The best Genshin Impact Barbara build

Want to learn how to create the best Barbara build in Genshin Impact? The bubbly Barbara is a deaconess at the Church of Favonius and an idol around Mondstadt. Despite being a free character, Barbara’s a beast at healing and she’s still a member of my team even in the late game. Unfortunately, she's only really suitable as a healer. Some players have taken on the challenge of building Barbara as a DPS, though we don’t recommend trying this unless you want to suffer. In this guide, we're going to focus on her talents as a healer.

This guide will show you how to create the best Barbara build in Genshin Impact. Below we'll cover everything you need to know about Barbara, including wishing, weapons, artifacts, ascension materials, talents, abilities, and constellations.

How to build Barbara as your healer in Genshin Impact

Best weapon: Prototype Amber

Alternatives: Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers, Favonius Codex

Barbara’s best when equipped with the easily craftable Prototype Amber, which helps shorten her lengthy cooldown times and even comes with a healing bonus. Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers is also an excellent Catalyst for Barbara thanks to its HP bonus and ATK buffs provided to other characters (and at 3-star rarity, you’re likely to already have a few of these up your sleeve). Finally, the Favonius Codex is perfect if you’re looking to focus on Energy Recharge stats.

Best artifacts: Maiden Beloved

Set bonus:

• 2 pieces: Character healing effectiveness +15%
• 4 pieces: Using an Elemental Skill or Burst increases healing received by all party members by 20% for 10 seconds

Alternative: The Exile

Your best bet with Barbara is always using a 4-piece Maiden Beloved set. This kit was basically designed for Barbara and provides stellar buffs for healers. If you don’t have access to a Maiden Beloved set yet, try The Exile, which is a 4-star option that will help with Energy Recharge.

Barbara’s healing abilities scale off of her Max HP, so with every artifact, you’ll want to prioritize HP, both as a main stat and a substat. Aim for the following:

• Circlet of Logos: Healing Bonus or HP
• Sands of Eon: HP
• Goblet of Eonothem: HP
• Substats: HP

Talent priority: Let the Show Begin (Elemental Skill)

Alternative: Shining Miracle (Elemental Burst)

When leveling Barbara’s talents, you’ll want to prioritize her Elemental Skill first and then her Elemental Burst, which both help heal your team. Keep in mind that you’ll also need to increase Barbara’s max HP for these talents to work since her healing abilities scale off of her HP. If you’re wondering what else she’s got in store, here are all of her abilities:

• Normal attack - Perform up to 4 water splash attacks that deal Hydro DMG.
• Charged attack - Consumes a certain amount of Stamina to deal AoE Hydro DMG after a short casting time.
• Plunging attack - Gathering the might of Hydro, Barbara plunges towards the ground from mid-air, damaging all opponents in her path. Deals AoE Hydro DMG upon impact with the ground.
• Elemental skill: Let the Show Begin - Summons water droplets resembling musical notes that form a Melody Loop, dealing Hydro DMG to surrounding opponents and applying the Wet status to them. Melody Loop has the following effects: On hit, Barbara's Normal Attacks heal your own party members and nearby teammates for a certain amount of HP, which scales with Barbara's Max HP. On hit, Barbara's Charged Attack generates 4 times the amount of healing. Periodically regenerates your own active character's HP. Applies the Wet status to the character and to opponents who come in contact with them.
• Elemental Burst: Shining Miracle - Heals nearby allied characters and your characters in the party for a large amount of HP that scales with Barbara's Max HP.
• Passive talent 1 - The Stamina Consumption of characters within Let the Show Begin's Melody Loop is reduced by 12%.
• Passive talent 2 - When your active character gains an Elemental Orb/Particle, the duration of Let the Show Begin's Melody Loop is extended by 1s. The maximum extension is 5s.
• Passive talent 3 - When a Perfect Cooking is achieved on a dish with restorative effects, Barbara has a 12% chance to obtain double the product.

Party composition

• Main DPS: Yanfei
• Sub DPS: Sucrose
• Support: Bennett
• Healer: Barbara

5* alternative: Diluc replacing Yanfei as Main DPS

As one of the best healers in the game, as well as the easiest one to obtain and level up, Barbara really earns her keep as healer support on just about any team. What we've suggested here is just one of many party set-ups that work really well for Barbara.

