The Normal Attack Curse of Genshin Impact 

Vote for your favorite/least favorite Genshin character: forms.gle/ETZw9rd9pLYGyjvE8

Yoimiya suffers from the reverse effect: such cool looking charge attacks that are absolutely unusable

Yelan's last normal attack is her literally dodging bullets...they just happen to hit the enemies

Ayato is an interesting case since he has a really clean set of Normal Attacks that all end with him sheathing his sword in different ways. However, you almost never use them because his general game plan actually revolves around ELEMENTAL SKILL GO BRRRRRRR.

Fun fact for Layla's third normal... The star changes colour based on the element her normals are, you can try it with Chongyun or Candace!

Then there is Arataki Numero Uno Itto. Whose entire kit is designed around his charged and normal attack. One of the coolest character to play.

Honestly surprised Albedo didn't make the list since he throws and reappears his sword midcombo with his flower animation. I love his attacks, but like Xiao and Kazuha I don't use them much outside co-op because of the damage. :'(

Xiao's infused normal attacks look insanely cool, it's sad that there's almost never a reason to use them. At least the plunges still look sick

Candace does have a niche normal attack use: Shatter-bloom comps. her shield bash counts a heavy hit (ie claymore attack). If you use this on a frozen enemy who is affected by Dendro (Cryo and Dendro auras can coexist in the same enemy since they don't react), Candace will simultaneously trigger shatter and blooms when under the effect of her burst. Its rather neat. Also her E shield bash is also a heavy hit.

The transition between Candace’s spear to zhongli’s spear was perfect

thats why heizou is one of my mains. cool normal attacks you can actually use

I have a theory about Yelan and why her attack animations don’t make much sense: the bow is a misdirection and she’s secretly actually a catalyst user/mage. For evidence: family has a history of being mages, bow is not even present for some of her attacks, and perhaps most telling- in charge shot mode her arrow is on the wrong side of the bow, unlike every other bow user in the game.

as a physical layla user I think that you are underplaying her attack animations. her bounciness makes her look so bubbly and her sheath animations expressions are gorgeous. building physical is the first thing I do with every electro and cryo character I get and her attack pattern is one of my favorites. JUSTICE FOR PHYISICAL CHARACTERS!

1:32 this transition was so smooth

Bro, Kazuha's Normal attack's animation is literally like one of the best sword normal attack animation.

The real curse is Charged Attack. We have Yun Jin to boost Normal Attack dmg and speed. But cannot boost Charged Attack dmg and speed. Most speed bonuses are only for normal attack. I think only Xinyan and Itto can increase their charged attack speed. But no support to help with that. Edit: so Beidou also, but no one uses Charged Attack of Beidou.

Fun Fact: Candace's second attack with her shield counts as a heavy attack and can shatter frozen enemies. This caught me off guard a few times and I think she's the only non claymore uses that can do that.

Genshin really goes the extra mile giving quriks for each characters attack animations that fit their personality but then give those attacks garbage stats, which leads to no one using them. I enjoy a lot of the attack animations. One of my favorites is Nahida and how her normal attack is an evolving pattern of dendro until it turns into a heart, plus her dancing animations are adorable.

The fact that every individual hit of the attack string has a unique recovery animation always blows me away, the first thing I do when I get a character is look at each one

Polearms in general are a pretty underrated weapon in media. I love polearms, i think fighting looks extremely cool with them.

Fun fact, non-human polearm characters are the only ones with unique charged attacks! Zhongli (spear fall), Raiden Ei (upward swish), and Xiao (upward claw swish thingamajig), whereas mortals like Cyno, Mika, Yaoyao, Yun Jin, Hu Tao, Rosaria, Xiangling, Candace, Shenhe and Thoma have the forward drill!

1:29 god this transition was everything

As an alhaitham and ayato haver im having a blast overusing normal attacks like crazy. Alhaitham does so well all the time because his attacks are fast and do huge AOE.

I honestly thought by "Normal Attack Curse" you'd talk about how characters are stuck to either normal atk dmg or performing normals through their kit in order to work with XQ, Yelan, Beidou, etc, or else be left to be disregarded as underperforming.

