Table of Contents
Rarity: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Element: Electro
Weapon: Gauntlets
Early Overview
Xiangli Yao, or just Yao, is a 5★ gauntlet user of the Electro element and the second Electro main DPS in the game, about to be released as we enter the second half of version 1.2. Like Changli a patch earlier, Kuro Games allowed everyone to get a sneak peek into his kit during the Moon-Chasing Festival storyline.
His gimmick, despite having far too many words used in his ability descriptions, is rather simple and involves cycling through different states of his Resonance Skill by using Deduction points (Forte Circuit) and Performance Capacity stacks (Resonance Liberation). Something to note is that despite his damage coming primarily from pressing his skill button whenever it flares up, most of his output is counted as Resonance Liberation damage, with a few Basic Attacks sprinkled on top for seasoning.
Yao turned out to be an unexpected highlight of the patch. A surprising number of players brushed him off on grounds of being a free unit, choosing to focus their attention on Zhezhi instead. When compared side by side however, it’s glaringly obvious where most of the version 1.2’s budget went. Not only is he a lot more polished and flashier, but he also takes the lead role within the Moon-Chasing Festival storyline and feeds us more lore on Tacet Fields. All of that, on top of his solid gameplay performance, should more than suffice as a reminder than for all their flaws, Kuro Games does not hold back on their free event units.
As a bit of extra meta trivia, Xiangli Yao has officially taken second place overall on Kuro Games’ powercreep speedrun leaderboard, having invalidated Calcharo to a humiliating extent in raw numbers, gameplay difficulty and somehow even story presence merely two patches into the game’s life cycle. To date, his only competition in the race for gold is PGR’s Lee: Entropy, who was powercrept by Alpha: Crimson Abyss merely one patch into said game’s existence.
Skills
Kuro Games’ word salad is surprisingly bland this time around, as it lacks the usual prose attempting to obscure character mechanics and make them seem more complicated than they actually are.
Basic Attacks
Xiangli Yao can perform five attacks in quick succession that deal Electro damage, and his heavy attack consumes stamina to deliver a charged Electro damage attack. No nonsense, no gimmicks, it just works.
Aside from that, Yao has access to the plunge attack and Dodge Counter moves like any other character.
Resonance Skill
Yao strikes the target with his mechanical arm, dealing Electro damage.
Kuro must’ve lost the rest of the skill description because it really is just that. And while the skill gets replaced by other moves, this is governed by Yao’s Forte Circuit and Resonance Liberation instead.
Forte Circuit
Capacity
Xiangli Yao can hold up to 100 points of Capacity, represented by his Forte bar, which he regenerates by using his Basic Attacks and Resonance Skill on enemies. Kuro once again doesn’t list the related numbers because apparently they think we don’t need them.
After fully charging his Forte bar, Yao’s Resonance Skill gets replaced by Decipher. Using it consumes all Capacity to deal Electro damage, counted as Resonance Liberation DMG.
Immediately after using Decipher, Yao can use his Basic Attack to immediately follow up on the skill with a plunge attack, regardless of whether he is in the air or on the ground. This also counts as Resonance Liberation DMG for some reason. This attack grants him 3 stacks of Performance Capacity.
Performance Capacity
Yao can hold 5 stacks of Performance Capacity, which he can gain by hitting enemies with any of his abilities during his Resonance Liberation. This time around, the amount of stacks gained is actually listed in-game.
When five stacks are present, Xiangli Yao’s Resonance Skill is replaced by Law of Reigns. Casting it consumes all Performance Capacity stacks and one Hypercube (mentioned later) to deal Electro damage, once again counted as Resonance Liberation DMG.
Like with Decipher, using a Basic Attack immediately after Law of Reigns consumes all 100 Capacity points to deliver a plunge attack counting as Resonance Liberation DMG and grants him 3 stacks of Performance Capacity.
