Might as well start these overviews off with a character everyone has, the Traveler! They’re the first five star character you’ll get in Genshin Impact. Now, it’s somewhat important: the male Traveler and the female Traveler have two subtly different movesets and we’re going to look at the female Traveler, Lumine, as representing the Anemo element.
While there’s definitely stronger characters, the Traveler early on proves themselves to be more than capable, strongly synergizing with nearly any element with the exception of Geo. This eases the burden of early game team configurations significantly, as almost any character will work fairly decently with them.
Basic Attack String
The standard combo is pretty well just that: five attacks that don’t have too many big standouts. The most important thing to note is that for the final attack, that blade beam, produces a distinct upwards pop when connecting with enemies that you can juggle who have just been hit by the final strike in the chain, setting them up for an easy follow-up by simply evading
Charged Attack
The charged attack is pretty well the usual when it comes to sword-wielding characters and their charged attacks. There’s not much to say here, in contrast to some of the other characters I’ll look at, however, it’s worth noting that as you can see, the Traveler steps forward. Some characters, like Keqing or Albedo, step backwards with a fade slash style attack.
Like all charged attacks, this will launch enemies, though you’ll need to immediately chase them with a dodge in order to follow-up.
Elemental Skill Press & Hold: Palm Vortex
The Traveler’s elemental skill creates a multi-hit Anemo orb in front of them. If it’s simply tapped, the attack while nearly immediately knock an enemy away. If it’s held, the attack while continue for multiple hits. After the first Stella Fortuna for the Traveler is obtained, this attack will also suck enemies in, making it a fairly decent attack for both catching the enemy to continue a juggle – or just stopping them from being knocked back a distance in the first place by pulling them back in.
On its own, this elemental skill might not appear impressive, but by picking up elements in the immediate vicinity, it’s possible to double the damage, or more, coming from using this attack. In contrast to Jean’s elemental skill, the Traveler can pick up elements off themselves as well as the environment and the enemy it’s used against. For the majority of the situations presented by Monstadt with wooden Dendro shields and similar threats, this turns flames either created by the player or present from other sources into an excellent starter for a flamethrower.
Elemental Burst: Gust Surge
I’m going to be honest, it’s kind of nice that they just went and got the tornado out of the way first. As one would expect, Gust Surge draws targets and elements inwards, creating a Swirl interaction if possible. If an enemy can be juggled, they will be swept up in the tornado and dragged away, creating for semi-decent crowd control in situations where you simply need specific threats to stop attacking.
Unfortunately, like all of Genshin Impact’s melee attacks, the Traveler’s elemental burst will auto-track the nearest target when the input is performed. This is obviously fairly undesirable in the majority of situations, so in order to aim the attack, create a line between yourself and the nearest enemy in the direction you want the tornado to travel.
If the tornado runs into a wall or other obstacle, it will stop. However, it can and will proceed off of edges where applicable.
Conclusion:
As mentioned prior, Anemo as an element synergizes strongly with most of the other available elements in-game. This makes the Traveler a strong force multiplier who isn’t exactly bad in their own rights, but can put out significant damage with a little help. It’s not really pertinent to the Traveler so much but there is another factor supporting their strong synergization: they do interact with elements and entities nearly across the board, as mentioned and demonstrated with the elemental skill and Xiangling.
This likely stems from the demands of design, as absolutely, the one character everyone gets has to work with everything.
Therefore, I would say that the Traveler with the Anemo element is worthwhile to invest in as a character in Genshin Impact, and that’s before mentioning the currently available artifact set available. One of the mechanics present with Anemo is that with certain passives, it can provide a debuff with the element it interacts with when Swirling on a target.
From the Valley of Remembrance’s Dance of Steel domain, there’s the Viridescent Venerer. In a four-piece set, this adds the aforementioned debuff to every Swirl interaction, to the tune of a 40% weakness as opposed to the 15% provided by Traveler’s sixth Constellation.
Besides that though, there’s another argument for leveling the Traveler and that’s mostly that it’s really easy to do so, Windwheel Asters are readily available as far as ascension materials go. Their constellations are provided through adventure rank for the Anemo element, so after the world ascension at adventure rank 45, you’ll get the Stella Fortuna and have said debuff equipped for Gust Surge.
So why not use a veritable flamethrower?
