If you’ve ever been stuck on a story boss for 20 minutes, chipping away at a health bar that barely moves because your team has the wrong elemental matchups, you know how frustrating that feels. I’ve been there too, grinding a level 30 boss with a random team I picked in my first hour of playing, before I figured out how to change your team in Wuthering Waves to fit every type of content. This guide walks you through every step of the process, plus common mistakes I’ve made (and learned from) so you never get stuck with a mismatched roster again.
Step-by-Step Guide to Change Your Team in Wuthering Waves
Swapping your team is far simpler than many new players realize, and you can do it almost anywhere in the open world, as long as you’re not in the middle of an active combat encounter or a cutscene. I’ve tested this process on both PC and mobile versions of the game, and the steps are almost identical across platforms, so you don’t have to learn separate workflows depending on what you play on.
Follow these exact steps to adjust your active roster:
- Open your main menu by pressing the Esc key on PC or tapping the menu icon in the top right corner of your mobile screen. Select the Roster tab from the list of options.
- Click on the Team Setup button located in the bottom right corner of the Roster screen. This will pull up your current active 4-person team.
- Tap or click on the unit you want to remove from your active team. This will bring up a list of all available units you own that are not currently assigned to a team.
- Select the unit you want to add to your active team, then click the Save Team button to confirm your changes.
You can also rearrange the order of your active team members on this screen by dragging and dropping their portraits into your preferred order. This lets you set your main DPS as the first slot for quick access when you load into a fight, which I’ve found cuts down on wasted time switching characters mid-combat. If you play on controller, the team order matches the D-pad shortcuts, so rearranging to fit your playstyle will make combat feel far more intuitive.
Key Considerations Before Swapping Team Members
Just because you can swap your team any time you’re out of combat doesn’t mean you should make changes on a whim. There are a few critical factors to weigh first to make sure your new team works as well as you want it to, instead of leaving you with even worse performance than you had before.
First, make sure you’re accounting for elemental synergy first and foremost. Wuthering Waves’ combat system rewards stacking matching elemental resonances, which give permanent buffs to your entire team as long as you have two or three units of the same element in your active roster. For example, two Aero units give a 15% movement speed buff, which is perfect for open world exploration, while two Glacio units give a 20% crit rate boost against frozen enemies, which is ideal for boss fights. Swapping out a unit that’s contributing to a valuable resonance for a random damage unit will often lower your overall team performance, even if the new unit has higher base stats.
You also want to check if the unit you’re adding has leveled up gear and abilities before you throw them into your active team. I’ve made this mistake before, swapping in a shiny new 5-star unit I just pulled, only to realize they were level 1 and did 10 damage per hit against level 40 overworld enemies. Take 2 minutes to upgrade their level, weapon, and key abilities before you add them to your main team to avoid that frustrating mistake. You don’t have to max them out immediately, but getting them to 80% of the level of your other team members will make a huge difference.
Finally, think about what you’re planning to do next before you make any swaps. A team built for fast open world exploration won’t work well for a tough abyss floor, and a team built for single target boss damage won’t be great for clearing large waves of mob enemies. Tailor your swaps to your upcoming activity to get the most out of every change you make.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Adjusting Your Roster
Even if you follow the step-by-step process correctly, there are a few common pitfalls that trip up new players when they first start changing their teams. I’ve run into all of these myself, so I’m breaking them down to help you skip the frustration.
One of the most frequent mistakes I see is forgetting to save your team changes before exiting the menu. The game won’t auto-save your swaps unless you hit that save button, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve spent 5 minutes adjusting my team for a boss fight, only to load into the encounter and realize I still have my old exploration team equipped. Always double check that you hit the save button before you exit the roster menu to avoid this.
Another common mistake is ignoring team role balance. A lot of new players will stack four DPS units in their team thinking that more damage equals faster clears, but that usually backfires. You end up with no healer to keep your team alive, no shielder to block big boss attacks, and you spend more time reviving fallen units than you do dealing damage. A balanced team with one DPS, one sub-DPS, one support, and one healer or shielder will almost always outperform a full DPS roster in 90% of in-game content. That’s not to say you can’t run fun meme teams for casual overworld play, but for high-difficulty content, balance is always better.
You also want to avoid swapping out units that have ongoing buffs active for your entire roster. Some support units have passive buffs that apply as long as they’re in your active team, even if you don’t play them directly. Swapping them out for another unit will remove those buffs, which can tank your entire team’s damage output without you even realizing it. Check the passive effects of every unit on your current team before you swap them out to avoid losing those valuable buffs.
How to Optimize Your New Team for Maximum Performance
Once you’ve swapped your team and saved your changes, there are a few quick tweaks you can make to make sure your new roster works as smoothly as possible. These small adjustments only take a couple of minutes, but they make a huge difference in both combat and open world play.
First, adjust your team order to match your playstyle. I like to put my main DPS in the first slot, my healer in the second slot, my shielder in the third, and my sub-DPS in the fourth. That way I can switch to my healer with one quick press if my health gets low, instead of fumbling with multiple swaps mid-boss attack. You can rearrange your team order right on the same team setup screen where you swap units, so it only takes a few seconds to adjust. If you play with friends in co-op, you can also adjust your order to prioritize support units if you’re playing the healer role for your group.
Next, take 5 minutes to test your new team against some low-stakes overworld enemies before you jump into a tough boss fight or abyss run. This lets you get a feel for how the units work together, if their ability cooldowns line up well, and if you’re missing any key buffs or healing that you thought you had. I once spent 20 minutes building a team for a new boss, only to realize the units’ abilities didn’t combo well at all when I tested them in the overworld, which saved me from wasting a boss attempt later on.
Finally, take advantage of the game’s saved team preset feature if you’re swapping teams often. You can save up to 5 different team presets in the team setup menu, so you can have one preset for exploration, one for boss fights, one for abyss runs, and one for event content. That means you don’t have to manually swap units every time you switch between activities, which saves a ton of time if you play the game regularly. You can rename each preset to match its purpose, so you never accidentally load the wrong team for the content you’re running.
At the end of the day, learning how to change your team in Wuthering Waves is one of the most basic but impactful skills you can master as a new player. It lets you adapt to every type of content the game throws at you, make the most of every new unit you pull, and avoid getting stuck on tough fights just because you’re using a mismatched roster. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different team compositions to find what works best for your playstyle, and remember to test out new teams against low-stakes enemies before you jump into high-difficulty content. Even small swaps can make a massive difference in how enjoyable the game feels to play.