Genshin Impact Weapon Types Guide

by Majesty

This time we’ll be going over the weapon types as well as the different systems available for weapons.

Here I have a picture of Favonius Warbow, which was given to players after they beat Storm Terror Dhvalin in CBT 1.  On details we can see that it has a name, weapon type, crit rate, attack value, star rating, current level, level limit, passive, passive level, and description.  Now most of these things are pretty self-evident, but it’s a good idea to go over some of them.  Crit rate is added onto your character base crit, and by default crits do 150% of normal damage.  Attack value is treated as your base attack for multipliers and stacks with your character base attack.  Star rating is the item rarity and can’t be changed, and in general higher stars means higher crit rate, higher base attack, and a stronger passive.  Level limit is related to enhance and passive is related to refine which I will cover in the next two paragraphs.

Weapons can be enhanced by either sacrificing enhancing materials that are obtained through dungeons, chests, or trading in ores or by sacrificing other weapons and a gold fee.  Higher rarity weapons provide more exp, as well as higher level enhancing materials.  Every 20 levels, the weapon will reach a level cap which requires you to perform level cap breakthrough.  At level 20, you will need to sacrifice 1 weapon of the same type in order to increase the level cap to 40.  At level 40, you will need to sacrifice 2 weapons that are both at least level 20 in order to increase the level cap to 60.  At least 60 (do you see a pattern), you need to sacrifice 3 weapons that are at least level 40 to increase the level cap to level 80 (do you know how painful this was in cbt 1).  Thus, leveling weapons requires early planning and resource collection (so start farming 50 mats per type a day if you want to have 4 lvl 60 weapons to increase to 100).

On the other hand, refining enhances the passive effect of weapons.  Weapons start gaining passive effects once they hit star rating 3 and higher, with 4 stars being the highest available in CBT 1.  Admittedly, I don’t know the full workings of the refining system since you needed to be adventure level 40 to use it (which was literally impossible given the possible available adventure exp in CBT 1 trust me I tried by doing every dungeon every day and collecting 95% of the chests and eye of winds didn’t even get close).  However, the interface did give a good idea of how it worked.  In order to refine a weapon, you had to sacrifice an identical version of the weapon and pay a steeper gold fee.  This would increase the level of the passive by 1.  Now, there wasn’t any information on whether you could just use level 1 weapons with lvl 1 passives for refinement as passive levels increased, or whether it had a requirement like enhancing.  In any case, with rare weapons being difficult to find this made refining a very large investment.  Additionally, you’ll notice the blue text in the weapon passive.  I’m assuming that’s the value that was being refined, but I could be wrong.  In any case, that led to some weapons being very potent if refined, so it definitely mixed up what shined with investment.

Now that we’ve gone over the weapon systems, let’s quickly go over the weapon types.  In CBT 1 there were 5 weapon types: swords, longswords, grimoires, bows, and spears. 

Swords

Users: Player Characters, Kaeya, Jean, Kamisato Ayaka

Swords have a 5-hit basic attack sequence as well as a charged attack that differs across characters.  All weapons (except bow) charged attacks will consume character stamina, so keep that in mind since dodging and sprinting also consumers stamina.  All weapons can also chain their basic attack sequence

into their charge attack any time before the last attack of their basic attack sequence.  Swords have relatively fast attack speeds and smaller Area of Effect coverage.  Their chain into their charged attack has relatively fast startup with little delay.  Since swords have the largest current user pool, it may be a good idea to invest into swords (since you can swap weapons mid-combat meaning you have a larger pool to swap to if your primary dps dies).  Overall, swords are pretty good jack of all trades weapon geared more towards single-target attacks.  

Longswords

Users: Diluc, Razor

Longswords have a 4-hit basic attack sequence.  Their charged attack (turns your characters into a beyblade) is a spin-to-win attack where the characters swings the weapon around them, continuously draining stamina.  Longswords attack relatively slowly, but have relatively wide hit coverage, especially

with their charged attacks.  Charged attacks have a really lengthy start-up animation and finisher delay, leaving the character vulnerable.  Longswords pack a big punch per hit as a tradeoff to their slower attacks and have good mobbing capabilities, but their vulnerability windows leave them susceptible.  

Grimoires

Users: Lisa, Barbara, Klee(?)

Grimoires have a 4-hit basic attack sequence.  Their charged attack inflicts Area of Effect damage in an area some distance in front of them.  Grimoires are somewhat weird in that they have decently fast basic attack speed, but their charged attacks have decently long start-up time as well as post cast delay.  Additionally, their basic attacks, while longer than melee weapons, don’t have too much range while their charged attack is effectively mid-ranged.  Grimoires are also unique in that their basic attacks inflict elemental type damage instead of physical damage.  Overall, they seem to promote a “close but not too close” type of playstyle with options for single target and Area of Effect damage.  They definitely are the most all-rounder type weapon, but since its users are spellcasters you probably won’t often use their innate attacks often anyways.  

Bows

Users: Amber, Venti

Bows have a 5-hit basic attack sequence.  Bow are unique in that they have a TPS aiming mode; this mode can either be toggled or entered by using a charge attack.  The toggle will retain the mode until you toggle again, while the charged attack will return you to normal attack mode after 1 attack.  The bow has basically no innate Area of Effect capabilities, built solely for single-target damage.  The normal attack sequence is decently fast with mid-ranged capability, while the TPS mode trades off attack speed for single-hit high damage attacks and also boasts extremely long range that can extend outside of monster aggro range.  The bow also has the unique ability of converting TPS shots into elemental damage if the attack is allowed to charge for a short time; this also increases its base damage.  The bow has unmatched DPS if you can land your shots in TPS mode and makes you vulnerable if enemies get close, since you can’t dodge in TPS mode and there’s lengthy toggle delay.  Overall, the bow is a high risk, high reward weapon and very useful for engaging enemies from a distance that might be difficult to fight in close proximity.  

Spear:

Users: Xiangling

Spears have a 5-hit basic attack sequence.  Their charged attack is a tunneling forward dash.  Spears have similarly fast attack speeds to swords while also having a larger range similar to longswords.  Their charged attacks have longer start-up and post cast delay than swords but much less than that of longswords.  Spears seem to fall into a role of disruptor rather than Area of Effect damage; their basic attack sequence ends up separating clumped enemies and their dash is not penetrating, instead knocking enemies aside and into the air.  If longswords are meant to handle a group of mobs all at once, spears are meant to separate and take them out one at a time.  Overall, spears give an alternative method to handling mobs while being flexible and fast as a weapon for single target.