Why NO ONE Plays: Sayu | Genshin Impact 

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It's not that she's a bad unit, its just that most of her entire kit only benefits from open-world exploration. Her skill, and her being an anemo user are the things that make her good at it. In combat, however, her skill is hard to use. She does have decent healing, but that's it.

I use her in a team with Xiangling, Kaeya and Shinobu. Basically, she rolls around while everyone's burst and skill revolve around her. It's pretty funny to use and surprisingly good if you build her teammates decently with EM in mind

Sayu is technically one of the most used units but never gets thrown in combat. Provides a small amount of healing, critter passive, anemo resonance, roll, and is an easy to obtain 4 star that you only need one copy of. If Sayu was a catalyst user there probably would've been some usage.

Sayu soup teams are legitimately very fun. Sayu + Kaeya + Xiangling + Barbara/Kuki results in a huge number of reactions while swirling all of it. Satisfying, even if not efficient.

I have to do it. I’m sorry in advance but, technically she is a Mujina which is a Japanese badger (also known as a racoon dog). Additionally according to her character story Mini Mujina it specifically says and I quote “I’m not a tanuki, I’m Sayu.” This is referring to whenever people mistakenly refer to her as a tanuki.

As a retired Sayu main, what she lacks the most is definitively CC. Her healing is quite good even when build for dmg and her dmg, for someone who was not meant to be a dps, is pretty good actually. My C2 Sayu on 4pc viridescend does around 45k-50k total with her E when she's rolling and hits an enemy every possible time (her E is crowned), tapping her E does 22k (every number is a crit of course) her crit ratio is 56/126 so pretty meh and she has 2,3k atk with 100 em-ish. Her burst doesn't do that much dmg (only 2,5k per proc) but she healed me 3,6k per tic (talent lv9) with no healing bonus. She also has er issues, even with a skyward pride equipped and ~30%er from artifacts her burst isn't up 100% of the time in a double anemo team (Sucrose as battery and cc support). She was my first main and carried me until late Inazuma when I got Xiao but she's way better as an exploratiom unit rather than a combat one. You can build her for dmg and if you pair her with someone like Sucrose, Venti or Kazuha for some actuall cc it's really fun!

As someone who enjoys farming and walking around on the open world I always have Sayu on my team. Between her and Kazuha I can literally get anywhere fairly quickly. I actually joined genshin because of her. I saw an ad of her rolling around Mondstadt and thought she was just too adorable not to play the game for. I was ecstatic to finally get her and she hasn't left my team since. My Kazuha and Diluc are a two man demolition team so Sayu never has to see any serious combat, she just has to keep them alive and she does a good job at that! I am and will never be in need of lizard tails, crystal flies or FROGS again. The amount of frogs I have now is ridiculous!! And the amount of frogs I needed before her was nuts! Now I practically have frogs coming out of my ears!! 10/10 frogs, everyone needs her if only for her passive alone!

I got Sayu when I was incredibly new to Genshin. But I was still in Mondstat and her materials were in Inazuma, so she ended up being compleetely useless for me. The same happened when I got Ningguang and Kujou Sara. I got region-blocked so hard 😔😭

Sayu was a life saver during those corrosion abysses. She's a portable Jean 🥺

Sayu (and the upcoming Dori) is a munchkin with a greatsword. That's good enough for me. I typically don't care for the "child" characters, but I think "small person with giant unwieldy weapon" is just the cutest thing, so I can make an exception.

Well, as a Sayu main.... You can roll off a cliff using Albedo's E, Zhongli's E, Travelers' E. It's pretty fun. Sayu's E dmg increases when she rolls it's her c2. Sayu is Sayu and Sayu's outfit is a Mujina not a Tanuki. Her burst can be moved and has a wider AoE unlike Jean's. Tip: Hold Sayu's E then quickly release her E. It will make you get more particles without having to roll. It also will deal the same dmg as her hold.

sayu is my favourite chibi character. She's super cute and also really fun to play. I love just running into enemies and rolling with her. I have a Kazuha/Sayu exploration team and it's super fun :)

Ive actually been using her with 965 elemental mastery and 4p viridescent. She's surprisingly serviceable Especially for dailies/exploration but other than that... yeah

when she first came out i fell in love with her. loved the design and the way her hood bounces, so i mained her and got her to lvl 90. but she was very underwhelming no matter the amount of investment i put into her. which is a shame really, i wish i had fun playing with her