When I got Thoma by accident I was so enamoured by his normal attacks that I used up the rest of my character EXP material (barely getting him to lvl 20) and spent a solid five or six minutes killing two small hydro slimes in the Guili Plains ... I was so proud of him :')

Albedo’s normal attacks are so pretty

The thing i noticed with her burst is that it's one animation and not actually something like a Raiden or an Itto burst. Basically the entire 4 second window is an animation itself for the whole 4 seconds. Where Raiden's burst animation ends the moment she pulls her sword out, and lateron depends on Raiden's normal attacks. While for dehya, her burst itself is a 4 second animation and not a normal attack. You can see this for yourself if you do not touch your keyboard, she'll still do her said attacks, because that whole attack sequence is an animation and not her doing normal attacks Which is concurrently means that it works like every other animation in the game, and so gets jump canceled. It's also why she cannot proc yelan or xingqui because she isn't doing a normal attack she's just in her animation state. Personally I think it's so useless to do that, like just make her burst something like raiden, so we can choose our own NA combos and she can proc xingqui yelan while not getting frozen. ( I am not sure about this one, but most characters who normal attack during their burst, the description of the burst mentions : It cannot be overridden by any other elemental infusion. And if my prediction is correct then in Dehya's case it should not be written)

Another funny thing about normals is that while they do look cool but when i try to imagine a lot of them fighting in the same style it looks extremely inefficient and ineffective in a lore based fight scenario. Xiao imo has the perfect NA sequence where it gives him personality but you can also see it being effective against hordes that he normally fights against. Jean ayato kuki and many others while do look good but they have so much wasted movements and openings.

I actually did c6 my Bennett specifically for Dehya and her NAs and I’m not regretting it

That edit from Deyha blocking the spear and it spinning to Zhongli catching the flipping spear was CLEAN

Its interesting to mention, that Laylas last hit actually staggers big enemies, a property that was previously exclusive to Klee's Charge Attacks (I think). Its funny

For me, I've always loved the feel and how smooth Xingqiu and Albedo's normal attacks are - actually the reason I mained Xingqiu in the very very beginning with fillet blade lol. But seeing Layla's and Albedo's attacks with infusions are so so pretty

Yun Jin is my favorite of the melee attacks you don't bother using. And for her, you are even more encouraged not to use them than normal, because of Husk. She doesn't do enough geo, so you lose that bonus if you keep her on field. So not only are you not encouraged to use her attacks, you're actively discouraged to do so. Dori is one of those claymore users that just attacks too slow. There are the ones that are fine, like Dehya and Eula, but she's in the same category as Noelle... friggin' slow. Unbearably slow. Which pretty much means spin-to-spin (not win, because she doesn't do enough damage for that... she's no Xinyan). One of the dumbest design decisions they made with Candace is that she can't use her own C6. It wouldn't break her in any way, due to what stats she wants, but for some reason, Hoyoverse is against fun. Why not let someone who wants to on-field Candace benefit from that proc? Overall, I think one big hindrance is the nature of DMG cups. We have phys cups, and we have elemental ones, but we don't have a generic cup. If we had a cup that was, say, 38%-40% DMG at level 20, just flat, all around DMG, then it would open up the field a lot more for characters to mix damage types. This benefits non-catalyst users in general, but also teams that can infuse (with a different element than the character's). So even for atk scaling characters, if their elemental skill or burst has elemental damage that matters, then their normals are probably going to have to suffer for it. Non-attack scalers would still suffer, but in the Redhorn, Jade Cutter, Staff of Homa, Staff of Scarlet Sands, and Engulfing Lightning, you can see how that issue can be worked around as well.

You will be so happy with Kaveh cuz his normal attacks looks so good, I think they are better than Dori and he has a kit that utilizes his Normal attacks since he'll be a 4star on-field driver. And his charge attack is also pretty good.

*Yun Jin* . She's amazing for anyone who loves using normal attacks. Normal attack dps Kuki is AMAZING with Yun Jin. I even use Gorou as a normal attack dps. Zhongli is also super good with Yun Jin. I don't see a lot of people talk about her.

About Layla's attack, her star is colored if you have any infusion, which is so cool when you play some weird Layla-Bennet-Chong-Candace party.

Actually looking at a character list now....there are actually rather few characters that do use their normal attacks or even have that as a viable playstyle, but it is pretty mind boggling that those usually have standard animations for their weapon types instead of these cooler custom ones Also, I think there should've been a honorable mention to Yoimiya who does use her normal attacks (but are still not as special looking as Yelan's) but has a very unique charge shot effect and mechanic that is not supported anywhere in her kit and is simply a dps loss that is never worth doing outside of hitting birds

Zhongli catching Candace’s spear was such a good transition

It's always the 4* units that have some of the best looking normal attacks

Can appreciate how clean the spear transition was

One you didn't mention that I love, Albedo has great normals and charged attacks, and Xiao has a fantastic special charged. Some Kaeya builds do allow you to use his autos but I still think the his teleport is severely underappreciated, instead of being decorative like most other teleports in auto-strings, it can actually go through enemies like Rosaria's skill. They put so much love into every attack string and it's a shame some of the prettiest (in my opinion) you'll basically never see.

