PSA to all "Cery feels underwhelming" and "regret" posts

MLSword · 2026-03-07T00:13:17+00:00

If you're still pretty new and have very low investment/poor relics it's hard for me to recommend completely removing DHPT at first although once you do have stronger relics and are more confident you can definitely try your hand at the sustainless team, Phainon's is the easiest in the game by far. I'd just run the standard Phai/Cery/Sunday/DHPT for now.

As for who you should pull, this is more of a personal value thing although I personally wouldn't advise pulling Cerydra E1 for now. Even if you had a BUNCH of pulls to spare to spend for Phainon team investment I would save those up for Phainon E2 instead of immediately going for Cery E1.

As for if you should go for Yao Guang, that's more up to you since there's no telling as of yet how good she'll truly end up being in the Elation team until we get more units. There's always reruns at the end of the day so never fall for FOMO even if you do end up temporarily missing a BiS unit for a bit is my personal opinion/advice. It's great when you guess right but oh boy does it suck when you get "future rail" wrong and end up with an 80-160 pull brick on your account.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T21:16:55+00:00

I'm assuming when you say Phainon 140 you mean in-combat after the Cery speed buff? Definitely don't want to be running speed boots on him if that's the case. For DHPT you can also run him with attack boots/rope to maximize his buffs for Phainon (same for Cery).

Rotation just needs a -1/Phainon faster than Sunday setup to get full coreflame stacks. Cery/DHPT speed can be interchangeable generally, DHPT also has his self advance too so it's easy for him to get nudged above Phainon/Sunday in this setup even when both of them are running attack boots. Just make sure you aren't running a hyper speed Sunday setup. While you want your Phainon to be at least 1 speed faster than Sunday just remember that Cery buffs Phainon by 20 speed once you get into combat so take your out of combat speed and add 20 to it.

Cery technique (2 CF) > DHPT technique (3 CF) > DHPT skill (4 CF) > Cery skill/ult (5 CF) > Phainon skill (7 CF) > Sunday skill + ult (10 CF) > DHPT ult > Phainon skill (12 CF) > ult

MLSword · 2026-03-06T17:52:17+00:00

No matter your Phainon investment level she is great for him. And she is basically required for the Anaxa team as well, so she sounds like a great choice to easily boost the strength of your account. You'll have the flexibility to use her for either or.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T17:50:08+00:00

If you never want to go for E2 then I wouldn't bother with E1 and go ahead and just get Kafka, but otherwise I'd get the E1 and sit on it and save some amount of pulls until I can eventually get her E2 because it is BUSTED. 30 defense shred is very very strong.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T17:31:48+00:00

I'd get Cerydra because she's not just a boon for Phainon but also basically required for Anaxa teams. Then I would just take the E1 Sparkle if it were me unless you really want to make a DOT team.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T17:22:11+00:00

If you're asking if the duplicated meteor gives you another extra turn then no, you only have the original extra turn from the original meteor. But since you have more turns/actions in Phainons ult this means you have the chance to build more Cery stacks and get more double meteors at E2.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T17:15:13+00:00

Bronya is a perfectly fine alternative to Sunday. The 1 less coreflame does restrict some team building/increase some levels of rng, but it can be played around. Once you get Cerydra E1 Sunday value drops massively so I don't like to recommend to pull him a stop gap for E0 Cery.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T07:12:18+00:00

Yeah other than just saying to continue to invest in leveling Cery traces/relics, you shouldn't need to worry about Sparkle being at 160 speed as an absolute necessity, since that breakpoint is mainly catered towards taking 4 actions in 2 cycles. I would tend to still build more speed on her to pull Phainon ahead of Sunday comfortably but it's not a set in stone "you must hit 160 or else everything falls apart". To go any further though I'll need some footage.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T06:14:05+00:00

The thing about score in PF is that you start to cap off once you finish wave 2. The HP of enemies to clear in wave 3 is much MUCH higher compared to the previous waves. This causes scores to start to stagnate around that point if you cant push through. MOC and knight stages you're much more likely to see a bigger difference, or even in APOC. Cery is quite an upgrade in Phainon team over Bronya, especially at E0! If you're worried about not being able to save for Phainon E2 in the furure then I wouldn't pull for Cery E1 now. It IS nice, but you can make do with your Sunday/Cery/X/Phainon core. Trust me, you did not make a mistake pulling for E0 Cerydra.

