On May 2, HoYoverse released the newest character banner for Genshin Impact starring the new four-star character, Kaveh. I’ve been very excited for Kaveh to appear on the Wish Banner. What is your first impression of Kaveh as a playable character? 

I personally find Kaveh’s skills and abilities in combat very interesting. 

Kaveh can immediately explode Bloom Cores in his vicinity that appear when enemies are hit with Hydro and Dendro abilities. These seed-looking cores typically explode over time, dealing damage to both the on-field character and the enemies. The damage output of this reaction is based off a character’s Elemental Mastery – the higher the Elemental Mastery, the higher the damage. 

Kaveh can explode these Bloom Cores on command using his skill. Furthermore, rather than taking damage from the explosion, Kaveh heals from it based on his Elemental Mastery. With his Burst activated, any cores that explode get a further damage boost, a stat that further increases as his burst is leveled up. 

I have yet to fully level up my Kaveh. He sits at level 40 with none of his skills leveled up, and yet, with the right team composition, he really does do a lot of damage. More than that, I find his play style very fun. 

His six-second skill cooldown is a bit difficult to manage, personally. I’m a bigger fan of quick rotation teams, so it took some time adjusting to it. I’ve mitigated some of this difficulty with the Sacrificial Greatsword, which has the ability to immediately end the cooldown of a character’s skill. This gives Kaveh the ability to explode Dendro Cores twice in a row. 

Furthermore, I am lucky enough to have summoned another copy of Kaveh, unlocking his first constellation that increases his Dendro Resistance and increases incoming healing within three seconds of using his skill. When paired with the weapon, my Kaveh can take more damage from the Bloom Cores exploding and heal larger amounts of health. 

From what I’ve seen, all of Kaveh’s constellations greatly increase his damage output, but it’s certainly not necessary for his character. His base abilities give him plenty of damage. 

I tried out a few different team compositions with him to see what felt best and teams I thought worked for new players. The teams I created focused on not including any characters that would cause the Dendro Cores to explode without Kaveh, meaning any Electro or Pyro characters. I felt that doing so would best display Kaveh’s versatility for players, particularly since players can’t gain any free Electro characters and only receive one free Pyro character.

The first team was made up of free-to-play characters, utilizing player gain for free by reaching certain thresholds in the game besides Kaveh who is only available through the Wish Banner. I used Kaveh, Collei, Barbara, and Kaeya for this team. It took a bit of playing around to get a hang of this team. It was harder to make Dendro Cores appear with these characters, but once I got the rotation of them down, I was making my way through the enemies. I was very proud of this team as well seeing as how my only character at max level (level 90) was Kaeya with Barbara sitting at level 60 and Collei at level 20. They did an impressive job against the level 88 enemies in the Spiral Abyss. 

The next team I used was much easier to rotate around. For this, I replaced Barbara with Xingqiu, one of the best, if not the best, characters to create reactions that utilize Hydro. Most players, even newer ones, tend to have Xingqiu as he is one of the best support characters in the game and often appears on Wish Banners. Creating Dendro Cores became a breeze using Xingqiu which increased Kaveh’s damage output. 

The last team I used was Albedo, Xingqiu, Nahida, and Kaveh. Xingqiu was, of course, to affect enemies with Hydro to begin making Dendro Cores. I utilized Albedo because his skill deals additional damage to enemies every time a normal attack hits an opponent in its area of effect and his Burst increases the team’s Elemental Mastery by 125 for 10 seconds. Nahida can regularly apply Dendro to enemies off-field with her Skill, making it possible to create more Dendro Cores alongside the ones created with Xingqiu and Kaveh as well as increase the Elemental Mastery for the team using her Burst. 

I was very pleasantly surprised with this team. I was creating clusters of Dendro Cores that made it easy to explode using Kaveh’s skills. Furthermore, if more than five Dendro Cores exist on the field, the first generated Dendro Core is guaranteed to explode to make room for a new Dendro Core which applies more damage to the enemies without me needing to use Kaveh’s skill. 

I love playing Kaveh’s character so far, and it’s been fun creating new teams around his skillset without the usual Pyro or Electro characters. 

What has been your first impression of Kaveh in Genshin Impact? Are you liking his playstyle or do you find yourself wanting the next available character? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below or in our Boss Rush Discord! 

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