Ayato has lower base attack (299) than Tartaglia (301). This game is called Genshin/Yuanshen for a reason. This guy Ayato is also a servant to the Almighty Shogun.
Genshin released patch notes saying that Ayato had a chance of extending corrosion. This game is funny sometimes.
Don't pull for Ayato ever.
Has an E like Childe/Hu Tao/Yoimiya and a Q like Ganyu.
Here come the Ganyu simps. But this has a more expensive 80 energy cost and 2s downtime. Sub-dps is unreliable even with Venti as there is anti-synergy. Ayato q lasts 18s, whereas Venti's q lasts less time, so enemies will not be cc'd the whole time, meaning there will be more inefficiency (not every raindrop will hit).
Ayato has a passive similar to Barbara, which will regenerate energy over time up to 40/80. It is an interesting symbolic choice given the voice actors.
He makes sussy food. Here come the Hu Tao simps.
Xiangling: however since Ayato's E only lasts 6s whereas XL's Q lasts 10-14s, Ayato does not fit Xiangling as well as Childe, who can keep up for the duration of XL's burst
Yun Jin: she can buff Ayato's NA, but Ayato has an HP self-buff so both the EO set and YJ buff will hit diminishing returns. Yun Jin's damage increase is more effective for characters like Yoimiya or Razor. That said, the other buffs from Yun Jin's constellations (C6) can still help Ayato.
Anemo buffers: Venti, Kazuha, Sucrose to provide CC and VV shred
Electro characters for EC teams, but in version 2.6, Genshin said the EC reaction had a bug for Ayato
Cryo for freeze teams
Dendro for bloom and hyperbloom: here Ayato can work with Nahida, Yaoyao, Nilou, Baizhu, Kuki. His off-field burst can in some ways support characters like Cyno or Alhaitham (although Yelan, XQ would be better for off-field).
Ayato does not have a tailor-made support or even a tailor-made set for that matter.
4p EO, 4p heart of depth, 4p glad, 4p shimenawa (not as recommended since you probably want to use his burst rather than drain energy), 2p heart/2p tenacity, and combinations thereof
The sword that released with him, the Jingjin sword with 33% crit rate, is pretty good. It has higher base attack than the jade cutter, and Ayato does want attack. In fact the Jingjin sword is a better long-term investment than the character itself.
If using Ayato with Furina (for say double hydro hp buff), then it may be possible to use Marechausse for NA and crit rate. But since Ayato is NA based, he can work with XQ/Yelan already (even though his dps window is 6s).
Ayato's E (镜花 Jinghua) lasts 6s and has a 12s cd. Within its duration, he can do 15 NA (the 3-hit combo 5 times). For a level 10 E, assuming 4p EO, the dps is $$x=(349.35*5)*(1.466+.2)/12 = 242.507125$$ The .2 is from the 20% NA damage from a level 10 Q. Dps is meh. Childe has higher dps with riptide. And Ayato's hydro application is worse with the icd, so Ayato is a worse enabler. The AoE is fair, but Ayato looks like a literal stone 石 while auto-attacking. During his E, Ayato cannot CA or PA. During Childe's E, at least he can CA and has riptide for hydro application. Moreover, Childe has the freedom to choose the duration. He can choose it short at 6s like Ayato or he can last longer up to 30s to accomodate other characters like Xiangling. Meanwhile, Ayato is stuck at 6s or less.
Ayato also has a water illusion that explodes once with 200.6% scaling. He also has the Namisen HP scaling. Level 10 E gives 1.11% HP per stack, max 4 stacks at C0 (at C2 becomes 5). He gains 1 stack every .1s. He attacks every 6/15=.4s. One of his passives gives 2 stacks at the start. Illusion explosion gives max stacks. So assume he has max 4 stacks the whole time. Assume he has 30k hp (if he has an ATK sands this may be harder to achieve) and 2k atk (Ayato is on the lower end of attack at 299, lower than Tatar). Max 4 stacks is 4.44% of hp, which is 1332 bonus damage. Scaling on shunsuiken (纯水剑) is around 100% each (actually a bit more) at level 10. Factoring in Bennett gives say 3000 attack, so base damage is around 3000. So the hp scaling gives roughly 4332/3000=1.444 times increase in damage $$1.444x = 350.1802885$$ This is Keqing level. Then add illusion explosion $$(200.6)*(1.466)/12=24.5066333333$$ The dps goes to around 375 mv. Yoimiya does more damage (and has higher base attack).
How do these three main hydro dps compare? Childe has quadratic riptide and becomes better the more enemies there are within a concentrated aoe. He scales purely with atk. Ayato's (Otto's) aoe is decent, but what makes him different is his off-field application. He dual-scales with atk and hp. Noctis has great aoe and very high natural damage too. He scales purely on hp. Childe, and Ayato, are also reliant on Bennett to maximize their dps, whereas Noctis is not (scaling with hp).
Childe and Noctis have higher dps on-field, whereas Ayato can be used more for off-field. XQ, Yelan have better off-field hydro app, so Ayato is somewhere in between Childe and Yelan in terms of on-field/off-field playstyle. So he tends to run into the jack of trades, master of none situation.
So the question becomes: who is the ultimate hydro dps, Childe or Noctis? For general situations, when enemies are spread out or far away, and even in single-target, Noctis can be a top hydro dps. Noctis is also not burdened by potentially long cooldowns. However, Childe tends to shine more when there are many enemies (3+) within a concentrated aoe, even outdamaging Noctis in those cases. Childe also tends to synergize better with vape teams involving XL.
The Yuan dynasty unified the Song, Jin, and Liao dynasties. The Yuan was founded by the Mongols, and Tatars served in the Mongol armies to conquer the Song dynasty.
Zhao Kuangyin founded the Song dynasty by murdering Li Yu via poison. But Li Yu was no saint as Li murdered Lin Renzhao and Pan You (潘佑) by poison as well. So when 'lin' and 'pan' are used in the epithets for Ayato, it symbolizes Genshin's microagression/attack on the Li family. During the Yuan dynasty, there was a classic play written about a lady named Zhao Pan'er.
At the same time, Zhao Gou was responsible for the political persecution and death of Yue Fei, considered a national hero in China.