Columbina
HydroCatalystSupportTL;DR
Columbina turns your team's ordinary reactions into lunar ones. With her in the party, Electro-Charged becomes Lunar-Charged, Bloom becomes Lunar-Bloom and Hydro-Crystallize becomes Lunar-Crystallize, all of them hitting harder the more Max HP she carries. Her Skill leaves a ripple that trails your active character dealing Hydro damage, her Burst lays down a patch of ground that sweetens those reactions further. Skill, Burst, swap out.
Rotation
- Skill (E) to start the ripple. It follows whoever is on the field for 25 seconds.
- Burst (Q) if you have the Energy. The ground around you turns into her domain for 20 seconds.
- Swap to the characters who actually trigger the reactions and fight inside it.
- Come back when the skill is off cooldown, about every 17 seconds.
Abilities
| Skill (E) | A hit of AoE Hydro, then a ripple that follows your active character around ticking Hydro damage for 25 seconds. Lunar reactions your team sets off while it is out fill her gravity meter. 17 second cooldown. |
|---|---|
| Burst (Q) | AoE Hydro, then it converts the terrain into her domain for 20 seconds. Lunar reactions triggered inside get an extra kick that depends on which of the three it was. 60 Energy on a 15 second cooldown. |
| Her gravity meter | Fills from lunar reactions while the ripple is out. Full, it discharges into the enemies. What it deals depends on which lunar reaction contributed the most. |
| Charged Attack | Ordinarily a slow AoE Hydro hit for 50 stamina, which you can skip. If your team is holding dew from lunar bloom it becomes a free Dendro attack instead, three hits, no stamina. |
The one mechanic to understand
She needs one of three reactions already happening.
Her passive only rewrites three things, so the team has to be producing one of them: Electro plus her Hydro for Electro-Charged, Dendro plus Hydro for Bloom, or Geo plus Hydro for Hydro-Crystallize. Once one of those is running, every lunar reaction the party triggers gains base damage from her Max HP, up to 7% at 35,000. The party's Moonsign also goes up a level while she is in it. The awkward case is an enemy that turns up with its own element already on it, since that can smother the reaction the whole team was built around.
What actually matters
The two or three real decisions. Everything else is noise.
- Energy Recharge, a great deal of it. Her Burst costs 60 with nothing in her kit feeding her Energy back. Solo Hydro wants somewhere around 250%, which a second Hydro character cuts down a long way.
- Max HP. It is the stat the team's lunar reaction damage reads off, so it is doing more for them than any damage stat does for her.
- One of Electro, Dendro or Geo in the team. Without a partner for one of those three reactions there is nothing for her to convert.
Gear
A build that works. KeqingMains lists every other option.
| Weapon | Energy Recharge before anything else. Favonius Codex is the accessible pick because its passive coughs up extra Energy particles on top, which is the cheapest way to bring that requirement down. |
|---|---|
| Artifacts | 4-piece Silken Moon's Serenade, the lunar reaction set. A couple of two-piece Max HP and Energy Recharge sets will hold the fort until you have four of them. |
| Main stats | Energy Recharge sands, HP goblet, HP circlet. Make the circlet Crit Rate if you are running Favonius Codex, since its passive needs some to go off at all. |
Works well with
Electro
Dendro
GeoThose three are the ones that make the reactions her passive rewrites. Anything else in the party is along for the ride.
Don't bother
- Building her for her own damage. Her contribution is the size of everyone else's reactions.
- Watching the gravity meter. It fills and goes off by itself.
- Her Normal Attacks. She is off the field for nearly the whole rotation.
- Grinding substats to 300% Energy Recharge on your own. A second Hydro character is far less work than the artifacts are.
Want the full theorycrafting version? Read Columbina on KeqingMains.