Should You Pull? Epic Prayer: Tropical Goddess

FOREWARNING: C3 Hecatia is a Friend who has only dropped on Touhou LostWord JP only a few days prior, making collecting information for her slightly more complicated than other Friends. While there may be some uncertainty to how her entire kit works, the conclusions here have been studied to be relevant to the current game’s meta.

Maybe, with a slight veer toward No. C3 Hecatia Lapislazuli is the third Epic Friend to enter Touhou LostWord, attempting to reach the same high bar set by F1 Reimu Hakurei and C3 Yukari Yakumo. To do so, she has entirely focused on debuffing potential, capable of dropping a foe’s Yang DEF by the maximum 10 levels. She also comes with a plethora of Water, Earth, and Freeze anomaly breaks to truly trump enemies’ defenses. Along with high debuff duration times and immediate 3P on turn 1, Hecatia is trying very hard to dominate the opposition with pure power.

Unfortunately for her, Hecatia comes with a few unexpected drawbacks, primarily from how mechanics in the game work. This does not mean that Hecatia is an unimpressive Friend or undeserving of her Epic status, as she is still by far the best Debuff Type Friend out there. Debuff isn’t an attribute that you never want on a team, but it does have some circumstances to consider compared to the sole buffing that other top tiers offer.

Something that is in Hecatia’s favor are the current co-running banners, or lack thereof. Since L80 Alice, Hifuu EX, and practically everyone else is gone, there are no high tier contenders to face against C3 Hecatia, at least at the start of her runtime. Mystia Lorelei, Kyouko Kasodani, and Kisume are all good Friends in their own right, but they barely compare to Hecatia. Her prayer lasting until September 16th also helps in giving you more time to pray for her.

Still, this does not take away the high risk involved with Epic Friends. You are unable to exchange for Hecatia with Exchange Points, also known as sparking. To make up for no sparking, the 5* story card Kasen’s Senkai is on this prayer as well, which is a good Yang ATK buffing card that will cost 50 Exchange Points for one copy. 

Instead of the usual high amount of free ritual pulls to try for Hecatia, there is a God Crystal Step-UP, providing 10-pulls with some special perks. Only the first step is discounted at 300 God Crystals, while the rest cost 600 God Crystals for higher rates on finding Hecatia, which goes up to 200% on the final step. Just like the banner itself, every God Crystal pull provides double the Fortune Dust, or 20. However, especially without a discount like the usual Step-UP, this deal is only recommended for players who truly want to look for Hecatia and have the God Crystals and/or funds to do so. This Step-UP also only lasts 72 hours from when the prayer started, making it even more stressful to go for.

+ 0P Water on Focus Shot
+ Great Water and Earth elemental access on spells
+ Plentiful Freeze anomaly inflictions and breaks
+ Hits well with high Yang ATK and Hard scaling
+ Insane Yang DEF debuff potential (up to 10 levels on one foe)
- High Yang DEF debuffs can be excessive, especially without Yang ATK buffs
- 4-5 turn endurance on debuffs unlikely to last if wave or HP Gauge ends early
- Breaking potential can conflict with Yang DEF debuffs at times
- Lacking good killers on her Last Word

Kasen's Senkai

[Numbers in brackets are buffs at Max Limit Break or stat sticks at Max Enhance]

• Yang ATK 2 [3] levels UP (3T)
• Body Bullet Power 15% [25%] UP (1T)
• DMG from hermits 15% [20%] DOWN (2T)
• Yang DEF +30 [+100]
• Yin ATK +30 [+80]

Before giving a brief summary on how C3 Hecatia fares in general, here are images provided by LostWord that provide a very simple summary on how she works. The last image features the image from the latest Dev Letter, which will have a clarification on one of the listed stats.

The stat spread for Hecatia. As you can see, she has a Yang ATK of 1930, which is actually the current highest Yang ATK stat in the game. C3 Yukari is in second place, just shy of Hecatia with a stat of 1925.

