Sanhua

Quick Verdict

Sanhua is a 4-star, so there is no pull decision here, only an investment one, and the answer is narrower than her reputation suggests. Build her if you play a Basic Attack carry who stands on the field, and ideally one who scales with ATK. For that one job she is genuinely excellent: 38% Basic Attack DMG Deepen is the largest single Basic Attack multiplier among her tested competition, and she delivers it in under six seconds of field time at zero pull cost.

What she cannot do is lift a team upward. Her buff covers one damage type, on one character, for 14 seconds, and it ends the moment that character swaps out. Her tested teams sit at the bottom of the validated projection because the carries she serves are older ones. Her rotation is complete at S0, but S5 is the node that makes her feel finished, and for a standard-pool 4-star that is a matter of time rather than money.

Sanhua overall rating:

How Sanhua Works

Sanhua plants Ice Creations, then blows all of them up with one Heavy Attack.

The three Ice Creations. Her Intro Skill Freezing Thorns creates 1 Ice Thorn. Her Resonance Skill Eternal Frost creates 1 Ice Prism. Her Resonance Liberation Glacial Gaze creates 1 Glacier. These are the three things her payoff hit detonates, and their timers decide her whole rotation: the Ice Thorn lasts 8 seconds, but the Ice Prism and the Glacier last only 5 seconds each. That is why her tested rotation casts Skill, then Liberation, then the Heavy back to back with nothing in between. Hesitate there and the Prism or the Glacier expires before it can ever be detonated.

Clarity and the Frostbite area. To cast the Heavy Attack Detonate you hold Basic Attack. A cursor starts moving, and you release when it falls inside the Frostbite area. That area is narrow by default and it widens with every stack of Clarity, up to 2 stacks. Sanhua gains 1 Clarity from Basic Attack V, 1 from her Intro Skill, 1 from her Resonance Skill, and 2 from her Resonance Liberation. Clarity stacks last 5 seconds, and casting the Detonate removes all of them. In practice, play the rotation in order and you arrive at the Heavy with 2 Clarity and the widest possible release window. If you release outside the Frostbite area there is no Detonate at all, nothing is set off, and the back half of her damage is gone.

Ice Burst is Resonance Skill damage. When the Detonate lands it explodes every Ice Creation in range: Glacier Burst 139.17%, Ice Prism Burst 79.53%, Ice Thorn Burst 59.65%. All of that is counted as Resonance Skill damage, not Heavy Attack damage. This is the single most important thing to understand about building her. The Detonate hit itself is Heavy Attack damage, but the explosions it causes are Skill damage, which is why Resonance Skill DMG Bonus sits above Basic Attack or Heavy Attack bonuses on her build.

Two Inherent Skills, two 8-second windows. Condensation increases her Resonance Skill damage by 20% for 8s after her Intro Skill, and because Ice Burst counts as Resonance Skill damage, that 20% covers the explosions as well. Avalanche increases Ice Burst damage by a further 20% for 8s after Basic Attack V. Both windows are 8 seconds, both need to still be running when the Detonate lands, and together they are the real reason her rotation is a fixed, tight sequence instead of a loose one.

Tested rotations

Standard route, about 5.5 seconds of Sanhua field time:

Intro > Basic 3, 4, 5 > Skill > Liberation > Heavy > Echo > Outro

That string is identical in her Cartethyia team and in her standard Camellya team, so there is exactly one rotation to learn.

Swap route, about 3.8 seconds of Sanhua field time, split across two visits:

Skill > Liberation > Heavy Forte > swap out ... later ... Intro > Basic 3, 4, 5 > Echo > Outro

This is the tested fast version of her Camellya team. She enters early without her Intro, sets up and detonates while the support's rotation is still running, swaps straight back out, and returns later for her Basic string and her Outro. The point of the route is not her damage: it overlaps her setup with someone else's field time and shortens the team's total rotation. Her own damage share falls to roughly 7% to 10.5% from about 13%, and the route is rated much harder to execute in the tested data.

It is also not the default for two mechanical reasons. On the first visit she has no Ice Thorn yet because her Intro has not happened, so that Heavy sets off two Ice Bursts instead of three. And she never casts a second Heavy, so the Ice Thorn she plants on her second visit is only cashed in through S5, which makes Ice Creations explode on their own. Below S5 that Thorn is simply wasted.

Silversnow and the handoff

Her Outro is the product. Silversnow reads: "The next character (or other characters on a nearby team that activates an Outro Skill) gains 38% Basic Attack DMG Deepen for 14s, or until the character is switched off field." Three clauses matter. It reaches the incoming character, one character, not the team. It covers Basic Attack damage only. And it ends at 14 seconds or the moment that character leaves the field, whichever comes first.

