“The Raiden Shogun is the awesome and terrible power of thunder incarnate, the exalted ruler of the Inazuma Shogunate. With the might of lightning at her disposal, she commits herself to the solitary pursuit of eternity.” - Genshin Impact’s Official Website
One of the most popular characters in Genshin Impact is the newly released Raiden Shogun, or the Electro Archon that rules over Inazuma, which was the new region added in version 2.0. Seeking to keep her people in an unchanging eternity, her motives and character were all explained in the newest storyline added to Genshin Impact.
Aside from her popularity, she is one of the most complex support damage dealer characters in Genshin that can even act as a Main Damage Dealer at times. Throughout this guide, you’ll learn her overall play-style, what her constellations do, which talents should be leveled up, weapons for both free to play players and players with some 5-star weapons available to them, which characters work well with her in a team, and how to optimally build her artifacts. All of which are important to understand how to maximize her damage output and get the most out of her in a team.
Playstyle
Starting with the Raiden Shogun’s normal, charged, and plunging attacks, these function just about as one would expect. She strikes five times with her spear dealing physical damage with her normal attacks. Her charged attack is an upward strike with her spear, and her plunging attack is the same as all other polearm users. All of these moves deal physical damage and will not be used often unless the Raiden Shogun is in her Burst state (more on this later).
Next, is the Raiden Shogun’s Elemental Skill, which when activated, immediately deals Electro Damage to nearby opponents. At the same time, an “Eye of Stormy Judgement” will be placed onto the currently active character and will stay even if the player switches characters. In Co-Op, the Eye of Stormy Judgement will be placed on every current player in the world. This Eye will launch coordinated attacks with the character (meaning, it attacks when the player does automatically) and deals AoE Electro damage. This coordinated attack can trigger once every 0.9 seconds, while the Eye will last for a total of twenty-five seconds. With a cooldown of only ten seconds and a duration of twenty-five seconds, this ability should have permanent uptime (it will always be active) if the player keeps applying the skill.
The coordinated attack damage from this skill is rather low, but can still serve three purposes: (1) Applying elemental reactions, which can greatly aid team compositions, (2) the Eye’s coordinated attacks also generate an elemental orb every two seconds while attacking, which can boost the rate at which your party gets their Elemental Bursts back, and the final and most useful boost (3) the Eye provides a universal Elemental Burst damage buff to the entire party.
This buff will scale with how high the energy cost of the Burst is; with the higher energy cost Bursts gaining far more damage than low-cost ones. With the ability to keep Eye of Stormy Judgement up at all times, this is a pretty significant buff that permanently boosts all Elemental Burst damage. One final note about this skill is that the coordinated Electro attacks from the Eye only activate when the character deals damage, so it cannot be used to help destroy Abyss Mage shields.
The most important ability in the Raiden Shogun’s arsenal is her Elemental Burst. Once activated, it deals a massive amount of AoE Electro Damage off the bat, and then puts the Raiden Shogun into a mode where her normal, charged, and plunging attacks all change their animations as she uses a sword instead of a spear, and converts all the physical damage those moves deal into both Burst damage and Electro Damage. This mode will last 7 seconds, and the Raiden should be on the field and not swapped out until the Burst ends completely. What makes this Burst even greater is the Resolve System unique to the Raiden Shogun.
Once players first start using the Raiden Shogun, they will notice a purple circle behind all of their characters that slowly lights up. This is how Genshin keeps track of “Resolve”. Resolve is gained by casting a character’s Elemental Bursts (with the exception of the Raiden Shogun herself), with Bursts that costs more energy giving more Resolve. This Resolve is then used up when the Raiden Shogun Bursts, and each stack of Resolve boosts her Burst’s damage significantly. This means that it is optimal to use the Burst of all your other party members first before using the Shogun’s. What makes this Ultimate ability even better is that during those seven seconds that the Raiden is in Burst mode, she recharges the energy of your other party members so they can use their Elemental Bursts again.
The Raiden Shogun’s kit is all about using the Bursts of her party members to make hers stronger, with a skill that provides a permanent Burst damage boost on all party members, as well as her Skill and Burst providing energy for her entire party; she is both a battery for your team and an excellent supporting damage dealer. With the energy she gives back, you can cycle using the rest of the party’s Ultimate first and then hers last to refill most, if not all the energy needed to use the Ultimates again.
Weapons and Talents
Considering the Shogun’s kit revolves so heavily around her skill and Burst, the player should focus on leveling those talents up first. Prioritize Burst and then skill, while the normal attacks can remain at Level one, considering that they won’t be used much. Due to her Burst changing the normal attack damage to Burst damage, nothing really scales off her normal attack talents, including when the Raiden enters Burst mode, so there is no need to upgrade it unless you just really want to. Just like the rest of the characters, the Raiden Shogun has three passive talents as well.
