NOTE: Guide has been reposted to officially be apart of the Strategy Guide event. Any support is appreciated!

Intro

If you just pulled Nekomata and have no clue what team to build her into, this is the guide for you! The team featured here only requires A rank characters for the other 2 slots, making it very approachable and also very enjoyable to learn! In this regard, if Nekomata is your first S rank pull, this team is perfect for progressing through the early game and will still be a useful team in what will presumably be a sea of other teams in the late game. As of patch 1.0, this is pretty solidly the premiere physical team so bar any game breaking character releases this composition will have longevity even through updates!

The team comp is as follows:

• Lucy
• Piper
• Nekomata (obviously!)

So let's look into why this comp works!

Composition Building

As a general rule of thumb, meta teams in this game generally follow this cookie cutter format:

• DPS (This could be Attack or Anomaly)
• Stun
• Support (This could also conditionally be Defense as seen in the Belobog comp with Ben)

Unfortunately, as of 1.0 release, there are only 3 stun characters: Anby, Koleda, and Lycaon. 2 of these are extremely difficult to get as S rank characters. And although Anby is nice, she can really only cover that role for 1 team. It is a role that is hard to skip; daze is a VERY important mechanic in this game due to the massive damage steroid it gives.

So why does the team comp in this guide spit on everything I just said and runs 2 DPS+Support? To answer this question, lets read what the Physical stat actually does:

As noted above, flinch, which is a debuff applied through physical damage, increases the daze a target takes. Although stunners are obviously the best at applying the daze effect, all characters generally do this to some degree. With this debuff applied and the number of hits Piper gets in with her EX Special Attack, this team ends up getting dazes off quite consistently. It should be noted that this does not fully make up the role of a stunner, but it does make the lack of one way less of a big deal. And with all the team wide damage buffs your team is giving, you likely will hardly feel the difference in DPS!

So lets look at the individual characters!

#1: Lucy

Lucy is the support for this composition. She provides support in 2 ways:

1) Her team-wide damage buff, Cheer On!, which increases teammates damage by a % of Lucy's attack.

2) Her 3 goons.

Confused by the second point? Don't be. Because if there is only 1 things you take from this guide, please let it be this: at the start of the any combat, switch to Lucy and tap E. This is because as soon as Lucy uses her special (doesn't matter if its an EX or regular!!!!), the 1 minion she generally spawns with will become 3. And these minions are no joke; they inherit her attack, basic attack scaling, impact, and even her crit rate% and crit dmg% thanks to the synergy with the rest of the comp. These minions also persist after swapping Lucy off the field, which is where she provides a majority of her support.

As for her damage buff, this is procced through EX special attacks. It applies to your team, her goons, and even your Bangboo! It should be noted that by holding her Special Attack button, it will enhance the attack and extend the duration of the buff for all teammates. Thankfully, you can skip most of this animation by swapping to the next character while she is winding up her hit. This will take some practice but doing it this way will minimize DPS downtime and ensure your other DPS do not lose out on their damage steroid.

Besides the obvious benefit of Attack, Crit Rate%, and Crit Dmg%, energy regen is crucial. Ideally, Lucy is doing as little basic attacks as possible and is only coming out to use her EX special attack before backing up to let the DPS and her goons do their job.

#2: Piper

If you have ever played Garen from League of Legends, you basically already know this character. For Piper has 1 goal and 1 goal alone: to spin. Not only does her spin do a ton of damage, apply physical anomaly like nothing else, and cleaves in a generous AOE; it also buffs team damage! Thanks to her passives, Piper gains stacks every time her spin hits a target for a limited duration. These stacks increase her Anomaly buildup, which is good, but the bigger thing is that if she maintains above 20 stacks all team members gain 18% ATK.

But that isn't all, for Piper has an important tech that will only become more important the later in the game you go. When Piper initially starts her spin on her EX Special Attack, it is very slow for the first few seconds. To circumvent this, you can make sure the spin starts at max speed by attacking 3 times and then immediately using your spin at the tail end of the 3rd attack. Like with Lucy's animation/downtime cancel, this will take a little practice but this will dramatically approve Piper's already absurd DPS.

You can tell Piper is on her 3rd attack because she throws her weapon behind her.

#3: Nekomata

As the primary DPS of this build, Nekomata is the character the should be seeing a majority of the field time. If you are struggling to keep a decent buff uptime from the other characters, it is strongly encouraged to apply the time-saving techniques in the relevant character sections (and obviously increase energy regen to taste). Fortunately, Nekomata's buff, despite being innately selfish, is considerably easier to keep up for you simply have to dodge counter or quick assist, 2 very commons actions that you are likely doing anyways. This buff increases Nekomata's attack by 30% but can be increased as she is being built to a whopping 60%. This, in conjunction with team buffs, mean that she will obviously be doing a TON of damage.

Few things to keep in mind:

1. Try to save her EX Special Attack until after an enemy get assault procced on them for yet another 35% attack boost. So many buffs!
2. You will be using Nekomata's ult 95% of the time. Piper's can be considered due to it refreshing stacks of her passive but with all the modifiers that Nekomata gets for existing it is still pretty hard to warrant.

Other than that, Nekomata is pretty straightforward. Basic attack to your hearts content and enjoy all the attack buffs you have piled up!

#4: Bangboo

Conclusion

Overall, this team comp makes incredible use of attack steroids and the flinch mechanic to make up for its lack of stunner. The tips/techniques I have included are not comprehensive but are a solid foundation to getting this composition up and running. Excited to see what new stuff the community finds out over time! Thank you for reading!