Leona guide & review

The latest member of Happy Zoo Squad is finally here! Leona brings a new gameplay definition to Shotgun (SG) characters: Critical. Previously, after the release of various powerful characters, SG was put in a weird spot. DPS meta was all about core hits and piercing, so much that SG rarely had a chance to shine. With Leona, SG now has their own distinctive playstyle. Will they finally be able to reclaim their lost throne?

Leona introduces some unprecedented buffs into the game. From extended effective range to increased number of pellets, her skillset can be considered unique on its own. However, most of her abilities are unfortunately restricted to SG weapons, which means that she can only buff certain characters that currently have no place in meta, reducing her versatility and overall worth. That aside, let's take a look at each of her skills and analyze it:

Skill 1

■ Activates after 5 normal attacks. Affects all allies.

Roar: Critical Rate ▲ 2.62%, stacks up to 5 times and lasts for 5 sec.

■ Activates after 15 normal attacks. Affects all allies with a Shotgun.

Maximum Effective Range ▲ 20% for 10 sec.

Two of Leona's primary strengths are her Maximum Optimal Range for SG units as well as the permanent CRIT Rate. Overall, the CRIT Rate boost (termed as Roar in-game) is always a welcome damage boost, especially for SGs, that synergizes well with other CRIT Rate and Damage buffs from her other skills, Tove's, and even Sugar's. It also lasts permanently as long as Leona has a valid target but requires some stacking to reach max stacks.

What about the Maximum Optimal Range? The optimal range here refers to the increased damage dealt (0.3x multiplier) by attacks landed when the enemy is in the effective range of that specific weapon. If you examine the numbers, you would think that this buff allows SGs to be effective both in short range and within AR's range, boosting their adaptability against enemies who are situated slightly farther. But this could not be more wrong.

What's worse is that while the ×0.3 bonus multiplier seems big, it is unfortunately diluted by other major modifiers: 0.5x on Full Burst, 0.5x+ with critical hits, and 1x with core hits. Even worse, this buff only lasts 10 seconds, whereas to activate this buff, she needs to shoot 15 times, which also normally takes 10 seconds. Reloading will definitely break the chain. Luckily, the passive ATK Speed provided by Tove, the best SG buffer right now, will allow her to maintain stacks more comfortably, that is if Tove herself does not drop her stacks.

Skill 2

■ Activates when entering Full Burst. Affects all allies.

Hit Rate ▲ 20.28% for 10 sec.

■ Activates when entering Full Burst. Affects 2 ally units with the highest ATK and a Shotgun.

Increases number of pellets by 5 for 10 sec.

At the moment, this skill is half-useful, in a way that the Hit Rate buff is actually great, but the Pellet Count Boost is disappointing. This is the second part of her kit that can be misleading. Since Shotguns are naturally inaccurate, reducing the spread via boosting Hit Rate will result in more pellets hitting the enemy, and in turn, more core hits as well. This will allow them to hit thinner or farther enemies without much damage loss from missing. On the other hand, the Pellet Count Boost is currently meaningless as they do NOT noticeably boost your damage output at all. This is counter-intuitive indeed, but the increased pellet count does not lead to more damage per shot because each pellet will now deal less damage. You might think: wouldn't that allow more shots to land against thinner enemies? Theoretically, yes, but your damage does not actually improve.

Let's dig deep into Hit Rate. Based on Korean's testing, the picture above shows the interaction table of how Hit Rate affects weapon's spread (the gray circle around your crosshair). Green cells indicate that your gun currently has AR's spread (comparable to Scarlet fully core-hitting against Solo Raid Material H's core). Red cells indicate full accuracy, like MGs, against any enemies with an accessible core. Therefore, your main checkpoint would be 75% (to match AR) and any higher is welcome. Unfortunately, right now, only Sugar can reach this high with a few Hit Rate OLs.

Burst

■ Affects all allies.

Critical Damage ▲ 34.64% for 10 sec.

■ Activates when the caster's Roar is fully stacked. Affects all allies with a Shotgun.

Critical Rate ▲ 21.32% for 10 sec.

A momentary DPS boost for all SGs in team! This skill comprises two components: CRIT Damage for all allies and an impactful CRIT Rate buff to all SGs in team. Now, this skill may look dull at first, but if you take a step back and examine Leona's entire kit from a bigger perspective, it's actually perfect for her CRIT-driven kit, despite the general consensus that CRIT equals trash. So far, we learned that she provides the team with over 30% CRIT Rate at max level. Pair this with the base 15%, alongside CRIT Rate buffs from Tove and Sugar (and possibly OLs), and you'll find that CRIT Damage does not seem so bad anymore, particularly for SGs. Even then, do note that she needs 5 Roar stacks before the CRIT Rate buff can activate, which means your first rotation will be devoid of it.