Hecatia contains 0P Water and Freeze anomaly breaks on Fruit Splitter, giving it some nice and varied utility. Seed Blaster has chances to apply Freeze anomalies as well to combo with the other shot.

All of Hecatia’s spells go into the debuff-side of things. Earth: Life Soup has some additional team support via heals and barrier restoration while also breaking Freeze anomalies. Earth: Watermelons Are Falling! is a very hard debuff on a singular target, in both Yin stats and Yang stats. Her Last Word, Water Planet, goes especially hard in debuffing all of the foes’ defensive stats, both in Yin, Yang, and CRIT.

Most of these skills are self-explanatory, with Gengobe Pickles being a great highlight due to its 2.00 Spirit Power UP as well as Self-Quick so that Hecatia can apply debuffs before anyone else goes. She also has 2 passives that focus on debuffing at the start of a wave: Body Cooling Effect providing 1 layer of Freeze on a foe while Beach Goddess gives 1 enemy 1 level of Yang DEF DOWN.

This is the image provided by the Dev Letter, which basically says the same information as above. However, it is important to note that the “Every turn” tagline regarding Yang DEF DOWN and Freeze is false, as this is referring to Body Cooling Effect and Beach Goddess, which only apply at the start of a wave. On a single target, no less, which is not clearly mentioned in the tagline. Additionally, as a small note, the 10 levels of Yang DEF DOWN will likely only be on 1 target due to the nature of Earth: Watermelons Are Falling!

Just like it was stated at the start, C3 Hecatia is by far the best Debuff Friend in the game, capable of stacking maximum Yang DEF DOWN buffs, along with heavy emphasis on Freeze anomaly inflictions and breaks to pair well with her good Water and Earth breaks. However, there are a couple of points and issues that are not covered when merely looking at her stats.

• Regarding 10 stacks of Yang DEF DOWN: Damage Comparison

While it might not make much sense at first, maxing out an opponent’s Yang DEF DOWN debuffs does not exactly rack up the damage when compared to buffing Yang ATK while debuffing Yang DEF as well. To put it simply, both stats stack on themselves in similar ways, which makes having a decent Yang ATK UP on yourself and Yang DEF DOWN on the foe do more damage than solely having one or the other. Unfortunately, Hecatia can only buff Yang ATK via applying Freeze on herself, something she only does 3 times in total (even if her first skill allows for the Freeze to always be on her). This buff isn’t even applied to her allies, making her questionable in support outside of her healing and debuffs.

• 4 to 5 Turn Duration on Debuffs

On paper, this is something that sounds purely great without any setbacks. However, there is a major problem that arises which regards wave and HP Gauge endurance. When you end a wave or break an HP Gauge, the debuffs applied on foes disappear. This is rather obvious for the former (after all, the enemy is…dead), but the latter is what truly cripples Hecatia, especially in EX stages. If a HP Gauge is broken early, say in 2 or 3 turns after applying her debuffs, then those might as well have lasted only for that amount rather than the extended one. This truly hurts when combined with her third skill, which has a 7T cooldown that is meant to be balanced with the debuffs’ 5T endurance. If the debuff ended earlier due to a broken HP Gauge, though, you just have a long cooldown with little to show for it.

• Applying Debuffs vs. Full Breaking Foes

When you Full Break an opponent, all of their debuffs are removed in favor of a flat x0.25 decrease of their defensive stats. Already, this detail goes against someone like Hecatia, whose main goal is to apply as many debuffs as she can. But when you also consider Hecatia’s great elemental and anomaly breaks (which, again, are still good to have), then it becomes very easy for Hecatia to quickly Full Break a foe and once again make her debuffs rather repetitive or pointless.

Details like the ones above might be true for all Debuff Type Friends, but the problem is that Hecatia is so good that she runs into these limitations very often. In a way, that almost speaks to how good Hecaita already is, with her amazing debuff, breaking, and damage potential. However, it still makes her fall a bit short when compared to the other Epic Friends and top tiers. None of this truly makes Hecatia “bad” in any sense, and if anything these bullet points are just meant to call out what to look out for when trying to use Hecatia to her fullest potential.