Updated for Version 2.7

Art by @RKSHI_

Preface

Welcome to KeqingMains’ guide on Arataki Itto, The First and Greatest Head of the Arataki Gang. Itto is the first 5-star Geo Main DPS of Genshin Impact, with a fast-paced and satisfying playstyle, making him quite unique from the rest of the cast. His kit is straightforward, while still having room for more advanced optimizations, making him a good pick for players who are looking for a balance of fun and challenge. In this guide, we will go over how to gear and play The One and Oni, Arataki Itto. 

The following is a condensed infographic for basic information on Itto. For details about gearing, combos and team comp options, please proceed further into the guide.

Character Breakdown

Art by @panosarts_

Talents

Art by @v1rg03

Talent Priority

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Itto’s Normal Attack is the most important to level, followed by his Elemental Burst. His Elemental Skill is good to level, as it is decent damage, but not as important as the other two.

See Zakharov#5645 calcs for a level-by-level breakdown of talent upgrade order.

Constellations

(% damage increase from each constellation was calculated by Merp#6832)

Artifacts

Artifact set calculation was done with R1 Whiteblind. 4Husk is prestacked if not using Serpent Spine.  If using Serpent Spine, 4Bolide can be worse than 2Husk 2Petra, but 4Husk is still BiS with any weapon.

For Mainstat, use DEF% sands / Geo DMG Bonus goblet / CRIT Rate/DMG circlet

For Substats, prioritize ER% (if ER requirement is not met) > CRIT DMG/Rate > DEF%

For ER% requirements, aim for 130-140%. It is recommended to not use an ER% sands due to significant DMG loss, and instead aim to get enough from substats. Use the Energy Recharge Calculator to determine the exact requirements for your team.

Weapons

See Merp#6832’s calcs for details and assumptions.

Combos

A short preface to this section: If you don’t want to do any of these combos, that is absolutely fine – just keep in mind that you want to use Itto’s Skill at the beginning and end of his burst, and you want to maximize the number of stacks spent in each chain of Arataki Kesagiri slashes. You might also want to see the Combo Improvisation section. With that said…

Itto’s combos are rather complex and hard to properly calculate, because of a few factors.

One, he has to micromanage the number of stacks he has, keeping in mind the absolute maximum of 5 stacks.

Two, his A1 talent makes having more stacks at once better because it speeds them up, but by how much is difficult to quantify.

Three, when Ushi (the cow summoned by his Elemental Skill) gets hit by an enemy, he gains one stack. This causes him to do an extra Kesagiri slash, which can extend the combo enough to not give him enough time to properly finish it.

Four, his A4 talent adds purely DEF-scaling MVs to his arsenal, which makes calculating the difference in damage somewhat annoying, as you cannot simply compare the MVs straight up, but instead you have to calculate the whole combo, and different assumptions can lead to different combos becoming more relevant than others.

Five, his Normal Attack combo can be canceled by a dash or by his Elemental Skill without interrupting the combo. This can be used to start a normal attack, cancel out of it, and continue to the next one, saving some time to allow more Charged Attacks. This adds so many more options to be explored for Itto’s combos, and this is primarily why the TC on Itto took a long time.

Six, hitlag extension can lead to a significant extension of his burst duration, which can affect the combos used in different rotations. Hitlag extension is a type of animation lag present on all melee weapons, alongside startlag, and endlag. Startlag and endlag are easy to see –  it simply shows the wind-up animations before and after the attack is dealt. Both of these are affected by Attack Speed. Hitlag, on the other hand, occurs when the enemy is hit, and is incorporated in order to include the feel of the impact of the attack on the character. Hitlag is implemented by essentially “pausing” all other effects during its duration, and this has some interesting consequences:

• It is not affected by Attack Speed.
• It effectively extends the duration of some effects present while it is occurring, as it pauses the timer on which they run.
• This includes Itto’s Burst effect duration; thus causing Itto’s Burst to effectively last longer than the stated duration.

However, due to the diligence of the KQM theorycrafters, a few optimal (to our knowledge) combos have been found.

