In this Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build Guide we’re going to be covering a support build, for Sanhua. This build focuses on buffing the normal attack of main damage dealers, and dealing damage on her own.

Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build Guide

Sanhua is a free, four star character, all players get at launch from logging to Wuthering Waves for five days. She’s a Glacio (Ice) character, that uses Sword as a weapon. Sharing a weapon is possible with other Sword-wielding supports, such as Yangyang. You can build one Sword with Energy Recharge, and swap between them; Since you will not be using both Yangyang and Sanhua in same team.

Top Reasons to Use Sanhua

Sanhua support capabilities starts with her Outro skill, that buff the normal attack of next character. But extends a bit by using Energy set, and Impermanenance Heron Echo skill. Sanhua however, can deal good damage in her short time on-field, and may build as sub-dps.

The damage she deal is relatively higher than most other support characters, and go even higher with unlocking Sequences. S3, and S4 sees the highest jump in Sanhua damage. While S6 allow her to give team wide ATK buff that stacks two times.

Her short time on field allow dps characters to take more field time, increasing team overall damage. But in some scenarios, Sanhua can take the field and fill in as a dps role. This is a nice fail safe when something occur to your main dps, such as losing so much HP and being unable to swap in during enemy rampage of attacks. Sanhua can bridge this gap, without dropping team dps. She’s overall, the best support character in second slot for any team that uses normal attack main carry.

Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build – Active Skills

Frigid Light – Basic Attack

Basic Attack skill level of Sanhua scales the Heavy Attack portion of her kit. However, the damage numbers she deals with Heavy Attack is not solely Heavy Attack damage. It also include the detonate burst effect from her Forte, which is the majority of her damage.

Sanhua Normal Attacks is nothing we focus on, but note that her normal attack 5 have higher damage multiplier. Also at S1, it gives Sanhua Crit Rate buff for ten seconds. So if you ever get stuck with Sanhua on field, make sure she reach Normal attack 5.

It’s her special Heavy Attack that’s more important. A pointer in her Forte bar moves back and forth when you hold Heavy Attack button. If released while pointer on “Frostbite Area” of the bar, she unleash her Forte procs. Player need to use this heavy attack twice or thrice while charging Concerto Energy, to use Sanhua Outro.

At S2, Stamina cost of Heavy Attack Detonate is reduced by 10. When Sanhua casts Resonance Skill Eternal Frost, her Anti-interruption is enhanced for 10s.

Eternal Frost – Resonance Skill

Sanhua skill deals decent damage, and creates an “Ice Prism” , a construct left the ground. This is one of three constructs Sanhua can create and detonate. She detonate the prism with Heavy Attacks, if she hit Frostbite area on the Forte bar. The detonation deals more damage, that scales with Forte skill, not Resonance Skill.

Resonance Skill of Sanhua has relatively short cooldown of ten seconds. This enable Sanhua flexibility on when she uses her skill in rotation. In all scenarios, Sanhua will find her skill ready to use in next rotation, so it’s flexible.

Glacial Gaze – Resonance Liberation

Sanhua has one of the cheapest Resonance Liberation to cast in Wuthering Waves, it cost only 100 Resonance. This mean with some energy Recharge, Sanhua can cast Resonance Liberation on every rotation, without staying on field for long. This smooth entire team rotation, and is very helpful against bosses that move around very much.

The Resonance Liberation is similar to her Resonance Skill, an AOE Ice skill, that leaves a construct. The damage modifier of Resonance Liberation is higher than skill. And the construct it leaves “Glacier” deals more damage when detonated.

It has 16 seconds cooldown, so in certain quick-swap teams, you can get very high dps (Damage per Second) by shortening the entire rotation duration. You keep swapping back and Forth with Intro and Outro between characters, and keep dealing peak damage.

At S4, Casting Resonance Liberation buffs the damage of next detonate with heavy Attack.

Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build – Passive Skills

Clarity of Mind – Forte Circuit

Sanhua Forte mechanic modifies the Forte bar, adding “Frostbite” area. The area size increase with the stacks of “Clarity”, up to two stacks. These stacks help us perform heavy attacks with more speed and precision. The bar without stacks have only ~ 10% of its size as Frostbite area. With one stack it reached ~25%, and with two stacks ~50%.

The stacks are tied with the constructs Sanhua left on the ground. So a bigger Frostbite area (more Clarity stacks) is an indication there are enough constructs to detonate. It’s also easier to detonate with a bigger area. We gain 1 Clarity stack on the following: Normal attack 5, Intro, and Resonance skill. And we gain two stacks with Resonance Liberation.

So a good combo for detonating the most constructs in easiest way is:

• Intro -> Resonance Skill -> Heavy Attack (Detonate with two stacks) -> Resonance Liberation -> Heavy Attack (Detonate with two stacks)

Note that detonating any stacks with a heavy attack deals a burst damage on top of the detonation damage. So splitting the detonation into two times is indeed a dps gain. You may also reverse the order if you have full Resonance Energy, and doesn’t have high Energy Recharge for next rotation.

• Intro -> Resonance Liberation -> Heavy Attack (Detonate with two stacks) -> Resonance Skill -> Heavy Attack (Detonate with one stack)

In terms of damage, it deals the exact same damage. However, it spend Resonance Energy first, to allow skill and heavy attacks to generate energy for next rotation. At the cost of having a smaller Frostbite bar in second heavy attack, which need player to be more precise in timing.

At S5, all of the constructs detonate even if not hit by heavy attacks. And the burst gain a massive 100% crit damage bonus.

Inherent Skill 1 – Condensation

A simple and useful passive, that gives Sanhua a Resonance Skill damage bonus for 8 seconds after using Intro. It emphasize on her role as a burst sub-dps. Enter the field, deal quick buffed damage, and switch out.

Inherent Skill 2 – Avalanche

Contrary to previous passive, this one buffs the sustained damage of Sanhua, in case you use her that way. The Burst damage that Sanhua deals alongside with detonations is increased, after casting Normal Attack 5.

If Sanhua plan to not switch out, and stay on field for long time for any reason, reaching Normal 5 will add a lot of buffs to herself. This passive is one of them, along with S1 Crit Rate bonus, and Normal 5 own high damage modifier.

Doing five whole normal attacks uninterrupted though is a bit of a hassle. As aggressive enemies forces you to dodge and parry and move out of the way. So keep this in mind, and play smart.

Sanhua – Concerto Skills

Intro and Outro skills needs fully charged Concerto energy to cast. They are important to trigger certain Echo Sets bonuses and weapons, And in case of our Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build, she give potent damage normal attack damage multiplier to next character with her Outro skill.

Freezing Thorns – Intro Skill

Unlike a lot of support character, Sanhua’s Intro is very important. It deals some damage, but create a construct no other skill creates. That is “Ice Thorn”, which deal extra damage when Sanhua detonate with heavy attack. It also give a Clarity stack, to ease up using Heavy attack on Frostbite area.

Intro is also tied with her Inherent 1 passive, to buff Resonance Skill damage. So it’s important part of her kit to use, but not as important to level up. The utility it provide is 100% there even at level 1 Intro skill.

Silversnow – Outro Skill

The main buffing ability of Sanhua, that makes her one of best support characters in Wuthering Waves. Switching out with an Outro, buffs the next character with 38% Normal Attack Deepen Multiplier.

This is not an damage bonus that stacks additively with % damage modifiers. This is a sperate ‘multiplicative’ multiplier that modify the final damage of the character. So if your Havoc Rover deal 2000 final damage with normal attack, after adding Sanhua this become 2760 damage. And a full string normal combo of 10000 damage become 13800 damage.

It’s very high damage bonus, with characters that deal mostly normal attack damage. And a decent damage bonus with characters that have their damage split between normal attack and other archetypes.

