How Star Rail’s First Abundance Unit Can Still Win!
For those of us who have been around since the beginning, we’ve seen Luocha fall from his once held crown as the preeminent sustain unit. At the time of his release, most sustain units were either 4-stars units such as Natasha or 5-star units like Bailu that hadn’t reached the power levels of more contemporary sustain units. Luocha’s design focused largely on pumping out large heals to the entire party with ease, placing him on top. However, as time has passed, the value of his kit has waned as newer Abundance units and non-Abundance healers such as Hyacine have been released. With the advent of these new and more powerful designs, it has become abundantly clear that sustain units are no longer sufficient providing sustain to the team. More contemporary sustain units bring additional team-based synergies that help boost their longevity within the meta to maintain their pull value. And hence why Luocha seems to have fallen to the relative bottom in terms of relevancy, despite being a perfectly serviceable sustaining unit.
What does Luocha Provide and Where Does He Fall Short?
In Luocha’s current form, he brings the strong and reliable healing as expected of an Abundance unit. The bulk of his healing is done through this talent, Cycle of Life, and his skill, Prayer of Abyss Flower. Using his skill, Luocha is able to restore a large amount of health to a single ally while also cleansing them of a debuff condition. Additionally, Prayer of Abyss Flower triggers automatically when a team member’s health drops to 50% or below, serving as an emergency get-out-of-death tool to prevent a unit from dying. His talent on the other hand, deploys a healing Field, restoring health to the entire party whenever an enemy is dealt damage by your team. This field deploys at the start of a fight when you use his technique, or is activated by accumulating two stacks of Abyss Flower (which is gained from a use of his skill or from his Ultimate).
This means that the vast bulk of Luocha’s healing is able to be performed without the usage of skill points and as your team takes actions dealing damage against the enemies. In addition to this ,Luocha’s ultimate ability, Death Wish, deals a small amount of damage twhile removing a buff on all enemies hit, dispelling annoying or powerful buffs that could extend the time it takes to clear content.
On paper, these strengths appear respectable for an Abundance unit, owing to the fact that he does everything that you would want from a simple healer. However, as of now, Luocha doesn’t have a means of increasing your team’s damage from his base kit. And with newer units having been designed with specific niches in mind, such as Lingsha for Break teams and Huohuo for teams that seek energy regeneration,Luocha seems to flounder as he doesn’t seem to have a niche to call his own. Even when it comes to SP generation, an area that Luocha used to lead, Gallagher, a 4 star unit released during the 2.x series of patches, is capable of generating more skill points, firmly snatching the crown away from the blond healer. To make matters worse for Luocha, current enemy and boss designs have been built around buffs and conditions that are unable to be removed, making an entire part of Luocha’s kit completely incompatible and inconsequential with the direction that the devs have chosen to go with their fight design.
But all hope is not lost for the blond swordsman. Being mediocre could be just a momentary thing, as with the recent wave of updated designs to older units, Star Rail has opened the door to implementing potential changes that could uplift Luocha’s current position and carve out a proper niche for the senior healer of the game.
Changes I’d Like to See:
Tidy Up Luocha’s Kit:
Luocha’s kit shows the wear and tear of units that rolled out at the beginning of the game’s life cycle. Namely, how the descriptions of skills and abilities were much shorter back then, and how often parts of individual skills sectioned off to be used as major traces, which could have been used instead to introduce new powers or abilities. Our initial changes for Luocha can focus on consolidating these individual parts together, creating more room to expand this unit’s power budget.
The first change would be adding his A2, Cleansing Revival, into the text box of his skill. The cleansing power of his skill shouldn’t have to consume the entirety of an entire Major Trace that could be used to give Luocha a proper tool.