5:31 that nahida edit cracked me up way too much I wanna add tho that cyno’s NA’s feel hilariously weak. Got em to lvl 8 and they dont do jack

1:33 is one of the best transitions I've ever seen, oh my god

It could be possible that they do something similar to Honkai Impact. All Kiana suits are equipped with dual handguns, but later versions of her can be seen using swords and lances in her combos. Early Bronya battlesuits used to have different normal/charged attack types based on the equipped cannon such as laser beams or cannonball type attacks. Now they attack based on the battlesuit regardless of the cannon. The newest Bronya battlesuit uses a lance and drones in her normal attacks despite still having a laser cannon as her equipped weapon.

HOLY THAT TRANSITION WHILE THE DEHYA SWORD FLEW TURNED INTO CYNOS SPEAR THEN INTO ZHONGLIS SPEAR

Heizhou has the best normal attack animations, police brutality at its best.

I think it's weird that the recent new characters, even 5 stars are nowadays only getting 3 - 4 normal attacks, when older characters get 5 - 6 attacks.

Always been a pet peeve of mine. Going back to zhong li and Albedo. I’ve never liked the idea of pulling/buying a really cool character to never actually play with them. I wish more characters were designed with more build flexibility in mind. Somewhat like Jean was originally. You could build phys dps, support or whatever and not feel like it’s a complete mistake lol. I think that makes for a far more interesting experience especially if you’re playing coop and you see someone with a completely different build that works. It creates additional dialogue.

I fell in love with Kujou Sara's normal attack string before I even got her - joke's on me. At least she still has a cool teleport on her skill.

Nahida's atttacks are insane

I want an infusion for every element tied to skill Chongyun’s infusion is amazing Compared to Candaces and and Bennet’s ULT!

This video perfectly captures the reason why I always INSIST on trying out physical dmg builds for all the characters that can realistically do so. I did so with Dehya recently and before that with Candace, and while I do admit, its certainly not great at all. Its some of the more fun gameplay in genshin for me

A Normal / Charged Attack Tier List video would be swell

4:42 what do you mean you don't know why? It's so amazing The fluency of it all, how he handles the polearm and swings it around. The finisher really does make it fell like you built up momentum for something All of it just means that his attacks look really amazing unless you're hitting an enemy

How did you not talk about Xiao in this 💀 He has imo the coolest animations out of any character in the game but you only spam his plunging attacks

My brother in christ you can use Dori with Xingqiu for increased resistance to interruption in a hyperbloom team

Honorable mention to Albedo? He's the earliest instance of "wow, I really wish this normal attack did any damage" I've had. Most of his string and his CA are pretty normal, his N4 creates a beautiful effect surrounding his sword that looks similar to his E procs. (For this reason, he and Kazuha are among my favorite characters to pull out when I want to farm some teapot wood)

yanfei and barbara have some pretty nice normal attacks! watch yanfei's face on her third normal or charged - she sticks out her tongue! of course, you do get to see her normals, since you do use them in combat.

This is the bane of my existence. Using normal attacks is my favorite way to play, and i've used physical Raiden for months and then switched to physical Rosaria since she deals more dmg with the same build. I've also built Kokomi to deal 3k to 4.5k on each normal attack and 5k to 7k on ult. It makes me really sad that i can't do the same with Sucrose or Mona because their attacks just don't scale that much and i'd have to be content with 1k to 3k damage per attack.

Been thinking this since 1.0! So glad to see a whole video on it

I honestly really like Kaeya's finisher. His basic combo if I remember correctly is almost the same as Bennett with different speeds, but for his finisher he literally teleports. And as a Kaeya main, I find this not only really cool, but also useful sometimes.

It's crazy how much effort they put into stuff like this just for the collected miscellany videos and whatnot. Something I like overanalyzing myself is natural attack speed penalties: like most claymores, swords like Jean or Xingqiu who have innate attack speed penalties, etc.

the video quality and thumbnails are so amazing, you actually put effort into your videos and editing!! i love them.

