Sucrose Build and Guide

Sucrose is a 4-star Anemo Catalyst user most commonly played as a support for teams that use reactions in order to deal damage. While being a Hexerei character gives her some important synergies with others in the faction, she herself is entirely non reliant on them. 

Her Ascension Passives clearly illustrate her role: the first one allows Sucrose to increase Elemental Mastery by 50 for allies who match an element she Swirls, while the second allow Sucrose to share 20% of her current Elemental Mastery to allies after using her Skill or Burst. Their short 8 second durations can be an issue; nonetheless, when paired with her ability to hold supportive gear like Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers and Viridescent Venerer, these Passives make Sucrose an incredible support. 

Her Elemental Skill is typically her primary means of applying her buffs and debuffs - when used, it summons a “Small Wind Spirit” that pulls in enemies and deals Anemo damage after a very short delay. It has a fairly long 15 second cooldown, though Sucrose thankfully has means of working around this if necessary.

Her Elemental Burst on the other hand summons a “Large Wind Spirit” which persists on the field for 6 seconds, dealing Anemo damage every 2 seconds; it can also absorb Pyro, Hydro, Electro, or Cryo in order to deal damage of the corresponding element, with the absorption radius being limited to a small distance around the Wind Spirit’s core. The Skill has good suction, and its long duration allows Sucrose to maintain her Elemental Mastery buffs over an extended period.

However, all these aspects come with caveats. For one, it has a long 20 second cooldown. The limited absorption radius and short duration means that it can be difficult at times to rely on it for reaction setups, and it can also absorb an undesirable element and disrupt reaction setups. Finally, the ability also has strong knockback, meaning it can end up scattering enemies that it is designed to group!

Her Hexerei Passive is fairly minor, with it largely existing so she can be paired with other Hexerei characters to activate their Passives; it allows her to provide a small buff of 5.71428 DMG% Bonus with Skill, and an ever so slightly larger buff of 7.14285% DMG% Bonus with her Burst.

While her Normal and Charged Attacks are unremarkable, their ability to apply Anemo is vital to certain reaction setups; her Normal attacks are relatively quick, while the relatively lengthy cast time on her Charged Attack is compensated for by its lack of an internal cooldown - allowing it to apply Anemo at any time.

Finally, as a 4* that can both be freely obtained and is available since the start of the game, Sucrose’ Constellations are relatively accessible and worth discussion. Thankfully, they are mostly very minor. C1 offers her Skill an extra charge - this can help provide additional Energy if short, or allow Sucrose to temporarily sustain the use of her Skill at a quicker pace than its cooldown. C2 extends her Burst duration by 2 seconds and thus lets it hit one more time, which can be useful for certain reaction setups. C4 allows Sucrose to shorten her Skill cooldown by 1-7 seconds every 7 Normal Attacks, and is typically not used due to Sucrose rarely staying on-field. Her capstone Constellation grants a nice 20 DMG% Bonus on the Element absorbed by her Burst, with Hexerei characters gaining an additional 8.57142%; however, it is infrequent that her Burst is used to absorb the element of the team’s damage dealer. 

And for a fun note on trivia; If wondering about why the numbers on her Hexerei Passive are like that, they’re randomly selected parts of the decimals when dividing 1 by 7, the output of which consists of .142857 repeating endlessly. This corresponds to the 7 times Sucrose ran the experiment in her Witch’s Homework quest, which in turn likely corresponds to the 7 elements of Teyvat and alchemy allowing one to transmute between them.