How to Play Yanfei in Genshin Impact

In the world of Teyvat, specifically in Liyue, magical creatures or illuminated beasts called adepti are highly respected, and humans even pray and give offerings to them. Some adepti married humans and gave birth to half-human half-adepti children just like Yanfei.

Although a half-Adeptus, Yanfei has lived her entire life in Liyue Harbor and is even more knowledgeable about the matters of the city than that of the adepti realm. She was born of an illuminated beast father and an ordinary mortal merchant mother and eventually became Liyue Harbor’s most sought-after legal adviser.

Yanfei is a Pyro Vision holder and a catalyst weapon user; therefore, all her attacks are elemental and deal Pyro damage. You can get her by making wishes on any character banner or selecting her as a rewarding character for the Lantern Rite event of Genshin Impact.

Play Style and Talents

Yanfei’s active and passive talents focus on dealing damage to opponents. The damage-boosting effects of the said talents will make you focus on charged attacks while making normal attacks in between.

When Yanfei’s normal attacks hit an opponent, she will be granted a Scarlet Seal of up to 3 stacks. Each Scarlet Seal decreases Yanfei’s stamina consumption. However, the Scarlet Seals will be consumed whenever a charge attack occurs.

Proviso, one of Yanfei’s passive talents, when consuming Scarlet Seals by using charged attacks, each Scarlet Seal will increase Yanfei’s Pyro damage by 5%. Make sure to have the maximum Scarlet Seals ready before making a charge attack to maximize the effect of this passive talent.

This nature of the Scarlet Seal makes you make normal attacks to collect the maximum stack of Scarlet Seals before making a charged attack.

Done Deal, Yanfei’s elemental burst talent, will automatically grant her the maximum number of Scarlet Seals and apply Brilliance.

The applied effect will automatically give Yanfei Scarlet Seals at fixed intervals without the need to hit opponents with normal attacks. Brilliance also increases the damage dealt by Yanfei’s charged attacks.

Another passive talent named Blazing Eye will further boost Yanfei’s role as a DPS character. This is because with Blazing Eye unlocked when a charged attack deals a critical hit, an additional instance of AoE Pyro attack will be triggered to deal additional damage to that opponent.

Role and Team Composition

Yanfei is a Pyro DPS character, which means her role is to deal damage and nothing else. She also needs to be on the field to continue her attacks and maximize her damage output. She does not have any talent that can provide support to the team.

Like most catalyst users, Yanfei is pretty weak on the defensive side. She easily loses health with low HP and DEF with just a few hits from the enemies. Not to mention her low resistance to interruption, making her attacks prone to getting canceled.

To help with Yanfei’s interruption problem, you will need a shielder in a team with her. Characters like Zhongli, Noelle, and Diona will do the job. You can also consider Xinyan if you do not have any other shield-making character on your roster. Xinyan should be the last option because her support capabilities boost a Physical Build team.

You can also try and unlock Yanfei’s level 4 constellation named Supreme Amnesty for the same reason. This will create a shield that lasts 15 seconds whenever she has her elemental burst talent.

For damage, you can compose an Elemental Reaction team with Yanfei triggering a Pyro-related Elemental Reaction, which is Melt, Overloaded, and reverse-Vaporize.

Melt Reaction teams may have Diona, Rosaria, or Kaeya apply Cryo to the opponent before Yanfei casts her Pyro attacks.

Overloaded Reaction teams need Electro characters such as Fischl, Raiden Shogun, Beidou, or even Lisa.

Weapon

For a DPS character, weapons that will increase Yanfei’s damage output should be the ones to be considered. Among the 5-star catalyst weapons, Yanfei can use the Lost Prayer to the Sacred Winds, Skyward Atlas, and Memory of Dust.

Although the Lost Prayer to the Sacred Winds is easily the best weapon if you want to build higher damage output, the Memory of Dust will also increase the shield’s strength around Yanfei with every hit she makes.

Among the 4-star catalyst weapons, Dodoco Tales is probably the best for Yanfei. It has a passive effect that when normal attacks hit an opponent, the damage of the charged attack increases for 6 seconds. Also, when a charged attack hits opponents, Yanfei’s ATK will be increased temporarily.

The passive effect of Dodoco Tales quite fits the combat play style of Yanfei’s kit.

The other catalyst weapons that still work well with Yanfei include Solar Pearl, The Widsith, and Eye of Perception.

If you are going for an Elemental Reaction build, you need higher Elemental Mastery; the weapons that give this bonus are Mappa Mare and Sacrificial Fragments.

Artifacts

From the Hidden Palace of Zhou Formula, the domain in Wuwang Hill, you can get the two artifact sets that give Pyro-related bonuses. These artifact sets are the Lavawalker and Crimson Witch of Flames.

For the Lavawalker, its 2-piece set will give a bonus resistance against Pyro damage, while using four pieces will also increase the user’s damage against targets inflicted with Pyro.

The 4-piece set of the Lavawalker works well with Yanfei because all of her attacks are Pyro. This means that any attack she does will inflict Pyro to the opponent, thus triggering the 4-piece set bonus.

The only downside of this set is that you need four pieces, which are tedious to farm. Not to mention the amount of resin you need to use to get a few artifacts with decent main and sub stats.

On top of the Pyro damage bonus from the 2-piece set of the Crimson Witch of Flames artifact, its 4-piece set will also increase the damage of the user’s Pyro-related Elemental Reactions Melt, Vaporize, and Overload. It also increases the Burning damage that enemies take from Yanfei’s Pyro attacks.

Crimson Witch of Flames’ 2-piece set is a common partial set used by most players for their Pyro DPS characters because of the Pyro damage bonus. You can pair this set with two pieces of other artifact sets like Gladiator’s Finale, Shimenawa’s Reminiscence, and Noblesse Oblige.