Lyney and Yelan, Which One You Should Choose?

August 17, 2023

Lyney is a main DPS while Yelan is a sub-DPS, but picking between them may not be as easy in their Genshin Impact banners.

Lyney and Yelan are two playable 5-star characters in Genshin Impact. While Hydro and Pyro can trigger the Vaporize reaction together, it’s hard for Yelan and Lyney to join the same team because of their mechanics.

Yelan can greatly Support DPS units with her endless Hydro application as long as they’re using their Normal attacks. As for Lyney, he doesn’t need his NA, and using one before he Charges to apply Yelan’s Hydro can quickly become a hassle. Not to mention, he’ll waste most of Yelan’s Burst duration when Charging his Arrows in Genshin Impact.

When comparing two units in Genshin Impact, it’s important to compare how hard it is to build them and how good they are on the battlefield. For that, Lyney and Yelan will go into these three trials:

Weapons
Artifacts
Roles

Weapons

Both Yelan and Lyney are Bow users in Genshin Impact. While both units are damage dealers, their roles dictate how they deal their damage, which affects the choice of their weapons. Yelan doesn’t have to stay for long on the field, so having a bow that amplifies her off-field damage is essential for her kit. Bows such as Aqua Simulacra, Hunter’s Path, and Polar Star are great for her. Even if players chose to play Yelan as a Support, there are some decent Supportive Bows for her like Favonius and Elegy for the End.

As for Lyney, he needs to be on the field to deal his Pyro damage in Genshin Impact. Not only that, but his artifacts set’s passive and Ascension bonus grant him a decent amount of Crit Rate, which makes it better to stack more Crit DMG on him when choosing his artifacts’ main stats and weapon Sub-stat. For Lyney, Bows like The First Great Magic, Aqua Simulacra, and Thundering Pulse work perfectly on him.

Among the two, Yelan is far less demanding in terms of weapons and is more F2P friendly. Her performance with an F2P bow like Favonius Warbow doesn't hurt her significantly as opposed to comparing Lyney with his best-in-slot versus his F2P weapon.

Artifacts

Artifacts are always an important step to fully build a unit in Genshin Impact. Since both Lyney and Yelan have different combat styles, they definitely need different types of artifacts to enhance their gameplay. Yelan heavily relies on her Elemental Burst to deal damage, which puts the Emblem of Severed Fate as an essential set for her. On the other hand, Lyney mostly counts on his Charged attacks to deal most of his damage, and that opens the way for many sets to work on him. However, one set outshines all other artifacts, which is the Marechaussee Hunter set since it grants Lyney 15% extra Charged attacks damage alongside up to 36% Crit Rate.

In terms of artifacts, Yelan is slightly less demanding than Lyney. She works with either HP or Energy Recharge Timepiece, and players can temporarily use HP Circlet instead of Crit without hurting Yelan's damage too much. Meanwhile, Lyney is hard set on the classic ATK/Pyro DMG Bonus/Crit.

Role

When choosing to pull for Lyney or for Yelan, comparing their roles is the most important aspect of making that decision. For Yelan, she’s an off-field Sub-DPS that is great at enabling Hydro for long periods of time to support many DPS units while dealing an incredible amount of damage. Lyney is more of a classic DPS where he needs to be on the field and carry his team’s damage. However, he’s not a selfish DPS since his source of damage comes from his Prop Arrows that don’t need a cooldown. So, switching him off and on the field can be done smoothly.

The damage the two deals are both considerable, but in terms of ease of use, Yelan wins again, assuming players have a main DPS that relies on Normal Attack to pair Yelan with. This is because, with Lyney, it's necessary to keep aiming his shot, which can be tedious in certain circumstances; for instance, for mobile players. Meanwhile, Yelan is the mindless "switch in, Burst, and switch out" type of unit.

One advantage Lyney has over Yelan is his Pneuma Arkhe, which is important when fighting enemies that hail from Fontaine. He can easily incapacitate foes with Ousia alignment with his Charged Attack.