Game Breaker / Genshin Impact

While the game is much more casual friendly when compared to Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact has seen a handful of characters, armaments, mechanics, and team compositions that absolutely dominate in the Spiral Abyss mode. Much of the fan-led research into the game has revolved around optimizing strategies for the Spiral Abyss. Just remember that because a character is not on this sheet, it doesn’t mean they aren’t good, fun, or lacking. This list reflects a highly specific view of the game aimed at achieving 36 stars in the Spiral Abyss above all.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Game Breakers are based on how they perform in endgame content such as Spiral Abyss. This is not a player's guide, so keep entries as short and concise as possible and avoid unnecessary Walls of Text. Also, for characters specifically, please do not list "convenient" abilities for easier tasking in their entries because they do not count as game-breaking abilities by default.

This page’s articles have been updated as of 4/27/2023 in collaboration with KeqingMains Theorycrafting.

Unmarked spoilers ahead!

Please add entries in the following format if possible:

• The character/weapon/artifact set (in alphabetical order).
  • Explanation of why their kits are excellent, overpowered, etc...

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Characters

Anemo Characters

All Anemo characters can use the 4-piece Viridescent Venerer’s artifact set, which shreds the elemental resistance of enemies that you swirl. This artifact set makes an Anemo support character a crucial part of any team that relies on elemental damage, and this is an inherent benefit to all the following entries.

• Kazuha
  • Kazuha is one of Genshin’s most valuable supports, grouping enemies together and allowing your other characters to deal massive damage. While Kazuha lacks Venti’s level of vacuum capabilities, he trades that for a party-wide damage buff to whatever element he Swirls. Incredibly powerful in countless teams, it would be easier to list the teams Kazuha doesn’t work well in than the ones where he does.
    • Kazuha has strong supporting capabilities, with off-field elemental application tied to his Elemental Burst, crowd control tied to his elemental skill, and buffs tied to his Ascension 4 Talent that allow him to increase the damage of the element he Swirls based on his Elemental Mastery.
    • His two-part Anemo application from his Double Jump lets him perform complicated “double-swirl” setups that can buff two elements simultaneously.
    • Don’t be fooled by Kazuha's role as a supporting character; he deals great personal damage on his own.

• Sucrose
  • Sucrose is a load of sweet deals rolled up into one, capable of a fantastic Elemental Mastery-share mechanic, tons of swirl damage and crowd control from her Elemental Skill and Burst. Sucrose shines brightest when your team composition can bring forth frequent element applications to summon a whole soup of reactions. Don’t be fooled by her innocent looks, she is one of the best support units in the game, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bennett or Kazuha, while still being able to flexibly shift between being played as an on-field driver of reactions or as an off-field support.
    • Sucrose has the ability to grant Elemental Mastery (EM) to teammates, allowing them to proc stronger Elemental reactions. This buff can be as strong or even stronger than Kazuha’s elemental damage increase in specific teams.
    • Sucrose has a particular synergy with Xiangling in her unique ability to be able to swirl Guoba. Simply press her elemental skill as soon as you see the exclamation mark appear above Guoba's head, and Sucrose will proc a pyro-swirl off of him. This allows Sucrose to be able to perform the "double-swirl" tech even easier than Kazuha does. You simply apply a non-Pyro aura to your target, drop Guoba, swirl both your target and Guoba and you now have Viridescent Venerer's RES shred affecting both your first elemental aura and Pyro. Since Xiangling is the game's most classic reaction-based DPS, she dovetails perfectly with Sucrose's ability to Pyro swirl her panda (for some reason) as well as benefiting from Sucrose's massive EM share.

• Venti
  • Venti is a 5-star Anemo Bow user who provides the strongest crowd control and grouping in the game. Venti largely stands alone and does one thing exceptionally well– If he can vacuum up the enemies with a giant vortex of wind that he creates, he will wipe out the entire room. This makes him less of a character that you slot into your team and more of a cheat code that deletes any group of light enemies.
    • He has the best grouping and crowd control in the game, bar none. Nothing even comes close to the massive vortex of the Wind’s Grand Ode. Even enemies who aren't suspended mid-air helpless still get grouped up and shredded conveniently for other members to finish the job.
    • Not only does he group up enemies with incredible ease and enable your other characters to slaughter everything that has been grouped up, but he also does ridiculous amounts of personal damage himself.
    • And if all that wasn’t enough, he batteries his team and himself with a 15 energy cost refund.

