Seasun doesn’t exactly have the best track record with designing pistol DPS characters. It’s been something they’ve struggled with for a while, even quite recently, so I think you would understand my apprehension about how Bubu would turn out. But luckily for her, her decision to break from pistol-DPS tradition and employ the groundbreaking trick of actually firing her gun to do damage means that she sees her fortunes take a turn for the better. Learning from the lessons of Haru - Absconditus and Vidya - Agave, the dorky diviner Bubu manages to overcome quite a bit of historical bias and make a name for herself. I guess the third time’s the charm.

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Abilities

Deiwos Passive

We’re switching things up and starting with her Deiwos passive, as it’s a pretty important part of her kit. In a nutshell, it mixes up your shooting pattern with a rapid-fire burst of three shots after firing two normal ones. The triple tap (known as an “Arcana Shot” - this will get referenced a lot) does less damage along with generating less U-Energy and dealing less parts break damage, but the bullets come out fast enough that it still ends up being quite a DPS gain. More technically, the “Final Damage” of the shots is reduced to 60% of normal, which is a unique and separate modifier from the existing “Final Damage” modifier in the damage formula, because doing it any other way would make too much sense.

If you don’t have enough bullets for the burst, Bubu will automatically speed-load in a fresh mag before shooting her shot, as well as automatically doing the same afterward. This effectively means you never have to wait on a reload, which is always very nice.

Oh yeah, the Deiwos also bumps up Bubu’s attack by 5% for every 100 Alignment Index you have, because I guess Seasun forgot to add AI scaling into the rest of the Deiwos effect and just tacked this on as an afterthought. In practice, it’s free attack for levelling her neuronics and makes logistics optimization easier, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

Standard Skill

The active part of this skill is much easier to explain, so let’s cover that first: hold down the skill to regenerate S-Energy. It’s as simple as that. You can’t shoot or dodge while doing so (duh), but you can still walk around for some casual repositioning.

So now, why do you actually need to do that? Two reasons. For one, this skill’s passive lets Bubu enter the “Evil Ward” state as soon as she enters combat, which allows her to consume S-Energy to make her shots do increased Thermal damage (this is NOT a separate damage instance, it’s a boost to your shot damage if it’s Thermal). As well, shots can consume additional S-Energy to ricochet to up to three nearby enemies and deal damage to them as well (they can crit!), with later ricochets doing less damage but consuming less S-Energy. You only get these effects if you have the S-Energy for it, so for all intents and purposes, being in the Evil Ward state basically means “while you have S-Energy.”

Okay so that’s pretty cool, but you’re probably thinking that Bubu can’t possibly be that much of an energy hog even with that kind of resource drain. And you'd be right! However, Seasun also knows this and Agave’d her as a result. This means that she’s incapable of passively regenerating S-Energy and is entirely dependent on using her standard skill to top up, no matter how well you set up the feng shui. Bummer.

Both neuronics here are kind of inconsequential, providing better mobbing power at most, but you’ll still want to upgrade these early to max out the Thermal damage boost that Evil Ward provides.

Support Skill

Bubu puts on quite the display for her support skill, setting up an area that deals Thermal damage over time to all enemies inside (with neuronics). As well, you can shoot the walls that mark the area’s boundary to do extra Thermal damage to all enemies inside. It’s quite the party trick, but the one second cooldown on how often you can trigger the bonus damage leaves it as a bit of a gimmick.

Ultimate

On cast, Bubu enters the “Evil Purge” state, which makes every trigger press a three-round Arcana Shot, but with every hit being guaranteed to crit and doing additional crit damage as well. Each shot also costs less S-Energy to get the Thermal damage buff from her standard skill, and comes with the same fast auto-reload after every two Arcana Shots. Yeah, we’re really cooking with gas now. Or more specifically, Vital Essence, which is what fuels this buffed-up state. It more or less works like Haru - Absconditus’ ultimate skill, with the ult cast giving you an initial amount that drains over time, as well as with each Arcana Shot.

This ability doesn’t have a U-Energy cost or a cooldown, but instead requires Bubu to have a special resource known as a Divine Seal. While her ult isn’t active, Bubu generates progress towards a Divine Seal passively over time, as well as when she fires Arcana Shots. With neuronics, you can also instantly get a Divine Seal when an enemy is stunned or paralyzed (once per enemy, before you get any funny ideas). Having a Thermal weapon equipped will also start you off with a Divine Seal from the get-go, making good on her fortune-telling prediction of a lot of damage very soon.