We can follow suit by making alterations to his A4 passive, Sanctified, as well. His talent already provides healing to a unit that deals damage to an enemy. Sanctified is what allows the rest of the team to be healed by the Field when an enemy takes damage, albeit recovering smaller amount. This is precious real estate that has been dedicated to an effect that already exists in the base kit under the talent, but just applies the effect to the entire team. We can update the talent to read “when any enemy in the Field is attacked by an ally, all allies HP is immediately restored” rather than what it currently reads as “the attacking ally”. This creates space in his kit for the addition of a new tool while also making it so that all allies heal for the same amount when an attack is performed, rather than healing the attacking unit for an additional amount bringing even and consistent healing across the board And for the final touch , we’ll have his field last three turns rather than two, bringing his Field duration in line with other units such as Jiaoqu’s field. We’ll have his talent also require 3 stacks of Abyss Flower rather than two in order to be deployed to match the change in Field duration.
And last but not least, let’s change Luocha’s A6 trace, Through the Valley. Interestingly, this trace provide Effect Res similarly to other more contemporary healers. Instead, it exists separately in a magical land that provides crowd control resistance that no other unit mirrors . Let’s modernize this trace and make Luocha easier to build for the Broken Keel planar set or if we must, we can simply round out the Major trace to resist crowd control effects 100% of the time as70% is just not good enough to be consistent. Make Luocha do more than Heal: Part of Luocha’s inherent weakness is the fact that Luocha doesn’t do much for the party outside of healing. We can address this by taking a look at his Talent, Cycle of Life, and his Ultimate, Death Wish.
Using the real estate freed up by the A4 Major Trace, Sanctified, let’s add a little extra spice to Luocha’s talent, Cycle of Life. When his Field is active, allies now gain a 10% increase to their Attack, Defense, and HP. This allows for them to deal a little bit more damage, while granting a small boost to their survivability as well. This also avoids stepping into Hyacine’s territory at E0, allowing for Hyacine to remain the de facto HP buffer. Additionally, when the Field is active, any healing or cleansing provided by Luocha’s skill, Prayer of the Abyss Flower, is applied to the entirety of the party, therefore healing and the entire team.
Now we can work to make his Ultimate have more use than just providing a stack of Abyss Flower As of now, Death Wish is known to remove buffs off of enemies . However, it’s evident that developers don’t want their bosses to have all their cool effects and buffs removed from them, having made them unable to be removed by Luocha’s ultimate or similar skills. In that case, we can add a simple application of a debuff, applying either Vulnerability or a Defense-down to the enemies hit in addition to removing any buffs that may exist on the enemies. This would allow Luocha’s to deal more damage to enemies hit by the ult, while still keeping his kit focused on survival of the party.
And as a finishing touch, we can help carve out Luocha’s once held crown as the most SP (skill point) positive Abundance unit, a crown that has been snatched up by a 4-star Gallagher. Using his new real estate from liberating his A2 passive, Cleansing Revival, we can add a few additions to his basic attacks. As of now, Luocha often uses his basic attacks during his turn as his automatic skill trigger and his Field are able to cover the vast majority of healing situations. When using his basic attack while his Field is deployed, we can have Luocha generate an additional skill point, netting two for every basic attack. This should help him keep up with Gallagher and even propel him forward in skill point generation in longer more drawn out fights. When his Field is down, to help Luocha redeploy it , his basic attack can generate for him 1 Abyss Flower stack (as it generates zero stacks as of now).
In conclusion, with these changes Luocha at E0 should find himself being able to keep up with his contemporaries, healing and the cleansing the party consistently , while carving out a niche for himself as a healer that can generate skill points for the party, apply vulnerability to enemy units, and slightly buff his fellow team members.
If we want to better streamline higher levels of investments in Luocha, we can then follow suit by updating his E1, Ablution of the Quick, to also provide an additional 20% buff to Attack , Defense , and HP, making Lucoa at E1 comparable to E0 Hyacine but more well-rounded. His E2 would follow suit by creating a shield on your entire party when being used on an ally with his field active.
Gacha games are not known to give second chances, preferring instead to churn out more profit by sunsetting older units. Given this unique situation, what units could you see from the earlier days of Star Rail being given another chance to stay relevant within the meta?