Eula Lawrence (尤拉 Youla), the Spindrift Knight (浪沫的旋舞), is the best Physical DPS and nuker in the game.
The name Eula sounds similar to Euler, the genius European mathematician and physicist. It is unknown if this is coincidental or deliberate.
Eula's normal attacks are good and have high scaling, but usually the most impressive thing about her kit is her burst.
Press version: does AoE Cryo damage. When hitting opponents gives a stack of Grimheart. Max 2 stacks. Grimheart increases Eula's own DEF and Interruption Resistance.
Hold version: consumes Grimheart stacks, does additional Cryo damage, reduces the Cryo and Physical RES of enemies (up to 25% each, which is actually quite broken). This alone makes her one of the best res-shredding characters at c0 (by comparison morax shreds 20% res, while ganyu c1 shreds 15% cryo res).
With one of Eula's passives, if she consumes 2 Grimheart stacks, she will create a smaller Shattered Lightfall Sword that explodes immediately and does half the base physical damage of her burst's Lightfall Sword. This makes her a walking nuker. The Shattered Lightfall Sword is considered burst damage (and can give energy stacks to her burst).
Initial swing does Cryo damage. Final burst of the Lightfall Sword does Physical damage.
Hitting opponents with NA, E, bursts (shattered lightfall swords) will increase the amount of stacks on the final burst, which will in turn increase its scaling. This burst can reach the highest scaling among all nukes in the game (some of the highest include Raiden's burst, Tartaglia's burst, Mona's burst). Even if Hu Tao melts on her burst, Eula's burst will still have much higher scaling. This can give Eula the best damage per screenshot in the game.
The burst costs 80 energy, so Eula usually needs some ER herself and likes to be run alongside a battery.
The burst has decent AoE, similar to Tartaglia's melee burst.
Eula's NA damage is more single target compared to some other units, but at least she has more AoE and higher scalings on her abilities than Hu Tao. Eula's lightfall sword explosions on her burst and passive give her more aoe damage.
Moreover, even though Eula is mainly a physical dps, the ~400% scalings on her cryo damage (hold E and Q initial swing) are higher than the scalings on Ganyu's abilities.
With one of Eula's passives, casting her Q will reset the CD of her E and give her one Grimheart stack. This is helpful for activating the 4p Pale Flame effect, which requires using E twice within 7s. Her E press has 4s cd while her E hold has 10s cd. A typical rotation would be use press E before burst, use Q, use hold E immediately (which will shred RES for 7s). This will activate the two stacks on 4p Pale Flame, giving 18% ATK as well as 50% physical dmg bonus for 7s.
Eula will have a 7s window to charge her burst with energy stacks.
Eula's constellations are solid, increasing her overall damage. None of the constellations will fundamentally change her gameplay in the way that a C6 Xiao would (that is one would play a C0 Eula more or less the same way they would play a C6 Eula).
That said, her C6 will give much more stacks to her burst, allowing her to reach the full 30 more easily and thus do much more damage with her signature burst.
With C6, using her Q will give her 5 energy stacks, and using NA/E/Q will have 50% chance to give an additional stack. On average she can get 1.5 times more energy stacks compared to non-C6.
C6 Eula can also open the door for a more quickswap nuke gameplay. That is, use Eula's Q and immediately swap off to activate the nuke. Admittingly this is possible at C0, but the difference is that at C6 the nuke will do more damage.
Eula's C1 is essentially a free 30% physical dmg bonus buff (using E to consume grimheart stacks will activate buff for 6s, can stack and extend duration to 18s). By comparison, Tighnari's C2 only gives 20% dendro dmg bonus.
Eula's C2 reduces E hold CD to same as press CD (4s). This has two main implications: 1) it becomes easier to activate 4p Pale Flame effect outside of burst and 2) it allows Eula to create more miniature lightfall sword explosions, thereby increasing her non-burst dps further.
The 4-piece Pale Flame is Eula's BiS.
That said, 2-piece Pale Flame and 2-piece Bloodstained is viable as well.
ATK on the sands, Physical DMG Bonus on the goblet, and CRIT on the circlet. Substats include CRIT, ER, ATK.
5 stars:
Although the Redhorn Claymore has high CRIT DMG, it has low base ATK, and its passive is not too suited for Eula. The above claymores are usually more recommended.
Although the Beacon weapon has CRIT Rate, the HP passive is basically useless as Eula does not scale with HP.
4 stars:
Eula's best teams take the form:
Some example teams include:
Raiden, Yae Miko, Beidou, Fischl, Kuki are the best options for the Electro support. Yae can be used in place of Fischl for electro sub-dps. Mika is another very strong Eula support, buffing physical damage specifically. While Shenhe is mainly a cryo buffer, she can shred some physical RES for Eula and generate cryo particles.
