Genshin Impact: Wishing for Yelan? Here are her best weapons, artifacts, and team

Genshin Impact’s long-awaited version 2.7 is finally here, and with it comes an all-new 5-star Hydro bow character — Yelan the Valley Orchid.

Yelan is a mysterious figure from Liyue working under Ningguang and the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Much of what we know about her comes from the tidbits of information we could get from voicelines of characters she has canonically interacted with.

Yelan has multiple names and guises under her belt, and because of this, she controls a vast intelligence network that she uses for unknown reasons.

People who know her know to stick to her good side, because if you get out of bounds… well, we all know what happened to those treasure hoarders in her demo.

Cool, elegant, beautiful, and deadly; Yelan is Genshin Impact’s very own version of an undercover agent femme fatale.

The air of intrigue surrounding her is nothing short of mesmerising. So without further ado, here’s why you should tap into your primogem pool and wish for her:

Excellent Hydro damage, both on and off-field

Yelan's kit is pretty much the 5-star version of Xingqiu's, with both characters overwhelming their enemies with wave after wave of Hydro damage regardless of whether they're on or off the field.

Xingqiu is already one of the strongest and most flexible characters in the game despite being a 4-star, so that should be more than enough reason to believe that Yelan will be an excellent addition to your party.

But what sets Yelan apart from Xingqiu is that she can deal much more damage with her full HP scaling while also buffing the damage of other party members thanks to one of her passive talents.

While on the field, Yelan can use her elemental skill, Lingering Lifeline, to dash through opponents and mark them with Hydro threads that explode after application, dealing Hydro damage that scales off her max HP.

Hitting enemies with Lingering Lifeline also lets Yelan enter the 'Breakthrough' state, which makes her charged attack load up faster and deal AoE Hydro damage based on her max HP.

Yelan can also trigger the Breakthrough state by spending at least five seconds off the field.

But what really makes Yelan shine is her Elemental Burst Depth-Clarion Dice, which creates an 'Exquisite Throw' that attacks enemies with waves of Hydro damage based on Yelan's max HP.

Think of Exquisite Throw like Xingqiu's Rain Swords, as it attacks whenever your active character attacks or when Yelan hits opponents with Lingering Lifeline.

But unlike Xingqiu’s Rain Swords, the coordinated attacks from Yelan's Exquisite Throw home in on enemies and deal more consistent damage as a result.

Exquisite Throw also ties in with Yelan's A4 passive talent, Adapt With Ease, by increasing the damage of the active character whenever the burst is active.

This damage bonus starts out at 1% and increases by 3.5% every second, maxing out at a 50% damage bonus in the last second that Exquisite Throw is active.

To top it all off, Yelan's other passive talent, Turn Control, increases her HP by up to 30% when your party is comprised of characters with different element types — further increasing her personal damage.

With Yelan in your party, you'll be shredding enemies with ease thanks to her own damage as well as the damage buff her burst gives to the rest of your party.

Flexible team compositions

With her very strong kit, Yelan can fit into virtually any elemental reaction-based composition, acting as the off-field Hydro applicator for Vaporize, Freeze, or Electro-Charged teams.

Yelan can even replace Xingqiu in the National (Bennett, Xiangling, Xingqiu, flex) team, which is great when you have Hu Tao, whose sole support is Xingqiu, and other DPS characters who rely on off-field Hydro application to deal their damage.

You can even pair Yelan and Xingqiu together alongside an Anemo character and a flex slot, with Yelan acting as the main DPS for a Hydro focused team that can drown the opposition in a deluge of damage.

Main DPS, off-field sub DPS, or even support, Yelan can easily take on any of those roles and excel.

HP scaling makes her easy to build

Since Yelan’s damage scales off of her max HP, people who have an abundance of HP artifacts can rejoice!

Farming for her artifacts won’t be difficult at all, because all you need to look out for aside from Crit Rate, Crit DMG, and Energy Recharge is tons and tons of HP.

For artifact sets, Yelan has quite a lot of options. You can build the 4-piece Emblem of Severed Fate to take care of her energy needs while also boosting the damage of her burst.

She can also go for a mix of 2-piece sets, with any combination of the two-piece Emblem of Severed Fate, Tenacity of the Millellith, or Heart of Depth being good options depending on her needs.

The difference in damage provided by all those artifact sets aren't that significant, so you can go for whichever combination has the best stats.

Speaking of stats, you'd want to have either HP% or Energy Recharge on your sands (depending on which stat you're lacking), Hydro DMG bonus on your goblet, and Crit Rate/Crit DMG on your circlet.

If you don't want to farm for artifacts, you can also just run all HP% main stat artifacts and you'll still be good to go.

As for her weapons, Yelan can make great use of the free 4-star bow, Fading Twilight, that is available from the new “Realms of Guile and War” event.

It gives her Energy Recharge and has a passive that synergizes with her burst, which is great. Not to mention that you can refine it to rank 5 for free if you do the event.

Other 4-star weapon options include the Favonius Warbow or Sacrificial Bow if you need Energy Recharge, or the Stringless, Viridescent Hunt, or Mouun's Moon if you need more damage.

If you wanna go for 5-star bows, then Yelan's signature weapon, the Aqua Simulacra, is your best option.

Other DPS bows like the Thundering Pulse, Polar Star, or Amos' Bow are also good choices. The Elegy of the End is also a great option if you're building Yelan as a support.

Overall, Yelan is a strong and versatile character that can fill any role your team needs. She also doesn't need a lot of investment to do well, thanks to her free weapon and HP scaling.

But if you invest enough into her, she will quickly have your enemies on their knees and begging for mercy.

Yelan features in a double character banner alongside the 5-star Anemo polearm character Xiao, who is getting his second rerun. Both characters will be available to wish for from 31 May to 21 June.

Yan Ku is a full-time dog parent, part-time (gacha) gamer, and part-time writer.

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