Should You Pull for Lan Yan?

Lan Yan is finally out, and with this comes the question of whether she’s worth pulling for or not. Being a 4-star unit, the answer to that is basically set. My general advice is to never pull for 4-star units as you have no way of guaranteeing you will get them. However, in Lan Yan’s case, this is a bit different. It is different because you can get a free copy of her from the events that will be running in the second phase of Version 5.3. This means that this is no longer a question of whether you should be pulling for Lan Yan or not, but rather if you should be pulling for her constellations or not.

Is Lan Yan Strong?

Honestly, Lan Yan is not that great at C0. Her only gimmick is being the first Anemo Shielder in the game. This by itself is nice, but it only feels bad when you realize that Lan Yan’s shield is nothing spectacular. It’s way weaker than Zhongli’s shield, and while its duration is not bad, the CD on her Elemental Skill is definitely bad. The shield has a duration of 12.5 seconds, while the Elemental Skill’s CD sits at 16 seconds, making it impossible to have a constant uptime on Lan Yan’s shield at C0. Is it possible with later constellations you might ask, and my answer to that would be yes, but only at C6. At C6 Lan Yan gets two charades to her Elemental Skills, which makes it so that you will have a constant uptime on her shield. Alongside this, you also get the benefits from her C2, which makes it so that you can refresh Lan Yan’s shield to its full strength each time you Normal Attack. Overall, a good stopping point for Lan Yan would be at C2, due to the great utility it provides to her shield, but if you really want to send it, then your next stopping point should be all the way at C6.

Honestly, I don’t think Lan Yan is worth it at C0. Her shield is weak, and it just feels clunky trying to use it in rotations. Yes, you can use her with characters like Arlecchino to get some decent results, but with a shield that breaks with 2-3 hits, your Arlecchino won’t be hitting much anyway. It feels sad that Lan Yan’s utility is locked behind her C2.

Should You Pull?

I honestly would hold off on pulling for Lan Yan. While she seems decent at C2 and C6, I don’t feel like she has the needed tools to give back the pull investment. Besides, whenever you’re pulling for a 4-star character you never know what you’re going to get. You might spend 100 pulls and still not get a copy of Lan Yan, so honestly I’d rather save my pulls for future 5-stars rather than risk it all for 2-3 copies of Lan Yan. She seems interesting, and being the first Anemo Shielder she is definitely unique, but I will only grab a copy of her from the events in Version 5.3 and not bother with any constellations. That is all from me. See you at the next character release!