Sayu Build and Review: Genshin Impact

It’s honestly been a while since we had such a fun and insanely useful 4-star character not to mention several builds seem to work on Sayu and easily make her into one heck of a valuable teammate.

Even though initial impressions would suggest she’s a support healer, that couldn’t be more further from the truth because not only can she use viable artifact sets like Viridescent Venerer to shred enemies’ resistance but she can also provide competent damage in nearly any team composition thanks to her decent damage multipliers and the huge quantity of Swirls that come from her talents.

The only drawback that will get addressed later on in this guide is going to be the cost of her burst, which you can solve in multiple ways but to be frank – it still barely holds her back because there’s just so much value packed into it that anytime you activate it, it just makes things easier for the whole team.

First of all, her burst has a massive range when deployed, basically, the same size as Ganyu’s so inside the Abyss area, there’s always going to be someone getting hit and even though it only goes for single targets, the Anemo attacks will easily damage surrounding enemies because of Swirl reactions. But what’s even cooler about it is that the burst provides healing that scales off her ATK not to mention a secondary way she can heal would be through her passive talent that scales with her Elemental Mastery.

Then you have her elemental skill, which not only is extremely fun to use but is also pretty consistent when using the hold version because at first you would think it’s more of a utility than an actual source of damage but you’d be surprised just how many times you can trigger Swirl reactions, even if there is a hidden cooldown for the number of times you can damage the enemy.

There are also some fun tricks you can do, like creating the ice bridge when you have Cryo status on yourself or going crazy around the enemy and just doing the back and forth movement to squeeze out as many attacks as you can.

But most important of all – bursts like Xiangling’s Pyronado and Kaeya’s Glacial Waltz as well as several few other abilities will roll together with Sayu so you can cause a lot of havoc with her hold version of the elemental skill.

Still, you can get interrupted and knocked out of this mode by enemies, which means using a shield teammate might be a good idea and there is also that similar issue with Mona’s and Ayaka’s dash, where you can get stuck on small ledges.

But if you take everything about her, the healing, the elemental reactions, and support capabilities, it’s easy to see how awesome she is, not to mention there’s even some damage potential with her hold version of the skill.

But to have her achieve the best results possible, we need to take a look at her build. You probably couldn’t come up with a more ridiculous idea than a silent ninja assassin with a massive claymore but here we are.

Now aside from this remark, there’s a lot of freedom when it comes to picking what weapon you want to use on Sayu, although some will serve better than others if you’re unable to address her burst’s costly issue. The other thing would be the way her healing scales because Elemental Mastery will not only improve her Swirl damage but also give a slight edge to the heal it produces from the passive talent, while the burst itself scales with her ATK.

This is why we have 3 situations – if you’re not able to solve her energy issues, then getting Favonius or Sacrificial Greatswords as well as Skyward Pride or even the new Inazuma craftable weapon could be the way to go, however, if you want to hit for more damage with Swirls and achieve some additional healing on top of it, there’s Rainslasher that works even better if you use her with Hydro or Electro teammates or even a low-budget option of Bloodtainted Sword but even then, you could also go for Wolf’s Gravestone to boost your talents’ damage multipliers and use the passive itself to supply your team with the buff.

But don’t get overwhelmed with so many options, just pick one of the weapons mentioned because the real power of her lies in the utility and support.

Now as for the artifacts, the safest choice you could go for would be a full set of Viridescent Venerer just because of how insanely useful it can be for elemental teams and since that’s the majority of them, you won’t regret it almost 99% of the time. The exceptions would be if you’re running her together with someone like Sucrose or Kazuha, who also have the artifact set so it would be a little redundant instead of having something else, like a full-set of Maiden’s Beloved if you’re in the need to boost her healing.

But if you’re still struggling to obtain decent pieces of Viridescent, you can go for its 2 set bonus combined with the newest Emblem of Severed Fate, which will give a big boost in Energy Recharge and that’s something this little ninja will appreciate.

And for the stats themselves, you should consider getting Sands with Energy Recharge main-stat to help her out with more consistent burst but you could also go on both with ATK% and improve the heals but lose out on damage potential or even consider substituting one of them with Elemental Mastery, although it’s advised to do so if you’re going to use a weapon with Elemental Mastery as well.

You should also know by now that Swirl belongs to the Transformative reaction group which greatly benefits from characters level, so if you want to hit harder with Swirl reactions, getting her all the way to level 90 could be a good idea but again, this is only advised if you’re committed to Elemental Mastery build, otherwise you might want to allocate those resources elsewhere since we are talking about a supporting character here.

Finally, for her talent priority, you want to focus on her burst and then level up the elemental skill but this of course is in the context once you have both talents at level 6.

As for the normal attacks – well it’s up to you if you think you’ll be swinging that claymore for damage or instead it will only be used utility. But aside from this, you can probably already see how flexible it is when it comes to building her, which isn’t surprising, seeing how Anemo has always been one of those elements where things can get more tricky with stat priority, although the biggest goal when it comes to building Sayu should be trying to get that burst active the moment it’s off cooldown, so you can just drop it and continue with your rotation.

