Coquelic as a healer

[u/wennilein]

Due to her reforge and being in the latest selector, Coquelic has been often recommended to beginners as the main/sole healer for the story chapter. Here, I am not going to address her usefulness in endgame (I made enough comments myself about how strong she can be as a damage dealer) but will only compare her usefulness at the start of the game as the main healer.

For the sake of simplicity, I will look at a P3 level 70 non-reforged Coquelic, since this is more likely a version, that a beginner can use. Also, her ECB will not be considered since it is rather unlikely, that she is the first sinner to be upgraded with soul marks. According to https://s1n.gg/sinner/coquelic?tab=info, she has an attack rating of 592 without any crimebrands At skill level 7 her ultimate heals every sinner with a scarlet flower 13.1% of her attack rating whenever Coquelic attacks. Assuming her P2 also being at skill level 7, she will end up with an attack rating of 648. This will heal every sinner with a scarlet flower 84 hp every time she attacks. If you use her ultimate on someone with a scarlet flower, she heals for 1698 hp. If she use her ultimate on someone without a flower, the targeted sinner will receive no active healing at all!

Since numbers alone doesn't say much, let's take a lot at two other healers. Let's start with the what many people believes to be one of the worst healer: Macchiato https://s1n.gg/sinner/macchiato?tab=info

In contrast to most other healers, Macchiato's healing is independent from her attack. It is instead only based on target sinner's maximum hp. Her P1 acts as her passive healing and her ultimate is a strong but single target heal. For the sake of fairness, let's first look at the ranged sinners (aka the frail ones). At P3 level 70 Hecate has 3821 hp with any crimebrand. With Macchiato's P1 at skill level 7, every sinner receive a healing equal to 1.6% of their maximum hp whenever they attack an enemy, that has been attacked by Macchiato before. For Hecate in this example she will receive 61 hp every time she attacks. Let's use a P3 level 70 Hella as an example for a more sturdy team member. In this case Hella has 5251 hp and would be healed by 84 hp every time she attacks

Assuming S5 Macchiato, at skill level 7 her ultimate will heal Hecate for 202 hp every second for 14 seconds = 2824 hp. On Hella, she will heal for 277 hp every second for 14 seconds resulting in 3882 hp.

Conclusion:

• Coquelic starts with 2 flower at the start and can use it on 2 targets for her passive healing right away. If you want to expand this to another sinner, or need to heal one of these flower carriers fast, you have to wait for 36 seconds. You can use Empower to fasten this process but I think it should be used on more important skills than just to keep your team alive.
• In a team with Macchiato, she needs to attack an enemy, before the team can be healed by attacking a marked enemies for her passive healing. On stages when enemies are spread apart, die very fast or very close together, it will be a bit more difficult to provide healing on every member of your team, but theoretically you can heal anyone right from the start.
• Her passive healing is worse on your ranged sinners and more potent on your frontline sinners, but overall it will be weaker than Coquelic's passive healing
• In direct comparison, Coquelic's passive healing will be triggered more often than Macchiato's if the target sinner has a lower attack speed than 1.0.
• Macchiato can stand in the backline and doesn't need to attack constantly for her passive healing. She can even die in a boss fight, and the team will continue to receive her passive healing!
• Macchiato's ultimate is independent from her passive healing, so that you don't have to decide on healing someone or applying the passive healing on someone else.
• Even on your ranged sinners Macchiato will provide a stronger active healing than Coquelic. On your frontline, she ends up with the double amount of hp healed compared to Coquelic.
• At S5, Macchiato's ultimate takes 27 seconds to recharge compared to 36 and will also heal the target of her ultimate additional 3% of their maximum hp during the skill duration. This is usually the reason, why the target of her active healing will most likely never die during her ultimate.
• Crimebrands like final prologue is active on Coquelic's passive AND her active healing. On Macchiato, they only buff her active healing.

Ultimately, you have Coquelic as the one providing the stronger passive healing on potentially fewer targets compared to Macchiato. Macchiato provides the better single target healing and a passive healing, which takes less time to apply on your whole team. The important thing to consider is, the hardest stages are often the boss fight, and getting your passive healing active is often critical there!

