With the large amount of enemies and bosses in Genshin Impact, it's hardly a surprise that some of them have some pretty annoying moves.
- The Large Hydro Slimes' bubble attack. If it connects, you will be encased and have to break free, just as if you are Frozen. But unlike Frozen which requires both Hydro and Cryo elements, this single attack is able to achieve the same effect with only a single element. It is particularly dangerous when you are being surrounded, as you become defenseless and open to multiple enemy hits. Finally, players might not anticipate it coming because there's no easy telegraph or some audio cue to signal it, so you either need to constantly watch out for this attack, or take out the Large Hydro Slimes first.
- Any enemy attack or explosion that sends you flying off a cliff. The Hilichurl Berserker's charging attack is infamous for this reason because there's no aerial recovery mechanic or a method to regain control if your playable character is pushed from a great height, making it a guaranteed death if you land on solid ground.
- Ruin Guards have a few:
- Their homing missiles cluster has strong tracking and is almost nigh impossible to dodge unless you're far away from it. On higher World Levels, those missiles can easily take out half your health or even instantly kill your squishy characters. It gets worse when you're fighting multiple Ruin Guards as you're on the risk of getting nailed by homing missiles coming from off-screen.
- Their Spin Attack has almost no window for a counter-attack except for a perfectly-timed aimed shot on their weak spot, which is easier said than done given how it's constantly moving. It also becomes more dangerous when you're fighting them in an enclosed space since you have to be mindful of your surroundings as they can corner you and take out a huge chunk of your HP, if not outright deplete it to zero. And god forbid if you fight multiple Ruin Guards and they all start spinning...
- The Ruin Grader's version is even worse, since it's twice the size of Ruin Guard and it has longer limbs. You won't have enough time to escape once it starts spinning. It also has a ranged attack where it bombards the battlefield. Better hope you have an archer to drop it.
- Dendro Samachurls have a move where they create a field that applies Dendro to all characters within it for a few seconds. Harmless enough... Unless you're using a Pyro character, in which case you have a strong chance of setting yourself on fire and taking a large amount of self-inflicted damage. With how popular Bennett is, this move can be dangerous to underestimate. Even if one brings a different element to the fight, Pyro is by far the most common element among Hilichurl-type enemies, turning a single hit from any one of them into a devastating blow.
- While fighting the Ruin Hunter, if the player is too far, at a different altitude from it or takes too long to kill it, it will fly up into the air and start bombarding the player with missiles. Not only do its attacks in this state have a large AoE and do high damage, but it's impossible to hit the Ruin Hunter and get it to come down without a bow user, forcing the player to endure the assault for a long period of time or run away. In particular, Kazuha's Elemental Skill, which momentarily lifts him into the air, is more than enough to trigger a Ruin Hunter's airborne state!
- The Golden House boss, Childe, isn't too hard with a ranged character, but he has two powerful attacks that are known for catching players off-guard. His fan-named "lightning jump" attack is lethal for all but the tankiest characters with a shield up. But what makes it this trope is that it's unavoidable unless you use extremely obscure tactics. You can get rid of the targeting ring on your character by touching the barrier at the edge of the arena. The ring will drop to the floor, and the boss will target where it falls while your character can run away. And even if you can do this, you have to run a deceptively considerable distance, because the jump produces a rather sizable Electro shockwave on impact. And once he goes One-Winged Angel, the shockwave gets bigger and more damaging. His other attack can summon a large humpback whale made of water after charging for a while. Not only does it deal massive AoE Hydro damage when it connects, the whale also covers a significant portion of the arena when it lands.
- The Resurgent Cryo Regisvine's special blizzard attack which can near-instantly kill your characters, which can only be survived by making it to a shield in time, and the indicators for where the next shield will spawn are very easy to miss. On top of that, it has a pattern in which after said blizzard attack, the boss will do its ice wave attack 3 times before doing its blizzard attack again; it will stop this pattern once it performs said pattern for the third time. The problem is that its weak point has moved on top of its corolla, so that you can only safely break its pattern if you bring an archer and use aimed shots on it.
- The Primo Geovishap's signature attack, Primordial Shower. It has an extremely large AoE, making it extremely difficult to outrun, its attack power is high enough to put any character's HP in the red if not pull a One-Hit Kill outright, and it can use it pretty frequently during the fight. The upside is that by having any sort of shield the damage is completely nullified and it damages the boss instead, and the game warns you very explicitly when it's going to happen and how to counter it. However, if you don't have any character that can generate shields in your party, you're NOT gonna have a good time.
