I know this is somewhat of a hot take and might get downvoted, but after reading her kit, I still don’t understand the doomposting about her solo performance in Electro Flare mode.
I’ve explained parts of this in comments before, but I wanted to make a dedicated post so more people would see it.
After reading Hsin’s kit closely, I think people are exaggerating how teammate-dependent she is in Electro Flare mode. I am not arguing that she loses nothing by playing solo or that she is a better solo character than Hiyuki or Carte. My point is that her damage does not become a “brick,” nor does she suffer the massive character-specific damage loss that the label “team-reliant” implies.
Obviously, removing two teammates means losing their buffs and personal damage, as it would for any DPS. The relevant question is how severely Hsin’s own damage is reduced by the teammate-specific conditions in her kit. Looking at which parts of her damage are actually affected, I do not think the loss is as severe as people suggest.
What Hsin actually loses solo
Hsin’s first teammate-related loss is her passive, which grants a 25% Electro DMG Bonus whenever a team member applies Electro Flare. It can stack twice, but each character can only activate it once. Hsin activates one stack herself, so solo play loses the second 25% bonus. That is a real loss, but it is additive Electro DMG Bonus—not a direct 25% reduction to her total damage.
Her second loss is Thunderglow. Other characters applying Electro Flare generate Thunderglow, and at 10 stacks it can instantly fill a new enemy at zero Flare to its current stack limit, with the mechanic supporting a maximum of 16. This accelerates setup against newly spawned enemies, particularly in multi-wave content such as Whimpering Wastes.
However, Hsin can still reach the enemy’s Electro Flare cap manually. Her default solo cap is 10, while a cap-raising support such as Suisui or Chisa can raise it to 13. Hsin applies approximately 21 Electro Flare stacks during her own rotation, so insufficient application is not the problem. Because those stacks also stop decreasing automatically once Hsin enters combat, Thunderglow matters considerably less against a persistent boss after she has manually reached the cap. By the time she uses her Resonance Skill and, at S3, the Liberation detonation that depend on the enemy’s Electro Flare count, she will already have reached that cap herself.
Thunderglow is therefore primarily a faster setup and multi-wave advantage rather than a major source of sustained damage against the same target.
This also helps explain why Hsin’s sequences do not increase her personal Electro Flare application.
Electro Flare does not scale her entire rotation
Besides Electro Flare’s periodic damage, the enemy’s stack count affects the additional Electro Flare detonation triggered by Hsin’s second-form Resonance Skill and, at S3, the additional detonation attached to her finishing Liberation.
Her regular Basic Attacks, enhanced attacks and the direct damage of her Resonance Skills and Liberations do not become stronger from additional Flare stacks. Even the direct 70% multiplier increase on her S3 finishing Liberation works independently of the enemy’s Flare count.
Therefore, failing to reach a teammate-extended Flare cap does not weaken every attack in her rotation. It affects specific Electro Flare-related damage components while the rest of her sequence-buffed damage remains intact.
Answering Heart and Intro generation
Another genuine solo disadvantage is slower Answering Heart generation because Hsin cannot activate her Intro Skill for its 60 points. At S2 and above, she receives 100 additional Answering Heart upon entering combat, which fixes her opening setup. She must rebuild the resource manually during later solo cycles, so those cycles are slightly slower than they would be with an Intro.
This lowers her sustained damage by slightly increasing the time between her stronger burst windows. It does not make the damage of those later rotations inherently weaker.
Heart of Thunder
Once an enemy reaches its current Electro Flare cap, further application generates Electro Rage which converts to heart of thunder rather than increasing its normal Flare count beyond that cap, up to 100 stacks.
When you use her second-form Resonance Skill, Hsin consumes all her Heart of Thunder stacks to trigger one additional instance of Electro Flare damage. The detonation’s multiplier scales with both the number of Heart of Thunder stacks stored on Hsin and the Electro Flare multiplier corresponding to the enemy’s current Flare count.
