Tag Archives: Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact – Kokomi Guide

kokomi spash art — Image Credit: Hoyoverse

Ever since the release of Kokomi, there were multiple reviews on her that showed she wasn’t a good 5-star character. However, as a Kokomi main myself, I always thought she would have her time to shine. With version 3.2 released, Kokomi now is one of the most used characters in the spiral abyss. Furthermore, the release of Nilou (The newest released 5-star Hydro character at the time of writing) shows how valuable Kokomi is on her team. This guide will give a high-level overview of how you can build your Kokomi if you were lucky enough to obtain her.

Talents

Normal Attack: The Shape of Water

A basic normal attack that performs up to three consecutive attacks that deal hydro damage.

Elemental Skill: Kurage’s Oath

Summons a Bake-Kurage that will pulse every two seconds which heals nearby allies and deals hydro damage to nearby enemies.

Elemental Burst: Nereid’s Ascension

Kokomi’s most important talent for her kit. When activated, deals hydro damage to surrounding enemies, before robing Kokomi in a Ceremonial Garment.

The Ceremonial Garment increases Kokomi’s normal attack, charged attack, and Bake-Kurage damage by her max HP. Furthermore, when a normal or charged attack hits an enemy, it will restore HP for all nearby party members. Lastly, increases Kokomi’s resistance to interruption and allows her to walk on water.

Ascension 1 Passive: Tamanooya’s Casket

If Kokomi’s Bake-Kurage from her elemental skill exists at the time her elemental burst is activated, the duration of the Bake-Kurage is refreshed. This allows 100% uptime for the Bake-Kurage Kokomi sets.

Ascension 4 Passive: Song of Pearls

While Kokomi is in the Ceremonial Garment from her elemental burst, the normal and charged attack bonus Kokomi gains from her max HP will further increase based on 15% of her healing bonus. Overall a good damage boost for her kit.

UtilityPassive: Princess of Watatsumi

Decreases own party’s swimming stamina consumption by 20%. This passive does not stack with similar effects.

Unique Passive: Flawless Strategy

This Passive makes Kokomi not able to crit by decreasing her own crit rate by 100% in exchange for a 25% healing bonus. Therefore, please do not build your Kokomi with crit sub-stats as it is useless to her.

Artifacts

For her artifacts, her best-in-slot for damage would be using the 4pc effect from the “Ocean-Hued Clam” set. You can use other artifact sets such as the 4pc “Tenacity of the Millieth” which is also another good alternative. Basically, as she is a support, you would want to focus on an artifact set that can provide a buff to your party members like the “Tenacity of the Millieth” or use an artifact set that can provide good overall off-field damage such as the “Ocean-Hued Clam” set. Kokomi’s main and sub-stats to focus on is relatively simple as you do not need to build her with crit. The stats I would prioritize would be:

HP%
Energy Recharge
ATK%
Flat HP
Flat ATK

Other than her circlet you can generally build full HP% main stat. However, for the circlet, you can either go for HP% or healing bonus. I have built Kokomi with a healing bonus circlet because her ascension 4 passive increases her normal and charged attack damage further by the amount of healing bonus stat she has.

Weapons

For weapon choice, Kokomi’s best-in-slot is the Everlasting Moonglow. This weapon is specifically made for Kokomi and as of version 3.2, no other character can benefit fully from the weapons effect other than Kokomi. This weapon increases the user’s max HP and increases the healing bonus by 10% at refinement rank 1. It also increases normal attack damage by 1% of the max HP of the character equipping this weapon. If you do not own this weapon using the Prototype Amber or Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers is also a good option. Using Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers buffs the character taking the field by 48% of ATK at refinement rank 5. The Prototype Amber doesn’t have a very useful passive but its sub-stat gives the character 41.3% max HP which is useful for Kokomi.

Other Resources:

Keqingmains – Kokomi

Genshin Impact – Yae Miko Guide

Yae Miko splash art — Image Credit: Hoyoverse

Ever since the initial release of Yae Miko in version 2.5 of Genshin Impact, she was considered an underwhelming character. Being somewhat of a split scaling character where her passive talent boosted the damage of Yae Miko’s elemental skill-based of on elemental mastery, her kit had felt confusing among a lot of players. However, after version 3.0 had been released, this changed as reactions such as Aggravate and Hyperbloom brought a lot of potential for Yae Miko as a sub-DPS. Furthermore, the release of the Dendro archon, Nahida, in version 3.2 of Genshin Impact made Yae Miko a lot more viable in many teams, as Nahida provided constant Dendro application. In this guide, I will be explaining some of the talents, artifacts, and weapons you can use if you happen to obtain Yae Miko during her re-run in the second phase banner of version 3.2.

Talents

Normal Attack – Spiritfox Sin-Eater

Like most catalyst characters, Yae performs up to three consecutive attacks, that deal electro damage for her normal attack.

