Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ)EvelynBuild and Guide

Evelyn is our first Limited S-Rank Fire Attack Agent, and just like so many of her recently released DPS peers, she immediately soars to the top of the meta with her incredibly potent and unique kit. What makes her so unique? Well, apart from all the fiery cables, wires, and that killer jacket, it’s her ability to use Chain Attacks whenever she damn well pleases - Stunned enemy or otherwise. This, paired with the fact that Evelyn just so happens to also get one of the strongest Chain Attacks in the game, equates to quite a potent kit focus - one which players can absolutely take extreme advantage of, assuming they know how.

Evelyn’s Kit contains 3 Unique mechanics - 2 of those are resources and one is a debuff, but all of them need to be managed effectively. That might seem daunting, but in practice it is actually quite simple. Playing Evelyn boils down to executing a few basic combos to build up her resources, followed by another sequence of combos consisting of multiple chain attacks during a Stun window in order to spend them. While that sounds simple it must be noted that Evelyn is easy to learn but certainly hard to master. A skilled Evelyn player capable of getting the most out of her resource accumulation and spending phases will deal significantly more damage than a player who is less capable. To ensure you’re one of the players getting the most out of her kit let’s dive into the details!

Unique Resources

Evelyn’s two resources are Burning Embers and Burning Tethers. Burning Embers can be accumulated via the majority of Evelyn’s Standard Attacks and are used to fuel her Enhanced Basic Attacks. Evelyn can hold up to 16 Burning Embers and she generates the following amount from these attacks:

• Basic Attack: Razor Wire P1 = 1

• Basic Attack: Razor Wire P2 = 1

• Basic Attack: Razor Wire P3 = 1

• Basic Attack: Razor Wire P4 = 2

• Basic Attack: Razor Wire P5 = 3

• Special Attack: Locked Position = 1

• Special Attack: Binding Sunder - First Form = 1

• Special Attack (Perfect Dodge) = 4

• EX Special Attack: Binding Sunder - Final Form = 8

• Dash Attack: Piercing Ambush = 1

• Dodge Counter: Strangling Reversal = 1

• Quick Assist: Fierce Blade = 1

Whereas, Burning Tethers are accumulated primarily from a few of Evelyn’s Enhanced Attacks and are consumed to allow her to execute Chain Attacks outside of the Stun Window on demand. Evelyn can hold up to 3 Burning Tethers at once and generates them from:

• Basic Attack: Garrote - First Form = 1

• Basic Attack: Garrote - Second Form = 1

• Ultimate: Lunalux Garrote - Timbre = 1

• Ultimate: Lunalux Garrote - Shadow = 1

We’ll cover how to generate and spend these resources efficiently when we get to the rest of Evelyn’s abilities but knowing how to accumulate them is enough for now!

Evelyn’s other signature mechanic is Binding Seal - a special debuff that attaches one of her wires to an enemy upon using certain abilities. Binding Seal has some interactions with a few of her abilities but its main purpose is to activate and maintain her Core Passive: Entangle. While Binding Seal is active and for 10 seconds after it expires, Evelyn gains 25% Critical Rate. Also when switching Evelyn out while Binding Seal is active, she’ll immediately execute her Special Attack: Binding Sunder - First Form, after which she’ll break the Seal. Keeping this Core Passive active at all times is important, and fortunately, it’s not hard, as the majority of her abilities apply the debuff, and you have a 10-second grace period even after it expires. In the event you break your Binding Seal or don’t have it active, re-apply it as soon as you can, also pay careful attention to avoid any non-essential abilities that break the seal.

Now that we’ve covered all her Unique mechanics and resources it’s time to get into her main kit!

First up is her Basic Attack, which consists of a standard 5-part attack sequence (3 Physical, 2 Fire). Standard Basic Attacks are one of the major tools Evelyn has to generate Burning Embers - as such you can expect to use them a lot. Also worth noting is that the 5th attack of the sequence is one of the abilities that applies Binding Seal.

