Now that 4.0 artifacts have been officially published, I think it's time to have an in-depth discussion about which characters can really benefit from them and whether or not they're worth farming for. I've seen a lot of misinformation being spread online so hopefully this post can answer a lot of the questions that you may have regarding these artifacts.

Disclaimer: All of the below calculations are done with 28 subs allocated, numbers will be slightly different depending on how invested your characters are.

Golden Troupe

2 Piece Effect - Increase Elemental Skill damage by 20%

4 Piece Effect - Increase Elemental Skill damage by 25%, additional when not on the field elemental skill damage will be increased by a further 25%. This effect will be cleared 2s after taking the field.

From the 4 piece effect we see that the characters that would benefit from this are off field characters that mainly do their damage from their elemental skills. The four characters we have in the game that can potentially benefit from this are Fischl, Yae, Nahida and Albedo.

Fischl:

Solid 18-20% damage increase over her next best set doesn't matter what team you're playing her in. Highly recommended if you're someone that uses Fischl.

Yae Miko

Yae is an interesting case because people play her differently since some people rarely use her burst and some people maybe use her burst every other rotation depending on the team. Let's go through these scenarios individually.

Scenario 1 (ignoring burst damage non-aggravate): Golden Trope (with ATK goblet) is approximately ~15% damage increase over Yae's usual 2ATK 2TF set assuming same sub stats.

Scenario 2 (including burst damage non-aggravate): Golden Trope is approximately ~7% damage increase over 2ATK 2TF assuming burst every two rotations against a single enemy. If you have C1 Yae and can burst every rotation then the increase is essentially 0. If you're bursting against multiple enemies Yae's 2 2 set is actually better than Golden Troupe.

Scenario 3 (Including burst damage w/ aggravate): Golden Trope is approximately ~9% better than 2ATK 2TF on C0 Yae and is ~1% better than 4 piece Gilded Dreams.

Verdict: If you only use Yae's elemental skill and never use her burst you're looking at a solid 13-15% damage increase which is worth it IMO. If you're someone that routinely works her burst into her rotations, then that damage increase becomes smaller especially in AoE situations. In this case it's probably not worth farming this set just for Yae especially if you already have a really good 2 2/Gilded set unless you're also farming for the Hunter set.

Nahida:

4 Piece Golden Troupe increases Nahida's damage by ~17% over 4 piece Deepwood assuming another character on the team is using 4 Deepwood already. With that said, I still personally prefer Nahida to have Deepwood since she has the best application by far. While the 17% damage is nice it's only her personal damage and not the team's damage. I'd much rather have consistent application of Deepwood's 4 piece effect, and not have to switch her artifact set every time I decide to use her as a solo Dendro or without a teammate that's using deepwood.

Edit: I haven't tested Golden Troupe vs Gilded Dreams because I don't use Gilded Dreams on Nahida for the reasons above. Some people posted that it's ~15% difference, I'll take their word for it.

Verdict: Farm if you care about her personal damage and is always playing her alongside another character that uses 4 piece Deepwood. Otherwise stick to Deepwood.

Albedo:

Ignoring his burst damage Golden Troupe is basically the same as Husk, if we factor in C6 Gorou then Husk becomes ~3% better and once we factor in Albedo's ult (which doesn't get any damage increase from Golden Troupe but gets 24% damage bonus from Husk) then difference becomes bigger. This is mainly because Husk is a really strong artifact set that gives 54% DEF and 24% Geo Damage bonus at max stacks.

Verdict: Not recommended unless you haven't farmed Husk yet and plan to farm the new domain.

C6 Faruzan:

This only applies to C6 Faruzan since it gives her Pressurized Collapse procs every 3 seconds during her ult which is part of her element skill damage. If you already have a nobless/ToM user in your team, then Golden Troupe should be a 23-25% damage increase to her personal damage. How much of that translates to your team damage will depend on how strong your Wanderer/Xiao is. Whether or not this set is worth farming will also depend on what type of Wanderer/Xiao teams you play - if you mainly play Anemo hypercarries then this set will be good for Faruzan. If you're using other elemental off field DPS character like Yelan/Fischl with your Wanderer then you're better off with VV for the res shred.

Verdict: Be on the lookout for ER sands & Anemo goblets.

