Zhuang Fangyi Guide and Best Build

Kit Intro

Zhuang Fangyi is a 6-star, Electric, Arts Unit Striker that redefines what it means to be a carry. Her core mechanics revolve around her Ultimate state and Electrification: building and consuming it to deploy “Sunderblades” in the field that can be detonated for heavy damage.

To the left of the controlled Operator’s UI is a set of 9 diamond-shaped pips, which track the number of Sunderblades out on the field. Each pip corresponds to a Sunderblade, with up to 9 being deployable at a given time, and each having an independent cooldown of 36 seconds.

Whenever Fangyi hits an enemy that has Electrification with her Battle Skill, she’ll consume it and deploy Sunderblades, with more of them being created the higher the reaction level. Right after she creates them, she channels them, dealing damage and recovering Ultimate energy for each one out on field.

This is similar to another Operator, Avywenna, but unlike her, Fangyi does not consume her deployed Sunderblades. This leads to a cycle of building Electrification, then consuming them to both build and trigger Sunderblades out on field, stacking them little by little until a storm of lightning is raining down on enemies with every cast.

Said loop repeats until Fangyi has enough Energy to use her Ultimate, which transforms her into the Empyrean of Truth, entering a state where her skills are enhanced and cutting the cooldown of her Combo Skill short, allowing for her to go through her rotation a lot faster and burst a lot harder.

Combo Skill

“Breath of Transformation” is said Combo Skill. It has a cooldown of 17s at Mastery 3 and is triggered when the controlled Operator’s Final Strike or Finisher lands on an enemy that’s under Electric Infliction. Such Inflictions are needed not just to trigger the skill, but to make use of its effect, as it will convert Electric Inflictions into Electrification levels at a 1:1 ratio. If Electrification is already present, then it will overwrite it with the count of Infliction stacks consumed +1.

• If the enemy has a level 3 Electrification and Fangyi consumes 1 Electric Infliction stack with her Combo Skill, it transforms it into a level 2 Electrification. 1 Infliction stack consumed + 1 = 2; the level of the existing Electrification is irrelevant.

• If the enemy has a level 1 Electrification and Fangyi consumes 2 Electric Infliction stacks with her Combo Skill, it would transform it into a level 3 Electrification. 2 Infliction stacks consumed + 1 = 3; so long as an Electrification is present, it gets a + 1.

• If an enemy has no Electrification and Fangyi consumes 3 Electric Infliction stacks with her Combo Skill, it would transform it into a level 3 Electrification. 3 Infliction stacks consumed and nothing else, as Electrification was not present.

On top of its reaction properties, this skill will also generate an additional 10 Ultimate Energy per Infliction stack consumed.

Note: Leveling this skill is often a priority despite it not being Fangyi’s highest source of damage, as the cooldown reduction effect is important to making sure Sunderblades don’t time out.

Battle Skill

“Matra of Sundering” is Fangyi’s Battle Skill, and it’s by far her most damaging ability.

As previously mentioned, it consumes Electrification to generate Sunderblades, with a maximum of 3 per cast. It creates 1 for every level of Electrification consumed + 1. So a level 2 Electrification is enough for 3 Sunderblades. If the enemy has no Electrification and there are fewer than 3 Sunderblades on the field, then it will create 1 regardless of reaction consumption.

After Fangyi deploys Sunderblades, then she will channel them for Thunder Strikes: each Sunderblade yields 1 hit, with the final Thunder Strike hitting 6 times harder than normal. As there can only be 9 Sunderblades out at once, this means it can deal up to 9 Thunder Strikes per cast. There’s also a bonus damage multiplier for the number of Electrification stacks consumed, which is applied to every hit.

This skill has the added effect of generating an additional 6 Energy with every Thunder Strike, being Fangyi’s primary way to build up to her Ultimate.