So when you play a xiangling you can increase the amount of times her pyronado hits the opponent by walking counterclockwise around them. The only limitation to this is the speed at which you can make it around them. With sayu you can actually increase the amount that large enemies are hit even further. If you're doing all of this inside of a ayato burst.... Congratulations you are VV swirling both elements while vaping. That's just the tip of the iceberg. And the reason no one plays her is cuz they don't understand that she is literally a driver for orbital AOE

Sayu's E skill can be used in abyss to evade thunder manifestation's Cage that quite deadly if caught. Also no stamina needed

She is an exploration character and one of the best ones at that, I think she is fine as she is, she was just never meant for combat, I personally would never run her in abyss, that does not sound like a good idea lol, but definitely one of the most fun, easiest and most satisfying characters for open world exploration and I want more exploration based characters in the future as even though we do not need them, they make farming and moving around in the map just a lot more satisfying and easier.

I use her only during exploration and heard a lot of people that do the same, it's good for the dash + anemo ressonance with Kazuya + healing But yeah, her hit just don't do enough for an anemo character. Anemo/Geo characters cannot just apply elements so she can only react, than her DMG isn't that good and her skill is slow to use in combat

Of all the unbuilt characters I own, Sayu is by far the one I have used the most. She's always on my team for daily commissions and rolling around the world never gets old. The thing is, she doesn't need ANY investment to fill this role, because I really don't need 4 combat units just to to do commissions. On another note, I sometimes give her a Cryo cup and infuse her as a Shenhe vehicle to roll over enemies until they die. That's pretty fun, too.

I love Sayu, she’s cute, really fun to play, and I completely emphasize with her desire to sleep all the time. But she’s someone I’ll always use im the open world rather than the abyss

It is interesting you didn't cover her elemental infusion on her skill which is spectacular before 3.0 and now that aggravate is out she is low key amazing.

I use Sayu in abyss and although her dmg isn't amazing, can't take her off the team - she's simply too cute 🥰💕

Meanwhile I can't build an Abyss team without her. She's just so comfortable to use in the Abyss

I think there's one more thing as a sayu main myself realised... that her skill (in rolling mode) actually made maybe because of the wolfs in Inazuma. Even Zhongli's shield is shaking. In the rolling mode, Sayu can both prevent the wolfs from attacking you and heals you if you ever get hit by it. She is basically made to open world exploration. She can prevent crystalfly from scaring it, she us a claymore user with allowing us to break hard material, she can roll from enemy that you dont want you fight and due to her body being smol, she can fit to smol stuff too. Other than that, i dont think she is not meant for battle just that she focuses on open world exploration.

Hoyoverse clearly made sayu for exploration. Being anemo and healer and sonic and that great passive, yeah, Im sure exploration was in hoyoverse's mind while creating her kit.

This one gonna hurt

I feel like if hoyo just committed to making her a dedicated exploration unit she would be so much better.

I actually want to build Sayu next for aggrevate teams. It looks like she needs a lot of energy recharge though! I'm also finishing up Yoiyima too. SO MANY CHARACTERS AAAA. Also I have not been blessed with Jean. I would totally use Jean if I had her.

After 2 years I finally got C1 Jean and still have never pulled a Keqing. That alone makes me think Sayu’s existence is worth it because 5 star rng can just straight up hate people.

1. as an anemo, she has no grouping ability 2. her skill takes forever if you wanna get the most out of it so basically shes jean but worse cuz worse healing and worse damage

She's perfect for exploration - skill for fast moving from place to place, anemo resonance, claymore for ores, the passive for collecting some creatures.

i bet a lot of people started playing during the period of ayaka's rerun in 2.6, and ended up with a sayu. in that hypothetical, sayu would be the only anemo option other than anemo mc. and we all know how broken the 4pc instructor or 4 vv is, and sayu would be the one new players would use, especially because there's a drive to not use anemo mc

I play Sayu and she is adorable. Also, the difference between Jean's burst and Sayu's burst is that you can actually MOVE Sayu's burst if you need to reposition it closer to enemies. I use Kazuha for it, to pull both the enemies towards it, and the burst center towards the enemies.

