A new Frost-damage operative that isn't just Katya with a new hairstyle?
An actual Auxiliary Unit summoning operative who doesn't use their own skills or shoot things to deal damage?
and she's actually pretty fun?
v3.4 is certainly turning out to be an unusual update indeed...
Mauxir - Lotus is indeed an odd one.
Bubu gave us a Dual-SMG operative earlier this patch, which was itself unusual, and now Mauxir is here bringing us a passive Aux-Unit summoning playstyle.
You use her Standard Skill to summon a Node, which itself summons Drones.
Both the Node and the Drones are immobile and shoot the nearest enemy automatically.
You can hold her Standard Skill to grapple to a Node, buffing its damage for 10s.
Lotus' ult is a dance that increases the damage and fire rate of her summons, massively boosting their damage.
Shooting a Node heals it, but also reduces the cooldown of her ult via its second Neuronic buff proc'ing her Auctus Drive A2 buff.
That's basically it - summon the max of 3 Nodes, use her ult off-cooldown to buff them, and otherwise just shoot the Nodes to heal them and recharge Lotus' ult.
Sounds simple, what are Lotus' drawbacks?
The two main drawbacks are that the Nodes can die, and that the summons are immobile.
The Nodes being able to die makes sense from a gameplay perspective, otherwise Lotus being able to summon an ally that is immortal, lasts forever, and deals damage would trivialize or outright break some of the games content, so having the Nodes die (and take out all their associated drones when they do) makes sense.
The summons being immobile is there for balance in my opinion.
If the summons could move, then Lotus would have basically perfect survivability, as she wouldn't need to actually do anything in combat except avoid incoming damage whilst her summons did all the damage for her.
Similarly, she could just summon them once, with no need to engage with Lotus' mechanics any further.
Being able to enter combat with all her pre-summoned summoned units would also mean she could deal max damage immediately, which would be extremely strong in back-to-back fights.
I'd rather her drones were the ones taking damage and the Nodes were immortal, and I'd prefer that the Nodes and Drones could move, but I understand why they don't.
Having her Nodes be immortal and mobile but not deal damage and slowly spawn drones would be more fun in my opinion, but that would likely make Mauxir too weak in endgame content.
It's difficult to envision how to give Mauxir mobile summons or immortal Nodes without her being either OP or useless in either casual or endgame content, or both.
With that being said, she doesn't deal that much damage compared to the high-dps operatives like Chenxing - Jade Arc and Katya - Rhapsody, so having her enter combat at full strength might not be that overpowered.
She feels relatively balanced as she is, and the main reason I would like her summons to move is fun and general content, not dps.
Whilst not really a drawback, Lotus is the first main dps operative in the game who doesn't actually ever deal any damage to enemies - she just sits there and has her summons do all the work for her. There probably is some content where this is a drawback, but I am struggling to think of some...
Lotus' base damage numbers are not that high, no.
She also has quite a bit of time before she hits the drone cap and is actually dealing max damage, and whilst there are a few exceptions like Fritia - Hush, Lotus has [one of] the longest start-up times of any operative.
This means she has no initial burst damage - her ult makes her very bursty due to just how much dps it adds to her, but she has no initial burst.
Katya - Rhapsody has been sitting on the wedding cake of "Best Frost DPS" since she was introduced, and Katya - Dawnwing was sitting comfortably on that cake before her, and is still a very strong operative - strong enough to have taken a slice or two from Rhapsody's cake too...
To be fair to Mauxir, Rhapsody is one of the games strongest operatives for dps, and as an Auctus Drive operative Mauxir was never going to be at the top, and that was by-design.
Mauxir's dps is very respectable though if you play her properly, so whilst she isn't getting the cake, Mauxir does have several strengths that other dps operatives don't:
She can just set up her Nodes and then leave them to it, meaning Mauxir can have amazing survivability.
Mauxir can theoretically have 100% uptime on her damage, as her Nodes can't be, for example, interrupted.
Aux Unit buffs tend to be stronger than other types.
Mauxir does come with a few major downsides though:
Her Nodes can die, at which point her dps drops off a cliff for a bit until she can resummon it and drones start re-deploying.
Mauxir really wants to keep shooting her own Nodes, in order to recharge her ult, so her situational awareness can be awful.
Mauxir only really benefits from ATK buffs, so teambuilding with her is both unique and pretty terrible.
Since all of her damage comes from her Aux Units, Mauxir isn't buffed by non-ATK buffs, but that is counter-balanced by the fact that she can double-dip on certain support buffs.
Lotus can double-dip on some support buffs, meaning she can, in essence, get their effects twice.
For example:
Tess - Phantasia's Arcane logistics set gives +35% ATK to any ally operative inside her Realm of Wonder (i.e. her ults AoE).
This applies to Lotus when she's inside, so Lotus gets the +35% ATK.
Lotus then summons her Nodes, which copy Lotus' ATK stat, which include the buff from Tess, so the summoned Nodes have +35% ATK.
The Nodes that Lotus has created are allies that are in Tess' ult, so they themselves gain the +35% buff from Tess' Arcane logistics squad.
