by NyxCrab #1954
Updated for Version 2.1
This guide is currently being updated. Please visit the KQM discord for details.
Xinyan is a pyro claymore character whose uniquely-scaling stats leave many people confused on how to properly utilize her. In this guide, I’ll be giving a quick rundown on how to effectively play Genshin’s resident rockstar as a main carry, sub-dps, or support.
Table of Contents
Basic Overview
Xinyan is a claymore-wielding pyro unit from Liyue. Despite what you may initially think, her main gimmick is being a high physical damage burst carry. Similar to Razor almost, except far less selfish in playstyle. Additionally, compared to Razor, Xinyan can fit far more team setups due to being able to be played as either a main carry or sub carry for a variety of teams. Her main downsides as far as being a main carry go are lower ratios than Razor and a more awkward basic attack animation, but don’t let that fool you. With enough investment, Xinyan can easily hold her own compared to other similar characters.
Base stats
Compared to other characters available, Xinyan’s stats are actually a lot better than you might expect. She has the highest base attack stat of all 4★ characters in the game at 249 at 90/90 , and tied with Noelle, Keqing, and Xiao for the 4th highest base defense in the game with 799 at 90/90. Additionally, her ascension stat is attack%, so she can hit pretty hard already once you start leveling her up, getting 24% attack at her final ascension. Her HP does leave a bit to be desired, only having 11,201 at level 90, but that’s more than enough to take a hit or two later on.
Leveling
When it comes to leveling Xinyan, on top of needing Pyro Regisvine materials as usual for a pyro character, you’ll also need Violetgrass found in Liyue and the Insignia’s that Treasure Hoarders drop. To improve Xinyan’s talents, you’ll need the Books of Gold found in Taishan Mansion on Wednesday’s and Saturday’s. You’ll also need the Tusks of Monoceros Caeli that Childe drops in his weekly fight.
Talents
Xinyan’s talents are:
 Dance on Fire (Normal Attack) | 4 hit combo similar to Beidou’s, with damage ratios on par with Noelle’s. Xinyan’s charged attack ratio is tied with Razor’s as the highest among 4* claymore users. |
 Sweeping Fervor (Elemental Skill) | Pyro shield that gains more health absorption based on the DEF stat and also depending on how many enemies are hit by the cast damage. Assuming your Xinyan’s A1 passive is unlocked (at level 20): * hitting 0 enemies gives a level 1 shield * hitting 1 enemy gives a level 2 shield * hitting 2 enemies gives a level 3 shield At level 3, the shield is around as strong as Noelle’s, but additionally deals pyro damage in a small AoE and cleanses cryo or hydo debuffs from your active character every 2 seconds. The shield lasts for 12 seconds and has an 18 second cooldown. |
 Riff Revolution (Elemental Burst) | Riff Revolution is a high burst damage ability. On cast, it’ll immediately deal high physical burst, followed by pyro damage over time for 2 seconds. It has a 15 second cooldown, and 60 energy cost. |
 “The Show Goes On, Even Without an Audience…” | “The Show Goes On…” decreases the enemy requirement for shield levels by 1. That means that hitting 1 enemy will give you her level 2 shield, and hitting 2 or more gives you her level 3 shield. |
 “… Now That’s Rock ‘N’ Roll!” | “…Now That’s Rock ‘N’ Roll!” gives anyone affected by her shield a 15% physical damage bonus. |
 A Rad Recipe | Xinyan has a 12% chance of cooking double the product when making DEF-boosting foods. |
Constellations
Her constellations are:
 Fatal Acceleration | Upon getting a critical hit, Xinyan gains 12% attack speed for 5 seconds. Can only occur once every 5 seconds. |
 Impromptu Opening | Riff Revolution’s Physical damage has its crit rate increased by 100%, and will give a level 3 shield when cast. |
 Double-Stop | Increases Sweeping Fervor’s level by 3 |
 Wildfire Rhythm | Enemies hit by Sweeping Fervor have their physical resistance decreased by 15% for 12 seconds. |
 Screamin’ for an Encore | Increases Riff Revolution’s level by 3 |
 Rockin’ in a Flaming World | Decreases charged attack stamina consumption by 30%. Charged attacks gain an ATK bonus equal to 50% of Xinyan’s Defense. |
How necessary are her constellations however? The sad truth of the matter is, Xinyan is heavily dependent on her constellations. Without any of them, she doesn’t excel at anything in particular. She feels slow and sluggish without her C1, and her burst just doesn’t do the damage you’d want it to without her C2. However, once you get her C2 she becomes one of the highest burst damage characters in the game, and her C4 only improves that. The only constellation that’s kind of weak on her is her C6, and that’s due to an issue we’ll get into shortly.
