Welp, he’s done. For now. Substats can still use work, but that’s the eternal grind. After much testing (over 2 heckin’ hours), I’ve found that Aventurine’s meta defense/support build is basically his crit build, but based off the numbers, DPS Salsotto ornaments up his damage a bit without tanking his shields hard. His defense literally boosts his crit rate due to one of his major trace unlocks, and I’ve included the in-battle stat chart at the end of this post to show how completely different his stats are with his shield in effect.
In this gear, he shields for about 1,580 and his best ultimate crit today was 28.9k, without using Bronya or Hanya’s buffs. Follow-up damage is inconsistent across build tests but that’s the RNG of not-100%-crit-rate and possibly also his concept of being a gambler in the first place. This is the main account version, the f2p challenge’s Aventurine is already proving harder to build a crit ratio with (using his purple signature light cone) but he’s also got some bleh relics and I’m hoping to improve that sooner than later with the current 3x relic event.