Venti is one of the most valuable, high-utility damage supports in all of Genshin Impact. He provides excellent crowd control and, with a good Venti build, can substantially boost the overall damage output of your team.
Venti is also, perhaps surprisingly to some, one of the most complicated characters to build for in the game. You can go the simple route, and max him out for straight damage, but doing so leaves a lot of party-wide damage potential on the table. Indeed, the best Venti build, or builds, take a concerted macro-view of the team comp as a whole and how Venti fits into the kind of onslaught you’re looking to create.
This is why we recommend a straightforward Swirl and Elemental Mastery-focused Venti build looking to maximize his ability to provide CC, damage buffs, and set up a vicious proc-storm for the rest of the party.
Talents
Basic Attack: Divine Marksmanship
Venti’s basic attack provides low but consistent DPS, doled out in sets of six, progressively stronger shots ranging from around 20 to 70% of Attack. His charged attack is, like other bow-wielders, an aimed shot that deals roughly 125% of his Attack in Anemo damage, while his Plunge Attack is an AoE arrow rain cut right out of any MOBA or RPG.
Elemental Skill: Skyward Sonnet
With a six-second cooldown, Skyward Sonnet is a highly-spammable CC Knockup that, when pressed, summons a Wind Domain at the target’s location and deals Anemo damage. When held, a larger Wind Domain is summoned at Venti’s location and works great as a disengage or as a primer for some cheesed plunge attacks from a claymore wielder.
Elemental Burst: Wind’s Grand Ode
His ult, Wind’s Grand Ode, is really the centerpiece of every Venti build. It summons a massive whirlwind that executes an AoE pull before suspending those caught in it in the air, rendering them fish in a barrel for the rest of your party members to blast into oblivion.
Wind’s Grand Ode is the most spammable Ult in the game, with a low cooldown and an excellent energy-recharge boost built into his passive.
Venti’s ult can also lay the Swirl-groundwork for a true artillery strike by taking on Cryo/Pyro/Hydro/Electro effects, priming it for vicious, non-stop proccing of your elemental reactions of choice. More on that under Gameplay Tips.
Passive Talent 1: Embrace the Winds
Simple and straightforward, Embrace the Winds creates a 20-second Wind Domain whenever Venti casts a held Skyward Sonnet — something that can be used for some serious enemy cheesing in conjunction with a claymore-wielder.
Passive Talent 2: Stormeye
At ascension level four, Venti obtains the Stormeye passive that restores 15 energy to him and every other member of the party whenever he uses his ult. This essentially creates a 25% Cooldown Reduction for the entire team’s ult — a critical component of the full-blown proc-fest that lies at the heart of a great Venti build.
Weapons
Favonius Warbow (Preferred)
The Favonius Warbow is an excellent choice for the support Venti build for its massive amount of flat Energy Recharge, as well as the passive, Windfall, which is mostly just icing on the energy recharge cake.
The ridiculous amount of Energy Recharge provided by the Favonius Warbow alongside the Stormeye Passive Talent will endow you with more than enough free energy to obtain the Ult-spam you’re looking for, allowing you to build for other stats.
The Stringless (Alternative)
The Stringless is a viable alternative to the Favonius Warbow. While it doesn’t offer the ridiculous Energy Recharge to coincide with Venti’s Stormeye passive, it gives a strong boost to Venti’s personal DPS which is always a handy way to start any combo.
Raven Bow (Cheap)
Compared to the Favonius Warbow and the Stringless, the Three-Star Raven Bow isn’t much beyond a cheap imitation — but one that will get the job done well enough for the casual adventurer or F2P without endless hours to sink into the game. It offers some Elemental Mastery is your best, easy-to-obtain option, and will comfortably escort you to the end of the current storyline.
Artifacts
Viridescent Venerer Set (Preferred)
Being an Abyssal Domain exclusive, the Viridescent Venerer set is much harder to get than the Noblesse Oblige. This is appropriate because the Viridescent Venerer set Venti build is much more complicated, and one best reserved for hardcore players willing to dig deep into advanced team comping and are ready to put in the hours (and probably more than a few Gacha pulls) to maximize its value. That said, if you’re ready to put the time in, the Viridescent Venerer set rewards players who can hit all the right notes in team comp and elemental combos.
What really makes the Viridescent Venerer set shine is not just the increased Swirl damage, but the huge elemental resistance debuff to the Swirl’s infused element it inflicts. Seriously, not only does the set buff Venti’s damage, it massively increases the damage of your primary DPS, whether it be Diluc, Fischl, Keqing or anyone else.
This is critical because any party built around Venti gets insanely powerful hard CC, cooldown reduction, and straight-up DPS steroids all in one combo.
Put simply, it’s kind of broken.
Noblesse Oblige Set (Alternative)
The Noblesse Oblige is the next best thing after Venerer’s, and provides you a much more straightforward 20% party-wide Attack attack bonus upon casting his Ult — which is still a great way to prime your opponent’s for a nasty follow-up. Especially by attack-scaling characters like Diluc, though it lacks the straight ridiculousness of the Venerer’s proc-potential.
Instructor Set (Cheap)
The Instructor Set is an easy-to-obtain, 3-star artifact set that works as a great, very F2P viable substitute for the much preferred Noblesse Oblige or the much, much more difficult to obtain but 100% OP Viridescent Venerer set. Its main utility is the heft boost to Elemental Mastery to both Venti and, with the full set, the whole party. This serves as super-simplified, poor man’s Venerers, but will certainly get the job done.
Gameplay Tips
Venti/Diluc Ult Combo
Rather than going the Elemental Reaction proc-fest route, this is more of a hard CC/Nuke combo straight out of the bot lane in League of Legends. One of the (few) problems with Diluc’s otherwise devastating ult, Dawn, is targeting the straight-path of the phoenix as it rides out in fiery oblivion and making sure that everyone gets hit by it. Well, the best way to solve that problem is with a good old Wind’s Grand Ode to suck everyone into place and keep them knocked up, ripe for an artillery strike from everybody’s favorite Pyro Batman.
Venti/Claymore Plunge Cheese
As we mentioned earlier, Skyward Sonnet can be used to create the Genshin Impact equivalent of the Uppercut spam from Mortal Kombat. As long as you’ve unlocked the Embrace the Winds passive talent, holding Venti’s Skyward Sonnet creates a Wind Domain that can be used by claymore wielders (*cough* Diluc *cough*) to repeatedly spam AoE plunge attacks. Great for players interested in a lowbrow playstyle who want to go home early.
Elemental Proccing Madness
The true magic within a good Venti build lies in maximizing his ult’s Swirl to generate a total Proc-fest on the enemies. Wind’s Grand Ode takes on the effect of the next elemental effect it comes into contact with, creating an elemental whirlwind that can be used to create elemental reactions.
Wind’s Grand Ode lasts 8 seconds, allowing players to drop Venti’s Ult, switch characters and fill the Swirl with, say, a Hydro effect, and then switch to another character who can put out continuous elemental effects, like Beidou’s ult. With those two elemental streams cascading right into each other, you’ve created an utter proc-fest that lays waste to just about anything caught within it.
And the best part? With Venti’s Stormeye passive, you get a good chunk of energy back so that seven measly seconds later you can do it all over again.
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