Two more buffs ride the same Outro. The Moonlit Clouds 5-piece gives the incoming character 22.5% ATK for 15s, and Impermanence Heron adds 12% damage for 15s if the Outro follows the Echo within 15 seconds. All three land on the same character in the same instant, and all three die when that character swaps out.

The 14 seconds is tighter than it sounds. In the tested Cartethyia team, Cartethyia's field stay is 13.99 seconds against a 14-second buff, so there is no slack whatsoever. In the tested Camellya teams, Camellya's field stay is 16.96 seconds, which is longer than the buff, so the last stretch of her rotation runs without the Deepen. Neither is a reason to avoid the pairing, but both are reasons to cast the Outro cleanly and get the carry on the field immediately.

Build Priorities

Her tested damage profile, played solo without team buffs: Resonance Liberation 29.95%, Resonance Skill 29.30%, Heavy Attack 18.03%, Basic Attack 12.24%, Echo 6.21%, Intro 4.26%. A little over half of that Skill share is Eternal Frost itself; the rest is the three Ice Bursts. That is how a character who casts one Skill per rotation ends up with a Skill line that large.

Sub-stat priority: Crit Rate, Crit DMG, ATK%, Resonance Skill DMG Bonus, Resonance Liberation DMG Bonus, Energy Regen.

Why 125% Energy Regen, and why it is nearly free. Her Liberation costs 100 Resonance Energy and her Max Energy is exactly 100, so she needs a full bar every single rotation. The tested loadout gets her most of the way there on its own: Emerald of Genesis at R1 gives 12.8% Energy Regen and the Moonlit Clouds 2-piece gives another 10%, which puts her at 122.8% before a single Energy Regen sub-stat. One roll finishes the target. It is worth hitting because skipping the Liberation costs her the Glacier, the largest of the three Ice Bursts, 2 Clarity, 20 Concerto Energy, and at S6 one of her two team ATK stacks.

Talent priority: Resonance Skill, Forte Circuit, and Resonance Liberation to Lv. 10; Normal Attack and Intro Skill to Lv. 6.

Echoes

Her set is 5-piece Moonlit Clouds with Impermanence Heron as the main Echo. The set is the entire point of her build: the 2-piece supplies the Energy Regen above, and the 5-piece hands the incoming character 22.5% ATK on her Outro, stacked on top of her kit's Deepen.

Main stats are Crit DMG or Crit Rate on Cost 4, Glacio or ATK on both Cost 3 slots, and ATK on both Cost 1 slots. The page's comparison settles the Cost 3 question: 2 Glacio Cost 3 at 100%, one Glacio swapped for ATK at 97.05%, both slots on ATK at 90.62%, and the two-Cost-4 setup at 86.58%. Take the two Glacio Cost 3.

For the Cost 4, note that Sanhua gains no Crit Rate and no Crit DMG from her talent tree. Every point of crit she has comes from her weapon, her echoes, and at S1 her sequence. With Emerald of Genesis, which supplies 24.3% Crit Rate, take Crit DMG on the Cost 4. If your Echo sub-stats are crit-poor, flip to Crit Rate instead because Crit DMG on hits that do not crit does nothing.

Weapons

Her strongest tested option is Blazing Brilliance at 105.87%, ahead of Emerald of Genesis R1 at 100%, and the reason is her damage profile: it stacks Resonance Skill DMG Bonus, which is her largest line, on top of high ATK and Crit DMG. But Blazing Brilliance is Brant's signature, and the gap is about 5.9% of Sanhua's personal damage on a character who contributes roughly an eighth of her team's output, which works out to well under 1% of team DPS. She is a support, not a carry, so Emerald of Genesis is the recommendation: it covers her Crit Rate, its ATK stacks trigger on the Skill she casts every rotation, and its Energy Regen is most of her 125% target on its own. Do not move a signature off a damage dealer for this slot.

Behind those two sit the 4-star swords, and the page's comparison puts them in a clear order: Feather Edge, Commando of Conviction, Endless Collapse, Somnoire Anchor, and Lunar Cutter, all landing in the low-to-mid 80s. These are early-account weapons; move her onto Emerald of Genesis as soon as you have one. Feather Edge gives Crit Rate, but not enough of it, and Somnoire Anchor's Crit Rate passive needs her to stay on the field longer than a sub-DPS should, so its listed value does not include that buff.

Overture is the one deliberate exception. It is the weakest sword on the list for damage, but it restores 16 Concerto Energy when she casts her Skill, and that noticeably speeds up her rotation. If you are early in the game and do not have S5 yet, it is a reasonable choice for exactly that reason.

Team Fit & Account Value

Sanhua asks one question of a partner: does this character deal Basic Attack damage while standing on the field? Everything else about her fit follows from the answer.

She has two tested cores and they land close enough together that there is no single number 1 team. Which one you play is decided by which carry you own, not by Sanhua.

