Looking for the best Genshin Impact build? miHoYo's free-to-play action-RPG is about using your party to face down fearsome foes of all shapes and sizes, unleashing elemental skills and bursts to electrify, burn, freeze, and blast them into oblivion.
Any of the Genshin Impact characters can be powerful with the right weapons, artifacts, and constellations, and that's the real fun of building characters. It's how you end up with players creating DPS Barbara builds and using them to annihilate bosses, but it's also nice that in a game about collecting your favorite characters, every one of them can become a strong party member.
There are a lot of variables in creating a great Genshin Impact build: you have weapons, artifacts, constellations, passive talents, as well as both talent and character ascension, and all of these play an important part in making a character strong. But that doesn't mean you need to have every five-star weapon or be a high-spend players in order to build a decent party.
In this Genshin Impact build guide, I'll list some examples of my favourite easy builds, and explain the basics of making your own.
Best builds
The best Genshin Impact builds
Here are a few of our favorite Genshin Impact builds for some of the most powerful characters, using artifacts and weapons that aren't too hard to get your hands on:
Ganyu - Cryo DPS
- Weapon: Favonius Warbow
- Artifact: Blizzard Strayer
The Favonius Warbow is a great weapon for Ganyu when combined with Blizzard Strayer's four-piece effect of increasing crit rate by up to 40% when attacking enemies that are frozen or affected with Cryo. This increased crit rate takes advantage of Ganyu's high base crit damage, but also the warbow's effect of potentially generating elemental particles whenever you land a crit.
Along with the warbow's increase to energy recharge, this lets Ganyu use her powerful burst more often, while Blizzard Strayer's two-piece effect increases Cryo damage by 15%, making it hit that little bit harder.
Venti - Burst DPS
- Weapon: The Stringless
- Artifact: Noblesse Oblige
Venti is such a fun character to use, since his playstyle is pretty simple: activate his incredible burst, then throw as many other elements into it as you can to cause Swirl reactions and create a nightmare DPS hurricane. The Stringless is a good four-star bow for Venti since it increases elemental skill and burst damage by 24%, and boosts elemental mastery for stronger reactions.
Noblesse Oblige also increases elemental burst damage by a further 20% for two-pieces, and four-pieces increases your party's attack by 20% for 12 seconds when you use a burst. This means that when your other characters follow up on Venti's burst and throw their own elements into the mix, it'll be even more powerful.
Diluc - Pyro DPS
- Weapon: Sacrificial Greatsword
- Artifact: Crimson Witch of Flames
Diluc is one of Genshin Impact's most straightforward DPS characters, and this build helps you get some value out of him without having to get five-star weapons or artifacts. The Sacrificial Greatsword takes advantage of Diluc's unique three-attack elemental skill, as every time you damage an opponent with it, there's a 40% chance to end the cooldown. It can do this once every 30 seconds.
Crimson Witch of Flames is another pretty straightforward pick, as two-pieces increase Pyro damage by 15%, and four-pieces boosts Pyro elemental reactions. Overloaded and Burning damage are increased by 40%, while Vaporize and Melt get a 15% bonus. Using an elemental skill also doubles that 15% Pyro damage bonus for the two-pieces, meaning Diluc can dish out some decent numbers.
Bennett - Support
- Weapon: Favonius Sword
- Artifact: Noblesse Oblige
Bennett is one of Genshin Impact's best support characters, due to the fact that his burst provides AoE healing and a hefty attack boost. Similar to the warbow on Ganyu, the Favonius Sword is a great way of recharging energy, as it has a 60% chance to produce elemental particles whenever you land a crit. This helps you keep Bennett topped off so you can use his powerful burst as much as possible.
Noblesse Oblige also synergises extremely well with the attack boost that Bennett's burst provides, as with four-pieces it increases party attack by 20% for 12 seconds whenever he uses it. Two-pieces also offer that elemental burst damage increase of 20%. This build turns Bennett into a support who can offer both healing and a decent damage boost when the party needs it.
Making your own build
How to make your own Genshin Impact build
It's worth remembering when building a character that you shouldn't focus only a single hero, but four, each with their own elements and attributes. This is especially important on the battlefield, where it provides Elemental Resonance, a bonus based on having two characters of the same element in a party. Here are the elemental resonance bonuses:
- Fervent Flames (two Pyro characters): You are affected by Cryo for 40% less time. Increases attack by 25%.
