Honkai Patch 7.4 Beta - Senadina Support Mechanics + New Team Guide!

Introduction

As you have probably already heard, Patch 7.4 releases the new character Thelema.

But what you may not know is Thelema has a shockingly large reliance on Senadina? I know many of you are probably confused how she went from being a competitive DPS last patch to suddenly becoming a stronger DPS and gaining support capabilities this patch. The good news is this post will serve as a guide to the new additions in patch 7.4 and explain what's going on and how you could potentially benefit from this. First things first, I should address the question everyone is probably asking.

What makes Sena a support?

Senadina has new mechanics as of Patch 7.4 that lets her support Astral Ring: Wheel of Destiny and Astral Ring: World Star.

She will not be used as a support for any Part 1 teams, and we do not know if she can support other Astral Ring types yet.

New Support Mechanics

If you were leveling your skills up for your Senadina you probably noticed this weird ability called "Custom Module:???"

We didn't know anything about what it did, we could just assume this was similar to Herrscher of Truth getting her ability in future patches to give her added synergy with Herrscher Trio team. The text told us was it's possible to be influenced from other unknown specializations and that it would be unlocked in future versions leaving us all wondering yet speculative.

Well that version has come and it's patch 7.4

Her skill has been updated and it's now called Custom Module: Radon.

The effects have also been added to it, it's a really long ability but I'll try to explain everything this passive does.

• Characters who are protected by Astral Ring: Wheel of Destiny ( For example Thelema ) can trigger Senadina to attack as a "Phantom" making the character come on field to deal a large amount of Shadow Star Attack damage.

Senadina Phantom

This is similar to how Sugary Starburst could come on field when you trigger her QTE supporting the team without forcing you to switch to the character. This alone can be a huge point saver cutting down time spent on supports and maximizing DPS uptime.

• She will then enter "Rondo in the Shadows" state for 11 seconds and attacks will generate Phantoms if Wheel of Destiny is activated.

As you can see, Valkyrie attacks are triggering "Phantoms" of Thelema to come on field and assist in combat.

These phantoms trigger passive effects, for Thelema in specific Phantoms generated restore Banquet Enjoyment,

( her energy mechanic ) deal bonus damage and boost Thelema's attack multipliers.

When the character enters battle, deployed characters will gain the following buffs:

1. Deal 10% Bonus Total DMG
2. Deal 60% Bonus Physical DMG ( That's right, she's a Physical support now too!! )
3. Enemies take 25% Bonus Physical DMG
4. During Stellar Outburst, deployed character deals 30% bonus Total DMG
5. When the character enters battle or enters / exits Stellar Outburst, consume up to 30 SP to boost the deployed characters Total DMG by 0.5 x SP consumed for 30 seconds ( up to 15% Total DMG ) Retriggering refreshes duration.
6. When 30 SP has been consumed all attacks from team members with Wheel of Destiny have 16% more Elemental Breach for 30 seconds. Retriggering refreshes duration.

So you may be thinking, there has to be a catch you can't just get all these buffs for free, and you would be right.

The catch is that the following will be removed for the rest of the battle if Senadina enters the field.

1. 10% Total DMG
2. 60% Physical DMG / Take 25% more Physical DMG
3. 30% Total DMG for Valkyrie on field during Stellar Outburst

So you don't want to ever switch to her unless you are fighting a boss that MAKES you use her like Symphony Kevin or Benares.

This also means that you don't really have many alternative stigmata for her because hers buffs the team passively without her having to come on field, the other Stigmata have conditions like using Ultimate or landing Weapon Active.

And finally, for the last thing this loaded ability does.

• Stellar Drain will recover 10 bonus Astral Ring Intensity and she will recover 25 SP when Stellar Drain is consumed.

This may not sound like much but this effect makes it so that Senadina can gain SP when another character consumes Stellar Drain. This comes into play since you will not be switching to Senadina so she needs a way to generate SP to give out her buffs.

If you would like to see a Guide focused on Thelema may I redirect your attention here!

Stigmata Support Effects

There were actually some support effects on her stigmata from patch 7.3 that largely went unnoticed.

This section will go over the support capabilities she has on her Stigmata to explain why she supports so well.

The support effects are specifically on her M piece and her 3 set bonus.

Middle Piece.

While Astral Ring is active, if she consumes 30 or more SP at once on standby, the team's Total DMG and Elemental DMG increases by 25% permanently outside of Stellar Outburst ( cannot stack )

This is a strong effect that can now be triggered permanently buffing the teams Total DMG and Elemental DMG by 25% outside of Stellar Outburst, this will help her team not be entirely reliant on Stellar Outburst to deal damage.

