Introduction
Hello Travelers, this guide will introduce a new 5-Star Sumeru Character which is Nilou! She is a DPS Hydro Character which focuses on having high amount of HP to further elevate her talent scaling and provide the most damage output possible. Although her kit is a bit niche considering the few characters available for pairing, she will still perform well while introducing a new elemental reaction unique only to her. This will be a complete guide to building her as we rundown her Talents, Weapons, Artifacts, Constellations, and Team Composition.
Talents
Jumping directly to talent priorities, it will be the Elemental Skill followed by her Elemental Burst and the Normal Attack. Reasoning behind this is simply because our stat allocation will mostly revolve around the HP stat in which both her skill and burst scales with.
- Active Talents
Her Normal Attack: Dance of Samser can perform up to 3 normal sword strikes, 1 charged attack, and a plunged attack. All of which provides a physical damage output and scales with Nilou’s Attack Stat. Since the attack stat will not be focused and does not correlate with her Elemental Skill, investing on this talent will not be recommended and will reward you the least.
The highlight of Nilou’s active talents, her Elemental Skill: Dance of Haftkarsvar, allows her to enter the Pirouette State dealing Hydro Damage to nearby enemies upon pressing the skill. It can then be followed up by either using her Normal Attack or repetitively casting her Elemental Skill in which both provides a different set of attacks that deals continuous Hydro Damage. All damage coming from her Elemental Skill scales with Nilou’s current Max HP.
Using her Normal Attack while on Piroutte State (Sword Dance) grants you a higher scaling on damage and can deal continuous Hydro Damage for 8 seconds. This will take most of Nilou’s on-field time since it’s where most of her damage will come from.
If you used her Skill by casting it repetitively while on Piroutte State (Whirling Steps), it will deal a slightly lower damage compared to using her Normal Attacks but will have a larger AOE. Upon pressing the skill three times (Water Wheel) the Elemental Skill will end and leave an Aura that can apply Hydro Element to nearby enemies.
The Elemental Burst, Dance of Abzendegi: Distant Dreams, Listening Spring, deals a large amount of Hydro Damage and applies the Lingering Aeon effect to all enemies hit. After a short amount of time, enemies that were applied with the said effect will receive a follow up hydro damage that has a higher scaling comparing to its initial burst damage. Both Initial and Lingering Aeon Damage scales with Nilou’s current Max HP.
- Passive Talents
The First Passive, Court of Dancing Petals, grants all characters in your team to have an increase in Elemental Mastery by 100 whenever they receive Dendro damage if your composition consists of only Hydro and Dendro Characters (you should at least have one of each). Here is where Nilou’s uniqueness comes to play as she can create a more powerful version of bloom reaction which is called the Bountiful Cores. Main difference of it to the existing bloom reaction is it deals more damage, will explode a lot faster, and has a larger AOE. Do take note that this new reaction can’t trigger Burgeon or Hyperbloom.
Dreamy Dance of Aeons, her second passive, converts every excessive 1,000 HP points above 30,000 HP to bonus damage dealt by her Bountiful Cores by 9%. Damage increase will have a cap of 400% thus the limit in terms of amount of HP is around 75,000.
As stated from her active talents to passive talents, focus should be around attaining the highest amount HP possible. Character pairing will also be restricted to use her passive correctly. This will be the base line for choosing our weapons, artifacts, and team composition.
Weapons
The core for weapon options will revolve around having the HP Stat. Elemental Mastery, Crit Value and Energy Recharge is also something to go for if you want to either increase her reaction damage, further increase Nilou’s damage from her talents, and have a good Burst Uptime. Anyways, we’ll run it down from the best option and other alternatives.
- HP Option (Most Recommended)
Best in slot for Nilou will be the Key of Khaj-Nisut as it provides an HP Percentage on its main stat and its passive. Additionally, it converts a percentage of your HP to elemental mastery whenever your elemental skill hits an enemy. This will be the perfect weapon to increase all your talents specially the damage of your Bountiful Cores.
Another sought of weapon will be the Primordial Jade Cutter with its high Crit Rate increase and an HP percentage bonus on its passive. Only downside is that its other passive does not benefit Nilou much since it converts a percentage of your HP to attack.
- Elemental Mastery Option
If you’re looking for the highest amount of Elemental Mastery available for a weapon, the Freedom Sworn should be your choice. This weapon has 2 sets of passives where it provides a flat damage bonus and another damage bonus to your Normal, Charged and Plunging attack upon triggering a reaction 2 times. Unfortunately, its second passive is not useful for Nilou since her playstyle does not revolve on using such.
Looking at some lighter options for Elemental Mastery, we have the Irong Sting and the Xiphos’ Moonlight. Should you want to go for a higher damage on Nilou’s output, go for the Iron Sting as it provides a damage bonus upon dealing elemental damage. If Burst Uptime is what you want to invest on, Xiphos’ Moonlight is the one you should consider since it converts your Elemental Mastery to a small percentage of Energy Recharge. Just do consider having some Elemental Mastery on your Artifacts if you are to use Xiphos’ Moonlight to capitalize more on its passive.
