The best Genshin Impact Lisa build

Want to learn how to create the best build for Lisa in Genshin Impact? Lisa is one of the four playable characters you unlock during Genshin Impact's Prologue questline. She is both the first Electro element user and the first Catalyst weapon wielder you'll get a chance to play as in the game, so even if you choose not to keep her in your party for long, she's a very useful tutorial character to play around with.

Lisa is a powerful mage turned librarian who, for reasons best known to herself, is always dressed in a sexy Halloween witch costume. Combined with her charismatic and flirtatious personality she is, unsurprisingly, quite fun to have around. But it can be a bit tricky getting to grips with her combat style after you've spent a few hours in the shoes of the more traditional fantasy RPG sword-and-bow users Kaeya, Amber, and the Traveler. Read on below for everything you need to know about making the most out of Lisa's unusual combination of abilities.

How to build Lisa as a sub-DPS/support character in Genshin Impact

Like most starter characters, Lisa naturally falls into a more supporting role in your party once you've pulled a few higher-tier characters from the gacha. Fair to say she's not a particularly often-used character: between the ease with which you'll pick up a better Electro user and the difficulty of building a Catalyst wielder into a decent combatant, Lisa usually seems to be the first starter character to fall out of most players' regular party line-ups. However, she still comes into her own on occasion, especially when resource farming from boss fights that are weak to Electro damage. This build focuses around that role for Lisa: a combined sub-DPS/elemental support character whose main job is to target and tear down enemies who are vulnerable to her particular brand of lightning magic.

Best weapon: Skyward Atlas

Alternative: The Widsith

As a Catalyst user in Genshin Impact, Lisa's weaponry works slightly differently from most other characters. Rather than wielding a traditional weapon (the game's other categories are sword, bow, claymore, and polearm), Lisa carries a Catalyst — a book that increases her elemental abilities when equipped. This can leave Lisa somewhat vulnerable in close-combat situations, since she has no handheld weapon with which to push enemies back out of melee range; but can also make her scarily powerful given the right build.

There are several strong candidates for Lisa's best Catalyst, but ultimately Skyward Atlas emerges as the top option thanks to it dealing a mix of immediate elemental damage and damage over time. With the Skyward Atlas equipped, Lisa will permanently benefit from a damage bonus to all of her Electro attacks; plus her Normal Attack has a 50% chance of generating a cloud of aggressive Electro energy, which will seek out nearby enemies and deal them a minimum of 160% damage with every attack it manages to land in its 15-second duration.

However, most of Lisa's best weapons come at a 5-star rarity, which isn't always a very realistic prospect when building a 4-star starter character. For a more easily-attained 4-star alternative, The Widsith emerges as the obvious choice. Upon taking the field with this catalyst equipped, Lisa will gain a random "theme song" for the next 10 seconds, which will give a massive boost to either her base attack power, elemental damage, or elemental mastery. The effect has a 30-second cooldown, unfortunately, but it's a perfect choice for throwing Lisa into the fray to deal some rapid-fire Electro damage at a key moment.

Best artifacts: Thundering Fury

Alternative: 2 pieces each from Gladiator's Finale and/or Shimenawa's Reminiscence

Like most early-game characters, Lisa benefits best from artifact sets that target her particular elemental vision. Therefore, while Lisa's exclusive reliance on Electro attacks means that any artifacts that boost elemental skills are good for her, the best option is to equip all the Thundering Fury pieces you can. With two pieces equipped, Lisa will gain a 15% Electro DMG bonus on all her attacks. With four pieces equipped, her Overloaded, Electro Charged, and Superconduct elemental reactions (generated from attacks in tandem with her Pyro, Hydro, and Cryo teammates, respectively) will each gain an additional 40% DMG; Elemental Cooldown after these attacks will be decreased by 1 second; and the effect can be repeated after a mere 0.8 seconds.