Always, and I mean every single time, switch from Sanhua into main dps with an Outro skill. This is not hard, since Sanhua generate full Concerto energy rapidly. If you fall short, just do another heavy attack, especially if you can time them correctly even without Clarity stacks. You will fill Concerto energy in no time.

Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build – Weapons

For this Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build, gear is a crucial part, and Weapon is a major part of gearing. Sanhua dps scales with standard Crit, Attack, and Glacio damage stats. However, building enough Energy Recharge comes as first priority, as well as getting Concerto energy fast enough.

If she gets enough energy from Echoes, Sanhua is free to use proper dps weapon. However, I prefer using Energy weapon from early to endgame, since weapons are easier to max than echoes. Sanhua uses Sword, which has some Energy options easily accessible.

Sword of Voyager – Three star

The get go support sword, with Energy Regen sub stat, and more flat energy refund when using Resonance Skill. It’s straight forward weapon to shorten rotation and ensure Sanhua always has a Resonance Liberation ready in each rotation. The effect allow Sanhua to skip taking Energy Recharge main stat of Echoes, ad use proper Glacio dmg bonus. So it’s in-direct damage increase.

As a three star weapon, you may get easily to S5, and have the passive effect grow from refunding 8 energy to refunding 12 energy per rotation! Doesn’t fit with rotations shorter than 20 seconds though. So beware when building quick-swap teams.

Scale: Slasher – Four Star

This is the most suitable weapon for this Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build. It has high Energy recharge, and regain Concerto Energy upon using Resonance Skill. This shorten Sanhua rotation and on-field time, and help more uptime for dps characters. Also enable some special rotations that involve switching to Sanhua more than one time.

I use this as the ultimate weapon for Sanhua, short of Five star options.

Emerald of Genesis – Five Star

Unlike most support characters, Sanhua does proper good damage in her short time on-field. So upgrading her with a five star weapon is fitting, especially with the fact that she’s a sword user. The standard banner Sword weapon has Crit, Energy, and % ATK stat. As well as high base attack. This make it a good support and dps weapon at same time.

It can be picked from Weapon Selector at Union level 45, or get from standard weapon banner as a guarantee within 80 standard wishes. So it’s really accessible for free.

If you use this sword on a main dps such as Havoc Rover, you can’t swap the weapon between Rover and Sanhua if they are used on the same team (In Tower of Adversity). However, if you separate Rover and Sanhua, you can swap the weapon between them, and have peak performance on both characters.

Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build – Stats & Echoes

Similar to Relics from Honkai Star Rail, and Artifacts from Genshin Impact, Echoes in Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build works as gear. We have five slots to equip echoes, but the difference is, we are not strict to use certain echoes in certain slots.

In total, character have 12 points to distribute among Echoes. Meanwhile, Echoes has three grades, Common (1 cost), Elite (3 cost), Boss/Overlord (4 cost). So the ideal distribution in endgame is (4,3,3,1,1). However, in certain situations, some other setup is possible. Such as getting more Crit stats from (4,4,1,1,1) setup.

This is possible with Energy Set, as it has two boss Echoes in the set. It however deny Sanhua access to Energy Recharge main stats. So you have to be smart about building enough ER from sub stats. Experiment at your own discretion

Sanhua Top Stats

In this Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build we aim to get these dps main stats:

• Cost 1: ATK %
• Cost 3: Glacio DMG / Energy Recharge
• Cost 4: Crit Rate / Crit Damage

Sanhua doesn’t needs a massive Energy Recharge to refund her 100 cost Resonance Liberation. So for fully optimized Echoes setup, we better fill our Energy Recharge requirements from sub stats instead of main stats.