For readability’s sake, here are a few rules for how these combos will be formatted, and things that are not stated.

1. Combos will be notated using “NA#” and “N#”. The differences between these can be found in the glossary.
2. An “SCA#+F” means start a charged attack, and keep doing Arataki Kesagiri slashes until you run out of stacks. The # is the number of combo slashes, and the F means the finisher. Just a SCAF means you only have one stack, and thus do no combo slashes.
3. All of Itto’s combos are fairly close in effective power (within 5%). In the end, it comes down to whichever one is easiest or feels the best to you, unless you really need that last bit of damage to 3* the abyss floor.
4. Framerate has not been considered when making these combos. There are some characters where framerate makes a difference in ease of execution (Hu Tao, for example), and it may be similar for Itto. All of the combos here have been done by someone, but framerates may have differed.

Combo Tech

Dash Canceled SCAF: By dashing right after the SCAF lands, you can save a few frames by canceling the large endlag of Itto’s SCAF. This is not necessary for most combos, and actually can be a frame loss if done poorly, but it could make it easier for you if you are used to it. Of course, this can be buffered, so you can get it very consistently even without frame-perfect inputs. This is only necessary for some of the hardest combos (“Prestack N1 E N2” and “Harder C1-C5 w/ Ushi” in particular).

Buffering: You can start the input for the next attack during the previous attack for the majority of his combos. The places where this is useful are as follows:

• Buffering an SCA out of NA3 (as soon as the NA3 animation starts, you can hold attack to buffer the SCA)

• Buffering an SCA out of NA4 (same as NA3, you can do it at any point during the N4 animation)

• Buffering a dash out of SCAF (the SCAF has to land first, if you dash during the jumping part before he lands then it will cancel the SCAF hit entirely and lose a lot of DPS)

• Buffering a SCAF out of E (can do it during any point in the E animation)

• Buffering any normal attack after the next (you can just mash click and it’ll work)

This is extremely useful for making sure you get combos done well.

NA1Q: This very recently discovered tech is very niche, but it is worth mentioning. It is not entirely known how it works internally, but it allows Itto to start his Burst with a stack by pressing his Q during the hitlag of an NA1. This allows Itto to gain a stack without wasting any time during the burst. This tech is only useful to start even the first rotation with a prestack combo, without wasting time on doing a full NA2 before burst.
See more details here. 

C0 Combos

MVs%s are based on Talent Level 9.

All of Itto’s combos on this list are within 5% DPS of each other.

“NA1 E NA2” (RECOMMENDED):

This combo does not require any cancels, and all of its inputs (while they can be tight) can be buffered. If Ushi gets hit during the first part of the combo, the extra SCA will still fit in while still being able to do the rest of the combo (at least on high-hitlag opponents, and if done well). 

“Prestack NA1 E NA2”:

This combo is very similar to NA1 E NA2, except you have one extra stack. This is effectively the same as NA1 E NA2 w/ an Ushi proc. However, this is worth mentioning because each rotation after the first, you start with one stack, and this can slightly increase your damage. Also, you can utilize N1Q to get this combo on the first rotation if you can. If Ushi gets hit during this combo, the SCAF at the end will not fit. As an additional variation of this combo, you can try starting with 2 stacks instead of 1, and skipping the first NA3, which gives you a lot more room.

Rotation example: https://youtu.be/FxwVESgYPnY 

“NA1 Finisher”:

This combo is also very similar to NA1 E NA2, except you cut out the NA4 and instead put an NA1 after the second SCA chain. This combo is weaker overall than NA1 E NA2, but it is significantly easier to do with the extra stack from Ushi or prestacking. If a prestacked NA1 E NA2 is too hard for you, then you can try this combo instead for pretty similar damage output. Using a variation of this is generally a good idea when you are improvising because it has so much extra room.

C1+ Combos

C1-5 Combo:

This combo is very easy to play, and has a lot of leeways. However, if Ushi does not get hit, this is actually worse than the recommended C0 combo.

