by Genshin Impact version 3.6 is finally here! The banners of this new version will be all about Dendro, with the first half featuring first reruns of Nahida, the Dendro Minor Archon Lord Kusanali himself, and Nilou, star of the Zubayr Theater and devotee of the God of Wisdom!
With the way Dendro and her myriad elemental reactions have dominated the metagame, should you roll for Nahida, Nilou, and their signature weapons to power up your Dendro squads? Read on and we’ll help you decide.
Get Nahida to boost your Dendro teams
Like Dendro Archon, Nahida is arguably the best character in her element. With Dendro’s strength tied to his many elemental reactions, the Dendro Archon greatly enhances his team’s damage output through elemental reactions while providing reliable off-the-battlefield Dendro application and elemental mastery bonuses to the entire party.
Not only that, Nahida can also deal with mobs of enemies even if she doesn’t have direct area-of-effect skills.
When using her ability’s lock mode to target enemies around her, Nahida can link them all and cause them to receive Dendro DMG whenever a linked enemy takes damage from elemental reactions. This allows Nahida and her team to unleash a barrage of elemental reactions on every enemy in sight, even if they’re on different ends of the battlefield.
While Nahida’s blast doesn’t deal damage on its own, it boosts her ability’s damage, which will depend on whether you have any Pyro, Electro, or Hydro characters in your party. A Pyro character increases the damage of her ability, Electro causes it to trigger more often, and Hydro increases its duration. Having two characters of each element will also enhance the buff their element provides.
Additionally, Nahida’s A1 passive grants her party an Elemental Mastery buff based on her Elemental Mastery whenever she uses the flurry. The more Elemental Mastery your characters have, the more damage they deal through elemental reactions.
Don’t let the Dendro Archon’s diminutive form fool you, he’s a capable fighter who can thrive as a Sub DPS off the field or Main DPS on the field, depending on what compositions you’re running.
As a Catalyst user, Nahida’s normal attacks deal Dendro DMG, making her a great reaction driver as Main DPS on the field for the group.
We recommend surrounding her with Electro and Hydro characters to take advantage of the strong Spread/Aggravate and Hyperbloom reactions. But don’t forget to bring along healers like Sangonomiya Kokomi or Kuki Shinobu to protect our precious radish!
Nahida is also quite easy to build. You just need to build up as much Elemental Mastery as possible, which will increase her skill’s damage and Crit Rate, while also increasing the Elemental Mastery bonus she gives to her teammates.
Of course, you can still run a more traditional DPS build on her by getting an Elemental Mastery sand, a Dendro DMG chalice, and Crit Rate/DMG core stats on her artifacts.
In short, Nahida is definitely a must for players looking for a strong Dendro team! The Dendro Archon can fill any role and will increase his teammate’s damage while dealing some hard hits.
Not to mention that Nahida is also one of the better written characters Genshin Impact until now. Not only have the teasers and character demos of him been absolute tearjerkers, the Dendro Archon has also had some tough times during the Sumeru Archon Quests and his own Story Quest.
Get Nilou for a boosted Bloom team
While Nilou has Hydro vision, he is practically a Dendro character. Her kit is all about boosting Bloom’s reaction, turning the Dendro Cores she summons into Bountiful Cores that instantly explode and deal much more damage.
There is one caveat, however, as Nilou can only create Abundant Cores if he is part of a group consisting of only Hydro and Dendro characters. And while that limits them to just one squad composition, it’s no big deal when they’re one of the strongest formations in the game.
Nilou creates Bountiful Cores using her ability, which takes three “steps” to fully activate and will have different effects depending on which button is pressed for the last step.
If you press the Normal Attack button in the last step, Nilou’s attacks will get a Hydro Infusion. Pressing the skill button on the last step will instead create a ring of Hydro, which persists even if Nilou is off-screen and following the active character.
Once Nilou’s ability is active, all Dendro Cores created by the Bloom reaction will transform into Bountiful Cores whose damage will be boosted by Nilou’s Max HP.
