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After a long wait, Travelers get their hands on the Dendro element and its reactions with the the Version 3.0 update for Genshin Impact. This came along with the Sumeru region, which also houses the Dendro Archon.
Tighnari is the first five-star Dendro character, aside from the Traveler. He's a forest ranger who refuses to be a part of the Akademiya because of his love for the forest. His unique kit allows him to have a particular playstyle without too many options to choose from.
Tighnari Is An Agile Character
The best part about Tighnari's skill set is that it allows him to constantly move. He doesn't get locked into any animations where he's vulnerable. Since he's a bow character who can easily be knocked off, it's recommended to keep moving as much as you can while using this character.
His Elemental Skill and Burst both have a pretty long radius. You don't have to worry about launching it from far away and missing the enemy, since it auto-targets as well. The agility of this character means he's a lot more fun and interactive, making him one of the more dynamic characters to play.
Elemental Skill Is His Bread And Butter
While Tighnari has a set of three skills, all of which are pretty useful, you'll mostly find yourself using his Elemental Skill. Unfortunately, while his Burst sounds very cool, it doesn't have high damage multipliers — even at higher talent levels. It does, however, cost only 40 energy.
If you want to use his Burst more often, you'll need a battery with him to allow for faster Burst availability. Most of his damage output comes from of his Charged Shots, and his Elemental Skill decreases their charging time — which is the best part of his kit.
Elemental Mastery Is Important On Tighnari
When you read Tighnari's kit, it essentially screams that Elemental Mastery (EM) is one of the most important stats for him. One of his passives gives you an extra 50 Elemental Mastery whenever you hit an enemy with the second Charged Shot.
Furthermore, for every point of Elemental Mastery you have, you get a DMG buff of 0.06 percent on his Charged Shot and his Elemental Burst. This stacks up to 60 percent, so you don't need more than 600 Elemental Mastery on him.
Fortunately, this stat is actually very good for Dendro reactions, since they boost the damage a lot. With another passive, an EM of about 550 gives you the maximum damage boost. Your EM requirement can be decreased even further with one of his Constellations.
Choose Your Party Wisely
Even though he's an agile character, his DEF is very low, and most of the enemies in the game can perform a heavy attack that can knock you back. This can be detrimental for Tighnari, since it completely cancels your Charged Shot, and also leaves you vulnerable to further damage.
To solve this problem, having a shielder as a part of your team will go a long way. If you have access to Zhongli, you can further decrease the enemy's Dendro resistance when you're in his barrier, while dealing a little damage with the Geo pillars.
The other two slots in your team also need a lot of consideration, because Tighnari is one of the few characters in the game that demands a high amount of field time. Even if you haven't used his Elemental Skill, his Charged Shots can deal quite a lot of damage.
You'll want to use characters that can deal a ton of off-field damage, like Xiangling or Raiden Shogun. These will allow you to do a lot of reaction-based damage too, which benefits from Tighnari's Elemental Mastery.
Characters like Xingqiu or Yelan, who require normal attacks to trigger their off-field damage, aren't good with Tighnari, because he usually doesn't make use of normal attacks.
He Doesn't Do Well Against Hordes of Enemies
Bow characters are inherently difficult to control when surrounded by hordes of smaller enemies, instead of a couple of large ones. While Hoyoverse does a good job balancing this, it seems like Tighnari didn't get that treatment, because hordes of enemies are going to be your nightmare.
His Elemental Burst and the extra arrows from the second Charged Shot target enemies at random, but this decreases your damage to the main enemy — something you won't want at times. This means he's generally not a good character to use against groups of enemies, unless you build him specifically for his Elemental Burst usage.
Fortunately, the hardest content in the game, Spiral Abyss, usually contains smaller numbers of bigger enemies, making him a perfect fit there.
You Need To Aim Well With Tighnari
If you're playing Genshin Impact on mobile, it can be extremely difficult to aim properly on such a small screen with your fingers. Unfortunately, Tighnari relies on aiming way more than any other bow character, even Ganyu. This is because of his Elemental Skill.
This ability makes it so that you require barely any time to charge three of your shots for the next 12 seconds. If you charge one of these shots and miss, the stack still gets consumed, and you'll only be able to have less charge time for two more shots.
Thankfully, if you get crowd controlled while holding a shot in this manner, the stack doesn't get consumed. You will still be able to fire off three of these arrows — unless you run out of time.
He Requires A Lot Of Resources
Being the main DPS, Tighnari is one of the few characters in the game that require an absolute resource sink. Firstly, you'll need to upgrade all three of his talents to the maximum level to get the most damage output. This is because, even after using his Elemental Skill, your Charged Shot damage depends on your normal attack talent.
Apart from normal stats like Crit Rate, Crit DMG, Energy Recharge, and ATK percent, you also need to look for a lot of Elemental Mastery in his artifact set. This will take even longer, given the RNG nature of finding relevant artifacts. Finally, you'll want both his weapon and his level to be at 90.
He Doesn't Rely On Constellations
It's no secret that getting Constellations for five-star characters is extremely hard for free-to-play or low-spending players in Genshin Impact. Being on the standard banner, it can be a little easier for Tighnari, but he also doesn't completely depend on Constellations.
His first Constellation gives him extra Crit Rate for his Charged Shot. While that makes it easier to build him, Ganyu gets this effect as one of her passives, which feels a little cheap. Furthermore, his sixth Constellation decreases his charge time for shots by 0.9 seconds, but it's still pretty long even after that.
Your charge time is insignificant after using an Elemental Skill, which is what makes this Constellation negligible except for the little DMG boost that you get. His fourth Constellation is probably the best, since it gives you a ton of Elemental Mastery, and it also supports the reaction-based playstyle.
Now, if there was a Constellation that decreased the cooldown of his Elemental Skill, or increased the amount of fast Charged Shots you can get, that would be more than worth going for. It would actually make him deal more damage in a shorter amount of time. Sadly, this isn't the case for Tighnari.
