Skirk Guide

Updated for Version 6.0

by JaxonFiles & Kirazen

Introduction

“When darkness falls… I will slit its throat.”
Art Source

Skirk is a powerful Cryo DPS who can be played as either an on-field Normal Attacker or a Quickswap Burst Nuker, similar to Mavuika. Due to her restriction of requiring only Hydro and Cryo characters on the team in order to maximize her damage output and wanting the team to trigger non-melt Cryo reactions to charge her special energy type, Skirk’s teams can feel both flexible and restrictive at the same time.

Why Skirk?

Skirk is relatively easy to play, with her combos consisting of spamming her normal attacks while having very high resistance to interruption. She can make great use of strong supports such as Furina and Escoffier, while also having fairly accessible (although significantly worse) alternative team options. Skirk’s best teams can deal extremely potent damage, rivaling the strongest teams in the game, as well as having the ability to be used as a powerful frontloaded Burst DPS for another Cryo or Hydro carry such as Wriothesley or Neuvillette, making her a great pull for those looking to maximize other characters overall team damage output as well.

Gameplay

Talents:

Level Priority

Skill > Burst (for NA playstyle)
Burst >> Skill (for Burst playstyle)

Skill

Skirk does not use energy and instead relies on what is called Serpent’s Subtlety. There are multiple ways of obtaining Serpent’s Subtlety points, and Skirk can only hold up to a maximum of 100 Serpent’s Subtlety points. When either tapping or holding Skirk’s Elemental Skill, she will gain 45 points of Serpent’s Subtlety.

When Skirk taps her Elemental Skill (tE), Skirk will enter the Seven-Phase Flash mode. During this enhanced state, Skirk’s normal, charged, and plunging attacks are infused with Cryo and deal significantly increased DMG. She will also continuously drain Serpent’s Subtlety points at a rate of 7 points per second. Once Skirk runs out of Serpent’s Subtlety points, she will exit her enhanced state. This state can last up to a maximum of 12.5 seconds.

When Skirk holds her Elemental Skill (hE), she will enter a floating state where she moves continuously at high speeds and can traverse over water, similar to Arlecchino’s Hold Charged Attack. You can end this mode early by using her Elemental Skill again. If her floating state ends while over water, she will stand on the water for a brief moment before falling in.

Burst

Skirk has two different Elemental Bursts depending on which mode you are in. Outside of Seven-Phase Flash mode, if Skirk has at least 50 points of Serpent’s Subtlety, then she can activate her Elemental Burst, Havoc: Ruin, to deal a high amount of damage to enemies by spending all of her Serpent’s Subtlety points. For each point of Serpent’s Subtlety above 50, the damage will be increased for every additional point consumed. Up to 12 points can be counted for this bonus.

If Skirk is in Seven-Phase Flash mode, then Skirk can activate a special Elemental Burst, Havoc: Extinction, without consuming any points of Serpent’s Subtlety. This will increase her Normal Attack DMG for the next 10 normal attacks based on how many Void Rifts are absorbed upon activation (see Skirk’s A1 for information about Void Rifts).

Passives

A1

When a party member triggers a Frozen, Superconduct, Cryo Swirl, or Cryo Crystallize reaction on an opponent, a Void Rift will be generated. This effect can only be triggered once every 2.5s. A maximum of 3 Void Rifts can exist at any time. Skirk can absorb Void Rifts to generate 8 Serpent’s Subtlety points per Rift through the following methods:

• Hitting an opponent with a Charged Attack in Seven-Phase Flash mode (tap skill)
• Using her special Elemental Burst Havoc: Extinction in Seven-Phase Flash mode (tap skill)
• Holding her Elemental Skill

A4

When nearby Hydro or Cryo party members (other than Skirk) hit an opponent with a respective Hydro or Cryo attack (meaning infusions of other elemental types do not work), Skirk will gain a stack of “Death’s Crossing” for 20 seconds, up to a maximum of 3 stacks. Each stack’s duration is counted independently.

Each stack of “Death’s Crossing” increases her Normal Attack DMG in Seven-Phase Flash mode (tap skill) by 110%/120%/170% of its original DMG and increases her Elemental Burst DMG when performing Havoc: Ruin (normal Elemental Burst) by 105%/115%/160% of its original DMG.

