Genshin Impact Version 3.4 finally released Alhaitham a couple of days ago but the hype around him has not been as high as was expected- and for good reason. Alhaitham has been out for a few days now and people have had time to test out his kit, including his constellations. F2P and whales alike must be wondering how a C0 Alhaitham compares to a C6 Alhaitham and we’re here to answer just that.
Alhaitham at C6 in Genshin Impact 3.4
Alhaitham has a considerable Energy Recharge and Cooldown issue in his kit in that if you don’t play him perfectly, there are considerable downtimes to his E skill and Dendro infusion up-time. While this isn’t a problem in the overworld as most enemies are dead by the first rotation of your team, it does become a glaring issue in Spiral Abyss- the hardest content in the game.
Alhaitham’s C1 does solve his CD issue to an extent but not fully. It does lower his Skill CD considerably but even those few seconds left are a noticeable amount in the Spiral Abyss. If you aren’t paying attention and doing your rotations in these few seconds of downtime then you’ll miss your chance and mess up your rotations in general.
His C2 grants him a bonus of 50 EM per Mirror stack up to 4 stacks. Even though 3 is the maximum number of Mirrors Alhaitham can have, when his skills are used in a certain order and rotation, he can get the full 200 EM bonus from his 4 stacks as the constellation accounts for an extra stack even after 3 stacks have been reached.
We’re going to skip over his C3 and C5 because they raise his E Skill and Q Burst by 3 levels respectively. His C4 gives his teammates a bonus of 30 EM per Mirror when they are consumed by his elemental burst. He does not however get his Mirrors back immediately as his burst is still in duration. You get your Mirrors back after 2 seconds which means there’s at least a 2s delay to the Dendro DMG bonus buff as well.
His C6 transforms Alhaitham into an on-field hypercarry as you can now be a bit more lenient with his attack and skill rotations. No matter what amount of Mirrors were consumed during his burst, you will always get 3 Mirrors back at the end of it. On the surface, it looks like this makes him an easy character.
But once again to maximise his damage, you’ll have to play him skillfully. The second effect from his C6 grants him a bonus 10% CRIT Rate and 70% CRIT DMG when he generates more Mirrors when he already has the maximum number of 3. If this happens again, then he increases the duration of this buff by 6s. At max, he can maintain this buff for roughly about 18s.
While the damage is indeed broken, it’s under the assumption you already have a great 1:2 CRIT ratio where your CRIT Rate exceeds 60%. A buff like this when you have F2P artifacts and build won’t mean anything significant. At C6, Alhaitham becomes a greedy, high-investment, high-skill unit which really isn’t worth that kind of spending. At that point he does more damage than he needs to- even for the Spiral Abyss.
In conclusion, unless you have that kind of money to spare, his C6 isn’t worth it as it doesn’t make him noticeably broken. It’s much better and even recommended that you invest in other long-lasting high-value units like the playable Archons or Yelan, Kazuha and so on.