Genshin Impact Guide | How to Build & Play Xiangling

Xiangling is a Pyro Polearm character who primarily does damage for her team by not being on the field. You could consider her to be an Elemental Burst support, meaning you use her ultimate and then swap away from her to another character while her ultimate deals damage. Here’s everything you need to know about how to get her for free, how to build her, weapon choices, artifact sets, constellations, and team options.

Should You Build Xiangling?

To put it simply, if you care about doing a lot of damage with your characters without too much effort, Xiangling is a great choice and she is also completely free to obtain. She could also help you easily clear the hardest Floors of the Spiral Abyss for the first time if you have not cleared it already.

How To Obtain Xiangling for Free

Xiangling is a cooking fanatic hailing from Liyue and one of the strongest characters in Genshin Impact, that you get for free just by clearing Floor 3, Chamber 3 of the Spiral Abyss, which you can easily do when you reach around Adventure Rank 25-30.

Kit Overview

Xiangling is a pretty simple character. Her Normal attacks don’t contribute much to her damage, nor does her Elemental Skill, which drops Guoba onto the field, where Guoba spits out fire after eating a comically large Jueyun Chili. The skill is called Guoba Attack, by the way.

It’s her Elemental Burst, Pyronado, that is the real star of the show. Xiangling does a three-hit combo, then summons a fiery ring that revolves around her and follows the active character around, dealing damage.

Xiangling’s first Ascension Passive slightly increases Guoba’s (her Elemental Skill’s) damage, and her fourth Ascension Passive makes Guoba drop a little chili when it expires. You can pick it up for a 10% boost to your ATK with any character.

Her non-combat passive talent gives her a 12% chance to double the production of ATK-boosting food when she cooks it.

Talent Priority

For Xiangling, her only playstyle is dealing damage with her Pyronado (her Elemental Burst). So you can ignore leveling up her Normal Attacks and Elemental Skill.

Simply prioritize leveling up her Elemental Burst. You may see that she ends up being a good teammate in a lot of teams, so you could even crown her (level the talent up to max level), but leaving her Elemental Burst at level 8 or 9 is also okay.

Artifact Sets (Which Set, Mainstat & Substats)

If you are above AR45, the best artifact set to farm right now is Emblem of Severed Fate. As Xiangling requires over 200% Energy Recharge in almost every team she is in, the set gives a nice buff to her Elemental Burst damage, and the 2-piece set also gives you a nice 20% Energy Recharge bump to your stats.

4-piece Crimson Witch of Flames or 4-piece Gilded Dreams are also great options if you want to maximize Xiangling’s reaction damage, though you may find that it is a little hard to get enough Energy Recharge to burst in every rotation.

If you do not have a full EoSF set yet, any combination of 2-piece bonuses that provide Energy Recharge, ATK%, Elemental Mastery, or Burst DMG% are solid options.

Sands: ATK% or Elemental Mastery (or Energy Recharge if you cannot use Burst in every rotation)

Goblet: Pyro Dmg % (or ATK% until you find a good Pyro Goblet)

Circlet: CRIT Rate/CRIT DMG (aim for a 1:2 CRIT ratio)

As for the substats, aim for Energy Recharge until you have enough, then CRIT>ATK%=EM.

Constellations

Xiangling’s constellations range from being really good to being completely useless. These are the notable constellations you should go for if you can.

C1: Enemies Hit by Guoba lose 15% Pyro RES.

C3 & C5: +3 Talent Levels to Elemental Skill and Burst Respectively.

C4: Increases the duration of Xiangling’s burst by 40% (+4 seconds).

C6: Provides a 15% Pyro DMG Bonus to all teammates except herself.

C4 is her most significant damage boost, C5 is a decent upgrade to her personal damage, and C6 gives her better support for other Pyro DMG dealers on her team.

Weapon Choices

For Xiangling, almost any weapon is great, though you need to keep in mind that she benefits most from those that provide her a boost to her ATK%, CRIT stats, Elemental Mastery, or general DMG bonus.

What’s great about this unit is that one of her best weapons is available for free—it’s called The Catch. You simply have to fish for it. Other 4-star options include Dragon’s Bane, Blackcliff Pole, Kitain Cross Spear, Favonius Spear, Deathmatch, Ballad of the Fjords, etc.

As for the premium options, Staff of the Scarlet Sands is her top 5-star weapon, followed by Engulfing Lightning, Staff of Homa, Primordial Jade Winged Spear, etc.

Team Options

Aside from the fact that she is a little tied to Bennett when it comes to building a team around her, Xiangling is pretty versatile, and she will thrive in any team as long as she has enough Energy Recharge in her build. Here are some teams you can try out.

Reverse Vaporize: Xiangling, Bennett, Hydro (Xingqiu/Ayato/Childe/Neuvilette/Yelan/Furina), Anemo Support/Xilonen/Raiden/Another Hydro

Overload: Xiangling, Bennett/Kujou Sara, Chevreuse, Any Electro

Mono-Pyro: Xiangling, Bennett, Kazuha/Xilonen, Any Pyro DMG Dealer

Reverse Melt: Xiangling, Bennett, Cryo Main DMG Dealer (Wriothesley, Ganyu, Rosaria, etc.), Anemo Support or Another Cryo

Burn-Melt: Nahida/Baizhu, Xiangling, Bennett, Wriothsley/Ganyu

Burning: Kinich, Bennett, Xiangling, Flexible Slot

These are just some examples of what team archetypes you can go for. The team options for Xiangling are plenty, so you can try the ones listed above or experiment with your own.

How to Play Xiangling (Technique & Playstyle)

Xiangling’s playstyle is pretty easy, but there are some things you must keep in mind in order to maximize her damage.

Her burst has a quirk that makes her take a “snapshot” of all the buffs she currently has right before the burst is activated. This means that if you want to maximize it, you want to activate all the buffs you possibly can right before casting her Elemental Burst.

If Bennett is in your team, burst with Bennett before doing it with Xiangling. If Kazuha, Chevreuse, or Xilonen are there, use their skills appropriately so Xiangling can catch their buffs when you swap to her.

Advanced Tips

If you want to go the extra mile in maximizing Xiangling’s damage, you can also take note of how you move while her burst is active. Xiangling’s Pyronado moves in a clockwise direction, so if you move or dash in the anticlockwise direction, the enemy will be hit more often.

If you are using her with Kinich, you can keep that in mind while you rotate around the enemy and hook for more Pyro applications.

For those who are familiar with advanced mechanics, her Elemental Burst has no ICD (Internal Cooldown), which means you can trigger an elemental reaction with every single hit from her Pyronado. It can be Reverse Vaporize, Reverse Melt, Overload or even Burgeon.

You can keep these advanced tips in mind when you play her, and they should help you achieve your goal in Genshin Impact, whether it is to cruise through the combat comfortably or speedrun through the hardest sections of Spiral Abyss.

Check out the review of Genshin Impact and stay tuned for more character guides like this!