The Split Scaling Problem
Xinyan’s biggest issue and the thing that holds her back the most in terms of viability as a unit for a lot of comps is her bizarre scaling issues. I don’t know what Mihoyo was thinking setting her up like this, and it causes her a lot of issues in the long run. Her shield scales off of defense while her burst scales of attack, and unlike Albedo there’s no constellation that gives her a sort of dual scaling besides her C6, but that only affects her charged attacks. Unless Mihoyo decides to eventually buff her by either letting her shield scale off of attack or make her C6 give her entire kit defense scaling, she’s going to be plagued by either having a poor shield and high burst damage or an okay shield but mediocre burst. Considering her scaling on her shield, I recommend avoiding a shield build outside of niche circumstances and prioritizing her burst damage instead, but I’ll go over both regardless in the next section.
Building Xinyan
As just previously discussed, Xinyan suffers from an identity crisis when it comes to building her. Do you go attack or defense? Do you want physical or pyro damage? The TL;DR of it is, go attack with physical damage on her. Her def scaling doesn’t do enough for her, and with attack + physical damage she’ll have some of the highest physical damage in the game regardless of running her as a main or sub dps.
Sub DPS
Artifacts
Sub DPS Xinyan wants to get as much damage out of her burst as possible while making it quick to recharge. Having good Energy Recharge is important for her, as being able to burst more often does more for her damage output than hitting slightly harder on each burst, and it makes her shield super easy to replenish with her C2. With C2, your priority in stats is going to be Attack, Crit Damage, and Energy Recharge with a Physical Damage Goblet. Crit Rate isn’t necessary after you get C2 as it guarantees the burst will crit. After you get about 130-155% Energy Recharge you can start focusing more on your damage stats. Artifact-set wise, these are the ones to prioritize:
| Artifact Set | Rationale |
|---|---|
 + 2 Bloodstained + 2 Pale Flame | The best set on Xinyan in terms of versatility as a sub and main dps. Gives the most possible damage to the physical part of her burst at the cost of a minor amount of pyro damage. |
+   2 Bloodstained/Pale + 2 Noblesse/Gladiator/Shimenawa | The second best set on her. Both of these sets trail a bit behind the top one in terms of phys damage but have a bit more pyro damage, and 2 Glad works as a decent versatile set for both roles though still falls behind Bloodstained and Pale Flame. Still, the difference is small enough that I’d recommend using whichever setup has the better stats. |
 4 Emblem of Severed Fate | Usually the go to set for sub dps units as of 2.0, it actually falls behind on Xinyan due to the physical damage sets giving more % damage than the elemental sets do (25% on phys vs 15% on elemental). While not a bad choice by any means as it gives her a healthy amount of ER, you need more ER to make up for the damage loss by not running 2Blood 2Pale or 2pc Noblesse (180% ER to match 2Phys 2Noblesse, 200% ER to match 2Blood 2Pale). |
4 Noblesse | Trades out a couple thousand phys burst damage but gives your team an attack buff instead. Not what I’d recommend for max damage, but if you lack a Noblesse user on the team it can work. |
Weapons
In terms of weapons, there are a variety of choices you should consider. In terms of overall utility and damage on Xinyan, these are how I’d rank them:
| Weapon | Rationale |
|---|---|
