Genshin Impact: Best Ganyu Build and Team Guide

Image: miHoYo via HGG / Ethan Erekson

Human Made

Penned by Ethan Erekson

Ethan is our resident Stardew Valley expert. He has also covered Genshin Impact, Animal Crossing, and LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Hsu

Ganyu, the half-qilin Adeptus and the secretary of the Liyue Quixing, is a 5-star Cryo Bow user in Genshin Impact. She’s a versatile character that works well with a variety of playstyles and teams, so she’s likely got a build for you. Today, we’re looking at the best builds for Ganyu in Genshin Impact to help you take her skills to the next level.

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Building a Strong Character: Ganyu

Before we get into the specifics, let’s get some things out of the way. When talking about character builds, we’re going to assume that just about everything is fully leveled up unless otherwise stated. This includes character and weapon levels, as well as passive talents.

However, we’re also going to assume that weapon refinement and constellations are at their base levels. We try to keep our guides free-to-play friendly, and unless you’re willing to spend some money, you likely won’t have multiple constellations for Ganyu (or any other 5-star characters). You can do it with enough grinding and a little bit of luck, but it’s not easy.

Also, remember to have fun with your builds. The meta may get you those high numbers and stats, but it isn’t the only way to use these characters. Try to do what works for you and your playstyle. We’re just offering some options to help you make your ideal Ganyu build.

Now that we’re on the same page, let’s get into Ganyu’s best builds!

Best Ganyu Builds: The Basics

Ganyu is a 5-star Cryo Bow character, and she can fill a variety of roles on your team. She generally works best as a DPS character, but she can also be a pretty solid Support. She also has a lot of flexibility within these roles, so you can make the most of her, regardless of your playstyle. Overall, you’ll mainly want to focus on ATK, Cryo DMG, and CRIT. Once these stats are sufficiently built up, Ganyu can pack quite the punch.

Ganyu’s best attack is her Charged Attack, as it can deal tons of damage and cover a decent area. Since she’s a Bow character, you can take full advantage of her while keeping your distance. Just keep in mind that it takes ~2 seconds to charge her shots, leaving her vulnerable to damage and interruptions. Maintain some space when attacking, and keep a close eye on opponents with ranged attacks.

Ganyu also has really good Elemental Burst, which covers a lot of space and deals quite a bit of off-field damage. It also provides plenty of opportunities for Elemental Reactions from her team.

Also, don’t feel like you need to stick to one build for Ganyu. She’s a flexible character, and she benefits from having separate builds that you can switch between depending on the situation. However, doing this can take a lot of resources and isn’t totally necessary.

Before we get into the specifics of how you can build your Ganyu, let’s go over what you’ll need to ascend Ganyu and her talents so you can use her to her full potential.

Materials

You’ll need a lot of resources when building a character. To get those resources, you’ll need to explore, fight enemies and bosses, and clear domains. For the most part, you’ll get what you need just by playing the game. The rest of it you’ll get from fighting the Cryo Regisvine, doing the weekly boss domain Enter the Golden House, and clearing the Domain of Mastery: Heart of the Flames.

If you’re ever short on resources, you can always do some grinding. As long as you have plenty of resin, you can keep fighting bosses, clearing domains, and completing Ley Line challenges. And if you ever need some help finding materials, you can use the HoYoLab Interactive Map to help you out. Getting everything may take some time, but building a character like Ganyu is worth it. Also, you don’t have to do it all at once — feel free to take your time and have fun with it.

Ascension Materials

To fully ascend Ganyu, you’ll need:

• 420,000 Mora
• 46 Hoarfrost Cores
• 1 Shivada Jade Sliver
• 9 Shivada Jade Fragment
• 9 Shivada Jade Chuck
• 6 Shivada Jade Gemstone
• 168 Qingxin
• 18 Wopper-flower Nectar
• 30 Shimmering Nectar
• 36 Energy Nectar

You’ll likely get the Shivada Jade you need from the Cryo Regisvine, who you need to fight anyway to get Hoarfrost Cores. If you’re ever short on it, though, you can always convert another ascension gem material into Shivada Jade using an Alchemy Table. All you need is some Dust of Azoth, which you can get by exchanging Masterless Stardust in the Shop through Paimon’s bargains.

Just take your excess ascension gems (Agnidus Agate for example) and combine it with enough Dust of Azoth to do the conversion. One Dust of Aozth converts a Sliver, three converts Fragments, nine converts Chunks, and twenty-seven converts Gemstones. This can be a great option if you have an excess of another material and want to save your original and fragile resin for another boss, domain or challenge.