Elemental Skill – Yakan Evocation: Sesshou Sakura

The elemental skill is Yae’s most important part of her kit. Yae’s elemental skill will summon up to three totems that will deal single-target electro damage. Although it is single-target, if the enemies are closely grouped together, it is possible to hit multiple enemies at the same time. The totems must be placed so that they are connected to each other to maximize the damage dealt. Therefore it is important to position the totems correctly when using her elemental skill.

Elemental Burst – Great Secret Art: Tenko Kenshin

Yae’s burst is her secondary form of damage. Yae’s elemental burst will transform her totems from her elemental skill to a “Tenko Thunderbolt” that deals AoE electro damage. The amount of “Tenko Thunderbolts” that strikes an enemy will be based on the number of totems that are placed in the field. Therefore, it is important to have the max amount of totems already on the field before activating Yae’s elemental burst. As it has a long cooldown with a high energy cost, in most cases, you will not rely on Yae’s elemental burst for most of her DPS.

Ascension 1 Passive – The Shrine’s Sacred Shade

Each of the totems used in Yae’s elemental burst will reset the cooldown for each of the totems Yae can spawn from her elemental skill.

Ascension 4 Passive – Enlightened Blessing

Increases the damage of Yae’s totems from her elemental skill by 0.15% of Yae’s elemental mastery. Before the release of Dendro reactions, this talent was deemed useless by many people. However, as Dendro reactions utilize elemental mastery, this passive has become a lot more useful.

Utility Passive – Meditations of a Yako

Has a 25% chance to get one regional talent material when crafting.

Weapons

Like most limited five-star characters in Genshin Impact, her signature weapon “Kagura’s Verity” is her best-in-slot weapon. Providing Crit DMG as the sub-stat and providing a boost to damage for the wielder elemental skill, this weapon is fantastic for Yae Miko. As everyone does not own Yae’s signature weapon, weapons such as “The Lost Prayer” and “Skyward Atlas” are also excellent options to use for a five-star weapon. However, if you do not own any of those four-star weapon options such as “The Widsith” and “Solar Pearl” are also excellent options.

Artifacts

In general, the artifact set “Gilded Dreams” is her best-in-slot artifact if you are using her in a Dendro team composition, utilizing the Dendro reactions. As this artifact set provides 80 elemental mastery with its 2pc effect and provides ATK buffs for your party members depending on the number of different element types in your party, the “Gilded Dreams” artifact is an amazing choice to use. However, choosing a two 2pc artifact set that provides either: elemental mastery, atk%, electro damage, or energy recharge is also equally as good as using the 4pc “Glided Dreams” artifact set. As you can see in the image above, my Yae Miko does not use the “Gilded Dreams” artifact set and uses a combination of two artifacts utilizing their 2pc effects. Considering how Yae has a lot of viable options for her artifacts, it is generally advised to choose the artifacts you own with the better sub-stats.

Other Resources

Keqingmains – Yae Miko

Peer Review #3: Examining Abysmal Guides

Context

This website was created for a class at Simon Fraser University titled Publication of Self in Everyday Life. In this class, we are developing our own digital identities and assisting our classmates in doing the same. This is the third and final of these reviews.

In this review, I will provide my evaluation of the site AbysmalGuides.com in regard to its intended target audience.

The Target Audience and Content Strategy of Abysmal Guides

The author of Absymal Guides provides a description of their target audience and content strategy in their post titled My Ideal Audience.

In this post, they describe their ideal audience and the content they are creating targeted at this audience. Their ideal audience is beginners or new players of the game Genshin Impact. They then go on to explain that they will be creating posts that help introduce players to the game, as well as some posts describing some deeper nuances which will require the basic information knowledge they provide in their other posts.

Abysmal Guides has developed a clear and concise target audience and an appropriate content strategy to approach this audience.

While this target audience is concise, I do believe that it would be worthwhile for the author to further empathize with their target audience. With this information, they could further explore the demographics, psychographics, and behaviours they believe this group has to better create content suited to this audience. It is worth noting, that this is an analysis they may have done but not published on their site.

Examining the Content of Abysmal Guides

Abysmal Guides’ Landing Page

When an individual arrives at Abysmal Guides, they are greeted by text explaining the site’s purpose and a background image from the game Genshin Impact.

The text that immediately grabs the audience’s attention is a large “Welcome to Abysmal Guides”, after viewing this text the audience likely then goes on to view a caption saying “Just another blog about Genshin Impact guides”. I love the large welcome as it does make me feel welcome, but am a bit thrown off by the caption as it does not assert that this site is the place I need to be. I believe that using stronger language and saying something like “The Genshin Impact Blog for Beginners”, would confirm for the audience that they are on the correct website would improve the site.

The landing page then goes on to explain the two purposes of the site, the fact that it exists as a guide for Genshin Impact beginners and that it was created for a class. This context is something I am sure the audience appreciates as it depicts transparency and lends credibility to the site’s information.

Following this, the audience can then see a few recent posts on the site with clear categories above titles ensuring the audience viewing the site can get to the posts they need to see.

