Ciaccona Wuthering Waves Ultimate Guide: Best Builds, Echoes, Weapons, and Teams

Wuthering Waves has just introduced its first playable bard, Ciaccona, a support character focused mainly on erosion debuffs with some added frazzle utility. While she also dishes out decent damage herself, her real strength lies in enabling powerful erosion-based teams. This guide covers everything you need to know about Ciaccona’s abilities, rotation, best gear, echoes, and ideal team compositions so you can get the most out of this promising new addition. Before this update, there’re also Zani Guide and Brant Guide!

Who is Ciaccona and What Makes Her Unique?

Ciaccona brings a fresh playstyle as a bard-type character who supports with erosion application—a status that boosts damage when stacked—and also applies frazzle in certain setups. Her gameplay revolves around generating and maintaining erosion stacks on enemies, enhancing not just her own damage but also the damage output of her teammates.

The standout feature is her basic attack four, which summons a hologram clone of herself. This clone stays on the field for a long time and boosts Aero damage for nearby allies by 24%. A key mechanic here is the ability to cancel the animation early (using a dash), letting Ciaccona chain attacks rapidly and keep the erosion stacks flowing.

Ciaccona’s Skills and Rotation Explained

Basic Attacks and Clone Mechanics

• Basic Attack Four: Generates one-third of her forte bar and applies one stack of Aero erosion.
• Hologram Clone: Stays on field, boosting Aero damage for nearby resonators by 24%.
• Dash Canceling: Cancel basic four early with a dash to have the clone finish the attack, then follow up with basic three. This lets you spam basic fours quickly, shortening the rotation.

Forte and Resonance Skills

• Forte Attack: Replaces heavy attack when her forte bar is full, applying erosion, generating Concerto, and grouping enemies.
• Resonance Skill: Simple application of erosion plus leads into basic two.
• Resonance Liberation: A mini concert where you can apply Aero erosion or frazzle continuously to nearby enemies. A quicktime event lets you choose the status effect mid-combat by selecting left (frazzle) or right (Aero erosion) icons.

Intro and Outro Skills

• Intro Skill: Applies erosion and grants a forte stack, allowing you to jump right into basic three and shorten the rotation.
• Outro Skill: Provides 100% Aero erosion damage amplification, hinting at synergy with future characters focused on erosion mechanics.

Erosion damage scales up significantly when increasing stacks. Moving from three to six stacks boosts damage by 2.5 times rather than just doubling it. Each stack deals damage every 3 seconds and lasts 15 seconds before decaying. Ciaccona’s abilities, combined with her outro skill, can raise the max stacks to six, potentially letting her deal strong erosion damage.

Recommended Talent and Skill Investment

1. Liberation (Resonance Liberation)
2. Forte Attack
3. Normal Basic Attack
4. Resonance Skill
5. Intro Skill

Prioritize talents that enhance her concert and erosion applications first, then move down to basic attacks and intro.

Ciaccona’s Standard Rotation

1. Use the Intro Skill to start.
2. Follow with Basic Three.
3. Use Basic Four, dash cancel early to trigger clone finishing attack.
4. Chain into Basic Three and repeat Basic Four dash cancel.
5. Use Resonance Skill to cancel basic four early again.
6. Apply Forte Attack once forte bar is full.
7. Use Liberation to start the mini concert.
8. Optionally, switch between Aero erosion or frazzle mode via quicktime event.
9. Finish with Outro Skill and swap to your main DPS.

You can weave in dodges and counterattacks as needed to keep the rotation smooth.

Echoes and Stats: What Works Best

• Set Bonus: Gust of Welkin is the prime choice. The two-piece bonus gives 10% Aero damage, while inflicting Aero erosion boosts the entire team’s damage by 15% and Ciaccona’s Aero damage by an additional 15%.
• 4 Star Echo: Reminiscence Fleurdelys for an Aero damage boost without cast time.
• Main Stats: Crit rate or crit damage, based on your current crit ratio.
• Three-Cost Echoes: Double Aero damage is best, but swapping one for attack percent is fine for some flexibility.
• One-Cost Echo: Attack percent is recommended.
• Optional: An energy recharge three-cost echo can improve reliability in maintaining liberation uptime despite some damage loss.
• Alternative Set: Moonlight set with Impermanence Heron can work for frazzle teams but Gust of Welkin dominates for Aero builds.

Best Weapons for Ciaccona

• Woodland Aria: Best in slot due to attack boost, 24% Aero damage on erosion, and a 10% enemy Aero resistance shred. This last effect benefits the whole Aero team.
• The Last Dance: A solid stat stick option.
• Five-star Pistols: Good fallback.
• Romance and Farewell: Surprisingly viable because Ciaccona consistently applies debuffs, helping these weapons keep their value. However, they lack the crucial resistance shred.

Sequence and Investment Priorities

• Start with Signature Weapon Refinement 1 for the resistance shred.
• Sequence 1: Boosts Ciaccona’s damage and gives interrupt resistance after resonance skill.
• Sequence 2: Big boost, grants 40% Aero damage for the team.
• Sequence 3: Shortens rotation, lets her spam forte faster, turning her into a more competent main DPS.
• Sequences 4 to 6: Further damage boosts and party damage reduction to improve survivability.

For most players, stopping after Sequence 2 is a solid investment point, with more advanced players moving deeper for full rotation efficiency.

Ideal Team Compositions

Aero Damage Teams

• Ciaccona + Aero Rover + Alto (DPS): A strong erosion and Aero synergy team that maximizes damage output.
• Ciaccona + Jiyan + Healer (Shorekeeper or Verina): Jiyan benefits from Ciaccona’s Aero buffs, making this a decent mid-tier option.

Frazzle-Focused Teams

• Ciaccona + Phoebe: Ciaccona’s ability to apply frazzle continuously supports Phoebe in multi-wave content, especially in Withering Wastes.
• Ciaccona + Zani: A viable but not optimal option; Ciaccona can substitute Phoebe for frazzle support if needed.

Ciaccona is shaping up to be a key support for future erosion-heavy team comps. With her unique clone mechanic, versatile status application, and strong Aero damage boosts, she brings fresh utility and damage potential. While she may need some teammates to fully unlock her power, her kit and synergy options make her a solid addition right now and a character to watch for upcoming meta shifts.

Practice her rotation carefully—especially the dash-canceling technique—and prioritize her weapon and key sequences to maximize her impact. Whether you build her around Aero or frazzle support, Ciaccona is definitely a character worth investing in for the future of Wuthering Waves. If you want a detailed breakdown of her rotation, builds, and team comps, feel free to ask for an expanded guide or watch gameplay showcases to see her in action.