Rina found her meta
Since the early days of the game opinions about Rina were split. A lot of players discarded her Pen bonus as too niche and discarded her in the face of newer and stronger supports such as Caesar.
Some voices, me included, argued that it was simply not her meta, yet - and that her time would come. Today, here I am gladly announcing: We are there.
Now, before the voices arise - yes, Yao is great with any character, but her and Rina combined shine in particular. Let me explain:
Most stats have diminishing returns. The more of the same stat you get, the less value each additional point make. For optimal damage you need to improve different stats that don't stack additively, but multiplicative, meaning ATK, CC, CD, Elemental damage and Pen. Pen is unique since it gets higher value the more you stack of it, yet it has lower value than elemental damage by itrself, which is why Pen is not common for Disk slot 5, in return making stacking it less valuable. Here, Rina comes in, granting a significant amount of Pen through her passive.
Now, that's nice - and we can see why she in theory has an advantage over Caeser when combined with Yao (Attack * Pen, instead of Attack + Attack), but there's more to it. Trying Caesar and Yao in the same team, you will notice that Yao's swap is up often, but not often enough to alloy smooth transitions, here Rina comes into play by being a support - also enabling her to trigger a quick-swap on her own, allowing near seamless spam of assist attacks.
Yanagi is not mandatory for the combination, but she pairs nicely with both: Rina improves her Shock, while she herself improves shock build-up. Additionally, Yanagi gets 10% Pen from her stance - and we remember: Pen scales better the more you have of it.
That being said: While Rina works in this comp at Mindscape 0 due to frequent swaps, Mindscape 1 makes her significantly more flexible.
Team:
- Astra M0; Kaboom the Cannon O5
- Rina M1; Weeping Cradle O3
- Yanagi M2; Timeweaver O1 (no significant difference to M1 and only a minor difference to M0 in this setup)