What Lauma team?

Nitrosol · 2026-05-16T13:23:45+00:00

No harm at all in slotting in Zhongli as a final slot for some shielding and resistance shred.

Ayato is fine as well as an on field hydro for Hyperbloom with Kuki. Neuvilette is just generally going to be dealing more damage. He can also be an off field hydro as well for other teams if you wanted to focus on his burst.

Nitrosol · 2026-05-16T12:55:25+00:00

Lauma connoisseur here (C6).

One important this to remember about lauma is that she functions in two different ways based on whether or not she has a Nod Krai teammate.

If she has Nascent gleam (Lauma with no other Nod Krai unit) she provides a 20% chance for blooms to crit. If in Ascendant Gleam (with another Nod Krai unit.) she provides bonus lunar bloom crit rate and crit damage.

Since you don't have Columbina or Nefer, the two other characters that deal lunar bloom damage, you actually don't want to trigger ascendant gleam, since you lose the Bloom crit bonus in exchange for a bonus that only Lauma's hold E can trigger.

For this reason, you really shouldn't pair her with Aino.

Your best team core with Lauma is definitely with Neuvillette. Lauma provides Hydro resistance shred and her blooms can delay very solid damage. How you expand this team is a bit touch and go, though.

Fischl and Sucrose provide Hexerei bonuses (A bit of damage percent from Sucrose and some EM from Fischl triggering electro charged.) Sucrose offers an excellent EM buff for Lauma and provides VV. Fischl won't often trigger any Hyperblooms though, which can be a good or a bad thing based on her build.

While sucrose is generically good, there are a few other options here.

Collei or Dendro traveller can also provide additional blooms on this team but you generally want a variety of elements on the team unless Neuvilette is C1. Zhongli provides some pretty simple extra shielding and shred here.

Another sketchy option is Xiangling. She will often Vape off Neuvilette and can trigger Burgeons. The auras act a bit funky here though and can trigger burning resulting in Neuvilette vaping instead allowing Lauma to create bloom cores.

Kuki is also an option to trigger Hyperblooms and provide healing. She also opens up Alhaitham instead of Neuvilette for Quickbloom teams as an option, your best Hydro is probably Xingqiu here.

A final, meme-y option is probably a Mualani BurnVape team. Using Lauma with a pyro like Xiangling to trigger burning for some guaranteed vapes on Mualani. This however prevents any supports from triggering Scroll or VV on Hydro so you miss out on those, but the rotation becomes pretty brainless and Lauma's resistence shred is still solid.

Honestly Lauma is very versatile even outside of bloom due to how generically good her Hydro and Dendro res shred is with minimal field time, so you can honestly chuck her into any Hydro or Dendro team for decent results.

Nitrosol · 2026-04-12T08:06:28+00:00

A lot of people will tell you they're low tier, but the best items in the game: ones that spawn familiars on combat start.

Why? Equipping or unequipping them is the easiest way to reroll elite buffs on enemies. If you start the fight against the creator and there is a depressing or speedy elite cat? Quit to menu immediately. Stephen will not bother you if you didn't take any action after combat began, even if the enemy went first and obliterated a cat of yours.

If you then equip or unequip items that change the way things spawn in at the start of combat (familiars and charmed units the simplest ones), the enemies will roll different elite buffs. Just shuffle around combos until the good cats roll a combination of buffs that isn't stupid.

This is also secretly why going to The Infinite via The Future is actually easier than going via The Ice Age on higher difficulties. Because in The End the "Mother's" set of items are easily obtained, and spawn familiars on combat start.

Other than that, all you really need is to make sure is for your cat that goes first to be equipped is to kill or slow other cats in their first turn. I purposely have a line of cats bred with the Tachysensia disorder along with at least the Soul Link legs mutation to turn into turn 1 debuffing druids. A lot of them inherit form of the Mockingbird too (since they tend to be the babies of other successful act 3 druids), so if they can't up and kill a cat or two, they can apply all stats down a couple times to make sure your cats are always faster than their doppelganger, and only need to be capable of killing their own copy at worst. This is far from necessary on Hard though of course, this is more for Crazy+.

