Barbara is a 4* Hydro Catalyst Support whose main role is that of a team healer.
She’s also one of the free characters that all players are guaranteed to obtain just by playing through the early chapters of the game’s story. Traditionally, free units in Genshin tend to be underwhelming and Barbara is one such unit.
As far as her healing capabilities go, Barbara is more than capable of keeping any team alive. What’s more, she even has the ability to revive fallen allies, provided you’ve unlocked all of her constellations.
However, Barbara’s kit offers very little outside of healing. In a game where Supports need to accomplish more than this to stay relevant, she lags behind. This is why we put her in C-Tier in our Genshin Impact Tier List—a place reserved for average characters that are good in some situations or only excel at one thing.
You can still use weapons and artifacts to boost her overall utility, allowing her to buff the team’s ATK and/or Elemental DMG in addition to healing, but this requires some clever itemization.
In this Barbara build guide, we’ll show you how to maximize Barbara’s effectiveness as a Support by making her more than just a healer without reducing her healing capabilities.
To this end, we’ll need to evaluate her:
- Talent priority
- Constellations
- Weapon options
- Artifact set bonuses
- Team synergies
With all of this info, you’ll be able to turn Barbara into a capable unit.
Table of ContentsShow
Barbara’s Talent Priority
| Talent | Description | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Normal Attack (Whisper of Water) | Normal Attack Perform up to 4 water splash attacks that deal Hydro DMG. Charged Attack Consumes a certain amount of Stamina to deal AoE Hydro DMG after a short casting time. Plunging Attack Gathering the might of Hydro, Barbara plunges towards the ground from mid-air, damaging all opponents in her path. Deals AoE Hydro DMG upon impact with the ground. | Unless you’re playing Barbara as a main DPS, don’t level this talent. |
| Elemental Skill (Let the Show Begin) | Summons water droplets resembling musical notes that form a Melody Loop, dealing Hydro DMG to surrounding opponents and applying the Wet status to them. Melody Loop • On hit, Barbara’s Normal Attacks heal your own party members and nearby teammates for a certain amount of HP, which scales with Barbara’s Max HP. • On hit, Barbara’s Charged Attack generates 4 times the amount of healing. • Periodically regenerates your own active character’s HP. • Applies the Wet status to the character and to opponents who come in contact with them. | Barbara’s Elemental Skill provides periodic healing for the on-field character. It can also be used to heal the entire party should Barbara use her Normal or Charged Attacks on enemies. Both types of healing scale only off of her HP, so increasing her Normal Attack talent will do nothing to increase the healing she provides while attacking. It’s also important to mention that using this Skill applies Hydro to herself, which can easily backfire when facing Cryo enemies. Nevertheless, this is Barbara’s second-priority talent. |
| Elemental Burst (Shining Miracle) | Heals your own party members and nearby teammates for a large amount of HP that scales with Barbara’s Max HP. | Barbara’s Elemental Burst is as effective as it is simple—a party-wide buff that will refill the HP bars of all your characters. This is Barbara’s most important talent. |
Barbara’s Passive Talents
| Talent Name | Description | Evaluation |
|---|---|---|
| With My Whole Heart | When a Perfect Cooking is achieved on a dish with restorative effects, there is a 12% chance to obtain double the product. | If you want to not use Barbara and still get some healing, you can replace her with this passive talent. Food can’t be used in challenging endgame content, however. This talent is just plain bad. |
| Glorious Season | The Stamina Consumption of characters within Let the Show Begin’s Melody Loop is reduced by 12%. | Reducing Stamina consumption is a great utility buff that increases the main DPS’s effectiveness both in and out of combat. This talent is good. |
| Encore | When your active character gains an Elemental Orb/Particle, the duration of the Melody Loop of Let the Show Begin is extended by 1s. The maximum extension is 5s. | Unless you’re out of combat, you can think of this passive as a guaranteed +5 second duration buff for her Elemental Skill. And you’ll need it, thanks to how long the cooldown on her Skill is. All in all, a mediocre talent. |
Barbara’s kit is frustratingly bad.
The main issue is that she does nothing but heal. Let’s compare this to other 4* healers:
- Bennett heals and hugely buffs the ATK of active party members.
- Diona heals, shields, increases movement speed, generates lots of Energy, and—with enough constellations—increases the Elemental Mastery of all party members.
- Noelle heals, shields, and—with enough constellations—deals enough DMG to compete with many 5* DPS characters.
- Sayu heals, debuffs Elemental Resistances with the 4-piece Viridescent Venerer set bonus, and spins like Sonic the Hedgehog—she’s not much better than Barbara, but she’s still better.