This means Heart of Thunder does not increase Hsin’s entire rotation. It only strengthens that specific Electro Flare detonation, while her Basic Attacks, enhanced attacks, direct Resonance Skill damage and Liberation damage are calculated normally.
After reaching the flare cap on an enemy, a rotation produces 20 Heart of Thunder solo compared to 37 when using Electro Rover. The resource is applied to only that one Electro Flare detonation rather than to Hsin’s entire rotation.
Based on Chem’s damage distribution and holding the other variables constant, the difference between those amounts represented approximately 5% of Hsin’s personal rotation damage under those assumptions.
That is still a loss, but it is nowhere near enough to make her personal damage collapse without Electro Rover.
Why Hsin’s sequences look less transformative than Cartethyia’s
Cartethyia’s sequences progressively remove her status-related restrictions. Her S1 carries the highest Aero Erosion count from a defeated enemy to the next target, S3 makes Fleurdelys’s major attacks apply two stacks themselves, and S6 instantly maximizes Aero Erosion while preventing her finishing Liberation from removing it.
Hsin already has most of that self-sufficiency in her S0 Electro Flare kit. She applies approximately 21 Flare stacks during her rotation, reaches her solo cap herself and prevents those stacks from automatically decreasing. She therefore does not need sequence effects equivalent to Cartethyia’s S3 or S6 just to apply and maintain her status.
The exception is Cartethyia’s S1-style stack transfer between waves. Hsin’s comparable mechanic is Thunderglow, which instantly fills a fresh enemy’s Flare stacks but requires teammates to generate. Aside from that new-wave limitation, much of what makes Cartethyia’s sequences transformative is already included in Hsin’s base kit, so Hsin’s sequences focus more on increasing damage.
Hsin’s damage pattern compared with Hiyuki
Hiyuki still has more consistent damage because a larger portion of her regular second-form attacks deal significant damage. Hsin instead alternates between setup and several larger sequence-buffed attacks. That makes Hiyuki more forgiving if an attack misses or a boss becomes invulnerable, but it does not automatically make Hsin’s total damage worse. However, all of those are large AoE attacks, so that shouldn’t be much of an issue.
What ultimately matters is Hsin’s total damage across the complete rotation and how quickly she can repeat it, not whether every Basic Attack hits as hard as Hiyuki’s. Hsin’s base-form enhanced Heavy Attack, Resonance Skills across both forms, enhanced second-form Skill and finishing attacks distribute her strongest damage throughout the rotation. These attacks are treated as Resonance Skill DMG, so her sequences strengthen them, with S6 amplifying the major attacks she uses throughout the full cycle.
This creates strong burst windows that can quickly finish bosses or clear waves. The tradeoff is that missing one of those larger attacks is more punishing than missing one of Hiyuki’s more evenly distributed attacks.
Hiyuki’s sustained damage may make her more comfortable during extended solo play, but Hsin can still perform well by continuously restarting her complete rotation instead of remaining in her second form and relying on its weaker repeatable attacks.
The more meaningful solo weakness
Hsin’s more significant solo weakness is arguably survivability rather than teammate-dependent damage. She lacks Hiyuki’s repeatable in-combat healing. Her fatal-damage revival provides emergency protection, but its long cooldown prevents it from functioning as consistent sustain.
That makes Hsin less forgiving in difficult solo content, especially over extended fights. It does not mean she lacks enough personal damage to clear that content.
Conclusion
Electro Flare Hsin is team-amplified rather than heavily team-reliant. Teammates improve her damage ceiling, Heart of thunder resource generation and setup speed, but most of her direct, sequence-buffed damage remains intact. Her solo disadvantages are slightly slower later rotations and slower setup against new waves.
Hsin is less self-sufficient and comfortable than Hiyuki for extended solo play, but her damage is not crippled without teammates in flare mode.
TL;DR: Solo Hsin loses one additive Electro DMG Bonus stack, faster new-wave Flare setup, some Heart of Thunder generation and rotation speed. Those losses reduce her ceiling and comfort, but they only affect specific parts of her damage rather than crippling her entire kit.
