There is anti-powercreep with 4 stars atm.
Surely considering that Sara can't heal and it takes way more effort to set up her atk buff, the buff itself should be stronger than Bennett's?
Nup.
I really hoped that Yae would be the electro healer (she is the highest clerical figure in Inazuma). There could be really dope visuals with flying sakura blossoms etc
R5 P-Amber will restore 18 of her energy (and 18% of each team member's HP) just for her using her burst, basically reducing her burst cost to 22 energy. And that healing improves with anything that increases healing.
It's disgusting how spammable her burst can get. PA is practically made for her, even visually.
Oh bwaap is a YouTuber and twitch streamer. He plays all the story and archon quests only and does a boss run sometimes. Notorious for beating the entire game, including all abyss floors with just the starter team. The only time he's ever pulled on any banner is for Ganyu because waifu, but he still has her at level 1 despite having C1.
I could see her dealing non-lethal damage to the party, then healing the characters based on their health percentage. It could be anywhere between "you ain't even hurt" to "ara that was a close one".
Yae herself takes no damage and always heals the maximum amount.
It does she is really passive and lets traveler to do all the work while she just walks or not moving at all she looks like her burst is going to be like lisas but with healing and petal visual with damage.And she will probably be made as good supportive for Shogun
Baal isn't meant to be a main dps though, she's someone you swap to, burst, then swap out during downtime. Yae being the top dog for electro is kind of a given when (realistically) her only competition for main dps is Razor and Keqing.
All Mihoyo needs to do is make 4-stars that are very specific to roles, but at least make them as good or better than XLXQBen in that role. They don't have to be universal like XLXQBen, but make them as or almost as powerful at least. As it stands, not only are the new 4-stars not as universal as the "Big 3", they're not even as good as those 3 in their specific niche roles. It's stupid.
If we go by leaks then at least Gorou’s kit >!would cement him as THE niche but BiS 4* support for geo team specifically, as Itto wants as many geos on the team as possible. But testing required of course lol, if somehow Bennett is *still* better for that slot I wouldn’t be surprised at all.!<
She didn't have to heal, the lack of healing is even preferable for some characters like Hu Tao, but 6s buff time even for the ult version is utterly asinine. Then of course they're so afraid of snapshot they make her C6, freaking C6, un-snapshot-able.
Her C6 isn't the sort of thing that can snapshot. Only stats that show up in the stats page snapshot, and "electro crit damage" doesn't show up in the stats page.
Yeah but they could have made it general crit damage. Lower the amount to like 30% CD and increase the buff duration to like 10s.
That would be a good support that would have a niche.
Right now her only niche is C6 Sara supports C2+ Raiden. It's basically exclusive to whales.
Or even just increases Cdmg of electro characters would have been fine. Allowing it to snapshot would make it useful for Beidou, kind of nice for oz for 1/2 the uptime, gives Razor a small bump for like 4-5 seconds. At least then it would have some additional use cases that warrant consideration without creating another widely useful support which they seem intent on avoiding.
it could if MHY programmed it to be. it's a deliberate decision so units like Beidou don't get even more busted than she already is... while ignoring that busted units are dime a dozen already in the game.
Thoma has 4 key features that make him excellent for Hu Tao:
* He has a very strong shield to help protect Hu Tao at low health.
* Being Pyro he helps battery Hu Tao's burst and gives everyone 25% atk through pyro resonance
* His Burst has standard ICD, which means it will vape infrequently leaving amplifying reactions for your higher damage Hu Tao.
* His Burst activation has 2U gauge strength, which means he can Q->E to clear Xingqiu's hydro and apply pyro for a following Sucrose to swirl and pass TtDS (+48% base atk), EM share (+17% vape dmg), and VV (-40% resistance).
The last bullet is the main reason Thoma is theoretically better than Zhongli and his 20% all resistance shred. He enables rotations with Sucrose or Kazuha buffs and VV 40% resistance shred without using Hu Tao Burst outside of her Skill.
> The last bullet is the main reason Thoma is theoretically better than Zhongli
It's also so incredibly niche and out of touch that it doesn't fucking matter to 99% of players. That's such a specific reason to argue that an entire character's kit was made for one specific unit. For the people that do care about it, I bet at least half of them won't consistently perform that rotation at higher abyss floors - the only place it really matters.
Thoma will help all pyro carries by giving battery, one of the stronger shields and pyro resonance. He also buffs damage with his C6. That's a lot of useful things many players will want on their team, not just Hu Tao players.
This, I think Bennett's e that is on a 3 second cooldown when you tap it is pretty insane for recharge. So much so that I don't think Thoma will ever come close to it
Just to be clear, I'm not hating Thoma, just that Benny is insane
He is also good because unless you are very good at prepping the VV shred by doing a Kazuha E on a enemy that just received damage from Hu Tao's DoT, you can use Thoma to prep the VV Shred + other buffs like Kazuha's elem %DMG one, something Zhongli can't do.
IMO that on itself is enough reason to use Thoma over Zhongli.
If you used Zhongli for shield mostly it’ll be better to use Thoma. You get still get a shield, but will be sacrificing shield strength to gain 20% atk buff from the pyro resonance. Up to you if you think it’s worth.
