Best Carlotta build in Wuthering Waves – Weapons, Echoes, team compositions, and Sequences

After what’s felt like an eternity, Wuthering Waves 2.0 has finally been released, and with it came the newest five-star Resonator, Carlotta. Carlotta packs a serious wallop and introduces a new style of play not seen before her release, so if you’ve pulled her, or are planning to, here’s everything you need to know.

Best Carlotta Build in Wuthering Waves

Carlottla is a Glacio DPS character, and the first five-star Pistol user in Wuthering Waves. Her weapon type comes with certain expectations, but I urge you to put these aside because Carlotta does not play like any other Pistol character before her. Carlotta is a unique combination of a Burst and DPS character, in that she has solid consistent damage, with a very powerful burst coming entirely from her Ultimate ability. In fact, her goal is to reach the most powerful state of her Ultimate before using it for maximum damage output. This requires you to pay attention to a number of factors and fits right into her gameplan.

Carlotta’s Gameplan

Despite appearances, Carlotta is a number-complex character, meaning the mechanics you need to be paying attention to often have little visual feedback. In Carlotta’s case, her most important mechanic is Moldable Crystals, which ties to almost every other mechanic she has access to. Moldable Crystals is a stacking buff (max six stacks) that she gains when performing many of her numerous actions. Without getting stuck in the weeds on this, her most reliable ways to gain Moldable Crystals are the following:

How to get Moldable Crystals

• Mid-Air Plunge Attack – Earns her three Moldable Crystals. If not hitting a target, you must follow this up with a Basic Attack to earn the crystals.
• Basic Attack Two – Earns her three Moldable Crystals only when she does not have Moldable Crystals. This is because Carlotta will utilize her Enhanced Basic Attacks when she does have crystals, dealing more damage and charging her Forte faster.
• Resonance Skill – The first part of the Skill only. Earns her three Moldable Crystals
• Heavy Attack – Earns her three Moldable Crystals.
• Dodging – Earns her three Modlable Crystals

Carlotta consumes stacks of Moldable Crystals to charge her Forte. The more crystals consumed, the faster her Forte charges. This is important to understand, so make note of it for now. We will return to it later. Here are the main ways she consumes Moldable Crystals:

How to consume Moldable Crystals

• Enhanced Basic Attacks – Replaces standard Basic Attacks while you have Moldable Crystals. Consumes one crystal per attack.
• Resonance Skill – The second part of the Skill only. Consumes all available Moldable Crystals.
• Dodge Counter – Activates a special riposte ability that consumes following a Dodge. Consumes one Moldable Crystal.

You are doing all of this gaining and consuming of Moldable Crystals to charge Carlotta’s Forte Bar to activate two special buffs upon completing filling: Tinted Crystal and Final Bow.

• Tinted Crystal – Allows Carlotta to use her enhanced Heavy Attack, which does massive damage in an AoE around her while reducing the cooldown of her Skill by six seconds. Tinted Crystal has a 22-second cooldown, but this cooldown only affects the AoE nuke, not the cooldown reduction portion. You will know if this buff is active if Carlotta’s hair has crystalized
• Final Bow – Buff’s Carlotta’s Ultimate damage by 80%. This buff is depicted as an hourglass on your buff bar. Once her Forte bar is filled, she will receive this buff permanently until her Ultimate is used. While her Ultimate is active, she will gain the full benefit until it has concluded or she is switched out during it.

Resonance Skill and Liberation

I’ve talked a bit about Carlotta’s Resonance Skill and Ultimate already, but there is a bit more to say about them separately.

Carlotta’s Resonance Skill, Art of Violence, is a two-part skill that requires two inputs to execute. The first part rewards you with three Moldable Crystals but also applies a very powerful debuff on the enemy hit called Dispersion. This debuff completely freezes any enemy hit by it for 1.5 seconds. This also works on bosses.

Her Ultimate Era of New Wave is the source of her Burst damage, but the initial hit also applies a powerful debuff called Deconstruction on any enemies hit by it. Deconstruction causes your damage to ignore 18% of the enemy’s defense, and this is the case for your entire team.

