Skirk Build Guide

Freeze

Skirk - Escoffier - Furina - Mona or Citlali

• Escoffier is irreplaceable in any such Freeze team, but especially for Skirk. Other RES Shred options like Shenhe aren’t nearly as good.
  
• Similarly to Escoffier, other Hydro options are significantly worse. Furina’s very high buff uptime helps a lot with Skirk’s generally longer rotations, and she buffs more than any other slot here would. Yelan is the best alternative, but not a particularly strong one.
  
• Citlali / Mona: These two are generally the best for this slot by far thanks to Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers. Getting Citlali to get Scroll every rotation can be difficult. Mona is easier to play and can be better if Skirk uses her big Bursts, but her buff uptime is much lower, as she does not get access to her Hexerei buffs. She also can't use Celestial Gift in this team. Other options include Charlotte, Shenhe, and more.

Example Rotation

1. Furina Skill Salon Solitaire + Burst Let the People Rejoice
   →
2. Escoffier Skill Low-Temperature Cooking + Burst Scoring Cuts
   →
3. Mona Skill Mirror Reflection of Doom + Burst Stellaris Phantasm
   →
4. Skirk on-field combo

This the only team archetype that Skirk can play that fully uses her kit. She is certainly able to play with parts of her kit out of reach or with lessened damage, and this can sometimes be desirable against certain bosses. However, in doing so, she will not be a particularly outstanding DPS. The best support options that aren't Hydro and Cryo would be Nicole, Fischl, and other such units. Specific Stygian Onslaught bosses like the Open-Eyed: Overbearing Contempt (the Watcher) or the Battle-Hardened Pionee (Pokeball) can let her make use of these non-traditional teams, but it is generally not recommended to use Skirk against these bosses.

Skirk can also be used as a Burst Sub-DPS in some teams, though these tend to be worse than simply using her as the on-field DPS. These include other Freeze teams like Kamisato Ayaka teams or Neuvillette teams with Escoffier.

BiS Option: Azurelight

Skirk’s Signature weapon, it essentially grants her a massive and more or less permanent (for her) 48 ATK% and 40 Crit DMG. A massive stat stick that should increase her team DPS by up to 20-25% compared to 4* options, depending on her team and team investment.

Limited 5 star alternatives:

Includes Swords such as Mistsplitter Reforged, Haran Geppaku Futsu and others. While typically slightly better than Finale of the Deep, they tend to be a decent bit worse than Azurelight. If you have any lying around they’ll be good, but only pull for Azurelight if you want to pull a weapon for her.

Best overall 4 star option: Finale of the Deep

Skirk’s best free option, typically by a lot. An excellent ATK% passive that she easily fulfills with Escoffier and very high Base ATK are quite desirable in Freeze teams, due to the lack of ATK% buffs.

Niche 4 star alternative: Calamity of Eshu

Better than Finale if the team has a Shield and you're confident in being able to maintain it.

BiS Option: Finale of the Deep Galleries

Skirk’s signature artifact set; she’s the only real user of it outside of very niche scenarios. It gives her 60 DMG% for both Burst and Normal Attack playstyles, however it won’t ever buff both. This isn’t a big enough caveat to not make it generally better than Marechaussee, especially once Cryo Resonance is taken into account.

Alternative: Marechaussee Hunter

Furina can enable this for Skirk, but the extremely high Crit Rate and lack of Burst buffing will typically make this a good bit worse than Finale. Still good in a lot of scenarios, especially if you have a set lying around and haven't yet farmed a Finale of the Deep Galleries set.

2p2p combinations: They’ll hold you over until you get one of the above. If you don’t have either of them, farm Finale of the Deep Galleries.

1. Elemental Skill
2. Elemental Burst

Despite Skirk's main playstyle being that of a Normal Attack DPS, the Talent damage of her NAs in her Special Skill State are entirely found in her Skill Talent. Her NA Talent is thus worthless. Her Burst Talent on the other hand contains both the damaging version of her Elemental Burst and the buffing version of it entirely.

Overview & Serpent's Subtlety

Skirk has two main ways of dealing damage, which she can use to be a dedicated on-field DPS with long field-time, a Burst DPS that can use her Burst and swap out, or mix and match depending on the situation. These are accessed through the different versions of her Elemental Skill and Elemental Burst.

Skirk does not interact with traditional Energy. Instead, she has a unique resource called ‘Serpent’s Subtlety’. She is able to gain Serpent’s Subtlety through her Elemental Skill as well as absorbing ‘Void Rifts’. Void Rifts are generated passively whenever any team member triggers a Cryo-related Elemental Reaction except for Melt. Skirk will almost always be played in Freeze teams, so the Reaction that will provide these to her will most often be Freeze.

