This is a guest article by maker of the wind guide Lolicore .Thank you so much.
And so yet again, Wind gets another unit leading up to its GW, and like how Earth got Landslide Scepter right before their GW last year, we get that happening again this time. Let’s take a look at her kit first.
For first impressions, Heavenly Wind (S1) looks okay at best – it serves to further boost one of your attackers’ damage output by splitting their autos into 2-hit attacks; this was previously present in Yukata Anila that was released alongside Yukata Vampy just last month. It also provides crit, Keen and 50% Wind ATK, the latter being an offensive buff that Summer Korwa also shares in her S1. It also comes with an Autorevive that also lets you keep the buff upon being revived, making it pretty useful for going super fast on SUBHL raids these days too since you want to safely take 75%.
However, it should be worth noting that S1 does not offer any real cap break opportunities – there’s no built-in echoes, no cap up; just split autos and Keen, which is marginal when you compare it to what her major competitor, Korwa provides with her own S1 (permanent DATA up, 1-turn 50% cap up and Double Strike that is always available as long as you have Fil stacks, something Kaguya’s S1 lacks). Even Kaguya’s self-steroids after S2 comes online won’t outweigh Korwa’s ridiculous offensive buffs.
Blessings of the Moonlight (S2) is a rather mediocre defensive buff skill at first, but on second cast it gets upgraded to Miracles of the Moonlight. The defensive buffs on second cast quite literally get doubled, become undispellable and permanent, and provide permanent Armored as well:
- 100% DEF Up
- 100% Debuff Resistance Up
- Refresh (heal values do not change)
- 100% / 20% Armored
So looking at the values, S2 basically becomes a teamwide Korwa S2 on its second cast, just that the Armored value Korwa provides is slightly higher, and that S2 does not have Refresh like Kaguya does. On its second cast S2 is a pretty solid buff skill that will be used for solos or mashing, but how fast can you get the S2 back up again on Kaguya is something that we will have to see in actual runs, as her ougi cuts her skill cooldowns by a turn every time it goes off.
S2’s second cast also provides Kaguya with some self-steroids from her first passive to improve on her offensive prowess, however her 30% echo is passive A-sided, so this overlaps with Narmaya’s 10% echoes on crits and Chain of Falsehood’s 20% echoes – they won’t stack with each other. Because her echo strength is stronger between the three common sources of passive A-sided echoes, the 30% will get applied instead.
A disadvantage with trying to get her S2 to come online however, is the amount of ramp up time needed, a realistic use-case of her S2 would be on SUBHL, but the current raid meta does not allow for that ramp up time when we have reached the point where a lot of veterans have grown accustomed to how the raid works and blow through it fast enough.
Lightning Rebuke (S3) is a 3-hit nuke that inflicts a unique, permanent debuff of the same name. Pretty useful for high difficulty raids that need it, especially if soloing as it lowers ATK/DEF (up to 15%), debuff resistance, accuracy and supplements their damage taken by up to 30k (10k per level).
Second passive is pretty self-explanatory – put S1 on a unit of your choice and every time they ougi, Kaguya gets more CB and CA reactivation. Nothing too special, but the CA reactivation helps in lowering her cooldowns, especially when you’re trying to get the upgraded S2 up. Note that 2 out of 3 of her skills cannot be recast, so past a certain point you would just be trying to use S3 nuke as needed.
Overall, as a unit, Kaguya seems to be more suited towards high-difficulty content and solos, but is her kit enough to compete against the likes of Nio 150, Grand Ewiyar and Summer Korwa in the buffer slot, when Vampy and Naru occupy the other two slots as your premiere attackers? Probably not. Her kit does not really do a lot to really amplify the team’s damage output – in terms of support abilities, she more serves the role of a defensive support; an archetype that is oversaturated and competitive. Anyone looking to use her should not be expecting the team to do a lot more damage than it currently is.
What Kaguya really needs is a good target/partner who can make use of what she gives and also give back. She’s relatively lacklustre because none of her current “ideal” partners in Wind can return the favour of her buff by helping her get to her S2’s second activation a lot faster. The only one who kind of ticks off all the boxes is Vampy, and it’s a hard sell at the present time to replace someone on a Vampy team with Kaguya.
Now for the main attraction, her Folding Fans….
To start things off, it’s a Dagger weapon, so it immediately synergises with Piercing Galewings because of the Dagger Voltage – so these two may as well be best friends in your Zeph grids. Rejoice, you Galewing gamers because the release of Folding Fans has further solidified their spot in Zeph gridbuilding.
Next, there’s TWO new weapon skills introduced with the release of this weapon – the Optimus aura boosting skill, and Demolishment – which is a boostable normal attack amplification skill. The Optimus skill cannot be boosted, it does the boosting instead, and can be stacked up to a maximum of 90%; the Demolishment skill by itself yields 3% N.A amplify, and the amplify caps at 30%; something that previously existed on Ereshkigal, Hraesvelgr and Golden Fists of Ura. Below displays the values on the N.A amplification with aura boosting summons, courtesy of @iorogi on the GBFI Discord:
Because Demolishment can only be boosted by Zeph and Ewiyar auras, it should be noted that this is NOT a gridpiece that should be used in Magna grids, at all.
