Zhongli 
✦ Geo Support Guide ✦
Welcome to my Zhongli Guide! We will cover basic info while also going deep into mechanics and playstyles!
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✦ Quick Infographic ✦
✦ Introduction ✦
Zhongli is a 5 star Geo Polearm user. He is a very flexible unit capable of fitting plenty of teams and to somewhat cover more than a role. He is the best shielder in the game and has a strong Burst. We will cover his 2 most common playstyles: Shield Bot and Burst Support. Some will also enjoy builds that focus on his Physical damage, which is surprisingly ok but still not ideal.
✦ Talents Overview ✦
✦ Elemental Skill: Dominus Lapidis ✦
Press
Creates a Stone Stele (Pillar).
• Cooldown 4s
Hold
Causes the following effects:
• Creates a Pillar (if their maximum number hasn't been reached)
• Creates a Jade Shield
• Deals AoE Geo DMG
• Drains a large amount of Geo Element from a maximum of 2 nearby targets (greatly damages enemies Geo constructs, Ores, Geo shields, etc)
• Zhongli gains a very high resistance to interruption while casting
• Cooldown 12s
Stone Stele (Pillar)
Deals AoE Geo DMG when created and resonates with nearby Geo constructs, dealing Geo DMG in AoE.
• It's considered a Geo construct and stays for 30 seconds
• Its Cast, Pillar DMG and Resonance DMG have a 50% chance of generation 1 Energy, with a 1.5s shared cooldown
• Can be climbed, can block attacks and can be destroyed by enemies attack or instantly by misplacing
• A maximum of 3 Geo Constructs is allowed, even in coop. Geo Main Character's Burst and opponents Constructs do not count towards this cap
• Both the Pillar DMG and the Resonance DMG snapshot, using Zhongli's stats at the moment of casting to calculate their damage
• The Resonance range is about twice the damage range of a Pillar
• Multiple Pillars will not resonate with each other but will both resonate with other Geo Constructs
Jade Shield
• Duration 20s
• Scales off Zhongli's Max HP
• Has a 150% DMG Absorption against all Elements and Physical DMG
• Characters protected will decrease nearby enemies Elemental and Physical RES by 20%
✦ Elemental Burst: Planet Befall ✦
Deals AoE Geo DMG and causes enemies hit to Petrify.
• Energy cost 40
• Cooldown 12s
Petrification
• Opponents affected cannot move nor act
• It lasts up to 4 seconds at Talent Level 10
✦ Normal Attack: Rain of Stone ✦
Zhongli's Normal, Charged and Plunge Attack talent. The Normal attack consists of up to 6 different strikes, with the 5th having 4 hits, making it a 9 hits total pattern.
✦ Ascension 1: Resonant Waves ✦
When the Jade Shield takes DMG it will increase any character's Shield Strength by 5%, stacking 5 times. Refreshing the Jade Shield will reset the stacks.
✦ Ascension 4: Dominance of Earth ✦
Zhongli deals bonus DMG based on his Max HP:
• Normal Attack, Charged Attack, and Plunging Attack DMG is increased by 1.39% of Max HP
• Elemental Skill's resonance and hold DMG is increased by 1.9% of Max HP
• Burst's DMG is increased by 33% of Max HP
These bonuses here are flat damage values that will scale with Crit and DMG Bonuses. This passive doesn't make building HP better than ATK for damage but it makes it very competitive and overall best option as it also increases your utility as a shielder.
✦ Talent Priority ✦
Burst Support
Elemental Burst > Elemental Skill >> Normal Attack
Shield Bot
Elemental Skill >> Elemental Burst > Normal Attack
Talent priority is very straight forward. If you are looking into maximizing Zhongli's Geo Resonance DMG prioritize your Elemental Skill first. A Main DPS Zhongli will, of course, have their Normal Attack levelled up, in every other case they can be left at Level 1.
✦ Artifacts
and Stats ✦
Artifact sets
Zhongli has a lot of freedom when choosing his artifact set. A Shield Bot build doesn't care about his damage as he's not supposed to Burst at all, so anything will do with Tenacity being the priority. A Burst Support build will instead choose damage for his Burst and Pillar while maintaining utilities for his team (Tenacity/Noblesse).
