All previous dual-operative releases have had one of the two be a dps, and the other be a support.
This is not the case for Starchaser and Raikou - both are main-dps operatives.
Since Mia is a Ballistic-only Electric-DMG operative and Raikou is a Skill-only Chaos-DMG operative, they aren't competitors, nor can you use one of them to support the other.
They are just two completely unrelated (in terms of gameplay) operatives who just happened to release in the same patch.
As such, I won't need to mention Mia in this article.
The TL:DR:
is that Raikou is absolute trash.
Err... what?
Haru sucks.
It's true that I am not a Haru simp - she isn't by favourite girl, but I do like Haru, and as somebody that has never gotten Absconditus and hence has only used Haru in the story missions, I was excited about actually playing Haru in some endgame content.
Raikou though is an extremely clunky operative who really struggles with... just about everything.
Normally at this point I'm supposed to say something like
"but since she's free and the game gives you all the resources you need to max her, she's a good choice until you get a better operative"
But no. I am not going to give Haru that much credit. Give the nearest Haru fan a hug of sympathy, then go use another operative instead.
I am not sure what the devs were doing when they thought up Raikou, but they must have been doing a lot of it.
When Mia released I [affectionately] referred to her as the "window licker" - a fun nickname for a fun and actually very well balanced operative that I liked a lot.
With Haru though I can't really think of anything positive to say about her, so I'll just call her Haru or Raikou throughout the remainder of this article.
Raikou is not a support operative
To get the obvious out of the way first: as expected of a main-dps, Haru's standard skill doesn't buff your team or debuff enemies, meaning you'll never use her as a support.
The Train Wreck.
As for how Haru actually works as a main-dps:
You use her standard skill to dash in the given direction, which leaves a purple trail.
When the trails combine to form a closed loop the contained area explodes for Chaos damage and the trails disappear.
Haru gains 1 charge for each closed loop that detonates.
When Haru has [created 6 closed loops and thus] gained 6 charges, they no longer detonate, and instead Haru can hold her standard skill to have Haru deal AoE damage to that area, which clears the charges.
This is a relatively simple gameplay loop:
Dash 3 times to create an area
Repeat 6 times
Hold her standard skill
Repeat.
In practice though having to encircle enemies means that mobile enemies that move around a lot may require a lot of dashes to encircle.
Haru's Auctus2 does give her more damage for more trails above 3, but that only mitigates the problem - she still deals less dps if you have more than 3 trails.
3 is the optimum number of trails.
Haru's A1 gives all her S-Energy back whenever the closed loop detonates, which means that provided you can create a closed loop in like 15 dashes you'll have no S-Energy issues, which is nice, but does mean that Haru absolutely sucks without A1, as she runs out of S-Energy constantly.
Raikou without A1 is worse than Fritia - Turbo when it comes to sustain - As a ballistic dps Fritia can just shoot things normally when her Stamina ran out and still make full use of all her ballistic buffs - Raikou is a pure-skill dps, meaning that once her S-Energy runs out you just have to shoot stuff with her AR, which has no buffs at all - at that point you may as well just dig up one of the 4* operatives, as they will probably deal more dps.
"But A1 fixes that" I hear you cry.
Yes, it does, but whilst we may have the luxury of getting Raikou to A4 with her 5* weapon at T2 as the game gives that to us until the 18th of December, for players who get Raikou down the line in a few months/years from now they might have Raikou but might not have Raikou's Auctus Drive, and Raikou will suck for them - more than she does for us, I mean.
Haru's ult is similar to her standard skill
What's Raikou's dps like?
Raikou's standard damage rotation is:
Standard skill twice + standard skill/ult to create three trails in total, to form a closed loop, which then detonates for AoE damage.
Repeat that 6 times
Hold her standard skill to detonate the 6th area for more damage.
This rotation takes around 17 seconds.
Using the numbers from their Trial versions so that both Haru and Mia have the exact same level of investment:
Haru's trail damage is (85% ATK + 21)
The AoE damage is (390% ATK +35)
The hold AoE damage is (260% ATK + 82)
As usual, you can probably ignore the constants, and just focus on the %ATK numbers.
How much damage it deals will depend on whether Haru actually hits enemies with her standard/ult skill trails or not.
If she doesn't, then the enemy will be taking 6x detonation damage + 1x hold detonation damage.
This is (390%*6) +260% = 2,600% ATK
Over the 17s duration of her standard damage rotation, this gives her a dps of around (153% ATK), which is quite frankly appalling.
