Heizou Build: Best Teams, Weapons, and Artifacts

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Heizou is an Anemo catalyst user whose primary role is as an on-field DPS driver. He does Anemo damage through his attack combos, skill, and burst which are also meant to swirl elements for additional reaction damage.

If you’re looking for how to build Heizou then don’t worry I got you covered. In this guide, we’ll go over Heizou’s build, best team compositions, weapons, and artifacts.

Best Heizou Build

He can be built with a full Elemental Mastery or a more traditional ATK and CRIT damage. In general, a build that prioritizes ATK and CRIT will benefit your Heizou’s damage the most in terms of consistency.

Crit DPS Setup

Best Weapon	Skyward Atlas
Sub Weapons	Kagura’s Verity Lost Prayer to the Sacred Winds Memory of Dust Solar Pearl R5 Dodoco Tales R5 The Widsith R5
Best Artifact	Viridescent Venerer 4-Piece
Main Stats
	Sands	ATK%
	Goblet	Anemo DMG
	Circlet	Crit Rate / Crit DMG
Sub Stats	Elemental Mastery / ATK% / CRIT Rate / CRIT DMG

This is a typical DPS build that focuses on increasing Heizou’s Attack, Anemo Damage, Crit, and Elemental skill-based damage. It works perfectly on single-target enemies and is easier to build in the short term, especially if you aren’t min-maxing at the end of the game.

Swirl DPS Setup

Best Weapon	Skyward Atlas
Sub Weapons	Mappa Mare R5 Hakushin Ring R5 Sacrificial Fragments The Widsith R5 Favonius Codex
Best Artifact	Viridescent Venerer 4-Piece
Main Stats
	Sands	Elemental Mastery
	Goblet	Elemental Mastery
	Circlet	Elemental Mastery
Sub Stats	Elemental Mastery / ATK% / CRIT Rate / CRIT DMG

Elemental Mastery can provide more damage in Electrocharge or Taser teams because you’re not only causing Electrocharge but also Swirling enemies. The reason why elemental mastery is typically preferred on swirl carries is that the swirl reaction is very strong.

If you can double-swirl enemies, which happens when you fight multiple enemies nearby, they will swirl each other, effectively doubling your swirl’s damage.

Weapons For Heizou

Skyward Atlas	Base ATK	ATK(%)
	48 – 674	7.2% – 33.1%
Increases Elemental DMG Bonus by 15%. Normal Attack hits have a 50% chance to earn the favor of the clouds, which actively seek out nearby opponents to attack for 15s, dealing 200% ATK DMG. Can only occur once every 30s.

Skyward Atlas is a fantastic catalyst that grants elemental damage bonus with no condition and procs that extra damage along with normal attacks. A damage/crit build will also help that damage proc hit even harder.

Kagura’s Verity	Base ATK	Crit Dmg
	46 – 608	14.4% – 66.2%
Kagura Dance of the Sacred Sakura Gains the Kagura Dance effect when using an Elemental Skill, causing the Elemental Skill DMG of the character wielding this weapon to increase by 12% for 16s. Max 3 stacks. This character will gain 12% All Elemental DMG Bonus when they possess 3 stacks.

Aside from the crit damage stat, the Kagura’s Verity has a skill buffing effect. However, due to Heizou’s 10 second skill cooldown, the kagura’s passive will take longer to activate before Heizou can receive the full buff.

Memory of Dust	Base ATK	ATK(%)
	46 – 608	10.8% – 49.6%
Increases Shield Strength by 20%. Scoring hits on opponents increases ATK by 4% for 8s. Max 5 stacks. Can only occur once every 0.3s. While protected by a shield, this ATK increase effect is increased by 100%.

The Memory of Dust is still viable, but it requires a shield to be fully maximized, which heizou’s typical team composition does not guarantee.

The Widsith	Base ATK	Crit Dmg
	42 – 510	12% – 55.1%
When a character takes the field, they will gain a random theme song for 10s. This can only occur once every 30s. Recitative: ATK is increased by 60%, Aria: Increases all Elemental DMG by 48%, Interlude: Elemental Mastery is increased by 240.

The Widsith is another excellent option, particularly at higher refinements. The main drawback is the RNG and cooldown time, but even if you don’t get the EM buff, Heizou still uses the attack or elemental damage buff, even on an EM focused build.

Favonius Codex	Base ATK	E. Recharge
	42 – 510	10.0% – 45.9%
CRIT hits have a 60% chance to generate a small amount of Elemental Particles, which will regenerate 6 Energy for the character. Can only occur once every 12s.

While Favonius Codex is not an Elemental Mastery weapon, it is an excellent choice for providing Heizou with the necessary energy recharge. Get a few crit rate sub stats from his artifacts and he’ll have plenty of time on the field to proc the effect.

Hakushin Ring	Base ATK	E. Recharge
	44 – 565	6.7% – 30.6%
After the character equipped with this weapon triggers an Electro elemental reaction, nearby party members of an Elemental Type involved in the elemental reaction receive a 10% Elemental DMG Bonus for their element, lasting 6s. Elemental Bonuses gained in this way cannot be stacked.

