Pro Tips For Playing As Hu Tao In Genshin Impact

Most Genshin Impact characters are relatively straightforward to play. Xiao needs to plunge, Raiden gives out Energy, and Bennett makes any content a walk in the park. However, every once in a while, a character is released that requires entire papers worth of calculations and theorycrafting in order to be played to their full potential.

Hu Tao is one such character. Her HP can turn into ATK, but being low on HP gives you ATK as well. Your Charged Attacks deal tons of damage, but you run out of stamina if you try dashing to cancel them. If you truly want to bury your opponents alive, here’s how to play as Hu Tao.

10

Don’t Waste Your Burst

One of the most overlooked things about Hu Tao is how her Burst scales. You may think that using the Burst at the start of a rotation or after your skill ends might give better damage, due to fully capitalizing on the duration of her Elemental Skill, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Hu Tao’s E Skill doesn’t only affect her Normal and Charged Attacks. It also grants her an ATK buff, increasing damage from all sources, including her Burst. If you want to deal proper damage with it, use it within the duration of the Skill.

9

Spam Your Charged Attacks

The core of Hu Tao’s kit may be her Elemental Skill, but a hidden feature is what makes her shine brighter and fierier than any other Pyro DPS. Hu Tao’s Charged Attacks have no ICD whatsoever, letting her trigger reactions on every single hit.

ICD, or Internal Cooldown, is a system in Genshin Impact that stops characters from causing too many reactions. For most characters, you can only apply a new element once every three hits.

As such, instead of using your Normal Attacks, it’s better to spam your Charged ones. You already do a Normal Attack upon holding the skill before automatically triggering your CA, so you don’t have to worry about not proccing Yelan or Xingqiu’s Bursts.

8

Animation Canceling

We’ve already established that Hu Tao’s Charged Attacks are some of the strongest in the game. However, they still have some drawbacks. First, Hu Tao dashes too far when doing them, going out of position and even changing targets at times. The full animation takes a long while as well, rendering her prone to damage and also reducing DPS.

To fix these, you can use a variety of animation cancels. Right after Hu Tao starts her CA animation, you can either dash or jump to cancel the rest of her motions. The damage still goes through, but it cuts the time in half and makes Hu Tao stay where she originally was.

7

Dealing With Stamina Issues

Hu Tao runs into stamina problems very easily. With her main damage being locked behind a mechanic that consumes stamina, her Charged Attacks, Hu Tao can often run out before she can deal all her damage. She can also just die from strong attacks due to her not having enough stamina to dodge.

To deal with this, you can opt to use jump cancels instead of dashing. Having a defensive unit can also help do away with the need to dodge. Another thing you can do is, instead of using her Elemental Burst for damage, save it for the immunity frames in order to dodge hard-hitting attacks even without stamina.

6

Keep Your HP Low

Hu Tao and her signature weapon, Staff of Homa, both grant bonuses when below 50 percent HP. These bonuses are significant enough to encourage intentionally keeping her low on HP.

In the Overworld, you can simply jump down and keep her permanently just an inch away from death. While this may be a problem in stages like the Spiral Abyss or the Imaginum Theater, letting the enemies get a few hits on you before starting your rotations can still be worthwhile.

5

Choose Any Healers Wisely

Healers that don’t provide other buffs are generally not recommended for meta teams, as giving them a slot over a buffer or a sub-DPS results in a huge overall DPS loss. This stands even more true for Hu Tao, where any character that heals her becomes a significant detriment to her damage.

However, there are certain cases where a healer might be fine. If you’re playing Hu Tao with a C6 Bennett, the added Pyro DMG Bonus and Bennett’s own personal ATK buff can make up for the lost damage. Similarly, if you’re playing Hu Tao in a Furina team, having an Anemo healer such as Jean or Xianyun can increase Furina’s damage while also increasing her buff on Hu Tao.

4

Explore Other Defensive Options

Since healers are (usually) out of the question, shielders are the next best thing. Characters like Zhongli and Layla provide Hu Tao much needed survivability, while also bringing other buffs. A shield can also help give Hu Tao interruption resistance, stopping enemies from knocking her away and disrupting her combos.

Similarly, characters that can aid with interruption resistance and DMG RES, such as Xingqiu and Dehya, are also splendid choices for a defense slot.

3

Gearing Up Artifacts

Hu Tao is one of the most stat-efficient characters to build in Genshin Impact. Where other characters really only need CRIT Rate, CRIT DMG, and an ATK stat here and there, almost every stat is useful for Hu Tao. However, there is still a need for balance, since overcapping on a specific stat results in lower overall damage.

While Hu Tao still benefits from ATK, her HP to ATK ratio on her Elemental Skill makes HP a better stat overall. For your sands, it’s always better to get either an HP or Elemental Mastery main stat.

Due to this, it’s important to keep the stat priority in mind. Having a healthy amount of CRIT stats, at least 60/120 is what you should aim for first. Afterward, try to increase your Elemental Mastery (EM) to around 300. You can then focus on getting as much additional CRIT and HP as possible.

2

Optimal Combos

Hu Tao’s Charged Attacks are her main sources of damage. However, that isn’t to say her Normals are entirely useless. The ICD isn’t shared between them, so she can Vape some of her Normal Attacks while also making sure to hit all her Charged ones.

If you’re comfortable in your ability to perform combos consistently, weaving in two Normal Attacks before doing a Charged Attack deals more damage than simply spamming the attack button. The difference in damage isn’t huge, but it’s not minuscule either. However, if you find that trying this makes you lose out on Vapes, reverting back to the Charged Attack spam will yield better results.

1

Using Viridescent Venerer With Hu Tao

Viridescent Venerer is one of the strongest supporting artifact sets in Genshin Impact. All the top performing teams have the set on an Anemo unit, and no carry can live up to their full potential. However, for one reason or another, using VV in a Hu Tao team can be quite difficult due to Hu Tao having no way of applying Pyro without her skills going on cooldown.

Another thing you can do is to use Hu Tao’s Burst at the start of the rotation, losing out on a lot of Burst damage but buffing her Charged Attacks due to VV.

One way to deal with this is using a second Pyro unit, such as Bennett or Thoma. The problem then becomes that applying enough Hydro with a single Hydro unit is quite difficult. To fix this, you can absorb Hydro into either Sucrose or Kazuha’s Bursts for a second instance of application. You can also just use Xingqiu, who can more or less still have enough elemental application to Vape all of Hu Tao’s hits despite being the sole Hydro.