How combat works

Every guide here assumes you know what a Burst is, what Energy Recharge buys you and why people swap characters halfway through a fight. If any of that is new, this page will explain it. Not a strategy guide, just the vocabulary the rest of the site is written in.

Every character has the same three buttons

Whatever character you just pulled, they have these.

Normal Attack	Unlimited, usually a string of three to five attacks.
Charged Attack	Hold the same button. Costs Stamina, the bar in the bottom right.
Skill (E)	Their signature move, back after a cooldown of a few seconds. For a lot of supports this is the entire character.
Burst (Q)	The big one. Costs Energy rather than time, so you cannot just spam it.
Plunging Attack	Attacking on the way down from a jump. Most characters can ignore it.

When a guide says Skill (E) or Burst (Q), that is the button on your screen.

Everyone has one element

There are seven: Anemo (wind), Geo (rock), Electro, Dendro (plants), Hydro (water), Pyro (fire) and Cryo (ice). Each character has one of them. It never changes.

Their Skill and Burst deal that element. Their Normal Attacks are usually Physical damage instead, which reacts with nothing. Catalyst users are the exception: their ordinary attacks are already elemental. Some characters turn their own attacks into their element for a while, which the guides call infusion.

You fight with four characters and swap constantly

You control one at a time, called the on-field character. Swapping has a very short cooldown, but you can generally swap freely. Whoever is active is the only one taking hits.

Plenty of things keep running after a character is swapped out. A turret on the ground, a field on the floor, a buff on the party. So a support can come in, press two buttons and leave while their effect keeps working. That is what a guide means by off-field. It is why so many pages end with "swap off".

Two elements on one enemy make a reaction

Put one element on an enemy, then hit it with a different one. This is where most of your damage comes from, which is why the guides care about your team's elements rather than its characters.

Vaporize	Hydro + Pyro, either order. The hit that sets it off does far more damage.
Melt	Cryo + Pyro. As with Vaporize it greatly increases the damage of the hit that triggered it.
Overloaded	Pyro + Electro. An explosion that flings small enemies away.
Superconduct	Cryo + Electro. A blast that leaves enemies taking more Physical damage.
Electro-Charged	Hydro + Electro. Repeated shocks that jump between everything standing in the water.
Freeze	Hydro + Cryo. They stop moving until it thaws.
Swirl	Anemo on Pyro, Hydro, Electro or Cryo. Spreads that element over everything nearby.
Crystallize	Geo on those same four. Drops a shard. Walk over it for a small shield.
Burning	Pyro + Dendro. Sets them on fire for steady damage.
Bloom	Hydro + Dendro. Leaves seeds that pop shortly after. Electro on a seed is Hyperbloom, which chases something down. Pyro on a seed is Burgeon, a bigger explosion.
Quicken	Dendro + Electro. Primes the enemy so the next Dendro hit (Spread) or Electro hit (Aggravate) lands harder.

Anemo and Geo never react with Dendro. Elemental Mastery is the stat that makes reactions bigger, which is why it is on some builds while being worthless on others.

Bursts run on Energy

Most characters' Skills generate glowing particles. They fill the Energy ring around your character's portrait when they reach you. Once it is full you can use the Burst. Different Bursts need different amounts, which is the number the guides quote: 60 Energy, 70, 80.

The Energy Recharge stat fills that ring faster for each particle collected. When a page says "around 160%", that is what it takes to have the Burst ready when it comes off cooldown. You need less if a teammate shares your element, since a particle matching whoever picks it up is worth more.

A rotation is one lap of your team

Fights work as a loop. Bring in your supports, press their buttons, then swap to your damage dealer while all the support skills are running. When the buffs run out you go round again. That is a rotation, usually somewhere near twenty seconds. The numbered list on every guide here is that character's part of the rotation.

Reading the Gear section

Each character carries one weapon plus five artifacts. The flower and the feather are fixed, so the choices are the other three: sands, goblet, circlet, which is the order the guides list them in. Artifacts come in sets that pay a small bonus at two pieces and a bigger one at four, so "4-piece Noblesse Oblige" means four of your five slots.

When a guide says a character scales off Max HP or Defence, their damage is calculated from that stat, so piling on Attack does nothing. Crit covers Crit Rate and Crit DMG together.

What C1 and talent levels mean

Pulling a character you already own gives you a constellation instead of a duplicate, C1 through C6, each one adding something to the kit. C0 means you have none of them. Guides here are written for C0 and name a constellation only where it changes how you play. Talent levels are separate: the three buttons level up individually, which is why a guide sometimes says which to raise first.

That's all there is to it really. Pick a character and the only question left is which order to press things in.