Wondering how best to build Alhaitham? The new five-star character added in patch 3.4 is a beast, and our look at the best Genshin Impact Alhaitham build ideas should help you realize his potential. But before you can get the most out of his kit, you'll need to understand how he works.
Alhaitham is a five-star character added in the limited-time banner, with his first appearance being from January 18, 2023. He debuted alongside the long-delayed Yaoyao, with Xiao appearing in a rerun banner at the same time.
While you're here, we've got handy lists of Genshin Impact Electroculus locations, Genshin Impact weapons, and Genshin Impact codes for you to check out. We also keep a regularly updated Genshin Impact tier list for your reading pleasure.
The best Genshin Impact Yaoyao build (January 2023)
| Role | Best weapon | Alternative weapon | Best artifacts | Alternative artifact | Stats | Talent order |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Damage | Light of Foliar Incision | Xiphos' Moonlight, Harbinger of Dawn | Deepwood Memories (four-piece) | Gilded Dreams (four-piece) | Crit DMG, Crit rate, Elemental Mastery, Energy Recharge | Elemental Skill, Burst, Normal |
Being a sort of polar opposite to Yaoyao, who specializes a Dendro Healer, Alhaitham stands out as a Dendro damage king, dealing high burst damage in the right composition.
To help him shine, Alhaitham scales well with Crit DMG and Crit Rate as primary sub-stats, and he puts Elemental Mastery to work as well. His kit suggests he's a Tighnari replacement, but initial testing hasn't made an excellent point of this just yet. He's comparable, but he doesn't change the game enough to outright replace Tighnari if you've already built up the earlier character.
Deepwood Dreams is the generally preferred artifact set for Alhaitham, but it's best to opt for Gilded Dreams if your team already makes solid use of Deepwood Dreams on another character like Yaoyao.
What are Alhaitham's abilities?
| Universality: An Elaboration on Form | Rushes forward to deal Dendro DMG to nearby opponents, causing a Chisel-Light Mirror to form, allowing Alhaitham's basic attacks to deal Dendro DMG while a Mirror is active. Upon hitting an opponent, any active mirror's hit for Dendro DMG. Only three mirrors can be active at any one time. |
|---|---|
| Particular Field: Fetters of Phenomena | Creates a Particular Binding Field to deal multiple instances of area Dendro DMG. Any active mirrors are consumed to increase the damage dealt. The fewer mirrors are consumed, the more will spawn two seconds after this effect ends. |
Yaoyao's abilities paint her as a primary support in a Dendro-focused team, with her Constellations padding out her healing abilities and energy recharge rates for the team.
For the most part, she exists to charge Elemental Energy for the team, and heal them reliably with White Jade Radishes that seek out allies or pop for significant HP restoration and damage when she leaves the field during her Elemental Burst. Paired with Nilou, she's a great switch-in/switch-out healer.
Are Alhaitham's Constellations worth it?
Alhaitham's C1 is necessary for him to reliably have more than one Chisel-Light Mirror on the field, which enables more consistent damage through normal attacks, and more burst damage with his Elemental Burst.
His C4, on the other hand, can really change the game. It's going to be a pipedream for many, and still might not be enough to make him the powerhouse some other five-star characters have proven to be, but his damage will scale rapidly from Elemental Mastery once unlocked, with each mirror's attack and his Elemental Burst dealing up to 100% more damage at a rate of 0.1% for each point of Elemental Mastery.
In short, they're probably not worth it given the cost of pulling Alhaitham a total of five times, but they're hardly bad Constellations.
Best Alhaitham team comps (January 2023)
Though you can try using her as a DPS character, Yaoyao's kit really stands out as a perfect Healing setup for a number of teams. She's likely to work best in a Hyperbloom-oriented team with Nahida thanks to her Dendro toolkit, but her radishes can make other element team comps work, too; like with Alhaitham.
Is Alhaitham good?
Though he isn't anything truly groundbreaking, Alhaitham has been lovingly dubbed "Dendro Keqing" due to the rapid attacks and high burst damage he can enable with his skillset and Crit-focused build.
The best way to describe him is that if Keqing is still so strong after years of power creep, someone being compared to her for another element is no insult.
For more on Genshin Impact, check out a few more build guides for the characters mentioned in this. We have a Yae Miko build, Thoma build, and Bennett build you can get good results from.