Fenghuang of Vicissitude - Video Guide by @Jayniro
DISCLAIMER: This article is a summary of my video guide linked above. I highly recommend watching it first and/or reading alongside!
For the past 50,000 years, deep in the mountains trained a lone phoenix who has honed her skills over time to absolute perfection. Embarking on countless journeys and facing off against countless, perilous foes, Fu Hua has finally fully shown off her ICHOR form. In all it’s pure splendor, Fu Hua’s brand new battlesuit is one of the strongest, and frankly the coolest battlesuits the game has seen to date. In this guide, we’ll be going over how exactly to build and play Fu Hua and build team comps around her. With that being said, let’s dive right into Fu Hua: Fenghuang of Vicissitude.
How to play Fenghuang of Vicissitude?
Having grown up doing and absolutely loving martial arts, it makes me happy that the only character in the game that has anything to do with it is finally getting another battlesuit after nearly 3 years. And then that battlesuit came after another year agonizing waiting. A very common thought behind martial arts is that it’s just mindless punching and kicking with no real strategy or thought behind it at all. While this isn’t true, it does make sense for Fu Hua in how it feels to play her.
FoV has two main stances that each determine how she fights. They largely do the same thing, but they each have their own respective meters because while it may grant max damage from using her basic attacks in a rotation, Fu Hua will instead punish you with her combo attacks for trying to use them. Each stance has their own respective Qi that starts and caps at 300 points which can be restored by using her 5 sequence basic attacks in each stance. Consuming all Qi casts combo attack for each respective stance. This is where the bulk of Fu Hua’s damage is going to be in her rotations. Each stance has different follow-ups as well. Pressing weapon skill does a joint attack that either dive kicks or shoulder charges. Meanwhile pressing attack after does a normal joint attack which either slams her fist to the ground like Doomfist or she does an axe kick from the heavens above. She does possess a special mechanic for her combo attack called Heart Flame. Using combo attack, joint attack, or parry attack three times lets you consume Heart Flame to enhance her joint attack and lower her HP to 36% of her max HP. The enhanced joint attack is where a huge portion of her damage lies. In kick stance, it’s denoted by a cinematic sweep kick followed by a bicycle kick while in punch stance is shown by her plummeting to the ground with both fists.
As stated before, FoV has a parry attack as well. In addition to being able to evade normally, pressing evasion without moving causes Fu Hua to enter the parry stance. Either blocking an attack or pressing attack instantly triggers ultimate evasion and casts parry attack based on the current stance where she either becomes Ryu and throws a Hadouken or Chun-li and unleashes a flurry of kicks. It should be noted that Parry Attack requires Evasion Skill to execute and attempting to use Parry Attack without her EVA Skill will lead directly into her normal attacks instead. During combo attack, joint attack, and parry attack, FoV gains Iron Body and reduces damage taken by 65% which is important meaning that she can’t be interrupted during these actions unlike Mr. Oratrice Mechanique D’Analyse Cardinal (Neuvillette). Meanwhile she’s completely invincible during her enhanced joint attack.
In the spirit of anime, we can’t have an anime protagonist that doesn’t have an ultimate finishing move. Her ultimate sees Fu Hua pour all her life and literally consume every single point of her HP to become One Punch man and deliver a Serious Series: Serious Punch which deals massive damage and then recovers 25% of her max HP immediately afterwards. It should be noted as well that FoV literally can’t die which makes sense considering the fact that she’s lived for the past 50,000+ years. That isn’t to say you should be careless with her because the game will punish you about as much as she will herself if you let her die since while she will regain 30% of her max HP, her total damage will be reduced by 50% and she’ll consume 1 SP every second as a result.
We haven’t gotten a valk in a long time that has been focused on quicker rotations, but Fu Hua is just that, although I wouldn’t say she’ll be your next 0 second clearing character since most of her damage is backloaded despite a faster rotation. Regenerating her Qi meters takes an excruciatingly long time, but entering via her QTE fully regenerates both meters, setting her up perfectly for her rotation. Fu Hua’s own damage rotation differs depending on what rank she’s at, so we’ll cover it briefly here and talk about it more in the Ranks section. At S rank, her standard rotation consists of entering via QTE and using Combo ATK. Then immediately use Weapon Skill during Combo ATK to swap stances. Continue fighting with a full 5-sequence basic attack followed by her Enhanced Joint ATK and finishing with her ULT. At SS rank, her rotation differs slightly and speeds up due to her SS0 skill unlock. After entering via QTE, using Parry Attack into Switch Joint ATK, then Parry Attack again into Enhanced Joint ATK followed up by ULT grants only about 500k damage less (at the time of testing) than a full damage rotation which uses a full basic attack sequence after the stance change and parry attack. This lets Fu Hua get the full brunt of her combo attacks off while easily setting up Heart Flame and also triggering her ultimate evasion for free.
(courtesy to Cay for the graphics)
With that being said, let’s talk how to maximize her damage with her equipment.
FoV’s Recommended Weapons
We haven’t gotten a Fist weapon damage dealer in a long time, unless you wanna count Senti, so it’s no surprise that Fu Hua is set to be the best Fist weapon wielder we’ve seen. A lot of what we’ve gotten in more recent times has been more physical and support focused, but there are some surprises when it comes to Fu Hua. Torch of Eons: Skyfire is her best in slot weapon and it’s pretty strong on other characters due to its high attack stat and the fact that it can create a pocket dimension that boosts total damage. While not everyone might be able to take advantage of the extra total damage and fire damage, free total damage is free total damage.
