Who Tao?
Introduction
Hu Tao is a Pyro polearm character. She has unparalleled statistical advantage during her elemental skill but is unparalleled shit during her cd. Due to her elemental skill constraints, she's hard slotted into DPS with downtime. She has a phasing ability on her dash that actually lets her move through smaller enemies.
Talents
Normal Attack: Hu Tao has a 6-hit basic attack sequence. Her charged attack is a drilling forward attack similar to Xianglings. Neither are really relevant unless you're in your elemental skill buff and which one you use will depend on whether you have C1 or not.
Elemental Skill: Hu Tao's elemental skill is pretty much the entirety of her kit since whether or not she actually does damage is entirely dependent on whether or not her buff from it is active. When she uses her elemental skill, she consumes 30% of her current hp and self-buffs which does the following: converts all her attacks to non-overridable pyro damage, gives her attack based on her max hp up to 400% of her base attack, increases her interruption resistance, and applies blood blossoms to enemies from charged attacks. The buff lasts for 9s or until Hu Tao leaves the field and has a 16s cd. Attacks will generate 3 elemental particles at most 2 times during the buff (one at the start, one at around halfway through), so energy generation is quite good. Blood blossoms applied to enemies deal damage every 4s and last 8s.
Elemental Burst: Hu Tao's elemental burst is a 15/60 that does AoE Pyro damage. Hu Tao regenerates max hp based on the number of enemies hit, up to from 5 enemies. When Hu Tao is below 50% hp, both the healing and damage are increased by ~25%.
1st Ascension Passive: When the buff from Hu Tao's elemental skill ends either from natural duration or her leaving the field, all other characters in the party gain 12% crit for 8s.
2nd Ascension Passive: When Hu Tao is below 50% hp, she gains 33% Pyro dmg%.
Extra Passive: 18% for a sus dish whenever you cook something, guess you at least have a bonus passive for all food now lol?
Constellation
C1: When she has her self-buff, Hu Tao's charged attacks do not consume stamina.
C2: The damage dealt by blood blossoms applied by her charged attacks when self-buffed increases by 10% of her max hp and spirit blossoms are also applied by her burst.
C4: When enemies with blood blossoms are defeated, all party members except for Hu Tao gain 12% crit for 15s.
C6: Hu Tao will ignore one lethal strike every 60s. If she takes a would be lethal strike or her hp falls below 25% max otherwise, for 10s she gains 200% elemental and physical resistance, her crit rate is increased by 100% and her resistance to interruption increases. Can only occur once every 60s.
Equipment Recommendations
For 5* weapons, your obvious choice is Staff of Homa. The reasoning is two-fold: Hu Tao naturally has high HP and wants to stay below 50% and would thus benefit the most from its affix, and its HP increase would lessen her requirements on artifacts to hit her self-buff cap. At level 13 e, Hu Tao needs ((106+608)*4)/.0715 = ~39944 to max out the attack bonus from her buff. Subtracting out the HP you get from flower main stat, you need 35164 HP. Since Hu Tao has 15552 base hp, that means she needs 35164/15552 = ~2.26 or ~126% bonus hp%. Since Homa gives 40% at R5 and an hourglass gives ~46%, that means you need 40% from artifact substats or other sources. Since each hp substat on average gives 5%, that means you would only then need 8 total rolls on average on substats to max out. In addition, since you would have around 40,000 HP, you'd get around 640 attack without the enhanced passive and an additional 720 below 50%, which is more than a max stat max level Bennett buff (which you wouldn't use with her if you had this set-up since you'd be giving up 720 attack and 33% pyro dmg for ~1200 attack and 15% pyro dmg at best (unless you're literally nuking 1 group of enemies when you can get all the effects stacked)).
Of course, the other 5* weapons are okay on her too, but nowhere near as good. Jade-winged and Vanquisher both have the issue that her base attack is so low that she's the equivalent of a 4* character with a 4* weapon when she uses a 5* weapon, so their atk% buffs are much less effective and she's overloaded with attack from her self-buff anyways. Spine is good since it gives crit and attack speed and she can trigger the damage passive, and it helps charge her burst which does pretty good damage too. For 4*'s, Lithic with Liyue composition, Deathmatch, and Blackcliff are all pretty much the same as stat sticks. Dragon's Bane is good if you're going vaporize build on her (and isn't diluted since no atk% like the other 3) but you're literally doomed on base attack if you use it (same with Deathmatch). If you're F2P and have no other options, you have to use Starglitter which kind of feels bad since you can never get the second stack on the affix, but at least you can amp your damage kind of and charge your burst faster.
As for Artifacts, I feel like miHoYo literally giga-trolled her. 2 Witch is a dead giveaway, but everything else feels bad. You could go 4 Witch just for Vaporize/Melt amp, but you'll never stack the 4 set. Her base atk sucks so 2glad gets pretty bad value. While her ult does damage, it's not overwhelming that you'd go 2 noble. You could go Bolide, but the same issue where your blood blossoms and burst together are also relevant damage. 4 Noblesse would buff the downtime characters in your party but she has so much attack it's buff is almost useless on her. Essentially, I actually have no idea what you'd go on her without feeling bad, but 2 witch is safe at least since she has relatively low dmg% sources and it won't get diluted as much.
Wish Recommendations
Before you pull for Hu Tao, you need to understand that at best, she's a downtime DPS. That means you at least need a developed support cast or another downtime DPS (Pre C6 Childe or Low ER/Bad Team Comp Xiao as examples) unless you want to do negative damage half the time. She can be used for anything less than that, such as Burst support, but at most she's going to have empty periods and thus cannot be an entire main DPS.
Verdict: If you have the set-up required and are okay with downtime and want a DPS, then pull for Hu Tao. If you want a nuke with some support abilities, you can also pull for her. Otherwise, you can skip.
If you do pull for her, C1 is somewhat important for DPS since spamming charge attacks gives you more damage. While you technically can spam charge attacks throughout that entire duration without C1 if your stamina bar is full, I hope you like not dodging both between your charge attacks for repositioning/avoiding attacks and during downtime so you can get your stamina back for your next phase. Overall, it's almost certainly going to net you more DPS and it's also more comfortable for use, so there's merit for it. C2 approximately doubles your blood blossom damage, which isn't a particularly large portion of your damage and more relevant with C4 anyways. C4 is the constellation you want for support, since with C2 it enhances her burst support ability of using e, using burst to apply blossoms, and then swapping out to give your Main DPS 8s of 12% crit and multiple sources of additional 12% crit (sucks if you're fighting bosses though since you can't proc it without killing them anyways). C6 is kinda meme and only useful if you have poor hp management, or plan around just suiciding to get that berserker mode and murdering everyone in 10s, since it's literally 50s downtime.
Recommendation: C0 is fine, C1 for DPS role damage increase and ease of use, and C4 for optimal support ability. C6 if you're bored and have cash to burn.
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