Oh Candace is totally throwing. The shield bash and throw is absolutely inspired by Spartan iconography and such!

when i saw a video titled "the normal attack curse", i thought it was going to be about dehya's anti-synergy with characters like yelan/xq/beidou whose burst procs rely on normal attacks. the video i watched was definitely not what i was expecting, but i really do resonate with it a lot :( the normal attack strings from countless characters are drop-dead gorgeous and unless you go out of your way to build them physical, you'll never really be able to see them in game. shenhe and yun jin's normals had my jaw dropping, and as you pointed out thoma's are so satisfying and bouncy i love them. the first thing i ever try out when doing character trials for new units in this game is look at their normal attack string in detail, and it often ends up being the first and last time i ever get to study them :(

that thumbnail art made me reach happy places 69 times

Ya know, I never realized how well Kamura sound track goes great with genshins atmosphere and gameplay

I felt this when I pulled for Nilou, I thought I could use her as a bountiful core driver for my bloom comp with the sword stance thing haha! She's still my main, at least I could also see Nahida's attack strings. Copege

i loove sayus normal attack animations and the stances she takes after them

I enjoy juggling enemies in the air with Diluc's normal attacks and mix in his 2nd searing onslaught it's easier to launch then you just normal attack 1&2 and they're in the air for as long as you want almost. So satisfying when you also dawn an enemy and it's as if you playing baseball or something, if enemy is already in the air then it is a free homerun.

If you're curious, I'm pretty sure Kuki Shinobu's throwing weapons are naku weeds. They have the same model as the ring on her skill and the description for it mentions it is a naku weed ring. It makes sense since she spins her kunai in her idle animation, showing it's not a long weapon but in her skill she uses the kunai with a rope of naku weed to make the sanctifying ring. So she must have a stash of them to attack or hel.

Was just watching your videos and you dropped this Thanks ^^

Wait I never actually tried Collei's NA That was so cool

I've never actually seen Layla's normal attacks, I love how fast and bouncy it is

10:59 yes, I did C6 Bennett for Dehya. But there's also another reason: I always found Bennett too boring to play without C6 so I promised myself to not even bother with him until he reaches that constellation. And I did fulfil the promise for one of my accounts. And I'm very unlikely to regret this decision because I don't plan to play him in any of my teams other than pyro ones or those where pyro infusion adds to the playstyle (like, that dendro team with Razor and Xingqiu).

With Thoma, this video was released well after dendro and Nahida were out. Burgeon Thoma was very much a thing and he has energy issues with his best weapon (Kitain) wanting him to burst > skill meaning he stays on field for at least 1 attack string to catch his own particles and sometimes more if you need to battery him. His normal attacks aren't directly doing damage but they don't need to be for you to see them.

1:29 that smooth af transition though !

Agreed. This is why once you reach the point you have a built account you no longer need to bother playing coop not unless you are the one assisting peeps. Thats a whole different story

I love that despite these parts of their kits being unimportant they still put so much personality and attention to detail in them.

Who else here ever thinking of using Thoma with 4pcs Retracing Bolide set and make use of his normal attacks?

Albedo is another case of this. His N4 is gorgeous, and the shape around his wrist changes color if you infuse it with an element, but the only thing you'd ever use him for is placing his flower down and then swapping off

As a thoma main for nearly a year who built him as a sub dps, (who moved on to Yanfei) I love Thoma's attacks! They're stylish yet brutal, and the way he literally kicks smaller enemies at the end it so cool.

i love thoma a lot as a character and playstyle wise so i'm building him as a phys main dps and while the team isn't considered meta, it's very fun to use in overworld and i get to see his cool normal attack animations !

7:30 I think what Collei actually does is incorrectly launching the arrow from her bow so that the arrow spins as they fly forward, and they also fly in an arc rather than straight Cuz she's rather clumsy

This whole time I've never noticed Colei's 3rd and 4th attack!

As Kazuha was my first five-star, getting into the game at 2.8, he _was_ my overworld main DPS for the longest, basically only getting phased out once I started kitting a standard-banner'd Diluc (who then was mostly phased out by the Shogun).

