one of their resistances is bad, which is a problem that no other operative in the game has ever had.
I feel that had Fritia - Sparkdrive been an Electric-Aptitude-based support operative, then even outside of her thermal dps role Longyan might have been able to find a genuine niche as a triple-damage-type team, which would probably fare well in all content and might be a good "go-to" team, or at least a good team to benchmark against.
Similarly, had Sparkdrive been a support then she could have given Longyan some CC-resistance, thus preventing Longyan from being interrupted during her Standard Skill, which would have made Longyan much more fun to play, and much more consistent too.
Longyan deals Thermal Ballistic damage.
The only other operative who deals respectable 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 potentially Nightglow, who deals Electric damage, or Aquila, who deals Kinetic-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.
There not being a pure thermal-damage ballistic support does also affect Bubu in the same way though, so Longyan basically always out-damages Bubu, but again - how much Longyan deals, and what damage types her team deals, does depend on who she is paired with.
Longyan deals Thermal ballistic damage, whereas the previous queen of Thermal dps; Fenny - Pureheart, deals mostly skill damage, so they're aren't always comparable.
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, although since Longyan will probably be supported by Tess, and is thus also affected by the bosses Frost Resistance, comparisons can quickly get more complicated, and are far less simple than comparisons between new and old operatives have been in the past.
For casual content, I feel like Longyan is a 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 usually work a lot better, for example Katya - Dawnwing.
Things you want for casual content: Good mobility, consistent AoE, and ideally some form of homing or lock-on for your attacks - dps usually doesn't make the top three.
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 moves more when she is using her ADS multi-target attack (you can just hold down right-click, by the way, so it's very easy to spam), but having her be locked in place for her normal shots as well as her Chain Finisher, as well as being teleported around by her Standard Skill and Ultimate still makes her feel like she has pretty poor mobility.
That her ADS attack seems to have a very short range also feels like a big limitation.
As mentioned above, that Longyan's Standard Skill is both very important to her kit, but can also be interrupted does mean that Longyan can be difficult to use for casual content as well as for endgame content.
Lonyan's Standard Skill should be amazing for clearing groups of enemies in general content, but without some CC-resistance to prevent her from being interrupted during it, it is unreliable, which is the last thing I want in my operatives.
Longyan feels pretty well balanced from a technical perspective - She can easily swap between single-target and AoE, and deals strong dps for both, but her mobility is terrible, and she has an ideal support (Phantasia) that can make teambuilding difficult, especially on multi-team content where your other team is Frost-damage, which are big disadvantages that do average out her strengths and versatility.
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 she's still a good choice when you need either a strong thermal dps or an operative who can effortlessly swap between single-target and AoE dps, which is something of a niche role, but that's fine. Not every operative needs to be the best at everything, and in fact it's better if each operative is ideal at only a few things and isn't a master of everything.
I don't much care for her playstyle, but Longyan does feel decently balanced with the current crop of dps operatives, it's just a shame that Bubu has been powercrept yet again, and that Longyan's lack of mobility makes her less fun than a Dual SMG operative with her constantly-shooting and skill-spamming playstyle feels like it should be.
Personally, Longyan's Standard Skill being interruptable, not working with Little Sunshine, her often annoying teambuilding, her horrendous mobility, and in truth the fact that half of her mechanics could end with the phrase "that it doesn't work this way feels like a bug" mean that I won't personally invest into Longyan, and if I want a Thermal dps I'll continue to use Fenny - Pureheart, or Bubu - The Geomancer should thermal ballistic damage be needed. I think I'll be happy to take the dps hit, because I find Pureheart and Bubu much more fun to actually play, which is the reason I play the game at all.
Objectively speaking, I think that Longyan is very strong
Subjectively speaking, I think that Longyan is borederline unusable.