Resonance Liberation
Xiangli Yao strikes an enemy dealing Electro damage and enters Intuition, which tells his Forte Circuit “hey, my Liberation is active” and does several other things, the first and foremost being that it grants him three Hypercubes to use in conjunction with Law of Reigns.
His Basic and Heavy Attacks are also replaced by Pivot - Impale. Name aside, the only major differences from his normal attacks are that the attack chain is shortened to just three strikes and that they completely disregard his Basic Attack skill node. They also grant 1 or 2 Performance Capacity stacks, as per his Forte Circuit description.
Additionally, his Dodge Counter is replaced by Unfathomed, which now deals Resonance Liberation DMG and grants 2 Performance Capacity stacks. Other than that, no gimmicks here.
Finally, his Resonance Skill is replaced by Divergence, which deals Electro Resonance Skill DMG for a change and grants him 2 Performance Capacity stacks.
Once Yao uses up all Hypercubes by casting Law of Reigns three times or 24 seconds pass, his Resonance Liberation ends.
Intro and Outro
Yao’s Intro skill has him deal two strikes to a target, dealing Electro damage. No gimmicks present.
On his Outro, whenever the next Resonator swapped in attacks with a basic attack, Xiangli Yao will call a laser beam on the first target struck, dealing Electro damage in an area of effect. This can happen up to three times, once every 2 seconds.
Inherent Skills
Yao’s first skill, Knowing, increases his Electro DMG Bonus by 5% for 8 seconds every time he casts any of his Resonance Skills. This bonus can stack up to 20% total.
His second skill, Focus, rather straightforwardly grants Yao interruption (or stagger) resistance while his Resonance Liberation is active.
Resonance Chain
| Sequence 1 | Resonance Skill Law of Reigns additionally launches 6 Convolution Matrices at enemies, each dealing 8% of Law of Reigns’ damage multiplier. This damage counts as Resonance Liberation DMG. |
| Sequence 2 | Casting Resonance Skill or Resonance Liberation additively increases Xiangli Yao’s Crit DMG by 30% for 8 seconds. |
| Sequence 3 | Casting Resonance Liberation grants an additive 63% Resonance Skill DMG Bonus to Decipher, Deduction, Divergence and Law of Reigns. This effect can be triggered up to five times per Resonance Liberation activation. |
| Sequence 4 | Casting Resonance Liberation grants an additive 25% Resonance Liberation DMG Bonus to all team members for 30 seconds. |
| Sequence 5 | The damage multiplier of Outro Skill is increased by 222%. The damage multiplier of Resonance Liberation is increased by 100%. |
| Sequence 6 | The Hypercubes obtained from Resonance Liberation multiplicatively increase Law of Reigns’s damage multiplier by 76%. |
Possible synergies
 | Verina | |
| Xiangli Yao is a main DPS and likes to deal damage - preferably as much of it as possible. Verina provides an ATK buff and All DMG Amplify to the whole team, letting everyone deal more damage. | ||
| Buffs | ||
| • 15% Team-wide All DMG Amplify • 20% Team-wide ATK buff • Rejuvenating Glow and Bell-Borne Geochelone | ||
 | Baizhi | |
| Being essentially Verina on half the budget, Baizhi provides the same buffs as the resident botanist albeit at lesser strength, with less duration, and to one character only. | ||
| Buffs | ||
| • 15% All DMG Amplify • 15% ATK buff • Rejuvenating Glow and Bell-Born Geochelone | ||
 | Jianxin | |
| With Yao’s damage counting primarily as Resonance Liberation DMG, Jianxin is able to utilise her Outro to greatly buff his damage output, on top of her wide-range pull and strong shields. | ||
| Buffs | ||
| • Gather • Shields • 38% Resonance Liberation DMG Amplify • Moonlit Clouds and Impermanence Heron OR Rejuvenating Glow with Originite: Type IV | ||
 | Yinlin | |
| Yinlin granting both Electro DMG and Resonance Liberation DMG Amplify effects on a very quick cycle allows her to take buffing Yao’s damage a step further and affect his whole damage output with almost no downtime. | ||
| Buffs | ||
| • 20% Electro DMG Amplify • 25% Resonance Liberation DMG Amplify | ||
| Sanhua | ||
| Although not ideal, Sanhua can be used to greatly buff Yao’s Resonance Liberation gimmick as it involves a fair bit of basic attacking. | ||
| Buffs | ||
| • 38% Basic ATK DMG Amplify • 10%~30% Teamwide ATK Buff (Resonance 6) • Moonlit Clouds and Impermanence Heron | ||
Accompanying 4★ Rate-ups
The accompanying 4★ units in Yao's banner are Danjin, Aalto and Yuanwu. It’s not the strongest selection of characters, but they’re trying their best.