3 Piece bonus

The effect we are looking at is specifically the following:

After activating Astral Ring, If the character consumes at least 30 SP on standby in one go, enemies take 15% more Total DMG and 15% more Elemental DMG for 30 seconds. Retriggering refreshes duration.

This is yet another strong Stigmata effect with a long duration, effectively permanent.

It's only possible to be triggered now because of her new unlocked skill letting her consume 30 SP while off field.

This means that you should NOT have any SP cost reduction on any of her Stigmata, she wouldn't be able to trigger her buffs.

So what Affixes do you run on her Stigmata if she's a support?

The good news is, she wants to run ATK affixes still so there's no need to chase anything that she doesn't already want as DPS.

And finally, I want to showcase their range of coverage in this guide too.

The Domain Resonance team is composed of Senadina Helia Thelema.

The Phantom team is composed of Thelema Senadina Coralie.

Can Helia Replace Sena?

So now the question I want to answer is something that I have personally seen many people asking, if Helia can replace Senadina in say, a party with Thelema. They are both Astral Ring: World star right? Surely the difference in power isn't that large.

I figured the best thing to do so I can beat the Senadina allegations would be a DPS test and comparison.

The only Astral Ring Wheel of Destiny DPS we have is Thelema, so it's only fair we do Thelema DPS with Sena vs Helia support.

Thelema Senadina Coralie

This team resulted in 1,247,955 DPS, one of the highest tests for a S0 character in the game.

48,670,272 damage in the rotation!

That's an extremely high number, lets see how Helia compares to this.

Thelema Helia Coralie

As for Helia, she did 667,120 DPS...

And 27,351,936 damage per rotation...

So the answer is no way, Helia can't even get close to Sena in supporting performance, even though you don't switch to Senadina using Helia results in roughly half the DPS not to mention a significant score loss... but why is this?

There are a few reasons why Helia cannot support Thelema, most of these are in the prior sections but I will still summarize.

First of all, Senadina just provides way more buffs than Helia including Elemental Breach without taking up any field time.

Helia is not a universal support, her Stigmata effects are predominantly lightning support focused not offering much to other characters. Helia's functionalities are more "Domain Resonance" focused without any synergy with Thelema.

Think of Helia as being a tailored support for Senadina, she's not amazing in any other team thus far.

Next, Senadina's "Rondo in the Shadows" buff lasts for 10 seconds letting Thelema attacks generate Phantoms.

As we covered previously, what Rondo of the Shadows does is...

1. Phantoms generate 1 extra energy ( Banquet Enjoyment ) for Thelema
2. Phantoms deal bonus damage of their own
3. Phantoms boost the multipliers of Thelema's attacks causing her to do more damage

Without Senadina there will be a huge gap in your rotation where "Rondo of the Shadows" buff runs out.

Instead of 15 seconds ( 10 from Senadina and 5 from Coralie ) you only get 5 seconds from Helia and 5 from Coralie.

Normally you would have it last for your entire Stellar Outburst duration but now it's impossible to rotate as smoothly.

Additionally, you don't deal as many Moment of Indulgence as you used to which is HUGE because of Thelema's passive.

Moment of Indulgence reduces the cooldown of Ultimate by 3 seconds, up to 3 times for each round of Ultimate.

Less Moment of Indulgence results in less Ultimate casts which in turn reduces the amount of time-stop from her weapon.

Everything is connected, by losing Senadina the rotation drastically changes and results in a large DPS and score loss.

If you don't have Senadina you would be better off turning the Astral Ring off and going for a Part 1 team If you have their gear.

This would be composed of Jade Knight and Sugary Starburst, but this assumes you already have them ranked and geared.

Can Sena Support well without her weapon?

I wanted to make this section for people that are set on getting Thelema but aren't confident they can afford Senadina and her weapon too. While I do recommend getting Sena's weapon if it's possible If I had to choose one it would be Thelema's weapon each and every time. Senadina's weapon doesn't offer any added functionalities meaning the playstyle is the same with or without her weapon. Lacking it won't impact you as much as missing Thelema's weapon and the DPS loss isn't as big.

So I would say yes, in my research there isn't a big loss to Thelema if you don't have her weapon.

There will be a Infographic in the following section with a comparison included.

Senadina Support Infographic

As we expected, Sena + Coralie stands at the top for supporting Thelema.

Helia is a Lightning support more so tailored to Senadina, so she's inferior to Coralie here.

