Gameplay tips and character summary
We’ve discussed Sayu’s weapons, artifacts, and talent priorities in an in-depth manner already, so is she viable in your Genshin Impact teams?
To see where she’d fit in, we have to consider the other Anemo characters in the game:
- Venti (support) – Venti is easily one of the most useful support characters in the game due to his strong crowd control (pull/gather) and Swirl infusion.
- Kazuha (DPS/support) – Kazuha’s crowd control is also great, and he’s decent in either a DPS or support role. The latter is helped by very high elemental mastery scaling and damage conversions.
- Xiao (DPS) -Xiao doesn’t even care about infusions or gathering. His burst nuke speaks for itself.
- Sucrose (support) – A C6 Sucrose that has elemental mastery fully stacked will greatly buff your squad’s damage while weakening enemies.
- Jean (sub-DPS/support) – Jean can heal, gather, and cheese enemies via fall damage.
The biggest problem with Sayu at the moment is that she’s part of a niche role with certain limitations. She has support capabilities (healing and Swirls), but she can’t gather mobs around her. Her ability with the highest possible damage, the Fuufuu Whirlwind Kick, does require you to charge her elemental skill and control her roll (which I found a bit janky). It led to moments that ruined my damage sequence and party rotation.
We also need to consider the wording of her skill when it comes to the Elemental Absorption effect. It looks like this only works on elements that Sayu comes into contact with while she’s rolling (i.e., the character model itself). This won’t get triggered by a wide AoE (i.e., Kazuha’s charged skill and burst) or generated abilities (i.e., Venti’s tornado or Sucrose’s wind spirit). Oh, and trying to stack elemental mastery with her (if she’s not C6) is a bit wasteful. You’ll gain more benefits if these artifacts are equipped by Kazuha or Sucrose. Still, the Muji-Muji Daruma, from her elemental burst, does seem interesting. You could have a means of healing your party while also dealing damage to foes.
Overall, Sayu simply doesn’t offer anything that other Anemo characters are known for. At best, she can be someone who’s in your party while exploring the overworld map. She can roll to speed up your movement and traversal (unless she gets stuck), and she’s a claymore user (which means she can destroy mineral nodes quickly). Likewise, one of her passives even prevents crystalflies from fluttering away so you can easily grab them. Other than these functions, she has no other use (certainly not in high-end content).
Genshin Impact is available via its official website. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.
