Clarina - Crimson Moon

Released in:
Version 3.1 - Defiant Bloom

This article is about how Clarina affects the games meta. If you only want details on Clarina herself - how to play and build her, then view her article here.

Bubu - The Geomancer was an operative that breathed a sigh of relief into much of the playerbase.
For too long Seasun had been releasing skill-DMG operative after skill-DMG operative, and many players were fed up with it, clamouring for a girl who wins a fight by actually, you know... shooting enemies with her gun.
Bubu - The Geomancer answered our prayers, providing a fun and adorkable operative who dealt competitive damage just by shooting things.
Things were good, and Bubu was beloved by all (and still is, let's be honest...)

After Bubu we got Chenxing - Jade Arc, an operative who bent the meta over her knee, gave it a good hard spanking, and told it to go wait in the corner whilst she dealt with things from then on. The meta still hasn't recovered, and Jade Arc is still the best dps operative as of v3.1.
Yao Nightglow did give us a good ballistic damage support operative alonside Chenxing though, which was nice, especially for Bubu's fanbase (i.e. absolutely everybody), although Nightglow usually found herself by Chenxing's side rather than Bubu's, simply due to Jade Arc's much higher numbers.

After Bubu came Enya -Tempest and Nerida - Styx Envoy, characters who only used their skills to deal damage and never once fired their weapons if played properly, showing that Bubu was merely an anomaly and that skill-damage operatives were still the norm.

Vidya - Celestial Swan gave us the best support operative in the game [so far], showing the powercreep Jade Arc had introduced was still possible for support operatives, whilst also reminding us of just how long it had been since we got an actual pure-skill-damage support.

Katya - Rhapsody and Tess - Phantasia returned to operatives who used/buffed their guns.
Whilst many disliked Katya's constant spamming of her standard skill, her minigun was/is extremely fun, and she's mostly a ballistic DPS - not a true pure-shooting DPS like Bubu was as Rhapsody does spam her skill quite a lot, but she was still well liked by pretty much all nonetheless.

Other than Bubu, how long has it been since we got a purely-ballistic operative?
If you didn't get Fritia's 5* weapon she barely counts since she can't sustain her standard damage rotation without it, so ... Lyfe IS, back in v2.0?

So, have Seasun finally listened our prayers again and released a girl who defeats enemies by actually shooting enemies with her gun, rather than only relying on skills?

Well, Clarina - Crimson Moon's standard rotation involves firing 60 whole bullets from her gun. 60!
She also fires 5 more rounds from her parasol. Not quite shooting her gun but I'll take it.
What else does she do..?

*Checks notes*

"Sanguine Burstfire doesn't consume magazine ammo and doesn't count as a Standard Skill hit or shot hit"

Dang it.

Yes, Clarina returns to the age-old fixture of SCZ - operatives who only deal damage via their skills, and don't actually shoot anything.
Her standard rotation does involve her shooting bullets from her gun, but that's basically just a visual effect for her skill - technically she doesn't actually "shoot" anything.

Whether you wanted a shooting or skill-based operative, Clarina twirling and floating around the battlefield on her parasol whilst spraying enemies one-handed with her SMG is both great fun and looks cool as heck.

Whilst Clarina can be very fun to play once you've figured her out, she does definitely have some notable caveats.

For standard gameplay

Outside of Neural Simulation and Supreme Battleground, basically all content in SCZ can be beaten with a 4* operative equipped with a can opener.
Realistically, you can just use Lyfe - Wednesday, as the game gives you lots of Manifestation shards for her, as well as a good 4* weapon for her (Work-in-Progress), and whilst she's nowhere near the best, she's all you actually need as far as non-endgame content goes.
You can just use the first 5* [main DPS] operative you get - they're all more than capable of doing non-endgame content, even with little-to-mediocre investment.
Once you get your favourite 5* operative then you can just use them forever without issue, as all 5*'s DPS-ers are more than capable of easily doing all non-endgame content.

For normal gameplay, you really just need an operative that has ok damage, has decent mobility, and ideally good survivability, ideally with a nuke to quickly kill bosses.
The character I have generally liked and recommended the most for this is Vidya - Agave, as she has auto-aim on her skill, can move during her skill, her skill has AoE, her ult can nuke bosses... Agave is just a fantastic all-rounder.
Lyfe IS is also great as a casual operative - great damage, great mobility, constantly dodging gives her good survivability, although outside of her ult she lacks AoE.
She's also a great all-rounder.