Sayu's damage does ramp up the longer you hold it with her constalation 2 though

I used to have Jean as my main healer, but i retired her for Sayu bc: -Jean: massive healing the moment u burst, but the continuous healing is low -Sayu: low-medium initial healing, but good amount of CH to keep my team alive

She is actually a very good character is you think about it, me being a sayu main i can say that she can apply VV shread even off- field, heal and be the vv shredder at the same time (tho it is like jean but she's a 5 star and she cannot do it off field) and she can infuse her skill with pyro and leave a fire trail behind her while she rolls.

At 11:36 you described her C2. "DMG of Fuufuu Whirlwind Kick in Press Mode increased by 3.3%. Every 0.5s in the Fuufuu Windwheel state will increase the DMG of this Fuufuu Whirlwind Kick by 3.3%. The maximum DMG increase possible through this method is 66%." The longer you're in her rolling state, the more damage her kick will be. And it's not a particularly hard constellation to receive

Tbh I completely understand the thumbnail color thing. Sayu really is a joyful character to use, and she's VERY good for exploration. Love her.

Btw, I play Sayu. She was in my first abyss clear team. I play since 2.4 and since I recognized this game has no real end game I built who ever I like with not really crazy stats, just 30CV artifacts is plenty enough power to clear all and let’s you focus on a wide variety of characters and not cry too much about artifacts RNG. 3-4 weeks per unit is enough time to get them to lvl9 talents ans decent stats and then go on to next. As welkin/BP spender this is mich more enjoyable then spending month on a single character and need a year to built 2 teams. I built 3 in 4month. Raiden Hypercarry, Ayaka Freeze and lately Yoimiya Vape. Which is enough and Sayu was in my Raiden Team before I could get Kazuha,

Hahahaha omg but I really want her tho her dash looks pretty useful also 3.0 fixed all alternative dash

She's very fun and a great healer, plus Viridescent user. So I'll keep using her but I'm interested what flaws people find her

While maybe she may not be used by many for attack-based teams, personally (maybe it's because she is my favorite character), she is always on my team as a healer even if she is not the best at it. I simply enjoy her playstyle.

Dont forget about her crystalfly anti-scare passive when talking about the positives of her in overworld exploration. It may not work how we all want it to, but it does help

I have her C6 and she's pretty damn effective especially since I'm jean-less, heals a f*ckton of health with her burst and a decent 1k with her swirls, she also applies VV so that's two slots in one as long as you play around her energy problems, her and heizou are easily the 2 best 4* characters that came out of inazuma, at least to me, the rest are either too niche or just bad

There is a difference between Jean's ult and Sayu's Ult Sayu's can be moved around after it has been summoned while Jean's cannot

One of the greatest ways I've seen people use sayu is in conjunction with xiangling's pyronado. How it works is that after casting xiangling's burst, you swap to sayu and rotating around an enemy in the counter clockwise direction, making it such that the pyronado stays in the same place, essentially making it such that you spin around the pyronado instead of the other way around. What this accomplishes is to deal massive damage to one enemy and constantly apply pyro (since xianling doesn't have ICD). Zyox did it in his 4 star character, no mouse spiral abyss video and I thought it's a creative way to use it. I think if paired with hydro imbued kazuha slash, it may be able to vaporise and deal even more damage. And for those who says that vars did that in the video, it wasn't done this way and was just normal spinning around that's all.

All sorts of movement like sayus roll but also ayakas, monas, ... sprintanimation, as well as yelans E will get a quality of life improvement in 3.0! we will be able to climb stairs more easily without getting stuck in every single crack there is :) so sayu will be even better for exporation!

