AlanDood
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9 Min read 
Heizou is a 4-star Anemo Catalyst user from Inazuma, who has just released in update 2.8.
Being an Anemo Catalyst user, Heizou has quite the strong competition with Sucrose, who is also an Anemo Catalyst user.
To put it frankly, Heizou likely will not outperform Sucrose on many teams, but he does have a playstyle that is different and can be refreshing.
In this article, I’ll be going over everything you need to know about Heizou, including his playstyle, best artifacts, weapons, teams, and more.
Even though Heizou is a Catalyst user, he fights more close ranged and uses martial arts attack animations. This is one big reason why you may enjoy playing Heizou. You have the benefit of having an Anemo Catalyst user, while also doing cool kicks.
Heizou’s Elemental Skill is his bread and butter. You can simply press to deal a close range burst of Anemo damage. Having “Declension Stacks” will increase this damage. Once you have 4 stacks (the max), the skill will do even more damage and have a larger AoE.
You can also hold down E to slowly build up Declension Stacks and then release to deal damage. This usually isn’t very practical, but it can lead to large damage numbers which is fun.
Like all Anemo characters, Heizou has a bit of grouping in his Elemental Burst. Heizou will kick out a shockblast that will explode on his enemy, deal Anemo damage, and pull enemies in a bit.
When hitting an enemy affected by Hydro, Pyro, Cryo, or Electro, this Burst will mark then. This mark then detonates, dealing AoE DMG of the corresponding elemental type.
For the most part, this Burst is somewhat lackluster. The grouping capabilities are quite weak, and the damage is subpar. Even still, it’s a decent Burst for a character that focuses on his Elemental Skill.
Here’s a quick talent priority for Heizou.
Elemental Skill > Normal Attack > Elemental Burst
Heizou is one of the few characters that you want to focus on their Elemental Skill and their Burst last. Heizou’s skill is what will contribute to a majority of his DPS, so that is for sure the priority.
Since Heizou is also mainly a “Driver” character, you will want to increase his normal attack next, as this will be one of main strengths to swirl off normal attacks.
So far, we recommend two basic strings for Heizou.
N1C and N4C
With N1C you can simply spam charged attacks, swirl many times to gain Declension Stacks, and deal solid damage. The weakness of this is that you will slowly knockback enemies, and will run out of stamina.
N4C is a solid alternative to do more Normal Attacks and finish with a Charged attack. For the most part, weaving in Normal and Charged attacks will be fine, as long as you use your Skill with max stacks.
N1C -> Burst -> N1C -> Skill
This is a quick example of how you can quickly gain 4 Declension Stacks and hit an enemy with your Elemental Skill. This is because as you swirl enemies, you will gain Declension stacks.
As you ascend Heizou, he will gain Anemo DMG.
Paradoxical Practice: When Shikanoin Heizou activates a Swirl reaction while on the field, he will gain 1 Declension stack for Heartstopper Strike. This effect can be triggered every 0.1s.
This is what allows Heizou to gain Declension Stacks easily and nuke enemies with his Elemental Skill. The cooldown doesn’t matter too much, but there is a slight ICD on his N1C combo. For example, you can expect to Swirl about 3 times when you do N1C -> N1C.
Penetrative Reasoning: After Shikanoin Heizou‘s Heartstopper Strike hits an opponent, increases all party members’ (excluding Shikanoin Heizou) Elemental Mastery by 80 for 10s.
This passive like Sucrose and Kazuha, buff up the team’s Elemental Mastery. This leans into Heizou’s potential support capabilities, but can also simply be seen as a buff to your team’s overall damage even with Heizou as your on-field DPS.
Pre-Existing Guilt: Decreases sprinting Stamina consumption for your own party members by 20%.
Not stackable with Passive Talents that provide the exact same effects.
Since Heizou is a 4-star character, you will likely gain copies of him over time. However, as the number of characters increases, you may want to pull on banners with Heizou if you wish to get him to C6. Remember, wishing on a banner solely for a 4-star character is a death sentence. There are no guarantees in place for 4-star characters and you can get very unlucky.
You should simply try to wish on banners that have a 5-star you want while also having Heizou.
Overall, Heizou’s constellations are quite nice. They help him in many different ways, but none of them are game breaking enough to make him a top tier character.
For 5s after Shikanoin Heizou takes the field, his Normal Attack SPD is increased by 15%. He also gains 1 Declension stack for Heartstopper Strike. This effect can be triggered once every 10s.
The pull effect of the Arresting Windtunnel created by Windmuster Kick is enhanced, and its duration is increased to 1s.
Increases the level of Heartstopper Strike by 3.
Maximum upgrade level is 15.
The first Windmuster Iris explosion in each Windmuster Kick will regenerate 9 Elemental Energy for Shikanoin Heizou. Every subsequent explosion in that Windmuster Kick will each regenerate an additional 1.5 Energy for Heizou.
One Windmuster Kick can regenerate a total of 13.5 Energy for Heizou in this manner.
Increases the level of Windmuster Kick by 3.
Maximum upgrade level is 15.
Each Declension stack will increase the CRIT Rate of the Heartstopper Strike unleashed by 4%. When Heizou possesses Conviction, this Heartstopper Strike’s CRIT DMG is increased by 32%.
Heizou offers a unique take on the Anemo Catalyst user by having a melee feel to his attacks and focusing his damage on his Skill rather than his Burst.
For the most part, people compare Heizou to Sucrose and feel that he is an inferior version. While this may be true, he does offer a different playstyle that can be more appealing to players.
