Yvonne Guide and Best Build

Kit Intro

Yvonne is a 6-star, Cryo, Handcannon damage dealer, completely centered around building and consuming Cryo or Nature Infliction stacks with her Battle Skill in order to access her Ultimate, which is responsible for most of her damage.

Similar to other hyper carries like Laevatain or Last Rite, Yvonne features an incredibly powerful but expensive Ultimate that can only be efficiently accessed by playing into her signature mechanic of Solidification. Yvonne’s core gameplay loop is building Nature or Cryo Infliction on enemies, then forcibly consuming them with her Battle Skill to generate energy based on the amount of the stacks, while also forcibly applying Solidification in the process. Doing this also immediately triggers her combo skill, which grants yet more energy and applies Solidification again after a short delay, which is a perfect segway into her Ultimate, which causes her to fire a stream of bullets over 7-8 seconds, followed by a Solidification-consuming final shot - when timed correctly, it will consume the Solidification applied by the combo.

In well-structured teams, Yvonne’s rotations flow nicely, but there can be some pitfalls if you’re not careful. Yvonne can easily mix Nature and Cryo units and Inflictions, but wants to isolate their Infliction application to one type per Battle Skill to avoid Natural Arts reactions. Any reaction you trigger outside of Yvonne’s Battle Skill is wasted energy that Yvonne could have put toward her next Ultimate. Because of this, it’s important to manage when you’re using each character's abilities to ensure you only apply either Cryo or Nature at one time. An easy solution is to just play either Nature or Cryo, but doing so may limit you from playing the most powerful unit combinations.

The other thing to consider when playing Yvonne is that her Ultimate requires a significant amount of in-game time to fully execute, something that is easier said than done against boss enemies immune to Solidification's controlling effect. Against these enemies, you’ll either need to wait for Stagger or time it perfectly, or else you’ll risk losing firing time and thus a lot of potential damage. Yvonne’s combo skill suffers a similar fate, being a deployable object that pulses damage over a short period, only to then explode. Throw it at the wrong time, or in the wrong position, and enemies can easily walk straight out of it, causing lost damage and, more importantly, a loss of potential Solidification application, which, when considering Yvonne’s Ultimate finishing effect, can also reduce potential damage a lot.

All up, Yvonne is a quirky hyper-carry character who relies on Inflictions to function, but can’t apply them herself, instead relying on teammates and strong team building to enable her. She requires planning in and out of combat to be effective, but can deliver satisfying payoffs when everything lines up just right.

Passives

Before getting into the meat of Yvonne’s kit, it’s important to understand her passives, one of which is vital to her damage scaling and the other of which is a key part of her rotations.

Her first talent, Freezing Point, grants her up to 20 Crit DMG% when attacking enemies with Cryo Infliction and double that (40%) when attacking Solidified enemies. Crit DMG% is an incredibly rare stat in Endfield, and having access to so much of it here and from her Ultimate makes Crit Rate one of Yvonne’s best stats. Yvonne will have Solidification up for most of her most impactful damage-dealing moments just by executing a standard rotation, but the fact that Cryo teams can maintain Cryo Infliction the rest of the time is one edge that Infliction type has over Nature-themed teams for Yvonne.

Note: The bonus Crit DMG% from this talent applies to the damage dealt by Yvonne’s Battle Skill even though it, itself, is the one applying solidification. This is also the case for her combo skill.

Yvonne’s other talent, Barrage of Technology, is a key piece of her rotation. After unlocking it, it allows her to immediately launch a Final Strike after applying Solidification with her Battle Skill - something which is essential for satisfying the trigger requirement of her Combo Skill. At max rank, this talent also boosts the damage of said Final Strike as well. It’s no exaggeration to say that playing Yvonne without this talent feels clunky, so unlock it as soon as you can.

Ultimate

Yvonne’s Ultimate is responsible for the majority of her damage, costs 220 energy to activate, and is what you’ll be structuring your entire team's playstyle plus rotations around. Using it causes Yvonne to become the controlled operator and enter a special stance for 7 seconds. During this time, her basic attacks are enhanced to become rapid fire, with each successful shot granting her a stacking buff up to 10 times that boosts Crit Rate for each stack. 