In Summary

With all of that said, in a nutshell, Carlotta gameplan is to:

• Generate and Consume Moldable Crystals to fill Forte
• Fill Forte to activate Tinted Crystal and Final Bow
• Use Ultimate with Final Bow active
• Use Forte to reduce Skill cooldown
• Use Tinted Crystal buff to launch a powerful AoE nuke
• Repeat

Any additional buffs that support the above flow, like intro skills, weapons, or team composition mechanics, enhance Carlotta’s ability to perform.

Best Echoes for Carlotta in Wuthering Waves

With the release of Wuthering Waves 2.0, a slew of new Echo sets also came into the picture, and one of them is extremely ideal for Carlotta. She has three options to use, with the newest set being the best choice.

• Frosty Resolve – This set gives Carlotta an abundance of additional Resonance Skill damage, which is why it is the most potent set for her. A majority of her damage is considered Resonance Skill damage, making it the best option by a decent mile.
• Lingering Tunes – Lingering Tunes is one of the original sets in Wuthering Waves, but it still packs the generic punch it always has by offering Carlotta a large amount ATK% the longer she remains on the field. Generally speaking, Carlotta likes field time, so this is a solid set to consider while you’re farming up the new one.
• Freezing Frost – As a Glacio character, Carlotta also reaps the benefits from the significant Glacio damage Freezing Frost offers her. It simply requires Carlotta to attack with her Basic Attack to gain the full benefit of this set, so while it is technically the weakest set number-wise, it is still an excellent option for her while farming the new set.

Carlotta is built like any other DPS character, so the ideal Echo setup for her is ‘43311’, which refers to the Echo Costs for all five Echo equipment slots.

• 4-Cost Echo (Crit DMG, Crit Rate)
• 3-Cost Echoes (Glacio DMG Bonus or ATK%)
• 1-Cost Echoes (ATK%)

Best Weapons for Carlotta in Wuthering Waves

As the first five-star Pistol character in Wuthering Waves, Carlotta doesn’t have many options for weapons to choose from. In fact, she only has two. The most recommended weapon is, naturally, her signature, The Last Dance. This Pistol gives her unconditional ATK% while significantly buffing her Skill Damage when her Intro Skill or Resonance Liberation (Ultimate) is cast.

The second option is the generic Static Mist, which serves as a solid stat stick for Carlotta thanks to its Crit Rate substat. However, Carlotta is a main DPS character and cannot really take advantage of Static Mist’s ally buffing ability in any real way. Also, as a Standard five-star weapon, it will never compete with The Last Dance in any Echo setup, making it always the worst five-star option.

If you do not have The Last Dance or Static Mist, I strongly urge you to reconsider pulling for Carlotta, as there are no viable four-star weapon choices for her, and her performance will greatly suffer if you try to use one.

Best Team Compositions for Carlotta in Wuthering Waves

Carlotta likes to have a lot of field time to perform her combos and stack up her Moldable Crystals, but she isn’t required to be glued to it. Thanks to her versatility, she is actually rather flexible with several teammates and is a preferable option for hypercarry and quickswap setups.

Carlotta/Zhezhi/Shorekeeper

This is the premium Carlotta team composition, and it performs extremely well thanks to both Shorekeeper’s and Zhezhi’s buffing mechanics. Carlotta naturally serves as the hypercarry, but before she takes the stage, you’ll want to open with Shorekeeper’s Ult into an immediate swap to Zhezhi. Zhezhi then generates her Concerto very quickly and, thus, provides Carlotta with a significant boost in Glacio and Skill damage with very little delay. By the time Carlotta switches in to dish out damage, all buffs should be active, which is ideal for Carlotta’s Ultimate, which should be used with Final Bow active.

If you prefer a quicker buff cycle, Shorekeeper can be swapped out with Verina for a similar effect.