- Each Abyss Mage has a particularly dangerous attack that will complicate things in Clear Pool and Mountain Cavern domain. Hydro Mages have the same bubble attack as Large Hydro Slimes, and they can cast multiple of them at a time. Pyro Mages in the domain are buffed with a homing fireball that explodes a few times before homing in to your location again, and they can release it even when they are stunned, so you can't just wail on them mindlessly. Lastly, Cryo Mages drop 3 icicles that create constant Cryo area-of-effect damage where they fall. If your character is melee, you will take constant Cryo damage as you beat them down. Special care should be taken when using Bennett's Burst, as the Melt reaction is going to drain your health alarmingly quick.
- Azhdaha's different possible elemental infusions give him a few.
- From both Pyro and Cryo variations, he has a move that summon giant meteors to track you and crash into the ground you're standing, with them being so large that you'll likely just barely avoid them and maybe even jump right into the crosshairs of another one. And after they land, they'll affect the ground so that standing on them will cause damage to you, which can limit your movement options.
- Cryo Azhdaha has a version of the above move on steroids, where he'll bury himself into the ground with only his tail protruding. They not only have a much larger AoE that makes them harder to dodge, but they'll release a wave of protruding icicles that'll make them temporarily uninhabitable.
- When infused with Electro, there are times when he'll burrow into the ground with his tail sticking out, and prepare to send a wave of Electro in a certain direction, with you having to get to a patch of ground that's going to be unaffected. It doesn't sound too bad, but where exactly he sends the Electro is completely randomized, meaning that while the safe patch could end up right next to you, it can also be on the exact opposite of where you are, to the point that even with Sayu, you'd probably just barely reach the safe patch. And while this can be mitigated by standing close to him for ease of getting to safe spots and maybe attack his protruding tail while you're at it, that doesn't stop the fact that you'll need to react quickly to avoid the Electro, and that the attack will effectively strike quicker the closer you are.
- Also courtesy of Electro Azhdaha, his Electro version of the Elemental meteor move is arguably the most troublesome. While smaller compared to the Pyro and Cryo variations, they have an AoE that sends lightning strikes in up to eight different directions, meaning you'll need to make good distance to avoid, which can be hard with how fast they strike and you may end up running into another, or precisely time your invulnerability frames.
- The Maguu Kenki's wind blade barrage attack is fairly simple in this regard: A fast, difficult to avoid attack that can easily one-shot your active character if they aren't built to take the absurd amounts of damage it deals.
- The Thunder Manifestation has two attacks. One has it spawn a pillar of Electro that chases you around and around, forcing you to flee while the blasted bat takes potshots at you, lest you get a huge chunk of your health bitten off. It also eats through shields quickly unless you have high enough Shield Strength. The second has it summon two highly damaging giant walls of Electro that will close in, forcing you to run out of range. And it will occasionally summon the walls as you're running from the pillar.
- In her second phase, there are times that La Signora will turn herself into a giant flaming tornado who darts around the room, while launching smaller but no less damaging tornadoes in different directions. And if you thought you could shoot her while she's like this (which in itself is a challenge due to how fast she moves), she's completely invincible in this state, so all you can sometimes do is just run and desperately try to avoid her and her new projectiles, while praying the flaming floor she's creating doesn't kill you.
- The Dendro Hypostasis' revival phase heavily limits the teams that can be built to counter it. A Dendro character is mandatory for that phase to "cleanse" the boss via activating three Restorative Piths, and an Electro character is encouraged to one-cycle the boss by enhancing at least one activated Pith. Since the Dendro Hypostasis is immune to Dendro, the Dendro character is deadweight until the revival phase. To make things worse, the Dendro character needs to apply Dendro accurately and quickly to activate all three Restorative piths in time, as the revival phase only lasts around 22 seconds; some Dendro characters who do not wield bows or catalysts (such as the Dendro Traveler and Yaoyaonote ) cannot activate all three Restorative Pith in one round due to skill cooldown. While, as of 3.8, only Nahida, Yaoyao, and Kaveh need this boss' drops, it has appeared in certain Spiral Abyss lineups, meaning if your Dendro party member has fallen before or during the boss fight, your Spiral Abyss run is over.
- All of the Abyss Lectors and Abyss Heralds generate an elemental explosion when they enter their shield phase, which does massive damage. However, the Abyss Herald: Frost Fall has a far more powerful explosion than the other enemies in this category - enough raw damage to one-shot an unshielded DPS unit at level 90.
