The best Genshin Impact Noelle build

Want to learn how to create the best build for Noelle in Genshin Impact? Geo Claymore wielder Noelle is a character you're likely to pull from the gacha early on in Genshin Impact, and generally speaking she's a solid recruit for your adventuring party. She's also likely to be the first Claymore character you get in the game, so playing as her presents a good opportunity to get to grips with this weapon type.

While Noelle isn't technically free to play, most players will likely obtain her early on thanks to her being a guaranteed drop on the Beginner's Wish banner, which you can easily claim your 20 pulls on using the free currencies you earn in-game. As one of the stronger characters you'll likely get in the early game, Noelle will probably form a key part of your starting party, with her Elemental Skill and 1st Ascension Passive making her a perfect candidate for a Shield Support role.

How to build Noelle as your Shield Support in Genshin Impact

Best weapon: The Unforged

Alternative: Skyward Pride

There are a couple of candidates for Noelle's best weapon, depending on whether you want to up her attack or defense capabilities. For a Shield Support build, you'll want to make defense her primary concern, in which case The Unforged is definitely the weapon of choice. While wielding this claymore, Noelle's shield is increased by 20%, and for every hit she scores on an opponent her attack increases by 4% (stacking up to five times and increasing by 100% again if her shield is in place when she strikes).

However, if you want to prioritise putting Noelle on the offensive as an alternative DPS build, choose the Skyward Pride, which provides a comfortable damage boost of around 10%; and creates a vacuum blade follow-up attack that deals a minimum of 80% additional damage every time a normal, charged, or Elemental Burst attack is used.

Best artifacts: Retracting Bolide

Set bonuses:

• 2-piece bonus: Increases Shield Strength by 35%.
• 4-piece bonus: While protected by a shield, gain an additional 40% Normal and Charged Attack Damage.

When choosing Artifacts for Noelle, one clear candidate emerges: the Retracting Bolide set. Whether or not you chose to focus Noelle's weapon choice around her defensive capabilities, equipping as many Retracting Bolide pieces as possible will ensure that Noelle can enter the fray with comparatively little concern for her safety. With two pieces from this set equipped, her shield strength is increased by 35%. Equip four pieces and she'll further benefit from an additional 40% damage on her normal and charged attacks.

In terms of stat priority, your selections for Noelle's artifacts should be as follows:

• Circlet of Logos: DEF% or CRIT DMG
• Sands of Eon: DEF%
• Goblet of Eonothem: DEF%
• Substats: DEF% and CRIT DMG

Talent priority: Breastplate (Elemental Skill)

The Weapons and Artifacts we've recommended for Noelle have focused almost exclusively on her capacity for normal attacks; so to truly round out this build, focus on building up her Geo Elemental Talents. When building Noelle as a Shield Support party member her Breastplate Elemental Skill comes in particularly handy. Your secondary priority, however, should be Sweeping Time (Elemental Burst), which comes in very handy when she's equipped her shields to wade into a crowd of hostiles.

Here's a full list of Noelle's Talents and what they do:

• Normal Attack: Favonius Bladework - Maid
• Normal Attack - Performs up to 4 consecutive slashes.
• Charged Attack - Drains Stamina over time to perform continuous swirling attack on all nearby opponents. At the end of the sequence, Noelle performs an additional powerful slash.
• Plunging Attack - Noelle plunges from mid-air to strike the ground below, damaging opponents along the path and dealing AoE DMG upon impact.
• Elemental Skill: Breastplate - Summons protective stone armor, dealing Geo DMG to surrounding opponents and creating a shield. When Noelle's Normal and Charged Attacks hit a target, they have a certain chance to regenerate HP for all characters, and the armor possesses 150% DMG Absorption efficiency against all Elemental and Physical DMG. The amount of HP healed when regeneration is triggered and the armor's damage absorption both scale based on Noelle's Defense.
• Elemental Burst: Sweeping Time - Gathering the strength of stone around her weapon, Noelle strikes the opponents surrounding her within a large AoE, dealing Geo DMG. Afterwards, Noelle gains a larger attack AoE and increased attack that scales based on her Defense, and converts attack DMG to Geo DMG that cannot be overridden by any other elemental infusion.
• 1st Ascension Passive: Devotion - Creates a shield for your active character that lasts for 20s and absorbs DMG equal to 400% of Noelle's Defense. The shield has a 150% DMG Absorption effectiveness against all Elemental and Physical DMG. This effect can only occur once every 60s. (When Noelle is in your party but not on the field, this ability triggers automatically when your active character's HP falls below 30%)
• 4th Ascension Passive: Nice and Clean - Every 4 Normal or Charged Attack hits will decrease the CD of Breastplate by 1s. Hitting multiple opponents with a single attack is only counted as 1 hit.
• Utility Passive: Maid's Knighthood - When Perfect Cooking is achieved on a Defense-boosting dish, Noelle has a 12% chance to obtain double the product.

