Linnea

Linnea

5★GeoBowOff-field Damage

TL;DR

Linnea sends her companion Lumi out to hammer things while you go and play someone else. Tap the Skill once and Lumi settles into a steady rhythm for about 25 seconds. Tap it five times instead and Lumi winds up one enormous hit, then goes sluggish until you reset her. Her Burst is a team heal. All of it runs on DEF, and she wants a Hydro teammate so the good reaction can happen.

Rotation

  1. Your Hydro teammate goes first and gets Hydro onto the enemy.
  2. Skill (E) to put Lumi out. Tap it five times instead if you want the big hit right now.
  3. Swap away and play your damage dealer.
  4. Burst (Q) when the team needs healing, which also refreshes Lumi on the way past.

Abilities

Skill (E) Summons Lumi for about 25 seconds. She attacks nearby enemies on her own with Geo while you're off doing something else. About an 18 second cooldown.
Tapping the Skill again Feeds Lumi. Five feeds and she lands one very large hit, then drops into a slow, weak mode until you reset her with the Burst or a fresh Skill.
Burst (Q) Costs 60 Energy. Heals the party for about 12 seconds off Linnea's DEF, and resets Lumi's timer without changing which mode she's in.

The one mechanic to understand

Lunar-Crystallize, and the little constructs it leaves.

Geo landing on a Hydro-soaked enemy normally just makes a crystal shard you walk over. With Linnea in the party it makes the moon version instead, which does real damage and leaves small constructs scattered on the ground. Those constructs are what let Lumi use her heavier attack, so they are the actual point. No Hydro teammate means no reaction, no constructs, and Lumi plinking away for a fraction of what she should be doing.

What actually matters

The two or three real decisions. Everything else is noise.

  • DEF everywhere. Sands, goblet, substats. Lumi's damage, the healing and the Elemental Mastery Linnea hands out are all slices of it. Around 2,000 is where her passive stops improving.
  • A second character with the moon mark. Two of them in the party pushes the party's Moonsign up a level, which doubles the Geo resistance she strips off enemies and switches on the better half of several of the new characters at once.
  • Don't Burst every rotation. It costs field time and a pile of Energy Recharge to do so. Cast it when somebody needs healing, and about 100% Energy Recharge covers that.

Gear

A build that works. KeqingMains lists every other option.

Weapon Crit, because no bow in the game comes with DEF on it. The 3-star Slingshot is genuinely competitive here, so put it on her and spend the resources elsewhere.
Artifacts 4-piece Husk of Opulent Dreams. It's the DEF set and she's the DEF character.
Main stats DEF sands, DEF goblet, crit circlet. A Geo damage goblet loses, because the reaction is where most of the damage lands and reaction damage ignores it.

Works well with

HydroGeo

Hydro is the requirement. A second Geo character gives you the resonance and another source of the reaction, so the constructs keep coming.

Don't bother

  • Her own bow. She fires it about twice and neither shot matters.
  • Elemental Mastery. It does feed the reaction, it just loses to DEF and crit in every slot she has.
  • Leaving Lumi in her slow mode after the big hit. Reset her.
  • Levelling her Burst before her Skill, unless you're leaning on the healing.

Want the full theorycrafting version? Read Linnea on KeqingMains.