Hu Tao Guide and Best Builds for Genshin Impact

Strengths

• Incredibly High Single-Target Damage.
• High Damage Ceiling.
• Self Healing using their Burst.
• Can provide CRIT Rate for the party.

Weaknesses

• More Mechanically difficult attack combos using Charged Attack cancels.
• Can run into stamina issues at C0.
• Very Reliant on either Xingqiu or Yelan to apply Hydro for Reactions.

Hu Tao's primary method to deal damage is by increasing vaporize damage to enemies that already have hydro applied to them.

Staff of Homa is by far her best weapon massively increasing your damage, the 2 main weapons. Staff of Homa and Staff of the Scarlet Sands will likely warrant different circlet substats due to one weapon offering CRIT Rate and the other CRIT DMG. Ultimately it depends on your luck with Artifacts.

There are caps to the attack bonus granted from Hu Tao's skill, Guide to Afterlife and her Paramita Papilio state (Pyro infused state). This scales off her max HP but caps at 400% of her base attack. This means a weapon with a low base attack will decrease your HP limit.

You generally want a few hundred Elemental Mastery to fully take advantage of Crimson Witch while not losing damage from CRIT or HP.

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. Other setups involve an additional Pyro character for Pyro resonance to increase damage instead. Healers are never recommended in any situation due to always wanting under half HP so use shielders.

Generally, Hu Tao's best team compositions use 2 hydro off-field DPS for application as well as damage. Zhongli is the preferred support due to having one of the strongest shields and resistance shreds. Kaedehara Kazuha can instead be used for grouping and slightly better resistance shred. But the downside is that you lose survivability which can make certain fights harder. Hu Tao has a high enough base HP as well as the damage reduction and small heals from Xingqiu making it enough to survive on.

Hu Tao also has great Anti-Synergy with Furina. The DMG buffs provided by both Furina and Bennett can be incredibly powerful even with Hu Tao being consistently above 50% HP.

This composition uses a Pyro character, for example Thoma and an Anemo character, such as Sucrose to swirl Pyro and buff Hu Tao by lowering enemy resistance due to your Anemo character having the Viridescent Venerer artifacts. Many variations use a range of Pyro characters and either Sucrose or Kaedehara Kazuha. Thoma generally being one of the better options for a shield, especially if using Yelan.

With the release of Xianyun, Hu Tao now has 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.