Sucrose offers players solid grouping and consistent damage with her kit, while Heizou will shine in scenarios that have more heavy enemies. This is because his single target damage is where he shines best and can utilize his Skill to the fullest.
If you want a character that can deal big damage numbers on a consistent cooldown against large or single target fights, Heizou is your guy.
Viridescent Venerer
Like many Anemo characters, Heizou has the option of going with an Elemental Mastery build, or a Crit/ATK based build. Either way, your best set will be 4-piece VV.
If you are running a Crit/ATK based Heizou, you can also run 2 piece VV along with any 2 piece ATK set like Gladiator’s Finale or Shimenawa’s.
Lastly, if you are running a support Heizou, 4-piece VV is definitely his best set to reduce enemy RES to other elements.
For the next two sections, we will provide two different scenarios. Crit/ATK based Heizou, and EM based Heizou.
EM Heizou is preferred when running him in an Electrocharged team, while Crit/ATK will perform about the same as EM on other teams.
Elemental Master builds focus on increasing the swirl damage done while Crit/ATK builds will focus on the damage being done by attacks or skills. Since Heizou’s main source of damage is his Elemental Skill, you will always benefit from having some Crit/ATK even if you are focused on Elemental Mastery.
Crit/ATK Build
EM Build
The order of substats once again depends on the build you are running. But the order is quite simple either way.
Here’s the order of sub stats to prioritize:
Crit/ATK Build
Elemental Mastery Build
Heizou’s Burst only costs 40 energy, and will likely be very easy to do in many different team rotations. If you have Heizou at Constellation 4, you likely won’t need to have any Energy Recharge at all.
For 5-star weapons, basically almost any of them will be strong damage options for Heizou regardless if you are building Crit/ATK or EM. Here’s a quick ranking of the 5-stars.
Skyward Atlas
The Skward Atlas is a great stat stick that provides high base attack, an ATK% substat, and has a decent passive ability as well. Overall, this is the go to option for Heizou in either Crit/ATK or EM builds.
Kagura’s Verity
Right behind Skyward Atlas is Kagura’s Verity. This weapon is another great stat stick with a Crit DMG substat. The main draw of this weapon is that it will be able to buff Heizou’s Elemental Skill damage. You unfortunately can only gain one passive stack on Kagura’s Verity, but it still will be a good DPS increase.
If you want big damage numbers on Heizou’s E, this is your weapon.
Lost Prayer to the Sacred Winds
This is basically just another 5-star stat stick for Heizou.
Memory of Dust
Once again, this weapon is simply another 5-star stat stick.
For 4-star weapons, we have a bit of a divide now between the Crit/ATK builds and the EM builds. How these weapons rank compared to the 5-star weapons will differ in each circumstance.
Widsith
The Widsith is a weapon that is always an option on Catalyst DPS characters. Having high refinements in the Widsith make this weapon comparable to any of the 5-star weapons.
Sacrificial Fragments
All of the Sacrificial weapons are amazing and this one is no exception. Being able to reset the cooldown on Heizou’s skill is huge considering that’s one of his main sources of damage.
While Widsith is mainly used for Crit/ATK based builds. Sacrificial Fragments will perform well on both Heizou builds (although better on EM based builds).
Mappa Mare / Solar Pearl
Lastly, these two 4-star weapons are also decent if you have nothing else. Mappa Mare can be crafted while Solar Pearl is from the paid battlepass. Both of these weapons should perform fine for Heizou. Note: Solar Pearl won’t be good on an EM Heizou, but Mappa Mare can still perform well on a Crit/ATK Heizou.
Arguably the best team for Heizou lies in Electrocharged. Taser teams have used Sucrose before, and Heizou can easily slot in and fulfill the role of an Anemo driver.
While Sucrose is arguably better, Heizou can still shine, especially in single target or heavy enemies. Furthermore, this team can utilize Heizou with either the Crit Build or the EM Build. EM is preferred in this team, but both will work.
For the last character in this team, you can use someone like Beidou or Yelan for double Electro/Hydro or something like Bennett to make the team more like a Soup team.
Next up, we have a Hyper Heizou team, which is designed to buff up Heizou’s damage as much as possible and ignore reactions for the most part. This team will want a Crit/ATK build Heizou, and is mainly useful for things like bosses or speedruns rather than the Abyss.
Whale Alert: If you have a Constellation 4 Jean, you definitely will want to run her as she will shred Anemo RES by 40% when inside of her burst.
Note: This team definitely is not as powerful as other teams we recommend in our guides, but we want to at least show how you can go about playing this type of team if you want to have fun.
This is another example of a strong team. However, this team is mainly strong due to the core of Bennett, Xiangling, and Kazuha. Heizou just happens to fit in nicely, but a lot of other characters do as well.
Even though the team is called Mono Pyro, it’s more of an Anemo Pyro quickswapping team. The lack of transformative and amplifying reactions is why people call this type of team Mono Pyro.
This is simply the famous National team minus Sucrose and with Heizou. Sucrose almost without a doubt performs better in this National team, but Heizou is still an option.
All in all, Heizou is a fun addition to the 4-star lineup. While he might not be game breaking like some of the original 4-stars, he still is quite strong and versatile enough to be a solid pickup for many accounts.
If you already have characters like Sucrose and Kazuha, you likely won’t be missing out on too much with Heizou. Even still, he can bring some fun gameplay if you like kicking people with wind.
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