Pairing Barbara with a Pyro DPS main allows her to nip onto the field occasionally to trigger the Vaporize elemental reaction, allowing the party's main combatant to deal extra damage. Unfortunately, really exceptional 4* Pyro DPS mains aren't the easiest characters in the game to come by; but a solid A-tier character like Yanfei will do the job admirably. However, if you have access to a 5* Pyro character like Diluc, this is definitely a good opportunity to use them instead.

For a sub-DPS who can also perform crowd control duties, an Anemo character is ideal. Sucrose is the best of Genshin's rare 4* Anemo characters, and makes a good sub-DPS in her own right. Furthermore, in this party set-up she can work together with Barbara to generate a Hydro Swirl to group enemies, which the Pyro DPS main can then take advantage of to apply Vaporize to multiple opponents at once.

Finally, Bennett is a solid choice for rounding out this team in a support role. His elemental resonance with the Pyro DPS will increase attack damage by 25%, providing a nice additional boost to Barbara's Vaporize reaction. His versatility as both a DPS and healing character means he can drop in to support any other role on the team as needed; and just like Barbara, he's surprisingly easy to obtain for such a powerful character.

How to level up Barbara in Genshin Impact

Ascension Materials

To fully ascend Barbara, you’ll need the following:

Farming for Barbara will include plenty of trips to the Oceanid for Varunada Lazurite and Cleansing Hearts. You’ll also need to look around the roofs of houses in Mondstadt and Springvale for Philameno Mushrooms - happy farming!

Talents

If you want to fully level any one of Barbara’s talents, you’ll need:

Pick up scrolls from defeated Samachurl enemies and Barbara's books from the Forsaken Rift domain (Wednesday/Saturday/Sunday only). Rings of Boreas are obtainable from the Wolf of the North Challenge, a Weekly Boss who drops them as a reward at Level 70+. Finally, Crowns of Insight can be obtained through limited-time events or by making offerings to the Frostbearing Tree and the Sacred Sakura. Bear in mind that if you want to double or triple crown Barbara's talents, you'll need to collect all of these materials per talent.

Constellations

Barbara’s Constellation 6 is definitely her strong suit. Once you’ve maxed out all of her Constellations, Barbara is able to revive fallen team members. While other healers like Qiqi have this ability as a Constellation 6 perk as well, since Barbara is by far the easiest healer to obtain, I’d recommend maxing out Barbara’s Constellations if you’re looking for an easy revival method. Here’s what all of her Constellations have to offer:

• Gleeful Songs: Constellation Lv. 1 - Barbara regenerates 1 Energy every 10s.
• Vitality Burst: Constellation Lv. 2 - Decreases the CD of Let the Show Begin♪ by 15%. During the ability's duration, your active character gains a 15% Hydro DMG Bonus.
• Star of Tomorrow: Constellation Lv. 3 - Increases the Level of Shining Miracle♪ by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.
• Attentiveness be My Power: Constellation Lv. 4 - Every opponent Barbara hits with her Charged Attack regenerates 1 Energy for her. A maximum of 5 energy can be regenerated in this manner with any one Charged Attack.
• The Purest Companionship: Constellation Lv. 5 - Increases the Level of Let the Show Begin♪ by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.
• Dedicating Everything to You: Constellation Lv. 6 - When Barbara is in the party but not on the field, and one of your own party members falls: Automatically revives the fallen character. Fully restores the revived character's HP to 100%. This effect can only occur once every 15 mins.

How to get Barbara in Genshin Impact

Barbara is easily obtainable just by playing Genshin Impact. If you’re at Adventure Rank 18 or higher, obtaining Barbara will be a cinch. Once you complete A Long Shot, which is a main story quest unlocked at AR 18, you can add Barbara to your team thanks to the indefinitely-available Baptism of Song event. Simply open the events tab (F5 on PC) and claim your new party member! And if you pulled Barbara before finishing this quest, you’ll receive an extra Constellation. Nice!

Barbara is also obtainable outside of this event. At 4-star rarity, it’s pretty easy to pull Barbara (so much so that some players have agonized over pulling Barbara on every banner). At the moment, she can be pulled from the gacha on the Beginner's Wish and Wanderlust Invocation banners, and all Character and Event Wish banners. She'll also sometimes featured with a boosted drop rate on the event banners of 5-star characters, at which point you'll probably be struggling not to pull Barbara.

If you’re saving up for Barbara or her constellations, check out our guide on getting characters to learn the best ways to prep, or our Genshin Impact codes list to get some free Primogems!

That’s all the info we’ve got on Barbara! Why not check out our Genshin Impact best characters tier list to see which other characters are good to wish for?