However, if you're looking to plug some gaps in Lisa's artifact loadout while searching for the complete set of Thundering Fury, equipping two pieces from either Gladiator's Finale or Shimenawa's Reminiscence (or both if you're feeling fancy) makes a good back-up plan. Neither set does much for Lisa with four pieces, but the two-piece bonus for each is a nice +18% to her regular attack damage; which can be especially useful if you're trying to hit once and hit hard with, say, The Widsith as her equipped weapon.

Lisa's artifact stats and substats should focus on further improving her various attack powers. Aim for something like the following:

• Circlet of Logos: CRITs
• Sands of Eon: ATK
• Goblet of Eonothem: Electro DMG Bonus
• Substats: CRIT DMG, CRIT Rate, and Energy Recharge

Talent priority: Violet Arc (Elemental Skill)

Secondary: Lightning Rose (Elemental Burst)

Elsewhere in this guide we've demonstrated some impressive buffs you can apply to Lisa's various powers with the right equipment. When it comes to raw talent, however, Lisa's outstanding feature definitely lies in her Elemental Skill, Violet Arc. Not only does building up this skill increase the strength of Lisa's Electro power to a high degree, but it goes a long way towards providing her with the self-defense abilities she sorely needs against enemies who manage to get close to her. Lisa's Elemental Burst Lightning Rose takes second place for the same reason, since it's the only one of Lisa's attacks that allows her to push enemies back out of melee range of herself.

Here's the full list of Lisa's Talents:

• Normal Attack: Lightning Touch
• Normal Attack - Performs up to 4 Electro attacks, dealing Electro DMG.
• Charged Attack - Consumes a certain amount of Stamina to deal Electro DMG after a short casting time.
• Plunging Attack - Gathering the might of Electro, Lisa plunges towards the ground from mid-air, damaging all opponents in her path. Deals AoE Electro DMG upon impact with the ground.
• Elemental Skill: Violet Arc - Press to release a homing lightning orb that deals Electro DMG upon contact, and applies a stack (up to 3) of the Conductive status to opponents in a small AoE. Hold to call down lightning from the heavens, dealing massive Electro DMG to all nearby opponents, and dealing great amounts of extra damage to opponents based on the number of Conductive stacks applied to them (after which it clears their Conductive status).
• Elemental Burst: Lightning Rose - Summons a Lightning Rose that unleashes powerful lightning bolts, launching surrounding opponents and dealing Electro DMG. The Lightning Rose will continuously emit lightning to knock back opponents and deal Electro DMG for so long as it persists.
• 1st Ascension Passive: Induced Aftershock - Hits by Charged Attacks apply Violet Arc's Conductive status to opponents.
• 4th Ascension Passive: Static Electricity Field - Opponents hit by Lightning Rose have their Defense decreased by 15% for 10s.
• Utility Passive: General Pharmaceutics - When Lisa crafts a potion, she has a 20% chance to refund one count of one material out of all the crafting materials used.

Party composition

• DPS: Beidou
• Sub-DPS/Support: Lisa
• Sub-DPS/Support: Kaeya
• Healer/Support: Barbara

5-star alternative: Shenhe replacing Kaeya as Cryo sub-DPS/support

To make the most of Lisa's Electro damage output, pair her with an Electro DPS main like Beidou. Their combined High Voltage elemental resonance will passively provide the team with a series of benefits, including a guaranteed elemental particle drop whenever an Electro reaction (other than Crystallize) hits an enemy, and reducing the party's time spent vulnerable to Hydro effects by 40%. Beidou is also an excellent 4-star heavy hitter who can team up with Lisa to easily take down enemies vulnerable to Electro.

Lisa's fellow starter character Kaeya is a solid shout for her fellow sub-DPS and Cryo elemental support, but if you have one of the game's many excellent premium Cryo characters in your archive, this is a good opportunity to use them instead. Shenhe is a 5-star Cryo support character who can work alongside Lisa to great effect, for example. Either way, working together with Lisa, the Cryo support character can apply the Superconduct reaction, spreading AoE Cryo damage and weakening afflicted enemies' overall defence. The Cryo sub-DPS can also chip away with a few follow-up normal attacks.

