TaoqiBuild and Guide

Taoqi is a 4-star Broadblade Havoc support who acts as a Skill DMG Amplifier and Shielder. Sporting one of the beefiest buffing Outro skills in the game, she is found to be desirable buff-wise for any Resonance Skill DMG-focused characters. But then, why is she bottom tier? Let’s delve into some specifics.

Taoqi’s main niche, as said in the introduction, and the most important part of her kit by far, is her Outro skill. It amplifies the incoming character’s Resonance Skill DMG by 38%. This buff is absolutely massive: we have two characters in this game that scale almost entirely off of Resonance Skill DMG, Jinhsi and Carlotta. They also happen to be some of the best DPS characters in the game currently. In itself, this is enough to justify her position on a team with either of two of the best characters in the game. So it really calls into question why she’s a bottom tier character. For that, we need to talk about the rest of her kit, starting with her Forte Circuit.

Her Forte Circuit allows her to consume her Damage Reduction shields generated by her Resonance Skill (which we cover later) in order to cast Timed Counters, that generate some Concerto Energy and a notable amount of Resonance Energy. However, this requires you to cast your Heavy Attack or Intro Skill prior, assuming you have some shields left. Your Heavy Attack causes Taoqi to stand still for 3 seconds waiting to receive an attack, the DMG of which will be reduced by 35% after which she will cast Strategic Parry, causing a minor amount of damage, Concerto Energy and Resonance Energy to be generated. So without parries or a Forte circuit to show for, all she has left is her Basic Attacks, her Skill and her Ultimate.

This is inherently problematic for many reasons: first, in the case you want to use it after her Strategic Parry, it requires you to get hit. This means, for starters, that you can write Taoqi off for any Hologram content where enemies will almost always oneshot you, so you can’t get hit in the first place as the DMG reduction is too small without a Bell-Borne Geochelone Echo involved (which is suboptimal for DPS because you forfeit the amazing Impermanence Heron or Fallacy of No Return’s damage boosts for it). However, it also means enemies HAVE to attack you for it to activate quickly (which is necessary to retain good DPS and clear endgame content in the required amount of time), something that’s very unreliable. It’s therefore not something you can consider in every rotation. 

Additionally, when comparing Taoqi to any character, Parrying or Dodging manually generates a chunk of Concerto Energy quickly, consistently and easily, which Taoqi can also do and often ends up being ironically preferable over her Strategic Parries, simply because it’s more consistent and much easier (her Strategic Parries having an awkward wind-up time unlike regular dodges, which makes it difficult to get used to and optimize).

Finally, for after an Intro Skill, you need to have shields pre-generated. You therefore need to cast her Skill pre-rotation as a result, something that not only the average player wouldn’t do, but also that you need to not get hit with your generalist Support before casting your Intro with Taoqi for this to work in its entirety, meaning it won’t be consistent once again and can’t be considered for standard rotations. This means her Forte Circuit, in her standard rotations, can be disregarded pretty much entirely. Which could already look like pretty bad news, since a lot of characters’ kits revolve around their Forte circuit. However, this is far from killing a character’s viability in itself.

Her Ultimate is not good for a support: it simply does damage based on her DEF. Taoqi is not aiming to do crazy amounts of damage: all that she wants is to amplify the next character in line’s damage and provide survivability to the team. As that works towards neither goal, it is only useful in providing Concerto energy for her - which, thankfully, it does well, so her Ultimate is pretty necessary and very much wanted, but is a lot of wasted potential in its effect. It nonetheless means building some Energy Regen on her is a requirement.

Her Resonance Skill actually holds some support capability: it recovers a huge chunk of Taoqi’s own health and provides 15% all-type damage reduction that can apply to your whole party in the form of 3 consumable shields that expire upon taking a hit, while doing some damage and generating a good chunk of Concerto, all at once almost instantly on a 15 second cooldown. Which might unfortunately be the only not completely flawed part of her kit, beyond the fact that it only heals Taoqi herself and she typically won’t be the one tanking hits, as your DPS will most often be the one taking damage. Nevertheless, it isn’t a terrible ability.