For reference, Lyfe - Wednesday just shooting her 4* SMG (Work-in-Progress) deals a dps of around 325% ATK - see Wednesday's page for the breakdown on that.
(That ignores Wednesday's crits - so add a bit more on for that.)
(Then add some more on for her drones.)
If all of Raikou's trails actually hit the enemy, then she will be dealing:
(85% * 3 * 6) + the above = 1,530% + 2,600% = 4,130%, or a dps of around 242.9% ATK.
Again - compare with the 4* starter operative Lyfe - Wednesday above.
Mia - Starchaser was harldy a bastion of dps - great against groups, but not so great against single-targets (especially as being the newest Electric-dmg operative meant that Mia was compared against Chenxing, but I digress...)
Mia's standard rotation was:
3 Hyerchew shots
3 bursts of 2 [regular] Sweetchew each from her gun
8 Sugarnova shots from her ult
Each Hyperchew shot deals 110%. Each regular Sweetchew shot deals 100%, and each Sugarnova shot deals 115.2%.
Mia's rotation takes around 6s, for an average dps of around:
( (110% *3) + (100% *6) + (115.2% *8) ) / = ((330%) + (600%) + (921.6%))/6 = (1,851.6%) /6 = 308.6%.
The difference of course is that Mia has a 100% crit chance for that entire rotation, has her crit dmg fixed at artificially high amounts (100% or more) and naturally gains Crit DMG Amplifier mods from various sources, in addition to the normal ones she'll get from for example Logistics, and at max investment Mia will have around 270% crit dmg multiplier.
In practice this means Mia can be doing well over triple the damage of Raikou or more.
Mia also gains more from her Manifestations than Raikou gains from her Auctus Drive.
Raikou gains +8% damage per foe less than 5 from her 4th Auctus Drive, but otherwise her Auctus Drive doesn't really boost her damage - it's mostly just there to be QoL buffs.
Mia, by comparison, gains electric resistance ignore, final damage bonus for her ult, , 15% DEF ignore, more damage, and even more Crit DMG Amplifiers from her Manifestations.
Is being free enough of a valid reason?
Whilst Raikou does of course have the defence that "she's free, so of course she's not going to deal great dps".
Of course Raikou isn't going to deal good dps - she's there as a cheap and easy way of getting a new operative into the game without them affecting the pulls players want to use (or shall we say buy) for other actually-good operatives.
She lets new players get a pretty good operative, with the more experience players having a new toy to have fun with.
Ideally, Raikou is great, because she's a fun new toy that can deal good damage as the game gives you all the investment you need to make her mostly-maxed.
There are two problems with this:
The game also gives you a lot of investment for Lyfe - Wednesday, and Wednesday is probably going to deal more dps.
The game gives you her ideal weapon, plenty of Manifestations for Wednesday, and (IIRC) a logistics set for her (but you can just buy those in the shop if not).
Raikou is, quite frankly, not very fun.
The discussion on how good Raikou actually is, is sadly somewhat redundant for me since I don't actually want to play her.
How subjective is fun?
Personally, I don't think Raikou is fun.
The requirement to spam her standard skill to constantly encircle enemies means you often have to dash through particle effects a lot, meaning the trails are difficult to see, meaning that forming a closed loop can be annoying to do againbst many enemies.
Similarly, constantly focusing on the group means your situational awareness is awful, and spending most of the time in combat staring at the ground isn't fun.
Since Haru's damage mostly comes from the detonation damage done when completing a closed loop, you want to use them as quickly as possible for max dps.
This means that you ideally want to spam Haru's skills as often as you can, which can make Haru feel frantic to play - as you know that any form of waiting will cost you dps.
Even just slowing down your casts to make sure you aim at the start of the first trail to maximize the AoE area could cost you a double-digit percent of your dps.
Haru also has the problem that mobile enemies can move away from her trails, forcing you to do a lot of casts in order to actually form a loop around them, which can cripple your dps.
Haru can thus feel both fast-paced and frantic, but also ineffective at the same time.
If you find Raikiu fun, then that's fine and being fun is all that is required for you to play Haru and enjoy her.
For me though, haru isn't fun, and her not being fun means that her absolute lack of dps means that there's no reason to play her.
Doesn't Raikou have an active ultimate?
Yes, she does.
With it, Raikou uses 50 U-Energy to deal damage in a line, which also creates a trail for 20s, and any closed loops/areas made with that special trail ignore 20% of the targets chaos resistance.
It also reduces the cooldown of her ult to 0 for 20s.
This allows you to simply have Raikou ult, dash/dodge/run to one side, then spam ult slashses on either side of the enemy to repeatedly make closed loops/areas with the trail from the ult, for pretty good damage.