 Wolf’s Gravestone | Originally I had this listed as second best, but I’m putting at the top now for a simple reason: With how much attack this thing gives you can forgo an attack hourglass and run an Energy Recharge hourglass instead, and if you have enough ER from substats this gives the highest amount of damage possible for her burst. It also fits with her aesthetically and gives a useful team buff. |
 Skyward Pride | This is the comfiest option for Xinyan due to it’s ER substat and the vaccum blades putting it really close to WGS’s damage after a burst. It combos extremely well with the damage output on her charged attacks as well. |
 Song of Broken Pines/The Unforged | I’m putting these 2 in the same spot for the same reason. Both are dependent on hitting enemies and keeping Xinyan on the field, which as a burst DPS isn’t really something you’ll do beyond charged attacks, and as such it’s hard to get the full benefits out of them. Between the two, Song of Broken Pines is better without its passive but not by much. |
 Sacrificial Greatsword | Similar to Skyward Pride, this is listed above the rest simply because it covers most of the ER you’ll need for good burst uptime, with the passive resetting your E cooldown makes it easier for Xinyan to battery herself and replenish the shield when it inevitably goes down. |
   Blackcliff Slasher / Prototype Archaic / Snow-Tombed Starsilver | These three are in the same spot because the damage output between all 3 is about the same, within a couple hundred damage of each other at most, though Blackcliff does have the highest damage output even without its stacks. With enough ER substats and an attack hourglass these do more damage than Sacrificial does, but the ease that Sacrificial puts on your build due to its ER substat is why I listed it above these. |
 Lithic Blade | Lithic Blade is a bit of a weird one. It’ll always have one stack due to Xinyan being from Liyue, but it still falls behind the above options. Once you get it to 3 stacks though it’ll beat out even Blackcliff Slasher in burst damage, but the inconsistency of it due to not always running liyue-heavy teams is why I have it below the other options despite the higher ceiling. At refinement 3 it’ll beat Archaic with 1 stack and at refinement 4 it beats Starsilver with 1 stack. |
 Skyrider Greatsword | Skyrider is surprisingly really good on Xinyan for being a 3* weapon. While it’s still a couple thousand damage behind the 4* above, it’s still more of a damage increase than any other 4* weapon, and it’s easy to acquire. |
 Debate Club | Falls about a thousand damage behind Skyrider and is just as easy to acquire. |
 Favonius Greatsword | Has the lowest damage out of any 4* weapon but in return gives an insane amount of ER. The passive synergizes well with her C2 as you’ll get the bonus energy when you burst if the passive isn’t on CD, but falls behind every other option in terms of damage that the only reason it’s above them is because of its ER. |
 Serpent Spine/the rest of the claymores. | Every other claymore, 4* at least, does the same thing. They’ll have a slight damage increase over Favonius but still can’t compete with the 3*’s and lack the utility Favonius brings. Serpent Spine deserves a mention because pre-C2 it’s about on par with Prototype Archaic but after getting C2 it’s worthless as the crit rate substat is wasted and sub dps Xinyan doesn’t stay on the field long enough to build stacks for it. |
Playstyle
As a sub DPS, her playstyle is pretty basic. When your burst is up, swap to her, use your elemental skill to apply the Phys Damage bonus and shred enemy resistance if you have her C4, then burst and swap back. If you want to maximize your burst damage, especially if you have C6, after you burst do a spin combo before going back to your main DPS. Don’t try to spin before bursting if you have her C6, the damage buff won’t carry over as it ends as soon as you stop spinning.
