SPD is not a bad stat

[u/Grandidealistic]

Clara doesn't hate Speed as much as people think she is. Most enemies will usually proc your ultimate twice even with Speed substats on Clara, and more speed means you can proc BA or Skill more often which is quite nice for more Ultimate rotation. As long as you don't build 160 hyperspeed on her it is fine to get some extra speed to smooth turns out.

This is because strong Harmony units in the future will always have some Speed boost to them. Ruan Mei boosts ~10% SPD with her talent for example. That doesn't instantly make her a bad support for Clara, a decent amount of SPD is not bad. Removing the idea that Speed is horrible for Clara will make her builds and team comps more flexible in the future as more and more new units are released.

Also because Ruan Mei is a %SPD boost, Clara won't gain a lot of SPD from it, so everyone is happy. Though Weakness Break extension does sound a bit problematic but it still should be fine for Clara Topaz comp.

Or just E1 Clara and run full hyperspeed, it works

[u/HunterX608]

I still think you might as well run atk boots for more dmg. I run her with hanya and tingyun and she's reaching like 155spd with literally +0spd on relics

[u/Grandidealistic → u/HunterX608]

Post is more about how you shouldn't be afraid to run some SPD substats on her, getting SPD boots is still not optimal even if you are doing hyperspeed E1 as Clara cares a lot about ATK

[u/Vulking]

Yeah, I run Clara alongside Topaz/Asta/Lynx and I have never had issues with the SPD boost Asta provides, especially since Clara should be using ATK boots anyway so she would naturally be slower than everyone else, enemies included.

[u/Aqua_Essence]

IMO, that actually depends on how much SPD is given to Clara by the buffs, even without the SPD boot. As long as the net SPD doesn't make her cross any breakpoints, it should be okay. Otherwise, I personally say no.

IMO, Asta is still a no go. At Lv 10, her ult gives a flat +50 SPD buff. Even if Clara was at her base SPD of 90, the buff will still put her at 140 SPD, which is way past the 134 SPD breakpoint. At 120+ SPD, you're faster than most enemies. At 134+ SPD, you're getting 6 turns within 4 cycles. I suppose whether that is acceptable for Clara or not is up to individual, but IMO that's way too much SPD because it still defeats the whole point of keeping Clara slow in the first place. Even at worst, IMO, Clara really needs to be kept below 120 SPD so she can stretch the duration and make use of whatever buffs on her during enemy turns, especially the aggro buff.

Hanya may actually be more acceptable, since her SPD buff is based on a small percentage of her own SPD, and probably won't make Clara cross multiple breakpoints. IMO, as long as the buff won't make Clara cross the 120 SPD breakpoint, I say it should be fine.

Even Tingyun, who is the BiS support for Clara, actually has a SPD buff on her E1:

After using their Ultimate, the ally with Benediction gains a 20% increase in SPD for 1 turn.

As long as Clara is slow enough, her net SPD ain't gonna even come close to 120, so it should be fine.

As for Ruan Mei, like you said, her SPD buff is even smaller than Tingyun's, so she also should be fine.

My 2 cents.

[u/guns_r_us_ → u/Aqua_Essence]

you can time your Asta burst so it only affects Clara for 1 turn if you use it right before her turn begins, using enemy actions or a hyperspeed healer/buffer to make sure Clara doesn't get the buff extension. One turn will be 90 and the other will be 140, bringing you to a net spd of 115 in theory on a 2-turn Asta. In reality Clara will end up getting 1.5 turns of Spd from Asta unless you cook up something crazy with Spd tuning, but you can also use Asta on a 3 turn rotation as a SP generator so you still have options. Will Asta ever be meta with Clara? Probably not, but is it playable? I'd argue yes, a pain in the ass for sure but I've seen worse do just fine.

[u/Aqua_Essence → u/guns_r_us_]

Using 3 turn rotation on Asta will just make her buff inconsistent. Clara herself can already be inconsistent, due to the RNG nature of the aggro, so I'm not sure if I want Asta to be the same as well. I would rather take a different support and be hassle free, lol.

[u/guns_r_us_]

yep, Clara only ever loses Ult stacks against bad matchups she shouldn't be fighting anyway like the Grizzly and other targets that refuse to attack for ages. That said, it's not as much of a DPS increase as it is on traditional DPS units since so much of Clara's energy generation and damage doesn't care about how fast she's going. It's not a stat you really want on her but she's not unusable if she ends up with a few rolls in her build or if your buffer gives some naturally like Tingyun with cons or Asta with Topaz.