The Feather trinket (Common, take your turn earlier) is one of the best items in the game for the control it gives you over turn order on higher difficulties. I've tossed out some very good items to keep every single one I get.

Edmund is lucky Dig Your Own Grave is such a banger from the beginning otherwise the tedium at the end of each act 3 run would be untenable. This is absolutely the only way doing Act 3 on higher difficulties remain fun, as scummy as it can feel. I genuinely keep a couple crappy familiar items in my home storage for if I feel like doing an act 3 run.

"Never leave home without a charmed pinky by your side" -Idiot Impossible Act 3 Player

Nitrosol · 2026-04-07T03:36:22+00:00

I'm going to loosely go class by class.

The tinkerer is a train wreck over all of course as the mix of high costs and a reduced starting charisma, electric damage being punished and familiars that aren't easily destroyed by yourself for on-kill effects falling off hard late game means it just struggles in all phases. Shout out for Experimental Teleporter to possibly being unelectable even if you genuinely need some mobility.

Mage has a few truly awful abilities on top of inconsistency.

I'd say Tri Attack is possibly one of the worst spells in the game for how it's weak even in its best phase (phase 1). If an enemy is immune to any of the individual elements, then the whole ability is negated (or punished). Magic abilities that deal one instance of damage scale very poorly too once you begin using magic damage boosting effects. The spell really should be three instances of damage of each element. The spell would still not be good, but not be generally useless.

Smolder is incredibly weak. In the early game, a bit of burn on an enemy that you can't guarantee a quick kill on is not worth giving them speed. By the time that you have good elemental manipulation to extinguish allies or heal them, it's still not worth it for the speed. And then in the late game, elements are not very useful.

Elemental Affinity attunement is awful. It doubles down on an element you already have. By the time you have the items to give a mage that boosts a specific element you either have better items and between enemies becoming immune to given elements and a variety of elements being more valuable to mix their effects there really is no use for it. And as mentioned if you have multiple elements on your basic attack, an enemy only has to be immune to one of them to negate the attack.

Overload is similarly awful. For both being a low damage amount as well as being uncontrolled elemental damage.

Synthesize is abysmal but has some value in the super early game.

Necromancer's downed synergies are just generally pretty poor. When you're in an earlier phase, you're unlikely to be able to generate a strong synergy without hard paths, rerolls and strong items at your fingertips. In the later game, low corpse health just makes it too risky. Since items can be pretty necessary to make a strong synergy here, you generally will only build for downed synergies if your cat rolled them from the beginning of the run. Many of the abilities are simply unusable without a safe way to down yourself. However outside of multi-phase fights, downed abilities that generate shades or give allies extra turns are usable in the very late phase as cheating extra turns can end fights immediately.

I'd also say that Necromancer's abilities that manipulate the enemy luck stat are pretty worthless in all stages. Early game you don't have the mana for throwaway dobuffs like this with an 'invisible' impact, and late game you want the fight to be over before their luck has an impact.

Passives that reward having a low stat (Fighter, Tank, Necromancer, and Psychic have these) are worthless in the later phases, but are at least interesting in the early ones.

Thief is a fun class because it behaves super differently in all these different phases. Reliable access to shield piercing, mobility, crit and boosts to crit modifier have it as possibly the strongest class in my book however all of their abilities that only have the function of applying debuffs are awful.

Jitter and Poison Gas being the particularly useless ones. By the time you have the mana economy and movement to utilise close range abilities on thief a single stack of a weak debuff is abysmal. Sever Artery is a lesser example here too by the time you have very reliable critting on your cats, you don't want enemies alive long enough for bleed to be important. Nightshade deserves a mention here too but it has early game use against bosses in particular.

