Wuthering Waves (WW)ChisaBuild and Guide

Chisa is a 5-star Havoc Broadblade Negative Status-oriented Support serving as the third slot teammate to Negative Status teams, capable of applying Havoc Bane which provides DEF Shred on the enemy, alongside extra DEF Ignore and DMG Bonus buffs for Negative Status teammates, as well as being able to increase the stack count of all Negative Statuses applied on enemies. Functional in single-target and AoE via grouping and multi-wave Negative Status application, while also having healing and a modicum of personal damage, Chisa presents herself as a generalist Support for Negative Status teams.

Key Mechanics - Who does Chisa buff and how?

Chisa is capable of providing a specialized array of buffs for Negative Status-oriented team members, with a modicum of generally applicable damage increases, as follows:

• Unseen Snare: Enables Chisa to apply Havoc Bane to enemies every 2s, and allows allies with Thread of Bane to ignore 18% of the afflicted enemy’s DEF.

• Havoc Bane: Up to 12% DEF Shred at 6 stacks. Applied to the enemy by Chisa every 2s in the Unseen Snare status.

• Thread of Bane: Provides 18% DEF Ignore to any character who applies a Negative Status on the enemy or inflicts Negative Status damage. Provides nothing to any characters who do not fulfill either condition.

• Signature Weapon (Kumokiri): Provides 24% general DMG Bonus to any character who inflicts a Negative Status on the enemy. Provides nothing to any character who does not fulfill this condition.

• Outro: Allows any character who damages any enemy to increase the maximum stacks applicable of any Negative Status and Electro Rage by 3.

All of these buffs will be permanently active in battle assuming any given character in the team can fulfill all activation conditions and the rotation lasts 30s or less (which is over the standard for any viable team in the game, generally around 25 to 28s). Also, all of her buffs and debuffs have mechanics intended to make them still applicable across several waves of enemies on Negative Status characters (but the ramp-up time across several waves of enemies still does make it less effective than in single-target encounters).

What’s important to note here is that almost all of these buffs either only pertain to Negative Status or only apply to characters who can inflict their own Negative Status/deal Negative Status type damage during their own rotation. Buffs will NOT apply if the character who wants to receive the majority of Chisa’s buffs is not able to fulfill these conditions by themselves. This makes most of Chisa’s kit not functional in any non-Negative Status teams. Ideally, the whole team has to apply their own Negative Status for Chisa to function at her maximum potential.

In other words, Chisa only functions in Negative Status-focused teams, and her use case as a generalist Support for non-Negative Status teams is nonexistent since even free characters like Baizhi can fulfill that role better. Additionally, her personal damage is too low to allow her to function effectively as a DPS.

It’s also worth noting her kit provides DEF Ignore (18%) and DEF Shred (12% at max Havoc Bane). Aside from the difference that Ignore is character-applied and Shred is enemy-applied, they function as different parts of the enemy DEF calculation. In the case of DEF reduction, it becomes more effective the more of it is reduced (similarly to RES reduction), so this actually works against Chisa since 30% Ignore or 30% Shred would actually shred more of the enemy’s DEF than the 18% Ignore and 12% Shred that she has.

However, enemy DEF is one of the few parameters that influence direct Negative Status damage (damage from ticks of Spectro Frazzle/Aero Erosion for example). Chisa’s unique ability to provide this DEF reduction may suggest that she could work with direct Negative Status damage dealers much more effectively than other Supports.

Lastly, her Forte Gauge called Ring of Chainsaw is the core of her own rotation. When her Forte Gauge is filled, she gains access to an Enhanced Skill where she gains access to Enhanced Chainsaw Basic Attacks which will conclude her rotation once the final attack has been cast, called Eradication. There are several ways to achieve this, but simply tapping Basic Attack during this state and then Swap Cancelling the last attack has proven to be most efficient, to minimize rotation time costs.

Attacks used in her rotations and their effects

Chisa is mostly a Basic Attack-focused character with similar gameplay to characters like Galbrena and Lupa, so she will feel very familiar to players already used to those characters. This is because her Ultimate, Skill and Intro are all used once per rotation (or twice for her Skill in her Opener since an Intro is lacking) and other than that she only ever wants to press Basic Attack as her main rotation input.

A typical loop rotation will have her use her Intro for some damage and it immediately allows her to transition into Basic Attack 2. It also triggers the part of her Inherent Passive 2 which grants her 20% Havoc DMG and Healing Bonus for her rotation.

She then follows with some of her 5-part Basic Attack with her Basic Attack 2, 3 (also called Rending Lunge), and 4 (called Death Snip). Her Basic Attack 5 (called Thread Withdrawn) is not necessary to fulfill her Forte Gauge and is hence skippable.