Sayu's Elemental Skill does have a thing where the longer time that you roll for then the stronger the end kick will be

This brings up alot of good points about how Sayu's kit is lacking, sayu is one of the characters that really needs a buff , or atleast somewhere where shes actually good

Just one thing I think you missed is that Sayu's C2 actually does incentivize using her skill for the full duration by giving you increased damage the longer you hold it. But what I think one of the big things about her is that she kind of has some confusing scaling between ATK, EM, and ER (C6 makes it a little easier to go full EM). Another thing I think is that there's just not a lot of characters right now that can really compliment her playstyle because she kind of demands to have significant on-field time but she's not really a driver like Sucrose or Heizou because a lot of characters need to proc off-field dps with their autos but you're usually not using Sayu's autos. Her playstyle alone could be good with units with persistent on-field effects like Kokomi's jellyfish, Mona's skill, Fischl's Oz, Kuki's skill for taser comps but two of those are already healers so that's already redundant. Kaeya, Xiangling, and to a lesser extent Rosaria, work well with her but it's not really anything exceptional. Beyond her gameplay while she does have a cute design and LilyPichu voicing her, the small child model characters usually aren't the most popular among the fans at least compared to the husbando or waifu characters so that's also point that might contribute to her situation.

sad to see my girl Sayu in a WNOP episode. It´s true, since i got kazuha, i don´t use her in the abyss anymore, but she was my only Anemo unit besides the traveller for a long time and i still use her daily for comissions or tasks in the open world. She is just great for traveling

I use her in my exploration team but thats about it She is anemo, has alt sprint, uses a claymore and can heal Very nice- though i wouldn’t say worth raising past like lvl 70 unless hardcore sayu stan

Ahh yes, my anemo unit in a makeshift taser team because sucrose fits really well with national on the other side. Just watched the video.. 11:38 it does..but you'd need the constellation for that Anyway, I feel like you're over exaggerating on why she's not a good unit. Also, you can't compare the kit of a 5 star and 4 star. Coz if the 4 star's kit is better than the 5 star, it makes no sense to even pull for the 5 star.

I always have Sayu in my overworld team when farming artifact investigation spots. Speeds up the route significantly. No regrets building her. As for Abyss, she's basically mini-Jean. VV + heal, but with less damage. If you don't have Jean, then she's an option. As Jean isn't exactly highly played herself, I actually think that the pressure comes more from the other direction: healer Sucrose. It would be difficult to improve utility in Sayu's kit enough that she could still compete with one of the most broken units in the game.

I wish her roll ramped up in damage and her kick at the end also did damage based on total distance traveled, and her burst gives her skill and teammates movement speed. Making a speedy team would be so cool and fun just being able to run around enemies and swirling everything at the same time even faster than before.

Many people seem to forgot that her E roll CAN heal every character

Sayu is pretty good as a healer. Her ult ticks really fast and has very decent range. I find she's easier to use than Kokomi who's E ticks too slow and sometimes cause death.

Oddly enough though, I ended up building Sayu up because per my play-style, she was exactly what i needed for my 2nd team comp to FINALLY be able to finish spiral abyss. 😅 Her healy-dealy was the main thing i needed, but her spin-dash (lol) was actually super helpful for me to waste time to build up energy for the rest of the teams' bursts without accidentally letting any of them die 😬

Why NO ONE Plays: Sayu... except me, I have an on field cyro Sayu build that wrecking abyss floors, unless the enemies are cyro immune.

My favorite way of using her is if I don’t have a team with a variety of elemental coverage, I can use her to grab elements from the environment or other enemies. I mostly use it to break shields or other environmental stuff.

Sayu is crucial for Domain rotation. Nobody goes through domain farming as fast as she does when she can spin her way to the tree and back.

I've been thinking about building Sayu recently so thanks for the good info. Semi relatedly I have only lost the 50/50 once in getting 20 5 star characters/constellations so unfortunately I don't have Jean, and the only time I lost it was in the same 10 pull after getting Shenhe, and I got Mona c1. I still do not have Diluc or Keqing either since I seem to get mostly weapons from the standard banner. Part of me always wishes I would lose the 50/50 and get her or Keqing!

I use sayu literally everywhere i just love rolling around

When you finish a domain in 5 seconds immediately after you click the key, the only way to speed up clear times is faster movement speed. Sayu's biggest role is the role consolidation of healer, 2nd anemo and mobility for exploration teams. That way you potentially get 2 remaining character slots that can do damage, instead of 1 when you did not consolidate the role Sayu takes. ex. in week 1 the exploration team was Jean/Mona/Razor or Kaeya/Venti Now we can do Sayu/Yelan/Flex/Kazuha

OH SHUCKS I ACTUALLY DIDNT EXPECT THIS... But yeah, kinda the hard truth I guess...