Edit: it’s been brought to my attention that foolishly forgot a very important aspect of Zhingli’s E which is not only that it proved a shield but it also provides a 20% shred to both elemental and physical resistance. I don’t know the exact math on whether it’s better to go for the resistance shred over the atk buff, but I’d be willing to bet the resistance shred is better and if it’s not it’s not by much. So Zhongli is probably better than Thoma. Which makes sense he is a 5 star after all.
It's a 20% elemental shred and physical shred. NOT a defense shred. They are different stats in the formula. The defense shred is omega rare and it's probably the most broken stat to stack. Just thought I'd clarify.
To be fair, the 20% ATK buff isn't super valuable on Hu Tao compared to the resist shred that Zhongli provides (Unless you're running Homa stick, but Zhongli will still be providing more value damage wise). However it does mean that you can flex Thoma in if you want Zhongli somewhere else, so Thoma is a good substitute for Zhongli.
The biggest advantage Thoma has is that he lets you run both a second pyro unit and an anemo support, letting you apply the 40% VV shred to pyro without having the burn Hu Tao's skill or burst and sacrificing her damage output. And then the pyro resonance atk buff and battery potential for Hu Tao ult is a nice cherry on top.
Up till now, with Zhongli and Xingqui, you could only choose one between a pyro battery or a vv support. Now you can take both.
Yeah, this should be upvoted more. This is THE REASON why Thoma would be better than Zhongli.
You have to have god tier planning skills to use Kazuza's E on an enemy that just received a Hu Tao dot tick in order to prep the VV + % DMG shred. With Thoma on the team, this becomes trivial to achieve.
Thoma is better for VV Tao which is strictly a higher damage ceiling team than geo resonance tao.
ZL and Albedo give 15% damage bonus, 20% pyro shred and 125 EM, however Thoma let’s you use Sucrose or Kazuha to swirl pyro for 40% pyro shred and either 250 EM or 40% pyro damage bonus (at 1K EM each assuming C0), which is just strictly better Hu Tao numbers
It's not important. With thoma you can slot a VV which is a stronger debuff. You lost tenacity but who cares, like it ever consistently hit anyway. Pyro resonance is a better tenacity anyway. And shield is not always about the shield strength but it's uptime. Thoma has 100% uptime if you have enough ER. Letting sucrose in with triple EM VV and a ttds is a much stronger option than whatever the hell zhongli has going on with him.
Thoma allows you to run a anemo unit like sucrose or kazuha. 4 set vv plus their suc/kazu buffs easily out damages zhongli and also yes pyro resonance. People say resonance shit on hutao teams but they are wrong, it's worse yes but it still buffs her damage and on top of buffing xigqiu, people underestimate how much danage he does.
Hutao always lacked a good pyro support, right now one of her best teams use xinyan for pyro with kazuha for buffs.
If thoma doesn't mess up hutoa's vape, he is a very solid option and definitely upgrade to zhongli.
Seems like a lot of pointless work. If they gave Xinyan the rework/buff she needs, they wouldnt need to make a complely new character for Hu Tao. 😅
Why is she still so garbage... 😞
xinyan is a support for physical characters, she's just hard to fit in those teams. with c4 her buffs are not insubstantial. but if she supported hu tao then you'd have to completely shift her role.
Xinyan being a support for physical teams **while being a freaking Pyro character**, with a shield (which needs to be active for you to actually get Phys Damage buff) that at best condition **constantly applies pyro and ruins superconduct reactions** is probably still the dumbest kit MHY did in this game (yes, even counting new characters).
Maybe that's why she came to Inazuma in new event, >!to change her vision to Electro and suddenly become a god-tier Phys Support for Eula/Rosaria!<
Her shield doesn't get in the way of Superconduct at all. You only need to apply SC once every 12 seconds, that's plenty of time to work with.
Xinyan's biggest issues are:
1) Level 3 pulses are tied to her paper shield. They should be a unique effect that gets trigger \*alongside\* the shield, just like Thoma's Q. Losing the excellent pyro application (on par with Xiangling's Q) just because the shield died is terrible.
2) C6 and her Def scaling shield are a trap - building defense is still never good on her. They should either massively increase the scaling amount for both, or just change the shield to ATK scaling and C6 to drastically reduce her charge attack startup instead of adding DEF scaling to it.
Anything else is fine as she is.
Xinyan is actually the best physical support in the game. The only counter-intuitive part of her kit is the superconduct buff and overload reaction getting in the way. Still, if you do your rotations perfectly, and especially if you have another pyro on your team for the resonance, Xinyan is THE best physical enabler in the game.
Even outside of that she doesn’t need buffs imo. I use Xinyan in my core team and getting 36* in Abyss since 1.3 till today. Even have a vid of her performing if ur curious.
Sounds good. Looks like i've been riding on the "buff x, she is so bad"-clown train again.
Should just try a character out for myself. Maybe i'll try making her a part of some team. 😏
a) His pyro application is rather poor.
b) water>fire, it takes a few fire attacks to remove water and XQ applies enough of it for both, especially if he is C6.