Talent Materials

To fully ascend one of Gaynu’s talents, you’ll need:

• 1,652,500 Mora
• 6 Wopper-flower Nectar
• 22 Shimmering Nectar
• 31 Energy Nectar
• 3 Teachings of Diligence
• 21 Guide to Diligence
• 38 Philosophies of Diligence
• 6 Shadow of the Warrior
• 1 Crown of Insight

Childe is a weekly boss, and you may not want to wait a week before you can get more Shadow of the Warrior. Fortunately, if you’re ever low on the material, you can convert some of Childe’s other weekly boss drops. All you need is some Dream Solvent, and you’ll be able to convert Tusk of Monoceros Caeli or Shard of a Foul Legacy into the material you need.

You can get Dream Solvent from fighting weekly bosses, but it’s a random drop. We suggest obtaining Shadow of the Warrior directly, as you generally can’t rely on having Dream Solvent to convert other materials into it. But if you ever have some extra materials and some Dream Solvent, it can certainly speed things up a bit.

Talents

Depending on how you build and use Ganyu, the priority of her talents can somewhat vary. For the most part, you’ll want to focus on her Normal Attack and Elemental Burst. Leveling talents can take a lot of materials, so you’ll want to prioritize them over her Elemental Skill. Trail of the Quilin is worth leveling, but its more limited use case makes it less urgent.

Elemental Skill: Trail of the Qilin

Ganyu’s next talent is Trail of the Qilin, which does a couple things. First of all, it causes Ganyu to dash backwards and leave an Ice Lotus behind. The Ice Lotus deals AOE Cryo DMG and taunts non-boss enemies, encouraging them to attack it. After 6 seconds or when it’s destroyed, it blooms and deals additional AOE Cryo DMG. You can gain some survivability from using Ganyu’s Elemental Skill, as it lets you dodge attacks, gain some additional space, and taunt enemies, which encourages them to attack the Ice Lotus instead of you. However, the taunt isn’t quite strong enough for you to rely on it too much.

Fortunately, Ganyu’s Elemental Skill can do more than help you survive a little longer. The backwards dash lets you reposition yourself so you can get some shot’s in. This is especially useful for Amos’ Bow, as it helps you get the distance you need to get some extra stacks in. And while the Ice Lotus’s taunt doesn’t necessarily stop enemies from attacking you, it can help group them to some degree so you can get all of them at once. The AOE Cryo DMG also provides opportunities to get in some Elemental Reactions.

Elemental Burst: Celestial Shower

Then there’s Celestial Shower. Ganyu’s Elemental Burst summons a “Sacred Cryo Pearl” that rains down Ice Shards. A total of 50 Ice Shards will rain down over the course of 15 seconds, dealing AOE Cryo DMG. These shards do target enemies, but it’s also somewhat random, so not everything will hit. However, the more enemies there are, the more will get hit, so her Elemental Burst is very useful and important when fighting groups.

Celestial Shower is also great for triggering certain elemental reactions. If you apply Hydro DMG while it’s active, you can trigger the Freeze Reaction, which will immobilize most non-boss enemies. You can also freeze entire groups at once! This gives you time to switch characters and heal up, or provide more opportunities for Ganyu to attack.

However, you generally don’t want to use her Elemental Burst if you’re using a Melt DPS Ganyu build in Genshin Impact, as it can steal the reaction. For the most part, you want to trigger the Melt reaction with a Level 2 Charge Attack to maximize the DMG multiplier you get from Elemental Mastery.

Best Weapon for Ganyu

Now that we’ve gone over what you need to build Ganyu and how you can use her talents, it’s time to get into her best weapons. Several weapons work well for Ganyu — while her best weapons are 5-stars, she also has some solid craftable 4-star options.

5-Star Bows

While these three are some of the Best bows for Ganyu, there are also plenty of other great 5-star bows you can use. Skyward Harp, Thundering Pulse, and Hunter’s Pulse all work well — if you have them, they’re definitely worth using.

Polar Star

The best weapon overall for in Genshin Impact for Ganyu is Polar Star. This Bow has a pretty good base attack and offers CRIT Rate as the secondary stat. By using your Normal Attack, Charged Attack, Elemental Skill, and Elemental Burst, you can gain up to 4 stacks that buff your ATK. Each stack lasts 12 seconds. It’s not too hard to maintain those stacks; all you have to do is keep attacking. As such, you can deal quite a bit of damage with this weapon. This weapon also works quite well with Ganyu’s Freeze DPS build, as you regularly use all of these moves.

