AlanDood
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10 Min read 
Ganyu is a Cryo Bow user from Liyue, and was released all the way back in update 1.2. She is one of the first few limited characters added to the game. Even though Ganyu was released a long time ago, she still reigns as one of the best Main DPS units in the game.
There are a lot of comparisons between Ayaka and Ganyu for best Main DPS in the game. It’s quite simple, just pick the one you enjoy playing more.
In this article, I’ll be going over everything you need to know about character, including her playstyle, best artifacts, weapons, teams, and more.
Charged Attacks are Ganyu’s strongest source of damage. Her level 2 Charged Attack has some of the best damage in the game. The initial attack explodes into a bloom that deals damage in a small AoE around the hit.
This skill isn’t anything huge for Ganyu’s kit, but skills are always important to help generate energy particles. It provides some utility by dashing backward, which can be used in sticky situations or for specific team rotations.
Ganyu’s Burst is also very powerful. It creates a large field that continuously rains down Cryo icicles, dealing damage. This damage also has “quadratic scaling,” which is a fancy phrase meaning more enemies = much more damage.
Ganyu’s Burst gives her some potential to be an off-field character, but her fame is being a Main DPS Cryo character.
Here’s a quick talent priority for Ganyu.
Normal Attack > Elemental Burst > Elemental Skill
Leveling up Normal Attack first is for increasing the damage dealt through charged attacks. Burst comes next as your next best source of damage. Lastly, leveling up skill is nice as it does provide some damage although nowhere near as much as the other two.
Ganyu is also a nice character to play as she is quite simple to play. For the most part, her rotation uses her Burst along with other team member’s skills/bursts and then spamming charged attacks.
For this section, I’ll go over her best rotation with one of her most popular teams.
Mona has an interesting interaction with her Burst and Freeze. Basically, frozen enemies do not pop Mona’s bubble, which gives you a damage bonus from Omen for a longer duration.
To ensure the enemy is frozen and stays frozen the rotation goes like this:
Ganyu E -> Q -> Mona Q -> E -> Ganyu Charged Attacks
We use Mona’s skill after her Burst in order to maintain the highest uptime for Hydro application.
Going a little deeper, we’ll assume that you’re running this team with an Anemo support and another Cryo character. For example, Diona and Venti. The rotation then becomes:
Diona E -> Ganyu E -> Q -> Venti E -> Q -> Mona Q -> E -> Ganyu Charged Attacks
Diona starts off the rotation in order to generate Cryo particles. While the particles are still floating, you will use Ganyu’s Burst and then absorb the particles before moving onto Venti. Venti simply dumps his skill and burst before moving onto Mona again.
As you ascend Ganyu, she will gain Crit DMG.
Undivided Heart: After firing a Frostflake Arrow, the CRIT Rate of subsequent Frostflake Arrows and their resulting bloom effects is increased by 20% for 5s.
This first ascension is a great damage increase for Ganyu. You will be spamming Frostflake Arrow (Charged Attack) a good amount, so having a free 20% Crit Rate is huge for damage.
Harmony between Heaven and Earth: Celestial Shower grants a 20% Cryo DMG Bonus to active party members in the AoE.
This passive is also a great damage increase as even if Ganyu is your only Cryo DMG, she still will get a free 20% Cryo DMG Bonus. On other teams where you run more Cryo units like Ayaka, Shenhe, etc, this is a nice buff to have.
Preserved for the Hunt: Refunds 15% of the ores used when crafting Bow-type weapons.
Ganyu is one of the best DPS characters even without constellations. Even still, if you are a Ganyu fan or a spender, you should consider Ganyu’s constellations. Almost all of her constellations are quite strong and provide something useful.
One thing to note is that C2 is somewhat low impact, unless you have C6. C6 Ganyu turns into an even bigger monster, making a bad constellation good.
Taking DMG from a Charge Level 2 Frostflake Arrow Bloom decreases opponents’ Cryo RES by 15% for 6s.
A hit regenerates 2 Energy for Ganyu. This effect can only occur once per Charge Level 2 Frostflake Arrow, regardless if Frostflake Arrow itself or its Bloom hit the target.
Trail of the Qilin gains 1 additional charge.
Increases the level of Celestial Shower by 3.
Maximum upgrade level is 15.
Opponents standing within the AoE of Celestial Shower take increased DMG. This effect strengthens over time.
Increased DMG taken begins at 5% and increases by 5% every 3s, up to a maximum of 25%.
The effect lingers for 3s after the opponent leaves the AoE.
Increases the level of Trail of the Qilin by 3.
Maximum upgrade level is 15.
Using Trail of the Qilin causes the next Frostflake Arrow shot within 30s to not require charging.
Ganyu’s playstyle largely consists of her using Charged Attacks, but it can vary slightly depending on which team you prefer to run. We’ll go more in depth into these teams later in the guide, but here’s a little rundown.
This version of Ganyu teams look to continuously apply Pyro to enemies off field to allow Ganyu to proc Reverse Melt with her Charged Attacks. This can lead to high damage numbers, but you may be forced to play very close to enemies.
Off-field Pyro application usually comes with close ranged abilities like Xiangling, so standing close to enemies is necessary for this playstyle.
Ganyu Freeze teams revolve more around comfort and safety. While budget versions of Freeze Ganyu can be comfortable and very strong, this version of Ganyu teams really excel with supports like Venti or Mona.
This playstyle of Ganyu still revolves a lot around her Charged Attacks, but the Freeze gives a level of comfort and ease of play.
4-piece Wanderer’s Troupe is one of the best sets for Ganyu. The Elemental Mastery helps scale the Melt damage, and the 4-piece bonus is an amazing buff to the Charged Attacks.
