As for her other teams, Keqing is just a decent unit. She still has her fair share of pros & cons, and these become more apparent when you’re not using the units previously mentioned. The release of Dendro basically gave Keqing a really good buff – but this also means that she relies on Dendro to be good. Pre-Dendro Keqing is significantly worse than her place in the meta now. Note: This is based on meta only. If you like Keqing regardless of her power level, don’t let this stop you from playing her.
Pros & Cons
Keqing Strengths
Aggravate Keqing is a new powerful team introduced with the release of Dendro. It’s basically Keqing’s best team by far – enough so that it counts as one of the meta teams in-game. Plus it serves as a massive buff to Keqing overall. This team typically consists of 1 off-field Dendro applicator, 1 Anemo unit (or Zhongli), and an extra slot for utility – usually Fischl. Aggravate Keqing is an overall strong team both in AOE and single-target. It’s also the reason why Keqing is now good. Keqing generates a lot of Electro energy particles from her skill. Plus her skill has a relatively short cooldown – so she can generate a lot of particles every rotation. This makes her an excellent Electro battery both for herself and her Electro teammates. It’s just a really nice piece of utility that decreases their energy requirements. Keqing has at least three main playstyles – on-field Electro DPS, burst DPS, and Physical DPS.
An on-field Electro DPS playstyle keeps her on-field to deal Electro damage through all her abilities. A burst DPS playstyle only uses her burst – and occasionally her skill – to deal bursts of Electro damage. A Physical DPS playstyle also keeps her on-field, but she deals Physical damage through her normal and charged attacks instead of Electro.
These are basically different builds and ways you can play her, and each one has a wide variety of team comps available. Some niche but potentially fun Keqing playstyles also include Pyro Keqing (with C6 Bennett), Cryo Keqing (with Chongyun), and Hydro Keqing (with Candace). These are playstyles where you infuse Keqing’s attacks with an element and turn her into an on-field DPS of that element.
Keqing Weaknesses
In teams where Keqing spends a lot of field time, she can encounter some stamina issues. This is simply because her charged attacks cost more stamina than most sword users. Her charged attacks also greatly stagger opponents. It can easily push lighter enemies away from Keqing and doing so would mean chasing after the opponent – thus consuming more stamina. However, this often isn’t a problem in a burst DPS playstyle since she’ll rarely use her charged attacks. Alternatively, you can also use crowd control units like Kazuha or Venti to group enemies together and closer to Keqing. Much of Keqing’s strength relies on Aggravate reactions and the 4pc. Thundering Fury (4TF) set. These are the staple elements of the Keqing Aggravate team, and they’re what makes her really good in that team. Aggravate significantly buffs Keqing’s Electro damage, and it also deals a good chunk of damage itself. It basically solves Keqing’s previously underwhelming damage multipliers. Whereas 4TF serves as both a damage and quality-of-life buff. Its cooldown reduction effect lets Keqing cast her skill more often – thus reducing the need to perform charge attacks to fill up field time. Plus her skill is a very convenient way of repositioning her toward opponents and generating more energy. Without these two, Keqing is just a mediocre unit – aka the same as her previous power level before 3.0 and the release of Dendro.
Are Keqing’s Constellations Good?
Keqing’s constellations are mainly damage increases and small quality-of-life buffs. C4 is her most significant constellation. It gives her a 25% ATK buff after triggering an Electro-related reaction, which just translates to more damage. It basically has the biggest damage increase among all her constellations. The rest are also good, but the damage gain is pretty underwhelming – and definitely not worth actively pulling for. Keqing is already a complete unit at C0, so constellations are never needed. But you’ll naturally get them while pulling in the limited and standard banners.
C1: Thundering Might
Recasting Keqing’s skill while a Lightning Stiletto is present causes her to deal 50% ATK as Electro damage at the start and end of her Blink. This is a pretty small damage increase. It’s easy to proc but often unreliable since the start and end of her blink should happen close to an opponent to benefit from both hits. And in most cases, the starting point is located far from the opponent.
C2: Keen Extraction
When her normal and charged attacks hit opponents affected by Electro, they have a 50% chance of producing an elemental particle. This can only occur once every 5s. This is mainly a quality-of-life constellation that can reduce the team’s energy requirements – but proccing it is inconsistent because of a bug. It’s basically harder to trigger this effect after triggering it once, so it’s impossible to gauge how much energy this gives in practice.
C3: Foreseen Reformation
Increases her elemental burst talent level by 3. This is a direct damage boost to her burst – which is definitely nice to have.
C4: Attunement
After triggering an Electro-related reaction, Keqing gains a 25% ATK increase for 10s. This is her best constellation thanks to its significant damage increase. It also incentivizes you to use her in teams that can maintain high uptime in its effect – namely, Aggravate and Electro-Charged teams.
C5: Beckoning Stars
Increases her elemental skill talent level by 3. This is similar to her C3. It’s a direct damage increase.
C6: Tenacious Star
When casting a normal attack, charged attack, skill, or burst, Keqing gains a 6% Electro damage bonus for 8s. Effects triggered by different abilities are considered independent entities. This is an overall good, unconditional damage gain. It’s also one of her best constellations, especially in Aggravate teams where damage bonus is more valuable than ATK.
