Genshin Impact like all other Gacha games has incorporated the concept of alternative scaling into its game. Usually, the preferred stats in any combat-oriented game are things like Attack, Crit bonuses, and so on. Defense and Health are usually at the bottom of the list when it comes to desirable stats.
Genshin Impact has several stats other than Attack, Crit Rate, and Crit Dmg that can qualify as alternative stats for alternative or hybrid scaling characters in the game.
What is Hybrid Scaling in Genshin Impact
Hybrid scaling or Alternative scaling is where characters scale off of stats other than the usual and more preferred Attack and Crit oriented stats. In Genshin Impact, these stats are Energy Recharge, Elemental Mastery, HP, and DEF.
Even though we’ve already had an alternative scaling character since the start of the game in Noelle, she was too unpopular and lackluster to become a topic of discussion. Noelle scales off of DEF and to an extent her own damage depends on her amount of DEF but of course, her role was that of a dedicated shielder- not damage dealing or DPS.
Recently, however, many of Genshin’s new character releases have had hybrid scaling built into their kit for bonus damage. For example, Raiden Shogun utilizes Energy Recharge for her damage and utility, Kokomi uses HP% for her healing and damage, Itto and Albedo both scales off of DEF, Hu Tao uses HP% for her high attack and Kazuha utilizes EM (Elemental Mastery) to buff his teammates and his own damage and utility.
The above stats make sure that these stats aren’t wasted on your artifacts and in turn thus make building these characters easier. Since you don’t have to grind for the perfect piece with Crit Rate, Crit DMG, and attack, the grind is less taxing and depressing as you know your character will utilize some of the other stats.
True Alternative Scaling
The above characters convert their alternative stats to Attack to bolster up their own personal damage. This however isn’t true alternative scaling. They are still hybrid scaling characters as ATK buffs still benefit these characters to an extent. Genshin’s recent Hydro 5-star Yelan is the first true alternative scaling character in Genshin Impact.
Yelan gets no benefit from ATK or ATK% as her whole kit directly scales off of HP%. She doesn’t convert her HP to ATK to deal damage- she directly uses her HP% to deal dmg. Since none of her attacks scales off of or converts to ATK to deal damage, she is truly a unique and true alternative scaling character.
Hybrid scaling and alternative scaling will be more frequent with Genshin’s future characters and we can only hope they will make the grind easier so that players can enjoy the game more. The only fear is that it might make older characters irrelevant and difficult in comparison. Hybrid scaling also has the potential to create some very powerful supports as we have seen with Raiden and Kazuha and we can only hope we get more of such characters.