Leona is designed for SGs, and so is Tove. However, Tove imparts a bigger impact compared to Leona, so in an ideal world, you would always want them to be together. Both are them are restricted to buffing SG teams, so any content where SG is an option will also be their battleground.

Campaign:

Leona will not see much use at all in Campaign as Shotguns perform poorly in Campaign.

Union Raid

With only 3 teams required for Union Raid, SG will not see much usage. This is because there are much better teams to deploy, and most of them are cost-efficient and effective against all sorts of bosses. Still, if you insist on using SGs as one of your team of choice, you will be delighted to know that they might compete with a non-fully-invested Dorothy + SAnis + Scarlet team. The main catch is all of your SG units, including Leona herself, must be super-invested. Is that a good idea? Maybe not.

Sugar with Leona and Tove as support can deal more damage than Scarlet with Dorothy + S.Anis support. Problem is, as a whole, Dorothy and SAnis will outdamage the other units that you use in the SG team by A LOT. Not to mention, dropping your fully invested Scarlet + Doro + S.Anis for a similarly performing team while investing 10/10/10 on Leona + Tove + Sugar with full OL is just going to burn your savings.

Solo Raid

At this time, even the most invested SG teams would have a hard time competing against the current established meta teams. Nevertheless, since Solo Raid requires 5 teams, you may end up using them if you don't have other sub-meta DPS like 2B, or if you don't own all of the meta units. Depending on how stacked your current teams are (especially SW), SG teams might actually do you a favor as Team 4 or 5.

Simulation Overlock

With many gimmicky restrictions related to weapon types and burst types, SGs may be valuable in the future. Remember that for full rewards, you need to pick a lot of restrictions, and that includes picking restrictions that limit team flexibility. For the current beta season, they may not be necessary. However, we do believe that the restrictions may change every season, so stay vigilant!

PVP

Do NOT even think about deploying her in PvP. Poli is a wiser choice if you are looking for a similar weapon type.

Gear Investments

An interesting finding with SG teams is that supports actually deal notable damage compared to true SG DPS (Sugar, Guilty). This is especially true with most of Leona's and Tove's buffs affecting all SGs in team. Because of this, you may consider OL-ing Leona and obtaining a few DPS-boosting OL lines, such as ATK or Max Ammo. You will definitely see an increased DPS output. It is expensive, yes, so it is not ideal at all.

Skill Investments

• Skill 1: 4
• The Maximum Optimal Range already reaches its max value at Level 1. Thus, what you're gaining per level is a tiny increment of CRIT Rate. We recommend leaving it at 4 since its reinforcement is not worth the cost.

• Skill 2: 4/7
• Half of this skill is useless since Pellet Count does not offer much. On the other hand, Hit Rate can help your SGs land more core-hits, but at lower values, you may not even see any noticeable difference. Thus, we recommend leaving it at Level 4, or 7 if you understand how to maximize this skill effectiveness through OL and other skills. Level 10 is not recommended since it is only a ~3% Hitrate buff.
• Burst: 4-10
• Leona' Burst Skill has a good value and a decent scaling. You may consider investing in this skill, should you have abundant resources and are making a crit-build team. Otherwise, leaving it at 4 or 7 would be adequate, especially if you need to spare some resources for other more powerful units. According to our testing, each level boosts Sugar's DPS by around 0.7% on average, but remember that this buff also affects all SGs in team, not only Sugar. Hence, the actual team damage boost may be higher.

Cube Investments

Both Bastion and Resilience would serve her well for PvE purposes for more reliable Roar (Skill 1) stacking.

Team #1 - Crit Team

Burst 1

Burst 2

Burst 3

Burst 3

Burst 3

This team does not have healing, so it has restricted use for specific bosses only, such as Land Eater or Gravedigger. However, when invested, this team can give outputs for SAnis and Scarlet higher than their usual Dorothy + Privaty pair! However, since Volume is usually either with Blanc Noir or Tia Naga, this team recommendation is mostly for people who lack one of these pairs.

Team #2 - Bossing Team with Heals

Burst 1

Burst 2

Burst 3

Burst Flex

Burst Flex

You will lose about 7% DPS with Sugar due to fewer bursts than normal, but it's comfy because you have a healer to back you up. Ideally, use this team against Solo Bosses. Boss 1, 2 and 4 in Union Raids are usually a decent option for SGs.

Team #3 - Bossing Team w/o Heals

Burst 1

Burst 2

Burst 3

Burst 3

Burst 2

This team can be used in UR once you pass a certain level. Either that, or use it against bosses then rarely deal damage to you, such as Gravedigger, allowing your team going full DPS race over 180s.

Pull if you are an SG simp, especially Sugar's, or Leona's simp, else just skip. However, if in the future they release a unit that synergizes with Leona well, like a unit whose damage scales off pellet count, has CDR, or has tons of built-in CRIT, then Leona may be seeing more usage. For now, though, she is just not worth it.