Genshin Impact Nilou Build Guide: Talents, Gears, And Team Comps (2022)

Nilou is a 5-star Hydro Sword Character in Genshin Impact. She is going to debut in the 3.1 version of Genshin Impact, where the desert portion of Sumeru is unlocked. Overall, Nilou is a Hydro sword-user who can play both DPS and support roles on Bloom teams specifically, thanks to her unique Skill that allows for varying playstyles.

In this article, Gurugamer.com is going to showcase a complete Genshin Impact Nilou build guide.

1. Genshin Nilou Skillset Overview

With the Dendro Element being the new, trendy thing in Genshin, Nilou's kit is pretty much hyper-specialized for teams utilizing the Bloom reaction. She needs a team with only Hydro and Dendro characters, as she doesn't benefit from other types of reactions.

When using Nilou’s skill, she can then do a 3-hit combo in any combination of Normal Attack and Skill button presses, all dealing Hydro damage based on Max HP. The last hit will determine which stance she takes.

• Normal Attack: Luminous Illusion continuously converts her Normal Attacks to Swords Dance moves for 8 seconds. This is Nilou’s DPS stance, and should be used when you want her to spend as much time on-field as possible.
• Skill: Water Wheel creates a ring around the active character that continuously applies Wet to enemies. The ICD on her Wheel is 2 seconds, but will tick every half-second checking for new enemies to affect. This is Nilou’s support stance, and although it doesn’t deal damage, it allows her to apply Hydro from off-field.

Nilou’s Burst is simply 2 modest instances of Hydro damage, which equates to two more applications of Hydro for Bloom Generation.

Her passive talent, however, is what makes her stand out in comparison with other Hydro characters. It buffs Bloom damage massively and turn Dendro Cores into Bountiful Cores which explode right away, and deal more damage in a bigger AoE.

The best constellations for Nilou are C1 and C2, which increases both her own damage and her teammates' damage.

2. How to use Nilou

It is highly recommended to get Nilou to level 90 to boost her base HP pool as high as possible, as well as to enable her Blooms to have the highest possible level scaling for base damage. Players should focus on Nilou's skill - her Burst can be neglected entirely and her Normal Attacks are the only talents that use her ATK stat.

Nilou combos

While Nilou’s combos may seem complicated at first glance, they’re fairly simple. Each type of attack as Nilou dances serves a purpose (application range, number of enemies hit, etc.) despite having different multipliers.

* Q, E, N3x6 (Optional Burst, Skill, 18 Swords Dance attacks) – On-Field Focus

* Q, E E E E (Optional Burst, Skill, 3 Whirling Steps attacks) – Off-Field Focus

* Q, E, N3 (Optional Burst, Skill, 3 Sword Dance attacks) - Off-Field Focus (use this rotation to apply Nilou’s buff while minimizing her own Bloom ownership)

3. Best Artifacts for Nilou

Nilou’s talents scale purely off HP and Bloom reactions scale purely with Elemental Mastery. Therefore, Nilou only needs HP, Elemental Mastery, and sometimes Energy Recharge (if players want to use her Burst off-cooldown).

Artifact Main Stats

Overall, players need to stack as much HP% as possible on Nilou, or HP% + ER% to reach 180% ER. Focusing on HP% gear makes Nilou very easy to farm for and to build (as you don’t worry about crit) and gives her the highest possible team-wide boost to Bloom damage through her A4 passive.

Artifact Sets

Nilou is fairly flexible. In general the best option is 2-PC Tenacity of the Milleleth for the 20 HP%, with any of the following 2-sets: 2-PC Gilded Dreams, 2-PC Heart of Depth, 2-PC Noblesse.

4-PC Deepwood Memories is also an option for the Dendro RES Shred.

4. Best Weapons for Nilou

The best weapon for Nilou is obviously her signature Key of Khaj-Nisut from the weapon banner. It gives lots of HP% and allows Nilou to convert her max HP to an EM buff for herself and for the rest of the team. Allows Nilou to double dip by getting high EM while building full HP%, which both empower her Blooms.

Outside of this, your weapon choice depends on your Nilou build and whether or not you have 180% ER. Below are the best alternate choices:

• R5 Sacrificial Sword - Any hit from Sword stance can reset the skill cooldown, which allows Nilou to use Sword stance attacks while her Tranquility Aura is active
• R5 Xiphos’ Moonlight - good stat stick and benefits team, but depends on refinements
• Freedom-Sworn / Primordial Jade Cutter – just for the stats.
• Iron Sting - Craftable EM stat stick; R5 is competitive with and sometimes bests other options here.
• Sapwood Blade - Craftable option to provide a small bonus amount of EM to an ally.

5. Best Nilou team comps

As mentioned before, Nilou is only effective in Bloom teams. Nilou’s passive allows Blooms to explode almost immediately, deal more damage, and expand the range of Bloom explosions.

There are three options for team structures:

Double Resonance (2 Hydro 2 Dendro)

As you need Nilou to trigger Bloom and not the other Hydro character, it is best to run a character with very minimal Hydro application like Barbara. Your double resonance team will basically be restricted to Nilou, Dendro Traveler, Collei, and Kokomi or Barbara.

A healer is needed for Bloom teams as Dendro cores also deal damage to your character.

Triple Dendro

Triple Dendro can ensure Nilou has full ownership of the Blooms she buffs. However, sacrificing the new Hydro resonance HP boost is a huge detriment, so the bar for Dendro performance must be high enough to compensate.

Triple Hydro

This type of team focuses on rapid Hydro application in order to ensure a Dendro character building full EM takes full ownership of Bloom reactions. The Yelan + Xingqiu off-field DPS combo can certainly carry nearly any combination of other characters, so the last piece of the team is a Dendro unit with healing (which hasn't been released yet)

>>> Read more: Genshin Impact: 5 Hidden Sumeru Quests You Might Have Missed