Party composition

• Main DPS: Kaeya
• Secondary DPS: The Traveler (Geo)
• Shield: Noelle
• Healer: Barbara

5* alternative: Albedo replacing the Traveler as sub-DPS

It's possible to put together a heavily defended party composed of mostly free characters if you use Noelle as your linchpin. Pair her up with a DPS whose element is Pyro, Hydro, Electro, or Cryo. I've gone with Kaeya because he's the strongest free DPS main I've encountered, but really you can substitute your best fighter with any of these elements for your main DPS. Crucially, combining their elemental powers with Noelle's will result in the Crystallise Elemental Reaction, which will raise an elemental shield.

The sub-DPS for Noelle's party should be a fellow Geo character; unfortunately the only free option here is the Geo-enabled Traveler, who isn't particularly strong, so this is a good opportunity to substitute in a more powerful premium Geo character like 5* Albedo if you have them. Putting two Geo characters together in a party gets you access to the Enduring Rock resonance, which feeds off your shield to increase resistance to interruption.

Finally, Barbara is free to obtain (with a little effort) and makes for one of the best healers in the game. With the exception of Kaeya (who has the unusual ability to heal himself while attacking), this party risks seeing its effectiveness in battle plummet if Noelle's shield is breached. Thanks to her numerous opportunities to raise the team's defenses this is unlikely to happen too often, but it's useful to have Barbara around to provide healing for Noelle and the sub-DPS to ensure that the shields can come back up.

How to level up Noelle in Genshin Impact

Ascension Materials

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

Fortunately, none of these materials are punishingly hard to get hold of. Appropriately enough, considering Noelle's strengths as an early-game damage dealer, your main concern will be making sure you fight plenty of Geo Hypostasis normal bosses and Hilichurls, since they're the best sources of Basalt Pillars and Masks, respectively.

Talents

To fully level up Noelle's talents, you'll need the following materials:

If you choose to triple crown Noelle's talents, you'll need to collect all these materials three times over. You can pick up the books required for Noelle's talents at the Forsaken Rift domain (Wednesday/Saturday/Sunday only), while Masks are dropped by defeated Hilichurls. The thorny issue here is getting Dvalin's Claws, which can only be picked up as rewards from completing the Stormterror Challenge at Level 70+. If you’re looking to crown Noelle's talents, you can do so with Crowns of Insight, obtained through limited-time events or by making offerings to the Frostbearing Tree and the Sacred Sakura.

Constellations

If you're looking to conserve your Wishes, Noelle is a great character to place front-and-centre in your party. Nearly all of her Constellations convey significant benefits on her two Geo Talents, which as we discussed above are among her most useful features; so if you're thinking of levelling anyone all the way up, Noelle is a good candidate.

Here's a full list of Noelle's Constellations:

• I Got Your Back (Lvl 1): While Sweeping Time and Breastplate are both in effect, the chance of Breastplate's healing effects activating is increased to 100%.
• Combat Maid (Lvl 2): Decreases the Stamina Consumption of Noelle's Charged Attacks by 20% and increases her Charged Attack DMG by 15%.
• Invulnerable Maid (Lvl 3): Increases the Level of Breastplate by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.
• To Be Cleaned (Lvl 4): When Breastplate's duration expires or it is destroyed by DMG, it will deal 400% attack of Geo DMG to surrounding opponents.
• Favonius Sweeper Master (Lvl 5): Increases the Level of Sweeping Time by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.
• Must Be Spotless (Lvl 6): Sweeping Time increases Noelle's ATK by an additional 50% of her Defense. Additionally, every opponent defeated during the skill's duration adds 1s to the duration, up to 10s.

How to get Noelle in Genshin Impact

While Noelle is not part of the player's starting party, she is highly likely to be one of the first characters you acquire when using the game's gacha system.

The easiest way to obtain Noelle is by Wishing on the Beginners' Wish banner. This banner is available to new players only, and expires permanently after 20 Wishes have been made on it. Noelle is guaranteed on or before the eighth Wish on the Beginner's Wish banner, and cannot be obtained more than once on it. Luckily, since the game isn't completely stingy with its freebie wishes, even completely F2P players should have no trouble adding Noelle to their archive.

You also have the chance to roll Noelle at any time by Wishing on the Wanderlust Invocation (standard wish) banner; and through all Character Event Wishes and Weapon Event Wishes. She also occasionally features on the former with an increased drop rate.

That's everything you need to know to put together a tough and durable Noelle build in Genshin Impact! If you're wondering how Noelle stacks up against the many other playable characters in the game (nearly forty at time of writing!), take a look at our Genshin Impact character tier list. Then, if you decide you want to expand your party with some new characters, check out our guide to getting more characters in Genshin Impact.