Since her Forte Gauge is almost full, she can cancel the animation endlag via her Ultimate which deals a good amount of damage, provides a good amount of healing to the entire team and restores some Forte while enhancing the damage of her Chainsaw Attacks. Finally, she can then cast her enhanced Skill called Serrated Loop, cast her Chainsaw Basic Attacks until she casts the last one, Eradication, that she can Swap Cancel out of as soon as it is cast (this concludes her rotation).

For special effects, Death Snip has an additional DMG multiplier that can be obtained by pressing Basic Attack again a couple of times during the cast, so make sure to do this. It also provides some healing to the team. Additionally, her Eradication attack gains a boost of damage depending on how much Forte Gauge is left and provides a sizable Shield to the entire team, reminiscent of Brant’s, making her Sustain capabilities quite noteworthy.

She additionally sports a Dodge Counter which does not get in the way of her rotations that much, whether in her base state or her Chainsaw State; so make use of it if needed.

During her Opener, Chisa can replace her Intro by a use of her base Skill which immediately allows her to transition into her Basic 3. It can then be interrupted by her Ultimate to start another Basic chain starting from Basic 2 into Death Snip to fulfill both her Forte and Concerto needs.

Unused attacks in her rotations

Outside of her Opener, Chisa will never make use of her Base Skill as it generates too little Forte and Concerto Energy to be worthwhile. Any mid-air Attacks, Heavy Attacks, and her second Forte Gauge called Jetstream are all entirely useless to her rotation and are not worth discussing due to their inefficiency in the context of battle.

Meta position & Conclusion

Chisa is, as of the time of her release, in a questionable meta spot in terms of cost-effectiveness. She has one big issue, and it is that she costs a lot compared to the return you are able to get on your investments. This doesn’t mean this can’t change, however we’ll definitely be marking her as a “skip until rerun unless you really like her” character, as she is in a similar meta position to Roccia on her release.

She is definitely the best in slot character for Cartethyia+Ciaccona, and there is no doubt about that. It’s fantastic news that she’s the best third slot to the best duo in the game in Tower of Adversity. However, that is only with her Signature weapon acquired, or only if the current endgame buffs favour Havoc Bane (which is why she will perform well on her release even without her Signature). In a vacuum however, while she has a fantastic F2P-accessible weapon choice in the form of Lustrous Razor - the standard banner 5-star -, she only adds to a team that was already complete, and with a free, permanently-accessible third slot teammate at that in the form of Aero Rover.

In the third slot to a Cartethyia+Ciaccona team, Chisa is only marginally better with her Signature than Aero Rover and worse without; the damage increase she provides to a team is much lower than Ciaccona even if Cartethyia+Aero Rover+Chisa works in a vacuum. Aero Rover provides almost the same utility to Cartethyia that Chisa does, since they also sport healing, a modicum of personal damage and buffs specialized towards Cartethyia that allow her to make full use of her kit via increasing the Aero Erosion stack cap by 3. Not to mention, all of Aero Rover’s Sequences and Weapon Ranks are accessible permanently, for free, and Cartethyia’s inherent kit buffs are designed to work with Aero Rover and not make them as clunky to use as they would usually be.

Even still, in a Cartethyia team, Chisa’s value is hindered in Whimpering Wastes where enemies are defeated quicker than her Havoc Bane can apply, whereas Aero Rover does not struggle with this as they do not apply any Negative Status of their own and are intended to work just as well whether in multiwave or single-target content, which hinders Chisa’s pull value outside of Tower of Adversity even further.

In the third slot to any other Negative Status-oriented teams, Chisa is worse than pre-existing options (Shorekeeper or Spectro Rover in a Zani+Phoebe team; and way too many Absolution Phoebe teammates like Phrolova, Mortefi, Sanhua, Iuno, Ciaccona, and of course Chisa can’t replace Spectro Rover). In non-Negative Status teams, as discussed earlier, Chisa does not have access to the majority of her buffs that could give her a modicum of generalist use case, so even characters like Baizhi end up outclassing her as a generalist.

In conclusion, since Chisa only adds to an already complete team and is not worth bringing anywhere else, and she requires her Signature Weapon at minimum to even get to that level, her pull value from a meta perspective is questionable at best, facing a similar situation to what Roccia or Cantarella faced on their releases. In that sense, she feels incomplete; however her unique ability to reduce and ignore parts of an enemy’s DEF, as well as being the only current Havoc Bane applier, could carve out a meta niche for her in the future. She may be a worthwhile investment in the future, and she’s also definitely worth getting right now if you really like her as a character; however our best advice for meta followers is to consider carefully whether you wish to get her now, or wait until a rerun to invest in her.