What’s wrong with Kokomi? Genshin Impact new 5-star character analysis

Last Updated on: 28th September 2021, 01:32 pm

Coming right after one of the most profitable banners in the game’s history, Kokomi is not exactly in a good position. Even with her high scalings and visually appealing abilities, most people will be skipping her without thinking twice. But why is that happening? What’s wrong with the Divine Priestess Kokomi?

Sangonomiya Kokomi is the featured character in the last banner of the 2.1 version of Genshin Impact, along with Rosaria, Beidou, and Xingqiu.

While all of them are great additions to almost any team, people already spent lots on Raiden. Kokomi is, at first sight, just another 5-star healer, with no distinctive abilities from other characters.

Is that all there is about her? Pure healers, like Qiqi and Barbara, are usually overshadowed by more versatile characters with healing abilities in the late game, like Bennett, Diona, or Jean.

Is that the same path Kokomi will follow, becoming just another cute 5-star but with no actual usage? Let’s find out!

General overview

Kokomi is a 5-star Hydro Catalyst user. Her Elemental skill works in the same fashion as Mona’s, and her Burst resembles Yanfei’s, or even Childe’s skill.

She scales with HP, and just like Zhongli, she can easily get to 50k without compromising any other desired status.

Her role is to heal allies with her Skill and her Burst. Similar to Barbara, she needs to actively be on the field in order to do so.

To avoid losing DPS, which is very important in the deepest floors of the Abyss, her Burst also gives a boost to all of her other abilities, while also granting some extra healing.

Sounds promising until here, and there’s nothing wrong with Kokomi until this point.

READ MORE: Genshin Impact 2.1: Kokomi banner leak, Jade Cutter is back

Elemental Skill and Burst

Her Skill is Kurage’s Oath. She summons a bake-kurage (you can just call it a jellyfish) that deals damage periodically while also healing allies.

The HP scaling is pretty good, and it also provides some nice healing, but only to the active character. With all that said, the jellyfish is also a good Hydro applier, which helps a lot for freezing/vaporizing comps.

Her Burst is Nereid’s Ascension. For a few seconds, Kokomi receives a huge boost to her abilities based on her max HP, while also gaining the ability for healing all her allies at once.

The main idea is to use her Burst, keep her on the field until it expires and return to your normal damage rotation. The effects are also stunning, and it has one of the most beautiful animations of the whole game.

READ MORE: Genshin Impact 2.2 leaks: New Hangout Events files uncovered

Talents and Passives

This is the real problem in Kokomi’s kit. Her Ascension Talents enhance even further her supportive capacities, but she also has a third passive. And that’s where everything starts to crumble: With her no-so-Flawless Strategy.

By losing 100% Critical Rate, she gains an extra 25% healing bonus. While it seems like a reasonable trade for a not-mean-to-do-damage character, it causes some problems when said character is expected to be on the field for quite some time.

While other healers also require some field time, you can usually Burst and switch them out. Kokomi needs to stay on the field to give her stronger (and even exaggerated) heals, which may not be optimal for your DPS.

Constellations

Yeah, I know. We’re talking about a 5-star, so it’s very unlikely most of us will ever get to use them. But it’s always nice to know how stronger a rare character can become.

In Kokomi’s case, she gets a lot better, like is usually the case with limited characters.

Her Constellations focus mainly on her Burst, and there’s nothing wrong with this since that’s Kokomi’s biggest strength.

Her attacks will hit even harder with each one you get, and the need for a healing bonus also drops considerably.

Builds and Teamcomps

It may seem like a surprise to you, but the main status to go for Kokomi is…. HP! Who would have thought?

All of her skills scale directly off it, so that’s what you should be focusing on. Healing Bonus headpieces are not required, but you may use them if you want to.

Her best weapon is, obviously, her signature 5-star weapon, Everlasting Moonglow, which grants HP, extra healing, and more damage for her Autos. But as you may imagine, Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers is the second-best option.

