The most asked question for many, when it comes to Genshin Impact, is how do they make a good or strong team with the characters they have unlocked. This is a complicated question that requires a bit of game knowledge and hopefully, this guide will assist you in understanding how to make the most optimal team with your current and future characters. Let’s go over some quick basics, then dive into the meat of this question.
THE BASICS
Every team will be composed of 4 characters, each fulfilling a “role”. One of the most interesting aspects of Genshin Impacts combat is the utilization of elemental combos and character switching. These two dynamics along with each character’s Elemental Skill and Elemental Burst define what roles they fill the best. Now this can change once more constellations are unlocked, but in general, these roles are considered without factoring in constellations and some characters can fulfill multiple roles. There are 3 main roles that every team should be composed of; every team should have 1x Main Carry and 2-3x Support or 1x Healer.
MAIN CARRY (MAIN DPS)
A main carry is a character that will be the focus of your “physical” damage output, as well as, possibly confirming elemental combos. This means that the main carries will be out on the field more than other characters to bridge the gaps between cooldowns or optimal physical damage windows. Many ideal main carries will have a basic attack string ending with a knockback or knock-up or have their charge attack cause a knockback or knock-up, allowing you to “juggle” enemies. Main Carries are defined by either having skills/bursts on a short cool down and bursts that scale well for damage output. This will become even more apparent later when you start optimizing your artifacts.
Ideal Main Carries will have bonus stats that are optimal for elemental attacks, basic attacks, and charge attacks while out on the field. Basic and Charged attacks are scaled mainly off Physical Damage, Attack, Critical Rate, and Critical Damage. Elemental skills/bursts scale off Attack and Elemental Damage unless otherwise stated. Ideal Main Carry ascension stats will look like: Physical Damage (Razor), Elemental Mastery (Xiangling), Critical Rate (Diluc), or Critical Damage (Keqing). These bonus stats scale as you ascend the characters and will have a large impact on how effective they are for utilizing elemental skills, basic attacks, charged attacks, or confirming elemental combos. Keep in mind that the Elemental Mastery stat is only applied when confirming an elemental combo and does not affect the initial damage of an elemental skill or burst. Elemental Skills, Bursts, and Combos can all critically hit as well.
SUPPORT (DPS OR CONTROL):
A support character is a character that will focus on providing damage or control for your team. You will be often switching to them, to set up elemental combos to either debuff, control, or deal damage. They are categorized by having elemental skills or bursts that you can throw out on the field and swap to another character while it continues to affect your enemies. An example of a support elemental skill is Fischl’s, Xiangling’s, Mona, or others whose will persists after casting it. Not everything is about damage, but control in later difficulties will help drastically avoid taking damage or stop enemies from getting abilities off, like freezing a water abyssal mage, before they can cast their bubble abilities.
Ideal support characters will have bonus stats that are optimal for elemental damage, elemental combos, and/or skill recharge. Support character ascension stats will look like: Energy Recharge (Mona), Elemental Damage (Sucrose), or Elemental Mastery (Xiangling). Since their skills typically persist, you can time them to create desired elemental combos with the character that has the higher elemental mastery, which includes using your main carries skill or burst to have the support skill confirm the combo. Some characters like Bennet or Mona may also have Burst skills that will increase the damage output of your team, so understanding how long that burst lasts and how to make the most of it with your team composition is important.
HEALER
A healer character is obvious for most, in that they have an elemental skill and/or burst that allows you to heal. Some healers are better in the scheme of optimal team composition based on what stats the heals scale off of. Currently, only Jean and QiQi have bonus ascension stats that directly increase healing, while Barbara’s ascension stat is Health Points, which does affect her healing directly. Healers like Jean and QiQi are able to stack Attack to not only increase their healing, but also the damage of their skills, making them formidable 5-star characters. This means that if you use Barbara as a healer, you will need to forego Attack for Health Points, making her less effective for promoting damage among your team.
CONCLUSION
Luckily, the game is easy enough, that if you decide to go off the beaten path and try to make a non-ideal main carry or support character work, that it won’t punish you too hard. Later difficulties may be a struggle for players with suboptimal team compositions or lack of utilizing elemental combos, i-frames from a dash, or basic/charged attacks. This may change as more artifact sets are introduced or if changes are made to how stats effect skills. This is how Genshin Impact added depth to their combat, rewarding players for utilizing all aspects of the combat system. You can also check out Genshin.GG, but keep in mind that tier lists are only a guide. Hopefully, with this information, you will be able to identify how to construct a well-rounded team.