Cryo Characters

Cryo DPS characters can use the 4-piece Blizzard artifact set in Permafreeze teams, which increases the critical strike chance of damage against Frozen targets by 40%. This is a massive stat boost that is an inherent benefit to both of the following entries.

• Ganyu
  • Ganyu is a versatile Cryo damage dealer that has found herself at the forefront of many “meta” teams. The dominance of her teams led players to theorize that Hoyoverse “nerfed” her by adding Inazuman enemies that were resistant or even completely immune to her crowd control. But even with the “nerfs,” she has never been anything less than a stellar unit in the Genshin Impact meta.
    • Ganyu's versatile kit can be built in two ways, covering almost all endgame content. Running Ganyu in a Melt team means you can shotgun boss enemies with massive Frostflake Arrow hits. Running Ganyu in a Permafreeze team will ensure that you can defeat entire waves of enemies before they even have a chance to move.
    • Ganyu's Elemental Burst has quadratic scaling with up to 5 enemies. This means having more enemies of roughly the same HP range in the wave - as quite a lot of endgame content contains - exponentially increases her damage output.
    • All her damage is ranged, meaning she handles flying enemies like the Golden Wolflord or the Thunder Manifestation easily.

• Kamisato Ayaka
  • The well-loved daughter of the esteemed Kamisato Clan, Kamisato Ayaka, performs incredibly well in the Spiral Abyss, helping players of all skill (and wallet) levels breeze through some of the toughest content in the game. She remains one of the most popular characters to this day and shows no signs of letting up.
    • Ayaka has a strong elemental burst, massive front-loaded damage, and a simple-to-execute playstyle. This front-loaded quality lets her take advantage of small damage windows to maximize her damage output, and the tremendous single-target damage makes her especially good against boss enemies.
    • She doesn’t require any particular support to function well and frees up powerful and highly contested teammates like Bennett or Xingqiu for your other Spiral Abyss team.

Dendro Characters

• Alhaitham
  • Alhaitham is the strongest on-field Dendro damage dealer, reaping all of Dendro's benefits from extremely solid reactions in Quicken and Hyperbloom while able to work with a massive amount of busted supports like Nahida, Furina, Yelan, Fischl, and others. The secret of his success is deceptively simple: his personal damage is very good while his skills are flexible enough that he can be the on-field driver for any Dendro-related team.
    • Alhaitham's full power depends on how many Chisel-Light Mirrors he has, maxing out at 3. These mirrors give Alhaitham's Normal Attacks a Dendro conversion, while also periodically creating a Dendro Projection Attack whenever Althaitham's attacks connect. Each mirror has its own Projection attack, meaning with all three mirrors Alhaitham becomes a storm of raining Dendro flechettes.
    • Unlike other similar characters that rely on power gathering mechanics, Alhaitham has multiple way of gaining Chisel-Light mirrors to keep his playstyle flexible. His Skill gives him 2 mirrors, his fourth ascension passive gives him 1 mirror for a Plunge/Charge attack, and his Burst gives him up to 3 mirrors and converts any mirrors he has to increase its damage. This allows his Burst to be either a combo starter or a finishing nuke.

• Nahida
  • Nahida unlocks an incredibly large amount of Dendro-related teams through her fast and robust elemental application. She is well-known for consistently applying and dealing Dendro damage to multiple enemies while on and off-field. As of version 3.3, she has the fastest, most accessible Dendro application in the game, far outstripping the other applicators, making her instrumental for single-Dendro Bloom/Hyperbloom/Burgeon compositions. If you want to unlock the full potential of the Dendro element, Nahida is a must-have for your squad.
    • Nahida already has the strongest Dendro application in the game from off-field. But she can apply even more Dendro aura to enemies if she is played on-field, contributing the elemental application from her normal attacks and the application from Tri-Karma Purification simultaneously.
    • The more Dendro aura there is, the more cores can be spawned. The more cores, the more boom.

