Hu Tao Guide and Best Builds for Genshin Impact

Strengths

• Powerful Single Target damage.
• Self Healing using their Burst allowing Hu Tao to manage her HP conversion.
• Can provide CRIT Rate for the party.

Weaknesses

• Without C1, stamina is consumed on Charged Attacks making gameplay clunky and more dangerous.
• Very Reliant on either Xingqiu or Yelan to apply Hydro for Reactions due to fast Pyro application.
• Lacking in AoE attacks outside of Xianyun teams.

Staff of Homa is by far her best weapon for her builds. Staff of Homa and Staff of the Scarlet Sands will want different circlet builds due to one weapon offering CRIT Rate and the other CRIT DMG. Hu Tao also has several good 4-Star polearms including Ballad of the Fjords from the battlepass and Dragon's Bane which is craftable.

Build Hu Tao with Crimson Witch of Flames however Shimenawa's Reminiscence is a viable option if played with healers, such as in Furina teams because you will not have the same survivability from your Elemental Burst. To fully take advantage of Crimson Witch, make sure to build some Elemental Mastery but it should not be your main focus.

Using Hu Tao's Elemental Skill ( Guide to Afterlife) allows you to infuse your weapon with Pyro making all damage from Hu Tao, while on-field, Pyro damage as well as providing you with a massive attack boost at the cost of HP.

Having your HP under 50%, your damage will be further increased (once you unlock her second passive talent Sanguine Rouge) meaning you want to always keep her under 50% HP. Being under 50% HP also increases the damage and healing of your elemental burst, Spirit Soother.

When under Guide to Afterlife, your charged attacks also apply Blood Blossom, making enemies take Pyro damage every 4 seconds. With this and high scaling on charged attack damage, charged attacks are your main way to deal damage and how you normally cause Vaporize with any Hydro application currently impacting enemies.

At C0 you ideally want to jump cancel as soon as damage is dealt to save stamina but this can be difficult especially on mobile so do not worry if you cannot always time it right. Practice makes perfect! At C1 however, you can simply dash cancel due to not needing to save stamina, dash canceling at the end of the attack is also faster therefore increasing your damage as well as being more comfortable.

When possible, use Spirit Soother near the end of Guide to Afterlife so that the animation does not take time away from your damage buff and Pyro infusion.

Hu Tao's main team compositions involve Xingqiu and/or Yelan. Using one or both of these characters for hydro application, Hydro resonance to buff HP as well as incredibly off-field damage.

Even though Hu Tao benefits from having lower HP, characters such as Furina provide massive benefits to the point a healer becomes valuable.

Hu Tao's best team compositions involve having 2 Hydro characters so that there is enough elemental application to consistently vaporize. Xingqiu and Yelan can often be used interchangeably however Furina needs a healer outside of higher constellation gameplay.

The above teams involving Citlali or Xilonen are currently Hu Tao's best team compositions. Xilonen enables Furina and provides significant damage buffs of their own. Citlali is not here for Freeze/Melt but for her offensive buffs including Pyro/Hydro RES Shred and also the ATK buff from Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers.

Xianyun provides Hu Tao with a powerful Plunge Attack focused team. Xianyun is a great healer who further enables the DMG buffs provided by Furina while Yelan continues to bring Hydro application. Xianyun also buffs Plunging Attack DMG while increasing jump height therefore enabling this Plunge-based gameplay.