Qiqi, Diona, Rosaria are good options for the Cryo battery. Qiqi and Diona can also heal, and Diona can also shield.
Because Superconduct already reduces 40% Physical RES, Eula and Physical teams in general do not really need Zhongli for an extra -20% RES, which can hit diminishing returns. Moreover, Eula's skill reduces Cryo and Physical RES by 25% at Level 10, which already powercreeps Zhongli. Eula will deal more overall damage from an ATK boosting support such as Bennett or even a Crowd Control unit such as Venti, Kazuha, or Sucrose to give the team more AoE.
Mona is a great support overall, but she can also fit in Eula teams to give some more DMG Bonus and provide some passive Freeze and Shatter. Note that when running Mona and an Electro character together for Electro-Charged, the Hydro and Electro status will exist concurrently, so Eula can proc Freeze and Superconduct.
Yun Jin can buff Eula's NA damage as well. Whereas some other NA-focused characters like Cyno have additive damage self-buffs, Eula does not, so Yun Jin's additive buff actually synergizes more and gives more to Eula (Eula mainly relies on physical RES shred to buff her NA). Among NA-focused characters, Yun Jin synergizes well with Yoimiya, Eula, Diluc, Scaramouche, Alhaitham, Childe.
It is possible to play Cryo Eula (with a cryo goblet) in a team like: Eula-Chongyun-Shenhe. There will just be a lot of shattering with the cryo infusion. Moreover, Eula's burst explosion is still physical and will not be buffed by cryo damage.
Mika and Eula: How good is Mika for Eula? Is he the best Eula support? Mika c6 is definitely a great Eula support for giving 60% physical crit damage, perhaps even the best. In fact Mika c6 is almost close to a universal support as most characters can do physical damage (besides catalysts). Without c6, Mika is still a good support for giving an atk speed buff, which allows Eula to gain more stacks on her burst, besides increasing her NA dps.
Rosaria is another very good support for Eula, giving crit rate and physical res shred at c6. Eula benefits from cryo res via crit rate buff, and Eula does like to crit on her nuke.
Bennett can greatly buff Eula's damage and burst. The catch is that you want c5 Bennett, not c6, as c6 Bennett will give pyro infusion, which Eula does not want. So Eula is one of the several reasons why people do not recommend activating c6 Bennett.
We assume a Level 10 burst at max stacks (30 stacks). The scaling is:
This is 4-5 times greater than most other nukes in the game. By comparison a Hu Tao with Level 10 burst has a scaling of 617.44 (low HP). Even if Hu Tao melts her burst, that gives around 1235 scaling, which is still much lower than Eula's burst at max stacks.
So anyone who says you need melt or vaporize to deal high damage is scamming you. Don't listen to them.
Note the above is an optimistic estimate assuming one can get 30 stacks each time, when in reality at C0 it may be possible to get around 14 stacks each time. At C6, it becomes easier for Eula to gain more stacks to reach the max of 30.
As for DPS, Eula is better and does more damage than Ganyu. A general rule of thumb is:
How exactly Eula's burst factors into her damage per second depends on how fast she can charge up her energy.
If we assume that she can spam her 80 cost burst on cooldown, then given the cooldown is 20 seconds (without any other CD modifiers like a Chongyun field), then the damage per second of the above scaling is:
without any DMG Bonus or other modifiers (like RES reduction). Note this is an optimistic estimate (assuming Eula always has her burst up, when in practice she may need some more time to charge it up).
If Eula has 4-piece Pale Flame with a Physical DMG Bonus goblet (25+58.3=83.3, note that physical dmg goblet gives 58.3% whereas other elemental dmg goblets give 46.6% for some reason) then the MV becomes
With the 2 stack 50% damage bonus (50+58.3=108.3) the MV is
This DPS is higher than Ganyu, and that is not even considering all the other sources of Eula's damage (her auto-attacks, skill, initial Cryo swing of her burst, and one of Eula's passives that can create smaller Lightfall swords).
Note this is still lower than a C0 Xiao's DPS (which is also AoE), but both Xiao and Eula are the prime examples of DPS units who do not need reactions to deal massive damage. Both Xiao and Eula have insanely high scaling built into their kit.
Assuming lv10 Q, half the base scaling of a lightfall sword is: \(725.56/2 = 362.78\). Assume she gets one grimheart stack each time she uses press E (4s CD). So she gets two stacks in 8s and can then consume them to create an explosion with hold E (10s CD). This rotation is 18s. The dps is $$x_{eb} = 362.78*1.833/18 = 36.943$$ At C2, this rotation is reduced to 12s (as hold CD becomes 4s).
This counts as burst damage. Another reason why Raiden synergizes well with Eula is that Raiden can buff burst damage, which Eula relies a lot on.