Main DPS
Artifacts
As a main DPS, Xinyan will be spending more time on field than as a sub DPS. However, she’s not a selfish carry like Razor is. She’ll still be swapping a lot and will be reliant on her burst for a lot of her damage output, but she can benefit more from her C1 and C6 effects with this playstyle. Your priorities in this build are getting attack as high as possible while keeping a good balance of crit rate and crit damage. While ER is still important, it’s not important enough to drop an attack hourglass for an ER one. Try to get about 115-130% ER from substats if possible, though the more the better. With C6, you still want to run an attack hourglass over defense, the defense scaling is a bonus instead of something to build for. Artifact wise, this is what you want to consider:
| Artifact Set | Rationale |
|---|---|
| + 2 Bloodstained + 2 Pale Flame | Like with sub DPS, this option gives the most damage output and lets you basically swap between using her as a main or a sub DPS based on your stats. |
| + 2 Bloodstained/Pale + 2 Gladiator/Shimenawa | A weaker version of the above set but keeps the versatility of it. Has the second best balance between normal and charged attacks. |
4 Pale Flame | Without stacks it’s comparable to 2 Pale + 2 Gladiator, but with stacks it’s slightly better than 2 Blood and 2 Pale. It’s rated below both however as Xinyan has issues keeping the buff active as while the pyro pulses do proc the set effect it’s inconsistent and too easy to lose the shield. The above options are far more consistent and why I’d recommend them instead. |
 4 Retracing Bolide | Falls below the above options in both normal and charged attack damage and relies on keeping a shield up which Xinyan struggles with due to her low shield durability. Also doesn’t improve burst damage whatsoever. It does buff charged attack damage regardless which is why it’s rated above 4 Gladiator, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless used with Zhongli or Diona. |
| 4 Gladiator’s Finale | Has the lowest charge attack damage but decent normal attack damage. It’s more consistent than Bolide and does increase her burst damage but is rated below Bolide as a lot of Xinyan’s damage does come from her charged attacks. However, if you don’t care about her charged attacks and want to focus on her normal combos I’d use this over Bolide. |
| 4 Bloodstained Chivalry | A meme set that only works in very specific scenarios, but in those scenarios it gives Xinyan insanely high spin damage. Wouldn’t recommend it for normal play, but if you’re looking for a clickbait youtube video on her spin specifically this is gonna give you the highest damage output. |
| 4 Shimenawa’s Reminiscence | Extremely niche, trades ER for more CA damage which isn’t the greatest trade off as Xinyan heavily depends on her burst and struggles to generate it herself. Only listed in case of niche scenarios or playstyles where bursting isn’t important, not recommended otherwise. |
Weapons
Main DPS Xinyan’s weapon options are a bit different from sub DPS due to crit rate actually being important to her and wanting as much damage as possible. These are how I’d rank weapons in terms of main DPS:
| Weapon | Rationale |
|---|---|
| Song of Broken Pines / Wolf’s Gravestone | The damage output on these two is really close which is why I put them together. Song of Broken Pines wins out in the long run, especially as it’s passive is much easier to activate in most situations, but Wolf doesn’t trail too far behind. |
| Skyward Pride | Skyward Pride trails behind both Broken Pine and Wolf’s Gravestone for damage, but is still extremely close. The ER substat does a lot for your burst damage and with its passive scaling off of phys damage it becomes really close to matching the above two, only losing out because of their passives. At higher refinements, Skyward beats both of them. |
 The Unforged | A bit of an unfortunate case. This sword just barely beats Skyward Pride in damage but lacks the utility Skyward offers with its ER, and it’s hard to make full use of this without some other shielder on the team. And even then, it can’t beat Wolf or Broken Pine for damage. The only reason it beats the 4* weapons is because of its higher stats being that it’s a 5*, but if it wasn’t for that this would lose to the better 4* weapons. |
| Serpent Spine | Xinyan’s one of two users, the other being Noelle, who can keep the full stacks on this up by themselves. In theory, at least. In actuality it’s hard to keep the full stacks up without another shielder due to her shields low durability, but even at 3 stacks it’s the best 4* for Xinyan in most situations, only beaten by others in a few niche scenarios. |
