A newly-discovered Genshin Impact bug has made Barbara far stronger than HoYoverse intended her to be in the anime RPG. For some reason, she’s able to create an infinite amount of Bloom reactions when her Elemental Skill comes into contact with the Dendro element. These continuous reactions then cause nonstop Dendro Core explosions to occur, which is bad news for any enemies in the immediate area, but good news for you.
It seems as though HoYoverse will patch this error soon, so make use of this busted Barbara bug while you still can. HoYoverse recently put out a statement inside the in-game Update Summary that specifically mentions Elemental Skills and Bloom reactions not working as intended, so the fix may come in the version 3.1 update.
However, in the meantime, players have been using Barbara to absolutely steamroll the Spiral Abyss. This Reddit thread shows two perfect examples of Barbara’s potential when used in the correct teams — one of which shows a player clearing the first half of Floor 12, Chamber 3 in about 40 seconds. This was done with Barbara, Fischl, Kazuha, and the Dendro Traveler to create Aggravate and Hyperbloom while Kazuha constantly Swirls everything.
The other clip showcases how Barbara’s broken Bloom functions in a Freeze team with Collei, the Dendro Traveler, and Diona. Diona and Barbara render the enemies immobile while Dendro Cores from Collei and the Traveler quickly eliminate them.
It can be difficult to see exactly what’s going on in both videos, but essentially, Barbara’s Elemental Skill applies Hydro to all enemies or entities that enter her small AoE. If she applies Hydro inside an area affected by Dendro while in combat, Dendro Cores will appear. The appearance of these cores causes Barbara’s Skill to apply Hydro once they enter her AoE, thus creating even more cores. And this continues infinitely without a cooldown, thanks to the bug.
Currently, this bug only works for Barbara, but it may also work for Nilou once she arrives in version 3.1 with Cyno and Candace since she seems to apply Hydro in a similar fashion.