Yelan

✦ Hydro Sub DPS Guide ✦

Welcome to my Yelan Guide! We will cover basic info but also go deep into her mechanics and playstyles

If you need help building your characters you can join our community at https://discord.gg/uZeRYTUor catch me live at https://www.twitch.tv/sevenevenpls

✦ Quick Infographic ✦

✦ Introduction ✦

Yelan is a Hydro Sub DPS that is forever going to be called "5-star Xingqiu" as their Bursts (and hair style) are quite similar, but in reality Yelan trades utilities for damage which comes as a pro or a con in various teams.

Her kit relies around a very high single target damaging Burst with a 70 energy cost, making her need a proper battery or high amounts of ER. Its damage scales entirely from HP which makes her weapon selection very F2P friendly.

✦ Talents Overview ✦

✦ Normal Attack: Stealthy Bowshot ✦

Yelan's Normal, Charged and Plunge Attack talent. She doesn't usually auto attack much but it might be beneficial to wave in a quick auto just to trigger your Burst while quick swapping, Normal attacks scale off her ATK so they will always deal low damage on a normal build.

Breakthrough Barb

When Yelan has been out of combat for at least 5 seconds she will get a Breakthrough buff, causing her next Charged Attack to deal AoE Hydro DMG.

• Damage based on her Max HP

• Has 80% decreased charge time

• It can be used as an opener for some quick damage

• Her right hand's bracelet will glow when a Breakthrough Barb is ready

"out of combat" means out of any enemy aggro/range and is for both on-field and off-field. During combat the only way to get a Breaktrough is via Elemental Skill.

✦ Elemental Skill: Lingering Lifeline ✦

Dashes marking nearby opponents with a Lifeline that will explode at the end of her movement, dealing Hydro DMG to any marked opponent based on Yelan's HP. Tapping the Skill will make her dash for a small distance. While Holding the skill will make the player able to control her movement for up to 3 seconds, pressing the Skill again will stop it early.

• Cooldown 10s

• Generates 4 Elemental Particles when hitting at least one enemy

• Each opponent market with Lifeline, when exploded will grant Yelan a 34% chance to gain Breakthrough (Special Charged Attack)

• When the Lifeline explodes, small enemies will be slightly pulled towards Yelan

✦ Elemental Burst: Depth-Clarion Dice ✦

Deals AoE Hydro DMG and creates an Exquisite Throw.

• Energy cost 70, Duration 15s, Cooldown 18s (83% uptime)

Exquisite Throw

Follows the active character unleashing coordinated attacks, dealing Hydro DMG based on Yelan's HP (if you are familiar with Xingqiu this Burst is somewhat similar)

• Occurs every 1 second when a Normal Attack is used by the active character

• Also occurs each time Yelan's Lifeline explodes hitting enemies (Elemental Skill)

• Tri***** by your Elemental Skill will not count towards the 1s cooldown of Exquisite Throw

• Only the last character hit by Lifeline's explosion is going to also be hit by Exquisite Throw

✦ Ascension 1: Turn Control ✦

When the party has 1/2/3/4 Elemental Types, Yelan's Max HP is increased by 6%/12%/18%/30%. Don't focus too hard on this Talent as resonances can make up for it.

✦ Ascension 4: Adapt With Ease ✦

If an Exquisite Throw (Burst) is in play, your own active character deals 1% more DMG. This increases by a further 3.5% DMG every second. The maximum increase to DMG dealt is 50%.

A really good talent as DMG% is one of the best bonusses to get, the flaw is that it slowly ramps up and lasts only 1 second at its full potential.

It is not snapshotable and does not refresh when switching between characters.

✦ Talent Priority ✦

Elemental Burst >> Elemental Skill > Normal Attack

This priority is the obvious choice as most of her damage comes from her Burst. Normal Attacks can be left at 1 if your rotation does not include a Breakthrough attack (Charged Attack).

✦ Artifacts and Stats ✦

Artifact sets

• 4 Emblem of Severed Fate

This is by far her best set because of Yelan's high energy demands paired with a Burst centric kit.

• 2 piece mix | Emblem | Noblesse | Tenacity | HoD

Your options if you really don't have a good Emblem set or you are playing with very low ER requirement (probably never)

• 4 Noblesse Oblige

There are way better candidates to hold this party-wide buff (that doesn't help Yelan at all). Avoid it generally.

Main/Sub Stats

• Ascension stat | 19.2% CRIT Rate

• Sands | ER% or HP%

Usually ER Sands on a non-ER bow and HP Sands on ER bows. You should never use anything other than ER or HP as she doesn't scale from ATK at all nor she ever wants EM.

• Goblet | Hydro DMG

No doubts here but in lack of a good Hydro Goblet an HP one will be fine. In very rare occasions it can be even better, for example when stacking many DMG% buffs.

• Circlet | Crit DMG / Crit Rate or HP

On average Crit will always be better but a good HP circlet might come on top for your overall damage.

Your substats will focus on ER%, Crit and HP%. You need to meet Yelan's energy requirements first then work on your Crit and, to a lesser extent, HP.

How much ER?

It will come down to team, weapon and if you are able to cast your Elemental Skill once or twice per rotation.

Let's have a brief look at how much you are gonna need on average:

• 1 Elemental Skill cast • 230 - 250%

• 1 Elemental Skill cast with Favonius • 190 - 210%

• 1 Elemental Skill cast with Double Hydro and Fav/Sac • 140 - 160%

• 2 Elemental Skill cast • 170 - 190%

• 2 Elemental Skill cast with Favonius • 135 - 150%

• 2 Elemental Skill cast with Double Hydro and Fav/Sac • 110 - 120%

DISCLAIMER: These calculations are average and might not apply directly to your team and rotation. Use a calculator to know for sure or just test it in game.