Her default one halves the Mora cost when upgrading polearms and swords, which is extremely valuable by endgame. At ascension Phase one, the passive talent unlocked allows small amounts of resolve to be gained by gathering elemental particles or restoring energy for your Bursts. While this does not boost damage by that much, it is still a nice passive that just adds extra damage to the end of a player’s rotation with the Raiden Shogun’s Burst.
The last passive talent unlocked at Ascension Phase 4 is the most valuable one out of combat and really helps determine both her weapons and what to build on her artifact-wise. This talent grants a 0.6% energy restoration and a 0.4% electro damage bonus for every 1% Energy Recharge above 100%. These numbers can easily stack to ridiculous levels; with 200% Energy recharge, that is 60% energy restoration boost from her Burst and a 40% Electro Damage bonus to her kit, and with 300% Energy Recharge, those numbers double.
Keeping that last talent in mind, there is both a free-to-play weapon and a new weapon that was released alongside the Raiden Shogun that works really well for her. If you’re willing to shell out the cash or get extremely lucky and pull the newly released “Engulfing Lightning” polearm, you have found the best weapon for her period. With a massive 55% increase to Energy Recharge at max level, as well as providing further scaling to her attack with ER, this weapon was made for the Raiden Shogun.
Alternate 5-star replacements would be the Staff of Homa, which provides insane Crit Damage (a stat good on every damage dealer), and the Primordial Jade-Winged Spear which provides Crit Rate. The worst 5-star weapon that can still work with the Shogun is the Skyward Spine. For free-to-play players, the best option available is The Catch, a 4-star spear that can be obtained at any time from the Inazuma Fishing Association by trading in certain kinds of fish. This also boosts Energy Recharge and provides a 30% Burst Damage bonus and a 12% crit rate bonus while Bursting. (It should be noted that The Catch at R5 is the best four-star spear damage-wise.) Other alternatives are the Favonius Lance and the Deathmatch.
Artifacts
The best set to put on the Raiden Shogun is the Emblem of Severed Fate set as the two and four-piece set bonuses seem like they were made for her. The two-piece set bonus grants + 20% Energy Recharge, while the four pieces set bonus increases Burst Damage by 25% of the character’s Energy Recharge stat. The Severed Fate Set was released in 2.0 and is located in Inazuma. If the player does not have the four good artifacts of this set yet, they can alternatively use temporary pieces and get any mix of two-piece Gladiator’s Finale, two-piece Thundering Fury, or two-piece Noblesse Oblige instead. But do note that any mixture of those set bonuses is outmatched by the four-piece Severed Fate set bonus.
The proper substats to go for on every piece are Crit Damage, Crit Rate, Energy Recharge, and Attack %. For main stats, your Sands piece should have Attack % or Energy Recharge % as main. As for which should you pick, that would depend on your weapon choice. If the player is using an Energy Recharge weapon like Engulfing Lightning or The Catch, then it’s better to go Attack %, as around 200 – 250% Energy Recharge should be more than enough to keep all her scaling high. If the player is using a non-Energy Recharge Weapon, having ER as the main stat on your Sands piece is a good way to keep her ER high.
For the Goblet, Attack % or Electro Damage % are the two best main stats to have. The optimal main stat between these two depends again not only on your weapon but also your team composition. Due to the Shogun’s final passive boosting Electro Damage off of her ER, if you have an ER weapon or an ER Sands piece, then Attack % is optimal. If you have a Bennett in your team composition, which already massively boosts attack, then it’s better to get higher Electro Damage %. If your ER is at 200 – 250%, then you do not need an Electro Damage % and you would be better off getting Attack % (preferrable) or Electro Damage %. For the Circlet, you want the main stat to be Crit Rate or Crit Damage, whichever you need more. (It’s recommended to have your Crit Rate and Damage be at a 1:2 ratio, meaning twice as much Crit Damage as Crit Rate, with a good setup being a Crit Rate of 50 – 70% and 100 – 150% Crit Damage. But this is pretty hard to obtain through substats alone, so it’s fine if you’re slightly under on either.)
Team Composition
Raiden Shogun has a lot of characters that she has high synergy with, and two strongly recommended teams where she excels. The first specific team is Eula, Rosaria (for the Cryo Synergy of providing more Crit Rate), Raiden Shogun, and a choice between Bennett for healing and attack buffs, or Kujou Sara for more resolve gain and battery. Eula has a high energy cost for her Ult, which means she needs a battery to work well. Use all your Ults aside from the Shogun, and while Eula’s Burst recharges, the Raiden Shogun can both deal damage, and recharge the Ults of everyone on the team including the high energy cost and high damage dealing Eula. Cryo plus Electro results in Super Conduct which lowers enemies physical defense and causes Eula’s Burst to deal even more damage as her Burst deals a high amount of physical damage. Everything about this team has a high amount of synergy and really shows what the Raiden Shogun can do as a support character.