| Lithic Blade | With 3 stacks at R1, Lithic Blade matches with Serpent Spine for damage, and at higher refinements it beats Serpent Spine at 2 stacks no matter what. It’s listed lower however due to needing to build teams in a specific way to maximize this. |
| Snow-Tombed Starsilver | Offers the most consistent damage for 4* weapons due to not needing any stacks to deal decent damage even without a cryo character. With a cryo team member to get the better passive effect the proc puts the damage on this almost ahead of Serpent Spine, but due to that being burst damage instead of sustained damage it falls behind in the long run. |
| Prototype Archaic/Blackcliff Slasher | Blackcliff has less damage starting out but has a really high damage ceiling once you start getting stacks on it, and Archaic’s damage is more consistent. At max stacks, Blackcliff beats Serpent Spine but due to how inconsistent that is, it’s down here with Archaic instead. |
| Skyrider Greatsword | Skyrider deserves some props. At max stacks this actually beats Archaic without its passive burst damage and Blackcliff without any stacks itself. The only reason I rated it lower is because it doesn’t have the damage potential that Archaic or Blackcliff do, but it is far more consistent than either due to not relying on burst damage or unreliable stacking mechanics to get the most out of it. |
| Debate Club | Poor man’s Archaic, it’s hard to recommend this over the other options as it loses even to Skyrider Greatsword, but if somehow don’t have any of those other options this is better than nothing. |
 Whiteblind | Has the same stacking mechanic of Skyrider, but a worse substat. This can be alright if you really want extra shield durability, but there’s no reason to run this over any of the above options otherwise. Better than Debate Club, only rated lower because this is much better on Noelle than Xinyan. |
Playstyle
Playing Xinyan as a main dps isn’t too different from playing say Razor but with one huge difference. Xinyan wants to take advantage of her charged attacks, she has the highest multiplier in the game for 4* claymore users and with her C6 the it offers a tremendous amount of burst damage. Regardless of constellations, you always want to use your elemental skill when possible for the Phys damage buff, and the res shred at C4.
At C0, I’d recommend just focusing on normal attack strings as her charged attacks are a bit too slow and clunky without the speed boost from C1. The ideal normal attack string is 2 hits then jump or dodge cancel. After C1, you can start to interweave charge attacks into your combos after critting so you get the speed boost. 2 Normals followed by a Charge Attack would be ideal assuming one of those 2 hits manages to crit, otherwise just repeat the N2>cancel combo til you get a crit. After C2 you can also start doing your spins after using your burst as you’re guaranteed the speed boost no matter what.
Save your burst for high priority targets like Cicin Mages or Fatui Assassins as they’re enemies with high HP values but average to low phys resistance, or for when there’s a group of enemies that you can quickly eliminate with your burst.
The Golden Crit Ratio
Fitting with Xinyan’s rather unusual nature as a character, it serves that her crit ratio would be a bit different too. C0 and C1 you still want the ideal 1:2 ratio, but after C2 you can instead opt for a 1:3 ratio so long as you’re able to burst somewhat consistently. Due to the guaranteed crit on her burst after C2, you actually end up dealing more damage in a rotation such as N2 > CA > Burst > CA due to your burst’s crit. This is however dependent on having good burst uptime, so having good ER or a battery is recommended if you plan on dropping some crit rate for more crit damage. As such, your choice depends on wanting more consistent damage (ex 50/100) or higher damage but more dependent on energy and batteries (ex 33.3/100).
Shieldbot
Artifacts
Xinyan as a shield bot isn’t something I’d really recommend for most people, but with the new artifact sets she does have a niche in it now. She’s the only person in the game besides Zhongli who can fully utilize the 4pc Milellith set. This does come at a cost as it can hurt her damage output, but by focusing on the shield with this set she can come pretty close to Diona’s levels of shield health and uptime. So instead of recommending artifact sets, I’m going to recommend main stat combinations as you should only be running her with 4pc Tenacity of Milellith if you want her for her shield.