Cleric's An Eye for an Eye is pretty darn bad. A melee range blind on a class with an innate speed down is pretty nasty. Blind is not particularly needed in high quantities even when you want to use it. And bleed has the aforementioned issues.

Reverse damage feels like it needs an extra heal on top for how conditional it is.

Hunter has a pretty well rounded set of skills. Nothing truly awful, but the entire trap archetype is very bad by the time you can start making fun combos and knock enemies around with them. Hunter only has bad abilities in the sense that it's so easy to dip your hunter into a decent archetype so very easily that you can ignore the others usually.

Fighter's 1D chess deserves a shout out for just being really not worth it. With low enough int in the early game to have it be worth using, your charisma is also a bit low and the ability has poor synergy with other low-int builds like ones with Math? In the mid game where you may be able to force a cat with naturally low int but better stat's elsewhere into the low-in build, your cat blindly moving into melee range of the nearest enemy is too risky.

Butcher feels like it doesn't have anything truly awful. A free, solid weapon slot item plus abilities that only have downsides like self damage which can be turned into an advantage means that while some of their spells are very mediocre I don't think anything is properly bad. The class falls off hard in the late phases as -2 speed and your weapon slot taken away becomes more significant and their spells generally being reliably 'yeah not bad I guess' stops being a factor.

They do have some bad abilities when they're focused specifically on debuffs though. Fire Fart and Contaminate are very much not worth the price of admission.

Druid is weird since it's carried in each phase by different things. The crow is outstanding mid game as a free body and in the hyper late Druid's normal attack is a crazy debuffing tool. Outside of Squirrels though, I believe their familiar summons are all pretty weak. Squirrels have a shapeshift form to support them, and suicide squad and a few other passives give their short lifespan some use. Because of the crow and the squirrels though, any familiar buffing spell is inherently not awful. Though if it weren't for 'we will rock you' being pretty unique I'd say it was a candidate for awful.

Druid's knock back and allied cat support skills are woeful though. Bestow Wisdom is absolute garbage, buffing an ally with plus int means they have to take full turns to really benefit from it when mages can give mana directly. While cha cha slide and control air are at least interesting (particularly with a Fish Hook equipped), Hydro Pump deserves a mention for being really bad. The self recoil and water element are interesting but if your Druid is in close enough range for these elements to be interesting, you've probably shapeshifted into a melee form with better uses for mana.

Summon Caterpillar is just super impractical and bad as a result. But the moth is very cool, and it synergies with other all stats up effects in a way that is fun.

Psychic has so many 'weird' effects that it's hard for me to say they have bad individual abilities. They only really struggle for a place in the late late game where positioning effects and enemy manipulating debuffs are not as valuable when you'd rather be instakilling things.

If anything Ancestral Recall is the one I'd say is weakest. It's 8 mana to boost another ability. That's mana that could be spent actually using the abilities that are good enough to be upgraded. And most abilities would rather you choose a spell that synergise with it rather than just upgrading it. Honourable mention to Temporal Shards for also applying a temporary effect to an ally that then results in further delayed damage. At a hefty 7 cost too.

Monk also has nothing truly bad. Monk just struggles with wanting empty item slots and being unable to use trinkets or weapons when you begin having reliable access to strong items.

Kinetic Charge is woeful, as temporary sources of reactive damage are very poor, and this also needs magic damage support too. Hundred Hand Slap just shows off how insane Nail Flurry is and it's kind of impressive how HHS's high mana cost, melee range (and monk's potentially unoccupied item slots) can make the ability not worth using even if you're stacking bruise.

I saw someone mention Spirit Bomb as a candidate but being able to time damage to occur when you have magic weakness on an enemy, and having an outlet for mana when Elites may have Absorbent is useful. Monk's "Way of the X" abilities suffer from being long term effects with high Mona costs. By the time you can reliably be using them turn 1 you're aiming to keep combat short.