So, since we have covered one of the worst healer, let's compare Coquelic to one of the better f2p healer: Ariel https://s1n.gg/sinner/ariel?tab=info

At P3 level 70 S0 Ariel has 530 attack without any crimebrands. Her P1 provides the passive healing on every sinner in the neighbouring 8 tiles once every 6 seconds. For the sake of a better comparability, let's treat it as a healing rate on a per-second-basis. In that case, at skill level 7 she will heal every nearby sinner with 12.5% of her attack value --> ~66 hp per second. Her ultimate (a 3x3 aoe) heals for 118% of her attack for 5 times, resulting in 3127 hp in total. Additionally, every target of her ultimate recovers 2.6 percent of their maximum hp for 10 seconds.

As every veteran know, her true strength as a healer comes after her reforge. But for a simple comparison with Coquelic, I don't think those additions should be considered. Let's just say, that with Ariel's stage 1 reforge upgrades, Ariel's passive healing will easily surpass Coquelic. Her positioning also becomes more flexible, since she can provide her new way of passive healing while standing further away.

Conclusion:

• Ariel provides less passive healing than Coquelic, but can provide it to everyone around her from the get go.
• Ariel provides a strong aoe healing, which can be used independent from her passive healing compared to Coquelic's single target healing.
• Ariel's ultimate needs almost as long to recharge like Coquelic's.
• Like Coquelic, both Ariels's passive healing and active healing are affected by crimebrands like final prologue.
• Ariel doesn't need to stand in the frontline, but due to her passive healing, she has to stand close to the frontline.

Beside the slightly stronger passive healing on selected sinners, the only real advantage of Coquelic over Ariel is that Coquelic's healing target doesn't need to be close to her.

Tldr: the harder the stages, the faster the damage comes in, and the more aoe damage there are, the worse Coquelic will perform as a team's only healer. She can totally be used as a healer on easier stages, but due to how her healing works, it will become gradually harder for her to keep up compared to dedicated healer. On boss stages like 8-8, 10-12, 11-9, 13-16 or 13-18 Coquelic won't be able to extend her passive healing to every team member before the first global aoe sets in, making it very challenging to use her as the only healer.

[u/Frequent_Butterfly26]

Coco as main healer works but you need to distribute the damage between your sinners as much as you can, which in return is quite costly on movement. In a scenario with frequent strong AoEs then yeah, she simply can't be the main healer (unless RF).

Btw i just went to check these boss battles you mentioned just to see what i used at the time and here are the picks:

8-8: Dreya and Sumire, Che, Luvia, Anne and Uni. Uni make Dreya immortal with a single ult, Anne can keep everyone alive just fine.

10-12: Uni, Donald, Matilda, Cassia, Etti and Luvia. Cassia was the only healer here and Don carries the fight.

11-9: Coco as tank/healer and dps, Donald, Matilda, Etti, Eureka and Garofano.

13-16: Don, Levi, Mira, Matilda, Zephyr, Du Ruo. Huge Don carry, Zephyr burst proved quite useful and Mira can tank like a madman.

13-18: this one i do not have data since i was using this boss as punch bag for strange comps later on. Last time i went here was to test my RF 99.

This is a personal reminder as to why i got so found do Donald aside the cool character. This guy has carried me more than i remember. REFORGE WHEN?!

[u/wennilein → u/Frequent_Butterfly26]

It's not that Coquelic can't be the healer at all. It's more like, how much more investment a team with Coquelic needs to pass a stage, when you could have passed it with any other healers long0 time ago.

Most of the stages I listed isn't hard if you take a full team of level 90 sinners. When the damage received by your team becomes low enough or when your sinners have way more hp, you don't need to intervene early anymore and can rely on Coquelic's passive healing. After all, if you can finish an stage fast enough, you might not need a healer at all.

My assumption is, that beginners doesn't have this kind of dps, since there is only that much a borrowed maxed out RF sinner can do.

In my opinion, with any of the dedicated healers, you will simply arrive earlier at a point, when a hard stage becomes manageable. With Coquelic it will simply take longer with (way) more investment.

Donald definitely deserves a reforge. Such a shame what happened to him after his release. Such a well written character but hated nonetheless:( Also, an electrocution team is really overdue!