She's very good for exploration in so many ways, but is never the first option or even an option to think of when putting her in battle teams

Woah I wasn’t expecting a GW2 sponsorship. Congrats!

It's just so fun to do coop with DPS Sayu - most people great you and are really supportive (quite the opposite to joining with Kuki)

Surprised to see this before WNOP Thoma, since you advertised that first. Is it because there’s a chance that he and Shinobu might find some uses out of Dendro that you’re holding off on talking about them? But back to Sayu, she was the first 4 star I got outside of the starter characters and has been a part of my overworld team after I got the materials to level her enough. She’s by no means meta, but she doesn’t have to be.

I play GI since release and I do not have Jean currently, so for healing, a little bit of damage and as an anemo battery, sayu is the best choice in a Xiaomorax team if u don't have Jea

I was very surprised that her ability to collect crystal flies was not mentioned. Like literally that was her selling point for me.

Sayu's kick does increase in damage the longer she spins; 11:35

Sayu is probably EXTREMELY popular. Just not in the Abyss. And honestly, with the upcoming 10 preset party slots, everyone will have her on the overworld slot, she's really good!

I love playing her in a xianling team with geo daddy and just be a rolling ring of fire. Only real gripe with her is that her rolling doesn't trigger other characters attacks; rain swords, Beidou's ult, etc cause a rolling taser would have been fun

Her rolling ability reminds me a lot of the doedicurus from Ark: Survival Evolved. It's basically an armoured armadillo-like creature that you can ride on the back of and has a spiky tail which you can use to harvest rocks for stone, but it can also roll up into a ball to protect itself or use it like Sayu does to travel around the map or get away from danger. Basically, they should have taken the doedicurus from Ark as inspiration and made Sayus roll ability harvest ores

If you place travelers rock or zhongli pillar on a tall place like dragon spine and start her E on the construct at the end if the constructs duration you Can actually Roll in the Air✨

@11:35 Am I mistaken. I think one of her constellations does exactly that. More damage on the kick based on how long you spent rolling (regardless of how many enemies you hit during the roll).

actually she does have a constellation that increases her kick damage based on how long she spent rolling also i've been playing since 1.5 and somehow don't have qiqi or keqing, so there're definitely people out there who don't have jean, and there'll also be new players who won't have any character at all

Yae Miko, Kazuha, Yelan, and Sayu are my exploration team, and honestly I never ran out of stamina when running around, and I appreciate dearly now I'm exploring Sumeru

having her and building her would make world exploration much more fun, I would definitely pull for her but since she need those anemo things she would be sitting in my back pocket for a longgggg time. If mihoyo really intended her to be exploration they should make her roll on mountainsides and on water as well, that would be cool as hell and fun to play. I am sure a lot of people would use her just for the sheer fun of that

Alot of people plays sayu, mainly for exploration but genshin is mostly and around exploration and shes built around exploration . Abyss is just the only place shes not used in. i feel like she shouldn't be on why no one plays

People may not want to use her because they have only one thing in mind and it is vv build and abyss rotation. She is quite good for world exploration, some did crazy stuff with her like shatter build, the new upcoming attack/em set could be great on her

I used to main physical Sayu, she did decent damage (decent considering I barely farm artifacts) and she was able to heal my entire team with her q+e, I think she's good for open world combat/exploration but sadly I had to bench her for Heizou

Sayu has been on my main team since I got her. Faster to get around, heals, swirls, claymore user to smash rocks and geo shields. She's short so when she on the top of the rocks you can usually still hit them, unlike taller characters.

Budget jean

Quick note: her skill (or at least, the ending strike) does ramp in damage based on roll duration, though it is locked behind constellation 2

Among my 4 stars, she's my only level 90, others are max ascension but stayed level 80. I really love exploration and it makes farming enjoyable.

She doesn’t seem like a character who has any bad design, combat-wise, but in truth, I just see her as a Jean alternative: a four-star Anemo ATK-scaling healer. For people who don’t have Jean yet, Sayu could be a good alternative, but once you get her, there’s no need to use Sayu over Jean unless you need an Anemo healer for your second team. I think the only way Sayu could possibly outperform Jean is if you can get her to C6 and use an EM build.