IMPORTANT: TO REALLY MAXIMIZE THIS PLAYSTYLE SHE NEEDS TO BE AT C2. OTHERWISE, HER LEVEL 3 SHIELD IS TOO INCONSISTENT TO MAKE FULL USE OF THIS SET. YOU’LL ALSO WANT AROUND 150-160% ENERGY RECHARGE SO YOU CAN BURST OFF COOLDOWN.
| Defense Hourglass, Goblet, and Circlet. | For max Shield health. With this setup and the 4pc bonus active, Xinyan can actually get really high health values on her shield. It is going to be reliant on ER from substats and weapon to burst off cooldown. |
| Energy Recharge Hourglass, Defense Goblet and Circlet | For better burst uptime at the cost of some shield health. This is the recommended one if you can’t get good substat rolls, as you’re relying entirely on your burst to give the shield. By trading some health for ER, you make this setup a lot more consistent. |
| Defense Hourglass, Physical Goblet, Defense Circlet | If you have enough ER and want Xinyan to do a bit more damage when giving you the shield, this is the recommended setup for that. It’s a bit reliant on having good ER substats too and you do lose a bit of shield health for a minor increase in burst damage, so this is the setup I’d recommend the least, but you can still get Xinyan to deal alright good burst damage on top of giving you the shield if you still want her to deal a bit of damage. |
Weapons
Given how different this style is from the other ones, it’s also fair that this one be a bit different. Given that Xinyan’s main purpose in this comp is to give us a shield, we’re focusing less on damage and more on burst uptime and utility. As such, there are 3 main options to consider:
Sacrificial Greatsword | The one I recommend the most. It gives a nice bit of ER so it’s easier to get the substats necessary to Burst off cooldown and with its passive effect you can easily battery for yourself with it or even get close to 100% shield uptime with smart usage of it. YOU CAN OVERWRITE HIGH LEVEL SHIELDS WITH LOWER LEVEL ONES WITH THIS. PLEASE BE CAUTIOUS ABOUT THAT WHEN USING THIS WEAPON. |
Whiteblind | For maximizing shield HP. It lacks the utility of the other options that can more than cover for a defense hourglass if you run ER in its place, helping this make a more well rounded setup if you’re missing the necessary ER. |
Favonius Greatsword | Because damage isn’t a concern in this setup, the insane ER from Favonius is an insane benefit for this playstyle. It lets you run more defense on your artifacts and have no worries about bursting off cooldown. It lacks the close to 100% shield uptime Sacrificial can give, but that may be worth it for always having your burst up. |
Playstyle
There’s honestly not a whole lot to playing Xinyan as a shield bot. Just make sure you have enough energy recharge to have your burst ready off cooldown and use it whenever possible. There’s no need to use your E before bursting unless you want a smidge more damage out of her, but it might be necessary to give yourself the energy to burst. Just be careful about using her skill properly, it can be really easy to replace her level 3 shield from her burst with a level 2 or 1 from her skill. As such, I’d only recommend using her skill once the shield from her burst goes away.
Fireworks
Artifacts
This is a bit of an unusual setup, but in the right hands it can work. I’ll go into more detail in the playstyle tab, but for now we’ll just quickly go over the artifacts you’ll want for this build.
The artifact set that makes this work is the 4 Piece Instructor set. With this, everytime you cause an elemental reaction you give the entire team 120 EM. That is the idea behind this specific playstyle, Xinyan serves an EM bot for the rest of your team to enable their reaction damage. Instructor being a 4 star set, it is going to harm your stats a little bit, but that’s no real issue. The stats you’re going to want to prioritize are as follows:
| EM/EM/Def Main stats | The 2 EM main stats increase the damage Xinyan does whenever she causes Overload, and the Def is to buff her shield up a bit more. 2 of them are going to have to be 4* artifacts, so it’s up to you if you go with a 5* EM or Def Artifact. Go with EM for more damage, or Def to buff the shield a bit more. |
| ER, EM, and Def substats. | As always, ER is a fairly important stat for Xinyan, especially as it’s required to keep her shield’s pyro pulses to be consistent with her C2. EM and Def should be easy to understand, more reaction damage and a beefier shield. |
As mentioned above, C2 is heavily recommended for this playstyle.