The other recommended team is more free-to-play friendly and works wonders even in the Abyss. Xiangling and Raiden Shogun will be your damage dealers while Xingqiu and Bennett provide support. Bennett’s Burst both heals the party and applies a universal attack buff to the group if they stay in his healing field, while Xingqiu’s Burst costs a lot of energy which provides a lot of Resolve for Raiden and stays on-field even when Xingqiu is off-field, applying constant Hydro Damage. Xiangling’s Burst also stays on-field when she is off, so using all three before Raiden Shogun’s provides a lot of Resolve, buffs her attack immensely, and makes her an elemental reaction machine as enemies are bombarded with Hydro, Pyro, and Electro.
Other characters she has high synergy with are Yoimiya, Venti, Kazuha, and Zhongli. Yoimiya and Raiden Shogun’s kits feel like they were meant for each other. Raiden’s Eye of Stormy Judgement gives Yoimiya some AoE capabilities, and Yoimiya’s Burst places a status onto enemies that causes them to take Pyro Damage when anyone other than Yoimiya attacks them afterward which, in turn, causes Raiden’s Burst (which should happen right after) to deal immense Pyro and Electro Damage. Raiden’s Burst will push enemies away as you slash at them, so keeping them in place with Kazuha’s Skill or Venti’s Burst can be super helpful. (Kazuha’s Burst also increases the damage dealt in its field, and will constantly react to the Raiden’s Electro Attacks). Zhongli is a near-universal Support whose shield provides immunity to all damage until it breaks, letting you go wild with Raiden as she shreds her enemies to bits.
While there are many more besides this that could work well with Raiden, there is one character that has worse synergy with Raiden than everyone originally thought. That character is Beidou, whose Ult procs off of normal attack hits. However, due to Raiden converting her normal into Burst, it will not proc Beidou’s Burst. Meaning, the two don’t work as well as they could and other characters like Xingqiu, Kazuha, Bennett, or Kujou Sara would be better replacements for her. This is not to say they cannot work together at all and can, in fact, work well in a certain Electro Charged composition that will be talked about in a later section.
Constellations
Now, let’s talk Constellations and which one is most worth summoning for. C1 (the first constellation) grants more resolve to the Raiden when every character Bursts, with Electro Characters granting 80% more than they normally would and all other elements getting a 20% increase to their Resolve gain. C2 causes Raiden to ignore 60% of enemy defense, which causes a 40% damage increase across the board. This is absolutely massive and is easily the Constellation most worth getting if you want to pick one. C3 increases her Burst’s talent level by 3. C4 grants an attack boost to your party after the Raiden’s Burst ends. C5 increases Elemental Skill’s talent level by 3. At C6, the Shogun’s Burst state will lower cooldowns on the entire party’s Bursts by one second per second for a maximum of five seconds.
Final Thoughts
While the teams listed above are by far the best with Raiden Shogun, they aren’t the only team comps that will sufficiently work. The teams listed in this section are here to serve more as fun team compositions that can still function as examples of how to build a team around the Raiden Shogun. One amazing team is Childe, Beidou, Raiden Shogun, and Bennet. This team requires the player to be careful with their rotation, by first using the Raiden’s skill, followed by Bennet’s Burst, then Beidou’s Burst, which follows up into Childe with his elemental skill form change. You will want to stick as Childe because his attacks procs Beidou’s Ult, and once her Burst runs out, use Childe’s Burst and go into Raiden’s Burst form to recharge everyone’s energy.
The team composition I personally use is Yoimiya, Kazuha, Mona, and Raiden. Yoimiya’s and Raiden’s synergy has already been covered, and with Mona’s Burst providing even further damage, and Kazuha’s leading to both further elemental reactions and the ability to pull in enemies before the Burst combo leads to devastating damage to an entire group of enemies by the end of the rotation. For better effects, use Bennet instead of Mona to still increase your party’s attack, get some free healing in, and apply a 25% attack increase for your whole party due to the Pyro Synergy that Yoimiya and Bennet will have on the same team.
Xiao, Ganyu, Raiden, and any type of healer (preferably Bennet, but Noelle’s shield can also work wonders) can make for a fine team comp with Xiao being the main damage dealer and Raiden serving as the battery that can recharge his expensive energy cost. Ganyu can provide Cryo reactions with her Burst and draw a group of enemies to a certain location, or she can play the role of long-range DPS when needed, while Bennet’s Burst is used to keep Xiao alive while in his Burst state. After every party member has used their Burst, Raiden Shogun can wipe the floor with the remaining enemies until Xiao gets his Burst back.
These are just a few of many team compositions players can make with the Raiden Shogun and, with some experimentation, you might even be able to make your own unique team using the examples above (whether they be meta or not) and get the most out of the Raiden Shogun. The Electro Archon is an amazing support damage dealer that can take the field when your main DPS is charging up their Burst, while simultaneously serving as a battery for the team and recharging everyone’s Bursts. She is excellent at elemental reactions with her skill able to have permanent uptime, and with her high levels of energy recharge, she should do her job as a battery well. Once the Raiden Shogun is fully built and mastered, you’ll find that she’s one of the most fun characters to use in the entire game.