Joining Zhongli and Albedo, she’s another 5-star character that has a 3-star weapon as one of her top choices, making her easier to build. The HP artifacts are usually left alone on the inventory, so it’s time to use them.

For the sets, she has a lot of different options. Going from the classic Maiden Beloved set, Tenacity of Millelith (AKA Zhongli’s set) and Heart of Depth, all with 2 or 4 pieces, are viable for her. 

Heart of Depth focuses on a more damage-oriented build, while Millelith gives her allies bonus damage whenever her jellyfish hits her targets. 4 pieces Maiden may be overkill on a character who naturally heals a lot, but 2 pieces is ok.

READ MORE: Genshin Impact: Leakers AMA, Sukuna’s list confirmed leaks

As a healer, she’s very flexible with almost any team comp, but she is best paired with Pyro or Cryo characters.

She cannot assume the exact same role as Mona in her Ganyu team but can do a nice job of keeping enemies frozen, while also granting some extra damage to the Cocogoat with Millelith and the HP Catalyst.

TLDR; What’s wrong with Kokomi?

There are two main problems with Kokomi: The contradiction of her own kit and the game’s current combat design philosophy.

She’s the healer that demands the most field time in order to do her job. People said that Raiden Shogun requiring field time was a DPS loss, and the same can be said about Kokomi.

The problem is that they were wrong about the Archon, but not about the Priestess.

Both characters’ main focus is their Bursts, which work in a similar way. But the Shogun slashes her enemies with considerable high damage and recharges your Bursts.

What’s wrong with Kokomi is that she doesn’t deal the same damage, and her only extra is healing, which may end up hurting your time on the Abyss.

She cannot crit, and the game’s current endgame content is all about dealing the most damage as fast as possible. She’s totally capable of completing the 12 floors with 9 stars, but you’ll probably have a better time with any other character as the main lead in order to do so.

She suffers not only from a counterintuitive kit but also from the game’s requirements for “meta” characters. The Player’s been asking for a different kind of Abyss for a long time.

Some kind of challenge that requires more than pure DPS, like testing your survival abilities. 

This would be the kind of content where characters like Kokomi, Qiqi, and Barbara would outshine the competition. The current Floor 11 is heading this way, but it’s completely doable without those characters.

And as a result of this disastrous combination, the community’s been bashing Kokomi since Day 1. The main thread on the Kokomi Mains subreddit was about her being worse than they expected during her release.

And as a “tradition” in the gaming community, this hate extended to people who didn’t even have anything to do with this. Kokomi’s Chinese voice actress had to disable her stream’s chat due to the negative comments, as an example.

And that’s not the first time a Genshin voice actor receives this treatment because something is wrong in the game. The same situation followed the airing of the 2.1 Special Program Live when the actors hosting the program received hate simply for following their script.

People are not happy about the anniversary rewards, and with all that’s wrong with Kokomi, they have the right to express their feelings, but not by simply bashing in the first target they see.

But don’t be mistaken, Kokomi has some niche uses. She’s a good Hydro applier, and that’s valuable. And we must also take our time to appreciate all the work that went into her beautiful character design.

All of what’s wrong with Kokomi is in her gameplay direction, not her concept.

READ MORE: Genshin Impact anniversary rewards anger players

We can’t expect that everything will be solved just like what happened with Zhongli, but miHoYo usually seems to take some of the players’ complaints into consideration. Hopefully, this situation will be solved. But maybe not so soon.

Genshin Impact is currently on the 2.1 version, “Floating World Under the Moonlight”, featuring the conclusion of the Archon Quests in Inazuma, a new Weekly Boss, 2 new World Bosses, new characters, and two new areas for exploration.

You can play the game for free on mobile devices including Android, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, and Pc on both miHoYo’s official launcher and Epic Games Store. A Nintendo Switch version is stated to be in development.