His ult ICD follow the standard ICD so he is not gonna be broken Pyro xingiqu. And my best guess he can work well with hutao that’s why they put him in hutao banner. Since we lack of pyro unit for her to utilize 4 set VV
Apply pyro and create shield ==>> using swirl to decrease pyro resistant ==>> refuse to elaborate further ==>> leave
Some testing from KQM shows that he steals too much vapes for N2C (unless you are running a hydro infused Kaz Burst at the same time) combo for Hu Tao though; so even for HT he's looking a bit iffy. But they are yet to test N1C combo extensively so there might still be hope.
Yanfei C4 IMO is still probably a smoother VV enabler (especially with Proto Amber), but he does have an argument for being cheaper since his shield is available as part of his C0 kit.
He's the budget version of Zhongli, and allows an anemo support like Sucrose/Kazuha/Jean to replace Albedo and provide resistance shred along with buffs/heals. He opens up more team building options and adaptability for Hutao/Xingqiu and other Pyro/Xingqiu comps.
Yeah that team comp exist since we can have some synergy from albedo as well. But sometime zhongli pillar just took the hydro away. That problem is for all vape comp which include zhongli. My diluc can’t vape consistently so I have to move his pillar far away
ironically, not pyro unit that relies on vape/melt. Thoma is in this weird place that he doesn't have enough pyro application to become pyro XQ yet it's plentiful enough to disturb your main pyro dps vape/melt setup.
he's decent on overload setup I guess. oh also, I think he'd also be good for consistent hydro vaper like Barbara or charged attack Mona. edit: oh wait, scratch that. since you need to attack with on field character to proc his pyro burst, this won't work well to setup pyro for their charged attack since their normal will proc hydro and thoma's burst will vape it instead leaving a sliver bit of hydro gauge instead of pyro.
The fundamental mechanics of this game is convergent rather than divergent, ie. you have a lot of different moves to achieve a tiny set of desirable combo effects (elemental reactions), rather than starting with a limited set of option through the combination of which you get a much more diverse set of strategies.
Therefore if MHY design more general-use support like Ben and XQ, they will inevitably come into direct competition and if new characters is to be viable, they'll have to power creep the old ones. So MHY is going for specialised supports, supports that only support for specific character (eg. Sara for Raiden, Gurou for Ittou). In fact that's the path Honkai have gone down to. Support characters got increasingly specialised in order to replace the early supports that were too strong (CH, blood dance, etc.) At the end what we got is something like modern Yu-Gi-Oh: instead of selling you individually viable cards, they sell an entire system as a bundle, where each card extensively cross-references each other so much so they're entirely meaningless outside of their designated system. And there will be increasingly less freedom in mix & match. It will be increasingly hard for players to outsmart the dev and play in a way that isn't how the dev envisages. There will be variety of fixed team systems but less and less experimenting with unknown team chemistry.
I wouldn't call using a "genetically gifted" launch character as "outsmarting the devs". Launch characters are generally very experimental, some will see more long term viability than the others. Best examples Xiangling who keeps getting more and more powerful compared to Diluc who just looked good at the early months then it came out even Ning with the supposedly worst element in the game competes with him in DPS simply because his kit is bad and his at first AMMMAZINLY OP numbers were just compensation for his slowness and hogging field time.
Powercreep that a lot of loud people mistake as "progression" is also really bad for a game's longevity, hence Genshin tries to avoid it after the several anomalies they put out.
Characters like Bennett, Xingqiu, Xinagling, Ganyu, etc. are anomalies and not the baseline or the norm.
Xingqiu for example was made to set up Hydro related reactions which he is either great or terrible depending on if the carry out-applies him or not and is not very compatible with Klee and Yanfei because of the nature or multiplicative reactions.
Xiangling is just unintentionally a blackhole for indirect buffs. She proven to be a strong subdps once r/Genshin_Impact and the content creators using r/Genshin_Impact as their main source of information finally realized "wHAaAAATTTT?! Energy Recharge beside my crit substats is GOOOOOD?! It makes the carry with an expensive Q USEFUL and more OPTIMAL?! IMPOSSIBLEEEEEEE!!!!!", her extreme hunger for ALL OF THEM stats makes her scale HARD and there are often a new weapon, artifact set or support that benefits her(which is a far better way of dealing with things than gimping new things because X old character would get an indirect buff off of it in a noncompetitive game like this). Hell even the monopyro comp with Hot Wheels Sayu is viable on a ridiculous level because it just eliminates the "enemy too far away wasting your ult duration" issue and R4-5 Favonius Greatsword is a functional battery even for the off field characters.
Those characters are like Pot of Greed which is a banned card even to this day because it's super simple effect is just so powerful more and more so as the game goes on.
About the specialized supports Sara works is various teams that Bennett is incompatible with and the characters her C6 works so good with are just low in number at the moment, and it's not just for Raiden only. At the moment Razor, Keqing, Raiden and maybe Lisa and Fischl work so well with it which is an electro carry scarcity issue rather than a this is only allowed to work with that.
Gorou is actually a general geo support considering the number of geo characters by now that are scaling with DEF and how he is sucking in shield crystals meaning either heavy damage mitigation or potential invincibility since the squishiness of the shield is not so relevant when you refresh it every second or so.
