The best Genshin Impact Barbara build, Artifacts, and F2P options
Sing for your succour
The best Genshin Impact Barbara build takes a free character and turns her into a potent healing machine with some surprising potential for setting up elemental reactions.
Barbara is someone you recruit automatically in Genshin Impact once you finish the prologue, and while there’s no shortage of healers in the RPG, Barbara is the most capable of the bunch.
The problem is that she’s a bit unwieldy at times, with long cooldowns and a skill effect that actually leaves you vulnerable to damage.
What is the best Genshin Impact Barbara build?
Barbara’s healing power scales with her HP, though focusing on elemental mastery is also a good idea, especially if you use her in Bloom teams.
Best Barbara weapon – A Thousand Floating Dreams
A Thousand Floating Dreams is one of the only catalysts that buffs elemental mastery, and its passive skill raises mastery even further or boosts the equipping character’s elemental type. It’s also a rare weapon intended for Nahida, so probably only ideal for Barbara in theory or if you’re experimenting.
Sacrificial Fragments is a strong alternative with an elemental mastery boost that almost matches Floating Dreams. Its passive skill has a decent chance of ending Barbara’s skill cooldown time as well, which is handy considering it has a 32-second timer.
Best Barbara Artifacts
Maiden Beloved used to be the top pick for Barbara, since it boosts healing power and adds even more healing when the equipping character uses their skill or burst. It remains a smart choice, but the Ocean-Hued Clam set helps you get even more out of Barbara as a sub-DPS without even having her on the field.
- Two-piece effect: 15 percent healing bonus
- Four-piece effect: When the equipping character heals a party member, they generate one Sea-Dyed Foam bubble. This bubble absorbs incoming healing, including overflow, up to 30,000 HP and explodes after three seconds, dealing damage based on the amount of HP absorbed
Best Barbara F2P build
Barbara’s F2P build is pretty close to the other one. The Sacrificial Fragments weapon turns up in standard banner pulls fairly often, but if you want to go the non-Primogem route, there’s an option for you: Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers. This 3-star catalyst is one you find in chests and regular banner pulls, so reaching the highest refinement rank is usually quite easy. It raises the character’s HP, which boosts Barbara’s healing power, and when you switch characters, it grants an attack buff to the incoming character of 24 percent to 48 percent for 10 seconds.
Is Barbara good?
Whether Barbara is good depends on what your team needs. She’s a healer and only a healer, so you won’t get much sub-DPS support from her, unlike Sayu and Kokomi, and she’s a bit difficult to set up some reactions with unless you’re in the middle of an enemy group. However, she’s also one of the only healers who can heal the entire party. Most healers in Genshin focus on the active character, leaving injured party members out of the loop.
Barbara also has a passive talent that extends her skill’s healing duration every time a party member picks up an energy particle, and her sixth constellation gives her the ability to revive the entire party if their HP drops to zero. Getting C6 on Barbara is easier than you might think, too. Not only do you get one Barbara during the game’s prologue, but she also shows up frequently in banners – and in pulls on banners that she doesn’t feature in.
Good as her healing abilities are, Barbara comes with some drawbacks. Her damage output is painfully low, and her skill applies Hydro to your active character. That means if your foe hits you with Cryo or Electro, you’ll either freeze or explode – not an ideal situation. She also has long cooldown timers and a burst that requires 80 energy.
Still, a free healer is a free healer, and her ability to heal the entire party makes some situations in the Spiral Abyss much easier to handle. Since Dendro reactions came on the scene, Barbara is also one of the best ways to trigger Bloom reactions, and her long-lasting healing skill means you won’t suffer too much from the core explosions.
Should I pull for Barbara?
You get a free Barbara at the end of the prologue in Mondstadt. If you’re new and want to save your Primogems, hold off spending them on a banner with Barbara. She’s a common rerun character anyway, so you’ll likely end up with at least a few constellations unlocked just by wishing normally on banners.
If you're saving up for future Genshin Impact banners, make sure to check out our up-do-date list of Genshin Impact codes for some free Primogems.