After that it's Sena + Coralie again, but Senadina is using "The Value of Pi" weapon instead of her Signature.

Then we have maxed out Jade Knight and Kira as the best alternative option if you don't have Senadina

Finally, you have a team suited towards new players, where Helia is a temporary while you plan to get Senadina.

Conclusion:

Senadina is an extremely strong support without any proper rotations.

Her value has skyrocketed this patch with her added support effects, some of which we still haven't utilized.

Now it's time to move on to her improved DPS and how her team has changed.

Sena DPS Team Comparison

Now that Senadina has a new "Best Team" where you replace Coralie with Thelema I figured it could be beneficial to have a proper comparison with the "before" and "after." This is done so people on the fence on if they should pull Thelema or not would know what benefits they are getting for the Senadina team. Keep in mind that some aspects will not be showcased properly here such as the Time-fracture provided by Thelema which would help inflate scores past what the numbers shown here would reflect.

With that out of the way we can finally move onto Senadina DPS related testing!

Senadina Helia Coralie

This is Senadina's old team used in patch 7.3.

While it's no longer her best in slot team It's still a good idea to see how well it holds up to the Thelema variant.

Coralie doesn't provide as much buffs as Thelema, and she doesn't have time-stop but they both act as the Resonance Trigger.

While you don't normally start rotations with Coralie Ultimate, there are some cases where you do and I'd like to test their potential under optimal conditions. This does slightly inflate the team DMG from 43m to 45m and DPS from 960k to 1.05m.

The damage done was actually quite respectable sporting the following

Damage Per Second: 1,054,178...

Damage Per Rotation: 45,329,664

But the question is, how does that compare to Thelema?

Senadina Helia Thelema

That brings us to the new updated variant of her team where you replace Coralie with Thelema.

The team operates the same, with Helia and Senadina dropping Domain Resonance then having Thelema trigger it with Resonance attacks, the notable difference here is Thelema has much stronger buffs, freeze, personal DPS and Time-fracture.

There you have it, Thelema did exceptionally well blowing Coralie out of the water.

Damage Per Second: 1,297,189

Damage Per Rotation: 53,184,768

Curious about other DPS teams for her? check out the infographic below!

DPS Comparison Infographic

I also tested and included 3 other team variants for comparison.

Senadina + Thelema + Helia ( No Weapon ) for players who weren't able to get Helia's Weapon to see how they compare.

Coralie + Thelemato see if people without Helia's weapon could use this as an alternative, but it was a flop because they both occupy the same role in the team as the one to activate Domain Resonance, they extend the rotation too long too.

Golden Diva + Lunar Vow to see how it compares in terms of DPS to Thelema. The ELF used is Kiana ELF 4*

It actually performed the worst but to be fair this was more of a team meant to be used with ranked Luna rather than S0.

It was never competitive in terms of DPS, but in using the shorter rotations to kill faster when over-geared + ranked.

As you can see, Thelema is amazing both as a DPS and as a support for Senadina.

I personally think Thelema has exceptionally high pull value for use in a Senadina team and as a DPS with Senadina support.

If you are interested in their exact DPS values I will add it here for your convenience so you don't need to check every video.

Helia + Thelema - 1,297,189 DPS

Helia + Coralie - 1,102,120 DPS

Thelema + Helia ( No Weapon ) - 1,079,104 DPS

Thelema + Coralie - 874,091 DPS

Golden Diva + Lunar Vow - 728,569 DPS

What about Sena + Luna teams?

I felt that this was as good time as ever to include this section, right after the DPS tests where Thelema won by ALOT.

Back in Patch 7.3. Lunar Vow did have some places where she was the best choice when paired up with Eden as the team leader, especially in Memorial Arena against Guaymas and on Stardust: Alien Guard, but can she compete with Thelema?

Unfortunately not, because of Thelema's release and Songque being buffed the team has been elevated enough to overtake Lunar Vow team variants completely in terms of competitive scoring. On the CN server Thelema now wins literally everywhere, even in Memorial Arena against Guaymas.

This holds true for S0 and SSS comparisons, Thelema wins in every case now.

Lunar Vow will still remain a competitive character in her own team, especially for Memorial Arena purposes, but she won't be superior to Thelema for usage in Senadina teams.

Gameplay

This gameplay is not indicative of the maximum potential score, it is just for fun to showcase her playstyle.

Here are the stats used

Closing

That's all for this guide~ I hope this helped!

Thanks to everyone that follows or leaves a like I really appreciate it!

If you have any questions feel free to message me here or on discord "Kithicide"

Check out my other Guides!