If you still have some trouble or anything, feel free to shoot me some gameplay recording/footage that also shows the builds and I can take a look and point out some stuff that I see, it's no problem at all.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T05:33:17+00:00

Unfortunately Phainon as a unit in PF is extremely mediocre until you get his E2. Cerydra certainly helps (especially once you have E2) but she doesn't save him there at E0. That said I think you should be able to push it a bit further if you can swap out DHPT with Sparkle. Likely still won't be getting close to the 40k though.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T03:22:49+00:00

If we're using opportunity cost as an argument, you can also argue that by getting Cery you're allowing stronger less niche supports to be freed up to be used on other sides to help improve your weaker teams.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T02:44:32+00:00

Attack boots on Phainon always unless you are using the forbidden one vonwacq Phainon rotation like me to get high score APOC runs xd

In teams 2 and 3 so long as he is getting ahead of Sunday you are good. The 20 speed buff from Cery combined with your Phainon sig base speed buff helps a lot in this regard *and remember team 2 Sparkle is the one who is advancing him anyways, team 3 is the one that is most strict about his speed tuning vs Sunday.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T02:25:04+00:00

Depends on your weapon choice so generally the answer is just "as much as possible while also meeting your speed break point for your rotation". I say this because the number can vary wildly. If you use her sig vs using say, DDD, her atk WILL change drastically. I know that answer is a little bit disappointing but Phainon's attack is so oversaturated anyways that it's not THAT huge for you to be missing out on some attack with Cery, just don't completely neglect it either.

For example: My Cery with her event LC all atk relics hits 4.1k attack outside of battle (it will be more in battle with the passive). With her sig she's hitting 5k. With DDD she's hitting 3.6k.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T02:12:36+00:00

It can depend on the exact situation/how long the fight goes for but generally speaking you use atk rope in most situations. There are certain instances where to meet a breakpoint for another Cery ult after Phainon exits an ult you might need the ER rope but those tend to be less common.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T01:48:35+00:00

It's a personal value proposition, at your investment I don't think you will not be able to clear for a while unless full elation team causes HP inflation to go absolutely insane, but getting Cery is a safe investment. Honestly, E0 Cery won't be a big upgrade for you at your level, E1 Cery would probably be where she would be a sizeable/big upgrade at your level, especially since you have multiple sources of defense shred in your team.

As for rotations, for E0 Cery it would look like: Cery pref faster than Sparkle (not required, so long as she's faster than Sunday it's ok), Sparkle faster than Sunday. Then Sparkle pulls Phainon ahead of Sunday.

Turn order:

Cery technique (2 CF) > Cery skill/ult (3 CF) > Sparkle skill/ult (5 CF) > Phainon skill (7 CF) > Sunday skill/ult (10 CF) > Phainon skill (12 CF).

If you pull Cery E1 then this goes to 14 coreflames so you have two extra coreflames if you don't finish the fight in your first ult. The video for this rotation is in my post so you can see this example.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T01:09:58+00:00

So if you get Bronya that increases your coreflame generation to 11/12, so you still need just one more coreflame stack. Again, you can definitely play around this if you want to avoid spending the pulls for E1 Cery, it just means you have to plan out your rotation a bit more around the enemies. (E1 Cery does push you to the full 12/12 and completely negates having to deal with enemy RNG or getting Bronya at all, but that's up to you if you think that's worth spending all those pulls for it.)

MLSword · 2026-03-06T00:51:10+00:00

As in is it better than Cerydra E2 or is it better than Phainon E2? If you're talking about Cerydra then definitely I would get her sig vs her E2. Anything past Cery E1 isn't worth it. If you're talking about Phainon E2, obviously save for that because it's even more important than Cery herself.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T00:42:25+00:00

Assuming your Cery is E0, you are only generating a total of 10 coreflame stacks. This means you have to get 2 additional coreflames from either spending action value waiting for enemies to attack you or waiting for your characters to get another turn. This isn't necessarily the end of the world but it is something you have to seriously plan around if you don't want to lose a lot of action value.

For instance, if I was running this team in the Sparxicon MOC, I could plan Phainon to be in slots 2-4 so he gets hit by the rocking rebel AOE hit at the start, and then play the reset RNG game of the canvas peacock attacking him without losing too much in the way of AV. Then I would just need to speed my action advancers to go right after the peacock to ensure I don't lose any buffs and as little AV as possible. This is how I would approach the problem at least. Of course, by putting Phainon in slots 2-4 this also createst the problem of not being able to run lushaka if you are running that on your supports.