Void Rifts

Void Rifts are generated when Freeze, Superconduct (and Stellar-Conduct), Cryo Swirl or Cryo Crystallize are triggered. Void Rift generation has a cooldown of 7.5 seconds, and up to 3 can be on the field at once. Skirk is able to absorb a Void Rift through 3 different methods: using the Hold version of her Skill, the non-damaging version of her Elemental Burst, or using a Charged Attack during her Normal Attack mode. The latter two are only accessible through the Tap version of her Skill. Each Void Rift absorbed through any of these methods will grant Skirk 8 Serpent’s Subtlety. Skirk teams tend to run 20+ second rotations, so there will usually be 3 Void Rifts on the field by the time Skirk enters.

Elemental Skill

Skirk’s Elemental Skill can be either Tapped or Held. When Skirk holds her Skill, she will grant herself 45 Serpent’s Subtlety and immediately absorb all nearby Void Rifts.

If she Taps her Skill instead, she will gain 45 Serpent’s Subtlety and enter a special stance called ‘Seven-Phase Flash’. During Seven-Phase Flash, she gains a non-overrideable Cryo Infusion and significantly powers up her Normal and Charged Attacks, including changing the animations for some of them. She will also modify her Elemental Burst to a non-damaging version that can absorb Void Rifts and further buff her Normal Attacks.

While in this mode, Skirk will consume roughly 6.66 Serpent’s Subtlety per second, and if she runs out of it she will exit Seven-Phase Flash. The maximum duration of this mode is 12.5 seconds, which requires about 84 Serpent’s Subtlety. This is fairly easy to achieve, as it only requires 5 total Void Rifts to be absorbed through either her Charged Attack or Burst. Since Skirk can only absorb 3 Void Rifts at a time, she’ll want to take an absorption action twice – either using her non-damaging Elemental Burst and a Charged Attack or two Charged Attack. When hitting an enemy with any attack in this mode, Skirk will generate 4 Cryo Particles. This has a cooldown of 15 seconds, so Skirk will only generate 4 Cryo Particles per rotation. Both versions of her Elemental Skill have a cooldown of 8 seconds.

Elemental Burst

Skirk’s Elemental Burst also has two different modes, called Havoc: Ruin and Havoc: Extinction. Havoc: Ruin is what Skirk has access to at a baseline. It can only be cast when Skirk has 50 or more Serpent’s Subtlety and will consume all Serpent’s Subtlety, dealing increased damage with each additional point over 50 she consumes. Up to 12 Serpent’s Subtlety points will count for this, meaning she gains maximum value at 62 points. Havoc: Ruin will always unleash 5 Cryo strikes with a large AoE regardless of the amount of Serpent’s Subtlety absorbed, and the extra amount of damage will apply to all 5 of these hits. A fully stacked Burst will deal just shy of 4000% talent value at talent level 10, which corresponds to roughly one third of the talent value Skirk is able to do over the entirety of her Tap Skill field time. When this Burst hits an enemy it will also generate 4 Cryo Particles, though this shares the 15 second cooldown with her Seven-Phase Flash particle generation. Using Havoc: Ruin does NOT lock Skirk out of Tap Skill. It is entirely possible for Skirk to use Havoc: Ruin and go into Seven-Phase Flash back to back. Skirk will usually to use her Hold Skill to access Havoc: Ruin, so this is only applicable when that isn’t the case.

Havoc: Extinction is only accessible while Skirk is in Seven-Phase Flash. On cast, it will absorb all nearby Void Rifts and grant Skirk’s next 10 Normal Attacks additional talent value depending on the number of Rifts absorbed, maxing out at 20% with 3 absorbed Rifts. While not a massive DPS increase, it tends to be a little better than absorbing Rifts with a Charged Attack. Havoc: Ruin and Havoc: Extension have a shared cooldown of 15 seconds.

Passives & Teambuilding Restrictions

Skirk gains a direct multiplier to her damage depending on the amount of Hydro and Cryo teammates. When a Cryo teammate deals Cryo damage or a Hydro teammate deals Hydro damage, Skirk will get a stack of ‘Death’s Crossing’. At 1/2/3 of these stacks, Skirk will deal 110% / 120% / 170% of her Seven-Phase Flash Normal Attack damage and 105% / 115% / 160% of her Havoc: Ruin damage. A Skirk with 3 other Cryo or Hydro teammates is about 40% stronger than a Skirk with 2 such teammates, making it essentially always worth it to use 3 outside of certain niche endgame scenarios.

To further reinforce this, Skirk will give all team members +1 to their Elemental Skill talent level if all teammates are Cryo or Hydro. In a team of Skirk / Escoffier / Furina / Cryo or Hydro Flex, this is going to be a 5-6% team DPS increase.