I really appreciate what you said in the beginning, on my old accident mained Qiqi (before that account got deleted) and now I use Collei because I really like burning as a status, I’ll never understand why my friends got mad at me why I used them because they’re not “meta” Genshin isn’t something like a competitive multiplayer game and majority of the time it’s single player so I feel that it really doesn’t matter how bad the characters you use are, all that matters is fun

I had a hard time with that vote, I like so many! Beidou, Rosaria, Sara, Raiden, Shenhe, Yae Miko, Yelan, Eula, Dehya, Candace, even Ningguang! In the end I had to pick just one so yeah it was tough. I considered more than just how fun they are to play. I considered their story building and personality and even how often I use them in my teams! Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing the results of your poll!

I've noticed a trend personally that, outside of a select few, the passive, non-aggressive characters are dps and really strong (Ganyu, Hu Tao, Heizou) while the powerful fighters are meant to be supports or are just weak in general (Venti, Zhongli, Klee, Deyha)

When I have time, I like to do juggle combos with characters just to make use of the normal and charge attack animations. For instance, If you use Geo travelers charge attack to launch an enemy, you can keep them in the air by doing a normal attack into the skill. You can then jump on top of the rock and do more normals to keep the combo going. It's nice to see that while the system doesn't cater to using attacks in that fashion, it's still allowing you to make things happen that you wouldn't expect.

Albedo's NAs are so elegant and neat that I used to take him on slime-bullying walks. Place his E, and spam NAs against slimes while being invincible thanks to crystallized shields.

I don’t know if anyone’s said this but Raidens autos match her burst autos pretty closely which I’ve always loved

1:34 Wow, that was a smooth transition.

for characters i like enough if i’m just standing around or goofing off, i’ll use their normal attacks to look at the attack animations and poses after each one! Childe’s definitely the one i did this the most with tho. I’ve heard he uses instinctive archery (no, technically he isn’t handling the bow wrong) and his last bow NA always amused me bc his strongest shot is an arrow yeet. Also like figuring out which catalyst chara’s attacks cause their weap to appear.

Thank you, finally. I can’t believe in a game where almost every character has entirely unique attack strings normal attacks don’t play a larger roll in each character’s kit. It’s so annoying seeing a new character have awesome normal attacks only to think “well I’ll never be using those”.

I triple crowned both Collei and Candace, Collei is built Physical purely so I can use those sweet sweet normal attacks. Nothing can stop me

Thoma's NA is one of the most useful for farming wood, his attacks are fast but not too fast so you get a piece with every hit. Plus his NA is actually AoE, you can even have the tree behind your back and you will still hit it. This waned with the tree farming gadget but if you're new player, it takes time to get it. Personally I level all talents of my characters at least to 8, including normal attack and I mean on every character. And surprise surprise, although their attacks do way less damage than their skills and bursts, it still counts and every so often it helps getting the monster die without wasting another burst. But I agree that most normal attacks in this game are weak and it feels like waste of effort the developers put into their animations. Infusions may help with it a bit but mostly only if there's infusion available in the character's element. And we don't have many of these and they usually cost a party slot for a character who's only there to do the infusion. Perhaps in the future we'll get something that will make NA more useful. There's always hope.

I think the main reason is there are teams of people working on different parts of each character, animators likely aren’t the ones deciding how much NA/CA damage they deal

oh my god, finally someone said something about it. i posted a thread on this like YEARS ago and everyone that replied said that it didnt matter and that i was nitpicking.

Bro I been saying this for the longest!! I wish NA were far more viable for everyone (catalysts, infusers and Eula aside) at their base standard instead of having to build them as a phys dps and/or maybe if there was some unique benefit to full maining them. Like what if NA were just stronger in general and, for example, Thoma's burst flame waves were too and they also ticked a lot quicker when you attack as him; you could make Vape Thoma an actually viable thing then, but it wouldn't be Childe and Xiangling level yk. Or maybe even better is if for non traditional dps type characters, whatever they scale with like EM, ER, HP, DEF also scales up their normal attack damage as well. It'd be so cool and refreshingly fun to be able to use Kazuha's NA and actually do decent damage while not compromising his full EM build and same with Thoma, Layla, Zhongli, Candace, Mika on full HP. I even triple crowned my Raiden and I love using her charged attack so increased NA based off of ER would actually put that crown to better use. I'm not saying it should make them cracked (or even moreso) or anything, just a bit stronger/a lot more viable in terms of NA. Ofc it's a reaction based team focused game but still, this would be such a harmless and fun option to have and let us appreciate our singular characters more. Also claymore characters need to attack WAY faster and more fluidly, Eula and using Diluc's NA in between his skill are the only ones that feel fluid enough.