Sayu’s c1,c2 and her passive talents should all definitely be in her regular kit as for what I would change her constellations and talent to. NEW passive talent|Adrenaline Kick: whenever Sayu does a full Fuuin Dash and also hits an enemy with her dash kick the entire party will lose 50% less stamina for charged attacks while bow characters can charge their shots 20% faster ,this effects lasts for 10 seconds. NEW C1|Daruma Diversity:when the Muji Muji daruma doll is hit by an elemental attack of your team it’s eyes and area will turn into the element’s color.All enemies within the area will also get the elemental effect after 5 seconds.You can change the effect of the daruma by hitting it with another elemental attack ,during this time the daruma will also deal elemental damage of whichever element you attacked it with. NEW C2|5 More Minutes :whenever Sayu is switched out with less than 10%hp and is not used for longer than 5 seconds a bar will appear above her in your party this bar indicates how long you haven’t used her ,for every 10 seconds that she isn’t used she will gain 20% she can only heal to 65% of her health until she stops healing. Two more ideas that could be in her kit: Being able to pick up her Daruma and place it somewhere else ,when you place it down it will have the same amount of time it had left as when you picked it up. I could see Sayu having a different sprint(like Ayaka)that makes her invisible to enemies. She could throw down a smoke bomb and once you do that she’s a little see through ,this could be fun for new player that want to explore but don’t want to die because of enemies.

She could be used to fill one very specific niche. To get melee characters in range of bosses who run away a lot like Maguu Kenki and Thunder Manifestation.

Good video, just one thing tho. You mentioned at 11:50 that it would have been good if her final kick's damage increased the longer you are in the rolling state...but her c2 does exactly that

Hope the title is bait, she's bloody amazing fun, and VERY useful. Full EM Sayu is life.

i guess i dont exist

One thing to note about how you can't roll off cliffs with her is that you can roll your way across narrow paths, like the ropes in parts of the chasm with no risk of falling down. Does that change any of your points? Not remotely. but it is a neat trick.

Depends what you mean by play. She’s in my exploration squad because of her roll and gets the anemo reso

No one can convince me that the root of Sayu’s problems is ANYTHING OTHER than that she was slated to be a Dendro character and HoYo decided to re-do her kit into Anemo for an earlier release. How can I think that?? • Her entire tan, brown, and green aesthetic is 100% plant-oriented. • Daruma is a doll made of wood. • She has a leaf on her forehead. • She is cosplaying as a woodland creature known as a “tree-dog.” • She is lazy and doesn’t like to work, but has dreams of growing really tall and strong - that’s what plants do. • The Transformation Technique (Naruto’s “Henge no jutsu”) trope typically replaces the ninja with a log of wood. If she’d been Dendro: • She would’ve been the #1 character for wide and long-lasting area of Dendro application. • She would’ve been the first - and, for a while, only - Dendro healer. My thoughts for changes in her kit would be: • Her Elemental Skill actually leaves Daruma behind as a decoy while she dashes at the same speed (with i-frames) to another area, and using it again teleports her to it for AoE Dendro application (similar to Keqing). • She no longer scales off of ATK, but off of Elemental Mastery. • Her Burst no longer deals damage, but simply recurs Dendro Application, with her kit based around boosting the effects of Dendro-based Elemental Reactions. You can say that I’m wrong, but you’d be wrong. Sayu was originally planned to be Dendro.

I knew as soon as i saw her skill and passive that she was a unit i was gonna be happy using on occasions instead of fighting, and i am all fine with a casual character kit! She may be poor to use in Sumeru rn but i gotta catch as many Dendro crystalflies as i can get and she's my gal for the job!

I have had Kazuha/Mona/Sayu/Zhongli in my pocket as a travel/forage team, working in Ganyu (explosive projectile) and now Ayaka (swapping Mona's decoy for Cryo application over water) as situations arise. Kazuha already blew exploration wide open, but when I'm trying to get plants, ore, and those elusive critters, Sayu covers _all_ this. She breaks rocks, she sneaks on crystalfies and the like, and she rollie-pollies for a more resilient escape option than Mona around enemies in attack range, not to mention is Anemo resonance enabling so much motion.

I will say, as an anemo main, it is _sometimes_ particularly useful that the daruma can be moved after placing it by hitting it with another anemo attack. If it gets caught up in heizou's anything or kazuha's e or venti's q it goes with that attack. Jean's is stationary.