At max stacks, this buff grants 30% Crit Rate as well as an additional bonus of 60% Crit DMG, which only activates at 10 stacks. The ultimate duration itself is broken up into 3 sections, an initial wind-up period which fires ~10 bullets, a quick pause, then a crouch where Yvonne will unload a constant stream of ~60-70 bullets, after that and when the timer is close to expiring she’ll fire a finishing shot dealing a large burst of damage, and if the enemy is solidified will consume it to deal even more damage.

Timing when to use this Ultimate is everything, as unlike many other characters, landing all its damage isn’t guaranteed. Any time you need to take dodging, or being interrupted by enemies will result in a loss of damage. Because of this, it’s usually optimal to pair it with enemy Stagger or moments of free-fire to ensure it all lands. The other thing to consider when it comes to timing is ensuring all team buffs/debuffs are active before use, and that the enemy will be Solidified during the final shot to maximize damage.

Note: Despite stating the Ultimate lasts 7 seconds, it actually lasts longer when factoring in wind-up time, crouching, and final shot animations.

Tip: Because Yvonne’s Ultimate grants 30% Crit Rate, she therefore has a soft cap of 70% from gear/weapons. You don’t want to go over; otherwise, you’ll be wasting stats during her most important damage window.

Battle Skill

Yvonne’s Battle Skill is the next piece of the puzzle, which makes up the majority of her energy generation. Using it lobs a bomb at your target (which can miss) that explodes, dealing Cryo Damage, some Stagger, but most importantly, consumes Cryo or Nature infliction to forcibly apply Solidification. 

This force Solidification deals no damage of its own, but Yvonne will deal additional Battle Skill damage based on the number of Inflictions consumed (a multiplier that is added to the base multiplier). Also, depending on the amount of Inflictions you consume when this Solidification is applied, Yvonne will also generate additional energy - with 10 being the baseline and an additional 30 being added for every Infliction consumed, meaning a Battle Skill that consumes 4 will grant 130 bonus energy. Balancing how many Inflictions to apply before using this ability is key to mastering Yvonne’s rotations. We’ll be covering that in the energy section below.

Note: Using this Battle Skill against enemies with no Inflictions will not trigger Solidification and therefore grant no bonus energy. In addition to the listed bonus energy, this ability grants the usual 6.5 global energy to the whole team.

Combo

Last but not least, the final piece of the puzzle is Yvonne’s combo skill, which simply requires the controlled operator (which should be Yvonne) to land a Final Strike on a solidified enemy. When playing Yvonne properly, this is beyond easy to achieve by simply Solidifying with her Battle Skill and taking advantage of her Barrage of Technology talent to launch an instant Final Strike.

On use, the Combo grants 20 energy and deploys a robot in a target area with an AoE radius around it. This robot lasts 3 seconds and pulses Cryo damage within its radius 4 times before finally exploding, dealing a larger amount of Cryo damage, some Stagger, and forcibly applying Solidification (counts as a 1 Infliction application). This ability is mostly useful for the energy it generates and the delayed Solidification it provides. 

In order to land the final strike of Yvonne’s Ultimate, the enemy needs to be Solidified at the end of its long duration, something that’s not easy to align if it wasn’t for this Combo Skill. Launching the combo right before using Yvonne’s Ultimate will time the Solidification just right so that it applies right before the majority of the damage of the Ultimate and lasts long enough for the Final Strike to explode it. Because of this, it should always be the last action you launch before entering her Ultimate.

Energy

Understanding Yvonne’s energy breakpoints is essential to team building around her and crafting optimal rotations. Our target is 220 energy - a figure which can be reached in a myriad of different ways, with or without the Ultimate Gain stat, both of which are viable. To start with, let's cover non-Ultimate Gain.

