Should you pull Willow?

Willow is one of the strongest Damage Dealers in the game, dealing high damage per turn in [Poison] teams by converting stacks of it into [Hag’s Bane], which does increasingly more damage as it's stacked over the turns. Despite her power, whether you should pull her or not relies on one thing: Do you have Tuesday?

Without Tuesday and her [Fear’s Cradle] buff, Willow’s damage plummets so dramatically that she can’t even compete with her 1.2 predecessor Jessica as it allows [Poison] to Crit, which it normally cannot.

Willow is a 6-star Arcanist of the Plant Afflatus. She is the second cornerstone of the Poison team, using her unique [Poison] adjacent debuff, she destroys any long-form content. Note that she gets significantly weaker if not paired with Tuesday.

Her kit revolves around the [Hag's Bane] debuff. This is a debuff that stacks on itself (think of the [Burn] debuff) and is considered [Poison]. At the end of the round, it increases its own DMG Dealt based on how often it's triggered per round (up to 4 times per round, max 10 stacks). Of course, Willow has ways of triggering this debuff more than once per round.

Let's start with how she generates [Hag's Bane]. For this she uses "Hag's Advice", which converts existing stacks of [Poison] into [Hag's Bane]. To do this you need sources of [Poison] such as Tuesday or Sotheby, as the only way Willow can generate [Poison] is with her Insight 1.

On the other hand we have "Hag's Gratitude", which consumes [Poison] stacks and triggers [Hag's Bane] 1 time (to work towards the goal of triggering its multiple times per round).

Her Ultimate "In The Fire, In The Shadow" is the most important part of her kit. It enters her into the [Ancient Ritual] channel. While active, [Hag's Bane] is considered to have triggered an amount of times per round even if it hasn't. In addition, to keep the channel active, Willow consumes around 4+ Moxie per round and inflicts [Hag's Bane] on all enemies equal to the consumed amount of Moxie. If not enough Moxie is available to consume, the channel ends and she casts “Ending Pose” which is a mass attack that scales its damage with the amount of [Hag's Bane] on the target.

Gameplay

Willow pushes [Poison] into a meta position, with a caveat.

If you don't have Tuesday, don't even bother playing Willow. Without the combo, Willow's damage drops so dramatically she gets beaten out by Jessica.

Outside of that, there's a lot to unpack. Right off the bat, [Hag's Bane] has a great modifier, layers on itself, and an insane modifier once the triggers are fully stacked. This is easy to do if you keep [Ancient Ritual] active, which is the primary gimmick and problem surrounding her kit. The longer you keep it active, the stronger you make [Hag's Bane] and the harder “Ending Pose” will hit; do it wrong (i.e. ending early or miss timing it) and your damage plummets.

Do it right and you're hitting your enemies with ATK*50% Genesis DMG (per stack of [Hag's Bane]). As you'll be running, on average, 7 or more stacks, it'll be stacking quite considerably.

This is ALL under the presumption that Tuesday is present in your team. The “Ending Pose” cast is potentially strong, but a majority of the damage output is tied to the [Hag's Bane] triggers per round. As it is considered [Poison], it cannot normally Crit. To help this, Tuesday has an effect called [Fear's Cradle] that allows [Poison] to Crit, which also affects [Hag's Bane]. This is one of the main reasons that Willow without Tuesday is almost non-functional.

The downside to this is [Ancient Ritual]. Willow's Insight 3 makes it so that she gains extra Moxie while in the channel, meaning that you'll need to dedicate at least 2 AP per round to casting/merging with her in order to upkeep it. Tuesday helps a little with [Room Service] allowing you to overcap on Moxie, but she brings the problem of needing to upkeep her Array, which makes you required to dedicate 1-2 AP per round to casting/merging with her. This gives VERY little room for other units to act, forcing you into picking units with a relatively AP-positive playstyle.

Pros & Cons

Completely fine at P0.

If you’ve been waiting eagerly to complete that [Poison] team and seek to invest into Willow for this reason there are a few Portraits to further optimize her damage. In our opinion, you’re looking at Portrait 1 and 2 here (luckily they’re the early ones).

Portrait 1 increases the Genesis DMG Dealt of [Hag’s Bane] from 20% of ATK to 24%. This may seem minor, but it ramps over the course of a fight especially as you keep the debuff applied.

Portrait 2 increases the Genesis DMG Dealt of the [Poison] inflicted by her Insight and, more importantly, increases the damage ramp of [Hag’s Bane] from 40% per trigger to 45%.

Of course, Portrait 5 is rather strong (further increases the damage ramp to 50%), but it’s by no means necessary to make Willow a strong character.

Poison Team, Poison Team, Poison Team. Anything that inflicts [Poison] or is somehow supported by whatever Tuesday does without eating too much AP does well. Normally, you’re running Vila as Healer for [Song of Passion], however, if you’re struggling to stay alive, a healbot Sotheby with Euphoria works just as well!

Notable synergies include:

Tuesday

Sotheby

J

Kakania

Future notable synergies: N/A

Here are the best Psychubes you can use on Willow:

Her Mournful Face

Offbeat Strides2.3

R10 Build (Equibalance Recommended)

Toxic Therapists[GLB]

Damage Dealer

Support

Sustain

TEAM EXPLANATION

• 4th slot options: Kakania
• Poison is a very powerful archetype, wielding several of the strongest characters in the game. Despite this it is lacking in variety options compared to its direct competitor: Follow-Up. This doesn’t hurt the team though, as when the characters that feature in it come together, it does just as well as Follow-Up.
• Tuesday is a must here. Her [Fear’s Cradle] massively boosting [Poison] application and allowing it to Crit is key in making any Poison-oriented team work, especially this one, as [Hag’s Bane] is considered a [Poison] effect. In addition, Tuesday’s [Room Service] extends the time that you can keep Willow’s [Ancient Ritual] channel active by allowing you to overcap on Moxie.
• But it doesn’t stop there. Kakania provides both AFK DMG Reduction and Genesis DMG output (with some healing on the side). This not only allows Willow+Tuesday to eat all her would-be AP, it benefits from Tuesday’s +Genesis DMG Taken debuff as well, and [Solace] as an ATK buff scales well with [Poison].
• Vila or Euphoria Sotheby are your healer options here. It’s pretty simple: if you’re going for damage you run Vila, if you need survivability you run healbot Euphoria Sotheby. If you happen to want to run J for the extra AP-positivity, a standard J+Babel combo works as well due to providing AP-positive debuff application.