Electro Characters

• Fischl
  • Fischl is a fantastic character who excels at multiple roles, being a powerful off-field DPS, an enabler for Electro-based reactions, and battery support— all of which she can do with barely any time on-field. While her playstyle is simple, her utility in many reaction-based teams is profound. Fischl’s kit revolves around summoning her raven familiar, Oz, who rapidly shoots bullets of electricity at enemies. Besides Oz’s fast Electro application, he deals damage while functioning as a constant source of energy generation.
    • The release of the Dendro element in Version 3.0 gives Fischl even more power through Quicken-based teams for two reasons:
    • The lightning-fast Electro application from Oz’s damage synergizes extremely well with the mechanics of Quicken/Aggravate, which gives flat boosts to Electro and Dendro damage.
    • Any Aggravate reactions will trigger Fischl’s Ascension 4 talent, which causes a follow-up lightning strike that triggers another Aggravate, giving you two reactions for the price of one.
    • At C6, Oz has near 100% uptime with a proper rotation and shoots additional bolts of electricity whenever the active character uses a Normal Attack, skyrocketing Fischl's damage output.
    • The addition of the Golden Troupe artifact set to the game with version 4.0 makes an amazing character even more amazing. The Golden Troupe increases skill damage by a ridiculous 70%. Nearly all of Fischl's damage is considered skill damage, including her Ascension 4 Talent. Over her previous best sets, Fischl gains about 15% more DPS. And she was already considered a Game Breaker before her 3.0 and 4.0 buffs.

• Raiden Shogun
  • The Raiden Shogun is a flexible, powerful on-field carry that offers your team energy, buffs, and damage. Her kit revolves around dealing the vast majority of her damage in her burst form, Musou no Hitotachi. She starts her burst with an incredibly powerful slash, changing to a highly damaging sword form while crucially restoring energy to your team per hit. She can easily carry your team’s damage requirements while on-field in Raiden-carry compositions, battery your entire team with her ultimate, and even act as an off-field trigger for Hyperbloom reactions.
    • Great personal damage condensed into a short, easy-to-buff uptime makes her a powerful, reliable DPS.
    • The release of Dendro in version 3.0 also gives the Raiden Shogun a whole new family of teams with very powerful Hyperbloom compositions. When built with high Elemental Mastery, Raiden Shogun’s Elemental Skill provides the most reliable way to trigger Dendro cores from off-field, smacking enemies with heat-seeking 20k damage Hyperblooms.

Geo Characters

• Navia
  • Navia is a spectacular main damage dealer due to how much frontloaded damage she possesses. Her kit revolves around her shockingly powerful Elemental Skill, which has her fire a shotgun-like blast that deals massive damage at close range and powers up further by collecting Elemental Shards from Crystallize reactions.
    • The most frontloaded damage profile in the entire game. Almost all her damage is concentrated into her Elemental Skill, which has two charges (she generates a charge every 10 seconds) and scaling that rivals other main DPS characters' Elemental Bursts, all available instantly at the press of a button. When at full stacks with team buffs set up, the amount of damage it deals can be absurd, taking huge chunks out of the health of bosses.
    • The rest of Navia's kit synergizes perfectly with her Elemental Skill. When held down, her Elemental Skill draws in Elemental Shards, making it easy to collect them, and the shields provided will let her take a hit or two while she lines up her shot. Then, after she fires, she gains a Geo Infusion for 4 seconds on her basic attacks, letting her trigger more Crystallize reactions when paired with the proper allies. Finally, her Elemental Burst rains down a Geo cannon barrage that will create even more shards for her to work with.