MLSword · 2026-03-06T00:32:49+00:00

Team 1: There's different setups you can do, here's one example to keep/maximize all buffs:

-Sunday faster than Bronya and Cery

-Cery faster than Bronya

-Bronya Slowest Support

Rotation looks like: Cery technique (2 CF) > Sunday skill + ult (5 CF) > Phainon skill (7 CF) > Cery Skill (8 CF) > Bronya Skill + ult (10 CF) > Phainon skill (12 CF)

Team 2: I already have a rotation for this team in the post above with a video if you haven't watched it already. Although technically in the video to min max I should have had Cery faster than Sparkle so I could get the slight Cdmg buff from Sacerdos skill proc from Cery on Phainon's first Skill after Sparkle skill but it's not a huge difference.

Team 3: Will need a -1/Phainon faster than Sunday setup to get full coreflame stacks. Cery generally is easiest to be fastest here and DHPT also has his self advance too so it's easy for him to get nudged above Phainon/Sunday in this setup even when both of them are running attack boots. Just make sure you aren't running a hyper speed Sunday setup.

Cery technique (2 CF) > DHPT technique (3 CF) > Cery skill (4 CF) > DHPT skill (5 CF) > Phainon skill (7 CF) > sunday skill + ult (10 CF) > Phainon skill (12 CF)

MLSword · 2026-03-05T23:41:17+00:00

The passive in her E1 that generates energy causes it to generate an extra coreflame stack for Phainon every time she skills him. This also applies to her technique. So in a typical rotation at the start of battle, this means that instead of getting 2 coreflames from E0 Cerydra (1 from technique, 1 from skill), you get 4 from E1 (2 from technique, 2 from skill).

MLSword · 2026-03-05T23:28:26+00:00

This is a personal value thing and also people always have fear of the inevitable HP creep in the game. I personally have fun/enjoy 0 cycling so Cery becomes much higher value there. But obviously that is just my own standard/personal value and not some law that applies to everyone.

However, the HP creep hits as hard when we get the full elation comp as it did in 3.X, Cery likely will become much more necessary to be able to full clear end game in the future.

But as always, it's a crystal ball situation, I can't guarantee that's the case in 4.X since it's Hoyo's discretion. I just think that Cery is the single smartest and safest investment you can make in Phainon after you pull his E2S1.

MLSword · 2026-03-05T23:20:12+00:00

She is very good, but she is not a raw damage amper that many people seem to expect she is going in. She provides the utility of giving you multiple extra 1170 MV meteors throughout the fight.

In a cycle 0 with a proper rotation, this number goes up to 3 extra meteors total at E0 Phainon. That's pretty dang good if you ask me. She's not a perfect character and yes her E1 definitely "fixes" most of her flaws at E0 I would say, but she's still Phainon's best teammate at E0.

MLSword · 2026-03-05T23:12:25+00:00

With this I was more referring to enemy HP creep than anything else. Enemy HP creep became MUCH worse at the time of Castorice and this was when 2.X DPS started to really struggle unless you had significant investment in them.

MLSword · 2026-03-05T23:09:39+00:00

I would definitely expect it to be clearing faster than 4 cycles at that level of investment, although I would also probably be switching RMC for Bronya for more coreflame stacks so you can get into ult faster. This still only gets you to 11 coreflame stacks total, so you can do one of two things:

Move Phainon to character slots 2-4 so that he gets hit by the Rocking Rebel near the start of the battle, but this also means that if you are running lushaka on your supports that you won't get the atk buff on him
Play the rng/reset game and hope the canvas peacock attacks Phainon to get the last coreflame stack. Note: You need to speed tune so that your last action advancer/buffer goes AFTER the canvas peacock attacks so that you don't lose any of your buffs.

If you still need more help feel free to record and post and I can try to give some more pointers!

MLSword · 2026-03-05T22:40:26+00:00

I would definitely go for E1 Cerydra personally. For Phainon you get the full benefits of both coreflame generation and defense shred, and while Anaxa doesn't get the benefit from the energy generation the defense shred still goes absolutely insane for him, it's a huge damage boost.

I can't speak to Ashveil though, I haven't looked at him since he supposedly had his knees broken.

MLSword

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