Compared to those typical choices for casual-play, Clarina - Crimson Moon fares... fine.
Clarina has great damage, excellent mobility, and constantly heals herself, but has to constantly move, which gets annoying in confined spaces
(Ah yes, the bane of all vampires... narrow corridors.)
Clarina also has to constantly spam buttons, which can get annoying real fast.
I personally think Clarina requires too much button spamming, forced movement, and situational awareness to be the ideal operative for casual play, but she's fine for the role.
If you are ok with those medium-sized caveats though, then Clarina is a great operative for casual play.

For hardcore gameplay

OK, so... great, Clarina is fine for casual players, but how does she fare at the high-end, where skill, investment, and teambuilding actually matter?
The answer is a solid *shrugging and various non-committal noises*

Clarina has good points and bad points, and whilst she is certainly capable in her own right, the real problem with her in NS is her absolute sheer lack of teambuilding options.

As stated above, Clarina is a skill-only operative.
If played optimally, she never technically "shoots" anything - not once.
This means that Clarina is buffed by:

ATK
Skill DMG
Debuffing enemies resistances and DEF
Absolutely f**k all else.

If would be difficult (i.e. basically impossible) to make a shorter list of things a new operative could be buffed by.

This means that:

Per-shot or Aptitude effects (E.g. Phantasia, Little Sunshine) can't affect her, as they only affect shots.
Ballistic buffs (Nightglow, Starshine) also don't affect her.
Never shooting means that reloading and magazine capacity aren't something Clarina cares for, so Fenny - Starshine is basically useless to her.
Similarly, Enya - Exuvia is also very poor as well as it's highly sub-optimal for Clarina to actually shoot.
Clarina being incapable of using U-Energy means that Tess - The Magician isn't useful either, nor even is the oddball pick of Fritia - Hush.
Generating more S-Energy than she needs means that S-Energy buffs are all useless for Clarina.
Since Clarina only deals Skill DMG, and skill dmg can't crit, things like the Crit DMG weakness of Yao - Nightglow doesn't affect her.
Nightglow is still decent due to her ATK buff, but isn't as effective for Clarina as for other operatives that can make full use of all of her buffs.
Similarly, any and all crit mods are absolutely useless to Clarina, regardless of their source.

This dries up the pool of useful support operatives considerably.
Realistically, Clarina's restrictions leaves a pool shallow puddle of support operatives that both aren't terrible and that Clarina can actually make reasonable use of:

Eatchel - The Cub - Healing, ATK Buffs, Skill DMG buffs. See Notes later.
Vidya - Celestial Swan - Huge DEF and Resistance debuffs are very strong but she ideally wants Clarina's 2nd support to deal Kinetic damage or not deal damage
Mauxir - Shadow Ka - Clarina doesn't need a stationary target at all, and Mauxir's Deiwos is useless to Clarina, but her Support Skills +20% DMG is still nice
Note Mauxir is off-element to Clarina (Shadow Ka deals Chaos damage)
Marian - Riptide - Team-wide Skill DMG buffs are much appreciated by Clarina.
Note Marian is off-element to Clarina (Riptide deals Chaos damage)
[Cope] Nightglow - Clarina can't use Yao's Crit or ballistic buffs, but Yao's ATK boost is still great. Yao is likely better off helping your other main DPS though.
Note Yao is off-element to Clarina (Nightglow deals Electrical damage)
[Cope] Acacia - Kaguya - A nice resistance debuffer, although Kaguya's Frost DMG buff is wasted on Clarina, and Celestial Swan just performs Kaguya's job better.
Note Acacia is off-element to Clarina (Kaguya deals Frost damage)
[Cope] Vidya - Agave - Although it's not the strongest buff, 20% ATK buff with 100% uptime is respectable for such little investment.
Note Agave is off-element to Clarina (Agave deals Electrical damage)

Clarina is a strong operative - good damage, good mobility, good self-healing, but her weakness is just how few support operatives she can actually make full use of.
... or how few supports Clarina actually significantly benefits from at all.

