Kachina
GeoPolearmOff-field DamageTL;DR
Kachina's Skill leaves a spinning drill standing on the ground, slamming it for Geo damage on its own while you play somebody else. Her Burst is one more Geo hit plus a field that widens what the drill covers. Everything she and the drill do reads off Defence, so that is the stat you build. Two buttons, then swap off.
Rotation
- Tap Skill (E) to plant the drill next to her. It starts slamming the ground by itself.
- Burst (Q) for a Geo hit and the field, which sits there for 12 seconds.
- Swap to your damage dealer. The drill keeps going until her nightsoul meter empties.
- Back in for the same two buttons once the Skill is off cooldown, about every 20 seconds.
Abilities
| Skill (E) | 20 second cooldown. Tap it and the drill appears beside her, slamming the ground at intervals for Geo damage off her Defence. Hold it and she climbs on and rides it instead, which is fast and great on cliffs. Once the drill is out, the button turns into mount and dismount. |
|---|---|
| Burst (Q) | 70 Energy, 18 second cooldown. One Geo hit off her Defence, plus a field for 12 seconds that widens the drill's slams and speeds it up while she is riding it. If her drill is already out somewhere it gets pulled over to her. |
| Her nightsoul meter | The Skill fills it to 60. Everything the drill does spends from it. When it hits zero the drill vanishes and she drops out of the state. |
The one mechanic to understand
The drill runs on her meter, not on a timer.
The drill has no duration of its own. Its slams are paid for out of her nightsoul points, so those 60 points are the whole budget and it disappears the moment they run out. Nothing you do while she is off the field puts any back, which is why her rotation is just the two buttons and a swap. Out in Natlan she rolls over to burning Phlogiston once the meter empties, so the drill lasts noticeably longer in the overworld than it does in a domain. At Constellation 2 the Burst hands 20 points back and will summon a drill if she has none out, which is the one constellation that changes how you press the buttons.
What actually matters
The two or three real decisions. Everything else is noise.
- Defence. Her hits and the drill's slams are all a percentage of her Defence. One passive adds another 20% of it to the drill's damage on top. Attack does nothing here.
- Enough Energy Recharge to cast the Burst every time you swap to her. It costs 70 and the drill wants the field over it. A Favonius weapon or a second Geo character covers most of the gap.
- Natlan teammates for the Geo damage passive. She gets 20% Geo damage for 12 seconds after a nearby character sets off a nightsoul burst. In a team without those characters it never fires.
Gear
A build that works. KeqingMains lists every other option.
| Weapon | Defence first, Crit after. Footprint of the Rainbow is craftable and carries Defence on the stat line. Favonius Lance instead if your team is short on Energy, since it feeds everyone rather than just her. |
|---|---|
| Artifacts | 4-piece Scroll of the Hero of Cinder City, which turns her reactions into a damage bonus for the whole party and is worth more than anything her own numbers do. 4-piece Archaic Petra if you have that farmed already, though it needs somebody to pick the shards up. |
| Main stats | Defence sands, Geo damage goblet, Crit circlet. An Attack goblet is dead weight on her. |
Works well with
GeoGeo is the comfortable home, mostly for the Energy and the Defence resonance. The passive that pays her best does not care about elements at all: it wants Natlan characters spending their nightsoul next to her.
Don't bother
- Her Normal Attacks and the charged lunge. She is off the field before either matters.
- Riding the drill in a fight. That mode is for climbing and getting around.
- Attack or Elemental Mastery on her artifacts. Both are wasted slots.
- Watching the meter tick down. Press both buttons, swap out, come back when the Skill is up.
Want the full theorycrafting version? Read Kachina on KeqingMains.