In addition to her Standard Basic Attack sequence, she also possesses two individual Charged Basic Attacks, Basic Attack: Garrote - First Form and Basic Attack: Garrote - Second Form. These attacks are the abilities you’ll be spending all of your Burning Embers on. Using either of them consumes 8 Burning Embers and the second form can only be used immediately after the first form (thus requiring 16 Burning Embers or a full gauge to use both at once). Executing either of the attacks will deal significant Fire damage, generate a single Burning Tether and grant Evelyn Anti-Interrupt and DMG Taken Reduction during its duration. Both attacks have similar damage and speeds so executing them back to back isn’t mandatory.

Evelyn’s Special Attack comes in three variants, all of which directly synergize with her Basic Attacks and Resource Generation and together they make up the majority of her combos. Her first Special Attack is her usual Standard Special, Special Attack: Locked Position. Using this is free, deals a small amount of Fire damage and immediately applies Binding Seal to the enemy if it’s not already active. This is a good way to start off your combo initially or establish your Seal if it ends up breaking.

Evelyn’s second Special Attack, Special Attack: Binding Sunder - First Form similarly does not consume energy and is only usable after the enemy is already Tethered, attempting to use it while the enemy isn’t will use “Locked Position” first instead.

Binding Sunder’s main function is to shorten and enhance Evelyn’s Basic Attack sequence. After using it, she can directly follow it up with an alternative (Fire instead of Physical) Basic Attack 3, 4 and 5, making it an essential combo piece for optimal rotations. Outside of this, Binding Sunder has two other features, the first is that it can be used in place of Evelyn’s Dodge and when used successfully it will grant her 4 Burning Embers in addition to its usual effects. The other feature is that when uninterrupted, Binding Sunder executes two separate instances of damage, an initial attack and a Seal Snapping finisher. This finisher breaks the Binding Seal to deal its damage causing you to need to re-apply it, fortunately the damage sucks. You can avoid triggering the snap simply by executing the Basic Attack 3 as soon as the first part lands, skipping the second part entirely.

Last but not least is her EX Special Attack, which is functionally identical to Binding Sunder outside of the fact that it deals more damage, generates 8 Burning Embers instead of 1, gathers enemies around your Sealed target, and costs Energy.

With all of this covered, we can finally form the “accumulation” portion of Evelyn’s combos, but without the spending side, it would be useless! So before we get into combos, it’s finally time to cover what’s most important: her Chain Attack and Ultimate!

Evelyn’s Chain Attack, like most characters, can be used while the enemy is Stunned, but unlike those characters, hers does significantly more damage and can be used outside of that window as well. To do so she must expend 3 Burning Tethers by holding Basic Attack or Skill after which she’ll immediately break the usual chain requirements and execute her Chain Attack.

Evelyn’s has two Ultimates, one called Timbre and one called Shadow, they are very similar but have a few key differences:

• Your first Ultimate will always be Timbre.

• Using Timbre will cause her to permanently enter the Dance of Awakened Fire state enhancing Evelyn for the rest of the fight

• While Dance of Awakened Fire is active all subsequent Ultimates will be Shadow.

Outside of these points, both Ultimates deal the same damage, grant one Burning Tether and apply Binding Seal on use.

Outside of resource generation and damage, the main purpose behind Evelyn’s Ultimate is entering the Dance of Awakened Fire state. While it’s active, every time she consumes 3 Burning Tethers to trigger a bonus Chain Attack, one is immediately refunded. This makes comboing with Evelyn far, far more potent and boosts her damage considerably; as such, accessing this state as early as is convenient (without wasting damage) is a priority.

To finish things off, we have one final bonus for Evelyn, thanks to her Additional Ability. While active, her Chain Attacks and Ultimate gain a generic 30% Damage Increase and as long as her Critical Rate is at or over 80%, the damage multiplier of her Chain Attack and Ultimate is also increased by 1.25 times their original value.This Additional ability is a must. Build your teams around it and ensure Evelyn has 80% Critical Rate at all times.