It’s worth noting that the more Sunderblades there are, the longer the skill animation is. Thankfully, once Thunder Strikes begin raining down, all of them are guaranteed to hit, which opens up the ability to Dodge cancel out of it. In fact, doing so is required to maintain Fangyi’s damage output, with it being especially problematic during her Ultimate state, where failing to Dodge cancel can reduce the total number of Battle Skills she’s able to cast.

Basic Attacks can also partially cancel the animation, but at a later point than Dodges.

Basic Attack

“Jolting Arts” is Fangyi’s Basic Attack, and it’s rather good.

It has decent damage multipliers, but is about average when it comes to stagger build and SP generation. There is an animation cancel point in the 3rd sequence, allowing her to skip the recovery frames from her sword summons, but even then the time save is rather minimal.

What makes it useful is in the utility value it provides. Sequences 1 through to 4 home in on enemies and sequence 5 is a moving beam of lightning that both travels far and has a wide hitbox. This makes it very easy to get Final Strikes on multiple enemies simultaneously.

Sequence 4 and 5 also allow for partial movement during their cast, which can be surprisingly helpful. It’s easy to chase after agile enemies so that they don’t move too far out of range and, in some cases, allows for Fangyi to avoid attacks without needing to Dodge.

Additional Mechanics

Separate from her skills is Fangyi’s Dodge, which has a unique behaviour. Her first Dodge works as normal, moving her a short distance away. If two Dodges are used in quick succession, then she gets a unique animation that turns her into a lightning bolt and has her cover twice the distance, all the while taking up less time.

While double Dodge animations aren’t unique (e.g. Gilberta, Lifeng, Pogranichnik), she stands out by having both the fastest and longest double Dodge of the cast at the time of her release.

Ultimate

“Smiting Tempest” is Fangyi’s Ultimate, costing 240 Energy and activating the Empyrean of Truth state for 25 seconds. The skill itself does no damage, instead working as an ‘install’ that alters the properties of her skills by enhancing all of them in some way.

Although Fangyi can deal a decent amount of damage while building energy, it’s only while in this state that she truly becomes a powerhouse of a unit.

Basic Attack

Jolting Arts is completely overhauled. Instead of being a 5 sequence string, it’s condensed into 3 sequences only, being significantly faster than its standard counterpart. Fangyi also gets full freedom of movement for every attack, with its speed matching that of her regular jog.

The range of its attacks is massively increased, they all gain a higher interrupt level resistance - so only knockbacks can stop it - and its damage scales with the Ultimate skill level instead (with higher multipliers at equivalent levels, but still considered Basic Attack damage).

Battle Skill

Matra of Sundering deals more damage, with Sunderblade Thunder Strikes being 80% stronger and the Electrification multiplier scaling doubling, as well as getting massively increased range. The final Thunder Strike also applies 1 Electric Infliction to targets hit, which allows for Fangyi to self-sustain her rotation without needing other teammates’ Inflictions.

The very first cast after Ultimate does not consume SP nor Electrification - so it benefits in full from the Arts DMG Taken effect - and is guaranteed to create 3 Sunderblades regardless of Electrification.

Combo Skill

Breath of Transformation has its cooldown tick 4 times faster, going from 17 seconds at Mastery 3 to 4.25 seconds, and it deals 50% more damage.

It should be observed that this is not a reduction to the cooldown, but an acceleration to its tick rate: if Fangyi’s Combo Skill has 8 seconds left before it’s usable and her Ultimate activates, it’ll recover in only 2 seconds.

Dodges

All of Fangyi’s Dodges are enhanced, making it so that she always transforms to lightning on use, with improved range and distance (similar to that of her regular double Dodge).

Note: Fangyi cannot gain any Ultimate Energy while in the Empyrean of Truth state, be it from her own abilities or the team’s SP spend. Sunderblades set-up during the Ultimate do remain however, which significantly speeds up the rate in which she can build up Energy after.

Talents

“Force of Nature” is Fangyi’s first Talent, and it grants her 18% Electric Amp for 5s after using her Battle Skill. This is then further increased by 2% for every Sunderblade Thunder Strike (up to a final Amp of 36%).