Poor Barbara just can’t keep up with all this utility without relying on the power of her equipment to carry her.
Worst of all, she’ll inevitably end up Freezing you when you use her Elemental Skill. This doesn’t happen often, but it’s infuriating whenever it does happen.
So, for the rest of this guide, we’ll focus on ways in which you can improve Barbara’s effectiveness outside of healing.
First up, let’s see if her constellations help.
Barbara’s Constellations
| Constellation Name | Description | Evaluation |
|---|---|---|
| Gleeful Songs | Barbara regenerates 1 Energy every 10s. | This constellation is useful in the early game when you’re traversing the open world and have plenty of downtime between combat encounters. But given that her Burst costs 80 Energy, C1 is useless in combat—it may as well not exist in lategame. |
| Vitality Burst | Decreases the CD of Let the Show Begin by 15%. During the ability’s duration, your active character gains a 15% Hydro DMG Bonus. | Barbara’s Elemental Skill has a 32-second cooldown—the longest cooldown of any ability in the game. As such, the cooldown reduction is more than welcome. This alone would be enough to make C2 Barbara’s best constellation. The fact that it can increase the Hydro DMG of on-field Hydro DPS characters is just the cherry on top. |
| Star of Tomorrow | Increases the Level of Shining Miracle by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15. | This increases Barbara’s already impressive healing capabilities. Since we won’t be focusing on buffing Barbara’s healing in this guide, the extra healing from C3 can come in handy. |
| Attentiveness be My Power | Every opponent Barbara hits with her Charged Attack regenerates 1 Energy for her. A maximum of 5 Energy can be regenerated in this manner with any one Charged Attack. | There is no cooldown on this constellation, so you could use it to quickly regenerate Barbara’s Energy against clumped-up groups of enemies. Unfortunately, Barbara’s attacks aren’t worth using—so C4 is useless. |
| The Purest Companionship | Increases the Level of Let the Show Begin by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15. | The verdict of this constellation is the same as for C3—it only increases her healing, which is already powerful enough. It can come in handy. |
| Dedicating Everything to You | When Barbara is in the party but not on the field, and one of your own party members falls: • Automatically revives the fallen character. • Fully restores the revived character’s HP to 100%. • This effect can only occur once every 15 mins. | Barbara’s C6 is garbage. The reason we feel this constellation is bad is due to the excessively long cooldown. This cooldown doesn’t get reset if you reattempt your run at the Spiral Abyss. You have to wait it out. In the open world, it’s useless because you can use food to revive party members or teleport to a Statue of the Seven at any time—even in the middle of combat. |
Overall, Barbara has some of the worst constellations in the entire game.
C1 and C4 try to address her Energy issues, but they do so in the most ineffective ways possible.
C3 and C5 increase her healing, which is just overkill in most situations. At the very least, it’s useful for not letting her healing suffer if you want to focus all your itemizations efforts on other supporting utilities.
C6 seems great, but it just doesn’t make sense within the confines of Genshin Impact where death has no penalty and you can always ditch combat anyway—even midway through a fight.
So the only good constellation she has is C2, which slightly reduces her long Elemental Skill cooldown and increases the DMG of on-field Hydro DPS characters like Childe and Ayato.
Best Weapons For Barbara
| Weapon Rarity | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Thrilling Tales of the Dragon Slayer 3* | Despite being a 3* weapon, the passive on the Thrilling Tales of the Dragonslayer is so good that many Catalyst characters who don’t benefit at all from its substat still use it to buff the ATK of the main DPS. Barbara can do this as well, with the added benefit of having the HP substat increase her healing. |
| Prototype Amber 4* | The craftable Prototype Amber is another weapon that increases healing but is featured here for an entirely different reason. Namely, it addresses Barbara’s Energy issues by restoring a large chunk of her Energy whenever she casts her Burst—anywhere between 12 and 18 Energy total, depending on refinement. |
| Hakushin Ring 4* | Hakushin Ring is amazing if you’re running Barbara as the on-field DPS in an Electro-Charged team. Do keep in mind that she’s only the on-field DPS so as to apply Hydro to enemies and not because she’s expected to hit hard with her Normal and Charged Attacks. In such a team, the Hakushin Ring increases the Elemental DMG Bonus of all Hydro and Electro party members by up 10% at r1 and 20% at max refinement. |
Best Artifacts For Barbara – 4-Noblesse Oblige
As mentioned, our focus in this build guide is to make Barbara more than just a healer. So, instead of using a healing-oriented artifact set bonus, we feel that she works best with the 4-piece Noblesse Oblige.
