Leona Analysis and Theorycraft – Should You Pull?

Note: This was made before the release of Leona. A more detailed analysis and guide will be published once testing has been done after her release. Character information is subject to change.

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Basic Information

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Skills

Skill 1: Thunderous Roar

Activates after 5 normal attack(s).Affects all allies.
Roar: Critical Rate ▲ 2.62%,stacks up to 5 time(s )and lasts for 5 sec.
Activates after 15 normal attack(s). Affects all allies with a Shotgun.
Maximum Effective Range ▲ 20% for 10 sec.

A pretty neat skill for shotgun teams, with relatively fast stacking speed (max stacks at~20s without assistance). Despite crit damage not being a good damage modifier in general (see here), they’re still somewhat effective with shotguns due to the fact that they can’t core hit because of accuracy problems but are able to still deal good damage.

Effective range is when a target is in the weapon’s preferred range. Hitting a Rapture at these ranges will increase damage by 30% (0.3), however this damage is not multiplicative, but additive to full burst, crit damage, and core hit modifiers (0.5 + 0.5 + 1.0). to save you from math, effective range damage bonus is basically ~10% total damage increase when factoring all these modifiers. Which will be useful against certain bosses where SG’s are just slightly out of range for effective range bonus.

Skill 2: Courageous Look

Activates when entering Full Burst. Affects all allies.
Hit Rate ▲ 20.28% for 10 sec.
Activates when entering Full Burst. Affects 2 ally unit(s)with
the highest ATK and a Shotgun.
Increases number of pellets by 5 for 10 sec.

Her skill 2 slightly addresses the problem all SG’s have, which is accuracy. However Hit rate shouldn’t even be a issue when fighting against bosses, nor is this hit rate increase enough to have SG’s consistently hit cores. This skill seems more effective on AR Nikkes (Scarlet), or SMG Nikkes to hit cores or hit tiny raptures further away.

However increasing shotgun pellets looks very enticing. Since shotguns have 10 pellets per shot, this buff would effectively increase their damage by 50%. However it is stated by the PR team (English, Korean Twitter Pages) that this buff does NOT increase the damage per shot. To clarify a bit more, let’s say we shot a round that deals a total of 100k with 10 pellets, each pellet would deal 10k, 10 times. Let’s say this buff is applied, instead of having each pellet deal damage 10k damage, 15 times. It would only deal 6,666 damage 15 times which would still total around 100k damage.

Which is incredibly misleading, as it is not stated in the skill itself. Ignoring this, I assume this is for SG’s to hit more consistently against targets far range and deal more consistent damage as more shots have a chance to critical hit.

Burst: Lion’s Heart

Affects all allies.
Critical Damage ▲ 34.64% for 10 sec.
Activates when the caster’s Roar is fully stacked. Affects all allies
with a Shotgun.
Critical Rate ▲ 21.32% for 10 sec.

An okay burst, increasing Crit damage for all allies while giving SG’s a pretty big Crit rate buff. Still rather lacking due to where Crit damage lies in the crit formula, while also locking half her buff for SG Nikkes which seems rather unnecessary as the buffs arn’t very powerful in the first place.

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Campaign

Shotguns has unfortunately fallen out of the meta due to the lack of new shotgun DPS units and other weapons being more versatile and more consistent. This is noticeable in campaign as shotguns are against useless small fodder and mobs far away. And Leona still isn’t a solution to that, even with her hit rate buffs and effective range buffs. Not to mention the previous SG buffer, Tove, would have a hard time pairing with Leona due the lack of Cool down reduction buffs these two have. Forcing awkward team comps if the user wants cool down reduction (1-2-2 Formation).

Example Team Comps

Tove + Leona CDR team

Tove,Leona,Dolla,Sugar,Noir

As mentioned, a rather awkward team but should still output the most DPS if RNG is in your side. Expect varied amount of damage due to how Tove’s skill kit works.

Normal CDR team

Liter,Leona,Sugar,Noir,Drake

Team that slightly addresses the hit rate issues of SG nikkes. Slotting 3 Nikkes that have some sort of Hit rate buff, enabling SG’s to actually be able to hit mid-range Raptures.

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Arena

Leona is a mag Shotgun Nikke, which means she has low burst generation. This isn’t usually an issue by itself if she offers something good in this game mode, however she literally does not have anything going for her. She would be unable to stack fast enough for her buffs to be somewhat effective, and her buffs in this game mode are mostly useless or underwhelming in this game mode. Not recommeded to use her here at all.

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Special Interception | Union Raid | Solo Raid

Rather underwhelming Nikke to use in these major game modes, due to the fact that the burst II slot is already contended with very powerful supports or cooldown reduction buffers, which Leona does not really provide. Nothing is really stopping the user to use Novel or Mast instead, even in Shotgun teams.

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Closing Thoughts

A rather underwhelming Nikke that doesn’t provide as much impact as she should in her team niche, however this can be easily changed if the pellet count buff actually increases total damage instead of simply increasing the amount of pellets. She does not address the issue of Hit rate problems of Shotgun Nikkes in campaign, nor does anything impactful for specifically shotgun teams.

Easy Skip if she’s not your waifu. Also she has 4 ears wtf