MercuriaBuild and Guide

Mercuria is a 6✦ rarity character from the Spirit afflatus who deals Mental damage and belongs to the Support class. Mercuria is one of the many support characters in the game who is extremely effective, and in this case, she comes with a unique new effect. Her Ultimate, “Morning Star for the Night”, is a mass attack that dispels buffs from enemies, deals damage, and grants allies a new status called [Rank Up] for 2 rounds. This status essentially increases your Incantation rank by 1; however, it doesn’t actually affect the Incantation’s effects and multipliers. The rank-up is purely for triggering effects that reference Incantation ranks. She also has self-synergy thanks to her passive ability, “Lengthy Journey”.

She gains 8 stacks of [Cosmic Energy] when entering battle, which is important to note as it forms a crucial part of her gameplay. A P0, Cosmic Energy increases the party's damage by 2% per stack, up to a maximum of 25 stacks, and these stacks cannot be dispelled. This means that with a high number of stacks, you can deal a significant amount of damage. Additionally, with her first passive ability, aside from gaining stacks when entering battle, she also gains them whenever allies use Incantations. The higher the Incantation rank, the more [Cosmic Energy] stacks she will receive. This creates synergy with her own Incantation rank-up effects. It should be noted that [Cosmic Energy] gained only lasts 2 rounds, independent of each other. 

Another bonus of her passive is that she can also gain Moxie based on the number of allies with natural Afflatuses (Plant, Beast, Mineral, Star), up to 3. This is very flexible, allowing you to benefit from this when using any of those 4 types in your teams, which is likely. Her damage buffs and powerful passives don't end there, as her Insight III provides further benefits. If her stacks of [Cosmic Energy] are above 9, all allies gain 30% Crit DMG, and if 16 stacks or more are reached, all allies receive +20% Incantation Might. Furthermore, if allies have used two or more rank 3 Incantations, her own Moxie will increase.

With that aside, her actual Incantations are pretty easy to understand. “Restless Souls” is a simple single-target attack that also restores the HP of the ally with the lowest HP. Her other Incantation, “Self Focusing” is a mass critical rate buff that also gains 4 [Cosmic Energy]. Mercuria is a fairly easy character to fit into most teams thanks to her high damage buff, and since most teams will have some critical-based characters, her crit rate buff will almost always be useful.

One important thing to take note, and also one of Mercuria’s biggest downsides, is that at P0 she can be a bit clunky to play. To the point that you can get a more stable performance from her buffs if she doesn’t act at all. A core part of her gameplay being locked behind Portraits made her a quite controversial character. Regardless if you choose to invest on Portraits or follow the P0 and not acting patch, it’s possible to make good use of her kit if you keep these distinctions in mind.