Thankfully Seasun seems to have anticipated this blatant teambuilding weakness and given Clarina an inseparable lifeline to help her with this.
...and Clarina's lifeline is Eatchel - The Cub.
What a weird world this is indeed.
And yes, the readers out there having flashbacks from Fritia - Turbo can calm down - unlike Fritia Turbo who was unable to sustain her standard damage rotation without her 5* weapon, Clarina has no such f2p-unfriendly weakness - Instead, Clarina potentially has it far worse than Fritia, as Turbo only wanted her own 5* weapon, whereas Clarina wants to be paired with another operative entirely, who also has their 5* weapon.

Eatchel has always been in a bit of a weird position in SCZ - adored by casual players as her constant healing does kinda trivialize the entire game.
(With Eatchel, you'll never die, basically.)
Similarly, Eatchel's 5* weapon Blitzing Fangs does allow Eatchel to passively apply a quite strong ATK buff to your main DPS, and her M1 does give the team a nice buff too.
This used to be a fantastic buff, but Eatchel is now generally outclassed by more modern support operatives (Celestial Swan, Nightglow, etc.), but Eatchel is still good.
Thanks to her Deiwos Clarina gains bonus Skill DMG based upon how much she is healed.
Given that all Eatchel does is sit on the bench and passively heal things, this gives Clarina great synergy with Eatchel - far more than Eatchel gives to any other main DPS.

Similarly, whilst Eatchel isn't the strongest pick for endgame content, with Clarina the extra skill DMG bonus Eatchel provides to the twirling parasol princess does actually make Eatchel one of Clarina's best support operatives.
As such, Clarina should really always be paired with Blitzing Fangs Eatchel, meaning teambuilding isn't too bad as Clarina only needs 1 extra support operative, and since Eatchel doesn't deal any damage, Celestial Swan (i.e. the best support) is perfect.

This poses the problem that if you don't have Eatchel with her 5* weapon, then Clarina loses one of her two main supports.
If you don't have Celestial Swan as well as Eatchel with her 5* weapon, then Clarina is really not getting that much from her supports when compared to other operatives.

Clarina's best support duo is Eatchel and Celestial Swan - they are her strongest supports and work the best together with no caveats.
Whilst that is nice and simple, things get more complicated if either Eatchel or Celestial Swan aren't by Clarina's side.

If Eatchel is missing, then in order to not weaken Celestial Swan you'll need to either use a [weaker] support that doesn't deal damage (good luck with that) or a kinetic support (also good luck with that). Alternatively use a strong second support, and just accept that Celestial Swan is going to be pretty terrible.
If Celestial Swan is missing, then you can use any support you'd like, but nobody else is as strong as Vidya, so Clarina isn't getting as much support power as she could.
You may also need to use a generally strong support like Nightglow, thus denying that support to your other teams main-DPS, weakening them significantly in the process.
If you don't have many support operatives, Clarina can thus be a problem for NS/SupBat where you need two teams of operatives due to her potentially wanting to use the good supports your other main DPS might want.

The TL:DR is that whilst Clarina is strong, and she has good supports, teambuilding with her can become a big mess real fast, especially if you don't have 5* Eatchel or Vidya.

Lyfe IS shoots stuff, and thus benefits from aptitude and per-shot bonuses.
These effects are visible in the image above:
White numbers are Lyfe IS' own Kinetic DMG
Blue numbers are from Tess - Phantasia's per-shot Frost damage buff
Red Numbers are from Fritia - Little Sunshine's per-shot Thermal damage buff

Lyfe IS can thus benefit from useful ballistic, per-shot, and shot-hit buffs.

Clarina's skills don't technically shoot stuff.
Hence, she can't gain or use ballistic, per-shot, or shot-hit buffs.

