Citlali Build and Guide

Citlali is a 5-star Cryo Catalyst user who is most commonly played as a support and sustain for Melt and Freeze teams. She provides great off-field Cryo application and shields through her Skill, alongside additional buffs through her Pyro and Hydro RES Shred and great gearing options. As a Natlan character, she has access to and utilizes Nightsoul mechanics.

Citlali’s Nightsoul mechanics are also largely tied to her Skill; when cast, it creates a Cryo shield which scales off of her Elemental Mastery, lets her enter Nightsoul's Blessing with 24 Nightsoul points, and summons Itzpapa. Itzpapa, however, only activates when Citlali has above 50 Nightsoul points, consuming 8 points to deal Cryo damage every second around the active character. Her Burst fills in for this missing amount, being a potentially strong Cryo nuke that generates 24 Nightsoul points on cast and 3 more from the summoned “Spiritvessel Skull” that hits immediately after - leaving her with at least 51 points, on its own translating to around 6 seconds of uptime. Note that there is an unpredictable delay on when the Spiritvessel Skull will hit, and it may not be at a perfectly consistent time every rotation.

While she does summon up to 2 additional Spiritvessel Skulls in AoE based on the number of targets, further Nightsoul point generation is better found on her first Ascension Passive. This allows Frozen and Melt reactions to grant her 16 Nightsoul points once every 8 seconds if Itzpapa is present; it also reduces enemy Hydro and Pyro RES respectively by 20%, solidifying her role as an enabler for these teams. Her second Ascension Passive is less noteworthy, offering additional EM scaling for her Skill and Burst alongside granting 4 Nightsoul points when a Nightsoul Burst is triggered. These are nice bonuses to have, but rarely actually relevant.

One aspect of her kit not well defined by its descriptions is that Itzpapa is subject to Internal Cooldown rules - that is, the rate at which it can apply Cryo to a given enemy is limited by the game. This cooldown is set at 1.5 seconds, meaning that though her Burst hits every second, it only applies Cryo once every two seconds. Another unexplained mechanic is that the initial hit of her Burst applies Cryo with twice the strength of the other parts of her kit. This is useful for helping to “clear away” other elements so Citlali can set a Cryo aura on them, especially since a Cryo attack requires double the amount of Pyro to fully consume it when triggering Melt on an enemy. 

Finally, while her Normal Attacks have no special value, their Cryo application is occasionally helpful for triggering or enabling reactions.