Additional

Skirk will increase the Elemental Skill level of every character in the party by 1 if there are only Hydro/Cryo party members with at least 1 Cryo and 1 Hydro character.

Combos and Rotations:

Normal Attack DPS

Skirk has a very complicated kit that devolves into spamming normal attacks, in a similar vein to Arlecchino. Skirk has two potential combos depending on whether you want to use her burst buff or not:

tE N5Q N5 N5C N5

tE 2[N5C N5]

where tE means tap skill (and hE would be hold skill). With ATK SPD buffs, she can also go up to an additional N5 due to her animations having almost no hit lag. Note that the burst combo is more optimal because the burst cancel is significantly faster than performing a charged attack.

These are just the optimal combos assuming proper Void Rift generation, however. In reality, there might be some differences in Void Rift generation based on party member application and whether or not the enemy is freezable. So, another method of playing Skirk is to do her combo dynamically by checking her Serpent Subtlety stacks throughout the combo. You will do N5 until you see the Serpent Subtlety bar drop to an unsafe level and perform a CA. This will generally be after the 2nd or 3rd N5 in her combo chain.

Additionally, there are teams where during the first rotation, there will not be enough Void Rifts generated before Skirk takes the field. Skirk prefers to have 3 Void Rifts before she does her on field combo. If this does not happen, you can start the first rotation with Skirk’s hE and dashing. This provides her with 45 Serpent’s Subtlety stacks that do not deplete when she swaps. The downside is that then her skill goes on a 8 second cooldown, so you need to spend 8 seconds on your supports before swapping back to Skirk.

Burst DPS

Skirk can also be used as a burst DPS, preferably as a quickswap “sub-DPS” character rather than as the main DPS. Similarly to Mavuika, in this playstyle she uses her (hold) skill, then her burst, and then swaps off to the next character (generally your DPS). The difference is that Skirk does not provide any additional buff to the team like Mavuika does. Her damage is the only thing she provides to these teams. The bright side is, however, that she does a lot of damage this way, to the point of performing better than buffers like Shenhe, Yelan, or Citlali depending on the level of investment into your Hydro or Cryo main DPS.

Before Skirk takes the field, you want at least 2 Void Rifts and 3 stacks of Death’s Crossing. This means you generally want your 3 other characters to take the field before Skirk does. If this is not possible, then your first rotation will deal less damage—in subsequent rotations, Skirk should have all 3 Death’s Crossing stacks.

Constellations:

These calcs were done with Skirk using a F2P weapon (Calamity of Eshu R5 for NA playstyle and Finale of the Deep R5 for the Burst playstyle) and 4p Galleries.

Build(s):

Normal Attack DPS

Weapons

4p Finale of the Deep Galleries

Skirk’s best F2P weapon options are Finale of the Deep (Fontaine craftable) and Calamity of Eshu (5.2 event weapon) when shielded. Black Sword is also an option for her that can be comparable to Finale of the Deep with refines. With more ATK buffs and less DMG% buffs, it can perform better.

Most 5 star weapons and stat sticks will work with Skirk, generally performing better than her  4 star options other than Calamity of Eshu. Her best 5 star weapons are her signature, Jade Cutter, Haran, and Mistsplitter.

4p Marechaussee Hunter

In the case of using 4p Marechaussee Hunter, weapons that provide Crit see their value diminish compared to other weapons. Since the majority of her best weapons give Crit, you can see the difference between non-signature weapons decrease, and some of the heavier Crit weapons drop in ranking. An ATK% circlet can be better than a Crit circlet when using 4p MH and a high Crit stat stick like Light of Foliar Incision (Alhaitham signature).

Artifacts

Artifact Stats

Skirk wants a general ATK-scaling damage dealer build. Skirk can go for either an ATK goblet or a Cryo DMG goblet depending on how much DMG% she is receiving in her team and how many ATK buffs she has. Generally, there are not very many ATK buffers in her team archetypes, so going for an ATK goblet on the Finale of the Deep Galleries set is recommended slightly more than a Cryo DMG goblet.