✦ Weapons ✦

Yelan Lv 90 C0, Talents lv 9, No external buffs, 4 Emblem, Lv 90 weapon

HP Sands with ER Weapon / ER Sands with non-ER Weapon - Hydro DMG Goblet - Crit Rate or Crit DMG Circlet

Damage from 1 Skill and 30 Burst procs.

DISCLAIMER: The above charts do not take into consideration teams and rotations. Your account and stats might have different results.

It is vital to remember that Yelan's entire kit scales off HP. Meaning that any ATK you might have will make zero difference to your damage. That kind of rules out almost every ATK Bow. It also makes high base ATK weapons less valuable as the higher the base ATK the lower the substat and vice versa (see Fav vs Sac).

In cases like this the biggest winners are often F2P weapons and... 3 star ones! As we can see from the chart Recurve Bow and Sligshot are very competitive.

Overall it is recommended to use:

• Favonius Warbow as it works fine for her damage while also giving your team extra energy + it's F2P (you get one for free)

• Aqua Simulacra is her best in slot and signature weapon. Requires ER% Sands or insane batteries but will give back a lot in terms of damage

• Sacrificial Bow works as well as Favonius in most cases, if not better. It obviously has a different rotation (double E) that makes it easier to get your Burst back, slightly less damage due to low ER substats (for Emblem set)

• Elegy for the End works great in teams that use its team buff well (Hu Tao)

• Fading Twilight has the same stats as Sacrificial Bow but trades the double E for some extra damage (free R5 with the 2.7 event)

• Any Crit weapon works fine but remember to not ignore Yelan's big ER% requirements

• 3 star options like Recurve and Slingshot are seriously good and should be used by anyone who's short of a Fav/Sac bow

• Fun fact, if you play Mouun's Moon you can leave it at lv 1

✦ Yelan vs Xingqiu ✦

Before talking about Yelan's teams we will have a small section where we compare and list her differences with Xingqiu as they share many teams.

The main difference between these 2 units is a trade between utilities and damage. Let's go over some pros on both of them:

✦ Xingqiu's pros

• Resistance to interruption (Rain Swords)

• Damage reduction (Rain Swords)

• Higher Hydro application (C6 unlocks more hits on his Burst + when Rain Swords are active they will apply Hydro to melee enemies)

• Faster cast times

• Some healing

• C2 decreases Hydro RES by 15%

• 4-star rarity, easier to obtain

✦ Yelan's pros

• More damage

• A ramping up DMG buff for the active character (up to 50%)

• More damage..

✦ Teams ✦

Hyperbloom/Burgeon Enabler

As an unit with a high rate Hydro application, Yelan can be great for Bloom and subsequent Hyperbloom and Burgeon archetypes. Bloom might not be an amazing pair, even for Nilou teams, but still viable.

Hyperbloom and Burgeon teams can instead utilize 1 or 2 Dendro units to match Yelan's Hydro application provide as many Blooms as possible for Electro or Pyro units to react with.

Hu Tao teams

Yelan can enable Hu Tao to Vaporize her Charged Attacks but it comes down to what combination of attacks you are using and if there are extra sources of Hydro, Pyro or other elements. The timing of Hu Tao's Blood Blossom can also be a problem for the Hydro gauge on your enemy.

The very common Hu Tao combo of *** (1 Normal + 1 Charged) getting cancelled by either a jump or a dash will work (just barely), while N2C for example applies too much Pyro. A way to make everything simpler is going C2 Yelan but I will not focus much on it as I can't personally test it.

Some Hu Tao / Yelan tips for team building:

• Avoid Double Geo (a common Hu Tao team) as Geo will weaken the Hydro Aura

• Any infused Anemo Talent should be infused with Hydro to make sure your Vaporizes are consistent

• Any extra Pyro application will be too much for Yelan alone to maintain (Thoma)

• Xingqiu allows you to have another Pyro unit in your team (Xiangling for example)

Yoimiya teams

Yoimiya can function very well as a Main DPS for Yelan, using all her usual teams. Adding the Electro element here is easier.

Raiden teams

Yelan's high Burst dmg coupled with her DMG buff makes her really good in Raiden teams. You can get creative team building here and include many other units.

Taser

Taser teams excel at dealing damage in both AoE and single target scenarios but the trade between Xingqiu and Yelan is unfortunately very noticeable as often they don't run a support that can heal or shield so Xingqiu's defensive abilities help. As an Hu Tao team you are trading comfort and safety for damage. Kuki Shinobu might help this team but decrease overall damage.

Mono Hydro

Do you like blue numbers? A lot of them?

There is not really a point in playing mono Hydro but as we get more and more units it's becoming a fun way to play.

Freeze

There're other better Hydro units for a Freeze team so Yelan is not recommended but she can work.

✦ Constellations ✦

Green = Very good

Yellow = Average

Red = Not important or worth

C1 • Extra Skill cast is good for getting away with less Energy Recharge (basically a free Sac Bow proc)

C2 • Extra Hydro application will help teams where she wants to be a Vaporize enabler but it might not be necessary

C3 • + 3 Level to her Burst Talent

C4 • HP buff for your team, only useful for a handful of characters

C5 • +3 Levels to her Skill Talent

C6 • A different playstyle that will be fun and incredible in speedruns

No Constellation is mandatory for Yelan.

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