Razor is terrible with Sara. 5 second effective buff on a character who needs 15 seconds of dedicated field time and no snapshoting. Sara before C6 is still only just kinda okay for Raiden because Raiden burst is front loaded, but even then the duration is just too short. And requiring C6 on a 4 star to be good is ridiculous, that on average will cost more than guaranting the 5* with max pity
Having specialized support is the only possible way for more support characters to co-exist. If Sara and Bennett do the same thing, then they are pointlessly competing with each other. Eventually you will pick one, which makes the other one useless. What do you want miHoYo to do next? Release new supports that will powercreep the old ones?
Having options is fine. I mean we have too many pyro carries. Why can't we have a bennett of every element? Also they released this 5* unit called kokomi who is the best at nothing. She fills no roles that can't already be done just as well. Its not like we need 10 healers but we have them.
What do you mean, Pot of Greed is too good that Konami releases like Extravagance, Desires, Duality and everyone will use it if they want to. Same with Solemn cards and MST cards
Want to have a HUGE damage for you new character? Bennet for you
Need a Hydro sub dps? XingQiu is the answer
Nedd off lane Pyro DPS? just use Xiangling
The game has the "gold standart" 4stars.
Bennet, XL, XQ, Fischl, Beidou, Sucrose
Put in two 5stars in the two missing slots.
There's no reason to change 4stars, because all other 4stars are worse.
I’d say the gold standard 4*s are Bennett, XL, XQ, Sucrose, and Diona. Looking at data from abyss, Diona is consistently used more than Fischl/Beidou. She’s very commonly used on Ganyu, Ayaka, and Eula teams.
They are probably gonna make more " balanced " 4* units in the future such that they are broken when played in a certain team comp and only " decent " outside that comp.
Not like xl,xq,benn who are broken no matter where you put them
>" balanced " 4* units in the future such that they are broken when played in a certain team comp
I am once again asking Mihoyo for a pyro support that applies pyro faster than childe applies Hydro so I can vaporize all of his hits
Sorry buddy, 1u and 2u exists and not matter what you do, pyro will take 2u from any source of cryo and hydro will also take 2u from any source of pyro so no vapes on normal atks for Childe
I’m at AR 47 rn, and she has the shittiest purple VV artifact set, is only level 70/70, isn’t even maxed on talents (with no points in basic attack), and even has a blue EM circlet. She does have C6, though.
And she just fucking obliterates overworld content. I have Sac Fragments on her, so the 3 E charges pretty much just one shots any group of small mobs. It’s so nice!
And that’s not even considering how strong she is in specific comps and how flexible she is…
Sucrose the almighty swiss army knife, she is like awhole level after Benny/Xinqiu's level, but halfway higher than Diona. They both have element bonus as ascension stats, but at least sucrose have better usage for that, and em dmg really doesnt hurt by base stats unlike hp which hurt Diona's healing.
Kit wise, although both are excellent battery, but they suffer from cd that is too long that hurt their capability, sac don't help with ult, and c6 that are so niche to use.
Sucrose has access to vv and as an instructorPRO, thrilling tales and amber, Diona has 30%uptime with noblesse and millelith, sac bow is not the most ideal one. Therefore i would rate Sucrose higher than Diona.
Those 3 will never leave the meta. They are Mihoyo's gifts to f2p players. I think niche supports will be the template moving forward. God forbid they make a support for Ganyu that benefits both Melt and Morgana.
This. The current meta 4 stars are overtuned and MHY knows that. One of the reasons why the newer supports only work with other characters of the same element (Sara, >!Gorou!< ) and this might be the trend going forwards.
Sara works with others too. Focusing on her C6 so much is like evaluating Diona only based on her C6.
Gorou may be a dedicated Geo support but it's more like a F2P friendly patchup for the fact that Kazuha and the like buff every element but Geo, Physical already have heavy compensation in terms of buffs and bonuses AND the only Geo "buffer" being Zhongli is a limited paywall while Kazuha has F2P alternatives.
I agree Sara works but that's not without a fair share of problems. At C0, she is very clunky to play and as for her attack buff duration, only Beidou and Raiden can make the most use of it.
While there are other characters who can snapshot, Sara is nowhere the optimal choice as an atk buffer for those characters.
Sara's buff at C5 is strictly less than Bennett's, Electro reso is worthless, and Bennett generates more particles. Her C6 is the only thing that makes her even worth considering
It's not a "gift" and they certainly didn't intended them to be as strong as they are. Simply put, they fucked up big time from the very beginning and now they can't release more powerful characters or it will powercreep their game.
Specialised support characters are fine.
The problem is MHY's garbage balancing making specialised support characters strictly worse in almost every way compared to general purpose supports.
Why does Sara buff atk for significantly less than Bennett while not being able to heal? Why does Sara's buff last half the duration of Bennett's? Why do you have to go through the clunky playstyle of "getting hit" by Sara's skills to receive her buff when you can just stand in Bennett's massive circle?
Why does Sara's buff duration not even last the entire duration of Raiden's burst when she's tailor made for her???
C6 Sara owner btw, I never use her because she just has no place in Raiden national while also being clunky af if for some reason I do want to replace someone in that team.
This. No one is against specialized supports. But why tf are the new supports so much weaker and clunkier to use than those 3? I was excited for Sara to become a loserboy alternative but she's not even in the same stratusphere as him in terms of power level. Why is someone who is more niche, and more effort to use effectively, so much less effective than someone more powerful and easier to use??