Nilou’s explosion also helps with this, unleashing a wave of Hydro on all nearby enemies to deal DMG and allow more Abundant Cores to be created.
However, you should always bring a healer to your Nilou squads because Abundant Cores also deal damage to your characters when they explode. Since abundant cores deal a lot of damage, you could end up melting along with your enemies if you’re not careful.
While Nilou’s strong kit is restrictive, she is relatively easier to build than other characters.
You just need to stack as much HP as possible by getting HP% main stat artifacts on your sands, goblets, and headband slots. You should also get bonus sets of artifacts that provide more HP, such as 2-piece sets for Tenacity of the Millelith and the newly released Vourukasha’s Glow.
As for his team, you only need the characters Hydro and Dendro. You should always have at least two Hydro characters to get a maximum 25% HP bonus from the Hydro Resonance effect. Healers like Sangonomiya Kokomi or Barbara are great options for your second Hydro character.
From there, you can run one Dendro character with three Hydro characters or two Dendro characters. A triple Hydro composition is ideal if your Dendro character is a great driver like Nahida. Otherwise, two Dendro characters will be the way to go.
While Nilou is not a must-have character, she is definitely worth having in your account. Even though she is very niche and restrictive, that niche seems to be one of the strongest teams in the game. If your enemy isn’t immune to Dendro, then Nilou’s dance and a burst of green will be the last they see.
Need Nahida and Nilou’s signature weapons?
As with any character in Genshin Impact, giving them a 5-star weapon will go a long way in unlocking their full potential, more so for 5-star characters with signature weapons. If you’ve got Primogems to spare, then giving Nahida and Nilou their signature weapons is definitely worth it.
Nahida’s signature weapon, A Thousand Floating Dreams, grants her 265 Elemental Mastery at max level. Her passive also grants her Elemental Mastery and Elemental DMG bonuses based on the elements of her teammates. She also provides her teammates with a 40 elemental mastery bonus to further increase the damage her team produces from elemental reactions.
Since Nahida scales with Elemental Mastery, her signature weapons greatly increase her damage output whether she’s taking on or off the field roles. It is also a versatile weapon that can be used by other Catalyst Elemental Master wielders and is not exclusive to Nahida.
Meanwhile, Nilou’s signature weapon, the Key of Khaj-Nisut, has a whopping 66.2 HP% substat as well as passively increasing his HP by 20% and an Elemental Mastery bonus based on his max HP. To top it all off, she also offers a party-wide elemental mastery bonus based on her max HP.
There are only two swords in the game that increase the wielder’s HP: the Key of Khaj-Nisut and the Primordial Jade Cutter. The latter provides a passive 20% HP bonus, though Nilou has little use for the Crit Rate and ATK buffs she provides. So if you really want to get the most out of Nilou’s HP and Abundant Core, then the Key of Khaj-Nisut is a worthwhile investment.
That said, Nahida and Nilou’s starter kits are powerful enough to erase easily even if they don’t have their signature weapons. So if you don’t have enough Primogems or aren’t willing to shell out a few bucks, there’s no need to pull the weapon banner.
Nahida can make good use of 4-star weapons that have Elemental Mastery sub-stats such as Sacrificial Fragments, Wandering Evenstar, and Sea Map.
While there are no 4-star HP-boosting swords for Nilou, she can still choose ones with Elemental Mastery sub-stats such as Xiphos’s Moonlight, Iron Sting, and Toukabu Shigure.
Genshin Impact version 3.6 is expected from April 12 to May 21. The first half banners will feature Nahida and Nilou, while the second half, starting May 1, will feature the debuts of Baizhu and Kaveh, as well as a repeat of Ganyu.
After version 3.6 comes version 3.7, which will see the debut of the new character Kirara and should be released in late May.
Yan Ku is a full-time dog parent, part-time gamer (gacha), and part-time writer.
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