Making the right team-building choices is one thing you won’t need to worry about Sayu.

And that’s thanks to her Anemo element which has been the glue for nearly any team composition in the game aside from very few cases, like teams that utilize physical damage.

Still, it’s important to keep in mind what role she plays before you stuff her into one of your comps, and the easiest way to describe her purpose would be one that’s similar to Jean’s who is an offensive healer that kind of has crowd control with her elemental skill, which isn’t something Sayu can do but the rest of the stuff is pretty identical.

It’s also important to note that the Viridescent Venerer artifact set helps her get adjusted more easily into teams with elemental damage and you’ll lose out less than using any other set because of the raw synergy Viridescent offers over everything else.

So with all of these caveats out of the way, a really fun team with her was Mono Pyro, where she could easily shred enemies resistance with her deployed burst, as well as just quickly running over her targets, then switching back to other Pyro damage dealers and taking care of enemies with weakened resistances.

Another similar team was Freeze, which also took advantage of her healing and in fact, one of the drawbacks of running Freeze comp without Diona is the lack of healing, because while Xingqiu can do it pretty well, it’s quite often not enough and Sayu easily compliments him with her support which works out nice in the end.

But like with many 4-stars, sometimes their potential in team-building only becomes better once they have more constellations and for Sayu, the 1st constellation is amazing because it removes that annoying Health restriction and now heals and damages without any limitations.

It’s kind of ironic because it’s pretty similar to Bennet’s where he also had that Health limitation bypassed with 1st constellation unlocked.

Now the second one is kind of weird because it rewards you with a bigger damage increase for every second you keep rolling with her elemental skill but the difference isn’t that dramatic and you shouldn’t feel obligated to keep rolling till the very end unless of course, you want to have fun once in a while.

The 4th constellation helps her address the expensive burst cost issue, although the energy gain isn’t huge it’s a nice thing to have and helps shave off a little bit of Energy Recharge needed from the substats.

However, the biggest change to her would be the last constellation which now increases the burst’s attacks and healing per each Elemental Mastery point you have on her and the big thing here would be just how much more emphasis you can start putting on her when it comes to Elemental Mastery from weapons and artifacts.

All in all – this sleepy ninja not only works with a ton of team compositions but also gives the player a massive quality of life improvement with her passive, not to mention even just by getting the first constellation you already give her a big boost in terms of performance.

It’s so refreshing to finally see a 4-star that works as a flexible unit in your team. The last time we saw a proper 4-star support character was Diona while others like Xinyan and Rosaria acted as more specialized helpers but for Sayu, it’s pretty clear you’ll see her in a ton of team compositions because of her widely applicable skill kit.

And you have to admire the unique combination of Anemo and Claymore finally making an appearance in the game which has some hidden perks like being able to destroy Geo structures and shields, as well as the ability to stagger enemies with a couple of normal attacks.

But let’s not forget the real star of the show which is the elemental skill because it seems to be miHoYo puts a huge emphasis on mobility when it comes to Anemo character design and this time around, while you won’t get to traverse the air like Kazuha or Venti you are going to be role-playing as Sonic The Hedgehog as you’re barreling through unsuspecting Hilichurls.

Overall, the damage output and healing Sayu can provide are quite competent for a 4-star character, not to mention since Swirls got buffed back in the 1.6 updates, you can feel the damage when rolling around or leaving the burst deployed and doing its own thing, which is great because the less you need to worry about staying alive and producing enough damage, the better.

The other thing that makes it hard not to like her is the abundant amount of nice little perks she gives, from a passive talent that won’t startle Crystalflies, to her Claymore that can break Geo structures and even the fact she can easily use the Viridescent Venerer artifact set, making her into one mean ninja that can shred enemies’ resistance.

But as with everything in the world of Genshin, the drawbacks sometimes will creep in and the most glaring one is going to be her burst which has a huge 80 energy cost not to mention a long cooldown of 20 seconds, which can be a little conflicting when trying to perfect your teams’ damage rotation.

It’s also a bit annoying that just like with Bennett, her full potential is locked behind the 1st constellation, which couldn’t be more obvious miHoYo is trying to monetize on lower spenders of the game and encouraging them to get something that’s a big step up for her overall performance. Still, even at 0 constellations, you’re going to have a wild ride with her in the most literal sense and it will be hard not to find a team that won’t benefit in some way from her talents, so it’s great to see developers have finally added new support that is going to be loved by beginners and veterans alike.

Let’s just keep believing we can see more 4-stars like her in the future because it’s starting to get a little tiresome when you see every team running Benny and the book nerd.

Hope you enjoyed the review and build of Sayu – making these types of guides takes a lot of time, so you could help out by gently pressing the like button. Thanks for reading and see you soon.