For players who enjoy preparation & execution, the builder, spender playstyle, and have an itch for combo-based gameplay with a higher-than-normal skill ceiling, Evelyn might be exactly what you’re looking for. She shines the most in game modes that allow her to execute multiple rotations in order to leverage her powerful enhanced Ultimate State, but is fully capable and even notorious for having the issue of simply killing enemies and endgame stages too fast to even make use of it.

With that said, at the time of her release, she currently suffers from somewhat lacklustre W-Engine options outside of her Signature, a distinct absence of a perfect Disc Drive Set, and a noticeable drop in performance when played outside of her ideal team, including Lighter and Astra Yao. But if you’re a Burst Damage Combo Enthusiast and can look past or solve these demerits, the upsides are more than worth the trouble, especially if you’re a player capable of mastering all her advanced combos and tricks.

Evelyn is a character who likes to on-field, not because she does much damage while doing so, but because she needs it to generate her resources. Being stocked on both 3 Burning Tether Points and 16 Burning Embers prior to a stun is often required for her most damaging combos and should be considered a priority.

On paper it’s simple: use her Special Attack: Locked Position to apply binding seal, then follow with Special Attack: Binding Sunder - First Form. This allows her to bypass the weak, Physical DMG 1st and 2nd hits of her Basic Attack string and get onto the stronger and higher Burning Ember generating moves faster.

From there, simply continue to use her Basic Attack string until the 5th hit, then again cast Special Attack: Binding Sunder - First Form and repeat. Be mindful so as to not overcap Burning Embers and use Evelyn’s enhanced Basic Attack: Garrote to convert them to Burning Tether Points every so often. 

It’s not uncommon to just about hit the Energy threshold for EX Special Attack: Binding Sunder - Final Form, so make sure to not waste any of its build-up.

In practice, it’s unlikely that enemies will stand still and allow for uninterrupted use of all these Basic Attacks. This is not a negative however, as it provides an opportunity to gain additional Burning Embers through the Perfect Dodge properties of Evelyn’s Special and EX Special. The more aggressive the enemy, the faster Burning Embers can be built, so do capitalise on attacks to maximise its generation.

Depending on how quickly her resources are built, it may allow for one out of stun Burning Tether Points Chain Attack to be used. This can do some decent damage but it’s primary purpose would be to generate Decibels, as Evelyn is more than capable of sustaining Ultimate use in every stun bar certain routes (e.g. 5 stuns on element neutral).

Despite Evelyn’s demanding field presence, this does not detract much from her teams’ abilities to stun quickly, as it provides opportunities to Defensive Assist onto Stunners for daze build and Decibel generation. As her Assist Follow-Up is not particularly strong, this is an effective use of Assist Points, however do be mindful as it can make Decibel build more reliant on using out of stun Chain Attacks.

Once stun arrives, that’s where Evelyn shines. She has some of the highest combo damage multipliers in the game, getting a truly absurd amount of Chain Attacks out in a short period. Her best combos however, are conditional on having specific teammates that can extend the stun duration (Lighter or Dialyn) as well as Astra, who is able to provide more Chains through her Ultimate. 

Being in Dance of Awakened Fire matters too, as the refunded Burning Tether Point can change how combos flow.

This means that there are a lot of combo variants which change depending on the team line-up, although almost all of them should be at 3 Burning Tether Points and 16 Burning Embers prior to start.

A simple, universal combo would be:

• Be on another character to trigger Chain

• Evelyn Chain Attack

• Cancel

• Points Chain Attack (3 → 0 Burning Tether Points)

• Swap to another character to trigger Chain

• Evelyn Chain Attack

• Basic Attack; Garrote - First Form (0 → 1 Burning Tether Points, 16 → 8 Burning Embers)

• Ultimate (1 → 2 Burning Tether Points)

• Basic Attack: Garrote - First Form (2 → 3 Burning Tether Points, 8 → 0 Burning Embers)

• Points Chain Attack

4 Chain Attacks, 1 Ultimate.

There is plenty of time after to squeeze in EX Specials and more enhanced Basic Attack: Garrotes at the end.