Substat priority is:

Crit > ATK% >> ATK

Skirk does not use energy, so she has no energy requirements. In fact, ER is a dead stat for her like Elemental Mastery. There are only two stats she can use: Crit and ATK. This makes finding artifacts with high roll value for her more difficult.

Artifact Sets

The percentages below were calculated using Skirk, Citlali, Furina, Escoffier for the team with 75% uptime on Cryo resonance and Skirk on Calamity of Eshu R5.

Burst DPS

Weapons

Skirk loses quite a few options for weapons in this playstyle, and there aren’t many that she gains. Any 5 star stat stick can be okay, but likely will perform worse than Finale of the Deep R5. The only memorable 4 star weapons are Finale of the Deep (F2P craftable) and Wolf-Fang (Battlepass). As with the Normal Attack DPS playstyle, her best weapons are her signature, Azurelight, then Jade Cutter and Mistsplitter—with Haran not being an option due to the fact that it primarily buffs her Normal Attacks.

Artifacts

Artifact Stats

Skirk wants a general ATK-scaling damage dealer build. Skirk can go for either an ATK goblet or a Cryo DMG goblet depending on how much DMG% she is receiving in her team and how many ATK buffs she has. Generally, there are not very many ATK buffers in her team archetypes, so going for an ATK goblet on the Finale of the Deep Galleries set is recommended slightly more than a Cryo DMG goblet.

Substat priority is:

Crit > ATK% >> ATK

Skirk does not use energy, so she has no energy requirements. In fact, ER is a dead stat for her like Elemental Mastery. There are only two stats she can use: Crit and ATK. This makes finding artifacts with high roll value for her more difficult.

Artifact Sets

The percentages below were calculated with Skirk on Finale of the Deep R5.

Teams

This list is not exhaustive and serves simply to show examples of different archetypes.

Normal Attack DPS

Key Synergies

Example Teams

Description

Skirk can be played as a normal attack DPS with the Cryo and Hydro characters she synergizes with. She needs at least one other Cryo character in the party and at least one Hydro character.  In these teams, Skirk does a substantial amount of personal damage. Her best teams are the ones with Escoffier and Furina, with the last slot being a choice between Shenhe, Citlali, Yelan, and Dahlia. Without Escoffier, you will either be playing a team with Furina + Charlotte/Mika or using Yelan/Xingqiu and strong Cryo supports like Shenhe and/or Citlali.

Burst DPS

Description

Skirk can act as a quickswap nuke DPS in teams with another Hydro or Cryo DPS. Even when she isn’t the main focus of the team’s damage, she still deals an absurd amount of damage with her burst to the point that slotting her can result in more overall team damage than using a buffer like Citlali or Shenhe depending on the level of investment into your main DPS. These teams will really want to be played with Escoffier, since Skirk needs to be doing a lot of personal damage in order for her to be worth slotting into the team over other options.

This does not mean, however, that this playstyle is locked behind Escoffier, just that it won’t feel as particularly strong or notable compared to other team options if you do not have Escoffier since Skirk limits your team to only using Hydro and Cryo characters to get the most value out of her.

Conclusion

Strengths

Skirk can deal extremely competitive damage with the correct supports, allowing her to be one of the strongest DPS characters in the game under the right conditions. She is also easy to play, having relatively simplistic combos and great Quality of Life such as relatively high resistance to interruption and not having to rely on energy in order to deal damage.

She also has a competitive (and oftentimes best-in-slot) artifact in Marechaussee Hunter, meaning that when played with Furina, players may already have a really good build ready upon her release. She also has access to great F2P weapon options, including the craftable Finale of the Deep and the Calamity of Eshu event weapon (when played with a shielder).

Concerns

Skirk is very reliant on multiple limited 5* supports (namely Escoffier and Furina) in order to perform at her best and is impacted heavily in performance when played in suboptimal teams. If you care about meta and do not have these options, Skirk might not be a strong pick for you.

Skirk also will also have worse performance against enemies with an innate aura. Proper Void Rift generation in these teams will be difficult since only Cryo reactions will produce Void Rifts. Against enemies with a Pyro aura, Skirk’s teams will particularly struggle since no Void Rifts will be generated at all. This can be offset slightly due to her team’s ability to Melt/Vape hits.

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