Thus, they've gained Tess' buff twice, in effect, and the two effects stack multiplicatively, so Tess gives Lotus' Nodes and Drones a 1.35*1.35= +82.25% ATK buff.
Similarly, Lotus can double-dip on Yao - Nightglow, as Nightglow provides a flat ATK buff during her ult, and her logistics squad also provides a +30% ATK buff.
This only lasts during Yao's ult, but you can initially cast it for like 2 seconds, summon Lotus' drones in that 2s, and then you have the buffs once, which lasts indefinitely.
You can then re-apply the buff if you have enough U-Energy to do so, which applies those buffs to the Nodes/Drones again, so they gain the buffs a second time.
This means that while Lotus can't make use of a lot of the buffs that support operatives provide (Frost, Ballistic, and Skill damage), she can make extra use of some ATK buffs.
These two do actually balance each other out to some degree, although obviously not exactly.
Note that this can make Lotus one of the most bursty operatives in the game - Going from no Lotus/Nightglow ult to using both ults can increase Lotus' dps by well over 5x.
You might be asking something like
"Isn't double-dipping a bug? Won't it be patched out?"
To which my answer is that the only other main dps operative in the game who uses Aux Units is Lyfe - Wednesday, who is literally first operative the game gives you and the main operative for the first part of the story, but is also still the poster-child of the game in many places, including for example the icon the game uses for the Windows taskbar, and even to this day Wednesday is the default operative the game uses if one is needed.
If double-dipping were a problem the devs didn't like and wanted to fix, then they would have fixed it a long time ago, so my assumption is that double-dipping is intended and ok.
(or at the very least, the devs know about it and are ok with it)
Lotus' damage comes entirely from her summoned Aux Units.
This means that unless a buff actually applies to those summoned Aux Units then that buff is useless to Lotus.
This generally means that Lotus wants ATK buffs, but also any buff that buffs "ally operatives" - of which there are very few.
Lotus also has a very low ATK stat - her base ATK is very low, and she doesn't get any ATK from her weapon, weapon effect, or logistics effects either.
I calculated Lotus should have 3,158 Loadout ATK when maxed, which is extremely low. This does mean that flat ATK buffs help her a lot more than other operatives.
For example Yao - Nightglow's +1,500 ATK buff is a roughly 50% buff for Lotus, whereas for most other operatives it's around 25-30%.
This gives Lotus quite a short list of usable supports:
Vidya - Celestial Swan - Vidya still reigns supreme as the best support, even for Lotus, but the margin is much lower for Lotus than for other dps operatives due to some of the other supports being able to double-dip, as above.
Acacia - Kaguya - Still great if Vidya is busy that week, although she's not necessarily the second best support for Lotus, as despite Lotus being a Frost dps, Lotus can't make actually use of Acacia's Frost dmg buffs as they don't apply to her summons.
Tess - Phantasia - As mentioned above, Lotus being able to double-dip on Phantasia's logistics' ATK buff means Phantasia is very strong for Lotus, and +82.25% damage is a huge buff. Tess doesn't really benefit Lotus in any other way, but the ATK buff on its own is enough to make Phantasia incredibly strong for Lotus.
Lotus also doesn't benefit from Phantasia's support skill at all, so you just cast Tess' ult once at the start of each mission, and since Tess' ult lasts forever that's all the interaction Lotus ever needs with Tess.
Yao - Nightglow - Yao can double-dip, as above, and whilst you can cast her ult for a few seconds initially to get the first round of buffs, the second dip requires Yao's ult is active, so Yao's effect on Lotus' sustained dps is lower than Celestial Swan or Phantasia's, but Yao is still great overall, although dealing continual Electric-damage means she still can't be used with Celestial Swan.
Yao is a good support for Lotus, but she feels very clunky in actual use.
Eatchel - The Cub's ATK buff from her 5* weapon is very strong for Lotus due to Lotus' low ATK stat.
Any other operative that gives an ATK buff, including both Vidya - Agave but also any operative with one of the 4* support weapons.
I'll have a better listing of Lotus' best supports when her Auctus Drives come out and I can test properly, but Lotus' best supports are Vidya - Celestial Swan and Tess - Phantasia.
With that being said, it's a decent list of viable supports, and, interestingly enough, is almost exactly what you'd expect a new Frost ballistic dps to be buffed by.
So, Lotus' position in the meta?
I'll have a better answer to that once her Auctus Drive's come out, but for now, it seems as if Lotus will be sitting well below both Rhapsody and Dawnwing.
Comparing Lotus to the other 5* Frost dps operatives (Lyfe - Wild Hunt and Katya - Blue Bolt) feels rather redundant as all three of them are well below the above Katya duo.
Lotus is an ok dps, but she isn't the top Frost dps, nor is she close.
So, Lotus is a good dps... so she's not a support?
Err...
Lotus can be used as a support - she's just not overly good at it.
Lotus' Support Skill deploys some drones, which are invulnerable and attack the nearest enemy.
