One of the most important characters that came with the Sumeru region was the Dendro Archon herself, Nahida. The story she brought to Genshin Impact was one of the biggest landmarks in the development for not just the traveler but the whole world of Teyvat. However, once she made her appearance as a playable character, the entire meta of the game became shaken up with what’s essentially the best character in the game.
Not only is Nahida one of the best catalyst users, but she’s also one of the characters that push the amazing aspects of Dendro while offering an easy-to-execute playstyle that rewards constant reaction triggers and aggressive gameplay, which will end up drawing huge numbers. Before we talk about what makes Nahida so great and why everyone is going crazy for her, let’s remind our readers that Wccftech looks at things from a technical level instead of style and story. So, we’re going to talk about what makes her so valuable for almost any team.
Let’s start with her element, which most people have stated to be one of the reasons behind the “redemption” of the less-demanded Electro. Dendro is an element that purely relies on specific reaction chains over anything else. When you combine Dendro with Hydro, you generate cores that will Bloom and burst after six seconds. Using an Electro or Pyro attack will make those cores become homing projectiles or explode in a burst of fire.
As I said in my previous article on Genshin Impact, the game revolves around Elemental Reactions. Until this point, the game revolved around Amplifying Reactions, allowing users to increase the damage of certain moves through a reaction. This is why you saw characters like Hu Tao being so popular since the damage that she could do with a single strike was ultimately amplified thanks to Amplifying Reactions such as Melt and Vaporize.
Transformative Reactions, which were almost as popular but not as widely used, are more of a Damage Over Time (DOT) effect in which the reactions do their own kind of damage rather than something directly tied to the characters themselves. The Dendro element as a whole relies on Transformative Reactions first and foremost, with characters like Tighnari, Dendro Traveler, and others like them using those to bring support, more often than not in an AoE effect.
However, when it comes to Genshin Impact’s early Dendro users, they were impressive but limited in some regards. Tighnari, the game’s first 5-star Dendro character, had the issue where his projectile, skill, and burst would fail to reapply Dendro against more than one target and a small radius. Colleil and Dendro Traveler fixed this issue by having an AoE application, but it could very easily be limited by the enemies’ ability to walk away from the AoE.
Not helping things was the game’s Internal Cooldown (ICD) preventing constant reapplication of certain elements. It was one of the biggest reasons behind the lack of popularity with this particular subset of reactions, as the knowledge you needed was extremely technical and niche.
In comes Nahida, Sumeru Region’s Archon and lovable Cinnamon bun, with a kit that not only fixes the issue of Dendro reapplication by allowing more Reactions chains with higher efficiency but also has a kit that provides massive support for almost any composition in terms of Support thanks to her buffs and the overall effectiveness of the chains. Additionally, she manages to streamline the concept of Transformative Reactions while rewarding characters for doing them.
Her Skill “All Schemes to Know” is a fantastic skill that ‘tags’ anything she can look at with a special Seed of Skandha. This tag essentially acts as a perpetual Dendro reapplication stamp that will trigger an elemental reaction on the opponent and any other opponent connected to them. Thus, she essentially allows for constant Dendro Elemental Reaction chains without the need to be concerned about trivial things such as the Area of Effect or whether the application is effective against single or multiple targets.
Not only that, but the tag will remain even after the reactions are done and will persist for 25 seconds, meaning that she can consistently reapply it since her Skill Cooldown is only 5 seconds on Press and 6 seconds on Hold. This means that Nahida will encourage non-Dendro users to use their elements to trigger constant reactions like Hyperbloom, Burgeon, Burning, and Bloom to dispatch large rooms of enemies quickly.
What’s more, Nahida’s Elemental Burst “Illusory Heart” rewards the presence of Pyro, Hydro, and Electro characters with unique buffs based on the element of the characters in the party. As such, she becomes an extremely flexible character whose utility varies depending on the composition of the party; since she is indiscriminate, there’s no real wrong pick when it comes to setting a composition that enables this very concept and makes the game fun to play even against overleveled enemies or overwhelming odds.
Nahida is one of Genshin Impact’s most F2P-friendly characters as well since her kit is this amazing without the need to look out for her Constellations. While yes, her C1 and C2 are almost invaluable with how much they not only buff her Burst but also the Dendro Elemental Reactions, they wouldn’t mean much if her kit wasn’t this loaded in the first place.
Her flexibility has even allowed some cheeky players (including myself) to find new strategies that would push other elements like Cryo into the spotlight and even bring new shine upon previously thought irrelevant units. So, if you are reading this article looking for reasons to pull for Nahida, you have plenty of reasons to do so now. She’s incredibly lenient for free-to-play players, she streamlines one of the most technically advanced aspects of Genshin Impact, and she also provides incredibly invaluable supportive aspects to almost any team she’s in.
Of course, she has her weaknesses, like her inability to properly deal with fewer targets or the over-reliance she would have on team compositions compared to other, more independent DPS or support units. But Nahida more than makes up for it with her incredible buffs and flexibility for almost any team composition. She also manages to work well with a lot of Catalysts rather than having to stick to her signature weapon.