As every Thunder Strike increases the strength of the Amp, it means that the attacks get progressively stronger as it ramps up. Although the value of the Amp gets stronger with every hit, they do not refresh the buff’s duration! Likewise, if a second Battle Skill is used before the Amp buff expires, it will fully reset the increase and start from 18% again.

Note: The Thunder Strikes lead to an increase to the existing Amp. Effects that rely on gaining Amp, like Flickers in the Mist, do not build alongside the Thunder Strikes, and so demand multiple Battle Skill casts to stack.

“Ordained by Heaven” is her second Talent, and it is thoroughly defensive in its bonuses.

Fangyi gets a 9% chance to be completely immune to one instance of damage taken, with an extra 1% in chance for every Sunderblade (up to a final chance of 18%). When this effect is triggered, she’ll restore up to 18% of her Max HP, having a cooldown of 99s. While this can be somewhat helpful at surviving against heavy-hitting, 1-shot attacks, the low heal value and long cooldown means it isn’t a reliable form of sustain, so it doesn’t make much of a difference when determining whether a healer is required.

Energy

Fangyi has an obscenely high Ultimate Energy requirement, at 240. As a Striker, however, she is able to generate Energy quickly:

• 6.5 per 100 SP consumed from any team member (standard).

• 10 from Combo Skill use (standard).

• 10 additional Energy for every Infliction stack consumed by Combo Skill.

• 6 additional Energy for every Sunderblade Thunder Strike that hits an enemy.

As each Sunderblade Thunder Strike gives Energy, the more she has of them, the more she gains on Battle Skill use. As each cast can build up to 3 Sunderblades max, it’d take at least 3 sets of Combo → Battle Skill uses to reach the cap of 9:

Potential 0 - 3 Combo, 3 Battle, 600 SP Rotation | 3 + 6 + 9

Unfortunately, at P0, it isn’t enough for Ultimate without gear assistance. As a fully artificed Armour provides 16.02% Ultimate Gain Efficiency, it can be used as an off-piece to reach the required threshold.

This does assume that no Sunderblades have expired, as it relies on a 3 + 6 + 9 split. In the case of a 3 + 6 + 6 split, then numbers change:

Potential 0 - 3 Combo, 3 Battle, 600 SP Rotation | 3 + 6 + 6

In such situations, then the 32.04% from a fully artificed Kit can be used for a slight damage loss but more forgiving rotation.

Note: With proper play, 3 + 6 + 6 is unlikely to ever happen, as one can simply delay Fangyi’s first Battle Skill and buy almost 17s of additional time. It can still be a factor in some stages and bosses with intermissions and stalling mechanics though (e.g. Triaggelos).

However, there is a significant loss of damage from running Ultimate Gain Efficiency pieces. If possible swapping to full damage and leveraging a kit such as LYNX Slab yields substantial damage increases. Doing this will leave her short of energy, but this can be made up by making use of a 4th Fangyi Battle Skill:

Potential 0 - 3 Combo, 4 Battle, 700 SP Rotation | 3 + 6 + 9 + 7

The sheer amount of Energy being generated is more than enough to make it to the Ultimate Energy threshold. This is a perfectly doable set-up with SP positive or SP neutral allies, like a Fangyi | Perlica | Arclight | Gilberta team, or those using double Vanguards (Akekuri or Alesh). Unfortunately, SP hungry teammates, like Antal and Ardelia, do not allow for this, which can restrict gearing options when running with them. This is true even when considering extra Inflictions from Antal:

Potential 0 - 3 Combo, 3 Battle, 700 SP Rotation | 3 + 6 + 9 (Antal)

It’s from this point on that Potentials can impact rotations. With Fangyi’s Potential 1, she generates an additional Sunderblade on her first Battle Skill, bypassing the usual 3 Sunderblade creation limit.