Weapons
There’s one main weapon that’s used for this playstyle, and that’s Sacrificial GS. It covers a lot of her ER issues and lets her recast her shield if necessary to keep the level 3 shield effect as long as possible. A case could be made for Favonius GS, but it’s still inferior to Sacrificial in this playstyle too. Bloodtainted Greatsword is good after C2 to increase Xinyan’s EM and give her slightly more damage vs enemies affected by Electro/Pyro damage which is super present in this playstyle.
Playstyle
This plays a lot like the standard National comp, with Xinyan being used for her shield more to setup reactions. Your burst is completely irrelevant beyond refreshing your shield for more pyro uptime. You want to try to keep the level 3 up as much as possible, so your priority with Xinyan should be hitting 2 or more enemies with your E or bursting whenever possible. There’s not much more to it than that. You can view this specific playstyle in action on youtube by user Terraflop
Team Comps
Fitting Xinyan into teams can be a bit tricky. She’s a phys character who’s also pyro, so she doesn’t fit into the standard setups most phys teams use. Her pyro element does give her an advantage over others if you’re willing to try some weird setups.
Superconduct
The standard setup for most phys characters but also incredibly awkward to use on Xinyan due to her pyro element. In this type of comp, to avoid messing up Superconduct you want to use Xinyan at the end of your rotation. As a sub DPS you would want to do it somewhat like this:
Electro/Cryo ability > Cryo/Electro ability > Xinyan Skill > Xinyan Burst > Swap to main DPS
And as a main dps it’d be similar:
Electro/Cryo Ability > Cryo/Electro Ability > Xinyan Skill > NA2/Burst > Charge Attack
So long as you activate Superconduct before using Xinyan’s skill, there is a 12 second window where her burst can’t overwrite it at all which lines up almost perfectly with the duration of her skill. This is the ideal setup to use Shieldbot Xinyan in as well, as the next comp benefits heavily from Xinyan being able to do damage.
Notable Characters
Razor, Keqing, and Eula all fulfill the main DPS role that Xinyan would be enhancing with her buffs. Kaeya’s another one who would benefit from this if you run him phys.
Bennett is always a good choice and with Xinyan he enables pyro resonance which can increase the whole team’s damage output.
Rosaria also combos extremely well with Xinyan. Her good cryo application lets her enable Superconduct setups, she is occasionally run as a phys DPS so she benefits from Xinyan’s phys buffs, and her C6 enhances physical damage output even more.
Lisa’s A4 combos well with Xinyan’s C4 for def shredding on top of Xinyan’s phys shred, but can be kind of awkward with her burst and Xinyan’s shield causing enemies to Overload away.
Fischl suffers from a similar problem with the overloads, but her electro reaction enabling are worth mentioning anyways.
Diona’s a good cryo enabler and can cover for Xinyan’s weak shielding on top of offering decent healing. You can get occasional melts from this, but it’s not worth mentioning too much as neither Xinyan or Diona really build for melt damage.
Beidou works insanely well with a main DPS Xinyan, as her burst works with Xinyan’s spinning whereas similar off field effects like Xingqiu’s burst don’t. Combined with a source of constant AoE cryo like Kaeya’s burst and can be easy to reapply superconducts in crowds with occasional Melts or Overloads.
Example Comps
Razor, Diona, Xinyan, Bennett, where Xinyan is a sub DPS enhancing Razor’s damage
Xinyan, Rosaria, Beidou, Bennett, where Xinyan is a main dps taking advantage of Rosaria and Beidou’s off field damage to enable Superconducts and deal good AoE damage.