Danjin is definitely the highlight of the three, as she is one of the only two Havoc characters currently in the game and can serve both as a strong budget main DPS or as a sub-DPS in conjunction with Rover (Havoc) (Female).
Yuanwu finds himself a niche of supporting Jinhsi with his Coordinated Attacks - provided you haven’t already rolled either Zhezhi or Yinlin who can accomplish the same goal. Outside of it though, our resident boxer is less-than-stellar, sporting a sub-par damage output and very little utility.
Aalto, however, eludes even the dignity of a passing glance in the current state of the game. Quite fitting, given him being known in the Black Shores for his “elusive nature”. While not the worst sub-DPS on paper, not only is his individual damage output rather depressing in practice, but he also finds himself having pretty much nobody to support with his Outro, with Jiyan preferring Mortefi instead and Jianxin preferring to avoid the role of main DPS. And if hearsay of future versions is to be believed, this is unlikely to change any time soon.
As for the accompanying 4★ weapons, we have Marcato, Helios Cleaver and Novaburst. A somewhat disappointing selection, in major part thanks to the currently available gauntlet users and pistoleers.
Helios Cleaver easily pulls ahead of the other two weapons thanks to its overall usefulness and the relative abundance of sword users. While its gimmick might not work equally well on every swordsman it is nevertheless universal enough to be a very solid option.
The same, however, cannot be said about either Marcato or Novaburst. Marcato is a solution in search of a problem, being a support gauntlet granting Concerto Energy and an overabundance of Energy Regen in a meta where all of the current gauntlet users prefer either an offensive option or Originite: Type IV instead. Novaburst, while technically the best pistol in the spreadsheet environment, suffers from a short buff duration and the need to constantly refresh it through dodges. At the end of the day, it doesn’t accomplish anything that Undying Flame doesn’t already do much more comfortably at a minimal damage loss.
Should you pull?
Unless you’re a heavy spender or you’ve missed his event, most likely no.
Xiangli Yao, while powercreeping Calcharo to a laughable degree, is going to be given out for free as part of version 1.2’s Moon-Chasing Festival event and as such, loses pretty much all major arguments one could make for both rolling and skipping his banner. Furthermore, his kit was designed to be fully functional out of the box like any premium character’s, having no part of his skill set locked behind extra copies.
To make matters even worse for the Jinzhou Campus’ Principal Investigator, the news of version 1.3 beta tests came just in time to confirm that the highlight of the next story chapter, The Shorekeeper, not only is a healer/buffer support unit, the very archetype we’re short of, she will also be available in the first half of the patch. This spells doom to any unprepared wallet, especially for those who just lost the 50/50.
An argument can be made about his weapon however, since at the time of writing it is the only Crit Rate% gauntlet in the game not named Stonard, which on top of its high base stats also offers All-Element DMG Bonus and a good amount of Resonance Liberation DMG Bonus. The caveat? The condition for the latter is rather specifically tied to Yao’s kit, as it is worded as “when using”, not “when casting”, meaning it won’t work on Resonance Liberations without duration. Bummer. That said, it’s still a very solid stat stick even when not given to Yao.
Regardless of your decision, always remember to spend responsibly and to never use “building pity” as an excuse for gambling.