• Camellya is where the whole package lands. Camellya scales with ATK and 80% of her damage is Basic Attack damage, so every piece of Sanhua's Outro connects at once: the 38% Basic Attack DMG Deepen, the Moonlit Clouds 22.5% ATK, and Heron's 12%. At S6 her 20% team ATK lands too. Shorekeeper fills the third slot in both tested versions, and the difference between them is the swap route described above.
• Cartethyia gets half the package. More than half of Cartethyia's damage is Basic Attack damage, and several of her other moves are explicitly counted as Basic Attack DMG on top of that, so the 38% Deepen covers a wide slice of her kit. But Cartethyia scales entirely on HP: her build target is 48,000 to 50,000 HP and her signature weapon's main stat is HP. Sanhua's Moonlit Clouds ATK buff and her S6 team ATK buff do almost nothing for her. Rover Aero fills the third slot here. This is Cartethyia's budget team, not her strongest structure.
• Roccia is the direct comparison for the Camellya slot, and it is genuinely close. Roccia's Outro gives the incoming character 20% Havoc DMG Amplification and 25% Basic Attack DMG Amplification. Sanhua's single Basic Attack figure is the larger one; Roccia's package is broader, and she deals more personal damage across a longer field stay. In the tested data Roccia's Midnight Veil build edges Sanhua's best route by a hair, and Sanhua's best route edges Roccia's Moonlit Clouds support build. A free 4-star holding that line against a limited 5-star is the strongest single fact on Sanhua's record.

Use the live Team DPS section for the current tested compositions, ordering, DPS values, equipment, and rotations. Those cards update from the validated Team DPS projection and are the only source for mutable team results on this page.

Her honest limits. Her Outro covers one damage type, on one character, for 14 seconds, and it dies the instant that character swaps out. The newer supports in the same role hand out All DMG Amplification instead, some of it granted to the whole team and lasting twice as long, which covers a carry's Skill, Liberation, and Echo damage as well as their Basic Attacks. She brings no healing, no shield, no grouping, and no Negative Status, so she cannot switch on the game-mode buffs that reward applying one. Her buff shape suits modern Basic Attack carries on paper, Luuk Herssen's damage is 92.73% Basic Attack, but the slot beside those carries goes to characters who buff and deal real damage at the same time. Her tested teams sit at the bottom of the validated projection, and that is a statement about the structures she appears in rather than about how well she does her job inside them.

Sequence Value

Sanhua's rotation is complete at S0. Clarity, the Frostbite area, the Detonate, the three Ice Bursts, and her Outro all work with no sequences at all. What sequences buy her is damage and speed, and because she comes from the standard pool they arrive by playing.

The page's sequence damage chart: S0 100% → S1 112% → S2 112% → S3 132% → S4 142% → S5 148% → S6 148%. The page also notes S6 reads 160% if you stay on Sanhua instead of swapping out because that node's buff belongs to the team rather than to her.

• S1 — Solitude's Embrace (5/5): Basic Attack V gives her 15% Crit Rate for 10s. She gains no crit whatsoever from her talent tree, so this is the most valuable node she has, and Basic Attack V is already sitting in her rotation.
• S2 — Snowy Clarity (2/5): 10 less Stamina on the Detonate, plus interruption resistance for 10s after her Skill. The chart does not move at all, 112% to 112%. Comfort only.
• S3 — Anomalous Vision (5/5): 35% more damage against targets below 70% HP. Conditional on paper, close to permanent in a real fight once the opening is over. The chart's 132% assumes the enemy is under that threshold.
• S4 — Blade Mastery (3/5): Her Liberation restores 10 Resonance Energy, and the next Heavy Attack Detonate within 5s deals 120% more damage. That applies to the Detonate hit itself, which is Heavy Attack damage, not the three Ice Bursts it sets off, which are Resonance Skill damage. The chart sets the expectation: 132% to 142% is a real gain, but it is a fraction of what 120% more damage sounds like on its own.
• S5 — Unraveling Fate (5/5): Ice Burst gains 100% Crit DMG, and Ice Thorn, Ice Prism, and Glacier explode on their own even if they are never detonated. That frees her from having to land the Frostbite release every time, and it is what makes the short swap route work at all. The site's own weapon note puts it plainly: S5 is where her rotations become fast.
• S6 — Daybreak Radiance (5/5): Every Ice Prism or Glacier detonation gives all team members 10% ATK for 20s, stacking twice, so 20% team ATK. Her personal chart does not move because the buff is not hers alone. It is worth a great deal next to Camellya and very little next to Cartethyia for the scaling reason in Team Fit. All three of her tested teams run her at S6.

Realistic stopping points: S1 is a real upgrade the moment it arrives, S3 is the next meaningful one, S5 changes how she plays, and S6 is her ceiling as a support. For a standard-pool 4-star, all of that is reachable by playing rather than by spending.

Pull Value

Since Sanhua is a 4-star, there is no pull decision here, only an investment one.