Raiden Shogun Guide and Best Builds for Genshin Impact

Strengths

• Very strong Main DPS.
• Is an Energy Battery for the entire team regardless of Element.
• Strong early Constellations.
• Strong F2P weapon "The Catch".

Weaknesses

• Uses up a lot of field time as Main DPS.
• Killing your target too fast can be a detriment for regaining Energy.
• Only 1 copy of her F2P weapon is obtainable and it is good on a lot of characters.

This is the general build Raiden Shogun, where you primarily focus on being able to do massive damage with her Burst, Secret Art: Musou Shinsetsu.

Raiden Shogun's weapons are pretty straight forward. Her signature weapon, Engulfing Lightning, is her best weapon. This is due to its effect of giving her ATK % based on her Energy Recharge, while also increasing your Energy Recharge after using your burst. Staff of Homa, Primordial Jade Winged-Spear and Lumidouce Elegy are all slightly stronger than "The Catch", but not by much. The Catch is very good and is free as long as you do not mind fishing. However, there is also a lot of competition for this Polearm as you can only get one. Out of the 3 5* weapons listed, Staff of Homa sticks out as there are other characters who use this weapon better than Raiden. Skyward Spine is about the same as The Catch, in case you use it elsewhere. It's benefit comes from the increased ATK SPD, which allows Raiden to squeeze in more attacks during her burst.

Emblem of Severed Fate is her best set when it comes to increasing Raiden's personal damage. It gives you 20% Energy Recharge for the 2-piece effect, while also converting Energy Recharge into Burst damage with the 4 piece. All the Normal and Charged Attacks you do during her burst are considered Burst DMG, thus this set bonus also affects that.

Raiden Shogun's stat priority is a bit different because she values Energy Recharge a lot due to one of her Ascension Passives, Enlightened One. She values it even more so if you have Engulfing Lightning, due to it converting Energy Recharge into ATK% as well. Because of this passive, it also makes Electro DMG on the goblet less valuable the more Energy Recharge you have.

The reason why is due to how damage is calculated in Genshin. The formula is long and winded, but in short, all types of DMG increases, whether it is from other characters like Furina's burst Let the People Rejoice or Electro DMG from your goblet will be added together. This counts the effect from Raiden Shogun's Ascension Passive Enlightened One as well. All of this is multiplied onto the attack value, meaning that getting more DMG bonuses will diminish over time, compared to increasing the attack value.

In short, the more Energy Recharge you have and depending on your team composition, the more you want ATK% on your Goblet. Same is true for the Sands. However if you have Engulfing Lightning, Energy Recharge is roughly equivalent to ATK%. Other than that, CRIT Rate and CRIT DMG are still stronger stats, where you preferably want a 1:2 split.

Between Electro DMG and ATK% on the goblet, it depends on quite a few things. Having Engulfing Lightning waters down the effect of ATK%, while Energy Recharge waters down the effect of Electro DMG. Having external ATK buffs, such as the buffs provided by Bennett and Kujou Sara also water down the effect of ATK% so the answer will always be it depends. However, as ATK% goblet is a lot more common when farming artifacts, it is more likely that you find one with good substats and possibly within Emblem of Severed Fate. This would mean your circlet can be the flex Artifact, making it a lot easier to gear her up properly.

This is a Hyperbloom specific build focusing on off-field DPS instead and an emphasis on Elemental Mastery.

Raiden Shogun is very simple when it comes to Hyperbloom, you just want to stack as much Elemental Mastery as you can. The priority for leveling her talents is not very important, as most of her damage will come from triggering Hyperbloom. This does not scale on anything but Elemental Mastery and artifact set bonuses so focus on leveling her talents as if you would also build her for main DPS.

Her weapon choices are also simple, all 3 weapons are 4-star weapons, where Dragon's Bane is her best option. This is due to the sheer amount of Elemental Mastery it has. Moonpiercer is a good secondary option if you do not have Dragon's Bane and is craftable which makes it very easy to come by. While Energy Recharge is not important on Raiden Shogun since she will be off field, Favonius Lance can used if someone else in your party wants the Elemental Particles that this weapon can create. If you use this weapon, you want to aim for some CRIT Rate in your substats since you will be relying on CRIT Rate to trigger the effects of the Favonius Lance.

Raiden Shogun primarily plays around setting up her burst, then spending 7 seconds with high damage combos, before rotating back out to build up her burst again. With sufficient Energy Recharge on Raiden Shogun and the rest of your team, you can essentially run a Burst Rotation every 18-20s depending on how the cooldown of Bursts on the other team members. Outside of the 10-12 seconds you will spend on Raiden Shogun (swapping in, using Burst and then doing attacks for 7 seconds), you will spend time on swapping through the other 3 characters, using their Burst and Skills, before swapping back to Raiden.

