Si Best Build Guide

Si is a 6-star, Cryo, Greatsword Supporter who seems to have it all: great buffs, utility and incredibly high personal damage output. 

She introduces brand new mechanics to the game, with her “Artful Intent” allowing damage dealt to enemies to be recorded and then detonated to deal a portion of it as “fixed damage”, bypassing any and all resistances or multipliers. Si can also summon an Inksoul on an affected enemy, which will sync itself up to them and transfer all the damage and statuses it takes to them. To top it off, she can reduce operators’ Combo Skill cooldowns by using her Ultimate, allowing for back-to-back Combo Skills that accelerate rotations.

Despite being a Supporter, much of Si’s value comes not from her buffs, but her Combo Skill’s high damage multipliers, as she’s able to match - and at times even exceed - what dedicated damage dealers can do. It’s to the point even when run in a supportive role, she’s better built with damage sets.

Her gameplay loop revolves around applying Artful Intent and benefitting from its damage record functionality, all the while finding ways to consume Inflictions so as to trigger her Combo Skill and enhance its damage, working as a hybrid unit that fits multiple roles in a team.

Battle Skill

“Brushwork Realm” is Si’s Battle Skill, and there’s multiple layers to it. It costs 100 SP and will apply either a Cryo or Heat Infliction to an enemy depending on the element of the operator in Team Position 01.

If the operator is Heat, then it’ll apply a Heat Infliction, but if it’s of any other element, then it’ll apply a Cryo Infliction. This is strictly the operator’s base element, so an operator like Rossi who can deal Heat DMG but is Physical would still yield a Cryo Infliction.

The initial hit deals some middling damage, builds 5 stagger and “Immobilizes” enemies for 1s. This is a complete freeze on their actions, pausing movements and attacks until it expires.

It will also apply the Artful Intent effect for 20s. At M3, this will record 13% of all damage dealt to the afflicted target, the total value of which can be seen through a unique UI node next to Si’s HP/SP bars when controlled or by her team portrait. The number shown corresponds to increments of ten thousands.

So if the number shows 1, that means it has recorded 10,000 damage. If it shows 35, that means it has recorded 350,000 damage.

All damage recorded is snapshotted, with buffs, resistances, stagger bonuses, etc. all included. It’s 13% of whatever ticks when it connects with the enemy. Once Artful Intent expires, it will then explode and deliver its recorded damage as “fixed damage” in an AoE, with the hit building 5 stagger.

This cannot be changed by any damage increase or reduction effects!

The result is that whatever damage has been stored will always be delivered in full. All that matters is the team and enemy status at the time the damage took place, not when it detonates: if 350,000 damage is stored, then that’s what it’ll do.

A way to think of this is to see Artful Intent as a multiplier, much like any other buff like DMG Taken, Arts Amp or Link. It’s a 13% increase to a team’s damage output, just that it’s delivered at once when the state ends rather than when a hit occurs.

If an enemy dies while they have Artful Intent applied, they won’t suffer the recorded damage, but this doesn’t mean that it’s wasted. When this happens, an Inksoul will appear and leash itself to the nearest enemy, applying the Artful Intent state to them for as long as its remaining duration would be. All of the damage recorded is retained as the state is passed to a new target.

The spawned Inksoul is an orb that translates everything that is done to it to its host. Damage, inflictions, stagger, buffs and debuffs, etc. Even attacks that would interrupt enemies, like the flinch effect from a Final Strike, still apply to them even if they’re done to the Inksoul. Once the Artful Intent state expires, the Inksoul will home in on its host target and immediately detonate for all of the recorded Artful Intent damage.

Although it spawns automatically on enemy death, it’s possible to summon the Inksoul manually, as Si’s Battle Skill changes to “Initial Stroke” while an enemy on the field has Artful Intent applied to them. Using it costs 15 SP and will pull the Inksoul from the target to the controlled operator, and this happens regardless of distance.

If an Inksoul is on the field, then Si’s Battle Skill changes to “Final Stroke”, and using it will end the Artful Intent state early and force the Inksoul to detonate.

Although the Inksoul is separate from the enemy it's derived from, the game treats both as the same entity. This means that:

• Attacks that hit both the Inksoul and the enemy at the same time still only apply its damage/stagger/effect once.

  • Hitstop from attacks is treated the same way and will only occur once.

• Skills that benefit from multiple enemies (e.g. Laevatain Combo Skill) do not get any additional hit bonuses.

• Skills that have “on death” effects (e.g. Camille’s Vesperwing) do not trigger on "death" of the Inksoul, like from a detonation.