Each E use also does cryo damage. Although Eula does not typically use a cryo goblet, her cryo scalings are quite high too. Suppose in 18s, she does tap E twice and hold E once after getting 2 stacks of grimheart. The hold E has higher cryo scaling than tap E, will consume both stacks, and deal 2 extra instances of icewhirl damage, while also shredding res and unleashing a mini lightfall sword (so that is 4 instances of damage + res shred). Consuming 2 stacks will also buff Eula's def by 60% (and give poise resistance). The cryo dps is $$x_{es} = (263.52*2 + 442.08 + 172.8*2)/18 = 73.04$$
The total dps from skill use is $$x_e = x_{es} + x_{eb} = 109.983$$
The atk bonus from the 4p pale flame has not yet been factored into calculations.
Eula's NA contributes the other component of her dps. Among claymore users, Eula's NA scalings are very high.
Her burst rotation is to use tap E, then Q, then hold E immediately. Without any speed buffs, Eula can do her full NA combo once before the Q explodes. With dash-canceling or if fast enough, she might be able to squeeze two more NA in (N2). There are some rotations that look like: tap, burst, N4, hold, N4. These might be able to get more stacks. However, the 4p pale flame will not take effect until after the hold E (will not last hold duration).
With a 17% atk spd buff (from Mika), she can do a full NA combo + N3.
The hold E takes time out of the 7s window. If she does not do hold E after Q, then she can do a full NA combo + N4.
We first consider the case without speed buffs and no hold E. The full NA combo at lv10 has scaling 1093.54%. From experiments, she can do her full NA combo twice within a 10s window (the cd of her hold E before c2). Thus her NA dps is $$x_n = 1.833*1093.54*2/10 = 400.891764$$ This is just really high dps for no reason.
Note this dps is just using NA without burst. If we add E dps we get $$x_n + x_e = 510.874764$$ This is Eula's dps without using burst. This is already quite high.
In teams, the burst rotation can look like: Bennett Q, Mika E, Eula tap E, Eula Q, Eula hold E, NA until Q explodes. This is assuming we already have off-field electro app (e.g. Raiden, Yae, Kuki).
During her burst, suppose she does her full NA combo once after using hold E. The dps of NA during her burst is $$x_{n2} = 2.083*1093.54/20 = 113.892191$$ At c0, it is impossible to reach the max 30 stacks. Eula can reach perhaps 11-13 stacks on the burst. The burst dps is then $$x_b = 2.083*(725.56+11(148.24))/20 = 245.39823$$ Her burst has a 20s rotation. For 7s while the lightfall sword is present, her physical dmg bonus is buffed further. Suppose in the remainding 13s that 3s are used for setting up supports, using E, while in the other 10s Eula does her full NA combo twice. The NA dps outside her burst is $$x_n = 1.833*1093.54*2/20 = 200.445882$$
The total dps from her burst and NA is $$x_1 = x_n + x_{n2} + x_b = 559.736303$$ Adding her hold E lightfall sword explosion, the dps becomes $$x_1 + x_{eb} = 596.679303$$ Adding her total E damage, the dps becomes $$x_1 + x_e = 669.719303$$ But the above is just adding the E (18s rotation) as if it were separate from the rest of Eula's damage (the 20s burst rotation). In reality, the E dps depends on Eula's rotation and her other sources of damage.
Suppose a complete rotation is 20s (cd of burst). At the start she does tap E, burst (reset E cd), hold E (enter 10s cd), NA until Q explodes. Say this part takes 7s. In the remaining 13s, suppose she does tap E two times before using her Q again. Note the 10s cd of her hold E gives only 10s remaining to use her E, so that is why we do 2 and not 3 tap E. Also, we do not do tap E, hold E as the total cd would be 14s, which exceeds the 10s remaining. Also we want to have two stacks to consume within Q.
So each 20s rotation involves 2 press E and 1 hold E (within burst). The dps of the E and minisword in this rotation is $$x_{e2} = (362.78*1.833 + 442.08 + 172.8*2 + 2*263.52)/20 = 98.984787$$ The total dps is $$x_1 + x_{e2} = 658.72109$$
Mika can increase phys dmg and atk spd. Calculate how this affects burst, NA dps.
When she has one stack of grimheart, her cape glows. When she has two stacks, her cape glows even more brightly. The way she spins in her last NA animation is similar to how Alhaitham spins in his last NA animation. Both Alhaitham and Eula wear capes too. Her 'burst mode' lasts 7s like Raiden's burst.
Eula is an example of a very complete character in that most/all aspects of her damage are quite high: she can shred a lot of res, she gets a lot of physical dmg bonus, she has really high scalings, she can work with Bennett to get high atk, she can get crit rate buff from cryo resonance, she now get more crit dmg from Mika, and she can also get atk spd buff from Mika. Moreover, she can buff her own def and interruption res with E and Q.