Shenhe Guide and Best Builds for Genshin Impact

Strengths

• Amazing Cryo Support and Battery.
• Relative easy to build.
• Low field time requirement.
• Fixes some of the Single Target issues many Freeze comps have.

Weaknesses

• Personal damage takes a lot of investment to scale high.
• Requires high amounts of Energy Recharge.
• Her supportive skills are less valuable at high target counts.
• Only works effectively in Cryo/Anemo teams for most part.

Shenhe's Support build is super straight forward. You want to keep uptime of your Burst high, so Energy Recharge is important, but other than that Shenhe solely focuses on building ATK %, which many characters usually tend to avoid. This means that picking up artifacts for Shenhe is easier, as she does not compete with other characters.

Shenhe is a very simple character to gear. She wants ATK % as her Elemental Skill scales based on that. Energy Recharge should be prioritized to be able to burst and then she wants CRIT Rate / CRIT DMG, more so CRIT Rate if you use Favonius Lance on her. Since Shenhe is a Support, we utilize Noblesse Oblige to further boost her supportive side, especially since you want to get her Burst out to support your Cryo Main DPS.

Her best weapon is Calamity Queller, which is also her signature weapon. It perfectly fits her playstyle and sports the highest base attack in the game together with Song of Broken Pines. The problem with this weapon is that it does not really fit any other character. Unless you want to really invest in Shenhe, it is better to go for a few of her other readily available weapons like Favonius Lance. The particles from this weapon are great, especially if they are used to funnel particles to other characters. It also helps with the your Energy Recharge requirements.

On the topic of Energy Recharge, you want close to 190%-200% if your team consists of 2 Cryo. A 3rd Cryo character will reduce the needs to about 170%. As with any Favonius weapons, they tend to reduce the requirement somewhere between 10% and 20%. Ultimately, these are just recommendations with team composition and the content you generally run changing this. Try different levels of Energy Recharge and see what you find comfortable to play with.

As a Support, the field time for Shenhe is rather short, as you would want to spend as much time as possible on your Main DPS. You swap in Shenhe for her Skill and Burst essentially, and potentially a melee attack or two in the case that you use Favonius Lance and have not triggered the effect after using your Skill/Burst.

While Shenhe's Elemental Burst is a click and forget type of Burst, her Elemental Skill requires some consideration. Spring Spirit Summoning has both a Press and a Hold function. This changes the damage values of the second part of her Skill and also changes how the skill does damage. If you press the Skill, you dash forward, dealing damage in a line. If you Hold, then you trigger an AoE around you. Both methods deal Cryo DMG. Holding her Skill causes it to have a 5s longer duration and CD (10s vs 15s for both duration and CD).

The second part is called Icy Quill which is a flat Cryo DMG buff based on Shenhe's Attack. This DMG buff can trigger 5 times if you pressed the Skill or 7 times if you held. Furthermore, her 2nd Ascension Talent Spirit Communion Seal increases your Skill and Burst DMG by 15% for 10s when you press her Skill and increases the DMG of Normal/Charged/Plunging Attacks by 15% for 15s if you held her skill. These increases are party wide.

The way the Flat Cryo DMG increase from Icy Quill works is that it applies the damage onto the base damage the Talent would do, before CRIT/other DMG bonuses are applied. So the order of operations would be Character's Total ATK times the Skill DMG % on the talent. Then the Icy Quill DMG bonus applies to this, which is based on Shenhe's total Attack times the Coefficient listed in her Elemental Skill Talent. Then CRIT is multiplied onto that if it iss a CRIT and finally other DMG Bonuses like Cryo DMG increases. Only Shenhe's Attack is used in this calculation, the CRIT/DMG bonus calculations are from the active character. The DMG bonus triggers on any source of Cryo DMG except Cryo Swirls.

Shenhe's main team compositions all surround Cryo-based reactions such as Freeze and Melt. With her supportive utilities increasing the DMG of Cryo DPS such as Ganyu and Ayaka.

This premier team uses 3 different components to deal high amounts of damage. We utilize Anemo to bunch up our targets and to potentially shred Cryo while also applying Hydro. This will trigger Freeze, locking your targets in place while triggering Blizzard Strayer's 4-piece effect. This will be used on the Main DPS. The main components are Shenhe and either Ayaka or Ganyu, while Sangonomiya Kokomi and Kazuha can be flexed. Mona is the typical Hydro replacement and Anemo can use Venti, Jean, Sucrose or Sayu.

This team is used whenever you cannot reliably freeze your target. As with the first team listed, Kazuha is the best option to use, however loads of Anemo characters can be used. Jean and Sayu can both heal which can be a benefit. In this team, Ayaka is the Main DPS so Ganyu and Shenhe want to funnel their supportive DMG into her. The rotation to use here will differ slightly depending on which Anemo character you slot in, but you always want to start with Dashing on Ayaka to apply Cryo before swapping to Anemo to trigger Viridescent Venerer. Afterwards, swap to Shenhe to use her Burst and then press her Skill. Do the same for Ganyu before going into Ayaka to do a full rotation on her. After this you do a non-burst rotation, where you start on Anemo as Cryo should already have been applied.

This team is super simple and is a variation on other Ganyu Melt comps. Shenhe support's Ganyu's Charged Attacks and Bennett provides a Flat ATK buff to Ganyu and Xiangling while also providing particles for Xiangling. She in turn applies Pyro through her Elemental Burst, which you then trigger Melt off of with Ganyu.
The rotation should be as follows.

• Spring Spirit Summoning Held
• Divine Maiden's Deliverance
• Fantastic Voyage
• Passion Overload
• Pyronado
• Guoba Attack
• Trail of the Qilin
• 5x Charged Attack with Ganyu
• Trail of the Qilin
• 1x Charged Attack with Ganyu
• Passion Overload

The star of this team is Eula, as the entire team revolves around buffing her burst as much as possible. This is done through Shenhe's Skill, Raiden Shogun's Skill and the Artifact set that Zhongli usually runs, Tenacity of the Millelith. Furthermore, Superconduct reduces the DEF of the targets hits, further increasing the damage of Eula's burst. If you want to look more into how to play Eula, head over to her guide.