The Optimus skill seems pretty strong on paper because it’s a 30% boost to boostable mods on your Primal grid, but the boost is not as noticeable as it seems if you run a grid with some unboostable weapons, which is not super uncommon these days considering meta grids nowadays have lots of unboostable gridpieces and skills like “Resonator” skills (e.g. Claiomh Solais Dion, Eternal Signature) and “Pact” weapons (e.g. Pain and Suffering, Galewings).
Example grids, courtesy of @dy_dk from his YouTube channel – check him out as he has started GBF content creation as of recently, show him some love. 【GBF】 How Good is Kaguya and the New Grand Weapon? || September Flash 2023 Banner Review
The left grid is a Manadiver FA grid, it has quite a few weapons and skills that cannot be boosted – Ultima Staff, Ewiyar’s Beak, Piercing Galewings and Clams’ first skill. While the Optimus weapon skill will not affect those at all, it is still a pretty great boost to whatever mods that can still be boosted like the Majesty skills in Clams and Opus, and the Fandango skill in Folding Fans as their skill values gain an additional 60% increase on top of all the aura boosting that is already present.
The right grid is the more burst-oriented grid, because Destiny Knuckles can be boosted, you get much more benefit out of the Optimus weapon skill from the Fans. It should be noted that the Opus used is different, and that’s because although the Primal Opus can receive the boost from Fans, the unique Magna modifier from the Magna Opus in this case is too good to pass up. Estimated damage even goes down by a fair bit if you equip the Primal Opus instead.
Going back to the Demolishment skill, honestly this is the main reason you would grab this weapon whenever you can – this is the strongest aspect of the Folding Fans. Amplification works as a straight percentage boost that’s applied to the final damage, so it gets added at the very end of the damage calculation. Although by this point we have not used Seraphic Weapons in forever, the calculation works in a similar manner, making it really strong.
Now how many copies of this weapon do we need? You may have seen a lot of people suggesting 3 because of how the Optimus skill can stack up to 90% and Demolishment can hit the 30% amplify cap on 3 copies in a single-sided Zeph grid. After our 2-day windlord VC conference, we came to a conclusion that two copies would be the sweet spot. With how the Zeph grid is right now, we think it’s pretty hard to slot three copies in, at the least without compromising on some raw damage due to losing out on some attack modifiers just for a third copy. If there is any grid that could possibly use a third copy, it would be on extra grids (for Revans, Super Ultimate tier raids), or low DEF raids (15 DEF and under) where you would have an easier time hitting cap.
Overall, I don’t see a rush to get a third copy if you were planning to get one (although I’m typing this right AFTER the banner has finished) unless you specifically want to build around those v2 raids.
Barring Priority for Grand Weapons and CC status
Now that’s out of the way, we’ve seen a lot of people asking what weapons to bar now that we got Folding Fans, or is [posts screenshot] enough to make a Zeph grid.
The list assumes that you now have most, if not all the gridpieces in your inventory right now and that you have enough gold bars to spare. This is also with the assumption that your Destiny Knuckles have been barred beforehand (these are not Grands but really good for raw damage in general), as they are usually your primary source of damage in Zeph grids.
- Galewing (1st copy)
- Galewing (2nd copy)
- Folding Fan (1st copy)
- Folding Fan (2nd copy)
- Clam (Jade Valuables is an available skill pre-MLB so it gets slotted whether if it is barred or not.)
- Clam (2nd copy, another Small Majesty won’t count towards the 15sk requirement if one is already FLB’d, which is why they are further down the priority list despite being great auto-slots.)
3rd copies (in the case of Clams and Fans) are not listed because there isn’t much space for 3rd copies now unless you’re building for extra grids. Because Destiny Knuckles are still great you can still run them in a 2-2-2-2 setup, the remaining slots being taken up by Opus and Ultima weapons. For Rhomphaia setups, you would probably take out either the second Clam or second Destiny Knuckle so that you can actually put your Opus in the grid slots.
As for Folding Fans, if you don’t have them and cannot spark for them at all right now because you blew everything on Summer (September is also generally an awkward time to spark because it is after Summer and before Halloween and Christmas periods), it’s not the end of the world – you benefit most from the gridpiece in decked out Zeph grids; basically when you already completed the foundations of it before its release. Because of how the weapon works, it is a “win more” kind of weapon.
As for Creepy Claws‘ status as a gridpiece right now, its only usage would only be if you are missing a 2nd Galewing; this also applied even before Kaguya fans came in. Aside from that, it is now almost never seen on grids unless you need a good Luchador MH.
