Genshin Guide | Ningguang

With the release of Update 1.1 for Genshin Impact, Ningguang is part of the rate up banner together with other four stars Beidou and Diona, as well as the featured five star, Childe. If you’ve pulled a Ningguang from the new banner and wondering how to build her, this guide is for you.

Overview

Ning is currently the only catalyst user from the Geo element in the game. While she does enjoy a certain uniqueness thanks to her element, kit, and weapon of choice, a lot of people dismissed her during the early days of the game on global servers.

Ningguang can be classified as a hybrid between support and DPS. Because of how her talents work, you can definitely build her to focus on either of the two role types and not at all suffer. She can also be an integral part of your exploration team thanks to her unique passive, and while Ning is a mage-type character, you’ll quickly realize that her element affiliation allows her to stay in fights far longer than other mages.

Skills

Ningguang’s normal attack (left click) consists of two star jade missiles fired parallel to each other and always in the direction she is facing. If there is an enemy nearby, the missiles will seek the target or targets out and gives you a star jade fragment that circles her back – up to three. This is very handy against enemies like the Eye of the Storm or the Ruin Hunter, as both float above you, out of reach of your sword and greatsword users.

Unlike other mages, Ningguang’s normal attacks are physical projectiles that have a flight path. You can see where they are going, allowing you to quickly reposition to hit the target you want to hit, unlike other mages. Something that separates Ning from others of her ilk is the fact that her missiles have slightly longer range compared to Mona or Barbara for example, thanks to their nature. Her first Constellation gives her normal attacks a small AOE.

Her charged attack consists of unleashing a slightly larger missile straight at the enemy together with the star jades on her back. The more star jades she has, the more damage she can do. If you have unlocked her Strategic Reserves trait at Ascension Phase 4, she won’t consume Stamina when you do a charged attack provided you have at least one Star Jade.

Her Elemental Skill, Jade Screen, lets her call on a massive semi-transparent wall to crash down. Anything hit or within the AOE of the Jade Screen will take a big chunk of damage and smaller enemies will be knocked back or staggered. The Screen also blocks most types of physical projectiles like the rockets from a Ruin Guardian – pretty handy when you need to fight more than one. It won’t block elemental attacks from Abyss Mages, however. Her second Constellation resets the cooldown of her Screen when it is shattered, either from enemy attacks or from your elemental burst.

Ningguang’s Elemental Burst ability is Starshatter, a move where she launches several large Star Jades at her enemy to deal massive amounts of Geo damage. If there is a Jade Screen nearby, Ning will shatter it and the fragments will add to your missile volley for even more damage.

Role

Because Geo is such a neutral and defensive element, Ningguang can add a lot of value to the team and her damage is not hindered by any kind of element. Usually, enemies are immune to the element they share the attack with. With Geo, the only thing you need to switch out Ning for are the Geo slimes. Every other enemy including enemies with a Geo shield or element can be crushed by Ningguang.

That said, Ning can bolster your team’s defensive capabilities with the shields she gains from the Crystallize elemental reaction. This gives you a very tough ball against the element that Ningguang triggered, which can be very handy against tough bosses. Building her with high HP helps, since the health of her shields and Jade Screen scale off of her HP stat.

However, Ningguang shines when put in an offensive role. Due to the fact that she can fire off so many Jade Stars and Fragments, you’ll always fill up your screen with a lot of yellow numbers that can easily go beyond the 1,000 mark. Ning can be the primary or secondary DPS of the team, and she’ll do her role quite well and with deadly efficiently thanks to the low cooldowns of both her Elemental Skill and Elemental Burst.

Gear

For people starting out with Ning, Prototype Malice is a good craftable weapon. It gives attack and HP as your main and substats. These help both her capabilities as DPS and support. The Prototype Malice also gives you energy regeneration and healing not just to Ning but her whole team for every time you use her Elemental Burst. Because the low cooldown and cost of her Burst, you can spam it often, dealing a lot of damage as well as regaining a lot of health and energy thanks to this unique synergy.

For gear, you’d want the following:

• Prototype Amber
• 2pc Berzerker + 2pc Gladiator
• ATK hourglass
• GEO DMG goblet
• ATK/CRIT DMG headpiece

From the starter build, you can branch out into a more burst-oriented setup without sacrificing damage values. Together with an offensive-focused catalyst, the 4pc Noblesse Oblige set will give Ning an increase in her Burst while also providing your team with a damage buff. This setup is perfect when you have a primary DPS character other than Ning.

• Prototype Malice
• 4pc Noblesse Oblige
• ATK hourglass
• GEO DMG goblet
• ATK/CRIT DMG headpiece

For a full-on damage build, you’d want to spec into Archaic Petra mixed with Gladiator or Simenawa’s Reminiscence to go all-out with the damage output Ning can do. Paired with either the Solar Pearl Battle Pass weapon, the Eye of Perception, the Widsith, the Skyward Atlas, or the Lost Prayer depending on what stat you are lacking in (ATK, CRIT DMG, CRIT RATE), this Ningguang build will be the main DPS for your team.

• Solar Pearl, Eye of Perception, The Widsith, Lost Prayer, Skyward Atlas
• 2pc Archaic Petra + 2pc Gladiator/Shimenawa
• ATK hourglass
• GEO DMG goblet
• CRIT DMG/CRIT RATE headpiece

Ningguang Team Compositions

Since Ningguang’s Geo element is reactive, defensive, and minimally disruptive to your attack plan, any three members can work with her!

You can build a Vaporize burst sub-comp with Mona, Bennett, and Sucrose with Ning coming in to bring down shields, energy regen, and healing.

You can even utilize Xingqui as an amazing support DPS for a primary DPS Ningguang. Even though Xingqui works best with greatsword DPS characters, a full offense Ning can benefit from his Skill to mitigate damage and his Burst to turn your normal attacks from softening up the enemy to outright killing them.

Having Xingqui, Xiangling/Bennett, and Fischl on the team covers all of your bases, since you have physical damage at range and a solid Vaporize combo.

A turret team consisting of Xiangling and Fischl coupled with Barbara works great because of Ningguang’s Jade Screen acting as an anchor, allowing you to place your Gouba and Oz within the Screen to keep enemies in range of Ning’s Starshatter.

Finally, Diona offers much needed Cryo procs to combo with Fischl’s Oz for Superconduct, softening enemies for the wombo combo of Jade Screen + Starshatter.

For more crowd control, having a support-oriented Mona with her Elemental Skill to taunt enemies and Diona’s Cryo field from her Burst will keep groups of enemies frozen while Ningguang safely deals damage. Put in a third elemental proc of your choice (Pyro or Electro) depending on who you have and you can quickly clear out Domains with ease.

Summary

Ningguang has a great kit and straightforward artifact and weapon choices that allow her to work as a hybrid/secondary DPS character or just your straight up damage dealer. Her passive talent of detecting ore nodes in the overworld greatly help explorer team setups, while her steady as stone damage-dealing quickly erodes shields, and enemy health bars.

Need to mine? Ning.

Need to hit enemies Diluc can’t reach? Ning.

Need to break shields? Ning.

Need a great character that can fill many different roles? Ning.

About author

JD Pablo Editor-in-Chief

JD Pablo is the current Editor-in-Chief of twenty8two. Enjoys video games, pizza, banana bread, and tea. Takes coffee black.