Keqing is widely known as a top tier Electro DPS. Some characteristics of a top tier DPS are having high damage modifiers, fast cooldowns and consistently dealing their respective elemental damage 90% of the time if not all the time. Keqing easily meets all of these requirements.
With that said, do not sleep on her potential to be a physical DPS, being Electro and Sword user is a really good combination to create an extremely high physical DPS character.
Basic Gameplay
Keqing’s normal and charged attacks are pretty straightforward. The only noteworthy thing is her iframe after performing her 4th normal attack and the piercing dash of her 5th normal attack. The iframe from the 4th attack means you can delay her 5th attack so you can possibly avoid attacks within the iframe phase.
Combining the 5th normal attack’s dash and her basic skill, Keqing can leave her stiletto (first skill cast) on the enemy, perform a full normal attack string and reset her position through a 2nd skill cast. The purpose of this is to juke the enemy, not for DPS.
Stellar Restoration and Lightning Stiletto
Unlike most characters, Keqing’s skill has a unique 2-part mechanic. On skill cast, she throws a stiletto which deals AoE Electro damage within a small area. Holding the skill allows Keqing to adjust where she throws the stiletto.
Within a set duration after the initial cast, Keqing can cast it again to teleport towards the location of her stiletto and perform a wide range slash that deals Electro damage.
Alternatively, you can place Keqing’s skill on a location and follow it with a charged attack. This will create an AoE Electro attack on the stiletto’s location.
Technically, this alternative method deals more damage since you can hit the enemy with the physical charged attack too. To simplify, the enemy takes Electro damage from the initial cast + secondary effect and physical damage from the charged attack.
Do note that on Keqing’s first ascension, she unlocks a talent that enables her to convert her normal/charged attacks into electro damage for 5 seconds upon re-casting her skill. To make this less confusing, double skill cast is for Electro Keqing builds while skill + charged attack method is for physical Keqing builds.
Burst – Starward Sword
Keqing’s burst skill is a very straightforward AoE attack that deals with massive Electro damage. The only noteworthy thing about this burst is that it has longer iframes than typical bursts and you’re able to move before the whole animation ends. At level 4 ascension, it will be a great initiating tool for Keqing due to its temporary crit rate and energy recharge buff applied after cast.
Advanced Gameplay
Typically, a lot of players just straight mash the attack button to do a full normal attack string but this means Keqing will perform her dash attack which sometimes wastes time and puts her into bad positions.
To solve this, you simply do 4x normal attacks and perform a charged attack to finish it off. Not only does this have a higher DPS, but it also gives you more control whenever using Keqing.
Optimal Attack Pattern
A newbie mistake done by a lot of players is to initiate with a double skill cast and perform the burst. While it’s totally fine for casual exploration and battles, it is far from optimal if you are aiming for min-max rotations.
One of Keqing’s most optimal combos is Skill – Burst – Skill – Charged Attack Spam – Skill – Skill – Charged Spam. The reason for such a pattern is to maximize her skill cooldown and Electro damage conversion.
To elaborate more, Keqing’s skill starts cooling down after the first skill cast and since her burst already does Electro damage, you can delay the second skill cast. After here burst, perform a second skill cast immediately to convert her damage to Electro.
Do a charged attack spam because it has the highest potential DPS for Keqing. As soon as Keqing’s skill can be re-cast, do a double cast and finish the rotation off with another set of charged attack spam until you are out of stamina.
Aiming For Weak Spots
Keqing’s ability to do aerial attacks gives her a certain edge against certain enemies. For example, you can aim for a Ruin Guard’s weak spot using her skill to immobilize it followed by the secondary cast and a plunge attack for some good burst damage.
With some practice, you can aim her skill directly on the ruin guard’s weak spot to stagger it and immobilized it with the second skill cast. Finally, finish it with a plunged attack for added damage.
Abusing Invulnerability Frames (iframes)
This is probably common knowledge, but I still want to emphasize this. Her burst isn’t strictly an offensive tool and can be used to dodge powerful attacks against certain bosses thanks to its unusually long iframes.
Physical Build Keqing
The reason why it’s viable is mainly because of two things; Keqing is a sword user and has an Electro element.
This allows you to have a Cryo character apply Cryo and let Keqing trigger superconduct using her skill followed by a charged attack spam. Superconduct combined with sword’s innate high DPS with charged attack spam will yield amazing results.
However, Keqing’s constellations encourage Electro builds. Charge attack spamming is also very stamina-heavy. As such, this build caters more to the early-mid game than the late game.
Recommended Synergy Characters
Xiangling has the ability to frequently apply Pyro damage even when not active in battle by using her skill and burst. This helps Keqing do a decent amount of overload procs which is the best damage reaction combo for electro. The frequency of Pyro application also helps with Keqing’s multi-hit nature.
Xingqiu‘s skill reduces incoming damage and provides heal when taking hits which is really effective for melee characters like Keqing. Xinqiu’s burst can buff up Keqing and enables her to constantly trigger Electrocharged procs for a long duration.
Excellent with Kaeya. While Chongyun can also help Keqing trigger Superconduct, the problem is that he also converts Keqing’s damage to cryo which disable any physical damage boosting passives. Kaeya can apply Cryo without holding back Keqing’s damage output.
Possible Gear Setups
Lion’s Roar
Possibly Keqing’s best gear setup as of Version 1.0. It has numerous amounts of separate damage multipliers with balanced values which is typically the ideal setup for maximum DPS. Change hourglass stat to elemental mastery for end game build.
- Weapon: Lion’s Roar
- Artifact Set: Thundering Fury
- Hourglass: Atk
- Goblet: Electro
- Circlet: Crit
The Flute
Personally, I think that The Flute is an underwhelming weapon for Keqing but sometimes beggars can’t be choosers. The double ATK% stack coming from the weapon and hourglass should be enough to boost the damage of the harmonic stack procs. Change hourglass stat to elemental mastery for end game build.
- Weapon: The Flute
- Artifact Set: Thundering Fury
- Hourglass: Atk
- Goblet: Electro
- Circlet: Crit
The Black Sword
The Black Sword is good at improving the burst DPS of Keqing whenever doing spam of charged attacks. It also gives Keqing more soloing capability due to the lifesteal procs. If you like using Keqing as your main frontliner, then this build is a good option. Change Hourglass/Circlet stat to Atk/Elemental mastery for end game build.
- Weapon: The Black Sword
- Artifact Set: Thundering Fury
- Hourglass: Atk
- Goblet: Electro
- Circlet: Atk/C.dmg
Aquila Favonia
Physical build. An alternative weapon is Prototype Rancour. When you consider the end game where elemental reactions are important and when there might be extremely hard coop content. I still don’t recommend a physical build for Keqing especially when Thundering Fury Set exists.
- Weapon: Aquila Favonia
- Artifact Set: Martial Artist
- Hourglass: Atk
- Goblet: Physical
- Circlet: Crit
Final Words
There’s nothing much else to say except Keqing definitely lives up to the hype surrounding her. Some people like comparing her with Fischl but personally, I think both are top-tier Electro DPS characters. It is fine to build both later on.
