Genshin Impact fans have a way of being able to argue that their favourite character — regardless of stats – is the best character. The fandom debates over DPS, elemental application rates, and whether their favourite waifu or husbando was screwed over by HoYo in the development stage at the drop of a hat. It’s what being a Genshin fan is half the time.
I’m not here to tout a character as being the be all, end all. But if we’re talking about pure, unfiltered usefulness — the kind that actually affects how you spend a lot of your time in this game — then I’m here to say clearly that Chasca is, and might always be, the most [ridiculously] useful character in all of Genshin Impact.
And that’s because she has a giant flying gun.
Flight changes everything (and Chasca does it best)
There are other characters in Genshin who can fly or pseudo-fly. Mizuki, Wanderer, Mavuika, and Ifa, to name a few. We have gliders, high jumps, grapples, mid-air nonsense, and “technically this counts as flight” abilities, but none of them come close to what Chasca does on that massive gun.
Her gun isn’t just a traversal gimmick like Mavuika’s motor bike. It’s easy to manoeuvre, responsive, and doesn’t feel like it’s constantly fighting you for control. Unlike Mavuika’s bike, which can feel like trying to parallel park during an earthquake, or Ifa’s silly bird companion (bro), Chasca’s gun just… works. Point it somewhere. Go.
More impressively, the flight range outside of Natlan and its phlogiston mechanic is actually quite substantial. Other characters might be able to use their abilities to glide or hover for a short time, but Chasca’s gun is truly designed for flight. Mountains become irrelevant. Hills become strictly decorative. Cliffs become a suggestion at best. If the terrain has even the slightest incline, Chasca will simply whiz straight up it like gravity personally offended her.
Exploration-wise, she is unmatched. Teyvat becomes less of a sprawling world and more of a mildly inconvenient speed bump… but that can be a problem for long-term play.
Congratulations, you’ve been spoiled forever
I started playing Genshin Impact shortly after the initial Natlan area was released (late to the party, I know). Knowing absolutely nothing about the game and what to expect, I threw primogems at the character banners without understanding anything behind the star ratings or rarity of characters. I pulled Chasca early on (she was released in November of 2024), after around only a month of play.
All together, I’ve only had a very short time in Teyvat without Chasca and it’s honestly impossible to imagine my overall Genshin experience without her. I’ve been able to explore the enormous map in record time, bypass annoying puzzles, collect oculi I should never have been able to reach that easily, and generally blast through the game at lightning speed.
Regions as sweeping as Sumeru suddenly become dramatically smaller when you can just opt out of verticality, and I can see that that has probably made things too easy and too fast. But, on the other hand, it has been a godsend. Scaling walls and climbing mountains isn’t exactly fun, and I’ve done plenty of it thanks to games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I also climbed walls the hard way at the beginning of Genshin, so I can’t say I miss it.
What I do miss, however, is having someone other than Chasca always in my party.
She is [somewhat regrettably] always in my party
After I left Mondstadt and started exploring the greater realms of Teyvat, Chasca stopped being a character I actively chose because I wanted to use her and instead became a permanent fixture in my team roster. This isn’t because I can’t function without her. It’s because I no longer want to.
The game is smoother with Chasca, and removing her from my party feels like voluntarily choosing inconvenience. The only compelling reason I have to do that is to increase the friendship I have with other characters, but even that can be accomplished via the Serenitea Pot.
Her gun is also, you know, a weapon
As if the traversal dominance wasn’t enough, Chasca’s gun is also her primary method of dealing damage, because… it’s a gun. And it turns out that her flying death platform is pretty good at killing things, too.
She’s one of the rare characters who can actively channel her teammates’ elemental alignments through her attacks, letting her force elemental reactions on demand. That’s not just interesting, that’s powerful. It gives her flexibility in many team comps and lets her function as a reaction engine rather than just another damage brute.
Is she the highest DPS in the game? No. Is she the most convenient source of controlled reactions while hovering out of reach and avoiding attacks entirely? You bet.
Damage stats come and go, but utility is forever
Damage numbers will always creep. New characters will always powercreep old ones. Today’s “broken” DPS is tomorrow’s bench warmer. But utility? Utility is eternal.
Chasca fundamentally changes how you interact with the game, and that kind of ability doesn’t get old or out of date. Even if her damage fell off a cliff tomorrow, she’d still be invaluable because she saves time, effort, and sanity in a game of Genshin’s size and time demands. And frankly, that’s the real endgame.
Bow before the gun witch
Regardless of how you feel about her combat style, the Natlan aesthetics, or her place on an arbitrary tier list, Chasca is easily the most useful character in Genshin Impact, and might always remain so. She turns traversal into a joyride and vertical terrains into a suggestion rather than a problem. She doesn’t just play the game well. She plays around the game.
And once you’ve flown across half of Teyvat on a giant gun, there’s really no going back.
