Stella Analysis
This is part of a series covering the VA-11 Hall-A dolls. You can go back to the overview here.
Introduction#
Puppet Mask ICD 6s/CD 8s
Active: Increase damage by 50% for 5 seconds.
Passive: After her puppets attack 16 times, her next attack gains an extra 50% critical damage. When Sei is present, Stella grants Sei 10% skill cooldown reduction (does not affect initial cooldown time).
Favorite Drink: When buffed by a Bleeding Jane, the passive effect only requires 10 attacks to trigger.
Stella's active looks a bit underwhelming - 5/8 uptime is typical, a 50% multiplier is subpar, and a 6s ICD is doing her no favors. She comes with a number of extras, though - bonus crit damage every so often, bonus CDR on Sei, and she gets stronger with Jill. (I have to wonder - if the Valhalla collab was first run later on, could these have been unity skills?)
Her SPEQ replaces a cape, giving +30% crit damage/+3 ROF/-3 MS. Nothing revolutionary, but it's a ~10% average DPS increase over a standard cape. Be sure to pick it up.
This skill text leaves out the fun side of Stella. Stella herself doesn't shoot anything - instead, she uses two puppets to make her attacks. Their targeting schemes are slightly different, and they shoot different enemies whenever possible. Not to be confused with General Liu though - they don't have anything like her clone's odd interactions.
About Autoattacks#
Liu's release makes this a little less remarkable, but Stella's normal attacks are split into two parts.
One of Stella's attacks follows standard RF targeting (pick farthest enemy, shoot until dead, find new target), while the other continuously retargets to the current farthest enemy. They will pick different targets whenever possible, only focus-firing when one enemy remains. Video reference.
Unlike Kord, both of Stella's attacks have her full AP stat (example - the dummy has 190 armor here). Before you ask - no, Stella's reduced per-shot FP doesn't make high armor a concern. RFs don't care about armor.
In a very general/theoretical sense, a typical RF selfbuffer gets a ~75% DPS buff with 5/8 uptime via their skill, for a 46.9% average buff. Stella gets 50% damage with 5/8 uptime and 50% crit damage - approximately equal to +50% damage - every 1/8 attacks, for a ~37.5% average buff. With Sei, the extra crit damage triggers every 5 attacks for a ~41.3% average buff.
That may sound bad, but (very roughly) 7% lower damage output could reasonably be overcome if Stella's split shots are good enough. AUG overcame a similar disadvantage to outperform Angelica in almost every test pre-chips, because of her random targeting.
A few overly-simplified sims confirm this sort of relationship:
Testing#
But simulators don't help us answer that bit on targeting. As usual, the remedy is actual testing:
This first round is rather inconclusive - overall performance appeared quite similar between RF options. At best, Stella and VSK may have had an advantage against the mostly-KCCO mob.
The Nemeum encounter mostly just demonstrates how the damage chart can get quite unreliable. We can expect Lee's baseline performance to be similar across tests, and final clear times were almost identical. Yet the damage contribution of the second rifle varied from -20% or so to +90%. If R93 was actually that much better, we'd expect clear times to also shrink substantially.
It's much more plausible that R93 was hitting Nemeums and almost killing them, leaving the killing blow for Lee and causing her to register much less damage dealt.
Let's scale back a little on the buffers/fairies and see if we can even out our damage chart readings.
Sufficient squinting may convince us that R93>QBU/Stella>SVD against the Strelets, but they're all about the same vs the Scout/Prowler node.
Historical Uses#
- Stella is, at least on paper, a reasonable option for farming routes that need to deal with armor as she won't be overwhelmed as easily by Nemeum mobs. This is only marginally relevant for a few night SPEQ farms and Liu can do similar things now.
- Stella's auto-retargeting shot is a nice lazy option for dealing with adds in certain boss fights. El Fail from DJMax is the obvious example. Similar feats can be achieved with IWS, R93, General Liu, any rifle that you wiggle for a moment, and a few others not particularly worth mentioning.
Conclusion#
Stella is a decent selfbuffer with a once-unique gimmick that specializes in mob fights. Now, Type88, 4 Shiki, and General Liu are almost surely better options for such enemies. Stella is sadly optional, but still decent.
If you already have high-end options raised, she won't add to your capabilities. But if you don't have many great rifles, Stella can help you get started.
Minor Notes#
- Stella is one of the two farmable dolls from this collab, so you can theoretically farm however many time allows. Her SPEQ is only obtainable once, though you could have a second from the original run. She is not worth duping with her SPEQ, so there's certainly no point going for copies that won't have one.
- Performance with her Jill/Sei interactions haven't been covered here. They're relatively minor bonuses and Valhalla-heavy echelons aren't a great idea in general, so don't worry about them. If it makes sense to use Stella and Sei in an echelon, it'll just be a little nicer than what it normally would be.
Example Echelons#
Standard disclaimer: teams should be built as needed according to the circumstances of specific maps and enemies. Do not blindly copy-and-paste teams. With that in mind, here are some not-entirely-awful ideas to illustrate where Stella can be used.
More like this
An updated perspective
Force manual vs Autoskill