Wuthering Waves (WW)QiuyuanBuild and Guide

Qiuyuan is a 5-star Aero Sword character who focuses on buffing Echo Skill damage and possesses multiple Echo casts. As you can most likely guess, this enables him to function well in Echo Skill-focused teams as a buffer, and indeed, that is his main use in the meta. Let’s delve into the details of his kit to understand how to make him work:

Key Mechanics

The most important aspect of Qiuyuan’s gameplay resides in his Forte gauge called “Swordster’s Soliloquy”. It is separated into three thirds at a value of 200 points each. At 200 points, he acquires enhanced Basic Attacks called Inkwash. At 400 points, he grants 30% Echo Skill DMG Bonus to the active resonator in the team for 30s, and at 600 points, he gets to cast 3 Forte Heavy Attacks that restore a lot of Concerto Energy, deal good damage, and expend his Forte Gauge, concluding his rotation. 

Since Qiuyuan is a character focused on buffing, he additionally gives teammates up to 30% CRIT DMG from his Ultimate if he is at 65% CRIT Rate or higher. However, this buff and the 30% Echo Skill DMG Bonus from acquiring 400 Forte points both only apply to the active resonator in the party, which means they won’t apply to any Coordinated and off-field characters. In Qiuyuan’s case, this is most relevant for Phrolova’s Hecate. It makes the synergy a bit weaker than it would otherwise, but as we’ll discuss later, the synergy between Phrolova and Qiuyuan is very much present regardless of this.

Lastly, he provides 50% Echo Skill DMG Amplification to the next character that switches in via his Outro for 14s, which expires upon swapping. This is only really relevant for Galbrena in the current meta. His Signature weapon also provides 20% Echo Skill DMG Bonus to the entire team, and he also has 2 Echo sets to provide team buffs in the form of Moonlit Clouds and Law of Harmony. 

Overall, this makes his buffing profile really specialized towards Echo Skill damage, and indeed this will be the main team archetype that he plays in.

Important rotation attacks

Qiuyuan’s rotation is very easy to understand simply by reading his ,kit as his combos are intended to flow naturally into one another. 

His Intro provides him 400 Forte points and also allows him to directly start his Basic chain from Stage 3. Since he gets 400 Forte from his Intro alone, this makes him cast Enhanced Basic Attacks right away, and stage 3 & 4 of his Inkwash Basic Attacks are enough to get him to the full 600 Forte.

After that, his Ultimate follows to give himself the 30% CRIT DMG buff on top of dealing a lot of damage and restoring Concerto Energy. It’s a good idea to cast any Moonlit Clouds active Echoes at this time if they were not used before his rotation, since his Ultimate can instantly interrupt them, and the Echoes will still provide their buffs as normal, not losing any rotation time in the process. Since his Forte is full at this point, he can hold Basic Attack to cast his 3 Forte Heavy Attacks and finally finish the rotation with a Swap Cancel of his Skill for extra damage and, most importantly, Energy generation. And that concludes his rotation, very easy to perform.

At S3 and higher, his rotation changes as he is allowed to perform a unique Skill in place of his Intro to perform this same rotation a second time. This unlocks a DPS playstyle for him, but it also poses an issue when using him as a Hybrid buffer, since he cannot perform a Skill at the end of his rotation as normal to generate Energy, as it consumes Concerto Energy to perform, so it does increase his Energy requirements significantly, as we have to skip out on it. Otherwise, there are no rotation differences worth noting since everything starts via his Intro, because it generates so much Forte for him.

Unused parts of his kit

In Qiuyuan’s rotation, all of his non-Inkwash Basic Attack-related moves as well as his regular Heavy Attack are all unused. With that being said, after an Intro Qiuyuan doesn’t lose much from having to dodge during his Forte generation phase, so the Dodge Counter isn’t bad to exploit when available (provided you aren’t busy casting his Forte Heavy Attacks).

Meta position & Conclusion

Qiuyuan is in a strong meta position currently, but he is not without his flaws. Due to his lack of personal damage and a rotation that’s on the medium-short side, he doesn’t perform well as a general buffer in spite of his generalist ability to buff the active party member’s CRIT DMG, and outside of S3, enabling strong DPS rotations, he does not have potential as a Main DPS either, unlike Iuno or Brant for example. This makes Qiuyuan very niche, to where he’ll have a hard time finding a spot on your teams unless you use Phrolova or Galbrena. They are both very strong meta contenders in terms of DPS right now, and rest assured, Qiuyuan is the best 3rd and 2nd slot teammates for these two, respectively. This is because Qiuyuan’s numerous Echo casts and team-wide Echo damage buffing increase Hecate’s damage potential by a ton in Phrolova teams (not to mention Qiuyuan benefits from 25% DMG Amplification via Phrolova’s Outro), and in teams featuring Galbrena she fully utilizes Qiuyuan’s array of buffs, including his Outro, boosting her damage by a lot. However, this does not come without its downsides. Qiuyuan is currently the strongest choice for these two, but he is only a choice in these two teams. The issue with that? He is easily replaced by Lupa in a Galbrena team (whether its with Brant, Mortefi or even Shorekeeper), and he is easily replaced in a Phrolova team by Roccia, Shorekeeper or even Danjin.

With that being said, he does have his selling points. Qiuyuan has no need for his Signature weapon which makes him less costly than most of his recent Hybrid peers, he is very easy to pilot and he is the strongest teammate for 2 of the strongest teams in the game right now, Phrolova being the single strongest in Whimpering Wastes by a long shot. That alone is more than enough to justify his position in the meta as a Hybrid buffer.

In conclusion, Qiuyuan is currently in a very strong meta position. Able to work with 2 of the best teams in the game as one of the best team members available, and having no need for a Signature weapon while remaining easy to play, he has a lot going for him. However, he is only limited to these 2 teams because of the nature of his kit focusing on the archetype of Echo Skill damage. Qiuyuan has a niche in which he specializes in and is very strong, and in spite of his low number of use cases, for players looking to improve their Phrolova and/or Galbrena teams, he’s definitely worth considering.