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Marechaussee Hunter

2 Piece Effect - NA and CA damage increased by 15%

4 Piece Effect - When current HP increases or decreases CRIT rate is increased by 12% for 5 seconds max 3 stacks.

From the 4 piece effect we can see that this is best used on characters that can decrease/increase their own health multiple times in a rotation.

Xiao

Xiao is the most obvious benefactor of this artifact set despite the 2 piece effect doing nothing for him. If you're using PJWS then Hunter is equal to Vermillion since you'll have 82% crit rate without a single sub stat. If you're using Homa then the Golden Troupe is ~2% better than Vermillion.

Verdict: Worth farming for if you're still using a 2 2 set that doesn't have godly sub stats (generally the 10% damage difference can be made up with 3-4 sub stats on your artifacts) since it's a better domain than Vermillion IMO. If you already have Vermillion or planning to exchange for Vermillion in the 4.0 strongbox then this set isn't really worth farming for Xiao.

Hutao

This is another interesting one since it has a couple of different scenarios. We know that Hutao can decrease her own HP by using her E, however it has a 16s CD so it can only stack once. Also since Hutao is generally played with a shielder like Zhongli and not a healer, it's hard for her to increase/decrease her HP via other means. With that said, there are certain things that you could do such as using Mona w/ Prototype Amber that provides her with a small heals in small intervals to trigger the 4 piece Golden Troupe effect.

Scenario 1 (Hutao only gets 1 stack from her E): Crimson Witch is ~7% better than Hunter ignoring her ult. If you're using her ult at the end of her E duration then the difference becomes bigger since Hunter's 4 piece effect won't increase her ult damage whereas 4 piece CW does. If you're using her ult in the middle of her E duration to extend the 4 piece Hunter effect then you might be doing less CAs on Hutao so idk if that's worth it.

Scenario 2 (Assuming Hutao can get all 3 stacks via Prototype Amber): Hunter 4 piece is 7% better than 4 piece CW if she can get and maintain all 3 stacks. The problem with Prototype Amber is that if you end up healing above her 50% HP threshold then you're losing damage, and if you're fighting an enemy that requires multiple rotations then Prototype Amber's healing might heal too much and prevent you from getting to below 50% HP with a single E usage.

Verdict: I personally wouldn't farm it for Hutao specifically unless you're planning to use her with Mona/Yanfei Prototype Amber. Even then it feels a bit too gimmicky and the damage increase isn't enough to be worth the hassle. With that said 2CW 2Hunter is also pretty good for Hutao if you don't have a good 4 piece CW set or haven't committed to farming CW yet.

Burgeon Teams

Burgeon on field DPS characters like Ayato can technically benefit from the Hunter set since they're always on field taking damage & healing. With that said, the on field DPS for Burgeon teams honestly don't do a lot of damage when you look at it from a team perspective. Will Burgeon Ayato do more damage personally with Hunter vs whatever he's using right now? Sure. How much of that damage increase translates into the entire team's damage? Not a lot.

Verdict: Farm it if you really want to maximize your Burgeon team's on field DPS damage, but it's not worth it IMO.

Melt Ganyu w/ Dehya

I just wanted to talk about Melt Ganyu because technically she could benefit from the 4 piece Hunter set when used with Dehya since Melt Ganyu could actually use the Crit rate that that 4 piece Hunter provides. However this is a bit niche IMO since it'll really depend on how often the enemy attacks. God forbid you fight something like the Wenut who just stalls without attacking. Maybe this is why MHY refuses to put an artifact change system in the abyss lmao.

Verdict: Not really recommended unless the team has a proactive way of decreasing/increasing HP instead of relying on the enemy to attack you.

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Conclusion:

The upcoming 4.0 artifacts give a TON of stats, but so far only a few existing characters can benefit from it. Generally I consider a ~10% damage increase from a new artifact set really good, anything above that is a must farm for that character. Anything within 5-10% I might consider farming if I could use the other set in the domain, and anything below 5% is honestly just not worth it.

With that said, I'm sure the new artifacts would be great for the new characters we have coming out and they're definitely worth farming for once 4.0 hits.

Happy Farming Everyone! Hope this helps with some of the questions you might've had regarding the new artifact set.

I'm also working on a post that will go over the new weapons coming out in 4.0 and who could benefit from those weapons. Hopefully I can get that finished soon!