The Hakushin Ring is a great craftable weapon but it pushes Heizou on electro reaction teams. Just keep in mind that if you have teammates who can snapshot their abilities, such as Beidou or Fischl, he’ll want to activate the Hakushin Ring’s passive first so they can snapshot the damage buff.

Mappa Mare	Base ATK	E. Mastery
	44 – 565	24 – 110
Triggering an Elemental reaction grants a 8% Elemental DMG Bonus for 10s. Max 2 stacks.

Mappa Mare is also craftable and more viable for general use, with a good base attack and elemental damage bonus, despite the fact that its Elemental Mastery sub stat is quite mediocre.

Sacrificial Fragments	Base ATK	E. Mastery
	41 – 454	48 – 221
After dealing damage to an opponent with an Elemental Skill, the skill has a 40% chance to end its own CD. Can only occur once every 30s.

Heizou’s skill cooldown will reset when the Sacrificial Fragment’s passive activated. This means that he will benefit greatly from this weapon because you will be using his skill the majority of the time. However, when its passive resets his skill cooldown, he must first get the Declension Stack before using it again.

Artifacts For Heizou

Viridescent Venerer	Set	Bonus
	2PC	Anemo DMG Bonus +15%.
	4PC	Increases Swirl DMG by 60%. Decreases opponent’s Elemental RES to the element infused in the Swirl by 40% for 10s.

In most teams mainly ones with reactions and elemental damage dealers you want to run 4-piece Viridescent Venerer to debuff enemy resistances. He’s able to output plenty of Anemo damage by himself but with Swirl and enemies that are debuffed he becomes an amazing support.

Gladiator’s Finale	Set	Bonus
	2PC	ATK +18%.
Viridescent Venerer	2PC	Anemo DMG Bonus +15%.

This is only recommended in teams where you don’t have any swirlable damage dealers or in a team with another Anemo unit already running 4-piece Viridescent Venerer.

Noblesse Oblige	Set	Bonus
	2PC	Elemental Burst DMG +20%.
	4PC	Using an Elemental Burst increases all party members’ ATK by 20% for 12s. This effect cannot stack.

In some specific cases, you could also choose a 4-piece Noblesse Oblige which is going to buff your team by giving them a 20 attack bonus after using your burst.

Since Heizou has such a low cooldown you can get really high Noblesse Oblige uptime but again that’s only if you already have a character with Viridescent Venerer on your team or you’re using mono Geo or mono Anemo team compositions.

Best Heizou Teams

In general, you can use Heizou wherever a resistant shredder Anemo unit is required, which is common in many teams. However, if you have other Anemo options, they are likely to be better choices, especially if you need off-field Anemo support. Still, here are some top team templates in which I believe Heizou can shine.

Hydro Taser Team
Heizou	Xingqiu	Yelan	Fischl

Surprisingly, double Hydro taser is slightly better for Heizou than the Electrocharged team just based on how he swirls but both should be pretty close in damage. The goal here is to build Elemental Mastery on Heizou and deal a lot of Electro and Hydro Swirl damage which will also activate Electrocharged reaction and stun lock enemies.

Freeze Team
Heizou	Rosaria	Diona	Xingqiu

Normally a Freeze team will have an on-field cryo DPS like Ayaka or Ganyu but Heizou can actually flip that narrative around and support some off-field crowd damage dealers. The premise of this team is to have Heizou constantly provide the resistant shred from the 4-piece set viridescent to your off-field Elemental bursts such as Rosaria’s Lance and Kaeya’s icicles.

Whether or not you build Elemental Mastery or Crit on Heizou for this team is completely up to you since we will be swirling a lot of elements and dealing a lot of Anemo damage.

Freeze Team #2
Heizou	Kaeya	Xingqiu	Yelan

One nice thing about Heizou in a Freeze team is that his punches don’t shatter the freeze so he’ll help maintain the freeze instead of disrupt it. Freeze teams also help compensate for the crowd controls that Heizou lacks running him with Kaeya was a particularly fun combo as he carries Kaeya’s icicles in fistfights. Heizou in this team can ideally equip Attack Crit stats since freeze teams don’t benefit from Elemental Mastery as much.

Heizou National Team
Heizou	Bennett	Xiangling	Xingqiu

Heizou is simply the ball carrier that holds Xiangling’s burst for infinite vaporizers against single target or groups of enemies. From my testing this composition by default does suffer pretty heavily from recharge problems so i actually opted for Favonius Codex on Heizou instead of a DPS catalyst weapon like Skyward Atlas.

The team’s rotation time is substantially more beneficial especially since Heizou is like 60 to 75% on field here so he gets a lot of Favonius Codex’s passive effect. Bennett here will supply the attack that Heizou loses running a utility weapon.

Final Thought

Because Heizou is an Anemo catalyst it’s sort of impossible for him to be bad. There are things he does better than Sucrose and things sucrose does better than him but both of them are solid units. He’s ridiculously flexible and probably the best 4-star we’ve seen since inazuma.

If you’ve already pulled for Heizou or you tried him out, please do let us know what you think of him in the comments below.