This set can be somewhat difficult to farm, however, as you’ll mainly get these from weekly bosses or world bosses. Farming for a good set can be difficult, but it’s something that can happen over time.
This 4-piece set is a strong alternative for 4-piece Wanderer’s. You will need to use Ganyu’s skill at the right time in order to make the most use of the 4-piece bonus.
The main draw to this set is that it’s in the same domain as Emblem of Severed Fate, which is one of the best sets in the game. This means you’ll likely farm up a lot of this set as well.
As with all Cryo characters, Blizzard Strayer is one of the best options, if not the best, for Freeze teams. Getting an extra 40% Crit Rate on frozen enemies is just so powerful.
If you’re struggling to get a strong 4-piece Wanderer set, you can also opt to run 2-piece Wanderer + 2-piece Blizzard Strayer as well.
If you mainly want to run Ganyu in Freeze teams, go ahead and farm this set up.
As with most DPS units in the game, your main stats will be the usual Crit, Atk, and Elemental Goblet. For Circlet, you definitely will want Crit DMG over Crit Rate as Ganyu already gains a lot of Crit Rate through things like her Ascension 1 passive and her Ascension Stat.
Here’s the order of sub stats to prioritize:
There are two quick things to note here.
Firstly, if you are planning to run Ganyu in a Melt team, you want to look out for Elemental Mastery substats as those will scale her Melt damage.
Second, if you are running Ganyu in a Freeze team, you will want to ignore Crit Rate, as you will easily hit the cap of 100%. If you are running without Blizzard Strayer, and on a Melt team, you can look out for more Crit Rate stats over things like ATK% or Flat ATK.
Ganyu has very little Energy Recharge requirements, so you won’t need to think about this too much. On a Freeze team where you want to burst off cooldown, you may want to have a couple substats. Depending on your team, you may want more or less ER.
Ganyu has a solid amount of 5-star weapon options, and these are the standouts, in order. Other 5-star weapons will also be decent as stat sticks, but these are the best.
This weapon is the premier weapon for Ganyu. What’s nice about this weapon is that you can obtain it on the Standard banner and it’s not limited. You may be spooked randomly by this weapon one day. There are specific situations where this weapon is outperformed, but overall, this is the the best weapon for Ganyu.
This weapon is simply a strong weapon for any Bow user. It’s has a strong passive and is overall a solid choice for any Bow user.
This Bow is another powerful option as it has a passive that gives more damage, and is a 5-star stat stick.
What’s nice about Ganyu is that she can use a multitude of craftable / easy to obtain 4-star weapons. These are all solid options for you to choose.
At max refinement, this craftable weapon will be the best 4-star weapon for Ganyu. However, this is contingent on the fact that you hit enemies in their weak spot in order to gain the weapon buff. If you are lazy and never hit weakspots, this weapon will be outperformed by these next two bows.
This is another craftable weapon that you have access to upon reaching Inazuma and unlocking the recipe. This weapon has a nice bonus of Charged Attack damage which goes up with refinements. Your best options are between this weapon and Prototype Crescent. They are both powerful and easy to obtain and slowly refine to 5.
This weapon is a decent baseline for Ganyu. If you are new or don’t have many crafting materials, you can simply buy this weapon from the shop for quick and easy performance.
This bow will become out scaled by Hamayumi and Prototype Crescent, but if you want something quick and easy, you can pick up this weapon.
Lastly for our guide, I’m going to go over how to build the best Ganyu teams.
Ganyu along with Bennett and Xiangling will be your entry into Melt Ganyu. Xiangling will be your main source of Pyro application, and Bennett can act as a battery for Xiangling’s energy.
Your 4th slot on this team is flexible. You can run an Anemo unit for VV shred, another Cryo unit for Resonance, a healer for some comfort, or whatever you want really.
Venti and Kazuha are notable for Ganyu because their Bursts can absorb and element. This means that they can absorb Pyro with their Bursts and apply it to enemies, allowing Ganyu to Melt. Sucrose can also do this, but the duration of her Burst is quite low.
Venti’s Burst also doesn’t have the best duration for this usage, but Kazuha is definitely usable. With the right rotations, you can Double Swirl on Kazuha (swirl Cryo and Pyro), infuse his Burst with Pyro, and then spam Charged Attacks with Ganyu.
This template will be what you’re aiming for on a Freeze team.
A second Cryo unit will be used as a battery along with Cryo resonance. They can be used as a Sub DPS or a Support depending on what character you want to run. Some examples include:
The Hydro unit on this team will be someone who can apply Hydro off-field. The better the application, the more comfortable your rotations will be:
Lastly, the Anemo unit is there to swirl Cryo in order to reduce enemy RES with the VV artifact set. They will also naturally provide solid CC along with some damage.
This is a very famous and popular team for Ganyu, named after the characters in the team (Mona, Ganyu, Diona, Venti).
This is essentially the pinnacle of Ganyu Freeze teams. Venti’s Burst synergizes with Ganyu’s Burst extremely well, due to the grouping and quadratic scaling.
Mona is able to carry TTDS and her Omen debuff works well with Freeze as explained previously.
Diona is a nice Cryo unit to use for battery and shield, but you can swap out Diona for just about any Cryo character and this team will perform about the same.
This wraps up just about everything you need to know to play and build Ganyu. There are more details and things you can learn about Ganyu, but this guide is meant to cover the essentials.
Ganyu is an extremely powerful Main DPS character, and she has two ways of building around her, either with Melt or with Freeze. She is also a character that is more simple to play than others. She provides consistent and powerful damage with her Charged Attacks, making her less intensive on rotations and positioning.
She’s been in the game for a long time, and she still performs at the top of the list.
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