CiacconaBuild and Guide

Ciaccona is a 5-star Aero Pistol DPS whose primary point of interest is her ability to apply both Spectro Frazzle and Aero Erosion (mostly via her Ultimate). She amplifies Aero Erosion DMG and boosts Aero DMG in several ways, and is characterized by her ability to rotate quickly while retaining an off-field presence, similar to Coordinated Attackers (even though she isn’t one).

We’ll go through her abilities in order of how we execute them in her rotation. Her kit is honestly pretty simplistic, so this won’t take long.

Her Intro skill allows her to skip instantly to Basic Attack stage 3 — this is important because stage 4 is the only important part of her Basic chain. Beyond that, it applies 1 stack of Aero Erosion, and like other Intros it generates a good chunk of Concerto Energy and does minor damage quickly.

Her Basic Attack stage 1 and 2 are pretty much never used, so only stage 3 and 4 matter. Stage 4 can be interrupted by several means, the primary method we use for this is with a dash. Why it’s important to do so is because it generates a wind clone of Ciaccona called an “Ensemble Sylph”. These Ensemble Sylphs have the effect of activating a “Solo Concert” which gives all party members 24% Aero DMG Bonus as long as the Ensemble Sylph is present. On top of this, the Ensemble Sylph will fully complete Ciaccona’s Basic Attack 4 even if it is cancelled, so you can cancel it at no loss. The duration of Ensemble Sylphs is permanent, but only 2 can exist at any given time. Due to this, you can pretty much consider this buff’s uptime as permanent. Note however that Solo Concert will not be activated on the specific condition that Ciaccona’s Basic Attack 4 is cancelled with her Skill.

An interesting perk of the feature which causes Ciaccona to resume her Basic Attack sequence if it is interrupted is that you will start from Basic Attack 3 after cancelling a Basic Attack 4 with a dash. This means you can chain Basic Attack 3-4 together by repeatedly dash cancelling. We make use of this in her rotation to shorten it a great amount.

The reason why we do Basic Attack 4 is for 3 things: 

• Charging up 1 of 3 Forte Circuit stacks called “Musical Essence” (we explain this later);

• Activating Solo Concert;

• Applying 1 stack of Aero Erosion while generating Concerto Energy.

Ciaccona’s Resonance Skill is similar to her Basic 4 in terms of applying 1 stack of Aero Erosion, other than that it’s a quick boost to her Concerto Energy which we make good use of.

After building up 3 Forte stacks total, including 1 from her Intro and 2 from her Basic 4 done 2 times, we can cast a special Forte Heavy Attack called “Quadruple Downbeat”. It generates a massive 25 Concerto Energy, a necessary boost to finish Ciaccona’s rotation. On top of this, it deals a great amount of damage and applies 1 more Aero Erosion stack. It also has the additional effect of gathering enemies in its center by pulling them in, which is great for dealing with small targets all at once.

Last but not least, Ciaccona’s Ultimate causes her to enter a singing state called “Recital” on top of doing a big wave of AoE damage. This state will last even if she is switched off-field, and every 1.6s she is able to either manually input or automatically perform a wave of damage called “Symphonic Poem: Tonic”. Depending on the mode chosen at the start of her Ultimate (Aero Erosion mode by default), she will inflict either Aero Erosion or Spectro Frazzle on all enemies hit. It is possible to almost instantly switch from Aero Erosion to Spectro Frazzle after casting her Ultimate so the process isn’t too slow. Once this is performed, she is ready to switch out and apply waves of Status Inflictions off-field. Her Outro even amplifies all Aero Erosion DMG by 100%, so her Aero Erosion actually ends up dealing solid off-field damage, especially with Aero Rover in the mix to stack Aero Erosion up to 6 times instead of 3.

Regarding her meta position, Ciaccona is already in a good niche and clearly she’s intended for a future character. We expect Cartethyia, an Aero Sword 5-star releasing right after her, to be a strong character to pair with Ciaccona in an Aero Erosion archetype similar to Zani’s Spectro Frazzle archetype with Phoebe. With that being said, we don’t advise you pull Ciaccona under this hypothesis until it is officially confirmed — what we’re trying to say is, if you want Ciaccona for Cartethyia, wait until it’s official that they’ll be good partners together.

Considering her current pairings, she’s already a character who can slot in many teams. The main point of interest is Absolution Phoebe a.k.a Main DPS Phoebe. She’s really strong with her because she’s able to apply Spectro Frazzle across several waves of enemies, a feature Phoebe was dearly missing to perform in Whimpering Wastes. Ciaccona allows her not only to perform in the gamemode, but to perform to top tier level alongside each other. 

In an Aero team, Ciaccona and Jiyan are a good pair even though Mortefi can be considered stronger in single-target scenarios. With that being said, Ciaccona has more AoE damage which is something to be considered, but she does boost Jiyan’s damage much less than Mortefi. Overall it’s difficult to pick one, we consider them pretty equal in performance to each other but this does add to Ciaccona’s team flexibility. 

Furthermore, Ciaccona can be used as a second Frazzle applier for Zani alongside Spectro Rover which allows Zani to access more extended combos without Phoebe, which Spectro Rover alone couldn’t cover before. Phoebe however remains the best Frazzle support for Zani.

In conclusion, Ciaccona is a character who has quick rotations, AoE capabilities, slots in many teams, while buffing damage by good amounts. Overall, she is desirable for many characters. Besides, her full potential is not yet unveiled as the Erosion team archetype isn’t finalized, which means we can expect even more out of her in the future. All this to say, Ciaccona is currently great, but consider that she is only a slight upgrade to certain DPS characters at best and the Erosion archetype needs to have a Main DPS to complete it in order for her to reveal her full potential.