If in Dance of Awakened Fire, then:

• Points Chain Attack (3 → 1 Burning Tether Points)

• Swap to another character to initiate stun, then trigger Chain

• Evelyn Chain Attack

• Cancel

• Basic Attack: Garrote - First Form (1 → 2 Burning Tether Points, 16 → 8 Burning Embers)

• Basic Attack: Garrote - Second Form (2 → 3 Burning Tether Points, 8 → 0 Burning Embers)

• Swap to another character to trigger Chain

• Evelyn Chain Attack

• Points Chain Attack (3 → 1 Burning Tether Points)

• Ultimate (1 → 2 Burning Tether Points)

• EX Special (0 → 8 Burning Embers)

• Basic Attack: Garrote - First Form (2 → 3 Burning Tether Points, 8 → 0 Burning Embers)

• Points Chain Attack (3 → 1 Burning Tether Points)

5 Chain Attacks, 1 Ultimate.

In practice it’s a 4.5 Chain Attack combo, as either a large portion of the first Points Chain Attack will land before stun begins, or the final hit of the final Points Chain Attack will land out of stun. Even still, it is an improvement over the previous, as Chain Attack damage on Evelyn is evenly split between the wires and finger snap portions.

If Lighter is present, then the above combo should comfortably have all 5 Chain Attacks land in stun.

With Astra and Lighter, then it’s possible to fit in even more without needing to be in Dance of Awakened Fire:

• Points Chain Attack (3 → 0 Burning Tether Points)

• Swap to another character to initiate stun, then trigger Chain

• Evelyn Chain Attack

• Cancel

• Basic Attack: Garrote - First Form (0 → 1 Burning Tether Points, 16 → 8 Burning Embers)

• Swap to another character to trigger Chain

• Evelyn Chain Attack

• Basic Attack: Garrote - First Form (1 → 2 Burning Tether Points, 8 → 0 Burning Embers)

• Ultimate (2 → 3 Burning Tether Points)

• Points Chain Attack (3 → 1 Burning Tether Points)

• Swap to Astra for her Ultimate

• Basic Attack: Finale on Astra to exit Idyllic Cadenza

• Evelyn Chain Attack (Quick Assist Conversion)

• EX Special (0 → 8 Burning Embers)

• Swap to Astra for her Special

• Evelyn Chain Attack (Quick Assist Conversion)

• Basic Attack: Garrote - First Form (1 → 2 Burning Tether Points, 8 → 0 Burning Embers)

6 Chain Attacks, 1 Ultimate.

If Dialyn is available, then she can exchange 1 Chain Attack for an Ultimate, leading to even higher damage, however the execution demands are steep as it necessitates making use of advanced Astra cancel techs:

• Points Chain Attack (3 → 0 Burning Tether Points)

• Swap to Dialyn to initiate stun with EX Special Attack: Rock

• Dialyn Hold Basic EX Special (Get Lost!)

• Evelyn Ultimate (0 → 1 Burning Tether Points)

• Cancel

• Basic Attack: Garrote - First Form (1 → 2 Burning Tether Points, 16 → 8 Burning Embers)

• Swap to another character to trigger Chain

• Evelyn Chain Attack

• Ultimate (2 → 3 Burning Tether Points)

• Points Chain Attack (3 → 0 Burning Tether Points)

• Swap to Astra for her Ultimate

• Special, Dodge, Special Inputs on Astra to exit Idyllic Cadenza

• Evelyn Chain Attack (Quick Assist Conversion)

• Basic Attack: Garrote - First Form (1 → 2 Burning Tether Points, 8 → 0 Burning Embers)

• Swap to Astra for her Special

• Evelyn Chain Attack (Quick Assist Conversion)