- Soothing Water (two Hydro characters): You are affected by Pyro for 40% less time. Increases healing by 30%.
- High Voltage (two Electro characters): You are affected by Hydro for 40% less time. Superconduct, Overloaded, and Electro-Charged generate an Electro elemental particle once every five seconds.
- Shattering Ice (two Cryo characters): You are affected by Electro for 40% less time. Increases crit rate by 15% against enemies that are Frozen or affected by Cryo.
- Impetuous Winds (two Anemo characters): Decreases stamina consumption by 15%, increases movement speed by 10%, and shortens skill cooldown by 5%.
- Enduring Rock (two Geo characters): Increases shield strength by 15%. Characters protected by a shield deal 15% increased damage, and dealing damage reduces an enemy's Geo resistance by 20% for 15 seconds.
- Protective Canopy (Four characters with different elements): All elemental resistances are increased by 15%, and physical resistance is also increased by 15%.
Party composition is extremely important as it helps you cause elemental reactions, which occur when one element meets another. There are simple reactions such as Electro-Charged, which causes increased damage when you apply Electro to Hydro, but there are more complex reactions like Melt, when you apply Hydro, then Cryo, then Pyro for a big damage bonus.
There are also more physical reactions such as Shatter, when you deal crushing damage to a Frozen enemy with a claymore, or with a Geo character. The strongest reactions in terms of damage are Pyro, followed by Electro, and then Cryo. Generally Hydro is the first element you want to apply to an enemy in terms of causing a decent reaction.
When building your party, you must also decide on a role of each character, as usually a party consists of a main DPS, a sub-DPS, a support, and a healer. To decide who is going to be who you need to understand each character’s attributes which, along with their skills, defines their role in your squad.
While attributes such as HP, Attack, Defence, Stamina, and Crit Rate/Damage are self-explanatory, here's a breakdown of the more complex terms:
- Elemental Mastery: Increases the damage dealt by elemental reactions. This is based on the elemental mastery stat of the character causing the reaction, not the character who applied the first element.
- Healing Bonus: Additional HP restored by an action that heals your party.
- Incoming Healing Bonus: HP restored when healed by an action.
- Energy Recharge: Energy restored when picking up Elemental Orbs or Particles. This recharges your character's elemental burst.
- Damage Absorption/Efficiency: How much damage a shield can absorb, and of what elemental type.
Weapons
This is your main source of damage output, so it's essential your chosen weapons suit your party members. Each has different base damage, specific stat boost, and an ability. You can upgrade your weapon via enhancement or refinement.
Enhancement uses other weapons and enchancement ore to level damage, but when you reach a certain threshold, you'll have to ascend the weapon using specific materials.
Refinement is basically a constellation system for weapons, and you feed copies of the same weapon into it to increase the power of its ability. Weapons are earned from chests, forging, and wishes.
Artifacts
These are accessories you attach to a character. Though you can equip five, most artifact sets apply effects based on whether you're wearing a two-piece set, or a four-piece set. Most artifacts also have randomized stats, meaning if you're building your character towards a particular stat, you might want to earn multiple copies of an artifact and choose the best.
You can also upgrade artifacts the same way as weapons, using enhancement ore, and other artifacts, to boost their stats. Usually a character's abilities synergise with a particular stat, such as how Noelle scales with defense. With this in mind, it's always worth being on the lookout for artifacts with suitable effects, that also boost your character's priority stat.
If you're looking for artifacts, they are earned through chests, but the best ones come from completing domains.
Talents
When you reach Ascension Level 2 for a character, you unlock Talent ascension. This basically allows you to use materials to upgrade the stat output of a specific character ability, whether a burst, or an elemental skill. These often require a lot of mora and materials to level. They can also be upgraded through certain character constellations.
Constellations
Easy to understand but tricky to improve. Every time you get a duplicate character, you get a specific item that can be used to unlock one of their six constellations. These unique bonuses usually increase the power of a character's elemental skill or burst, but they can also offer bonuses to normal and charged attacks, as well.
The only problem is that you'll need to earn more copies of the same character to unlock these, but you can only get new characters through wishing, or certain specific events. Constellations are what really make characters superpowered, and C6 characters are most often extremely powerful.
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