Oblivion down is gonna be the next best option, but is just barely better than her signature non-pri. Cinder Hawks surprisingly makes a comeback and is slightly better than Cosmics. But here’s a small chart of the weapons I tested showing their capabilities.
FoV’s Recommended Stigmata
There’s not much to say when it comes to Fu Hua other than the fact that she’s giga cracked. Despite her being an amazing fighter, her stigmata sets might not be exactly what you’d expect. Actually they probably are since she has her own signature set. With such a crucial part of her kit scaling off her max HP it makes sense that her stigmata set aims to increase and manipulate her HP to its advantage. Her T stig increases her fire damage based off her current max HP, her M stig increases max HP by a flat amount and causes enemies to take more fire damage when she recovers HP. Her B stig increases her total damage and causes attacks that are neither ultimate nor burst mode attacks to deal more fire damage.
Additionally when her HP is below a certain amount, ultimate or burst mode attacks deal additional fire damage. When specifically equipped on our resident field of view slider, this last effect goes from 20% to 60% additional fire damage. Meanwhile for the set bonuses, just like the Marechaussee Hunter set in Genshin, recovering or losing HP increases the Valkyrie’s total damage. The crazy part is that this effect actually stacks on itself. Additionally the full set bonus causes each stack from the 2-piece bonus to increase fire damage while also healing the Valkyrie for a short duration when it exits the field. When equipped on FoV, it causes enemies to take even more total damage.
Without full set, the damage drop off can be felt extremely hard. Luckily though I did go through and test a variety of different stigmata setups. When testing different variations of parts of her gear set, I found it very interesting that Ragna T actually outperformed the G4 T stig. Albeit it was a minor outperformance, it was still a dub for Ragna nonetheless. Meanwhile without the signature B stig, there really was no reason at that point to not just run the full G4 set. When considering some other stigmata sets like LWK and Margrave, the order of actions actually made a difference since some of the effects proc from either ult usage or SP consumption so I decided to put up both different rotations separately since the damage was pretty drastic in difference. With that being said, it’s ironic that even at 0/4 equipment, her damage is equivalent to a full set SSS Dea Anchora. Where are the Dudu stans now??
Who Should I Run With FoV?
Here we are: team comps. This section is probably gonna be pretty quick since Fu Hua is in a similar predicament to Sirin like I discussed in her guide video. Fu Hua is an amazing fire DPS, but unfortunately, I can’t say the same for fire teams as a whole. There really aren’t many options unfortunately, so what I’m about to say is probably to be expected if you’re as into seeing big numbers like I am. To start things off, our backbone support is gonna be defaulted to HTR. The sheer amount of support she provides to the team is nothing to scoff at and I see her being prevalent well into part 2 even with the new astral ring mechanics coming in. She provides a large source of elemental damage buffs as well as elemental breach that is just absolutely crucial in endgame and quite a detriment without. I know a lot of people probably missed out on her, and if you did I’m sorry, but AE is right there as well! Just like I said back then though, a 0/4 S0 HTR is better than a 4/4 SS AE in terms of the buffs that they apply and give to the team. As for the sub-dps, the sure slot in is gonna be Ai-chan. If you haven’t farmed out Ai-chan yet, I strongly suggest doing so. Ai-chan gives an astronomical boost in fire damage to the team while having pretty decent damage herself for a sub-dps. Not to mention that she applies a buttload of ignite trauma as well making it super easy to ignite enemies and trigger Fu Hua’s QTE. You can also use Raven as well, but I recommend against it since she’s slow and clunky, and also takes forever to get her ult back up. I would much more recommend using Shigure Kira and Pardofelis since they’re much easier to play and also grant total damage on their charged attack and ultimates in addition to additional elemental damage.
Are FoV’s Ranks Worth It?
If you’re being self-conscious of your spending right now like I am, then you probably wanna know whether or not you should go for her ranks. Her S1 increases her elemental breach primarily. This may not seem like much, but in Red Lotus and Nirvana, additional elemental breach could mean the difference between having to do an extra rotation and falling out of top 10 in your abyss bracket. S2 causes enemies to take more fire damage from Fu Hua. Usually S2 is the stopping point for low spenders, and I would wholeheartedly agree. S3 is an increase to her leader skill. Meanwhile, SS unlocks the ability to connect straight into your N4 and 5 from parry attack. This should enable a little bit extra damage since for her basic attacks, the majority of the damage is backloaded. It additionally unlocks parry attack dealing additional fire damage. The kicker however is that switching stances resets the evasion skill so you can KICK enemy booties a little more. SS1 doubles the increase in damage enemies take from combo, joint, and enhanced joint attacks. SS2 increases Fire Damage on entry or switching stances. SS3 is another increase to her leader skill. And SSS makes enemies take even MORE damage from Fu Hua.
Final Thoughts
Fu Hua is an amazing Valkyrie and I’m happy that our resident chicken momma is finally getting a much well deserved suit. She’s giga cracked though and I’m happy that she’s finishing off this era of Honkai right before Part 2. If you’re pulling for Fu Hua, I wish you the best of luck on your own pulls, and if you’re still on the fence about whether or not you wanna pull for FoV, I hope this guide informed you a little bit more on her as a whole. Happy Honkai gaming!
Jayniro is an official YouTube creator and Twitch streamer for Hoyoverse with a large focus on Honkai Impact 3rd guide making and gameplay/meta. You can follow him on his different platforms at YouTube, Twitch, and Twitter/X.