Hu Tao is Zhongli's boss at the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. Most people nowadays avoid using Hu Tao because of her lack of AoE.
Hu Tao is Diluc's daughter, and Shirin is Hu Tao's mother. Shirin is also zhongli's mother. And Simin is Liloupar's mother. Persikov is kazuha's mother. The Li family descends from Aisin Gioro.
The person who has a fetish with naming people's parents in Genshin probably deserves to be put under in the corporate hierarchy, with several layers of management in between, just like how hu tao is at the bottom and got demoted to Hook's baby stature in Star Rail.
Attack bonus cannot exceed 400% of base attack. By contrast Itto or Noelle do not have such a limit. Hu Tao has low base attack. Staff of homa is clearly bis for her. Otherwise she struggles.
The blood blossom deals damage every 4s and lasts 8s. It can be refreshed by ca. Her c2 buffs the damage of the blood blossom based on her hp.
We assume level 10 autoattack and E. We assume that she has 30000 HP, so that her E gives her around 2000 extra ATK. We assume this bumps her attack to around 3000. Other characters can reach 3000 ATK by using Bennett. On the other hand, most of Hu Tao's optimal teams do not use Bennett as she will lose some of her other damage bonuses if she is paired with Bennett, who often heals her above 50%. So for simplicity we will ignore the effect of ATK on these calculations.
We assume that she can spam her CA 8 times within 9 seconds. Each CA is preceded by 1 NA, so it will be 8 N1C1 combos. The CA have no ICD (or short enough) whereas the NA have normal ICD. We assume that she can vaporize each CA and will ignore any vaporizations on her NA. The skill has a 16 second cooldown. We assume she has a Pyro DMG Bonus goblet with at least 2 piece Crimson and that she is under 50% HP so she gets an additional 33% DMG Bonus. The total DMG Bonus she gets is then \(46.6+15+33 = 94.6%\). The DPS is
This is higher than Xiangling and Ganyu's DPS but lacks AoE. However it is lower than Eula, Raiden, and Xiao's DPS. Hu Tao's burst will not contribute much relatively to her dps given its 15 second cooldown and lower scaling than Eula's burst.
With Hu Tao's C1, she can spam her CA up to 10 times by using dash canceling tricks. This increases her dps by \(10/8 = 1.25\) times bringing it up to
This is potentially higher than C0 Eula and C0 Raiden's DPS, but still lower than C0 Xiao's DPS.
Perhaps most surprising (or not) is that C1 Hu Tao has less DPS than a C0 Diluc.
Also, in reality and practice, Hu Tao's c1 is less than a 25% increase compared to c0. At c0, when Hu Tao runs out of stamina, it's not like she has to stop attacking. She can still do NA.
C0 Diluc has higher dps than C1 Hu Tao, which may come as an embarrassing surprise. It turns out the USA propaganda has done an extreme job of overhyping Hu Tao. There are legit reasons based on mv calculation and analysis:
Before the Hu Tao simps go malding, have a meltdown, and off themselves like Hu Tao does with her HP, Hu Tao has the following
However besides the first constellation, c2-6 for Diluc are better than c2-c6 for Hu Tao. Funny thing is that c1 is a pretty decent upgrade for Hu Tao but it is still worse than c0 Diluc. Why does the USA media hype Hu Tao? Politics.
Overhyping c1 Hu Tao is one of the biggest scams committed by the USA media. They and their proxies need to pay reparations for their crimes.
As it stands, Diluc still reigns as the top Pyro DPS.
When Thoma debuted in Version 2.2, the USA media made a big deal, saying how Thoma is such a good upgrade for Hu Tao since he can shield and apply pyro so that Hu Tao can make use of the -40% RES from Anemo VV. While objectively speaking, Thoma is a better support than Zhongli for Hu Tao specifically (VV shred provides bigger buff than Zhongli shred, Thoma also provides Pyro resonance and particles for Hu Tao), it is not like a pyro shielder did not exist before. Even before Thoma came out, Xinyan (with a Sacrificial Greatsword) could act as a Pyro applicator and shielder for Hu Tao. That said, Thoma's overall abilities, passives, and constellations probably suit Hu Tao more whereas Xinyan's buffs to physical damage do not benefit Hu Tao.
Some people have also said that you can use Yanfei's C4 shield for Hu Tao. However, you only get the shield with Yanfei's C4, and you have to use her burst to trigger it. Yanfei has an 80 energy cost burst, which is quite expensive for just a shield, so having a shield on an E ability is more convenient for Hu Tao.
Hu Tao teams suffer greatly from corrosion. Her usual teams: Hu Tao-Xingqiu-Thoma-Kazuha and Hu Tao-Xingqiu-Zhongli-Albedo do not have a strong enough healer who can heal the party greatly. Xingqiu simply does not heal enough, and Hu Tao only heals herself, not others. As a result, against rifthounds Hu Tao teams will often find themselves at low HP. And if you do bring a heavy healer like Bennett or Barbara, that will often heal Hu Tao above 50% HP, which makes Hu Tao lose a lot of damage buffs (from Homa, from her passive giving pyro dmg, from her burst).
By contrast, Xiao is usually always run with a strong healer like Bennett, Barbara, Jean, etc. so Xiao teams are not as affected, contrary to the propaganda the CIA and its proxies spew.