Ifa

4★

AnemoCatalystHealer

TL;DR

Ifa's Skill puts him in the air on his bird. Up there his Normal Attacks turn into darts that heal the whole party rather than hit anything hard. While he hovers, a passive counts up all the Nightsoul points his party is carrying and turns that into a Swirl damage bonus. So he is a healer you actually spend a few seconds of field time on. Elemental Mastery is the only stat he really wants.

Rotation

Burst (Q) first. The dart bursts on the enemy you aimed at and drags the group together.
Skill (E) to lift off. He hangs in the air and the button turns into a plunge.
Hold Normal Attack and let the volley run, roughly a dozen darts. The party heals as they land.
Swap off, or hold Skill (E) and let the plunge finish to come down with a hit.

Abilities

Skill (E)	7.5 second cooldown. Fills his Nightsoul meter and lifts him into a hover. Hold it while he is up there and he starts a Plunging Attack; let go and the plunge stops and he keeps hovering. If the plunge actually reaches the ground, the hover ends.
Normal Attacks	Only while hovering. He fires darts that heal every party member, not just the one you are playing. Holding gives one kind of volley and tapping gives another, so tap if you have an off-field character who answers each of your attacks with their own hit.
Burst (Q)	60 Energy, 15 second cooldown. Fires a dart at an enemy that bursts into a wind current, pulling nearby enemies and loose objects in for Anemo damage.

The one mechanic to understand

His Swirl bonus is a headcount of your party's Nightsoul.

While he is hovering, Ifa banks one point for every Nightsoul point his party is carrying, his own included. Every point is a little more Swirl and Electro-Charged damage for nearby characters. A party of Natlan characters with full meters gets him near the cap. A party with none of them leaves him counting only himself. The points clear the moment his hover ends, so what the bonus buffs is whatever happens while he is up there, which is mostly his own Swirls.

What actually matters

Elemental Mastery. It feeds the healing on his darts and the Swirl damage he is on the field to cause. Nothing else on him comes close.
Energy Recharge. Roughly 180% if he is your only Anemo character. A Favonius weapon or a second Anemo character pulls that down a long way.
Natlan teammates. The Swirl bonus counts their meters and a second passive hands him Elemental Mastery when one of them sets off a Nightsoul burst. Without them the first effect is a fraction of its size and the second never happens.

Gear

Weapon	Elemental Mastery, as much as you can find. Sacrificial Fragments is a standard banner 4-star with the most of it. Favonius Codex instead if his Burst keeps arriving late, since its passive is the fix for that.
Artifacts	4-piece Viridescent Venerer. Swirl is where his damage comes from and the set cuts enemy resistance to whatever he swirled.

Sands	Goblet	Circlet	Substats
EM	EM	EM / Healing Bonus	EM / ER

Crit does almost nothing here, since Swirl damage cannot crit and his healing does not care.

Works well with

Anything he can swirl works. Hydro and Electro do a little more for him, because the same passive that boosts Swirl boosts Electro-Charged as well.

Don't bother

Levelling his Normal Attack talent. The darts he fires while hovering come off his Skill, so that is the talent to put books into.
His catalyst attacks with both feet on the ground. There is no reason to be down there.
Crit stats. Swirl cannot crit.
Landing the plunge while the hover still has points in it. It ends the hover and wipes the bonus he has stacked up.

Want the full deep dive? Read Ifa on KeqingMains.

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