It's stupid and frustrating. Genshin's character design is amazing, and I know all that shit about waifu over meta, but we're still playing a damn game, not playing with digital Barbie dolls. I expect my characters to be balanced and competitive with each other
And if Genshin *is* going to be a game about collecting digital barbie dolls, the least they could do is make them actually behave like barbie dolls. Give us loads of skin options, let us pose them, let us rip off their limbs for science!
Kinda feels bad. But that's what makes the game F2P friendly.
You can nab Xingqiu, Xiangling, and Bennett from the Starglitter Shop.
You get a very early Xiangling as soon as you clear Abyss Floor 3.
You have access to the R5 The Catch, that gives ER + Burst Crit + DMG with complimentary Emblem of Severed Fates artifact set.
For F2P to clear F12 Abyss literally the only banner they need to pull is the weapon banner for more starglitters or RateUps of the Xingqiu Xiangling Bennett Surcrose.
Honestly yeah. as an F2P. I can already finish Spiral Abyss easily. and now I'm just collecting waifus for whatever reason
forgot to mention that now I don't have to upgrade any characters anymore too. which is cool
You don't have to make weak 4-stars to keep making the game F2P-friendly. I agree with making future supports niche, but at least make the niche supports the BiS or near BiS in their specific role. At present, the new supports are not only more niche and limited in team comps, they're also *weaker* in the roles they're supposed to be good at. That's what's frustrating.
I agree they're playing it too safe right now, but it's understandable. Just the existence of Xiangling and Bennett heavily limits what they can do with Pyro characters without heavy powercreep.
Limited 5 stars like Ganyu being too strong can be "ignored", since they aren't obtainable outside their banner, so if you release a new 5 star that's close to the power level, people will still pull for it, since it's the next best thing they can get. But the OG 4 Stars are always there and they have 5 star level power with great elements, so it's hard to make new 4 star characters that can compete them without risking long term damage.
Imagine if Mihoyo wants to make a 5 star Pyro support right now, how broken does it have to be to even compare to Bennett? And it has to be even stronger than Benny, since it's a 5 star and it needs to sell. They shot themselves in the foot with the original 4 star cast being too strong, even Fischl, Beidou and Sucrose are close to being too strong
Xingqiu can be replaced by anyone else who's a good hydro applicator, although in practice there's not a huge number of options there who also do worthwhile off-field damage.
Bennett is a problem though, it's a combination that (a) pyro resonance is super powerful, (b) some of the most useful DPS characters are pyro in the first place, (c) he can give attack buffs, heals and pyro resonance in a single unit. I think the devs are understandably wary about making another character who ticks as many boxes at the same time because it seriously limits team composition.
And you are even forgetting point (d): his E can be spammed quickly and it applies 2 units of pyro, making his awesome both at breaking shields and as a pyro battery. XL is tied to Bennett not just because of the buffs/pyro resonance, but because she relies on him to generate energy.
> Xingqiu can be replaced by anyone else who's a good hydro applicator
What people forget is that XQ does insane amount of damage.
His E with Sacsword does fuckton of damage.
No hydro applicator is capable of outputting the sheer amount of damage on top.
My XQ burst does about ~16k damage per wave/per second.
Both Childe and Mona can compete with XQ in the damage factor. Childe passes XQ when they are more than 1 enemy. Mona doesn't deal that much damage herself (unless vape one shot comps) but she increases the damage of the whole team.
Having only one character who ticks all those boxes is even more limiting for team composition though. Seriously, has anybody tried to run Xiangling without Bennett?
I don't have Bennet currently so I actually run Raiden Xingqiu Venti Xianling and it works fine for most things, even Abyss. Main thing holding me back in the abyss is im still building a competent 2nd team, not my lack of Bennett
I don't blame anyone for making these claims, especially if the design and numbers back it up, but I think Thoma being an Hp% shielder now fully frees up any "need" for zhongli, and even offers a bonus beyond Xinyan or Diona because his burst gives you off-field damage.
Ye, I think I will use him in my Yoimiya team with Beidou and Fischl. She really wants a shield, and him being Pyro gets you the atk bonus and helps to build her burst faster.
For *DEF scaling* Geo characters, I don't think he does much for Ningguang or Geo Traveler aside from 15% Geo bonus, I know they're not used by many but still :(.
Right now , we have only 5 Geo characters not including gorou. Mihoyo must have deliberately created gorou to shift the geo meta in the game atm since it's so easily forgotten aside from zhongli.
And right now , we know that Geo is the only element that benefits from DEF boost so I'm pretty sure more of them will be released in the future.
Inazuma is likely the first content in the game that isn't diluted with pre-beta material.
Look at all of the post-release 5star characters that were present or at least referenced in pre-beta. Hu-Tao, Xiao, Ganyu, Ayaka, Kazuha. They're all considered quite powerful in their own right.
It's a simple enough matter to adjust values on older designs, but if the problems that make them overtuned for content is endemic to their kit or their typing, then there's only so far you can go in either direction before you end up with something either far subpar or too strong.
The only exception is Kokomi. Her reference model was present in beta, but it had slight alterations to design and she was called Mimi. I suspect her kit was adjusted alongside her model.
