Raiden FAQ

Credits: Ayzel, Zanto

Q: What is Raiden's best weapon? 1

Q: What is Raiden's best 4 star weapon? 2

Q: Is it more worth it to invest in Raiden's personal damage, or to simply stack as much

ER as possible on her? 2

Q: What are some potential Raiden teams? 2

Q: How good is Raiden's energy generation/What is the ICD on Raiden's burst/skill? 3

Q: What is Raiden's best artifact set? 3

Q: What is Raiden's best combo? 5

Q: What mainstats should I use on Raiden's Artifacts? 5

Q: How much ER does Raiden need to use her burst off cooldown? 5

Q: How good are Raiden's constellations? 6

Q: Should I pull for Raiden? 7

Q: How strong is Raiden? 7

Q: What is Raiden's best weapon?

A: Raiden's best weapon is likely going to be her signature weapon, Grasscutter's Light.
At high ER values and with the right rotation, Grasscutter's light can outdamage the
Staff of Homa (with low HP on). Even though the Staff of Homa will outdamage
Grasscutter's Light in many situations, Grasscutter is still likely going to be a better
choice because of the team utility (flat energy for the team) that Raiden provides, which
scales with her Energy Recharge. Using Grasscutter will make it easier to hit higher ER
thresholds than using the Staff of Homa, since Grasscutter has an ER substat while the
Staff of Homa does not.

However, at equal ER values (i.e. Homa with an ER sands, Grasscutter with an ATK
sands), the Staff of Homa with its low HP modifier can out-damage Grasscutter's Light
in certain situations, like if Raiden is receiving a significant ATK bonus or at lower
energy requirements. In these cases, since both weapons are aiming for the same
Energy Recharge value (which takes away Grasscutter's advantage of being easier to
stack ER with), the Staff of Homa is better.

Right now, we haven't done full team damage calculations to see whether it's more
worth it to stack ER on Raiden and sacrifice her personal damage, or if it's better to
have a balanced amount of ER on Raiden to preserve her personal damage at the cost
of some team utility. If the former is true, then Grasscutter will be her BiS weapon, while
if the latter is true, then Raiden's best weapon will vary based on the situation.

Q: What is Raiden's best 4 star weapon?

A: Raiden's best 4 star weapon is Deathmatch. While The Catch R5 is theoretically
more damage in some situations if sword normals are counted as burst damage, it is
only marginally better in some situations, and the likelihood that sword normals will be
counted as burst damage is low.

Q: Is it more worth it to invest in Raiden's

personal damage, or to simply stack as much ER
as possible on her?
A: We don't know yet.
Q: What are some potential Raiden teams?
A: Raiden works well with energy-hungry units; one prime example is Beidou.
Raiden/Beidou is a strong core, and can slot into many teams. Here are some
examples:

Mono Electro: Beidou/Raiden/Sara/Flex

In this team, Raiden can gain a large amount of resolve since Beidou and Sara both
have 80-cost bursts, while Sara and Raiden can both buff Beidou and allow her to deal
more damage. Raiden provides flat energy to the party, allowing Beidou and Sara to run
less ER and use more damaging stats. Some options for the flex unit include Xingqiu,
Zhongli, Jean, Bennett, Venti, and Kazuha.

Yoimiya Overload: Yoimiya/Beidou/Raiden/Flex

In this team, Yoimiya functions as an on-field attacker who constantly triggers overload
with the help of the electro aura applied by Raiden and Beidou. It's uncertain at the
moment whether Raiden is a better choice for this slot than Fischl/Electro MC.

Raiden/Childe Fireworks: Childe/Beidou/Raiden/Bennett

Childe Fireworks is a very strong team, and Raiden can potentially take Fischl's place in
it. Raiden can use her burst during Childe's downtime on his melee form, which negates
the issue of Raiden taking away field time from on-field carry units. Raiden can also buff
all of her teammates, since Childe and Beidou both deal a significant portion of damage
with their elemental bursts. Lastly, in the "typical" fireworks team, Beidou's burst isn't
constantly being triggered, since Childe only wants to be on field for around 7-9
seconds, while Beidou's burst lasts for 15. Using Raiden's burst right after swapping off
Childe will allow Beidou to proc more discharges, increasing her personal damage.
(edited)

Q: How good is Raiden's energy

generation/What is the ICD on Raiden's
burst/skill?
A: We don't know how good/bad Raiden's energy generation is. Her ICD likely follows
standard ICD rules (i.e. new electro application every 3 hits or 2.5 seconds) although
she could have weird ICDs on her attacks.

Q: What is Raiden's best artifact set?

A: Although it might seem like the Emblem of Severed Fate set is good for Raiden (after
all, it released with her region), the 4-piece set bonus is unlikely to work well with her.
This is because, as previously mentioned, it is likely the case that only the initial hit on
Raiden's burst will count as burst damage, while the other parts of her burst (sword
normals) will count as normal/charged attack damage, as this is how Childe's melee
form/Hu Tao's skill/Xiao's burst all work. It is possible that this will be changed to allow
Raiden to work well with the ESF set, but it's unlikely.

The other sets that may work well with her include:

4-piece Thundersoother: 35% DMG to electro-affected targets is quite a lot, and in

many of Raiden's teams, maintaining an electro aura on targets won't be too difficult.