Assessment

Bubu answers the question of “can a pistol DPS be good?” with an emphatic “of course, I’ve already divined it!”

While Bubu - spoiler alert - isn’t an actual geomancer, the damage she does is very much real. Letting loose a rapid-fire stream of juiced-up shots and feeding bullets into her gun fast enough for you to not notice, Bubu is proof that the power of shooting really hard is still worth something in this day and age. Bubu’s two-step repositioning waltz that she does after each burst can make it a little tricky to keep shots on target, but this is just a small price to pay for strong damage with a stylish and addictingly fun gameplay flow to match.

Well, there is one catch, though. Bubu’s amazing damage output depends heavily on having both S-Energy and her ult available, and her DPS ability goes down quite a bit once she goes through her entire stash of special sauce. This can limit her performance in extended fights, especially if she can’t find a break in the action to pop her standard skill and recharge. But overall, Bubu is a highly competent damage-dealer who will be more than enough to tackle general content with the potential to steal away Neural Sim bosses and put pressure on the current top picks. She also isn’t entirely dependent on a charge-up minigame to do her damage, which is a breath of fresh air from Seasun’s fixation on this playstyle for the majority of 2024.

Weapons

If you haven’t noticed, Bubu’s event shop and gacha weapons are a bit unique. Despite being classified as semi-automatic pistols, their ammo capacity, weapon compatibility, and base crit damage stats are those of the revolver-type pistols. Why is this? Well I’ve never claimed to know what Seasun is thinking when they come up with stuff, but if I had to wager a guess, it would be to allow them to equip the Bold Type - Magazine attachment which grants a +1 to your ammo capacity to get just a bit more value out of Fenny - Starshine’s support skill.

Both of these weapons also can apply a Stun to the next enemy hit after firing a certain number of shots (of course, the gacha weapon requires only 40 shots compared to 60 needed from the freebie gun), which as you may remember, gives Bubu a free charge of her ult. It’s a nice way of providing a unique benefit for using Bubu’s designated gear while also not punishing you for trying stuff out like with Fritia - Turbo’s weapon selection. I guess Seasun is capable of learning from mistakes, sometimes.

Between the shop gun Plum Blossom and the gacha-locked Gilded Blaze, the usual buff mixing is employed with GB getting access to a %DMG Taken buff as expected. It’s good for a 25% improvement over the free alternative at T1 and 54% advantage at T2… which isn’t actually that high. Among modern DPS operatives, only Siris - Ksana has a smaller premium weapon gap. I guess Seasun really put some value into having the Stun available sooner (your mileage may vary on that). Oh, and a quick tip for those using her shop gun - if you haven’t ulted in a while, give your standard skill a quick tap every now and then to refresh one of the buffs that Plum Blossom provides.

Looking at more unconventional options ended up being way more interesting than I initially expected, because wow do you want something with a revolver statline. I initially didn’t even bother testing off-element weapons as I figured that missing out on Evil Ward’s Thermal damage boost would be too big of a gap to overcome. As it turns out, however, just having better weapon compatibility (essentially an ATK multiplier for shooting) and base crit damage goes a long way, with the support weapon Prismatic Igniter topping the cope charts just by being a Thermal revolver. In fact, every other Thermal pistol, being semi-automatic, ended up losing to the three off-element revolvers I tested before forcing myself to stop lest I end up admitted into a psych ward laughing at the absurdity of it all. One of them was the starter 2★ pistol! And it actually translates into DPS too, as the rapid-fire Arcana Shot effectively neutralises the rate of fire difference that usually keeps these weapon sub-types competitive. My apologies to anyone hoping to use Lucky Times.

Manifests

Bubu follows the relatively-recent shift towards manifests being all damage, all the time. This time though, it seems Seasun didn’t quite give her M4 quite enough juice, as it leaves a dip in an otherwise-linear growth curve. This makes M3 a compelling stopping point, though M2 is also a decent enough parking spot as it provides some rare extra utility alongside its damage boost in the form of extra CC resistance while her ult is active.

