Genshin Impact Qiqi guide: weapons, artifacts, and more

Qiqi is potentially the best support and healer in the game. If you’ve been lucky enough to roll Liyue’s most adorable zombie, here’s how to make the most out of this Cryo healer and enabler.

Genshin Impact Qiqi guide

Weapons

For all that she’s a healer and an enabler, Qiqi has a bite to her damage. Her abilities all scale off her attack and hitting enemies in the face, and that means she needs a weapon to match even if you want to use her for her supportive qualities

Skyward Blade

(Picture: miHoYo)

Qiqi’s healing scales off her Attack, and how often and hard she hits enemies when she uses her Elemental Skill and Burst. Sky-Piercing Fang means she can do all of that so much more efficiently, and it comes with Energy Recharge to ensure her Burst is up even more often.

If you want to use Qiqi as more than just a healer, but also to offer a decent amount of burst damage, Skyward Blade is a great choice

Sacrificial Sword

(Picture: miHoYo)

The best option in the game right now for a primarily supportive and enabling playstyle on Qiqi. Energy Recharge means that Preserver of Fortune is up more often, while Composed means more uptime for her Elemental Skill, Herald of Frost - especially when it can activate the ability with any of its extended damage after summoning, not just the initial burst!

Heals and skills up nearly permanently; what’s not to love?

The Flute

(Picture: miHoYo)

A more aggressive option than the previous two, straddling the line between support and DPS. The key is getting to 5 Harmonics and getting massive healing from the AoE attack courtesy of Chord synergising with Qiqi’s Elemental Skill and Burst on-hit healing.

You’ll have your abilities up less often with this choice, but you’ll make excellent use of them when they are active.

Aquila Favonia

(Picture: miHoYo)

A final nod has to go towards Aquila Favonia. Qiqi is a more than capable DPS with a lot of inherent longevity thanks to her ability to heal her way through tough incoming damage. Aquila Favonia indexes into that: facetank the enemy with your skills running, laugh off the damage with your healing, and watch the enemy murder themselves as Falcon’s Defiance heals you even more and retaliates for 200% of your ATK.

It’s… kind of ridiculous, frankly.

Some other options include Black Sword (DPS), Favonius Sword, and Cool Steel.

Artifacts

(Picture: miHoYo)

There are two major supportive artifact combos that are run on Qiqi: 4-piece Maiden Beloved for maxed out healing for the party and 2-piece The Exile with 2-piece Scholar for maximum Energy Recharge, and therefore more Elemental Bursts. Both are very potent and double down on Qiqi’s utility for a team.

Another option is full Noblesse Oblige, which offers a more powerful Elemental Burst and increases your teams’ attack, in turn increasing the amount of healing they receive from damaging opponents who have Fortune-Preserving Talismans applied. It’s less healing generally, but it is more damage.

• Read more: Genshin Impact Mona guide: weapons, artifacts, and more 

For a DPS focused Qiqi (the Aquila Favonia build is fun), you’ll want full Gladiator’s Finale or 2/2 +18% ATK sets. More attack means more damage, and all Qiqi’s abilities scale on attack - a win-win.

The all-important hunt for the Cocogoat, source of coconut milk. (Picture: miHoYo)

Artifact Stats

Unlike most supportive characters, Qiqi does need to bring some damage to the table even in a purely healing focused build. These stats are likely to find you the most success on the Zombie Girl:

Stat priority (Support/Enabler)

• Energy Recharge
• ATK
• Healing Bonus Circlet
• Elemental Mastery

As with most DPS builds, if you do go that route with Qiqi you’ll want to prioritise Crit (Rate, then DMG) followed by Attack. You can also run a Physical DMG Goblet if you want, and Energy Recharge and Healing Bonus are still useful to keep your HP up through drain-tanking!

Play Patterns

One of the great strengths of Qiqi is her Elemental Skill and Burst persist even when she is off the field. Her Elemental Skill heals the active character and damages nearby enemies (great for setting up Cryo reactions, especially with Qiqi’s Life-Prolonging Methods skill), while her Burst paints a juicy target on Talisman-afflicted enemies for other party members to beat like a healing piñata.

You are well within your rights to play Qiqi purely to fire off her abilities and switch to your DPS focused characters. In many comps, that will be the optimal way to play.

(Picture: miHoYo)

That said, there are a couple of additional things to keep in mind:

One, when Qiqi is the active character and attacks enemies with Herald of Frost on the whole party is healed, not just the active character. This is very useful when you need to mass heal, or your desired character switch is too risky - this is a safe way to heal.

If you need context, think how Barbara's Elemental Skill works for reference.

Two, Qiqi can apply Fortune-Preserving Talismans to enemies by attacking them thanks to A Glimpse into Arcanum. If you are waiting on cooldowns, you can use her basic attacks to apply a talisman, then switch out to your other characters as you would post-Elemental Burst.

For DPS Qiqi just fire off your abilities and get facetanking! You’re relying on your healing empowered basic attacks from her Elemental Skill and the healing from all damage courtesy of the Talismans from her Elemental Burst to outlast and out sustain your enemies’ damage.

This gets more potent from Constellation Level 2 when she unlocks Frozen to the Bone, and gets an additional 15% DMG from normal and charged attacks against enemies affected by Cryo.

• Read more: Genshin Impact Barbara guide: weapons, artifacts, and more 

As for party members, Pyro is always a good choice due to Melt (a lot of single target reaction damage), as is Electro for Superconduct and Hydro for Melt. Diluc, Tartaglia(Childe), and Keqing are all great DPS choices to have Qiqi back up, as are people like Fischl, Lisa and Xiangling.

And that’s the complete guide to Qiqi! Go forth and quest for the Cocogoat!