The usual magic number for non-Ultimate Gain Yvonne rotations ranges between 4 to 5 Inflictions, depending on the number of how many of her own Battle Skills are used, owing to its bonus energy on Solidification. This means she can work either with 4 Inflictions, 3 Battle Skills and 2 Combo Skills, or 5 Inflictions, 2 Battle and 2 Combo Skills.

How Inflictions are split (1+1+2, 4+1, etc.) doesn’t matter, only the number of Inflictions consumed and Battle/Combo Skills used.. Here is a breakdown in chart format:

255.5 is somewhat excessive, and this setup would be enough even without factoring in any ally Battle Skill uses. It is possible to take this down to 4 Inflictions, by shifting SP spend to Yvonne instead:

In this format, only 2 ally Battle Skills are required. As there are ways of applying Inflictions without spending SP (such as with Alesh’s Ultimate, Fluorite’s Combo Skill/Ultimate, Gilberta’s Ultimate, etc), this can enable condensed rotations that cycles through Inflictions faster.

Doing so would be dependent on having teammates that can supply cheap Inflictions though, as Yvonne is still demanding a fair few resources for rotations:

Attempting to make do without a third Yvonne Battle Skill would demand a minimum 5 ally Battle Skills and 4 Inflictions, else be left with 1 energy short.

This means either needing to consume a 5th Infliction, or trim down on the amount required with Ultimate Gain. As an example, swapping out an Armor for Bonekrusha Heavy Armor, or a Kit for an Artifice 0 Redeemer Seal would be more than enough.

If using a Redeemer’s Seal, which grants 25.7% Ultimate Gain at baseline, then even 3 Inflictions would be enough:

Using the above set-up you can skip out on 2 whole Inflictions, which usually means 2 saved Battle Skills, preserving that SP for other purposes. 

If you want to push in a different direction, though, it’s also possible to cut out a Combo Skill and Battle Skill from the rotation instead, aiming for a 1 Battle Skill = 1 Ultimate playstyle.

Note: While faster Ultimates can be useful, it is often worse than other options, as not only does it mean giving up on more damaging gear, ideally you want all the teams' cooldowns to be up and the boss to be Staggered, which is very hard to do if you’re using Ultimate twice as often.

In this final set-up, just using a single Battle Skill to consume 4 Inflictions alongside a Combo Skill and at least 4 ally Battle Skills (which is often needed for the 4 Inflictions anyways), Yvonne can gain ultimate. Artificing beyond 25.7% Ultimate Gain or just using more Ultimate Gain can open up even more breakpoints for Yvonne, but we’ll stop here for this guide.

How many Inflictions you decide to go with, how you split them up between Battle Skills, and if you decide to use Ultimate Gain or not, all depend on your play style and whether it fits your team.

Gameplay

Once you have your energy mapped out and your team set-up Yvonne isn’t too complicated to play, but it will depend on all the information covered in the energy section above and what you decided to go with. 

For simplicity's sake, we’ll be breaking down how to play Yvonne without energy, but it will change a little if you decide to use some. Yvonne’s no-energy rotations are usually split up into two halves, one half for each battle/combo skill.

• Open the fight by applying 1 or 2 Cryo/Nature Infliction, then Solidify them with Yvonne’s battle skill. Going for lower stack sizes early on in the fight is usually optimal to get combo skills on cooldown faster.

• Next perform an instant Final Strike to trigger Yvonne’s combo skill and recover some SP. If you’re playing a character capable of triggering Shatter with their combo skill, like Gil or Estella, only use it after landing Yvonne’s Final Strike.

• After that, deploy Yvonne’s combo skill. This marks the end of the first half.

• Start the second half in the exact same way as the first, but build 3 or 4 Cryo stacks to bring your total between both rotations to 5 (how many you need depends on how many you started with)

• Use the same Battle Skill into Combo Skill sequence, but this time, after that, use all available team cooldowns (shorter duration buffs/debuffs can be saved for mid-way through Yvonne’s Ultimate) and move straight into Yvonne’s Ultimate and fully channel it for as long as possible. After this, rinse and repeat.