Welcome to my Yelan guide for Genshin Impact! Yelan is a terrific support that applies Hydro while dealing a lot of damage, all while buffing the damage of the entire team. Anyway, I’ll cover everything you need to know about Yelan.
Talents
First, let’s talk about Yelan’s Talents. Her basic attacks are mediocre, the one to really watch out for her Breakthrough Barb. It is a variant of Yelan Charged Attack that scales with her MAX HP. After getting “Breakthrough” status on Yelan, you can use her Breakthrough Barb.
We can know whether Yelan is in “Breakthrough” state by observing whether Yelan’s bracelet is glowing. So how to make the bracelet shine? There are two ways to do this. One is out of combat for 5 seconds or more. The second way is to link enemies to her elemental skills.
Enter Yelan’s Elemental Skill, Lingering Lifeline. Lingering Lifeline puts Yelan in a sprint state where she can mark enemies to explode after the skill ends and do a Hydro DMG based on her MAX HP.
This skill has press and hold variants, both have the same cooldown. If pressed, she will travel a certain distance and end the ability immediately. If you hold it down, she enters a continuous run state, in which case she increases interrupt resistance and can run for up to three seconds.
Now let’s review Yelan’s Elemental Burst, Depth-Clarion Dice. When cast, it deals with AOE Hydro damage based on her MAX HP and summons a Dice named Exquisite Throw. Exquisite Throw will fire three arrows whenever your active character uses a normal attack or uses her skills to cause an enemy to explode. These arrows also deal with Hydro DMG based on her MAX HP.
While the burst itself costs 70 energy, Exquisite Throw will remain active for 15 seconds and has an 18 second cooldown to cast again.
Talent Priority
Now that you know what Yelan’s Talent does, which one should you practice first? I recommend you start with her Elemental Burst first, as this is the biggest boost to her personal damage. This is followed by her skills and her Normal Attack lastly.
While Breakthrough Barb scales on Normal Attack, it doesn’t deserve a higher boost than the other two abilities and provides an inconsistent source of damage.
Artifacts
Before we delve into her Artifacts and stats, upgrading her to level 90 is the first thing you should do if you want to maximize Yelan’s damage as much as possible. Since Yelan primarily scales through MAX HP, this will be the largest increase at the base level. Now, let’s actually get into Artifacts.
Yelan’s overall best set is Emblem of Severed Fate. Not only does this set help with her energy recharge needs, but the more recharge she has, the more damage she does. You can build your team to better help Yelan recharge, which is still a powerful set for her.
Still, it depends on how you use her and your team rotation, though. Now that you have a good understanding of Yelan’s Artifacts, what weapon should you use?
Weapons
Yelan prefers weapons with ER, Crit or HP. Our first choice is Favonius Warbow. Not only does Favonius Warbow provide a 61.3% Energy Recharge substat at level 90, but it also grants additional Energy Particles when you critically strike.
This weapon greatly satisfies Yelan’s energy needs. Not only that, but they gave this weapon away for free after completing Mondstadt Archon Quest, which all makes it one of the best weapons in Yelan.
For a 3-Star option, Recurve Bow and Slingshot isn’t bad. Recurve Bow can be obtained from chests in Mondstadt, and provides an HP substat. And Slingshot can provide Yelan with a nice crit boost.
As for other 4-Star options, we have Sacrificial Bow, Stringless, and Mouun’s Moon. Sacrificial Bow lets you use her skill twice to tackle her Energy hunger, but ends up being worse than Favonius Warbow.
Stringless enhances Elemental Skill and Burst damage, which increases her overall damage. Mouun’s Moon has a useless secondary stat against Yelan, but increases burst damage based on the total energy drain of the party burst.
Go to the 5-Star option and you have Aqua Simulacra and Elegy for the End. Both are very comparable, but it will ultimately depend on how you look at them.
In terms of Yelan’s one-man damage, Aqua Simulacra would be Yelan at his best. Aqua Simulacra will give Yelan the highest damage output, and if you can use her Burst on cooldown, it will be her best weapon.
Elegy for the End is about as good as it’s worth. It has a high energy supply secondary stat. After you hit an enemy 4 times with an Ability or Burst, your team gains an Attack and Elemental Mastery buff for 12 seconds.
Energy Tips
Before I dive into the teams that Yelan excels at, let’s talk about how to energize her. I said before that if you don’t pay attention to how you build or use Yelan, she can have a lot of energy issues. Here’s a small workaround.
You can prepend power into Yelan by using her ability and using her Burst immediately afterwards. This is a common good practice for most characters, but saves Yelan in particular. Now, this doesn’t mean you don’t need to build any supplies on her, but it can be a helpful tip to keep in mind for a smoother rotation.
Teams
Yelan is a Hydro character. This means she can be very flexible with the teams she excels at. These teams include, but are not limited to: Vaporize, Double Hydro, Bloom, Hyperbloom, Burgeon, Taser, and Freeze.
In terms of Dendro related teams, Yelan would fit nicely into any Bloom, Hyperbloom or Burgeon team. So if you want to try more teamwork, maybe you can try a Genshin Impact Account.
Yelan can also play Freeze archetype, not the best option, but she can still work on it. Overall, Yelan, being Hydro, is very flexible and can fit into most, if not every team.
Conclusion
We know Yelan as one of the best characters in Genshin Impact. With Hydro related reactions enabled, Yelan has a broad team that she can fit into.
She has a very simple build process as she scales purely with HP. Although she can be very demanding of energy in some situations, you can usually compensate for this weakness quite easily. Not only that, but Constellations can be a valuable upgrade for her, making her even more powerful in her role.
