Hysilens Best Builds, Teams & Relics

Character Explanation

Hysilens is a DoT character whose kit revolves around her Ultimate Maelstrom Rhapsody which is a Zone that lasts for 3 turns. Enemies within this zone have 15% reduced ATK and up to 25% reduced DEF (Lv 10). The main mechanic of the zone is that when enemies within the zone take DoT damage they will take an additional instance of DoT damage from Hysilens. This can trigger up to 8 times per enemy per turn or action. The damage from these additional DoT hits makes up 75-85% of her damage.
For example, if Kafka uses her Ultimate then Hysilens can trigger her additional DoT damage up to 8 times per target based on the number of active DoTs but will not trigger more than 8 on each target even if they have more DoTs times unless she has her E6 When to Return From Where You Lie which increases it to 12.

Hysilens' additional DoT damage from her Ultimate Maelstrom Rhapsody will deal the same damage no matter the effectiveness of the DoT trigger — it does not scale with the DoT effectiveness. This is very useful for Luka's Eidolon 6 A Champion's Applause or Sampo's E4 The Deeper the Love, the Stronger the Hate which cause very low effectiveness DoT triggers but will still cause Hysilens' to deal full damage.

Hysilens' has four weak DoTs from her talent Sirenic Serenade. These DoTs mainly exist to drive her Ultimate Maelstrom Rhapsody but they do contribute to 10-15% of her total damage output by themselves. These DoTs will stack without issue with DoTs from other characters as they are from Hysilens and Hysilens' Wind Shear can stack up to 5 stacks like any other Wind Shear it just takes a long time to stack up and can expire.

Hysilens' main gameplay revolves around using her Skill Overtone Hum: Chorus After Dark Tides if the debuff is not present on any of the important enemy targets and using her Basic ATK to conserve Skill Points for Kafka between Skill uses. If you have spare Skill Points you should spend them on Hysilens' Skill as it will make Ultimate generation more consistent as she is heavily reliant on kills or being hit with only a single skill used every 3 turns. Hysilens' will generate enough energy if she uses her Skill 3 times and gets hit 1-2 times but that is very Skill Point intensive. When dumping spare Skill Points on Hysilens' be mindful to make sure that Kafka will still have one Skill Point for her Turn as losing out on Kafka Skill uses is very bad for damage. In the same vein, it is important to make sure that you will have enough Skill Points to refresh any other Support Character's damage buffs.

It is extremely important that you have Hysilens' Ultimate Zone up at all times as she barely does any damage without it being active!

Build Advice

When building Hysilens the most important stat for her is Effect Hit Rate. You need at least 66.7% Effect Hit Rate to cause her to have 100% chance to apply her DoTs and this should be the absolute minimum you build but we strongly suggest getting to 120% as a priority because of her A6 Trace The Fiddle of Pearls. This will make every 10% Effect Hit Rate you build over 60% (up to 120%) give you 15% DMG (to a maximum of 90% DMG) which is incredibly efficient and is far better than ATK% for DMG.

For ease of building Hysilens we strongly suggest using an Effect Hit Rate body especially early on as it will be a very big damage gain. If you do not have an Effect Hit Rate Lightcone you have to use an Effect Hit Rate body as getting enough Effect Hit Rate otherwise is nearly impossible.

With an Effect Hit Rate Body and a 40% Effect Hit Rate Lightcone Hysilens will only need approximately 7 Substats of Effect Hit Rate to reach 120% Effect Hit Rate. With this setup she can obtain a maximum of 16 ATK% rolls with reasonable chance across her gear (Valid on 4 pieces as she has ATK% Rope and Shoes) for a maximum of 23 ATK% + EHR Rolls. We strongly suggest also aiming for Flat ATK on her ATK% pieces as these are approximately 40% of the value of an ATK% roll and makes it easier to roll better Relics. It takes approximately 7 or 8 SPD Substats (3-4 with her Signature Lightcone) to reach 134 SPD if you want an additional action within 150 AV, which is not necessary for damage but can be nice. With lucky 4+ ATK% upgrade pieces you could get more damage but that many upgrades are extremely rare to obtain on a single stat — 0.39% on a piece that did not start with 4 Stats, and 1.56% on a piece that did.

