Genshin Impact’s latest new character, Alhaitham, is now live. I got lucky in pulling him early, so I’ve been busy trying him out. Alhaitham is an on field, Dendro, DPS character. There has been a number of youtube videos showing him pulling of some pretty crazy DPS. While I’ve not been able to max out his talents or perfect his build yet, I can confirm that he does hit pretty hard.
I did a comparison between Alhaitham and Tighnari fighting the Hydro Hypostasis with similar talent levels. Alhaitham took down it’s main phase significantly faster, to the point that I, actually, went in to check the talent levels were the same. Alhaitham’s normal attack turned out to be one level lower with the other two the same, so it was a reasonably fair competition. It should be noted that Tighnari can still take out the droplets faster in the final phase, due to his ranged ability, but Althaitham still took them all down before the Hypostasis could revive and was significantly faster overall.
That being said, Alhaitham isn’t for everyone. A few people have posted on Reddit that they don’t like the feel of his playstyle, so if you are planning on pulling for him then make sure you try him out first.
In terms of personality and lore Alhaitham is not among my favourite characters and, like Wanderer, I probably wouldn’t have bother pulling him, if I hadn’t been intending to review him. However, I certainly don’t regret pulling him. While it takes a certain amount of skill to maintain his maximum DPS output, I find him fun to play.
Similar to Ayaka, Alhaitham can maintain a 100% uptime on his elemental infused attacks, but it does take a bit more skill than with Ayaka. Alhaitham’s normal skills are infused with dendro when he has at least one Chisel-Light Mirror out. These are produced by his elemental skill and burst and also can be by his charged attacks. However, his charged attacks need to hit an enemy to generate a mirror, so timing is key to keep his mirrors up. He works well in hyperbloom and aggravate teams.
He is also easy to build. He runs well with the 4 star, craft able weapon Iron Sting and his best sets are the Deepwood Memories and Gilded Dreams sets which are all easy to farm. His ascension material, while native to the newly released desert area, can be found in concentrated clumps and aren’t as spread out as some other recent ascension materials have been.
All in all, I’ve found Alhaitham to be quite a pleasant surprise. He’s available for two more weeks for those wanting to try for him; but do always remember to pull for characters based on your own likes and dislikes and not on what is considered meta this season. A game should ultimately be fun to play. All characters will have more banners in the future, so there is no need to rush into a decision if you’re not already sure. He will come again.
