Building guide
Heyy guyss, hope everyone is doing well!! I came here to ask for help with understanding builds, stats / substats and how to properly calculate and manage a good team. I may have a basic understanding, I’m at AR55 and I have just been playing casually for the lore and have never reached higher levels on the spiral abyss or done crazy dmg, so I wanna learn all the convoluted math behind it and to be able to strategically make use of what I have !! I’m a f2p player so if anyone has good tips and tricks or the patience to deal with teaching me, don’t be shy to talk to me :p !!
Commentaires
But you really don't need to know most of it. Just read how your character damage scale and try to maximize that.
Nefer skill scale from EM so you go for it, Columbina damage scale from HP, Barbara healing scale from HP, etc, etc,
And if you want to go deeper - usually everything is explained in KQM character guides, like this [Jahoda Quick Guide](https://keqingmains.com/q/jahoda-quickguide/) - it have all information that you need to make your Jahoda better. Character builds, teams, rotations, everything.
But your right, latest Extended Guide is from 5.8. Maybe their extended writers left. You could always join their Discord and ask.
You know how it work on wiki-like resources - you could always contribute if you don't like something.
Almost all of them are very outdated though.
As for more generic recommendations:
# Team member "roles"
- Main (or on-field) DPS: the damage dealer that does most or all of its damage while active. You only want one of those in your team since they take so much field time, but there are team archetypes with no Main DPS in the team. Example characters would be Neuvillette, Hu Tao, Ayaka, Mavuika, Columbina (only in Bloom teams). When a main-dps is responsible for the vast majority of the team's damage (like 80%+, not 50%), we call that a hypercarry DPS, as the dps is single-handedly carrying the team.
- Sub (or off-field) DPS: a damage dealer that does most or all of its damage while not active, usually through skills or bursts that last a while and trigger multiple instances of damage. You can have multiple sub-DPS per team. Example chatacters: Xingqiu, Yelan, Mavuika (again), Columbina (in general). When sub-dps characters are responsible for the vast majority of the team's damage, we call that a "wheelchair" team, as the on-fielder (usually expected to do most of the damage) is being carried by them.
- Offensive support: a character that either buffs your team or debuffs the enemy to increase your team's overall damage. Some supports are rather universal (Kazuha, Xilonen, Furina...), some are very dedicated (Escoffier, Lauma...), some buff only the active character (Benett, Iansan...) while others buff the whole team or a type of damage (Columbina...), and sometimes a significant portion of their support ability comes from artefact sets or weapons.
- Defensive support: a character that provides buffs to your team's survival, either through healing, shielding, or interruption resistance. Characters like Barbara, Kokomi, Lauma C1, Ineffa. Citlali, etc.
Sometimes characters can fit multiple roles at once. For example, Ineffa is a sub-dps with support capabilities, Mavuika and Columbina can be both main and sub DPSes, etc. Most commonly, it's sub-dps characters that have some support abilities, or support characters doing both offensive and defensive support.
Most team archetypes revolve around either 1 main dps and a mix of supports and sub-dpses (generic team), 1 main dps and 3 supports ("hypercarry" team), sometimes multiple sub-dps or burst dps ("quick-swap" teams), etc.
# Elemental reactions
Almost every aspect of team building revolves around elemental reactions. You don't build teams around just a character, you build them around a specific reaction that character will trigger. For example, "Mavuika melt", "Mavuika overload", "Mualani vape", "Nilou bloom", etc.
I'm not gonna recap every reaction and what they do, there are plenty of wikis and videos to explain them including the latest ones, but basically whenever you want to build a team, ask yourself "what reaction is this team built around". Is the reaction easy to trigger with your characters, do the characters in your team buff that reaction, does anyone work against that reaction in the team, etc.
For example, if you want to make a team that revolves around Dendro, you probably won't want to use an Anemo character in it since anemo has no synergy with dendro. But hydro, pyro and electro characters will work with it. If you combine a dendro, hydro and electro character, you get a hyperbloom team, but then the electro character becomes very important: they need to be able to apply hydro to the bloom cores and they need a lot of elemental mastery, so characters like Raiden and Kuki are perfect, while characters like Fischl not so much.
# Synergy
Whenever you ask about teams and characters pairing, you'll see people talk about "synergy". What that means is how two different characters combo well with each other because their kits (talents, stats) match well.
For example, Flins and Ineffa have a lot of synergy. They both rely on Lunar Charge, they both buff the reaction a lot, flins is an on-fielder while ineffa is off-field, flins wants a shield that ineffa provides, the reaction wants elemental mastery that ineffa provides, so they're a perfect match. Aino and Columbina also have amazing synergy in that team because the reaction requires hydro, and both provides decent hydro application and good buffs to Lunar Charge, and both can hold a support artefact for this reaction. And sucrose, similarly, provides elemental mastery thanks to her talents, and resistance shred thanks to an artefact set, and a lot of attack thanks to a weapon.
Meanwhile, Flins and Nefer have no synergy at all. They rely on different reactions entirely, they don't buff each other, they're both main DPSes so they compete for field time, etc.
Finding synergy between characters is a mix of finding characters with:
- compatible elements
- compatible roles
- mutually beneficial talents
- mutually beneficial artefact options
- mutually beneficial weapon options (Kazuha wouldn't work as well as Sucrose in a Flins team because even if he can share EM at C2, and wear the same artefact, he can't use the same weapon that lets sucrose buff attack)
That means reading and understanding talents, artefacts and weapons (mainly support ones, there aren't that many per weapon type don't worry).
Every aggravate team wants some form of res shred on electro, which is ideally Sucrose. Lunar-bloom teams or hyperbloom teams also employ her for the EM buff.
That's fair, I forgot about aggravate as a main team reaction with how bad it is these days lol. Hopefully Hexerei-like buffs will hit sumeru at some point.
> Sucrose in lunar bloom teams
Genuinely who does that, though. It's a good pick if you have no other option, sure, but that's about it. Nahida is a better pick, Diona is arguably a better pick as well thanks to her shield if you have her C6, even Ineffa fits in a Lunar Bloom team better than Sucrose since she provides a shield and meaningful damage. You don't dedicate an entire team slot just for a bit of EM.