• Zhongli
  • Zhongli is one of the most versatile supports in the game. He provides unparalleled survivability, resistance shred utility, and a unique form of crowd control. His bread-and-butter is his shield, which is the best shield in the game in terms of both damage absorption and uptime. Having a Zhongli on your team effectively makes your characters immune to direct damage. For travelers who can comfortably meet the DPS requirement of Spiral Abyss, Zhongli provides unparalleled comfort and ease of use.
    • Zhongli’s shield is by far the strongest in the game as of Version 3.3, clocking in at approximately 22,000 effective HP when Zhongli is entirely built for Shield Strength. The next highest shield value comes in at only 15,000 HP. This means Zhongli can give your character effectively double the HP while also adding knockback resistance and resistance shred at full uptime.
    • Shield Strength Sheet by Ghosted#9310

Hydro Characters

• Furina
  • Furina has a kit focused around team HP manipulation and encouraging team-wide healing, but properly managing this cost will unlock insane potential.
    • First and foremost, her Elemental Burst grants up to 75% Increased Damage and 30% Healing Bonus for up to 18 seconds for the party, simply through HP gain and loss. For context, this damage bonus is so potent that it can cause Elemental Damage Bonus artifacts on DPS units to reach diminishing returns and even turn Kokomi into an Abyss-capable main DPS in Mono Hydro teams.
    • Furina's Elemental Skill has two modes. The default mode summons three familiars, which power up by draining the party's HP (down to a minimum of 50%) to hit shockingly hard. Not only does this health drain power up her Elemental Burst buff, but it also allows other DPS units to take advantage of the extremely powerful Marechaussee Hunter artifact set. The alternate mode is a strong active-character heal covering a massive area, comparable to Nahida's burst. This Elemental Skill has 100% uptime, being on a cooldown (20 seconds) shorter than its uptime (30 seconds).
    • All other Fontainian characters have only one Arkhe alignment and can, at best, apply Pneuma or Ousia off their Charged Attacks. Furina can switch modes to apply either Pneuma or Ousia off her uncharged Normal Attacks on a short cooldown (6 seconds, with each Arkhe on an independent timer). This makes her extremely useful in disabling Arkhe-aligned enemies.
    • Furina's early Constellations are extremely powerful. C1 increases her starting damage buff to 37.5% and her maximum damage buff to 100%. C2 causes her to build up her Elemental Burst buff extremely quickly, and any stacks beyond the limit instead go towards increasing her Max HP, dramatically powering up both modes of her Elemental Skill.

• Neuvillette
  • Neuvillette certainly made a splash after his introduction. Whereas most Hydro characters excel in enabling powerful reactions such as Vaporize, Freeze or Bloom, Neuvillette is perhaps the first viable Hydro hypercarry, thanks to his extremely powerful empowered Charged Attack.
    • Neuvillette's special charged attack, Equitable Judgement, is a powerful Hydro beam with substantial range, the ability to pierce enemies and massive ticking damage. By absorbing the Sourcewater Droplets his Skill and Burst create, he can deploy it with barely any charge time. His A1 passive buffs its damage with every Hydro reaction the party triggers.
    • Neuvillette is able to move while channeling and firing Equitable Judgement, enabling him to kite enemies and maintain damage output while staying out of range of enemy attacks.
    • Neuvillette's kit includes substantial HP manipulation, giving him enhanced survivability through Sourcewater Droplet healing and letting him use the Marechaussee Hunter artifact set to massively boost his Crit Rate.
    • After unlocking Neuvillette's C1, Neuvillette gains massive interruption resistance while channeling and firing Equitable Judgement, enabling him to keep up damage even while absorbing hits with his substantial HP pool.

• Xingqiu
  • Xingqiu is widely considered one of the game's best sub-DPS. He provides the strongest single-target Hydro aura application, grants a massive survivability boost, and deals incredible damage– all while being off-field. Having Xingqiu on your team is like playing with two characters at once, making him one of the most contested supports for Spiral Abyss and a key part of many meta teams.
    • His Elemental Burst is his main selling point, generating Rain Swords that shoot out when the active character attacks, with each of the blades applying Hydro aura from long range. This dovetails Xingqiu perfectly with powerful Pyro DPS characters like Xiangling or Hu Tao.
    • Xingqiu also provides healing and damage reduction with his Rain Swords, immensely increasing the survivability and fluidity of the active character.

