[Guide] What is Elemental Mastery in Genshin Impact?

In this guide, we’ll explain what “Elemental Mastery” is in Genshin Impact, how it works, and which characters you should build it on.

Elemental Reactions are one of the core mechanics of Genshin Impact’s combat system, and one way to increase reaction damage is through a stat called “Elemental Mastery.”

It’s important to understand how Elemental Mastery works in the game so you know which characters exactly you should build them on and who should trigger the reaction.

If you want to make sure you’re maximizing your elemental reaction damage in the game, keep reading!

Contents

What is Elemental Mastery in Genshin Impact?

Elemental Mastery (EM) is a stat attribute that increases the damage of Elemental Reactions such as Vaporize, Melt, or Overload.

The higher your Elemental Mastery, the more damage elemental reactions will do once triggered.

Elemental Mastery doesn’t give a flat bonus damage to reactions. Instead, it is just a multiplier that increases the reaction damage by a certain percentage.

You can check how much bonus damage your current Elemental Mastery gives each reaction—just go to your character’s Attribute Details page.

In this screenshot, Sucrose’s EM is 376 which in turn increases the damage of Overloaded, Superconduct, Electro-Charged, Shattered and Swirl by 141%.

Meanwhile, damage dealt by Vaporize and Melt reactions are increased by 58.9%.

Here’s a list of all Elemental Reactions in the game and their effects. Also, check out this in-depth Reddit post for more some maths and graphs on how EM damage is calculated (for all nerds out there!)

Note that Elemental Mastery does not increase damage from single elemental attacks alone.

For this, you might want to look at effects such as “Elemental DMG Bonus” or “Pyro/Anemo/etc. DMG bonus” instead.

Finally, since EM is just a multiplier, you should first focus on having decent ATK stats and a high character level, since these directly affect the base damage of your elemental reactions.

Having extremely high amounts of Elemental Mastery won’t mean anything if your base elemental reaction damage is peanuts!

Whose Elemental Mastery is used?

When triggering an Elemental Reaction, the Elemental Mastery of the character who applied the second element is used to calculate the bonus damage.

Remember, Elemental Reactions are triggered when you apply a combination of two different elemental effects on a target.

For example, let’s say Mona deals Hydro damage to a Slime applying a Wet status, then Diluc does a Pyro attack with his skill that triggers a Vaporize reaction. In this case, Diluc’s Elemental Mastery is taken into account when calculating the damage bonus for the Vaporize reaction. Mona’s Elemental Mastery is irrelevant in this scenario.

In general Genshin Impact terminology, Mona is called the enabler (i.e. she enables the reaction) while Diluc is the trigger. The trigger character’s Elemental Mastery is used to compute the damage bonus.

Therefore, if you’re planning to increase a character’s EM to deal more elemental reaction damage, you should do it on the character who will usually apply the second element.

EM bonuses that are granted to all members in the party are also great—this is what makes Sucrose one of the best support characters in the game.

How to Increase Elemental Mastery

Here are three methods to increase your team’s Elemental Mastery.

1. Artifacts with Elemental Mastery stats

The easiest way to build up on Elemental Mastery is through Artifacts that give Elemental Mastery either as a main stat or as a sub stat.

The Artifact sets Instructor and Wanderer’s Troupe are also great sources of Elemental Mastery.

2. Weapons with Elemental Mastery stats

Aside from Artifacts, Weapons can also give you bonus Elemental Mastery as the main stat.

An example is The Stringless, a 4-star bow which is perfect for a support/enabler Fischl build.

Mappa Mare, a craftable Catalyst weapon, also gives Elemental Mastery as its secondary stat.

3. Characters with passive skills that give Elemental Mastery

As we mentioned, Sucrose is one of the best support characters you should add to your team comp if you want to deal huge amounts of reaction damage and elemental combos.

Sucrose has two passive talents that helps with building your team’s EM:

Catalyst Conversion increases your team’s EM by 50 whenever Sucrose triggers Swirl
With Mollis Favonius, casts Sucrose’s Skill or Burst increases the whole team’s EM by 20% of Sucrose’s EM