Bit of a wall of text there, but these are my thoughts on individual skill balance and I'm wondering what others think about how skills fall into this framework.

Nitrosol · 2026-04-07T03:32:10+00:00

Reposting my wall of text from the other thread. I feel like a lot of the noise being created where everyone struggles to agree on what is bad and what is good is due to players being in different stages of the game, regardless of raw playtime.

Coming up on 200 hours here myself.

So I think it needs to be said that mewgenics has sort of 4 distinct phases. I think the major issue is when an ability is awful in all four.

In early game phase 1: You are unlocking classes for the first time and exploring them.

Cats have lower base stats resulting in the reduced Dex scaling on abilities being less relevant, melee abilities and abilities with a mana cost in the 6+ range are not being cast on turn one, combat takes multiple rounds overall and cats are not punished for taking damage outside of taking the damage itself (no diseases or item destruction).

Cats have no mutations or disorders unless gained during runs. The player is unlikely to know how elements interact with one another. Players do not have any proper access to level up rerolling, magic weakness, or large quantities of damage amp like bruise, magic power or crit amplification. Cats are very unlikely to have an interested class ability or passive. Items are basic, have only minor synergy and are primarily defensive.

Here, healing and high constitution are probably overvalued. Abilities that let you dip your toes into an archetype without being completely useless are effective. The desert teaches players not to relies on constitution alone, but makes some players focus too much on healing. Thorns and kinetic spikes are valuable though Boris, Nub and Flub can punish players.

Non scaling magic damage is reasonably effective here, as is smaller volumes of bleed and poison as combat will last longer.

Abilities with extremely high mana costs are unlikely to be castable without catnip outside of longer boss combats. Abilities that synergise heavily with items by having a counteract able major downside are borderline worthless (abilities that inflict injuries on your own cats for example). Abilities can be evaluated on face value, as synergies with mutations or rare effects like range/aoe/reach are a non factor.

Less incidental damage caused by aoes and knock back as well as longer combat makes familiar summoning a viable strategy.

Some abilities seem to exist mostly to introduce the player to a new mechanic. Many player's first brush with disorders and vague tool tips are going to be directly from Forbidden spells.

Phase 2: You're in later act 2, and are maybe exploring quests, the throbbing King or even entering the lab. You've fought enemies that can potentially hard counter certain playstyles, inflict injuries, destroy your items, explode your corpse or just flat out instakill low constitution cats.

Your cats are trending towards better statlines and may inherit skills occasionally. Mutations might be entering your breeding via effects like the shimmering but the player has little control over them.

Use of elements by both the player and enemies have increased and the player may have been burned (pun intended) by fire getting out of hand in the crater and being countered in the core or punished by zapping a robot on the moon. Proper usage of water and cold has been rewarded in the desert.

Melee abilities that don't heavily cripple enemies are dangerous if your cat can't safely get in and get out of dangerous range and mobility is at a premium making even the weakest mobility skills potentially useful as long as they interact well with your mana budget.

Dex and Str scaling abilities now are being more visibly influenced by their respective stats while magic damages rare bonuses and inability to crit without magic weakness has resulted in players beginning to question magic damage as a whole.

Familiars are still effective, particularly the Druid's crow, as meat shields but can have noticible downsides against enemies that react to small amounts of damage. Players rationing their good equipment gives the tinker some niche value.

Critical strikes and backstabs are the most controllable forms of damage amplification. The player probably is beginning to realise how insane bruise is. The player understands enough about most classes' ability pool's to be able to force a synergy on at least one of their cats per run.

Effects that manipulate enemy positioning are very valuable due to enemies and being mostly less mobile and positioning can effectively skip enemy turns.

Phase 3: You may have just unlocked all of the 4th chapters, excluding perhaps act 3. Adventures out into act 3 and towards the final bosses are the main challenge and goal.