Harder C1-5 Combo:
Ushi hit: https://youtu.be/t-kbVCTSNj
No Ushi hit: https://youtu.be/EULCJGpS9QE 

This combo is basically the same as the other one, except you can fit an extra N1 in the beginning of the combo by being a bit more precise on your inputs. It is possible to fit another SCA in the combo (for a SCA7 at the beginning) but it is extremely tight.

C6 Combo:

This combo is extremely fluid because of the RNG of C6. You could get a lot more saved stacks, or very few. This is just an average sort of combo, assuming more or less every other SCA doesn’t consume a stack. Pray to RNGesus, and learn to improvise.

Combo Improvisation

We’ve attempted to give you some combos that are proven to work and do well, but sometimes, Ushi gets hit twice, or you do a prestack combo but Ushi gets hit anyway.  Or maybe, you have C6 Itto. Sometimes, combos won’t go your way. Never fear, though, because it’s very possible to change your combo midway through, if you have quick-thinking skills.

Let’s start with an example. If you are doing a prestacked NA1 E NA2, but Ushi gets hit during the first half of the combo, then you will not have room to fit the SCAF in at the end, resulting in a significant loss of damage. What can we do to rectify this? Well, you can drop the last hit of the N4 string (NA4) in the second half, which makes you lose 2 stacks (one of them is gained back by Ushi disappearing, which usually goes over the cap in this combo). This would lead to the overall combo being Q NA1 E NA2 NA3 SCA5+F (Ushi gets hit during that SCA chain) N3 SCA3+F, and then finish it off with E SCAF. This means that you’ve dropped an NA4 for the finisher, overall, which is significantly better than just going ahead and ignoring Ushi getting hit and not hitting the finisher. In fact, that allows the Ushi proc to be beneficial rather than a detriment to that combo.

This general process can be applied to any combo you might do, and generally requires some forethought since there are so many factors that go into Itto’s combos. However, if you can master this, then you have indeed mastered the One and Oni. 

Some general rules to maximize your damage: 

1. You should always use 2 E’s per Burst. The burst cooldown timer will be around 2-3 seconds left when the burst actually ends if you’ve been attacking enough, so make sure to use the second Skill no matter what.
2. You should always try to hit the SCAF right after the final E, because it uses the stack up. There’s no real way to time this with improvisation, so you just have to get a feel for it.
3. Itto will have time for approximately two SCA chains in his burst, and then the final SCAF. The length of these can vary, but trying to fit a third in will likely not let you use the E SCAF at the end.
4. Try not to overcap stacks: using a full N4 will give you 5 stacks, which is the maximum, so try not to use an E during that or continue doing normal attacks. Once you have 5 stacks, start an SCA chain.
5. Cutting off an NA4 in a combo will usually be the solution to allow the SCAF to fit, because NA4 takes 78 frames on its own. If Ushi gets hit, as well, then NA4 is mostly irrelevant, as you will only gain 1 stack. Additionally, Ushi disappearing and giving a stack is usually ignored by these combos; if you drop the NA4 because Ushi got hit, in one of these cases you’ll be at the same number of stacks with 78 frames saved. 
6. All of this is mostly irrelevant at C6. It’s all RNG up there, so you can try to make sure you get something but honestly you’re going to be killing everything anyways. So.

Teams and Synergies

Images generated using Genshin Team Portrait Generator

Triple Geo

This team composition is the recommended go-to for Itto due to all the synergy it has. Itto appreciates the extra energy generated by having teammates of the same element, and Gorou’s buffs cap out at having 3 Geo members on the team. Albedo is highly recommended in the 3rd slot due to his consistent off-field damage alongside energy particles generation. The fourth slot is usually flexible, and does not require any particular unit, as Itto does not have anti-synergy with a majority of the cast due to the innate, non-reactive nature of the Geo element.

Though strong, Triple Geo with Itto, like any other team, has its own drawbacks. The most obvious problem is the team’s difficulty with breaking elemental shields: Geo does not react with other elements like Pyro, Hydro or Cryo do. This, coupled with the fact that Itto’s NAs and CAs during his burst all apply 1U Geo, means that he by himself can struggle with taking down Abyss Lector’s or Herald’s shield. Fortunately, the flex fourth slot of the team can be a dedicated shield-breaker, making the team far from useless when dealing with shielded enemies.  

