Genshin Impact Kaeya Support Build Guide

by Remilia Grim

Kaeya is one of the first characters who is joining Travelers team and first character, who give us their own personal quest.

His kit is one of a bruiser – both defensive and offensive. Frostgnaw deals damage, puts Cryo status on enemies and heals 15% of ATK on hit. With more Conselations unlocked, on low health Kaeya will surround himself with Cryo shield, that will defend him from any incomming damage.

As a Cryo character it is preferable to use characters with Hydro Vision with him, so enemies can be chilling around. Freeze is a great defensive and offensive tool. Other good Vision to pair with Cryo is Electro. Low temperature is a good way to increase conductivity of an enemy, and Superconduct status will decrease enemies DEF, while making an explosion around them. Good way to shred through Elite and Boss enemies. And last in pairing is Pyro. Burning enemies will be thankful for him cooling them down by throwing away chunk of their health through Vaporize!

As one-handed sword user, Kaeya is greatly benefiting from ATK stat. This means, that Feather-type artifact is the first one that Kaeya want to level up. Leveling up Feather artifact at the beginning will almost double his damage! On Later stages (levels 51~61+) it is better to start focusing on Crit and Energy Recovery stats.

For sword the best choice in early game (and until Kaeya get 5* sword or a refinement rank 2-3 skill 4* sword) the best one will be Cool Steel. This sword amplifies all his damage by 30% against enemies who are affected by Cryo or Hydro (and they would be permanently!) statuses. It works much better than 4* sword that Travellers are getting for completion Liyue Adventure Guild quests (ignore 16% DEF), as Kaeya can be paired with any Electro Vision character and have DEF down from Supercharged almost permanently.

Second best sword to use will be Iron Sting, if it can be refined to level 3 or above. On refinement level 1 it is not worth it. Kaeya is doing elemental damage only once every 6-6.5 seconds, so he will never be able to have both stacks up (and even with two stacks it will be only 20%, which is still less than 30% from Cool Steel) without help of someone like Xingqiu.

It would be nice to have some special 5* swords in the future for Kaeya/Xingqiu. Something like “Ice Shard” and it will give 20% more damage against enemies who have Cryo or Hydro, stacks 2 times (40% total). However, if enemies will have BOTH Cryo and Hydro (aka they are Frozen) damage will be 30% per stack (or 60% total). Or maybe sword that will add Cryo (or Hydro) damage to every auto attack after using Energy Burst, that will work better on Xingqiu, than on Kaeya, but still will be very cool.

For Artifact Set it is the best to go for Martial Arts if Kaeya is using Cool Steel sword. Do not forget to use Frostgnaw on cooldown for set buff to be active all the time. Skill coodlown is 6 seconds and Martial Arts set buff lasts 8 seconds (so our icy boy can have extra 45% of ATK permanently).

If Kaeya is using different sword, then it is best to go Icebreaker set. Icebreaker set is the best on Kaeya in lategame as well, it works on him much better than Crit sets. Icebreaker increases all damage enemy is receiving by 30%. This means that even damage from crits is amplified. So if Kaeya was doing 1000 damage with normal attacks, 2500 with crits, under the Icebreaker buff Kaeya will be doing 30% more (or 2500 * 1.3 = 3250 damage) to that target, which is the same as getting extra 75% Crit Damage modifier! And the more damage and crits he have, the bigger will be the difference.

Both Artifact sets (Martial Arts and Icebreaker sets) are drops from Hidden Palace of Zhou Formula domain. This domain is a hidden domain, it is located on south of the Quingce Village, behind the mountain. To unlock it Travelers would need to finish three Geo riddles. Martial Arts set is possible to get very early in the game from special chests for doing big special secret puzzles in Liyue mountains! 4* one Travellers can get by doing the “flying island” secret with birds and light, and 3* pieces are available on ground level from Geo puzzles under that flying island.

For stats Kaeya player want to focus on ATK at first. After reaching 1000 ATK (normally it is around leavel 61+, if Kayea is not lucky with 5* Sword) it is good to start focusing on Crits. At first Kaeya want to have Crit Chance on a level near 35-40% Crit Chance, after that it is better to go into the Crit Damage up to 250-300%. In geneal, after 35% of Crit Chance the way to go is for each 1% Chance getting 3-3.5% of Crit Damage. Kaeya attacks are pretty fast, so this amount of crit chance will be a sweet spot (for slow hitters it is better to go 50+% Crit Chance first), plus on average same items of same level and quality are giving 1.5-1.7 times more crit damage percentage than crit chance percentage (for example, on mine 4* Wine Cup Artifacts, one have 14.0% Crit DMG and another have 9.4% Crit Rate, which means 9.4 / 14 = 1.49 times more crit damage than crit chance). Example how crit chance and crit damage going after 30% of crits:

Energy Recovery is another good stat. With enough of it it is possible to have his Elemental Burst to be active permanently.

As of talents…just maximize Normal Attack first, and everything esle as leftovers with Frostgnaw first (as Kaeya will spam it all the time).

We are not frozen in place after all, so Kaeya always want some good friends with him in party. My teams of choice are Kaeya + Beidou(or Lisa/Razor) + Xingqiu + Barbara and Kaeya + Bennett + Xingqiu (or Barbara) + Beidou. Everything with those teams is covered: healing, freezing, superconduct, tanking, huge extra damage from Beidou and Xingqiu Energy Bursts.

For the secondary character DPS (Xingqiu, Beidou, Razor, Lisa), it is almost always better to use Icebreaker sets. For healer it is best to stack health on them (Barbara or if Traveller is using Bennett, Jean, Xingqiu as healers and not as dps). And it is good to maximize Energy Recovery stat on supportive characters, so they have their supportive abilities much more often.

For Barbara it is better to use The Widsith magic codex!

Playing: Bee Gees – Staying Alive

With this setup it is possible to clear very high Spiral Abyss levels while using Kaeya as main DPS. I cleared up to level 67-69 enemies in Spiral Abyss (I believe it is 7-3 ~ 8-1 stages or so) while Kaeya was level 50 and with team of Lisa + Barbara + Xingqiu + Kaeya (everyone else was level 40). Second team was Xiao (level 40) + Bennet (level 40) + Beidou (level 60) + Noelle (level 40).

I hope this will help Travellers on their cool journey, or while they are waiting for more Cryo characters like Ayaka!

Stay frosty.

Release Update!

As game released and we got new main stats on artifacts, new weapons and stuff.

As Artifact set I still recommend Martial Artist, Gladiator’s Finale (or Icebreaker, which is not farmable anymore) sets. Most damage should come from Martial Artist set if used perfectly, but it can be tricky sometimes, so Gladiator’s Finale is just more stable damage increase.

Main stat on artifacts: on Mask/Crown best will be Critical Rate (or Critical DMG if you have already 40% Critical Rate). On Cup best will be Physical DMG Bonus. On Hourglass/Clocks best will be ATK (or anything attack related).

Elemental reactions were changed as well. Now Superconduct (Electro + Cryo) is reducing enemy Physical Defense by 50%, so Electro is very recommended to be in party (Lisa or Fischl are ones who will proc Superconduct the easiest).

As for weapons, craftable weapon “Prototype Rancour” should be the best free to play choice and easiest to obtain.