• Yelan
  • Yelan is another one of the game's best sub-DPS, granting very fast single-target Hydro aura application with her burst while providing even more damage than the aforementioned Xingqiu. Being Hydro, she enables the whole repertoire of powerful Hydro-based reactions like Bloom, Frozen, and Vaporize– all while being off-field.
    • Her Elemental Burst at Constellation 0 is approximately as strong in damage as Xingqiu’s Constellation 6 Burst– which is extremely good.
    • Yelan slacks a little bit behind Xingqiu in terms of the rate of her Hydro Application and lacks his defensive utility, but she makes up for that by amplifying your active character’s damage over time with her Ascension 4 talent buff.
    • When combined with Xingqiu in the “Double Hydro” duo, the two stack synergy upon synergy with each other, making for one of the most powerful pairs of characters in the game.

Pyro Characters

• Arlecchino
  • Arlecchino undoubtedly lives up to her hype as the Fourth Harbinger, dishing out some insane damage output thanks to her Masque of the Red Death state from obtaining a Bond of Life, which infuses her normal attacks with unoverridable Pyro and increases her attack power. Her unique character passive grants her a hefty 40% Pyro damage bonus just for being in combat, with the downside of not being able to heal outside of casting her Burst, Balemoon Rising, but the sheer damage output she can put out more than compensates for it, and even that can become a negligible issue with a good shielder and dodging, essentially turning her into an unstoppable one-woman wildfire that can easily take down any foe that isn't resistant to, or immune to Pyro, and even that can be dealt with by giving her an off-field sub-DPS that isn't Pyro, like Xingqiu or Fischl.

• Bennett
  • Bennett provides fast healing, respectable damage, a powerful attack buff, outstanding battery capabilities, and a high rate of Pyro application. As a result, he is one of the game's most contested and valued characters. Bennett’s only flaw is that you can only put him in one of your Spiral Abyss teams, and sometimes his field's Pyro application can be a detriment, especially against Electro enemies.
    • Bennett is arguably the best damage buffer in the playable roster. His Elemental Burst, Fantastic Voyage, creates a field that provides an attack boost that can give characters within it up to an extra 900 ATK and provides the fastest heal over time in the game.
    • His Elemental Skill, Passion Overload, has the best Pyro energy generation per second in the game.

• Hu Tao
  • Hu Tao is currently one of the most powerful damage-dealing Pyro characters. She is highly recommended for players looking to push the single-target damage ceiling. Through stack upon stack of amplifying factors, Hu Tao ends up absolutely frying any single enemy she can get her hands on, which includes bosses in the Abyss.
    • Hu Tao has incredibly high single target-oriented output, yet still has plenty of AoE damage potential from her burst.
    • She has a front-loaded damage profile, which lets her take full advantage of Genshin enemies with limited damage windows, such as the Ruin Serpent, who loves to tunnel into the ground, or the Golden Wolflord as it floats about an arena.
    • A majority of her damage comes from her elemental skill with little reliance on her burst, making her rotations flexible and her Energy Recharge requirements minimal.

• Xiangling
  • Xiangling is a Pyro character available to all players for free after clearing the third floor of the Spiral Abyss and is easily one of the best Pyro characters in the game. Her damage can be dealt almost entirely from off-field, leading to a myriad of team compositions and play styles that can carry you through even the hardest end-game content.
    • Xiangling is one of the best sources of Pyro reactions in the game because of her ability to facilitate many powerful reactions while providing impressive personal damage even on her own.
    • Her ace-in-the-hole, Pyronado, allows her to make a fiery, orbiting tornado with incredible damage that can be strengthened when paired with reactions like Vaporize or Melt. Her ability to consistently and rapidly apply Pyro off-field is Genshin’s best-in-class.
    • Xiangling’s burst, Pyronado can 'Snapshot' the buffs it had upon activation, retaining its increased damage even when she goes off-field, or the buff duration expires. This means you can pair her with great buffers like Bennett and still have the Pyronado deal increased damage whether you are within Bennett's burst circle or not.

