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Ever since the beginning of Genshin Impact, the community was eagerly waiting to see the final element, Dendro, in the game. It was finally released alongside Sumeru in the Version 3.0 update, with Collei being the first four-star character who can manipulate this element. Because of this, the community had a lot of expectations from her.
Collei is a forest ranger who works with Tighnari to clear the dangers within the rainforest. The lore lovers have already met this character in Genshin's official manga, which is available on their website — it made us fall in love with her personality from the get-go.
Collei Is Very Versatile
Fortunately, Hoyoverse has done a great job designing the Dendro character that most of the free-to-play and low-spending community will have access to. Her kit allows her to fit in a wide array of play styles, and while some of these might not be the most efficient, they are still a possibility.
Firstly, Collei's entire kit signals towards her being an off-field support character. This play style works best for her as she can just press her elemental skill and burst quickly, and then swap for another character.
On the other hand, you can easily use her as the main damage dealer using weapons like Polar Star with Emblem of Severed Fate or the Gilded Dreams artifact set. Her elegant play style will definitely attract you towards using her as much as you can.
She Has Energy Recharge Problems
Every character in Genshin Impact has a set of three abilities. These include their normal attacks, elemental skill, and elemental burst. The elemental burst requires a certain amount of energy to be able to be activated and this is the bread and butter for Collei.
The energy cost for her burst is 60, which is considered a medium burst cost, but don't let this mislead you. Her elemental skill generates three particles for her every 12 seconds (skill cooldown). Since she's off the field most of the time, her recharge deteriorates further.
To use her properly, you're required to fix this problem by using an energy recharge weapon like Elegy for the End, Favonius Warbow, or Sacrificial Bow. All of their passives are good to get the burst back faster, even though the last two weapons increase her field time — which isn't the best.
In case you want to use a weapon with a different main stat, you can try fixing the energy problems by finding this stat as sub-stats on your artifacts, or by using a sands with energy recharge as main stats. Although, this will reduce your damage significantly.
Her Boomerang Can Be Tricky With Elevation
Collei has arguably one of the most satisfying elemental skills because it's a boomerang. But, this skill seems to have a few problems with elevation. Whenever you use your elemental skill on a higher elevation compared to your enemies, it will go over their heads and not hit them.
This can be fairly annoying since when you're fighting in the open world on Genshin, most of the time you're not going to have a leveled field. Further, if you use this skill on a lower elevation towards a height, the boomerang will simply hit the ground and disappear.
To avoid this, the best practice is to stay on the same level as your enemy. For the enemies that are in the air and can't be reached, you can use Geo structures like Zhongli or Geo Traveler's elemental skill.
Collei Relies On Reactions
After reading Collei's talents, especially her passives, it is obvious that she's meant to trigger a lot of Dendro reactions that got released along with the Sumeru update. One of her passives deals extra damage on her elemental skill when you trigger a reaction.
Another one increases the duration of your elemental burst upon triggering reactions during it. Further, Hyperbloom is definitely one of the best reactions in Genshin Impact and increases the Electro damage significantly.
However, her elemental skill doesn't have a lot of Dendro applications, so you need to rely on your elemental burst for it. Yae Miko, Raiden Shogun, and Fischl are some of the best teammates for Collei because of this.
Constellations Make Her A Lot Better
Whenever you get a duplicate of any character after unlocking them for the first time, a constellation unlocks that provides the respective character with a special buff. For free-to-play and low-spending players, the only way to get constellations for five-star characters is through pure luck or sheer dedication.
Fortunately, Collei is a four-star, and it's much easier to get her constellations. This is good because she's reliant on them to be a great character. Her first constellation solves the problem of her energy recharge while the third and the fifth one give her extra levels on her skill and burst.
Further, some of her constellations buff her elemental skill, and the sixth one allows you to have a mini elemental burst occasionally when you use your elemental skill.
She Can Be A Great Battery
It is significantly hard to build Collei as the main off-field or on-field damage dealer. This is because she scales off ATK percent on ascension and suffers from energy problems. Because of this, you have to focus on energy recharge, Crit Rate, Crit DMG, and Elemental Mastery when it comes to the weapon and artifact set.
Hence, you can also use her as a battery for other Dendro characters. Basically, if you use her elemental skill and switch to another Dendro wielder, they will get a good amount of energy depending on how much energy recharge they have.
Due to this, you can have good uptime on the elemental bursts of both Collei and the other characters. For this build, you don't have to focus too many resources on Collei, and she can still be extremely useful to your team.
Avoid Using Cryo Units With Her
While Version 3.0 update saw reactions between Dendro and most of the elements, Cryo wasn't one of them. Whenever you use any Cryo character like Ayaka or Ganyu with her, you'll simply see Dendro damage and Cryo damage on your screen but no reactions will trigger.
The world of Genshin is sustained on reaction. The developers make it a point to not give too much raw damage to most of the characters because this can be multiplied with different reactions and buffs like Bennett's elemental burst or Kazuha's Anemo Swirl.
With all this in mind, it becomes a bad decision to combine Cryo characters with Collei. However, you can add a Hydro or Electro character with it to make the team a little more viable.
You Can Increase Her Elemental Skill Duration
Apart from being amazing to look at, Collei's elemental skill also has some dynamic aspects to it that can be used to increase the duration her boomerang stays on the field. Whenever this boomerang hits an enemy, it applies Dendro to them and this trick can help in applying the element to more enemies.
When you throw the boomerang by pressing the skill, it starts from your right side and then rotates towards the left while it comes back to you. You can do two things while the boomerang is on the field to increase its duration.
Firstly, you can simply walk backward if an enemy is behind you. The skill only ends when the boomerang gets close to you, so if you put more enemies in between, it'll hit them as well. On the other hand, you can move front from the right side, which will allow you to hit enemies on your right as well.
Unfortunately, this skill doesn't allow you to hit a single enemy for the third time even if you can pass the boomerang through them thrice. Furthermore, it can be a waste of time in certain instances if the Dendro application isn't followed up by other reactions.