Fontaine is a watery land that the Hydro Archon rules, also known as the God of Justice. Fontaine is a place full of waterfalls, rivers, lakes, and even underwater areas. It is also a place where people love art and beauty and even though it’s all artistically inclined, Fontaine is also highly advanced in technology. For a city so sprawling with art and technology, with fountains all around, you would think the Hydro Traveler would be a step up or at least on par with the previous Dendro Traveler– but no.
It would seem Hoyoverse has gone back to making the Traveler as powerless as he can be perhaps to invoke the underdog trope. In this article, we will discuss why the Hydro Traveler feels like such a joke.
Hydro Traveler’s Kit in Genshin Impact 4.0
The Hydro Traveler has a rather unique elemental skill that emits or shoots out small water droplets at enemies when held. When tapped it just attacks the nearest enemy with a jet stream of water.
The skill has decent damage scaling but in no way does it qualify as powerful enough to be used for DPS. While the skill does seem to have a long-range visually, in practice the range is mediocre and the hitboxes are small so it’s like using a bow character without auto-aim who shoots water drops like a machine gun. Another thing of note is that while this skill is held, the Traveler is locked in position and cannot move. Even though he does get a semblance of interruption resistance, this is still a very limiting quirk.
His elemental burst is even more preposterous. Hydro Traveler’s elemental burst, just like Geo Traveler’s elemental burst, does actually deal a decent chunk of damage. On paper, the damage numbers would qualify him for a quick-swap, burst DPS role but the way his burst operates feels like the developers are trolling the players. His burst shoots out a giant water bubble that deals Hydro DMG to all nearby enemies it comes in contact with.
And that would be all fine and dandy if the water bubble ever stopped near the enemies- which it doesn’t as it just moves past all enemies after applying Hydro once and going off into the sunset. The water bubble doesn’t stop at anything and it just keeps moving slowly into the distance after striking all enemies in its path just once.
For now, the only viable teams for the Hydro Traveler, are ironically, all Dendro teams where the Traveler can act as a mediocre Hydro driver for Bloom-based reactions. At least because of Dendro Teams, the Hydro Traveler gets saved from the trophy of the worst Traveler as that title is still proudly held by the Anemo Traveler.
