BrantBuild and Guide

Brant is a 5-star Fusion Sword Hybrid character who’s defined by his ability to deal great personal damage while having the potential to buff another DPS character on the team thanks to his Outro skill. This enables more unique team archetypes where, instead of concentrating damage into a single character, multiple characters contribute to the total, aka a Dual DPS team. He additionally sports sustain abilities in the form of Heals and Shields, and most of his kit involves Mid-Air attacks. This makes him a great multi-purpose character who’s able to fill many roles in a single team slot whilst also being relatively safe in the air.

Like many other Wuthering Waves characters, Brant’s kit is centered around his Forte Circuit with the majority of his other abilities connecting to it in some way. His Forte is called “Bravo” and is considered full at 100 points after which he is able to cast the enhanced version of his Resonance Skill “Returned from Ashes” which deals tremendous damage and scales off Basic Attack DMG. “Returned from Ashes” makes up a significant portion of his overall damage and fills up his Concerto Energy by half, meaning building up to this Forte skill as fast as possible is a priority and should put you in a great position to trigger Brant’s Outro skill right after, assuming you fully exploit his kit. Additionally, it enables him to gradually heal the party every 25 points of “Bravo” and to gain flat ATK - both of these are dependent on his Energy Regen.

Brant’s Forte gauge is filled in 3 ways:

• Via Basic Attacks;

• Via Intro Skills;

• Via regular Resonance Skills (mostly unused, not worth it).

His Basic Attacks are the most important method of all of these and are essential to his kit, due to Brant’s kit revolving around building his Forte Gauge to full as quickly as possible. However, his grounded Basic Attacks offer very little Forte Gauge gain; the massive Forte Gauge build-up is found in his Mid-Air Basic Attacks, which he’ll end up relying upon the most. His full chain of Basic Attacks, when paired with an Intro skill, are enough to fill his Forte Gauge. However, we can optimize it more by instead exploiting his Charged Attack and backflip mechanics. By holding down Basic Attack, Brant will perform backflips automatically for extra damage and causes the next attack in his Basic chain to be followed by a powerful Charged Attack that enables him to build up his Forte gauge quickly and efficiently. This makes Brant extremely straightforward to play as his playstyle pretty much amounts to holding down Basic Attack until his Forte is full. However, before we get to do that, a few key abilities need to be performed, namely:

Brant’s Intro skill, on top of doing minor damage, has two additional effects: one being generating a quarter of his Forte Gauge and the second enables him to start his Mid-Air attack sequence from stage 2 instead of 1. These specifics make using his Intro skill necessary to his optimized rotations — due to the extra Forte gain.

Brant’s Ultimate also does significantly more than just minor AoE damage: it heals the whole party based on his Energy Regen, significantly increases the flat ATK boost gained from his Forte Circuit when performing his enhanced skill Returned to Ashes and lastly, it instantly puts him into Mid-Air and doubles his Forte Gauge generation from any source other than Intro skills.

Therefore, his gameplay amounts to Brant casting his Intro, immediately following up with his Ultimate and then simply following up by holding down Basic Attack until his Forte Gauge is full. At this point he can cast his enhanced skill and is ready to Swap-Out after it’s performed. These actions make full use of his kit in a simplistic yet ingenious way.

At its core, we’ve already established that Brant’s gameplay is fundamentally simple. However, don’t be fooled by the simplicity of it as his Forte skill hits stupidly hard and is able to deal a huge portion of the team’s damage by itself. In fact, it hits hard enough to be able to completely justify him in a traditional Hypercarry team where Brant’s doing the overwhelming majority of the team’s total damage. Granted, this doesn’t make full use of his kit as his Outro is very valuable, however it remains a totally valid teambuilding choice.

Despite having healing and shielding, Brant doesn’t fill the role of a generalist Healer like Shorekeeper or Verina, however, running him in addition to one makes things even more comfortable thanks to the extra Sustain available.

In contrast his other supportive capability his Outro is far more useful as the combo of Resonance Skill and Fusion DMG amplification is not only very appreciated on a number of characters like Changli and Chixia, but can also extend to general Fusion DMG dealers like Encore and general Skill DMG dealers like Carlotta or even Jinhsi (however those are harder to exploit as they require extensive Quick-Swap knowledge).

Before getting too excited about building Brant, there is one thing that must be highlighted and it’s the main challenge with his kit — his massive Energy Regen requirements. Grant gains a significant amount of Flat ATK for each % of Energy Regen he possesses over 150% up to a cap of 280% (including the 100% Base Energy Regen). This makes Energy Regen one of his best offensive stats to have, not to mention the fact it’s required in order to access his Ultimate every rotation. To make it even worse, Brant’s Signature Echo Set, a set which is a substantial damage gain for him over alternatives, also requires an absurd 250% total Energy Regen (including the 100% Base Energy Regen).

All this means that Energy Regen is a stat he can’t avoid. He needs it on his Echo Main Stats, Sub Stats, and if you have any intention of getting close to maxing out his Passive bonuses or using his Signature Echo Set, his Weapon as well. Fortunately as long as you have enough Energy to gain his Ultimate every Rotation (200% including Base should be enough) all you’ll be losing out on is damage, as you can sub out his Signature Echo Set with 5P Molten Rift at the cost of only needing to press his skill once before doing his full rotation. Getting as much Energy Regen as possible is always a goal of Brant’s but doing so at the cost of other high value offensive stats like CRIT isn’t always worth it even if it means using a lower power set for a while.

Based on the above, it should be clear Brant has higher Echo requirements than most, especially if you intend to avoid using an Energy Regen weapon, although that shouldn’t stop you from building him as he packs quite the punch when fully geared up. Fortunately or unfortunately, based on who you ask, Brant has a quick fix to his gearing woes, his Signature Weapon Unflickering Valor. This weapon is totally tailored towards him and offers him a substantial amount of Energy Regen he needs, while providing the Basic Attack DMG bonus he needs to hit even harder with his Forte skill, and even a minor amount of CRIT Rate for his CRIT requirements to be slightly reduced. This weapon not only makes him incredibly easy to build on Tidebreaking Courage — it makes him reach a different level of viability when he’s built properly.

The substantial amount of Energy Regen it gives is enough for you to run a Fusion DMG bonus 3 cost Echo instead of 2 Energy Regen 3 cost Echoes; this makes his damage potential skyrocket as DMG bonus is one of his best stats to invest into — something that his weapon leans into even more. Remember that his base ATK is low compared to other DPS units, so ATK% isn’t too profitable and the flat ATK gains from his Forte/Ultimate hold a lot more meaning in comparison due to this. If it was only up to us, we’d suggest pulling Brant with his Signature Weapon if you really want to play him, and otherwise not pulling Brant at all; however, if you like the character and don’t have the resources required to pull his Signature Weapon, by all means pull him and have fun.

To summarize, Brant ends up as a character who has a lot of potential, can work in multiple team archetypes, can fill many roles on a team efficiently, and yet has a ton of his potential locked behind extra gear that costs a LOT of Astrites. And if his Signature Weapon alone wasn’t enough, he even scales off his first 3 early Sequences really well. He will still work at a baseline S0 level with Emerald of Genesis on Molten Rift; however, a ton of his potential is locked behind his extra upgrades. With that being said, his Mid-Air playstyle is enjoyable and when Brant does get to work, he works brilliantly. While he isn’t top tier by any means, he remains a strong contender to add that little bit of extra damage you might need to clear the endgame of Wuthering Waves.