Their dps isn't great, but they do last for 20s, meaning they rack up an impressive amount of total damage (2,400%).
This makes Lotus pretty decent as a support, however you are still better off using Lotus as a main dps and not as a support.
Lotus' ult also can't be use passively - Lotus swaps in for the entire duration of her ult (which is loooong) so your other main dps won't be doing any damage during that time.
This generally means that you don't want to use Lotus' ult if using Lotus as a support, as the dps loss for your main dps isn't worth the extra gained from Lotus' ult, although it's really not that bad - the support drones average 120% per second, so with the ult that's 480% per second, which is pretty decent.
Mauxir's ult has such a long cooldown you really only get to do that once per fight though, and again, it's not really worth it.
Lotus is a decent support, but Lotus isn't a great support.
If we do get more Aux Unit summoning operatives in the future Lotus will probably be a good support for them though.
Since Lotus is an Auctus Drive operative, she's pretty easy to get, and also to get good investment for. This means that the decent damage of her support skill makes Lotus a good support for new players who don't have a great team but have another operative they like using as a dps, but don't have many/any supports for.
Even if you don't have any good dps operatives at all, Lotus is still a good support, as she deals her own damage, and doesn't just buff the dps of your main dps like other supports.
If anything, Lotus almost seems designed around her Support Skill being a second form of her Standard Skill - you start a fight using another operative, use Lotus' Support Skill, then swap Lotus in to summon her three Nodes and then use Lotus' ult to buff them - her ult doesn't buff the drones from her support skill, but they're extra dps and that strategy still allows you to use two support operatives.
So Lotus is a decent main-dps, a mediocre support... but is she fun?
Yes*.
The asterisk is there because Lotus does have a few flaws that can make her less fun in some circumstances:
If her Nodes constantly die then Lotus becomes quite frustrating to play, as she just has to run around re-summoning them, which means her dps is terrible as her Nodes won't survive long enough to make many Drones.
If there's a large enemy who covers her Nodes, then shooting her Nodes can be tricky, making them hard to heal.
For example, as of Lotus' release the current Neural Sim boss of Snowbreak Aku-MA has their pyramidal shield, which can completely cover the Nodes.
Since her Nodes/Drones don't explicitly target enemy weakspots, Lotus has trouble destroying enemy weakspots - she basically just has to use her sniper, which has a low RoF.
This can make certain enemies difficult to deal with, especially if the enemy is invulnerable or takes reduced damage until their weakspot is broken
(For Example: Joseph - Hardened, and Snowbreak Aku-MA, respectively)
Lotus can perform poorly against enemies who reposition a lot (e.g. Iron Ouroboros), against enemies who have fixed invuln phases (e.g. Lament of Yehrus), or that have multiple weakspots that need to be broken (e.g. Snowbreak Aku-MA), as those will prevent her drones from doing damage, meaning Lotus' ult is wasted.
Given just how much damage Lotus' ult deals, wasting even part of it due to an invuln phase or a weakspot that Lotus needs to use her sniper for can be a huge dps loss.
Lotus also isn't the best for casual content, as her Nodes and Drones being immobile means that she has to re-summon them for every single new group of enemies.
I'd have preferred it if Lotus' Nodes were mobile and moved with her, but the drones were immobile - that way Lotus could move between groups and only re-summon her Nodes if they actually die, whereas needing to re-summon the nodes for each new fight means she still needs some wind-up time before she starts dealing high dps.
The Nodes having lower damage, but a higher max Drone count, would be the way I'd balance that.
Her Nodes and Drones being immobile also means that in boss fights she wants to set up her Drones immediately so she can actually deal damage, but Lotus then doesn't have a way to move her summons to a better location, which can get annoying.
I'd rather Lotus' Standard Skill grappled the Node to her location, rather than grappled her to the Nodes location.
In some game modes where your operatives can select or use external buffs (notably in Paradoxical Labyrinth and its variants) Lotus can't make use of the vast majority of buffs.
Not being able to be buffed [as much as other operatives] makes her a lot weaker than other operatives in those modes.
Lotus has a sniper rifle. It's a Semi-Auto, but it's fire rate is still pretty low, which means that healing her three Nodes can take a while and it feels very slow.
I'd much rather Lotus had something with a higher fire rate (probably an AR). The numbers might've averaged the same, but it probably would've felt more fun.
In practice, these aren't massive issues, and mostly just make her more a bit annoying to play in casual content.
Overall though, I've found Lotus to be very fun.
Lyfe - Wednesday does have drones, but they deal much less damage than Lyfe herself does, so I've never really considered her an Aux Unit operative.
Lotus though does actually fully go for the Aux Unit playstyle, and it's both novel and enjoyable, albeit with a few minor caveats, but those minor caveats aren't enough to ruin her.
Lotus does actually do something new that no other operative does.
She isn't perfect, but her dps is pretty good for the Auctus Drive operative that she is, she provides a unique support effect, unique gameplay, and most importantly - she's fun.
She's also really good for new players.
Overall, I think Lotus is a fantastic operative.