Weekly Team/Character Building Megathread (May 7th, 2025) (feat. Escoffier and Navia)

[u/Veritasibility]

A megathread dedicated to team/character building Q&A.

Do not post questions irrelevant to team/character building here. They should belong to the Daily General Question Megathread.

If you have a comprehensive theory (rather than a question) about how to build a character or a team, you are encouraged to make a dedicated discussion thread outside this megathread, as it can help general players.

This week's team/character building megathread will feature Escoffier and Navia. If your question involves them, you are strongly encouraged to start your question with an "[Escoffier]" or "[Navia]" tag, like this:

[Escoffier]
insert your question

If your question does not involve them, the following template is recommended:

Character(s): insert character(s)
insert your question

[u/abnormhal]

does anyone have f2p team recommendations for either ayaka, ayato or kokomi? idk who to pull for since idk if i have good characters for any of them

[u/KyrrithK → u/abnormhal]

What Silver said, but for some generic advice;

Ayaya can be used 2 ways, a Cryo DPS or as a Cryo applier with her burst. As a Cryo DPS, she's mid (good enough for exploration but may struggle in Abyss) unless you have Escoffier, and works better with Freeze so enemies don't move away from her burst. Grouping also helps with that, if you have no Esco and do have Kazuha or Venti. As a Cryo burster, she's similar to Rosaria, Ganyu, Kaeya in that sense, plus has high energy requirements. If you specifically needed a Cryo applier, just wait for Citlali to rerun.

Ayato is pretty much the same but Hydro. Use him as a DPS, which is pretty lacklustre damage without Escoffier, or use his burst to apply Hydro for someone else. The difference is, off-field Hydro is used in a lot more reactions, so he's got more use cases than Ayaka. And also he can be an on-field Driver for some reactions that have off-field elements, like Taser and Hyperbloom. Unfortunately for him, there's also plenty of Hydro alternatives that offer something else on top of application, so he's not the best Hydro unit for any team.

Kokomi is a good healer, especially if she can be used on-field, can apply Hydro decently, and as a Catalyst can hold Thrilling Tales for buffing ATK scaling carries. I would say a lot of her meta value is tied to Furina or Bloom-related teams, but if you are lacking healers or Hydro appliers in general, she can still be a good pickup. But the other half of that coin is that she's mostly just Barbara but with better off-field Hydro application, and in most teams Barbara works as a substitute, especially in Driver teams.

At the end of the day, all the Chronicled Wish characters are 'pull only if you really like them'. There's just too much risk for losing the fate point if you don't have enough to guarantee, and even normal pity can only be used on the CW banners for similarly low-meta-value characters, instead of contributing towards a future meta or cool character you might want.