• 4 Tenacity of the Millelith
• 20% HP + 20% ATK Bonus and 30% Shield Strength for the entire team when your Elemental Skill hits
Triggering this set is not as straight forward and easy as it looks (especially at C0). It's easy for a solo pillar to miss and not grant the Tenacity buff so it works best in a team with more Geo constructs resonating, or C1. If you can make it work it's his best supporting option.
• 2 piece flex | Noblesse | Archaic | Tenacity | 18% ATK
Zhongli is very versatile and doesn't need to be forced into a set often.
• 4 Noblesse
• 20% Burst Damage + 20% ATK Bonus for the entire team when you cast your Burst
A great option for Burst Support, it also lines up perfectly with his Burst cooldown. Remember that it does not stack so only 1 Noblesse per team. And yes it buffs his own Burst.
• 4 Emblem
Another good option for Burst Support but do not build any unnecessary ER, good offensive stats are better. Also there might be other characters that use this set better.
• 4 Archaic Petra
• 15% Geo DMG + 35% DMG to a particular Element for the entire team when picking up a shield created by Crystalize
Zhongli needs to be the one picking the shield which makes this set very clunky. You can also only grant 1 buff at time so a mono Element team works best. Overall very niche, not recommended farming for but if it works it's great.
Main/Sub Stats
• Sands | ATK / HP
• Goblet | Geo / HP
• Circlet | Crit / HP
• Burst Support wants either ATK or HP Sands, Geo Goblet and Crit rate/dmg Circlet. Substats should prioritize Crit, Atk and HP while having enough ER.
• Shield bot only cares about HP.
ATK vs HP Sands
His Ascension 4 Talent makes it somewhat close but ATK still comes on top when prioritizing damage. HP, however, will offer both damage and a bigger shield.
✦ Weapon Calculations ✦
Assumptions
• 2 Noblesse + 2 Archaic Petra
• 80/90 C0 Zhongli with level 8 Talents
• LV 90 enemy
• 60/120 Crit (balanced according to weapon stats)
• Mid/high investment substats (with some HP% and Atk%)
• Geo Goblet and Crit Circlet
• No external factors (except his shield shred)
• Burst support (ATK sands)
• Burst support (HP sands)
• Shield bot
The only weapons considered are Favonius for team energy or Black Tassel and Homa for bonus HP. Black Tassel offers more HP than R5 Homa. You can go for damage options but in this build it won't matter much.
✦ Teams ✦
Teams can be very straight forward as he is appreciated almost anywhere and doesn't have much energy problems with a 40 cost Burst.
He is great at enabling risky carries like Xiao, Hu tao, Ganyu, Yoimiya etc to do their combos without being interrupted or damaged while providing a 20% RES shred and carrying utilities/buffs. He's also amazing in Geo teams since relying on Crystalize to activate the Resonance is not a great option.
He is not a good fit in Freeze teams and can sometimes be viewed as a "dps loss" in very meta and optimized teams, where there is no need for a shield and a more offensive unit is preferred.
Let's list some popular Zhongli team, but they are all very self explanatory:
Vape Yoi 
Hu Tao Double Hydro
Melt Ganyu 
ITTO 
Xiao's Bodyguard 
✦ Is Zhongli worth pulling?✦
Zhongli's main feature is a shield that brings an enormous comfort to your team, however, he is not a must have.
The more expert players/veterans have the option to not care so much about survivability and go all in for the offensive strategies. Zhongli still helps in that department with his universal RES shred but the rest of his kit, especially his burst, in very optimized teams, is not always able to keep up.
Overall, in my opinion Zhongli is worth pulling and should be skipped only in the aforementioned situations.
P.s. If you are a mobile player you should have him!
✦ Zhongli and Dendro ✦
As of version 3.0 there's no reaction between Geo and Dendro and even if it was a thing, it would still not change much for Zhongli.
A Quicken (Electro + Dendro) team, a Burning (Pyro + Dendro) team or a Bloom (Hydro + Dendro) team could all use Zhongli's protection and RES shred but more testing is necessary, stay tuned!
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