However, being a heavy Broadblade user, she suffers from very long Basic Attack animations, which have a lot of wind-up and leave her vulnerable to being interrupted, not to mention in this game the shields she generates do not remedy this issue at all; chances are you’ll have to dodge and interrupt your string - which, all things considered, really isn’t that bad because the basics don’t do damage as they scale off of ATK - or you’ll take a hit, be staggered and have your attack string reset anyways due to the really long animations. Subsequently, this makes her Concerto rotation difficult to finish and her Outro (the most desirable part of her kit) difficult to access.

All in all, as much as this whole review has been practically doomposting Taoqi, she does hold a single niche, which is being able to amplify and contribute to big nukes to any Resonance Skill DMG focused characters, and as of right now that’s mostly Jinhsi. Taoqi is indeed one of the characters that can provide the biggest buffs to your Jinhsi’s insane nuking capabilities and that leads to huge Damage Per Screenshot moments. However, that is not a viable meta niche as Taoqi doesn’t do much damage and takes a while to access her potent buffs, ruining her potential to contribute to an overall team’s DPS. All of these factors explain why Taoqi is a bottom tier character in the meta. But hey, if you like Taoqi, by all means play her! Jinhsi is good enough that you can actually clear all the hardest endgame content with Taoqi on the team, so don’t let this review affect your will to play her because you like her all too much! What matters at the end of the day is that you have fun playing characters you like, and we at Prydwen aren’t here to discourage that at all.

To summarize, while Taoqi is a bottom-tier character due to her kit fundamentally not being viable in the meta, she nevertheless allows for some big Jinhsi nuke numbers - just make sure to run her on Moonlit Clouds, Outro into your Jinhsi, and you’re good to go. Maybe Taoqi will find her ideal partner to support in the future, but as of Patch 1.4, that has unfortunately yet to happen. All of these factors amount to one conclusion: Taoqi has too many flaws to see effective meta use. Unless? Because she does hold a single niche, all thanks to her Outro being ever so valuable. Two of the best DPS characters in the game do Resonance Skill DMG almost exclusively: Carlotta and Jinhsi. She’s directly compared to the premium Zhezhi, who outclasses Taoqi by far for a multitude of reasons, from higher damage, to shorter, more consistent rotations, to a more cohesive kit, and so on. Zhezhi even has Coordinated Attacks to contribute more to Jinhsi teams, where Taoqi doesn’t. Lumi on the other hand is a fairer comparison: she’s also 4 star, has the same 38% Skill DMG Amplify Outro buff, and a more cohesive kit than Taoqi. However, she has an even longer rotation time despite accessing similar buffs, so the two are comparable, but Taoqi ends up usually contributing to more team DPS due to her Outro buff lasting 14 seconds compared to Lumi’s 10, and her rotation being slightly shorter while remaining fairly lengthy. 

So all in all, she isn’t the worst character in the game, compared to what some might believe, and she holds some genuine use in Jinhsi and Carlotta teams - where, once again, due to her rotations taking too long, some options will be preferred - but you are more than free to play her if you simply like her or want to see really big damage numbers on your Jinhsi and Carlotta. Those two DPS characters are strong enough in themselves to clear any form of content in the game, so as long as they have supports that make sense - a category Taoqi falls into, thus you’ll be able to easily clear anything the game throws at you.

In conclusion, Taoqi isn’t a perfect character and understandably bottom tier due to a lack of a cohesive kit and suffering a lot of comparison to stronger options. However, one part of her kit, her Outro skill, is really advantageous for some of the best DPS characters in the game and as a result, she ends up being very usable in teams that’ll easily clear any of the endgame’s content. While outclassed, she is by no means unusable, so go ahead and play her if you like her or simply want big damage numbers!