Crit Rate and Crit Damage better follow a 1:2 ratio. Sanhua has a Crit rate bonus (From S1) that’s not accessible in short burst rotation. And at S5, she gets massive Crit DMG bonus on her Forte. So it’s always more suitable to get Crit Rate main stat than Crit DMG. This way, we close the gap and get the ratio close to 1:2

For sub stats, Sanhua need Energy Recharge, Crit, ATK, Heavy Attack DMG, and Resonance Liberation DMG. Resonance Skill DMG is not bad as well.

Sanhua Echo Skill

On top of providing main and sub stats, each Echo provide a skill that can be used in battle. Only one skill can be acquired this way, and it comes from the top Echo on the Echoes page. Sanhua highly prefer Energy Recharge set, so we are restricted to an Echo skill from that set.

The best is Impermanenance Heron, which deal damage, and provide Damage bonus for next character after swap. We use the press version of this skill, and swap cancel the animation towards the end of the skill. So the skill still hits, but we are not locked into animation. Allowing team to perform faster rotation.

Sanhua Echo set

Echoes split into certain sets, and some echoes capable of rolling into one of two sets. So it adds another layer of complexity to our Wuthering Waves Sanhua Build.

The best set for most buffer supports is Energy Set, and Sanhua is no exception. It allow shorter rotation, as well as ATK buff to next character upon using Outro. It also has buffer Echo skill, and enable using two Echoes with 4 cost (the set has two bosses).

Sanhua Team Composition

Teams in Wuthering Waves consist of three characters, and to build Sanhua right, we have to pair two suitable companions. Sanhua buffs normal attack, so we must build around this aspect of her kit.

She can take either two dps characters, or one dps and one healer. But the latter is more common and easier to play.

A DPS with focus on Normal Attacks (Encore/Havoc MC/Lingyang)

Some characters who get modifiers from Forte skill such as Havoc MC has their damage still count as Normal Attacks. So modifiers and buffs to Normal Attacks help them a lot. Encore is a character that get all her modifiers from Resonance Liberation, but also her attacks considered normal. Unlike Calcharo whos Enchanted Normal Attacks are considered Resonance Liberation. So Sanhua synergy with him is somewhat limited.

The buff from Sanhua lasts for 14 seconds, which is enough for damage dealer to do most of their rotation. Even with Havoc Rover who may stay on-field longer, most of their damage is front-loaded near the start, while the buff still up.

Make sure to Switch from Sanhua to your dps character with an Outro skill.

A suitable Healer (Baizhi/Verina)

There are only two straight up healers in Wuthering Waves suitable for Sanhua team, Baizhi and Verina. With the other defensive characters not having great synergy. Taoqi for example buffs Resonance Skill damage, while Jianxin buffing Resonance Liberation damage.

Among these, Verina is the ultimate best healer and buffer who fit third slot on any team. I’ve went through all details of why Verina is the best choice in her own guide, so check it out. But long story short, Verina give several team-wide buffs. They are generic, benefit all characters, and last long.

If your Verina is busy in another team, use Baizhi instead, she’s next best pick, with some caveats.

Final Tips

As a four star character, it’s much easier to get Sequences (dupes) for Sanhua over time. All players also start with a Sanhua from day five, so they can get and build from early on.

Most Sequences of Sanhua improve her damage, but some also give additional buffs to the team. So the performance of Sanhua will keep improving as accounts grow older, and more Sequences acquired.

An ideal rotation for Sanhua need speed and precision, and knowing how to animation cancel skills into skills. However, playing sub-optimally because you are on phone or just lazy, Sanhua still perform well. As long as you switch her out with an Outro, she does most of what she need to do for your team. So you can ease up if you want.

As a heavy Attack spammer, Sanhua can auto parry some bosses attacks without even trying. This help shredding the shields of enemies, making them enter vulnerability phase. So when you switch to your main dps who use normal attacks, it’s easier for them to focus on dealing damage, not dodging and parying.

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Stay tuned for more Wuthering Waves Character Guides. and check out our Calcharo, Yangyang, Havoc Rover, and Verina build guides. And Check our YouTube channel for news & guides on other games.