Posts

In examining the content of AbysmalGuides.com, I began by viewing the post Things to Know Before Starting Genshin Impact. This post is well-structured and easy to read, very appropriate for this site’s target audience. Reading it gave me a good overview of the game and has enabled me to an understanding that I did not previously have.

Next, I wanted to view a character page as the author described these types of posts as ones that could be viewed and understood only after gaining a basic understanding of the game, so I viewed the post Venti Character Build. This post is again well structured, providing an overview of the character then diving in to specific attributes of the character.

Conclusion Regarding Content

Abysmal Guides is well written. The content fits the audience very well, and the author has accomplished what they set out to do in their initial post. I am greatly appreciative of this and enjoyed viewing the site.

Affordances on Abysmal Guides

Affordances are defined as action possibilities provided to the actor by the environment. They are critical to making the uses of an item immediately obvious (Kaptelinin, n.d.). In evaluating Abysmal Guides’ design I examined the site through the lens of affordances.

Affordances That Make Sense

The menu bar on the top, provides an immediate easy way for users who know what they are looking for on the site to find what they are looking for.
The sidebar on the side of the screen has many good elements which make navigation of the site much easier.
The headers found on public posts make Abysmal Guides, guides easy to navigate. This is greatly appreciated and useful for the users as it minimizes the amount of time they need to spend on the page to find what they are looking for.

Affordances That Could Be Improved

Author title – Currently, all the posts are authored by “Admin”, changing the name of this poster might be worth exploring, though the title Admin does lend the posts some credibility.
Category colours – The categories above the post titles are coloured which makes the site much more visually intriguing, but these colours do not mean anything as they are randomly assigned which makes them confusing. If different colours went with different types of categories, it would be useful and intuitive.

Affordances That Could Be Added

An easy way to access the post Things to Know Before Starting Genshin Impact, immediately after arriving on the site would be a nice touch and fitting for the site’s target audience.
Headers could be added to the posts created for the course. They are currently on the posts for Genshin Impact which makes them easily navigable and it would be nice if the author carried these ideas over to their other posts.

Conclusion – Abysmal Guides Successfully Targets a Niche

Abysmal Guides does a fantastic job targeting their content at a niche. The site is functional and easy to use, providing users with a positive experience.

In the article Embracing the Power of Niches, Steve Pratt (2020) explains that targeting a niche can allow a content creator to reach audiences that others have not yet realized, and I believe that this site has done a fantastic job implementing this principle. This is evident in the fact that several of the posts on the site have comments from users thanking the author for the information they provide (for example, on the post Things to Know Before Starting Genshin Impact).

I greatly look forward to seeing what Abysmal Guide develops into in the future and thoroughly enjoyed evaluating the site.

References

Kaptelinin, V. (n.d.). Affordances. The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, Chapter 44. Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/affordances

Pratt, S. (2022). Embracing the power of niches. The Creativity Business. https://creativitybusiness.substack.com/p/embracing-the-power-of-niches

A Guide for Useful Resources for Genshin Impact

Introduction

This guide will be different from my usual Guides. As Genshin Impact is a game with a large fanbase there exist multiple sites like my own that try to help guide players to accomplish things in this game. However, as there is a lot that doesn’t mean that they are all the best. This is why for this week’s post I want to take the time and share some of my favorite websites and YouTube channels I like to see when I need help.

Channels

There are three Genshin Impact content creators on Youtube that I particularly like watching:

They all provide build guides similar to how I talk about character builds on my blog. However, in a more in-depth manner. Each of these channels has its own respective unique content that they also do aside from the character builds. One of which I like seeing is the DPS showdown videos of certain characters by IWinToLose Gaming. It is interesting to see what character is stronger than others and how they build the parties to deal with such high DPS.

Websites

The websites I access have their respective purposes. The Genshin Impact Interactive World Map is a useful resource that allows users to find materials, chests, puzzles, etc. This map is very useful when I need to collect materials to ascend my characters. By using this map I will know where to find the materials I need without any hassle. The other site I like to use is Paimon.moe. This site is a database that shows content from upcoming events to materials that are farmable today. Furthermore, it also has character guides similar to my content on this blog. It also includes a neat feature the “Wish Counter” that allows you to import your data on the character/weapon wishes you have done on your account. It will use this data and will give you information on how lucky you may have been with your wishes. Or even how often you reach the 5 – star pity.

My Online Self

Genshin Impact v3.1 Tier List

Character rankings of characters from v3.1 — Tier list created using tiermaker

For this week, I decided to compile a tier list for the characters in version 3.1 of Genshin Impact. The rankings are based on my experience with the character and how I think they are valued depending on their kit. Furthermore, I do not own all the characters so some of the characters are based on what I’ve seen on how people have used the characters. Depending on how you use the characters some character’s rankings can change and can differ depending on the person. There may be characters with that you may not agree with the rankings. So please note that this is all based on my experiences with each of the characters.