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With its simple-to-grasp mechanics and beautifully written world,Genshin Impactis an RPG beloved by many. Whether you’re a casual player or pride yourself in knowing the game’s nuances, Genshin Impact has something for everyone. This can be seen best in its combat system, which revolves around choosing from an option of simple attacks to beat up enemies.
However, despite there being no difficult combos or skill-shots to aim, what goes into Genshin’s combat under the surface can be quite complex. Snapshotting buffs is one of the first mechanics to learn if you want to maximize the damage your teams.
What Is Snapshotting?
Snapshotting is a way tomake the most of your buffsby using specific skill attributes. This can be used tolengthen their duration or to grant the same buff to multiple charactersby forcibly keeping the buff active even after you swap out to a different character.
Only certain skills can do this, though.These are skills with an attribute commonly known as Static Scaling, which means theycalculate damage values upon castinstead of updating them in real time.
What Is Dynamic Scaling?
Buffs affect most skills in a very straightforward way in Genshin Impact. Usually, acharacter’s skills are tied to themselves and their stats directly.
For example, if you’re playing Eula and get buffs when inside Bennett’s Burst, walking out makes it so your Lightfall Sword is no longeraffected by the buff. Such skills are calledskills with Dynamic Scaling.
Advantages Of Dynamic Scaling
Dynamic buffs and skills don’t Snapshot. However,they still have their advantages:
Disadvantages Of Dynamic Scaling
However, despite these limited advantages,Dynamic Scaling falls off quite quicklywhen compared to skills that have Static Scaling instead.
What Is Static Scaling?
Statis scaling is an attribute that certain skills have, and it works as the complete opposite of how Dynamic Scaling.This is what lets Snapshotting buffs work.
Put simply, instead of being affected in real-time by buffs and debuffs, skills withStatic Scaling only take the stats your character has at the time of casting the skillinto account.
Suppose you have a C6 Bennett who gives a 15 percent Pyro DMG Bonus to your characters and you use Xiangling’s Pyronado inside the burst.Open up Xiangling’s stat page to see how much ATK and Pyro DMG Bonus she has.
If you open the stat page after the Burst has ended or Xiangling has walked out, you’ll notice thatXiangling has a lower amount of ATK and Pyro DMG Bonusthan when the Bennett buff was active. However,despite lower stats, Pyronado’s damage stays the same.
Advantages Of Static Scaling
Units with Static Scaling, specifically off-field DPS characters,are some of Genshin’s strongest. Apart from being able to Snapshot buffs, they have some other things going for them as well.
Disadvantages Of Static Scaling
While Static Scaling lets you make use of Snapshotting to make use of more buffs, it isn’t better in every aspect.
How To Snapshot Buffs?
Snapshotting can do wonders for your team’s DPS sincebuffs that usually apply to a single character can be given to multiplethis way.
For example,Bennett’s buff is one of the strongestin Genshin Impact, but itonly applies to the active character in his field.However, using a Static Scaling skill likeXiangling’s Pyronado or Fischl’s Oz can double the buff efficiency, resulting in higher DPS.
Another reason you might want to utilize Snapshotting is forincreasing buff duration. For example,Gorou’s buff has an extremely short duration.However, using Albedo’s Elemental Skill lets youmake use of it for a full 30 seconds.
To Snapshot a buff,cast the buffing skill first.Any skill withStatic Scalingthat you use afterwardkeeps this buff for its entire duration.
This applies even if the characters move off-field.
What Characters Can Snapshot?
We’ve mentioned some of the most notable characters with skills that can do it, but here’s acomplete table that includes every character that can Snapshot buffs.
Elemental Skill
What Buffs Cannot Be Snapshot?
The Genshin Impact team quickly realized just how strong Snapshotting can become. For this reason, not only have they stopped creating characters who can Snapshot their main sources of damage, butthey also reprogrammed many buffs to be dynamic.
These buffs, such as Furina’s Elemental Burst,work as an extension to your character’s statsinstead of a direction addition. When the extension is cut, even if a character would have otherwise kept the buff,the stats are removed instantly.
Yunjin
Elemental Burst
All buffs in Genshin Impact, except the ones here,can be Snapshot by characters with Static Scaling.