Logistics

Halo Squad is Bubu’s designated logistics set, and (surprise) you should use it. Its 3-piece effect increases Arcana Shot damage as well as increasing her attack stat while she’s in the Evil Ward state, which for those that forgot, is whenever she has S-Energy. In other words, basically always. Okay come on, Seasun, at least make it less obvious.

As for substats, your obvious first pick will always be ATK%, because more attack means more damage. As for the other stat, you have the choice between Alignment Index (which converts to more ATK%) and crit damage. In a perfect scenario, crit damage is better, but this is also assuming you’re always critting. That’s actually not too outrageous of an assumption considering that Bubu’s ult is a thing, but if you expect to spend a lot of time without her ult and your aim isn’t the best, Alignment Index isn’t a half bad cope stat.

See the supplementary material for a logistics calculator to help you optimize your loadout.

Teams

Alright, let’s get the obvious pick out of the way first. Bubu is a character that does damage by shooting, and there’s currently no better support for characters that do damage by shooting than Fenny - Starshine. Yes, I know Bubu doesn’t have reload downtime that can be reduced with bonus ammo, and no, it doesn’t matter. More damage is more damage, and more damage is good. If your Starshine is M1 or higher, do note that you’ll want to put a little extra effort into aiming for weak spots to get the bonus %Final DMG boost when you do so.

Mauxir - Shadow Ka is also an easy shoo-in as far as support pairings go, as the stationary target, damage amp, and increased crit rate are all things that ballistic damage operatives enjoy. You lose a bit of synergy with Starshine since Kebechet doesn’t count as a weakspot, but it’s a price worth paying most of the time.

Alongside the usual generalists of Acacia - Kaguya and Eatchel - The Cub, Tess - The Magician can also be quite potent for quick fights. And I know what you’re thinking:

“But viiiiiic, Bubu doesn’t use U-Energy for her ult, you told me that earlier!”

And you’d be right, but hear me out. Tess’ Hjartagard Squad logistics set provides a 20% damage buff after Tess ults, which then increases by another 25% when someone else does. Add in her signature weapon Eccentric Joker, which provides similarly-large buffs in the same manner, and the fact that Bubu can instantly ult at the start of combat, and you have a whole lot of buff in not a lot of time. Your damage will drop off very quickly once said buffs expire, but for triple-tapping Sim bosses to death as quickly as possible and other shorter fights, it works much better than you might think.

More budget-friendly picks include Fritia - Little Sunshine, who has the option of either Amarna or Twilight Squad thanks to the element match, and the ever-reliable Acacia - Redacted with her Slow and Navigator Squad damage amp.

Should you pull?

If you don’t have Lyfe - Infinite Sight, Bubu is an amazing DPS operative who will serve you well as likely the strongest ballistic damage operative in your roster and is highly recommended.

If you do have Lyfe though, things get a bit more complicated.

The two actually have a fairly competitive head-to-head comparison, with either pick having the potential to come out on top depending on the conditions at hand. However, Bubu can only keep up her full DPS ability until she runs out of S-Energy and ult uptime, while Lyfe is more than happy to dump out dodge shots all day long. Lyfe is also more versatile, being able to spec into more skill damage if need be, enjoying the larger resulting support pool flexibility as well. If I had to pick one, I would probably go with Lyfe IS.

At the same time, though, living in Lyfe IS’s shadow has its benefits, especially if you’re a different element. At the time of writing, Seasun has been very enthusiastic about putting Kinetic resists in the weekly Neural Simulation modifiers list due to Lyfe’s considerable dominance, and this can definitely make enough of a difference for Bubu to swoop in and steal the show on occasion. As well, the currently-pinched ballistic support pool is inevitably bound for future expansion. This naturally opens up more support options for Bubu, who’s put herself in a very comfortable position as a top 3 ballistic DPS with Lyfe IS as her main competition. And when said ballistic damage support is released, maybe it’ll even mean a little less competition over who gets custody of Fenny - Starshine for the week.

Of course, this is only speculation based on past data and likely trends, so take it with a grain of salt. But if there’s anyone on the Heimdall force able to conjure good fortunes in her future, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Bubu, the self-proclaimed master of divinations herself.

Supplementary Material

Link to spreadsheet

Includes weapon calculations, manifest growth calculations, and a logistics optimization calculator.

Cheat Sheet