The Sad State of the Cryo Element in Genshin Impact

The Cryo element was once one the most powerful in the game spearheaded by the overpowered Freeze reaction and having a strong cast of characters. Recently though, it might be in contention for the worst element in the game for a multitude of factors. We're gonna be investigating Cryo and what's caused it to enter such a dying state.

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[VarsII]

Small Rant: YOU CAN NOT JUST GIVE US TWO OF THE HOTTEST SKINS IN THE GAME FOR TWO OF THE BEST WAIFUS IN THE GAME AND THEN NEVER LET PEOPLE BE ABLE TO BUY THE CHARACTERS THE SKINS ARE MEANT FOR 😭 #FreeShenhe

[TerraTheWise]

You know it’s bad when you can’t even freeze the boss literally made out of water but every other hydro based reaction works on it.

[Shokukun]

When cryo is applied on your character it slows them down. No wonder cryo characters haven’t had a rerun in so long

[vj]

Cryo characters not getting a rerun in over a year is honestly 60% of its downfall 😭😭

[igr]

You know Hoyo hates Cryo when the only freezable boss in the game was never put in Abyss

[semconteudo]

Cryo be like:

• melt: sorry we don’t have decent pyro or cryo off fielders
• Freeze : sorry the enemy is Immune
•Super conduct : 💀
• Shatter : 💀💀💀
•Crystallize and swirl: No difference in comparison with electro, pyro and Hydro .
• Dendro : I will ignore your existence.

[GTsvetkovski]

Hoyo really gave cryo the cold shoulder. The element has been frozen in the same spot ever since 2.6 with Shenhe. The lack of support has had a chilling effect for all characters really.

[bjornnilsson]

I guess Mihoyo were so traumatized by the Morgana team they threw both Venti and the cryo element in the trash and never want to bring them back 💔

[TheAAJYu]

The only thing these days that Cryo is top tier in is not having reruns for their characters.

First Eula, now Shenhe and even Wriothesley and Charlotte… 😢

[Zedrinbot]

Seeing how Zenless handled their ice element with anomaly buildup really makes me think that could've been an alternate way for cryo to work on bosses. While basic enemies could be frozen im mediately, if something is has CC resistance, they instead need multiple applications of cryo for a brief freeze, and the freeze is shorter based on how tenacious the unit is. Would've been better than the all-or-nothing approach we got.

[johnal]

my ideal cryo buffs considering most of the points raised in the vid:

- enemies affected by cryo attack and move slower,
- cryo applies a frostbite debuff. frostbite shaves chunks of hp after x stacks (like how limbs stop working off due to hypothermia/ brittle stuff crumbles in the cold). frozen enemies get frostbite stacks faster.
- and finally, exploding dendro cores cause shatter

[zente]

Capitano and Citlali have some work to do

[InmateOmighty]

Can’t wait for Citlali to be Cryo Faruzan with terrible efficiency unless you get her C6 bait 🥰🥰🥰

[sheepnamedpig]

Still convinced they're gonna bring back superconduct and physical damage when we get snezhnaya

[mohammedbaig]

Fall off so bad it needs to be studied lmao. They basically gave freeze the same treatment as venti, they couldn't weaken their CC, so they just started making enemies immune to that CC altogether

[gothemcloud]

You forgot to mention the Artifact power creep. Blizard Strayer giving 20-40% crit rate was huge compared to most of the artifact sets available at 1.0.

[mehedi]

They are saving cryo meta for sneznaya 😇😇

[clarapomegranate]

High key we need a Chevreuse for superconduct one for one.
Imagine giving a massive buff to attack, cryo damage, electro damage, and physical damage.

[MrSquishy]

Shatter should have increased sheild break efficiency regardless of element... a man can dream

[BotanVal]

You're actually sort of missing the boat on what made freeze a top meta team back in day (and why its so bad now). The freeze effect itself wasn't what made these teams broken, it was that freeze enabled 4p Blizzard Strayer which at the time was by far the strongest single character artifact buff in the game. Back then where many top dps units had high ER requirements, balancing crit stats was one of the biggest challenges for practically everyone, and so the fact that Ayaka and Ganyu both got a free 55% crit rate bonus gave them a huge leg up on everyone else. Freeze teams were balanced around this to make up for the fact that the reaction itself gave no inherent damage amplifiers.

The biggest issue for freeze teams now is that blizzard strayer got powercrept by marechausee/obsidian Codex. While the crit bonus for all 3 of these is around the same, marechaussee/codex let you run characters with actual amplifying reactions, vs freeze that doesn't inherently provide any damage bonuses. With spiral abyss being a dps check against the clock, even if bosses were freezable, you'd be better off running actual damage amplifying reactions to get the faster clear. Freeze has the additional drawback of being terrible in multi-wave since its a setup reaction. With the direction the game has gone, I have a hard time thinking of any way they can make freeze viable from a damage perspective again.