This makes for a very smooth playstyle as long as you do not miss any uptime on your Burst on Raiden. This can directly affect how much Energy you get back. While the game tells you that her Burst lasts for 7 seconds, it will not drop off mid attack, meaning that if you initiate a Charged Attack right as it is about to end, it will extend itself until that attack is finished.

Raiden Shogun has quite a few attack patterns during her burst to maximise the amount of damage you can squeeze out of them. The reason why you want to do this, is because the damage you do with all your regular attacks are considered Burst DMG. This means they benefit off of her own Burst DMG mechanic and also the 4-piece effect of Emblem of Severed Fate.

Which attack pattern will use depends on the weapons and buffs in your party. Generally speaking, you want to do 4 Normal Attacks into a Charged Attack. This is done twice before you do 2 Normal Attacks into a Charged attack. This combo is written out as 2N4C + N2C. There is another combo you can use as well, named 4N4D, which is 4 Normal Attacks into Dash cancel. This is done 4 times.

Dash cancelling is when you use your Dash mid attack animation to cancel the animation without cancelling the attack. This combo specifically can be a bit tricky to pull off at first, since you have to dash cancel after the 2nd hit of her 4th attack. The best you can do is to train this timing until it is muscle memory, however it is recommended to not Dash cancel if you are uncomfortable with it. It is a higher damage loss than what is gained if you mess it up. Other attack combos available includes 3N3C + N1C, which is recommended if you have any kind of ATK SPD, such as Jean's C2 or Skyward Spine

For Hyperbloom Teams, Raiden Shogun is off-field, meaning that you essentially swap her in to use her Elemental Skill Transcendence: Baleful Omen, before swapping her back out. This also changes her weapon choices as shown in her Hyperbloom specific build.

Below are a few examples of Raiden being Main DPS in but also one where she is the Electro driver for Hyperbloom. Raiden Shogun is generally very flexible, hence why these teams are just examples.

The Raiden National team is a 3-man team with a flex slot, coined by the Chinese community. It is a highly efficient team consisting of the 3 4-star characters seen above who are all still performing extremely well. The general issue this team has had, has been regaining Energy for the high power bursts of the 3, which Raiden Shogun elegantly resolves while also benefiting of it. This means you can lower the Energy Recharge that the rest of the team needs, and funnel those stats right back into both CRIT values and ATK % for Xiangling and Xingqiu. Their burst cooldowns are pretty similar, with the longest at 20s. Since all the other characters are 4-Star, it generally makes this build relatively budget friendly.

This team is close to the National comp as seen above, however Xingqiu has been replaced by Chevreuse. The addition of her means that the team is locked to Pyro and Electro characters, while provided large amounts of resistance shred and damage increases to those elements. The playstyle is otherwise similar, as you want to cycle ults and skills, leaving Raiden's burst till last. While Overload is slightly iffy with melee characters, Raiden has a rather large Charged Attack hitbox during her Burst, which can circumvent the constant knockbacks created by Overload. When running this team, you want to use Ocean-Hued Clam or Song of Days Past on Chevreuse, as Bennett is already used Noblesse Oblige.

This team takes advantage of the high burst costs of the 3 other characters, with Yae Miko costing 90 Energy, and the two others costing 80 Energy. Furthermore, Yae Miko has very high damage off-field as well as when she casts Great Secret Art: Tenko Kenshin. This is coupled with Kujou Sara's ATK increase from her Skill, Tengu Stormcall, and Burst, Subjugation: Koukou Sendou while Sin of Pride (C6) provides a massive 60% CRIT DMG increase to Electro DMG specifically. Jean is present to be able to heal the party and to shred Electro with Viridescent Venerer. You can slot in other Anemo characters as well, just be aware of their Burst cost, as that will directly influence the amount of damage Raiden Shogun's burst does.

Hyperbloom teams are very strong, with Raiden Shogun providing consistent Electro application off-field as her skill lasts for a very long time. There is a bit of flexibility with the team, mainly with the Hydro character. With the addition of Furina, you can forego Kokomi and then slot in Baizhu who is one of the strongest healers. This works really well with Furina's Burst. You can still use Kokomi, in which case Baizhu is not needed as Kokomi already provides healing. Nahida is your main Dendro applier in this team, and you would want to run Flower of Paradise Lost on Raiden Shogun, as she will be the one to trigger Hyperbloom off the Dendro Cores. With hyperbloom team, Raiden wants to go for Elemental Mastery as well, as her personal DPS does not matter at all.