With an ATK% Body she will need ~18 Substats of Effect Hit Rate to get to 120% EHR but will only have a reasonable maximum of 12 ATK% rolls across her gear since you cannot roll ATK% on an additional piece. Combined this would be ~30 substats usefully used. This is very difficult to hit however as it needs you get 3 or 4 useful upgrades on every item. This setup is equal to an Effect Hit Rate Body at 7 ATK% Rolls without taking into account additional Flat ATK rolls which are worth about 40% of an ATK% roll each.

Speed is not too important for Hysilens as she does not directly scale with more turns. Her abilities do not deal significant damage per use as most of her damage comes from her DoT effects. Her Ultimate's Maelstrom Rhapsody Zone uptime is based on her own turns so increasing her SPD can actually make it slightly harder to maintain the Zone as she will be hit less often and get less kills per turn on average to generate energy for her.
The main reason to invest in SPD is if it lets you get an additional ultimate off within a fight. We do not suggest dropping any Effect Hit Rate or ATK% for SPD as you will not necessarily get a good return on investment.

We do suggest getting at least 120 SPD as it will give you an extra action within 250 AV which is a very good clear time in any content. If you have her Signature Lightcone we suggest instead going for 126 SPD as this will let her reach 134 SPD after she gets the 10% SPD buff from her Lightcone giving her the 0 Cycle Breakpoint. She needs at least 129 SPD to reach the 0 Cycle Breakpoint on the first wave of combat before she has the 10% SPD buff.

We do not suggest using an Energy Regeneration Rate Rope as she usually gets enough Energy from Kills and being Hit by Enemies to rebuild her Ultimate before it expires even with only 1 to 2 Skill Uses. If you have higher SPD than we recommend you may need to use more Skills per rotation to guarantee that you get enough Energy.

Triple DoT Teams

Triple DoT teams use Hysilens and Kafka as their two core characters and run a third DoT Character as a supporting Sub DPS. The most common third DoT Character and the most powerful is Black Swan and is one of her strongest teams possible. Additional weaker options are Sampo, Luka or Guinaifen.

These teams do not use the Support Character that are in high demand for other teams which makes team building significantly easier for 2 Team or 3 Team content.

Black Swan is the most powerful DoT Character because she has the strongest amplifying debuffs of any of the other DoT Characters. She also deals a very large amount of damage because her Arcana DoT from her Talent Loom of Fate's Caprice stacks up incredibly quickly with Hysilens.

Luka is a good option for Pure ST but he does not have an easy way to put his Bleed onto multiple targets. He will also cause Bleeds to immediately deal DMG whenever he uses his Enhanced Basic ATK which will add good ST damage. Luka also has to use his Skill to apply his Bleed which makes him less Skill Point efficient than characters who can avoid this.

Sampo is an excellent option if you have his E4 The Deeper the Love, the Stronger the Hate which lets his Skill make Wind Shear instantly deal damage per hit — if at least 5 Wind Shears were present on the target. Sampo can also more easily apply his DoT on AoE than Luka but can take a while to ramp up to maximum damage if there are a lot of enemies.

Guinaifen is a weaker option as her DoT is not as strong and only lasts 2 Turns. Her DoT must be applied by her Skill making her SP Neutral or SP Negative which is not good since you already have very high SP demands for Kafka and would ideally like to spend spare Skill Points on Hysilens. Guinaifen can also only trigger dots with her Ultimate which is a lot worse than Luka or Sampo.

Dual DoT Teams

Dual DoT teams use Hysilens and Kafka as their two core characters and then use a powerful Harmony or Nihility support as their third Character. Common options include Robin, Cipher, Ruan Mei, Tribbie or Silver Wolf

These teams are completely viable and deal excellent damage but they use characters that are highly competitive for other teams which can make it harder to field multiple strong teams for 2 or 3 Team content.

Teams without Kafka

Playing teams without Kafka is strongly not recommended as Kafka is the biggest DPS increase for DoT teams of any Character.

These teams can work in content where there are other mechanics that increase DoTs viability such as the V3.4 Memory of Chaos, Pure Fiction or Apocalyptic Shadow because these have blessings that massively benefit DoT teams. These can also work fine in Simulated Universe because you can get other sources of DoTs triggering that can partially make up for not having Kafka.

Ideally in teams without Kafka you would run an E4 or higher Sampo and play him in a similar fashion to how Kafka is usually played. He will use his Skill every turn to try and trigger as many Wind Shears as possible to let Hysilens deal damage.