In theory this is great.
In practice though Raikou is incapable of generating any U-Energy - literally nothing in her kit generates it, so the only way for her to get U-Energy is for her to shoot her gun.
Since her gun is completely unbuffed (because she's, you know, a pure skill-damage operative) you really don't want to do that.
Her 5* weapon does give her one free ult every 100s, but since her ult only lasts 20s (and you'll need a second or two to reposition as well) the actual %uptime from that is low.
If you don't have Raikou's 5* weapon you may never use Raikou's ult at all.
As such her ult can be a good opener, but it's not great against mobile enemies, and its overall effect on Raikou's sustained dps is actualy quite low.
Teammates, Nerida - Styx Envoy, and Marian - Riptide
Raikou deals Chaos skill damage exclusively.
Currently, the only other 5* main-dps operative who also deals exclusively chaos skill damage is Nerida - Styx Envoy.
Does Nerida deal more damage than Raikou?
Yes.
By a lot.
DPS aside, Nerida does also encircle enemies like Raikou, except Nerida can stay at much higher range, increasing her survivability.
Whilst the best support in the game is currently Vidya - Celestial Swan, for both Raikou and Nerida the next best support is Marian - Riptide.
Due to how she works Nerida's best support is Riptide, but both Raikou and Nerida want skill-damage buffs, and ideally want to use Celestial Swan, and Celestial Swan is strong enough that using Vidya and Riptide is better than any other two supports, even if the other support might be better than Riptide on their own for supporting Raikou.
This basically means that Raikou fills the exact same team role as Nerida, but what does Raikou bring to the table that Nerida doesn't?
Well Raikou can heal herself a little, which is certainly nice for casual play, but Nerida has so much mobility and range that she doesn't really need much healing, so it's not the strongest win for Raikou, and overall you're essentially always better off using Nerida by a large margin.
Overall
Overall, if you actually don't have many/any 5* operatives, then the game giving you Raikou and lots of investment for her means she might work well for you, but Raikou has low dps and can feel very clunky in how she plays, meaning that you'll probably only use Raikou until you get other 5* operatives to use instead.
A Request
I started making this site somewhat shortly after Snowbreak.gg stopped being updated, and I've now covered 5 new operatives, but not only were all of those 5 mechanically flawed in some way, but many of the operatives before that were also flawed.
Heck, Marian - Swift was one of the original 5* operatives and in my opinion she's the most mechanically flawed operative in the game.
I'd even say that Lyfe - Wednesday is mechanically flawed - and she's both the poster child of the game and the literal first operative the game gives you.
Operatives have been clunky to play for quite a while now - everything from Clarina's forced movement and button spamming through, Pureheart's AoE RMB not actually working with her AoE ult at all. Mia's standard skill not working with her ult - there are just so many little flaws, and every new operative seems to have a new one to add to the list.
In my opinion most operatives could be made much more fun with very small QoL changes.
If these changes were actually implemented then they could also be a nice balance patch - to help bring older operatives back into contention with the newer operatives and the powercreep that has settled over the game and its meta.
The game does have powercreep, and some operatives are just much stronger than others.
This is obviously bad - the devs do still make outfits for older operatives, and ideally players would just use their favourite operatives, and be willing to buy an outfit for any operative, since they could use that operative since they'd be balanced.
Instead, some operatives are so weak or clunky to use that I'd never want to use them, regardless of how much I like the character or their outfit, and I wouldn't pay for an outfit for some operatives just because I know I'll never used that operative due to how terrible/unfun they are.
I've created a list of all the operatives and how I would change them to buff them - both in terms of QoL changes that would make them actually more fun to play, but also potentially QoL/mechanics changes that would help their dps [if needed].
These are entirely my subjetive opinion, and in some cases better solutions do exist I am sure, but if you just want some ideas for how to fix the existing operatives, there you go.
Consider this a request, Amazing Seasun Games - if Raikou is the sort of operative we have to look forward to in the future, then could you please take a patch off and just buff and balance the existing operatives? Basically none of them require a massive QoL change in order to make them vastly more fun and effective.
I've mentioned previously that I'd like an upgrade token for the 4* operatives that upgrades them to 5* operatives - given that the models could be re-used with some minor changes (removing jackets, etcs.), that would be a good and easier option for the second operative in dual-operative releases if creating two operatives every other patch is a bit too much.
That the bar was set this low is extremely concerning for both the future of the game, as well as the creative vision and technical capabilities of its creators.
Haru fans deserved better than this.
Haru deserved better.