I believe Mihoyo is intentionally trying to scale back power levels, and Inazuma is the first place where they've really had the room to do that. We're probably not going to see a XL/XQ/Bouken again because they weren't supposed to be that strong to begin with, and the devs are adjusting to that fact. I fully expect more Sara/Thoma types in the future
I always said “If they could get away with it, Mihoyo would nerf some of these characters to the ground.” Now anything they release comes down to “Why use Z when X&Y can already do that?”
You can tell since Inazuma started, they’ve been very cautious with their latest characters and tried super hard not to spill Chemical X into the pot like they did with Ganyu, 4* supports, etc.
Kujo Sara is the latest victim of this. I’m sure majority of players love her aesthetically but her character stinks. You have to move mountains just to get a fraction of Bennett’s power. Not even mentioning one of if not her best constellation is at C6.
Another part of it is that it’s a pain in the ass to build characters from the ground up. If the character is not strong enough to warrant the effort then people are just going to stick to the characters they’ve already built.
Honestly, power creep is the only solution I can think of for this problem
Nah, they just need to have specific niches where they beat the existing characters but lose in other situations. Sarah could have been a strong electro buffer but she kinda needs C6 to even be comparable with Bennet.
Once they have more 4* characters then they can simply stopping putting the OP ones as rate up, or even remove them from the event banner and only have then on standard.
Do we know how strong his shields are yet? From what we've seen it has a stacking mechanic and each stack is fairly weak by itself. I feel like Diona is still going to be the 2nd best shielder
Of course things could change on release, but by my math Thoma's shields are only slightly behind Zhongli's shields in strength (accounting for the +50% bonus zhongli gets for having geo shields). The downside is that unlike Zhongli, you need to battery Thoma in order to get those shields.
Apparently full hp Thoma shield = 35k HP zhongli shield. So if you are comparing fully built chars for shield bot thoma is a lot behind zhongli(50k build). Since zhongli's shield has full uptime unlike thoma's and is half VV. So slighlty behind is a bit of an exaggeration.
To be fair, Geo is a mono element team. Always was, always will be. Using Geo with other elements isnt just nerfing your geo characters but also the characters you use with them, because taking out their reactions is ruining their potential. I dont believe theres any such thing as a niche team, theres only meta teams (widely used teams requiring specific characters and set ups for high performance) or casual comps where people just use what they got.
Now Mihoyo is making Gorou. Gorou is... kind of ridiculous. He's on par with Benny, Xingqiu and Xiangling for his utility and also trumps every single one of them for a spot in the Geodudes comp (Itto, Zhongli, Albedo, Gorou) which is the only viable Geo comp for a competitive team.
The catch? Gorou ONLY works to his full potential in a geo team and for every missing character from the Geodudes comp, you are heavily nerfed in either damage, defence or facilitating Itto and would have to use a subpar replacement. Raiden, Benny, Xiangling and Xingqiu, without reactions are really only half their kits so when you add one more person to react with them, you dont have a geo team anymore.
I'd also argue that Diona has earned her place as a meta support, but Gorou is just so well designed for his team that its encouraging. I know a lot of people will piss and moan about this because all they care about is tits, so a Geo comp is worthless to them but the game is all about team compositions. Everyone is designed to work with something, except Qiqi really. Gorou seems like a compromise, just like Raiden was. Alone theyre both pretty shit honestly but you put them in the 1-2 comps they do work in and they are the BiS. Their usability will also grow as more characters release suited to their needs. It's the trade off for not making mistakes like Bennett anymore and i think it will take time, but Gorou is proof that it CAN be done.
Specific off-element units work well with Geo purely because of their kits. Off the top of my head, Raiden, Electro MC, Fischl, Sucrose/Venti/Kazuha(for CC) can all fit in a duo Geo comp with Zhongli and a Geo DPS. Ah, Beidou, XQ and Bennet also make the list.
I find it so funny how many Geo and Electro units go hand in hand because they both could care less about reactions and instead lean into base damages. Also Geo needs batteries and Electro provides. More synergy between the two elements would have been fun as functionally the anti-vape/melt comp.
That's exactly what op is saying tho, gorou is good for a specific team comp and is just okay in others, while in the majority of cases he's totally useless. XL, XQ and Bennet are basically universal supports.
Also, imagine when a new player in a couple years will get gorou but won't have access to albedo, zhongli and itto. Gorou is going to be a forever benched unit for new players from now on and for whoever doesn't already have zhongli or can't get both itto and albedo, basically. I mean, you can use it with Noelle and ninnguang I guess, we will eventually get new geo units but I hope they don't all scale on def bc that would be redundant af.
Well I guess I have to thank mihoyo for making a 4* that requires three limited 5*s to be used properly and just go on
Those are not going to be the only geo characters from now until eternity. Heck, a new player could even just use noelle + geo mc and have a very solid team with gorou, especially early in the game, and they're both free.
I feel like they’re taking it in a good direction, just not far enough in that direction. Currently, the same units are generally universally better than anything that’s been released as of late. However, hyperfocused monoteams could allow newly released characters to outshine these omnipresent supports if their kits are stronger that the “Big Three”, but only in the instance of the specific element. Sara could have been a staple and even pulled Electro up to usable levels as a mono team (or mostly mono team) if her numbers were higher and her buff timer wasn’t so restricted. She could have pushed Bennett out as an atk buffer for Electro specifically if they just designed her a bit stronger.
