The greatly anticipated dendro archon, Nahida, has made her debut. To date, archons tend to be the most powerful of their element. The only one some may question this with is Venti. So how does this new archon shape up? Well, as only the second 5 star dendro character to be released, she doesn’t yet have much competition. However, she is a very flexible character and does great damage against multiple targets.
Her elemental skill can mark up to eight enemies at once, applying dendro and causing damage when a dendro reaction is triggered on any of the marked enemies, which spreads to all other nearby marked enemies. Dendro reactions can be triggered by hydro, pyro or electro which give a wide range of choice when choosing which characters to pair her with. Her normal attach also triggers a line of dendro which hits all enemies immediately in front of her, giving her good multi target damage and dendro application. Her elemental burst, unusually, doesn’t cause any direct damage but creates a large zone which boosts the damage done by the active character. These boosts differ depending on the team makeup but a default boost to elemental mastery of 25% of the character with the highest EM is applied to all teams with additional boosts for teams with pyro, electro or hydro characters.
She can fulfil just about any role in a team, main dps, sub dps or support but it is worth noting that while, if built right, she can do good on field damage that she is quite squishy. For that reason, unless a player is really lacking in main dps characters, I would advise against using her in that capacity. She really excels in the sub dps and support categories. She is particularly valuable as a support for single target dps characters, like Cyno and Tighnari. As long as they are capable of triggering dendro reactions, she gives them the ability to trigger damage on multiple enemies, rather than their usual single target focused damage. Her marks will also last the full length of Cyno’s very long elemental burst, if you reapply the marks before triggering his burst, making her the dendro support Cyno pullers were waiting for. She also works well in a Nilou super bloom team.
Her elemental skill also allows her to gather items, flowers, cooking ingredients, etc from a distance. Trust me, if you pull her then you’ll need it, as her level up materials are found at the tops of cliffs and can be annoying to collect by hand. A fun side use is that her skill can also read the minds of NPCs, but that doesn’t really have any in game advantage.
So, in conclusion, she is a very versatile character that can be fitted into most teams. She deals excellent multi target damage and is a great support character for most main dps characters. I would like to take this opportunity to remind players that no matter how hyped up a character is, there are no must pull characters and Nahida is the same. You should always try a character first in their character trial and only pull for that character if you like the way they play. Furthermore, archons tend to get more reruns than other limited 5 stars so, if you do miss her, you should get another opportunity to grab her in the next six months or so.
