Haru (Kamuy)Build and Guide

Haru (Kamuy) (KHaru/ Karu) is a DEX Beast Type Debuff Ranger who specialises in applying and maintaining the Curse DoT along with a bevy of other Debuffs.

• Passive - Cursed Wolf: KHaru’s Normal Attacks (NA) inflict Curse on enemies.

• S1 - Howling: Haru attacks the nearest enemy, dealing 280% AOE damage and inflicting 20% Attack Reduction on all targets hit.

• S2 - Curse of Abyss: KHaru attacks the nearest enemy, dealing 280% AOE damage and inflicting <Curse Burst>; which will deal 400% damage per stack of Curse active on the targets upon expiration.

• Main - Forgotten Illusion: KHaru attacks the nearest enemy, inflicting <Curse of Abyss> for 6 seconds if the target is Cursed. Abyssal Curse inflicts 30% <Total Damage Dealt decrease> and 20% <Total Damage Taken increase> for the duration.

• Ultimate - Dream Undying: KHaru attacks the furthest enemy and all enemies within a long AOE, applying <Curse’s Weight> on all targets. <Curse’s Weight> inflicts <Crushed> for every 2 seconds Curse is applied, reducing 2% ATK and 4% Physical/ Magic Resistance per stack (Stacks up to 15 times, essentially making this a permanent 30% ATK reduction and 60% Resist Shred!)

• Artifact - Wolf Soul: Decreases the Speed (10% - 25%) of all Enemies inflicted with Curse, and increases Curse Damage. Also grants <Winter Wolf’s Protection> at the start of combat, which prevents Haru from taking lethal damage once per battle, heals her HP (30% - 100%), and (Legend+ Artifact and up) grants <Summer Fox’s Protection>, which greatly reduces up to 80% Final Damage taken for a short time.

• Pattern: NA > S1 > NA > S2 > repeat.

KHaru’s release marks the end of the Q2 2025 Roadmap, and joins an ever growing roster of super Debuffers. KHaru’s kit features no less than 5 different debuffs - Permanent Resist Shred, Permanent Attack Reduction, Speed Reduction, Total Damage Taken Increase and Total Damage Dealt Decrease. However, she along with Jiho (Mir) must be paying for the sins of Honglan (Peerless), because the Devs decided to give the majority of her debuffs short durations. With the low duration on her Curses, KHaru is largely dependent on her being able to rotate through her kit to maintain Curse uptime for her debuffs.

Damage over Time comps in general have historically been very bad in PvE content, and KHaru on her own is no exception. Since she typically can only maintain Curse on no more than 1 target at any time, her impact on the field is typically fairly muted or only limited to frontliners. However, we can anticipate that she will become more viable once a source of AOE curse (similar to Weiss) is released, allowing her to potentially slow multiple cursed targets at once.

The main difficulty for KHaru’s viability in Raid lies in the fact that she is a pure debuffer. Honglan (Peerless) in comparison has that massive regenerating shield; Rose can both heal, Burn and buff the ATK and HP stats; and Jiho (Mir) can both heal and cleanse. KHaru does not have these additional utilities, going all in on her debuffing capability. As such, swapping out these debuffers will require either the team to equip Lifesteal keepsakes/ Zodiacs or running a Healer. 

She would be able to do well in bosses where her ultimate has free range, such as Gaiah, Pluto and very likely Charite (where her permanent ATK reduction debuff will make her a staple). However, she struggles in both Ruthra (where you must pay the opportunity cost of using a different Ultimate every rotation) and Dark Knight (where you will be swapping between fighting the boss and multiple enemies in intervals).

Investment

Considering that the majority of her utility is available out of the gate, she is a cheap and easy pickup for players looking to expand their raid roster. She would be able to do an acceptable job at Eternal+ Ascension and Legend+ Artifact, and further investment on Ascension will give her more bulk to work with.

Upgrades on her artifact will improve the potency of her Speed reduction buff while increasing her survivability, but is not probably required since many bosses are immune to Slows.

Team Compositions and Synergies

Given KHaru’s fairly universal kit, she is easy to fit into many comps on her own. She however, appreciates any additional curse uptime and speed so that she can easily rotate through her kit.

• Larimar: Has a strong 8 second curse on her Sentence subskill and confers a speed Aura to her party.

• Violette: Subject to testing, but KHaru offering Curse and a bevy of debuffs means there is a possibility that she will easily fit in a Violette carry comp once Violette receives another balance patch. Violette also applies Curse to slightly improve KHaru’s debuff uptime.

Conclusion

KHaru marks the end of a fairly slow quarter, being a pretty solid debuffer with minimal investment needed. With the Q3 Roadmap and possibly a new Demon/ Angel soul on the horizon, players might want to wait for that announcement before committing heavily into the banner. We do recommend picking up a few copies since she is an easy slot into many comps.