The extra Frost/blue and Red/Thermal damage numbers Lyfe IS gets in the picture to the left aren't present here, as Clarina isn't technically doing any shot hits to proc the buffs, even though the buffs are active.
(The green numbers are her self-healing. Yes I was testing her at Lvl.75, hence 252)
Supports like Tess Phantasia and Fritia Little Sunshine are thus worthless to Clarina

Clarina's Two Big Competitors

All of this combined means that Clarina is actually in a very weird position, and she reminds me an awful lot of Nerida - Styx Envoy.
Nerida works by basically having her Ult add extra damage based upon how much Chaos Skill damage is dealt during the meagre few seconds her ult lasts, meaning that her best support operative is Marian - Riptide by a huge margin - to the extent that I recommend that you don't play Nerida unless you have and use Riptide alongside Nerida.
It felt as if Nerida had been designed around having Riptide as a sub-DPS to support her, and Nerida didn't really work properly without her - even the amount of skill casts Nerida needs to max her gauge kinda matches with Marian's Tidesong generation, and Nerida's ult duration lasts slightly longer than the length of time it takes Riptide to swap in and magdump a full Kraken mag - just enough for Nerida to swap back in via her Support Skill.

With Clarina the situation feels similar, albeit to a lesser extent - Whilst Clarina's Deiwos bonus does work for herself, it does also seem clearly designed around having Eatchel with Blitzing Fangs as her primary support operative - I.e. There is a reason that Clarina's Deiwos passive doesn't only apply to her own self-healing.
On the one hand, this is great - Clarina is a fantastic operative for casual play, and Eatchel is a great support, both for casual play but also for Clarina in all game content.
At the high end Eatchel also provides a larger buff to N6/D4 Clarina than to other operatives, meaning Clarina+Eatchel is a very natural paring, to the extent that if Clarina is a viable operative for a fight then you really don't want to use Eatchel to support anybody else.

This brings me (in a very weird way - I am going somewhere with this, I promise) to Clarina's two biggest problems - Lyfe IS and Enya - Tempest.
Lyfe IS has very high consistent damage, and whilst IS can't self-heal, she does dodge a lot, which means she can have a similar level of survivability in many scenarios, especially if she's also paired with Eatchel.
Whilst Lyfe IS deals high ballistic damage and Clarina deals entirely skill damage, the distinction between shooting and skill damage doesn't matter in most cases.

Similarly, Enya - Tempest also deals Kinetic Skill DMG only, meaning she deals the exact same type of damage, and hence fulfils the exact same role on a team.
Whilst Eatchel is less useful to Enya, Enya does use U-Energy, meaning that Enya+Tess is a natural pairing, so Enya doesn't have it any worse as far as viable supports go, and since Enya can also use Eatchel, Enya's pool of support operatives is still larger than Clarina's.

This means whether I recommend you pull or use Clarina [for gameplay reasons, not just waifu-ism] is entirely determined by whether you already have Lyfe IS or Tempest, as Clarina, Lyfe IS, and Tempest just fill out such similar roles on a team that you are basically never going to need or want more than one of them:
For Lyfe IS vs Clarina, both have:

High mobility
A strong amount of Auto-Aim
Standard rotation involves constantly spamming dodges/movement abilities
High Kinetic damage
Low damage-per-shot but high RoF
Ult is mechanically quite different than their standard gameplay.

If anything Lyfe IS is better because she has better synergies with many of the common support operatives (notably Nightglow) and doesn't need to frequently stop and stand still to cast her ult.

Similarly, if you already have Enya - Tempest then you can probably skip Clarina (again ignoring waifu-ism, just gameplay), as both of them deal high Skill-only Kinetic damage, and perform the exact same role on a team, and every support Clarina can use can also be used by Tempest.

TL:DR

Clarina can be summarized as follows:
Lyfe IS, but:
Younger
Flatter
Classier
Has ditched an SMG for a parasol. (The trade somehow worked out quite well for her...)
Deals non-shot Skill DMG instead of shooting ballistic damage
Deals similar sorts of damage numbers
Both have high mobility
Both have high survivability
Requires more button spamming, making her a bit less fun.
Has a much shallower pool of support operatives
Really wants to be paired with Eatchel - The Cub
Or alternatively as:
Enya - Tempest, but:
Younger
Flatter
Classier
A parasol is kinda like a shotgun, right?
Deals a very similar amount of the exact same damage type - Kinetic Skill DMG.
More survivability
More manoeuvrability
Much less AoE
Requires more button spamming, making her a bit less fun.
Has a slightly shallower pool of support operatives
Really wants to be paired with Eatchel - The Cub

Do you like Clarina?
If yes, then by all means pull for her - she's certainly a very capable operative.
If you already have Lyfe IS and/or Tempest though, then you can skip Clarina if you aren't too fond of her.