- Crit Option
Consider going for Critical stat weapons only if you want to elevate Nilou’s sole damage output while going for Non-Bloom Composition.
Mistplitter Reforged will be the most viable option with its Crit DMG increase on its main stat. Its second passive also increase your elemental damage on certain criteria which Nilou can meet easily.
- Energy Recharge Option
Our final set of choices are weapons that can provide us with a good burst uptime.
There are a ton of choices available for such but what I would like to highlight the Festering Desire and Sacrificial Sword. Should you want an increase on your Elemental Skill Damage, go for the F2P option, Festering Desire. If you want more on-field time with Nilou, go for the Sacrificial Sword so that you can use your Elemental Skill more often.
There are more Weapons available out there, which I did not include either because it has a high base attack thus having a lower scaling on the main stat or it has a passive restriction of taking damage which you will continuously encounter with the Bountiful Cores.
Artifacts
Similar with our weapon options, focused stat on artifact set piece will still be HP. Stats such as the Elemental Mastery, Hydro Damage and Crit will also heighten either your reaction damage or your active talent’s damage.
- HP Option (Most Recommended)
The 2-piece set of Tenacity of Milileth will be our best pick since it provides a flat increase of 20% HP. We can then pair this with any 2-piece set that can increase Nilou’s damage further whether it be a direct output increase, reaction damage increase or better burst uptime.
The 4-piece set of Gilded Dreams is also a decent choice since it can increase your Elemental Mastery up to 180 (assuming that you’re running a Bountiful Core Team).
Of course, we can also go for a two piece of the Gilded Dreams and the Wanderer’s Troupe for an easier pairing of main or sub stats.
Going on to the Artifact Main Stats, the following will be your priority:
HP%, Hydro DMG, Elemental Mastery, Crit or Energy Recharge
And for the Sub Stats, this should be our priority:
HP%, Elemental Mastery, Crit, Energy Recharge, or flat HP bonus
Should you want to highlight Nilou’s sole damage more, prioritize the Crit Stat instead.
Constellations
Looking at Nilou’s Constellation, it’s a good addition to boost her source of damage whether it be the reaction or her sole damage. Pretty much self-explanatory but here’s a simple rundown of it.
Constellation 1 will enhance either the damage of her Sword Dance’s 3rd hit by 65% or extend the duration of her Tranquility Aura by 6 seconds which simply states that there will be a different effect depending on the stance you are using with her Elemental Skill.
Constellation 2 decreases the Hydro and Dendro Resistance by 35% if you deal Hydro damage while Nilou’s second passive is activated and a whenever a bloom reaction deals damage respectively.
As usual, the third Constellation is an increase of your Talent Level by 3(Burst)
Constellation 4 will provide an Energy after casting the third hit from your Elemental Skill and increases the Elemental Burst’s Damage by 50% more.
And of course, fifth Constellation is another increase of your Talent Level by 3(Skill).
Constellation 6 increases your Crit Rate by 0.6% and Crit DMG by 1.2% for every 1,000 HP that Nilou has and is capped at 30% and 60% respectively. This means that at 50,000 HP, you can max out this effect.
Aiming for higher constellations in my opinion will simply be overkill. I do not recommend going for it since Nilou at 0 Constellation already functions well.
Team Composition
As mentioned on Nilou’s first passive, her kit will function if we only have both Hydro and Dendro characters on our existing team. Thus, creating a team composition will be direct and will consists of 2 characters for each element to utilize the elemental resonance as well.
With the way Bountiful Core is played, we’ll be receiving multiple damage from it upon explosion if we’re within its AOE. Having a healer will be heavily required in this case such as the likes of Barbara, Kokomi, and Xinqiu. Since there are no Dendro Healers atm, their main role will either be continuous application or another source of damage output.
Here’s how an ideal team will look like:
Should you not have the characters mentioned above, simply go for similar elements and try to be creative in mix and matching. Fortunately, building a 2 Hydro and 2 Dendro team is easy due to Hoyo recently dropping a free Collei! Having 3 Hydro Characters is also viable but will have less reaction versus the ideal pairing of 2.
Alternative type of composition will be the likes of Vaporize or Freeze reaction. Although this is the lesser option, it can still be viable with the right execution. Simply have a character that can deal continuous application of Pyro or Cryo for this to work.
Summary
All in all, Nilou is a good addition to the Sumeru line up as she brings us a new gameplay which is unique only to her. A very straightforward character and is very easy to build even with low investments. That’s it for this guide! Thank you for reading up till the end and We’d love to hear your feedback on Nilou’s overall kit.
You can check out an F2P Nilou with pure built HP here as referenced on the Talents portion here.