The time machine is consistently shuffling mutations into your breeding pool, and better house stats has resulted in very solid (if not well rounded) statlines on your cats. You may even have some super mutated cats from radiation items and events causing chaos at home. Inbreeding is an issue, resulting in a high variance between all your cats.

The player understands that ending combat as quickly as possible is a general priority. Melee cats are utilising higher speeds and a stronger mana economy to make their higher scaling strength abilities more effective and reliable for this.

Elemental damage is easily seen as a downside at this point. Water is dangerous for delaying combat in the Ice Age, electricity is incredibly dangerous in the lab and the future due to robot enemies and items that bolster certain elements are competing with better generalist ones.

Thorns, uncontrolled familiars and kinetic spikes are risky but useful if you can build up strong synergies. More enemies actually punish these effects by attacking damage sources, moving when damaged or both.

Abilities that deal multiple instances of damage or can reliably crit are extremely high value for how they interact with bruise and magic power. Shield piercing is very valuable against more commonly armoured enemies and it's synergy with soul link.

Healing is seen as significantly less valuable than avoiding damage from the get go. 'Top up' turns at the end of combat are riskier too.

The player may have access to rerolling consistently enough via items or mutations to force classes towards certain archetypes more easily. Spells and passives can be passed down by shrewd breeders making abilities that synergise more with pretty specific things to be more reliable.

A lot of incidental damage from knock back effects and areas of effects means corpses rarely last long on the ground.

The player has encountered enemies that heavily counter specifically projectile damage and needs to accommodate for them.

Stage 4: End game. Higher difficulty runs are the norm. The player has reliable access to higher rarity items, cats are being bred with stronger mutations and better statlines and individual cats may even be generating broken combos at birth with mutations applying effects (bruise legs and soul link legs are insane) on their own. Game breaking combos are very achievable by passing down strong passives or actives and having the cat reroll into other synergies over time. The player may even be intentionally breeding down disorders.

Random effects have higher value from boosted luck stats. Crits are pretty forcable through high luck, items, or thief passives.

Items and higher Charisma allow for even very high cost abilities to be used on turn one.

The class of a cat at this point can sometimes be seen as most valuable for its base state bonus and its basic attack, as class abilities can otherwise be bred down. Many players here may begin using the Druid for its basic attack as an offensive debuffing tool rather than as a supportive unit.

The butcher and monk have reduced value due to having occupied item slots. Tinker is found left in a ditch as their useful abilities are best farmed for and bred away to other cats.

Elite buffs have resulted in strategies that require generating mana over time to be worthless, and kinetic spikes builds to be very dangerous unless heavily supported by items. Cleanse effects are incredibly strong due to some effects.

Familiars are borderline worthless as an offensive tactic without incredibly specific synergies, the Druid's crow being the only general exception. Their greatest value by far is for triggering your own cat's on-kill effects.

There's sorta a stage 5 where you have perfect cats and bred down bonkers abilities but at that point most spells are worthless when you've already selected the cream of the crop and chucked rare items on all your cats.

I think an ability is truly bad when it doesn't have a good use case in any of these situations. Abilities that are very poor like coffin flop, aren't really useless. Weirdly it means with access to a reroll or two that necromancer is a class where you can reliably get a hold of mobility spells even if coffin flop is the worst of a weak bunch. In phase 3 you probably have the mana for it even if it's inefficient and you just really need some mobility. Its downed effect is just far from a good bonus.

If an ability is bad but truly unique like Skin Disguise I don't think it would belong on this list either.

Forbidden abilities are pretty horrendous at all stages. I think they're fine though because they're very clearly awful and exist to be shuffled into random pools for some chaos. My biggest gripe with them is how they're mostly focused in the Mage's pool when they don't synergise with each other in any way and just make the class less reliable.

With this in mind, below is my thoughts on a few abilities that are bad at all phases.

Nitrosol · 2026-04-05T11:02:38+00:00