Aqua Simulacra

Aqua Simulacra takes the cake as Ganyu’s second-best weapon and one of her best weapons for a Melt DPS build. Like Polar Star, Aqua Simulacra has a solid base ATK, though it has CRIT DMG instead of CRIT rate as the second stat. On top of that, its passive increases DMG when you’re within 8 meters of an enemy. That’s basically slightly more than the backward dash from Ganyu’s Elemental Skill. If you ever get out of range, just toddle back in and you’ll regain the DMG buff.

Amos’ Bow

Amos’ Bow is another weapon with a great base ATK, and it offers even more ATK through it’s secondary stat. Its passive increases DMG based on the arrow’s travel time (12% plus 8% per 0.1 sec up to 5 times at R1). As such, it’s fairly easy to get an extra stack or two, resulting in your Normal and Charged Attacks doing even more damage. Since Ganyu’s Charged Attack is generally her best attack, the extra damage is pretty nice.

4-Star Bows

If you don’t have one of the 5-star options, there are also some great craftable options you can use instead.

Prototype Crescent

First up is Prototype Crescent, which is Ganyu’s best 4-star weapon. It’s a crafted weapon, and you can craft it as soon as you get a Northlander Bow Billet. As long as you get enough of them, refining it to R5 is fairly doable. It has a solid base ATK and has ATK% as its secondary buff, so you can deal quite a bit of damage with it. You can also gain additional buffs to speed and ATK if you manage to hit enemies’ weak points. However, not all enemies have weak spots — in those scenarios, it might be better to go with a weapon like Hamayumi.

Hamayumi

As far as stats are concerned, Hamayumi is pretty similar to Prototype Crescent. Its base ATK is slightly lower, but it makes up for it with a higher ATK%. While Prototype Crescent’s passive is better against enemy weak points, Hamayumi outperforms it when there isn’t one (or if you can’t hit it). Its passive increases ATK for Normal and Charged Attacks, and once your energy is filled up (meaning you can use Elemental Burst), it increases it even further. Simply put, its passive is easier to use. With that extra ATK, it’s another great option if you want to keep things free-to-play.

Best Ganyu Builds: Freeze/Melt DPS

With all of that out of the way, it’s time to get into the builds! First up is the DPS role, for which there are a couple of builds you can use. The first is Freeze Ganyu, which focuses on Cryo DMG and triggering the Freeze reaction to immobilize opponents. Another option is Melt, where you take advantage of the bonus DMG from Elemental Mastery to deal as much damage as possible. Both options work really well. If you build your Ganyu right, you’ve got one of the best DPS characters in the game.

If want, you can always do both builds — they’re fairly similar in terms of stats, and you can use the same weapons. The main difference is the artifacts, team setup, and how you use Ganyu. However, this does take additional resources, so sticking to one is perfectly fine as well. Just do whatever works for your playstyle.

Artifacts

Artifacts make all the difference when building characters. Not only do they boost your stats, they also have certain bonuses when you complete sets. So what artifacts should you choose for a DPS Ganyu build in Genshin Impact?

A lot of it depend on the stats you need. Ganyu works best when you focus on CRIT DMG, Cryo DMG, and ATK%. If you’re going for a Melt focused build, you’ll also want plenty of Elemental Mastery. However, before you pick your artifact sets, you want to pick a goblet with Cryo DMG Bonus as its primary stat. It doesn’t matter what type of artifact you pick — you’ll get the full set bonus from the other four artifacts.

After you do that, it’s time to pick your set. Ganyu can take advantage of a couple different sets and two-piece combinations. If you’re doing a Freeze DPS build, Blizzard Strayer is the way to go. This set boosts your Cryo DMG, and as you affect your enemies with Cryo, your CRIT Rate jumps up by 20%. And if you Freeze your enemies (which is the point of a Freeze build), you get an additional 20% boost when you attack them. You get an insane amount of CRIT, and when you build your CRIT DMG alongside that, you can deal a ton of damage.

As for a Melt Ganyu build, you’ll want Wanderer’s Troupe. This set increases Elemental Mastery and Charged Attack DMG for bow users. Since Melt builds rely on the DMG multiplier from the Melt reaction, Elemental Mastery is key in getting that damage as high as possible. The Charged Attack buff is also nice, as Melt Ganyu primarily uses Charged Attacks.

Artifact Location

So where can you get these artifacts? Blizzard Strayer artifacts can be found by completing the domains at Peak of Vindagnyr in Dragonspine. You’ll get Wanderer’s Troupe artifacts from fighting bosses (including Cryo Regisvine), so grinding for them in domains isn’t necessary.

