Best Teams for Shenhe in Genshin Impact

How to Choose a Team for Shenhe in Genshin Impact

Like any character, the first thing to know when building them a team in Genshin Impact is knowing how their Talents work. 

Shenhe’s most important Talents are her Elemental Skill and Elemental Burst. Her Elemental Skill Spring Spirit Summoning deals Cryo DMG and generates an Icy Quill. This Icy Quill grants your active character a Cryo DMG buff which scales with Shenhe’s ATK. Her Elemental Burst on the other hand, creates an icy field which deals AoE Cryo DMG to enemies within it. Enemies within the field will also have their Cryo and Physical RES decreased.

Which means Shenhe directly increases Cryo DMG dealt by your attacks and makes enemies weaker to those attacks too. This also means Shenhe isn’t a good choice for teams without at least one other Cryo character.

Catering Shenhe’s Team to Her Best Role & Talents

To get the best performance out of Shenhe, she is pretty much always going to be a Support character. She doesn’t have the power to be a DPS and her kit is built to increase her party members’ damage rather than her own. 

Yes, Shenhe does still benefit from her own buffs. In general though she just doesn’t deal a whole lot of damage which is why she is relegated to a Support role.

It’s way more efficient for your team damage to pick a strong Cryo DPS to pair Shenhe with then work off their strengths first. Once you’ve settled on a DPS you can then fill in the rest of your team appropriately and use Shenhe to bolster them. Her Elemental Skill is the easiest way to up DPS damage on teams like this since you’ll be able to use it more often and it will provide a direct DMG buff. 

Key Takeaways

While Shenhe’s kit isn’t as complex as some other characters in the game, there are still a few important things to remember when building her teams. 

• Always keep Shenhe with a strong Cryo DPS character.
• Shenhe’s Cryo DMG buff scales with her ATK stat.
• Take advantage of Cryo-related Elemental Reactions!

1. Permafrost (Shenhe, Kamisato Ayaka, Kaedehara Kazuha, Sangonomiya Kokomi)

As the name suggests, Shenhe Permafrost teams are all about keeping enemies frozen. Frozen enemies are easy pickings for even the lowest-level characters. Unless you’re in a domain or time trial, you can leisurely take them out one by one while re-applying the Frozen Reaction to immobilize nearby enemies. 

To maximize Frozen Reactions, it’s important to get your team rotation down. Start with Kokomi and use her Elemental Skill then swap to Kazuha and trigger his Elemental Burst. This will apply Wet to all enemies within a wide AoE. Afterwards, swap to Shenhe and use her Elemental Skill and Elemental Burst. Finally it’s time to go all out with Ayaka. 

Thanks to Kazuha’s Burst re-applying Hydro to enemies and Ayaka’s repeated attacks it will be easy to keep the battlefield Frozen while you take everything down. 

While Ayaka is practically perfect for this team, if you’re looking for alternative characters there are also some great second-choices too. You can use Ganyu, Wriothesley, or even Charlotte to drive Frozen Reactions too. Kazuha can also be easily replaced with Sucrose. 

There are unfortunately no easy swaps for Kokomi. Xingqiu is an option but his Hydro application won’t be as consistent as Kokomi’s since it is reliant mostly on his Elemental Burst. Barbara can also work but she may also apply the Wet status to your active character too.

2. Melt (Shenhe, Ganyu, Xiangling, Bennett)

This particular team benefits largely from low-investment characters like Xiangling and Bennett while still being incredibly powerful. 

Xiangling’s Elemental Burst will repeatedly apply Pyro to enemies in an AoE around your active character while Ganyu’s Charged Attacks and Elemental Burst trigger the Melt Reaction. Shenhe and Bennett both provide buffs to increase Ganyu’s damage with their Elemental Skill and Elemental Burst respectively. 

The team rotation has a little more flexibility than other team comps and is easy for even beginners to pick up on. Finding the right distance to keep between you and enemies is probably the hardest part of using this team. At least if you’re wanting to use Ganyu’s Charged Attacks.

If you’ve missed out on adding Ganyu to your character roster, there are some alternative character options. Kaeya can actually be a decent choice if you don’t have any 5-Star Cryo DPS characters. His Elemental Burst compliments Xiangling’s and his Elemental Skill has a short cooldown which will allow him to apply Cryo to enemies with some decent consistency. 

3. Superconduct (Shenhe, Eula, Raiden Shogun, Zhongli)

To use this team effectively you’re going to need to know a bit about Elemental Reactions and enemy resistances. By using Raiden Shogun and Eula’s Elemental Skills you can trigger the Superconduct Reaction which will deal AoE Cryo DMG and also reduce Physical RES. This decreased DMG resistance is perfect for Eula’s Elemental Burst since it primarily deals Physical DMG.

So long as you trigger the Superconduct Reaction shortly before using Eula’s Elemental Burst, it should be easy to reduce your opponents’ Physical RES and get high damage. If you want to maximize damage though, you’ll need to bring in your two Support characters before setting off Eula’s Elemental Burst. 

Equipping Zhongli with the Tenacity of the Millelith artifact set and using his Elemental Skill, your active character will gain a shield along with a 20% ATK buff. After Zhongli swap over to Shenhe and use her Elemental Skill and Elemental Burst. Enemies within the field created by her Burst will have their Physical RES decreased by an extra percentage on top of the Superconduct Reaction’s effect. 

While Eula isn’t really replaceable in this team comp, there are some very viable alternative characters if you’re missing either Raiden Shogun or Zhongli. A good off-field Electro applicator like Fischl can replace Raiden Shogun. 

Kuki Shinobu can also work on this team as an Electro applicator and even use the Tenacity of the Millelith artifact set to provide the same ATK buff as Zhongli. Shinobu won’t be able to provide a shield but she can help cover with some extra Electro DMG if your off-field Electro attacks aren’t quite landing.