Emilie be Cyno's saviour after v2?

I’ve been thinking about the synergy between Cyno and Emilie. 

Unfortunately, Emilie doesn’t provide any elemental mastery boosts, damage isn’t particularly strong, AoE range is limited, and only applies Dendro to nearby enemies. 

Even if she handles waves well, do you really think she can outshine Nahida? But hey, even if the outcome seems obvious, it’s worth testing if there’s even a small chance, right?

Here’s the team I used:

Cyno, Emilie, Fischl, Zhongli

Cyno, Emilie, Fischl, Baizhu

I considered replacing Nahida with Emilie, but I didn’t include both Nahida and Emilie together since I figured Nahida and either Fischl or Yae with Zhongli or Baizhu would be a better choice.

 I thought Zhongli or Baizhu were essential, and compared to Fischl or Yae, Emilie doesn’t really offer much.

1. Emilie's Setup

For Emilie, her signature weapon isn’t great for an Aggravate team since it’s an ATK 608, Crit Rate 33.1, ATK 15% weapon, so it lacks competitiveness. 

There aren’t many good alternatives either. Among 5-stars, I consider Scarlet Sands first, Staff of Homa second, and her signature weapon third. 

But due to limited enhancement materials during testing, I used her R5 signature weapon, which boosts her ATK from 15 to 31.

Considering her damage output, using a support weapon might be more effective. If you’re focusing only on Dendro application, Favonius Lance is your best bet.

For artifacts, if you’re aiming for damage, go with Gilded Dreams or Deepwood Memories, with Deepwood being more versatile for both Quicken and Burning. 

For support artifacts, Noblesse Oblige seems best since Instructor has low efficiency. If you position Emilie ahead of Cyno, Instructor might have some effect, but it’s only for 6-7 seconds

so it’s not a huge difference.

Exile could work too, but with Favonius, Noblesse is better. 

As for constellations, investing in her for Dendro application seems wasteful to me. 

Constellations 1 and 2 become irrelevant, and while 4 and 6 can be useful, are they worth the investment? Even using her with Burning, her constellations aren’t great, and for Quicken, they’re even less effective.

2. How does she feel in actual use?

To sum it up, I felt like not using her was the better choice.

Pros:

Unlike Nahida, she doesn’t need to reapply Dendro, which is convenient.

Cons:

Dendro application isn’t always reliable.

Overall DPS drops.

The main reason to pair Emilie with Cyno is to address Cyno’s weakness against waves of enemies. 

Her Dendro application was better than I expected, but the drawbacks were more significant. She’s a single-target projectile, only attacks nearby enemies, and her AoE range is limited. Plus, her projectiles are slow.

During battles, when a new wave appears, all these problems combine to create more issues:

For the first 1-2 seconds, no enemy has Dendro applied (Emilie’s E is slower than Cyno’s attack speed).

For the first 5 seconds, only one enemy has Dendro (if enemies move, it takes additional time).

If a new wave starts and Emilie’s cycle isn’t reset, in the worst case, no enemies might have Dendro applied (if enemies spawn far from Emilie’s E).

From this, it’s clear that Emilie isn’t Cyno’s savior for handling waves effectively. The supposed convenience I mentioned is actually sarcastic.

Emilie doesn’t have much more to offer, so nothing really changes.

Secondly, the DPS drop was terrible. Assuming Emilie is well-built with Scarlet Sands and decent artifacts, without Spread, she’d do around 5k damage, and with Spread, about 20k. 

Even her Q doesn’t hit 30k, so her practical DPS is around 20k. This is similar to a well-built Fischl.

So, Emilie becomes a 5-star Dendro Fischl who can’t use Elegy for the End. While some might see this positively, we usually use Nahida in Aggravate teams, right? 

At C2, Nahida lowers enemy defense by 30%, boosts elemental mastery by 250, and even without considering her own DPS, her buffs alone make a clear difference. 

Comparing parties in Spiral Abyss with Nahida and Emilie, Nahida’s team performed better. 

Single-target battles aren’t even a contest.

Conclusion and Thoughts:

Cyno is a failed design.

But he’s strong with Furina, Nahida, and Baizhu.

I think this hotfix was because couldn’t handle Electro monsters well.

And a bonus point: Cyno’s cycle is longer than Emilie’s E duration, so if you use E at the start and then use Q mid-cycle, you need to refresh her E duration, or it will expire. 

Using her E this way doesn’t cause any issues.

Overall, aside from slightly better Dendro application, the result was as expected.

I think the Burning setup is successful, but Emilie’s versatility is a bit lacking.