  • On the flipside, even though an Inksoul remains after enemy death, any statuses or on-death effects tied to the enemy will still trigger.

So for all intents and purposes, there is no difference between attacking an enemy or the Inksoul. As it costs SP to summon with Initial Stroke, is dropped automatically on enemy death and isn’t required for the AoE effect, one might think it’s only ever worth summoning for an early Artful Intent detonation.

However, as both Initial and Final Stroke are Battle Skills, this means that using them will build “on-use” effects, like Type 50 Yinglung’s stack. If SP allows for it, integrating it into rotations that can’t sustain 3 Battle Skills before Si’s next Combo Skill can help improve her damage.

But be aware that since Initial and Final Stroke replace Si’s regular Battle Skill while Artful Intent is active, she can only have Artful Intent applied to one enemy at a time. This also means that Si cannot build Inflictions during the state! 

Either wait for the state to expire, or manually detonate an Inksoul to use Brushwork Realm again, but keep in mind that the latter does demand 15 SP for the Initial Stroke cast, which can make her Inflictions more expensive than that of other operators.

Between its Infliction application, wholly unique 13% boost to team damage, carry-over effect and AoE damage, Si’s Battle Skill is one of the primary ways she has of supporting her teams.

Combo Skill

“Fully Envisioned” is Si’s Combo Skill, being triggered on consuming or absorbing a Cryo or Heat Infliction and having a 15s cooldown.

On use, she’ll summon an Ink Lung that’ll damage enemies, with the skill’s multiplier scaling with the number of Inflictions consumed. At M3, its base multiplier is 750%, with an extra 100% per Infliction stack used for its trigger, amounting to a possible 1150% damage multiplier.

The vast majority of Si’s damage output comes from this skill alone, and this is actually a good thing, as it allows her to build for Combo Skill DMG on her gear. Since the stat has higher values than generic Cryo DMG bonuses, she can get some absurd amounts of DMG Dealt applied to the skill.

The skill’s damage is also delivered by the Ink Lung rather than Si herself, making for a detached hitbox. As the Ink Lung is summoned instantly, it’s possible to use Si’s Combo Skill, then cancel it with a dodge or Ultimate and still get the full damage to go through.

The latter is especially useful, because as soon as the first tick of damage connects, that builds Energy which allows her to animation cancel it with her Ultimate. So despite using a Combo Skill before her Ultimate, it can still benefit from its buffs.

Ultimate

“No One Spoils the Fun” is Si’s Ultimate, costing 80 Energy. It deals some Cryo DMG and grants a 36% Cryo and Heat Amp to the entire team for 12s.

It doesn’t have particularly high multipliers as far as Ultimates go, and although it does build 20 stagger, it comes late. It’s good to have, as unlike many other Supporters, it at least builds some stagger, which can help with routing fights, but it won’t often be used for this.

That’s because if using the Combo Skill cancel trick, it’d mean having the Combo Skill damage land outside of stagger, and that may not be optimal given how much damage Si does.

Even if it isn't, it'll often be used late in a rotation so that its Amp effect can cover a burst period.

Thankfully, some teams which have Si in a supportive slot allow her to run no Ultimate Gain Efficiency pieces and be built for pure damage.

This isn’t the case if running her as a main damage dealer, but the low Energy cost of her Ultimate means that she can get away with few Combo Skill casts.

The Ultimate also holds tremendous value in its ability to streamline rotations, owing to Si’s Talents.

Talent

“Proxy’s Patronage” is Si’s first Talent, and it’s one of the primary reasons she’s such a useful Supporter. After using her Ultimate, the operator in Team Position 01 will have their Combo Skill cooldown reduced by 20s.

This can be Si or any other operator, and when considering that Combo Skills still have their cooldowns tick during Ultimate cutscenes, most operators can get an instant reset to their Combo Skills after use from this Talent.

Note: The cooldown reduction applies slightly after the Ultimate cutscene ends, so there’s a small delay. This means a Combo Skill can technically be used after her Ultimate and still get reduced! 

“Unsoiled Brush” is Si’s second Talent, and it gives a 30% Haste buff for 5s after the Inksoul disappears. 

It doesn’t see much use, as it is strictly triggered by the Inksoul, not Artful Intent, so it won’t apply without it being summoned in some way, and then detonated.

Basic

“Artistic Urge” is Si’s Basic Attack, and it’s not a very good skill. It has decent damage multipliers, with a respectable 18 stagger and 20 SP on Final Strike, but it’s rather slow and has no animation cancel points.

This last point is especially problematic because sequence 4 has a long animation, and dodging at any point during it means having to re-cast it all over again. As it’s not a Final Strike, it gains no interrupt resistance, so Si can feel awful to have as a controlled operator against aggressive enemies.