Overview

Skirk is one of the most mechanically intricate DPS kits in Genshin. She has significant skill-based optimization and various nuances that can lead to her punching significantly above her theoretical weight.

Elemental Burst + Normal Attacks together

Because using Havoc: Ruin won’t prevent Skirk from going in Seven-Phase Flash, Skirk is able to use both if she sets up properly. When beginning an Abyss run, Skirk will start with 100 Serpent’s Subtlety. This means that on the first rotation, Skirk can use Havoc: Ruin and still perform her Seven-Phase Flash on-field mode, though she will have to modify her combos because she won’t be able to access Havoc: Extinction.

Stygian Onslaught contains many bosses who either have very short damaging periods, like the Inquisitous Baptist switching shield phases, or long stalling phases during which Skirk does not get to attack these bosses very much. In this case, Skirk can still be in a team as the dedicated on-field DPS but opt to use her Hold Skill + Havoc: Ruin combination and switch out, as she won’t get to Normal Attack them much, or go into Seven-Phase Flash depending on what the boss is currently doing.

Another example is the Open-Eyed Watcher boss, who will gain extra RES during a recording phase, and once both recording phases are done will fly up and delay you from being able to damage him again. In such scenarios, Skirk can simply Hold Skill, swap out, wait for the boss to become damageable again, and use Havoc: Ruin before going into Seven-Phase Flash and also using Normal Attacks.

Combo optimization & Explanation

Skirk attacks quite fast in Seven-Phase Flash mode. Her first two Normal Attacks in her NA string in particular are very quick, though the latter three not as much. Skirk is also able to dash-cancel most of her NAs unusually quickly. Dash cancelling is generally used to get out of what’s called ‘animation endlag’, essentially skipping the ending part of an animation that’s not necessary.

• There are many variations of strong Skirk combos, with the strongest ones being significantly more difficult to perform. Skirk is still a strong unit with the ‘baseline’ combos though. Skirk’s easiest combo that’s still fairly decent is 4N5 2N1. This is achieved by doing the following:
  
• • N1 + Burst (Havoc: Extinction, absorb 3 Rifts) → N5 (dash) → N5 (dash) → N5 (dash) → N1 + CA (absorb 2-3 Rifts) → N5

Dash cancels are not required to perform this combo, but they do make it a bit smoother and easier. The multiplier of Skirk’s N5 is quite high, and it’s easier to get to Skirk’s N5 while spamming the attack button compared to constant dash cancelling.

• The best of these relatively easier to achieve combos will perform a combo similar to the above, but each N1 will instead be an N2, making it 4N5 2N2.
• • N5 + Burst (Havoc: Extinction, absorb 3 Rifts) → N5 (dash) → N5 (dash) → N5 (dash) → N5 + CA (absorb 2-3 Rifts) → N5

This is about 7% stronger than 2N1, deceptively high for a simple change.

Advanced combo optimization

Skirk’s strongest combos will generally involve dash cancelling as many N2s as possible. Genshin has a global dash cooldown if 2 dashes are used in relative quick succession, and because Skirk’s N2 is so fast, Skirk cannot dash cancel more than 2 N2s at a time. In order to avoid this, Skirk can either use string longer than N2 to dash cancel, like N5, use walk cancels (inputting walk commands in order to skip endlag animations instead of dashes, which is harder and not necessarily faster than dash canceling a lot of the time, especially for Skirk) or a Burst or Charged Attack animation. The last one also doubles down as Rift absorbing.

A couple examples of the harder combos to perform:

• 9N2 2N5: N2d → N2d → N2 + Burst → N2d → N2d → N5d → N2d → N2 + Charge Attack → N2d → N2d → N5

This combo requires consistently good dash canceling and fast clicking to perform. It’s able to be extended up to 11N2 with 2 more N2s done after the last N5. This combo itself is another ~7% more damage than 4N5 2N2, while 11N2 2N5 is 12% stronger than 9N2. It’s also exponentially more difficult.

• 8N2 2N5 N3 + CA: N2 + Burst → N2d → N2d → N5d → N2d → N2 + Charge Attack → N2d → N2d → N5d → N3 (Charge Attack)

Harder than the previous one and a decent bit stronger (about 6%). The Charge Attack at the end lets you absorb remaining Rifts in order to ‘cheat’ out a bit of Serpent’s Subtlety for the next rotation – a Charge Attack that starts its animation during Seven-Phase Flash duration and goes off as the mode ends will still absorb Rifts.

Skirk was officially released as a playable 5-star Cryo character in Genshin Impact on June 18, 2025, during the Version 5.7 update.