Kokomi is a powerful character in Genshin Impact and is the Divine Priestess of Watatsumi Island. She is a descendant of the Sangonomiya Clan and oversees the affairs of Watatsumi’s Island, as well as shoulders the responsibilities of her bloodline heritage. Her tactics and strategies have helped Watatsumi Island functions properly, even with a lack of manpower. Kokomi was first released in Version 2.1 Update, after Raiden Shogun, and her banner sales were quite low, even when her character design was very impressive. Aside from her design, Kokomi’s kit had consistent Hydro application and decent heals, but still, she wasn’t considered any good and many recommended to skip. In this post, Reddit User u/insrto gives a very insightful analysis of Kokmi’s situation.
Why was Kokomi so underwhelming during her initial release
When Kokomi was released, the main highlight that players got about her kit was that it had a passive talent of -100% Crit Rate, which means she can’t use Crit stats, which is a huge DPS loss for any character. Moreover, her multipliers for AA (Auto Attack) and Elemental Burst, which scaled of HP%, were quite low and couldn’t justify the negative crit debuff on her. Unlike many healing characters like Bennett, Diona, and Qiqi, who provide heals off-field, Kokomi had to be on the field for a significant amount of time even to fulfill her role as a healer. Her damage was still on the down-low even with her active Elemental Burst.
Genshin Impact is a game that heavily relies on big damage numbers to clear content, so if a new character can’t do damage in a 6-digit figure, the general player base usually dismisses the character very quickly. The fact that Kokomi’s kit relied on extra field time without contributing anything for the team didn’t help much. So from a first outlook, she felt pretty underwhelming for most of the players. Some players even considered her worse than Qiqi, in terms of healing.
Kokomi: From a meta character from a sub-par healer
Kokomi did not get any direct buffs to her abilities, instead, she got indirect buffs that made her strong as she is now in the current meta. The artifact set Ocean-Hued Clam was newly added in 2.2 Update and was tailor-made for Kokomi and other characters capable of providing high healing output like Qiqi.
Before the release of this artifact, set her best in slot artifacts was 4pc Heart of Depth or a hybrid of various possible combinations, which did not provide an exceptional boost to Kokomi’s kit. But the Ocean-Hued Clam set changed that not only was this artifact set capable of giving damage of 25k+ every 3 seconds, since Kokomi scales with HP%, farming the set was also relatively very easy as compared to other 4pc artifact sets as players only needed to look for HP% Main Stat and didn’t have to worry about Crit stats at all.
Ocean-Hued Clam set certainly gave players the incentive to use her, but the problem was placing her in a team. Aside from teams focused on her, Kokomi didn’t have a place in the most meta-driven team compositions, but that changed when the Sukokomon team was established.
The Sukokomon team consists of Kokomi, Xiangling, Sucrose, and Fischl. It works because of zero ICD on both Kokomi’s Jellyfish and Xiangling’s Guoba. Their abilities swirl to form a massive amount of fast elemental reaction, which has a high damage output. The Sukokomon is a high ceiling team and is on par with other meta teams like Ayaka Permafreeze and the Rational team (Raiden National).
Aside from Sukokomon, the release of Shenhe made it very viable to place Kokomi in a permafreeze team, in the slot of Diona. Her Hydro application is impressive and long-lasting, but Kokomi’s healing ability also ensures the team’s survivability in any fight and a certain situation, using her as a tank to take the damage for the team.
Final Thoughts
With more updates, Kokomi has improved to become one of the better characters to use in the game. The case of Kokomi gives some hints that miHoYo won’t shy away from providing much-needed buffs to weaker characters. In the long run, a good example is Qiqi, who got a much-needed buff from the release of the Ocean-Hued Clam set. Similarly, Keqing is also considered quite underwhelming for her Element, and she might also get some buffs in the future.
What are your thoughts on Kokomi improving to become a powerful character in Genshin Impact? Let us know in the comments below.
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