4-piece Shimenawa's Reminisce: While the 4-piece set bonus will allow Raiden to do
more damage while in her sword form, it will also increase her energy cost to an
astronomical 95 energy. The 4-piece set bonus will also not apply to her skill damage.
Overall, the TC team needs to do more calculations to see whether this set is worth it or
not (although it's probably not).

4-piece Retracing Bolide/4-piece Gladiator's Finale: Same issue with Shimenawa 4-

piece - doesn't apply to skill damage. It is unlikely that either of these sets is better than
the 4-piece Thundersoother set.

2-piece Thundering Fury: Can be combined with another 2-piece set, such as the 2-
piece Gladiator's Finale set.

2-piece Gladiator's Finale/2-piece Shimenawa's Reminisce: These two sets can be

combined with other 2-piece options like the 2-piece Emblem of Severed Fate set or the
2-piece Thundering Fury set. The damage of these sets is competitive with the 4-piece
Thundersoother set, as Raiden runs into the issue of having too much DMG%
(especially if Resolve stacks are additive DMG% modifiers to her burst, which they likely
are). More calculations need to be done to determine whether it's better to use a 2-piece
SR/2-piece Glad combination over the 4-piece Thundersoother set.

2-piece Scholar/2-piece Exile: These sets are interesting. While it's typically not worth it
to sacrifice 5-star stats, Exile and Scholar 2-piece sets could be stacked with the 2-
piece ESF set to boost Raiden's ER% by 40%. As previously mentioned, we don't yet
know if it's better for team damage to stack ER% and lose Raiden's damage or to stack
damage and lose Raiden's team utility; if the former is the case, these 2-piece sets have
the potential to be alright.

2-piece Emblem of Severed Fate: Works well if Raiden is solely functioning a battery for
her team, but will contribute less to Raiden's personal damage than other 2-piece sets
like the 2-piece Thundering Fury set assuming that Raiden can use her burst off
cooldown in both situations. If Raiden needs additional ER to use her burst off
cooldown, this is a good option, as it allows Raiden to use other damage-oriented
substats rather than needing to get more ER subs to burst off CD.

4-piece Noblesse Oblige: There are two main issues with the Noblesse Oblige set. First,
it's unlikely that the 2-piece bonus buffs Raiden's kit significantly, and second, the buff
only lasts for 12 seconds, and Raiden wants to stay in sword form for a decent chunk of
that time, which eats into the buff uptime. This is less of a problem if a character who
can snapshot swaps in after Raiden uses her sword form attacks (such as Beidou), but
not all characters can snapshot. However, for characters who can snapshot, this could
be a decent support set for Raiden.

Q: What is Raiden's best combo?

We don't know yet.

Q: What mainstats should I use on Raiden's

Artifacts?
A: Raiden will probably want to use an ER% sands (slightly less damage than an ATK
sands but more team utility, with the damage gap possibly closed by Grasscutter's Light
if you manage to get it), an Electro% or ATK% goblet (depends on both situation and
whether certain parts of Raiden's kit work in the ways that we think they do), and a Crit
circlet (either CR% or CDMG%; whichever brings you closer to a 2:1 ratio.)

Q: How much ER does Raiden need to use her

burst off cooldown?
A: We don't know yet, since we don't know her energy generation.

Q: How good are Raiden's constellations?

A: Her first constellation will allow her to charge her resolve to full more easily (at C0,
she will probably get around 40-ish resolve stacks in a team with other units that have
decently high energy costs). This is a decent damage increase; calculations need to be
done to see how large of a damage increase it is.

Her second constellation is pretty good, as it allows Raiden to both provide a Burst
DMG% buff and a decently large ATK% buff to her teammates. While it's certainly not
as strong as something like Bennett's buff (or even Sara's buff), it's still quite a lot of free
damage that she provides to her team.

Her third constellation, which increases the talent level on her burst, is interesting - it's
good if characters are investing in Raiden's damage, but it's unknown at this point
whether it's more worth it to invest in Raiden's damage or just to stack ER on her.

Her fourth constellation is a bit of a mystery. If it works like a 60% DEF shred, it will
increase Raiden's sword damage by 44.44% (assuming level 90 Raiden and level 100
enemy), which is a tremendous amount. However, the wording (ignore 60% of
opponents' DEF) implies that this buff is only applicable to Raiden, so Raiden's fourth
constellation is a bit similar to her third constellation in that its strength is dependent on
whether players are investing in Raiden's personal damage or not.

Her fifth constellation is less stellar than her third constellation, as Raiden's burst makes
up a large portion of her damage than her elemental burst (skill is probably around 1/3rd
or less of Raiden's overall damage).
Her sixth constellation is interesting. Having an, at minimum, 25% lower cooldown on
character elemental bursts seems super powerful. It still needs to be determined just
how strong this constellation is, but given that it decreases the burst cooldowns of every
member of the team, and many of Raiden's strongest teammates are burst-reliant, this
constellation could have the potential to be devastating.(edited)

Q: Should I pull for Raiden?

A: If you want.

Q: How strong is Raiden?

A: It's hard to say. Raiden is a super complicated unit, and while her personal damage
doesn't look great, the utility that she provides to her team is pretty significant. It's
currently too difficult to "rank" Raiden.