The result is that she instead can follow a 4 + 7 + 9 split:

Potential 1 - 3 Combo, 3 Battle, 700 SP Rotation | 4 + 7 + 9 (Antal)

This allows for Fangyi to run with LYNX Slab instead of an Ultimate Gain Efficiency piece and still manage to get to her Ultimate with 3 Combo and Battle Skills, given that Antal is able to use his Combo Skill twice.

Note: This breakpoint is currently only accessible to Antal on release due to the extra Energy he supplies to Fangyi’s combo skill with his extra Inflictions.

The next breakpoint is at P4, which always allows for no Ultimate Gain Efficiency to be run regardless of team or rotation:

Potential 4 - 3 Combo, 3 Battle, 600 SP Rotation | 4 + 7 + 9

As the Ultimate Energy requirement drops by 15% to 204, Fangyi has no issues hitting her breakpoints regardless of what is used.

Gameplay

Fangyi’s general gameplay ends up being quite simple. As she needs to build up Sunderblades to gain Energy for her Ultimate, and her Combo Skill is an easy way to apply and/or enhance Electrification, rotations all tend to follow the same template:

• Use Perlica’s Battle Skill to apply Electric Infliction.

• Final Strike to trigger both Fangyi’s and Perlica’s Combo Skill.

  • Make sure to have Perlica use her Combo Skill last, as timestop mechanics mean that she will apply her Electrification first, which is then +1 from Fangyi’s Combo Skill.

• Use Fangyi’s Battle Skill to consume a level 2 Electrification and create 3 Sunderblades.

• Repeat the above x2.

At this point, there are 9 Sunderblades on field, so what happens next changes depending on team and gear.

If at P0 with an Energy Gain Efficiency piece, or at P4+, then Fangyi has enough to use her Ultimate:

• Ultimate.

• Battle Skill (free first cast).

• Final Strike to trigger Fangyi’s Combo Skill, then use it.

• Battle Skill.

• Final Strike to trigger Fangyi’s Combo Skill, then use it.

• Repeat the above until Ultimate expires.

If at P0 with LYNX Slab, then use a 4th Fangyi Battle Skill before the Ultimate, as that would generate enough Energy to hit the threshold.

With how fast Fangyi cycles through Final Strikes and Combo Skills in her Ultimate, it’s unlikely that there’ll be enough SP leftover to spend on other Operator skills, so be sure to set-up buffs/debuffs beforehand. While this ends up being a rather simple flowchart to follow in theory, there are things to watch out for.

Instead of using Fangyi’s Battle Skill right after her Combo Skill lands, it’s better to wait for as long as possible before doing so on the 1st set of Sunderblades. That way, there is very little risk of them expiring by the time the 3rd set has been deployed.

This is good practice for certain teammates too, as by slightly delaying the reaction consumption, it’s possible for Arclight to get 2 uses of her Combo Skill every cycle, resulting in a notable increase to SP recovery for the team.

There’s also adaptations that need to be made on the fly. For example, unloading most team Ultimates as Fangyi uses her own Ultimate is good to stack up relevant buffs in time for her free Battle Skill cast.

Which Ultimates are used and how long is spent on them can cause alignment issues. As Fangyi’s 1st Battle Skill does not consume Electrification, this means that Electric Inflictions can be built up and converted with Arclight’s Ultimate so that the Battle Skill benefits from the Arts DMG Taken effect. Such a scenario means the Electrification isn’t cleared, and multiple Ultimate cutscenes can buy enough time for Perlica’s Combo Skill to be ready early. Using it, however, would overwrite the Electrification from Arclight’s Ultimate, so delaying it and making use of only Fangyi’s Combo Skill at first can lead to higher damage.

Likewise, if Gilberta is on the team with Arclight, then she can instead use her Ultimate to ‘snipe’ the Electric Infliction before it’s converted into Electrification. While this does mean losing out on the Arts DMG Taken effect for the 1st Fangyi Battle Skill, the gain from having Corrosion for multiple casts leads to better results.

There’s a multitude of different adjustments that can be made. Working with a team and integrating their individual skills and mechanics into a rotation is part of the skill expression of Fangyi teams.