Team Recommendation (Freeze)

Ultimately, Freeze Ganyu is all about triggering the Freeze reaction and immobilizing your opponents in Genshin Impact. And with the Blizzard Strayer artifacts, you can take advantage of that to deal a ton of CRIT DMG. As long as your team achieves that, then it should work fairly well. The team that works best for Ganyu is known as the “Morgana” team, and consists of Ganyu, Venti, Mona, and Diona. There is some flexibility, though. You can swap out Mona and Diona for Kokomi and Ayaka, for example. You can also replace Venti with Kazuha, though Venti generally works better.

There are specific rotations that you can use to make the most of the team and maximize damage, but here’s the gist of it. Venti groups the enemies together, Mona applies Hydro, and Ganyu triggers the Freeze reaction. Diona is primarily for healing, though they can also be used freeze enemies. With this setup, you can easily group, immobilize, and take out your enemies in one go.

Team Recommendation (Melt)

For Melt teams, you need to check a specific set of boxes for it to work well. First, you need Ganyu. This is a Ganyu guide after all. She’s the primary DPS, and will also be the one triggering the Melt reactions. The next person you’ll need is Bennett. His Elemental Burst both heals and buffs ATK. Then, you’ll need someone to apply Pyro to your enemies so Ganyu can trigger the Melt reaction. Xiangling is great for this, as her Elemental Burst, Pyronado, can simultaneously apply Pyro while Ganyu uses her Charged Attack. However, you can also use an Anemo character like Jean or Kazuha to apply the Pyro from Bennet’s Burst. Finally you’ll need a shielder — if you have Zhongli, you’ll definitely want to use him.

While you may not have a lot of flexibility in what characters you can use with Melt Ganyu, this team setup is optimized to deal as much damage as possible through Elemental Reactions and is one of the strongest in Genshin Impact. You don’t really need to immobilize your opponents like with the Freeze build because they’ll all be dead soon enough.

Best Ganyu Builds: Support

While Ganyu works best as a DPS character in Genshin Impact, she can also be a pretty good Support. When you use her in this way, you mainly want to use her Elemental Burst to trigger Elemental reactions. As such, you don’t really need to worry to much about her Normal/Charged Attack or Elemental Skill, and you get more flexibility in how you play and what characters you use. Here are some ways to build Ganyu even when she isn’t the main character on the field.

Artifacts

Since Support Ganyu is mainly used for her Elemental Burst, the best artifact set for her is Emblem of Severed Fate. This set increases Energy Recharge and Elemetal Burst DMG. This essentially lets you change up Ganyu’s Burst faster in addition to making it more powerful. Look for ATK%, Energy Recharge, Elemental Mastery, and Cryo DMG as secondary stats. You’ll want to make sure to have plenty of Energy Recharge, as the DMG bonus from Emblem of Severed Fate scales off of it. It also makes Ganyu’s Burst more readily available.

However, there are a couple other options you can use for a Ganyu support build in Genshin Impact. Blizzard Strayer remains a good option due to its high Cryo DMG and CRIT Rate. You can get a lot of damage out of Celestial Shower with those stats. You can also do a two-piece combination of a couple different sets. As long as it helps Ganyu with her Burst DMG or Energy Recharge, it’ll work fairly well.

Artifact Location

You can find Emblem of Severed Fate artifacts by completing the domains at Momiji-Dyed Court on Yashiori Island in Inazuma.

Team Recommendation

Since a Ganyu Support build is focused on her Elemental Burst, you have a lot of flexibility in how you build your team. You’ll want a good DPS character, and some characters that can trigger certain Elemental Reactions. Beyond that, it’s honestly up to you who you put on your team. One good team for Support Ganyu is Xingqu, Rosaria, and Hu Tao, who’ll be your DPS. This team works like a combination of Ganyu’s Freeze and Melt DPS teams, though Ganyu’s role is different. In this instance, Xingqu is the one who applies Hydro, Ganyu summons her Burst and immobilizes the opponents, Rosaria does her Burst and Skill, and then Hu Tao does her thing, and gets some Melt reactions along the way. If you want an example, you can see that here.

As we’ve said, Ganyu is a flexible character. Whether you want to use her as your main DPS or as a Support, she’s a great character to have on your team. She works well for a variety of playstyles, from immobilizing enemies to dealing absurd amounts of damage with Elemental Reactions. However, when you use her as a Support, you get opportunities to do all sorts of stuff. Sure, you can go with our recommendations, but we’d like to encourage you to have fun with it. Make the most of her flexibility and try her out with all sorts of teams until you find something you like that works with how you like to play the game.

Join the High Ground

That’s it for our recommendations for Ganyu builds in Genshin Impact. Which of these builds would you consider using for Ganyu? You can leave any suggestions, comments, or questions below, and feel free to subscribe to our newsletter! We have tons of content, including more on Genshin Impact, so be sure to check it out.

Happy gaming!