Note: If players have not obtained Gorou or cannot use him, the characters from the 3rd slot, notably Ningguang, can also fit well for the 2nd slot for this team.

Overall, any unit with decent particle generation as well as Support and DMG Boosting abilities will be appreciated in this 4th slot. Examples of team compositions can be found below.

Itto Gorou Albedo Zhongli

Triple Geo plus Zhongli, or Mono Geo, trades in healing and shield-breaking for comfort thanks to the high uptime on a strong shield, in addition to extra Geo RES shred. A rather straightforward team, with Itto and Albedo being the primary DMG dealers, and Gorou and Zhongli adding valuable buffs and protection. Also eases up ER requirements for Itto and Gorou.

Rotation: Zhongli hold E → Gorou EQ → Albedo E → Itto Q combos

Itto Gorou Albedo Diona

This triple Geo variation provides DMG while also offering utility and healing. Albedo is the perfect partner for the Itto-Gorou duo for all the reasons listed above – being able to double-dip in infinite uptime on 4-pc Husk and Gorou buffs, while contributing respectable off-field DMG. Diona provides shield, healing and energy, alongside some potential shield-breaking. 

Rotation: Diona EQ  → Gorou EQ → Albedo E → Itto Q combos

OR

Rotation: Gorou EQ → Albedo E → Diona EQ → Itto Q combos

You can choose which one to do by which one you prefer: a shield throughout more of your Itto combos, or Gorou buff (15% Geo DMG) throughout more of your Itto combos.

“Microwave”: Itto Geo MC Zhongli Gorou

Only recommended for players with C1 Zhongli, although the team is functional without this Constellation. This team revolves around maximizing resonance damage between the Geo constructs of Zhongli and Geo MC, with Gorou providing buffs. As the resonance between Zhongli’s Stone Steele and Geo MC’s constructs contributes significantly to overall damage, players without C1 Zhongli need to use a different rotation to make sure the pillar is always active. Zhongli prefers a damage-oriented build here (HP sands is recommended).

C1 Zhongli Rotation: Gorou E > Geo MC EQ > Zhongli hold E > Gorou Q > Itto Q combos
C0 Zhongli Rotation (second rotation onwards): Zhongli tap E > Gorou E > Geo MC EQ > Zhongli hold E > Gorou Q > Itto Q combos

Other Teams

Itto unfortunately does not have a lot of team options outside of Triple Geo, given that he will perform best with teammates of the same Element due to the reasons already discussed. However, this does not mean that players are discouraged to explore unconventional options. Players can opt for teams with Itto and another Geo unit, and two flex units that work off-field and can provide good utility or DMG, or mix and match for more fun teams. See some examples below:

2.3 Spiral Abyss, Itto – Beidou from Aftermath#7658: https://youtu.be/R3pHhNWbE0k

2.3 Spiral Abyss, Itto – Beidou from Akarin#8270: https://youtu.be/uPnDR94Ti4k

Afterword

Art by @yeurei

This marks the end of the Arataki Itto guide done by the KQM community. We hope that after reading the guide, you are able to gain more interest in trying out the joy that is Itto. We would like to give special thanks to the KQM Theorycrafting community, as well as everyone that provided their support and contribution to the guide during the writing process. Feel free to contact any of the authors for further questions regarding the guide, and check out the KQM Discord.

This guide was written by :
Merp#6832
Prévisible#7440 (Taked)
nxriaki#6316


Calculations were provided by:
Zakharov#5645
Merp#6832: All of these calculations have variable weapons. If you would like to see accurate artifact/constellation/combo comparisons with a weapon of your choice, create a copy of this sheet and select it from the dropdown. Contributions to these calcs were also made by Aftermath#7658.

Special thanks:

Akarin#8270

Aftermath#7658

Neo Frost#2327

Meatball#0438

Cuzimori#1535

Emiliabyss#1641

Reens#9389