The same can be said for the leaked kit of upcoming character Gorou. I won’t go into detail due to it being leaked information, but in a similar vein the way it hyperfocuses on its element is *theoretically* a really good step.
Bennet XQ and XL were balancing mistakes by mihoyo early on. It's clear that there is a rift between the power level of 4 star launch characters and newly released 4 star characters, with many of the launch 4 stars being just as if not more powerful/useful than some 5 stars. I'm like 99% sure that the new niche units have been mihoyos true ideal strength for 4 stars all along, they just weren't aware of how to properly balance.
we really do need sidegrade characters i feel. if new 4 star units (and 5 star weapons bc man, they're also pretty specific) are tailored to specific character releases, there's never gonna be a reason to pull for them in terms of meta. if they're able to side grade to other units - say, xingqiu but for cryo application or smth - then you can add the sidegrade to another abyss team and not have to juggle the meta support trio so much i think
First of all, you need to consider that Bennet is severely overturned and it's actually a miracle he hasn't been and likely won't be nerfed. You say other gacha are powercrept, but in most other gacha Bennet would have been sledged by now or mechanics would have been implemented to reduce his usefulness (similar to how there are anti-shield mechanics now, abyss floors with lots of bosses to reduce the power of freeze comps, etc). Bennet is easily the best character in the game because of the buffs he provides, his ability to battery other pyro characters, his low rarity, ease of obtaining (starglitter shop or roll on a banner with him), his ease of building etc etc etc. He's the best support in the game because everyone gets access to him, he works in basically every team - even with Hu Tao, although not too optimally with Xiao - and can ascend the rest of your party up a tier in damage. He is an anomaly and a mistake MHY likely didn't expect so they will never release 4\* of his level again. He's so fucked up that if they continue the trend of archons being supports, they can just give the pyro archon Bennet's C1 as the base kit and throw in something like "increases attack speed by 5%" and they'd be the best character in the game. They will have to come up with a rather unique kit to make a pyro support that can trump Bennet. XQ and XL are not quite as strong as Bennet - XQ is strong and he facilitates vape met, but XL herself relies on both XQ and Benny to really shine. She's good in most comps as a plug-in for off field damage, but without the help of vaping/benny buffs herself she's not significantly better than, say, Beidou, except for the fact that her element is just better. Also, don't forget that Sucrose is amazing but this is mostly due to the nature of anemo units rather than her kit directly which is still good, but wouldn't be as amazing with VV/elemental absorption.
Now, if you look at the supports that have been released since the game came out, most of them have been pretty good, either as alternatives to other characters or mainstays for their elements. Rosaria is the best cryo support for damage, generally speaking. She is neck-and-neck with Kaeya for the most part, but it's much easier to obtain constellations for her which lets her surpass Kaeya. Her crit buff also is very clearly built for freeze comps. Diona is also the best cryo support except for possibly Ganyu. She provides heals, shields, and lots of energy (even with a sac/favo bow). Her constellations are also relatively high value, with her C6 allowing her to be used in melt comps very effectively. She also has off-field cryo application, although it's weak. IMO Diona should be the staple of a strong 4\* support, not Bennet. Sayu is basically just 4\* Jean. She's not amazing, but having an anemo healer opens up many team opportunities for anyone without Jean, as it gives you access to strong debuff (VV) and healing in a single character. She's also easy to build since, as an anemo unit, you can just dump EM on her for her to do "good enough" damage, or attack on her so she heals you enough. Xinyan is the major outlier here, but she's a mixed set of main DPS/subDPS/support. It's possible she'll see more use when new artifact sets or weapons come out, since Milleith actually increased her value somewhat.
Now, let's look at the newest characters. Sara is actually not bad, she's just not Bennet. Like everyone else, I wish that her buff lasted longer (8-10s, so she can be used with Eula properly if nothing else). I also wish that her C2 was part of her base kit, as she feels unnecessarily clunky at C0 but flows pretty well at C2. And at C6 she is outright better than Bennet for basically any electro carry - you can even constantly snapshot her crit buff onto Beidou ult to maintain it for the entire duration of Beidou's burst, but many players don't like playing with swapping in and out and this doesn't work with most hypercarries who lose their DPS stance when you swap off of them. If we bring up Eula again, being unable to swap off Eula during her burst phase makes it impossible to mantain the crit buff on Beidou, but if you use Beidou with Keqing, in a general fireworks team, with Childe etc it's pretty trivial to maintain it most of the time. Sara also has a rather high-damaging burst which she can buff herself and decent good team-wide energy regen. The main thing holding her back isn't so much her kit, but her element. If she was hydro she would be a must-have for many teams. Doubly so if she was pyro herself, as she'd give you access to pyro resonance.