Sure, she is unable to benefit from the 2-piece Noblesse Oblige set bonus since her Burst doesn’t deal any DMG. However, the 4-piece bonus will increase the ATK of all party members by 20% for 12 seconds whenever she casts her Burst, giving her that extra utility.
The main stats that work best on Barbara are:
- Energy Recharge on the Sands
- HP% on the Goblet
- HP% on the Logos
As for substats, try and aim for:
- Energy Recharge
- HP%
- HP
In case you’re running Barbara as an on-field DPS in an Electro-Charged team, you should try to get some Elemental Mastery on her as well. In this situation, feel free to use the 4-piece Ocean-Hued Clam set to greatly increase her DMG output.
Lastly, if you don’t have any 4-piece set bonuses to give Barbara, you can use combinations of the following 2-piece set bonuses:
- Tenacity of the Millelith
- Emblem of Severed Faith
- Maiden Beloved
- Ocean-Hued Clam
Best Team Composition For Barbara
F2P Healer Barbara
Despite being overshadowed by all other 4* healers, Barbara has the benefit of being team agnostic—she’ll perform her role equally in any team. You could even run the following team comprised of only free characters to great effect:
- Barbara
- Xiangling
- Kaeya
- Electro Traveler
Barbara is the team’s healer and ATK buffer. With both Thrilling Tales of the Dragonslayer and the 4-piece Noblesse Oblige, she’ll be able to buff the ATK of all characters by 20% and one additional character by another 48%.
Xiangling is the team’s off-field Pyro DPS. Since her Burst can snapshot and lasts so long, it’s best to give Xiangling the buff from the Thrilling Tales.
Kaeya is the team’s main DPS, dealing Physical DMG with his Normal Attacks and Cryo DMG with his abilities. He can Freeze enemies who come in contact with him when Barbara’s Elemental Skill is active. Finally, together with Xiangling, he can proc Melt Reactions to multiply his DMG output.
Electro Traveler is the team Energy generator. All other characters require a lot of Energy to cast their Bursts, so Electro Traveler is used to feed Energy into the character who needs their Burst the most. The off-field Electro DMG he does is just the cherry on top. Alternatively, you can use Chongyun to make it so that even Kaeya’s Normal Attacks deal Cryo DMG, Thoma for some shielding, or really any other character. Barbara will make sure the team stays alive, no matter how unconventional the party composition is.
F2P Electro-Charged Barbara
- Barbara
- Fischl
- Beidou
- Xingqiu
Barbara is the on-field DPS responsible for keeping Hydro applied to enemies with her Normal Attacks. In this team, it’s best to use the Hakushin Ring and 4-piece Ocean-Hued Clam set bonus to greatly increase the team’s overall DMG output.
Beidou ensures steady access to Electro-Charged Reactions though the Elemental Burst, which offers enormous amounts of AoE off-field Electro DMG. You could use Lisa as a replacement, although this will significantly lower the team’s DMG output.
Fischl is used to generate a bunch of Electro Energy for Beidou with her Elemental Skill. She also does a bunch of off-field Electro DMG in her own right. Electro Traveler works as a replacement.
Xingqiu is here for additional Hydro DMG since he can also benefit from the DMG bonus of the Hakushin Ring passive. However, you can use a variety of characters for this last party slot. Sayu and Sucrose both come to mind for their Elemental Resistance shredding with the 4-piece Viridescent Venerer set bonus.
Whale Barbara Team
- Barbara
- Childe
- Xiangling
- Kazuha
Barbara is the healer and ATK buffer in this team. Since the team features an on-field Hydro DPS, her C2 also gets to shine.
Childeis the team on-field DPS. Truth be told, Xiangling will be the one doing most of the DMG by Vaporizing Hydro. This is because Childe attacks so rapidly that he’s unable to be the one to consistently proc Vaporize himself. You can use Ayato in this team instead and very little would change.
Xiangling is the team’s off-field Pyro DPS, just like in the F2P team.
Kazuha is the team’s source of crowd control, buffing, and debuffing, all at once. Since none of his buffs directly affect ATK, you won’t get any diminishing returns from using him together with Barbara and her ATK buffing equipment.
Is Barbara Worth It?
It should be painfully clear by this point that Barbara is not a good character.
Her kit is just too one-dimensional, with or without constellations.
The only way to make her more effective is by using equipment or creative team compositions, but even then she’s suboptimal.
In a game where you’re always starved for resources to level up characters, leveling up Barbara is just not worth it.
However, if you’re a fan of her character, you can use the tips and tricks shown in this guide to at least make her a bit more effective than she’d otherwise be.
