Genshin Impact Artifact Stats: Main Stats and Sub-Stats

Genshin Impact artifact stats follow one rule: give each character the stat that their damage or their job scales with. For most damage dealers that means ATK% on the Sands, a matching Elemental DMG Bonus on the Goblet and a CRIT stat on the Circlet. Energy Recharge comes first for characters who depend on their Elemental Burst, and Elemental Mastery for characters whose damage comes from reactions.

How Genshin Impact artifact stats work

A character wears five artifacts: a Flower, a Plume, a Sands, a Goblet and a Circlet. Each piece has one main stat, which is large and grows with every level, and up to four sub-stats, which are small.

A 5-star artifact goes up to level 20. Every four levels it either gains a new sub-stat, if it has fewer than four, or raises one of its four at random. You cannot choose which one. The main stat never changes after the piece drops.

So judge a piece in this order: main stat first, sub-stats second. A piece with the wrong main stat is rarely worth leveling, however good its sub-stats look.

Best artifact main stats for each piece

The Flower always has flat HP and the Plume always has flat ATK, so there is nothing to choose on them. The other three pieces can all have HP%, ATK%, DEF% or Elemental Mastery, and each adds options of its own:

• Sands: Energy Recharge. This is the only piece that can have it as a main stat. Most damage dealers take ATK% here.
• Goblet: Physical DMG Bonus or the DMG Bonus of one element. A damage dealer wants the bonus that matches their own damage: Pyro for a Pyro character, Physical for the few who hit with plain weapon damage, such as Eula.
• Circlet: CRIT Rate, CRIT DMG or Healing Bonus. Damage dealers take one of the two CRIT stats, whichever balances the other. Healers take Healing Bonus.

ATK is not always the answer. Read the character's talents and see which number they scale with. Hu Tao and Zhongli scale with HP, Noelle scales with DEF, and the healing of Kokomi and Barbara comes from their HP. Those characters put HP% or DEF% in the slots where others put ATK%.

The right elemental Goblet is the hardest piece to find. That is why many builds use four pieces of one set and a Goblet from any set: the fifth slot stays free for whichever good Goblet drops.

Energy Recharge vs attack: which comes first

A burst that is not ready deals no damage at all. For a character whose strength is in the Elemental Burst, energy comes before attack: a stronger burst fired every second rotation is worth less than the same burst fired every rotation.

Xingqiu and Xiangling are the classic cases. Both work from off the field through a burst with a high energy cost, so they need Energy Recharge from the Sands, the sub-stats or the weapon before anything else. For Raiden Shogun the stat even adds damage, because part of her damage bonus grows with her Energy Recharge.

How much is enough depends on the character and the team, so test it. Play your normal rotation. If the burst is ready every time you come back to that character, you have enough, and more is wasted: move the Sands to ATK% and keep what you need in sub-stats. If you are waiting for the burst, add more.

When Elemental Mastery beats everything else

Elemental Mastery raises the damage of elemental reactions, and reactions come in two kinds.

Swirl, Overloaded, Electro-Charged, Bloom, Hyperbloom and Burgeon deal damage of their own. That damage follows the level and the Elemental Mastery of the character who triggers the reaction, not their ATK or CRIT. A character whose job is to trigger these, such as Kuki Shinobu in a Hyperbloom team or Sucrose spreading elements with Swirl, wants Elemental Mastery on the Sands, the Goblet and the Circlet at once.

Vaporize and Melt work differently: they multiply the hit that triggers them. Here Elemental Mastery is one more damage stat next to ATK and CRIT. It is useful in sub-stats and sometimes on the Sands, but it is not a reason to drop the CRIT Circlet.

Give Elemental Mastery to the character who triggers the reaction, not to the whole team.

Sub-stats: what to keep and what to give up

For a damage dealer the valuable sub-stats are CRIT Rate, CRIT DMG and ATK%, plus Energy Recharge or Elemental Mastery when the character needs them. Flat ATK, flat HP and flat DEF add little, and HP% or DEF% help only the characters who scale with them.

A common target is about one part CRIT Rate to two parts CRIT DMG. Our guide to CRIT Rate and CRIT DMG in Genshin Impact explains why.

A simple routine saves a lot of materials:

1. Check the main stat. If it is wrong, feed the piece to another one.
2. Check the sub-stats it starts with. Two or more useful ones: keep it.
3. Level it to 4, then to 8. If the upgrades went into flat stats, stop there.
4. Take only the pieces that rolled well to level 20.

Supports need less. For most of them a cheap piece with the right main stat is enough.

Frequent questions about artifact stats

Can you change an artifact's stats?

The main stat is fixed when the piece drops, and sub-stat upgrades are random. That is why it pays to level a piece in steps and stop early when it rolls badly.

How much Energy Recharge do I need?

Enough to have the burst ready every rotation in the team you really play. Test it instead of copying a number.

When should I start farming artifacts?

From Adventure Rank 45, when the highest domain level drops a 5-star piece on every run. Before that, use what you find with the right main stats and spend your Resin on levels and talents.

Stats first, new characters second

Good stats on the characters you already own usually add more damage than a new character with poor artifacts. If you do decide to top up for the next banner, Genshin Impact Genesis Crystals on Mas4Games are loaded by UID and server, with no password asked, and the help center has live support for any question about an order.