Double Resonance
A setup that is far less awkward than Superconduct at a slight damage loss, this setup takes advantage of Xinyan’s pyro shielder nature to run a team that consists of 2 Pyro Units and 2 Geo Units. With a shield active and the damage bonus from both pyro resonance and geo resonance the damage output comes pretty close to what a superconduct comp could offer but is far less awkward to use. Comps like this take full advantage of Xinyan’s high burst damage to combo them with other characters for high burst damage quickswap teams, but that comes at the cost of needing to build up multiple characters to get the most out of this. This works best with a C4 Xinyan as well so there’s some form of Phys shredding, but it’s far from necessary for this to work.
There’s no set-in-stone rotation for this kind of playstyle, it’ll depend heavily on characters used, but running this with characters like Ningguang, Zhongli, Albedo, and Bennett can enable a lot of burst spam shenanigans. And despite the name, you can use setups like this with just Geo or Pyro resonance and run someone like Mona instead to up the burst damage.
Notable Characters
Zhongli is the CEO of GEO for a reason. He offers high burst damage of his own and a durable shield that shreds resistances to improve the damage of the whole team. He’s welcome on basically any setup like this
Ningguang is also a welcome addition to this team. Her high burst damage complements Xinyan well as they can ensure constant burst damage just by rotating bursts, and Ningguang can easily take over as main dps for these teams if necessary.
- Bennett is a welcome addition to any team with Xinyan on it. He enables pyro resonance and is the best battery for her, on top of his healing and damage buff being a welcome addition to any team.
Noelle offers a bit of sustained damage and healing to these setups and decent shielding at that. She works best in these at C6 as a main DPS to cover for the burst characters downtimes.
Albedo is a constant stream of off field damage with good burst of his own. Simple, yet welcome in any Geo team.
Mona, as mentioned above, improves the already high burst damage a team like this would offer. While it hampers her damage a bit as she can’t enable super high vaporize damage, she’s nonetheless a welcome addition to any team with quick bursts like this.
Geo Traveler is a clunky but just as effective burst character similar to Ningguang. He’s got better multipliers on his abilities but can be a bit more hazardous to use due to his pillars affecting the environment.
Raiden Shogun again works great in burst heavy setups like this, both for how she enhances the team’s burst damage and her ability to battery everyone and her overall decent damage with her burst active to cover for everyone elses burst downtimes.
Example Comps
Xinyan, Ningguang, Zhongli, Bennett for maximum burst and quickswap damage.
Noelle, Ningguang, Xinyan, Bennett trades out Zhongli’s burst for Noelle’s sustained damage while Ningguang and Xinyan alternate their abilities and bursts to ensure constant damage output.
Fireworks
A fireworks style comp that was designed with a few specific characters in mind. Those being:
Sucrose or Kazuha as the primary on field character using their grouping, high anemo application, and EM/Element sharing to increase the damage of the whole team. - Fischl for her high electro application rate and Oz’s incredible damage. With C6, Oz will deal an additional attack for each time Sucrose/Kazuha and Xinyan’s shield hit something, leading to an awful lot of damage values in a short amount of time.
Xingqiu serves as additional damage on top of increasing the durability of Xinyan’s shield and slight healing. As electro-charged doesn’t remove the electro element from an enemy, it doesn’t screw up your overload setups, so Xingqiu adds a ton of value to this team. - Beidou works here too, trading out the healing Xingqiu offers for even more damage with little uptime problems thanks to Fischl. She still offers damage reduction to make Xinyan’s shield last a bit longer too.
I’d recommend checking out the videos posted in the Playstyle section above to see this in action, as I myself wasn’t responsible for finding this comp.
Team images generated using this tool
Conclusion
And that’s about most of the basics to our favorite rockstar! However, there’s likely still a lot of room to add and improve the guide, so if you have any suggestions or improvements I can do, don’t be afraid to reach out to me (NyxCrab#1954) on the Xinyan discord!
Rock on!