Finally, not only is Barbara one of the best healers in the game who gets added to your archive for free once you hit Adventure Rank 20, but her Hydro effects will allow the rest of the team to apply the Electro-Charged and Frozen (immobilising) reactions. In combination with Lisa and Beidou, Barbara can proc Electro-Charged to deal continuous ongoing Electro damage to afflicted enemies, strengthening Lisa's attacks in particular.

How to level up Lisa in Genshin Impact

Ascension Materials

To fully ascend Lisa you'll need the following materials:

Of these, the only materials that pose any real difficulty to get hold of are the Lightning Prisms. They can only be gained from Electro Hypostasis mini-bosses at Level 30 or above, which means you might find yourself grinding a lot of fights against that enemy type — especially since Lightning Prisms are a staple material for ascending all other Electro characters, not just Lisa.

Talents

To fully level up any one of Lisa's three active talents, you'll need to collect the following materials:

You can choose to fully level up all three of Lisa's talents (triple crown), but be aware that you need to collect all of the above three times over in order to do so. Fortunately, none of Lisa's talent levelling materials are particularly rare. At higher levels you'll need to spend plenty of time taking on the Stormterror Challenge trounce domain at Lvl 70+ to collect Dvalin's Claws, and keep an eye on events that offer Crowns of Insight if you're looking to get one of Lisa's talents to the very top level.

Constellations

To be blunt, it may not be worth your while spending too many Wishes on Lisa's Constellations. She's not even the only free-to-play Electro character any more since the Traveler gained the ability to switch to that elemental relation and her status as a starter character means she's one of the hardest to pull duplicates of from the gacha, plus there are many more powerful Electro users you could be spending your precious Wishes on. However, if you're sticking with free-to-play characters, Lisa can be a useful Electro main if you're focusing on the Traveler's more exclusive Anemo power in particular. If you do choose to focus on Lisa's Constellations, they get better the higher they go, so it's worth deciding early and settling in for the long-haul to collect all of them.

Below is a full list of Lisa's Constellations:

• Infinite Circuit (Lvl 1): Lisa regenerates 2 Energy for every opponent hit while holding Violet Arc. A maximum of 10 Energy can be regenerated in this manner at any one time.
• Electromagnetic Field (Lvl 2): Holding Violet Arc increases both Defense (by 25%) and resistance to interruption.
• Resonant Thunder (Lvl 3): Increases the Level of Lightning Rose by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.
• Plasma Eruption (Lvl 4): Increases the number of lightning bolts released by Lightning Rose by 1-3.
• Electrocute (Lvl 5): Increases the Level of Violet Arc by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.
• Pulsating Witch (Lvl 6): When Lisa takes the field, she applies 3 stacks of Violet Arc's Conductive status onto nearby opponents. This effect can occur once every 5s.

How to get Lisa in Genshin Impact

Lisa is the librarian for the Knights of Favonius in Mondstadt. You'll meet her as an NPC when you first enter the order's headquarters during the Prologue questline. A little while later you'll gain her as a Trial character for the Sparks Among the Pages quest, where she serves as your Electro elemental tutorial while you clear the Temple of the Lion domain together. Completing this quest adds Lisa to your party as a full member.

It's also possible to re-roll Lisa as part of the standard Wanderlust Invocation wish pool, though as a starter character she doesn't appear on any Character or Weapon Event Wish banners (and therefore never has a boosted drop rate, making her one of the least likely pulls from the gacha in the entire game). Duplicates of Lisa can also occasionally be bought from Paimon's Bargains, where she appears as a featured character about once every six months (usually in May and November).

That's everything you need to know about making the most out of Lisa, Genshin Impact's regrettably low-powered but undeniably charming 4-star Electro Catalyst character. If you like Lisa's set-up but find yourself frustrated by her low base stats, consider checking out our best Genshin Impact Yae Miko build guide, for a look at Lisa's premium 5-star Electro Catalyst equivalent. To see where she stands with regards to all the other potential party members in the game, check out our Genshin Impact character tier list.