Carlotta/Changli/Verina

This is Carlotta’s premium quickswap team composition, and it works well thanks to Carlotta’s and Changli’s longer-than-normal animations during combat. Long animations are a positive for quickswap teams because as long as a character is performing an animation, they will remain on the field and can be swapped back to without losing most buffs. This setup doesn’t really use a rotation as much as others, only needing Verina to perform her chores to get her ATK% buff going. Carlotta and Changli then swap between each other’s long animation attacks, performing their chores until it is time for them to unleash their big bursty attacks.

If Carlotta has activated her Ultimate while Final Bow is active, do not quickswap during it. If you do, Carlotta will lose the massive 80% damage buff to it, which is not good.

Carlotta/Sanhau/Shorekeeper

This is a strong hypercarry team composition that focuses on the extremely quick Concerto generation of Sanhau to get both Shorekeeper’s and Carlotta’s buffs up and going ASAP. Sanhau plays the role of sub-DPS buffer here and should be using the Moonlit Clouds set for the additional buffs.

The traditional rotation for this comp is opening with Sanhau via using her Skill/Ultimate, then swapping to Shorekeeper before Sanhau’s Concerto is full. From here, Shorekeeper builds her Concerto and uses her Ultimate. With a full Concerto, swap back to Sanhau, who should already have a full Concerto, then immediately swap to Carlotta. Carlotta then remains on the field until it’s time to renew her Ultimate buff.

Sanhau does not buff Carlotta in any meaningful way outside of the Moonlit Clouds set, but the Basic Attack buff she does provide is not entirely useless to her; it is just not ideal.

Best Sequences for Carlotta in Wuthering Waves

Carlotta is a decently strong character at S0, and does not require Sequences to clear any of the content in Wuthering Waves. That said, she certainly does benefit considerably from her first few, and you may want to consider going for them, thanks to their effects. Without a doubt, S3 is your best stopping point, but that is not exactly easy to get. If you’re interested in knowing what her Sequences do, then here they are, condensed for your clarity.

• Beauty Blazes Brightest Before It Fades (S1) – When hitting a target with the Deconstruction debuff, those hits have an additional 12.5% Crit Rate. When hitting a target with the second portion of her Skill, Carlotta gains 30 additional Forte. Great Sequence that increases her damage a bit while speeding up her rotation speed.
• Fallen Petals Give Life to New Blooms (S2) – More than doubles the damage of her Ultimate (126% Damage Increase). Considering her Ultimate is a large bulk of her damage, it is a strong Sequence to consider.
• Adelante, Cortado, Spinning in Grace (S3) – Carlotta gains a second mechanic to her Outro Skill, allowing her to dish out 1032.18% of her ATK to any enemies hit when she swaps out with a full Concerto. This one has huge potential and is a large buff to her quickswap playstyle. If this wasn’t enough, though, it also buffs her entire Resonance Skill damage by 93%. This Sequence gives Carlotta a considerable spike in damage and should be the stopping point if you’re investing in her.

• Yesterday’s Raindrops Make Finest Wine (S4) – Whenever Carlotta uses any form of her Heavy Attack, she buffs herself and her entire team with 25% Resonance Skill Damage for 30 seconds. This is actually a rather strong Sequence because Resonance Skill Damage buffs are rare in Wuthering Waves. This also helps future-proof her as she can now play a sub-dps role for characters like Jinhsi, who like Resonance Skill Damage.
• Toast to Past, Today, and Every Day to Come (S5) – Buffs her Forte-empowered Heavy Attack by 47%. Decent, but not worth investing in unless you’re going straight to the bottom with S6.
• As the Curtain Falls, I Remain What I Am (S6) – Massively buffs the damage of her Ultimate while also enabling it to inflict the Scattering debuff on targets hit. Scattering functions almost exactly like Dispersion, freezing enemies hit for 1.5 seconds. The difference is that the next hit will break Scattering’s freeze, but this isn’t an issue since all shots of Carlotta’s Ultimate will inflict it. Effectively, this ensures that no enemies will be hitting her while it is active. Very strong, very effective.