She can move while casting her sequence 4 and 5, but it isn’t enough to dodge most attacks. As Si will be built for Combo Skill DMG, her Basic Attacks don’t hit particularly hard either, so outside of Final Strike triggers (e.g. Xaihi Auxiliary Crystal), it’s best to fall back on other operators to be controlled and for Finishers.

Energy

As Si’s Ultimate costs only 80 Energy, it’s possible to get to it with only 8 Battle Skills and 3 Combo Skills without any Ultimate Gain Efficiency pieces.

8 Battle, 3 Combo Skills, 30 SP Return

She can accommodate up to 30 SP returned, but be wary of anything more (e.g. with Tangtang). Rotations that need Si’s Ultimate to be used earlier, like with 6 Battle Skills, some Ultimate Gain Efficiency is needed.

6 Battle, 3 Combo Skills

If no SP return takes place, then she can make do with only an Ultimate Gain Efficiency Armor. Not all teams can frequently trigger her Combo Skill though, and in such cases it’s more likely that Si will only get 2 Combo Skills off.

6 Battle, 2 Combo Skills

7 Battle, 2 Combo Skills, 75 SP Return

At only 6 Battle Skills, a Kit alone isn’t enough for Si to sustain Ultimate use. Using multiple pieces (e.g. Armor and Glove) can be workable with support sets, like Eternal Xiranite, but even in a supportive role, much of Si’s contribution to a team comes from her damage.

This means it can be better to extend rotations to 7 Battle Skills and run only 1 Ultimate Gain Efficiency Kit with a Type 50 Yinglung set.

If Si is being run as a main damage dealer, this is likely to be the optimal set-up, as rotations that force 3 Combo Skills may sacrifice on ally Battle Skills to force consumptions that lead to worse buff management and alignment. 

Given that only 625 SP spend is required, rotations function even with high levels of SP return, which can condense them to be almost as short as 6 Battle Skill rotations.

How to Play

The core of Si’s gameplay loop is to maximise her damage by timing use of her Combo Skills during key burst periods (like Stagger), fitting in her Ultimate’s Combo Skill cooldown reduction to streamline rotations and making sure that Artful Intent is up for as long as possible, so that all damage dealt is being recorded.

This last goal can be surprisingly difficult to manage, as Initial Stroke’s SP cost means it’s more efficient to allow the state to time out naturally when building up to a burst. 

Conversely, if Artful Intent happens to expire mid-burst (like during Yvonne or Rossi Ultimates), even if there’s enough SP to re-apply Artful Intent, the skill cast time means it may be missing out on recording multiple high damaging hits.

That is also if the rotation has enough SP spare to sustain another Battle Skill use. As fixed damage doesn’t care about stagger modifiers when it triggers, it’s often better to push Artful Intent’s application to as late in a rotation as possible so that it can capture the entire stagger burst.

It’s better to spend 15 SP for an early detonation (and one which may happen regardless, so as to build Yinglung stacks) than 115 SP to re-apply Artful Intent and a detonation.

Artful Intent management also matters beyond just its damage record, as Si can’t apply Inflictions until it expires. So one should manage not only buff uptime, but also have it expire naturally at certain points in the rotation where an Infliction would be needed regardless.

Unlike other operators who have ways of providing cheap Inflictions (Tangtang with SP return, Alesh with free Infliction on Ultimate, Arcane/Antal with Infliction duping), Si’s minimum spend for an Infliction is 100, possibly 115 SP if multiple are needed in a short period, and this should be factored into a rotation’s broader SP economy.

Given that Si wants as many Inflictions to be consumed as possible to maximise her Combo Skill damage, it’s also worth structuring rotations to accommodate for this.

For example, Yvonne may be able to split her Infliction consumption with 2+3, but with Si on the team, it’s better to split it as 1+4, so that the 4 consumption can happen at stagger point and lead to higher burst.

Si’s Ultimate Combo Skill cooldown reduction can be used to reset her own, but in practice this isn’t actually needed. By exploiting timestops on Ultimate cutscenes, it’s often possible to get 2 uses of Si’s Combo Skill in a stagger period without a self-reset. 

Instead, using it on other Agents (like Arcane or Camille) is preferable, allowing for more Inflictions/SP/buff value, etc. so as to further increase the team’s damage (and ideally have another 4 Inflictions ready for the Combo Skill following her Ultimate).

Overall, Si isn’t a technical character in isolation, but working around specific timings and managing not only her buffs, but her personal damage output, can make for complex rotations.