Weapons

• Favonius Weapons
  • This weapon series can greatly benefit any battery character with its passive effects focusing on energy generation. A character dealing a critical hit with a Favonius weapon has a chance to generate colorless Elemental Particles that provide respectable energy for the entire party. This is incredibly useful for battery supports as they can charge your party’s Bursts quickly regardless of element. Having Favonius weapons in your line greatly frees up the energy requirements of your entire team.
    • The hard numbers are that for each proc of a Refinement 5 Favonius weapon, every 6 seconds, your entire team gains about the equivalent of 10~20% worth of Energy Recharge in terms of stats. This works out to be 2 ~ 4 rolls worth of substats for each character on your team for each proc of Favonius in your rotation, which provides incredible value that competes with 5-star weapons in terms of what a weapon adds to your team.
• Serpent Spine
  • A 4-star claymore available by purchasing the Gnostic Hymn rewards on the Battle Pass, and oh baby does this thing punch above its weight class. Every 4 seconds a character is on the field, they gain a buff that boosts the damage they give and take, maxing out for a total of 5 buff stacks. This buff lasts indefinitely, with one stack being removed every time the character takes damage. Clearly, this was intended to make its wielder a Glass Cannon, but in practice, that drawback is very easy to avoid. Shields prevent both the damage and the loss of a buff stack, skilled players can exploit invincibility frames to avoid damage, and characters capable of off-field damage that snapshots (like Beidou) can simply avoid being on the field long enough to ever get hit. Don't like wasting field time just for the buff stacks? They still occur outside of battle and keep after switching, so just give this character some time before starting your domain challenge or entering combat. Huge power boosts and an easily mitigated drawback put this weapon ahead of most 5-star claymores, and we haven't mentioned its crit-rate boosting substat yet!
• "The Catch"
  • This is 4-star polearm available to all players for free after the 2.1 update. While obtaining and upgrading it requires a lot of fishing, the result is more than worth it. At full refinement, "The Catch" boosts elemental burst damage by 32% and the crit rate on your burst by 12%, along with providing a good chunk of energy recharge as a sub-stat. It's comparable to most 5-star weapons for burst-centric polearm characters like Xiangling, Rosaria, Zhongli, or the Raiden Shogun, and its effects stack with the Emblem of Severed Fate artifact set. Better get to fishing!
• Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers
  • When a character is equipped with this Catalyst, upon switching out with another party member, said party member will gain a ten-second ATK% buff starting at 24% at base refinement and going up to a significant 48%. With this equipped, even the likes of Barbara or Lisa can turn into fairly potent supports for your main DPS, to say nothing of what it might do on an actual support character like Sucrose. Also, did we mention that this amazing weapon is available in all gacha pools as a 3-star weapon? Forget five copies, you'll probably pocket a few dozen on the side while rolling for the characters or weapons you want.

Artifact Sets

• Emblem of Severed Fate
  • Energy recharge is considered a double-edged sword of a stat, as investing in it helps your character use their elemental burst more often at the cost of an overall weaker character for not investing in attack or critical hits. This artifact set changes that, as the 4-piece set effect increases your burst damage by 25% of your energy recharge (capping at 300 ER for a 75% boost). With energy recharge now a power boost, full ER builds get the benefits of a more frequent AND stronger elemental bust. The cherry on top? The 2-piece effect boosts ER by 20%, and all characters start with 100 ER so without weapons or artifact substats you are looking at a 30% power boost MINIMUM. This is a godsend to burst-centric characters, especially those with off-field effects like Xiangling, Xingqiu, and Beidou, making the Severed Fate recommended over their specific elemental sets like Crimson Witch. If you only have the resin to farm one set, it's got to be the Severed Fate!
• Marechaussee Hunter
  • This set's 4-piece set bonus provides up to a massive 36% Crit Rate increase if the wearer's HP increases or decreases, which is very desirable since a Critical Hit is a huge DPS increase and sources of Crit Rate increase are otherwise rare.
  • This set is best-in-slot for DPS units with self HP manipulation (such as Lyney and Neuvillette), while Furina's party HP drain enables other units to benefit from this set.
• Viridescent Venerer
  • A must-have for Anemo characters. On top of increasing Anemo DMG by 15%, a four-piece set also decreases an enemy's elemental resistance by a whopping 40% to the element that activates Swirl for 12 seconds when it's triggered; i.e the same amount as Superconduct's Physical RES reduction. This adds an extra layer of lethality to Anemo attacks, giving them the capability to cripple a lot of mobs at once and allowing the character of the appropriate element to turn enemies into confetti with relative ease.