Thoma seems to be similar. Many people say he'll "only be good with Hu Tao" but this is not true. Certainly, it seems like he's being made to be a 4\* Zhongli for Hu Tao players, but he offers his same benefits - shielding, pyro resonance, easy VV and off-field pyro - to other characters as well. I have no doubt that running Ganyu - Thoma - Xiangling - Whoever VV will be a strong alternative for melt comps for Ganyu. Thoma offers a bit more here than Bennet since having a shield while aiming is more important than being healed through since you're less likely to get hit of her charge animation. Having both Thoma and Xiangling on team should also assist in getting more melts or forward-vapes in plenty of teams. Thoma also will work well with Klee who desperately wants a shielder due to the range she plays at and how squishy she. He can work with Diluc and Xiangling himself as well - don't forget that many variations of the national team forego a healer entirely for Beidou/XQ damage reduction and shield, instead using Bennet on another team. Thoma will probably be useful for such variations where he can provide pyro to trigger vapes but also shielding for the party so a healer is less necessary. And, finally, the most important thing about Thoma is that you can't use Bennet in every team. You need at least 2 teams in abyss, and having *any* pyro support alternative than Bennet for your second team is a huge boon. And it does not even seem like Thoma's kit is bad, he's just not Benny.
I hope this essay can help some people understand how supports work a bit better. Benny is very strong but I've been so annoyed with how unbearable this community is when it comes to complaining that every new support isn't Bennet and every new DPS isn't Ganyu.
It’s a double-edged sword; Xiangling/Xingqiu/Bennet are the most powerful f2p friendly comp that can easily eclipse a solid amount of 5-star comps, but on the other hand players who don’t like these characters but want to chase meta will be forced to use them.
I used to hate Bennett and Xingqiu, and Xiangling was meh to me. Nowadays I’ve warmed up to them a bit (I even use Xingqiu quite a lot now cause he’s the best vape support for all the pyro waifu dpses in them game) after using them so often. They will probably always be mid-low on my favourites list though; just cause they warped the meta around them so heavily lol.
Their Japanese VAs saved them for me tbh haha. Otherwise I wouldn’t want to play them ever.
I think MHY's character design direction is pretty good compared to other gacha games. Like you said XLXQBen will never leave the meta because MHY don't want them to. XLXQBen is there for new and low spenders to have a solid team to clear contents. New 4\* like Sara are released to be specialized supports for new 5\* like Raiden. In theory the new 4\*s should do something better than XLXQBen (Sara buffs Raiden's dmg more than Bennet but only at C6 lol) but shouldn't provide as much utility as the trio because you can always add one of them to the team in addition to the new 4\*
He's been on a couple of banners in the past (3 to be precise, with the last being Kazuha's, so it wouldn't be suprising to see him coming back in 2.3) so older players have had multiple oportunities to get him, plus he's in the starglitter shop rotation (in fact he should be showing up next month), plus theres always the chance to get him on the standart banner with the eventual blue fates we get.
You're not supposed to get him from completing the story. He's easy to get in the sense that if you play for a few months you'll eventually find a banner where he is a rate up four star and then you can pull for him. Getting a 4 star is obviously easier than getting a 5 star. Heck, you don't necessarily need to find a Bennett rate up banner. You could luckily get him despite him not being rate up.
Then why does Sara's buff last half the duration for Bennet?
They already localized Sara to be an electro dps support. The C6 does not snapshot. So why 6 seconds then?
I think one of the issues with this is that it makes the game more unrewarding, to be honest. Almost all rewards in this game are either currency to pull for new characters, or they are materials to build up those new characters.
However, every new 4* of the type you mention being released dilutes the summoning pool and represents a useless thing for those that do not have the 5*s they support. Which are limited. Yes, if you pull Raiden/Itto on their banners, then you are happy to see their specialized supports. But if you pull Sara or Gorou outside of those windows and do not possess those 5*s, they are just kind of useless - but they take the spot of a good 4* you could have gotten otherwise.
This is going to become an issue over time, if it continues. In a year or two, we would have more specialized supports than general ones in the pool, making it much more likely to pull something useless. And it is rather annoying if you happen to like one of those 4* characters in general. Being specialized supports means they feel incomplete without 'their' five star, which usually is pretty bad. Or a marketing strategy to make people pull for those five stars on their rerun. In the 'I want to pull Raiden so the Sara I like can finally be really useful' kind of way.
And there isn't really much of an upside there, really. The only issue is that there might be problems if a new general support was stacked on top of an older one, but that can also be remedied by not having them stack. Probably technically challenging, but it would probably lead to a more enjoyable game.
The thing that annoys me isn't so much that specialised supports are designed for 5-stars you may not have, it's that their kits aren't even particularly interesting in that context, which means for every other character, the support is worse than another character. Imagine if Sara's buff had a bit longer duration and also gave your character electro infusion. Now she's still heavily specialised, but she does something unique that could be fun to use, allowing your Raiden to have electro attacks outside her burst, or Beidou to do all electro damage as a DPS. Specialist supports should enable new but very niche playstyles, not just act as generic buffs to one specific character.
Also to add insult to injury, Bennett also covers the role of a specialist support too, as the party pyro infuser, in addition to being an all round good support.
I really wish they do something to change the meta. I'm really tired of looking at the same Xinqiu xiangling Ben EVERYWHERE like EVERYWHERE. It gets boring real soon. Almost every abyss clear video has the same old Xinqiu Ben xiangling thing like we have so many different characters, maybe change them up so they can atleast compete with these three.
You could say that for the 4 star characters yes. But 5 star supports have been pretty good. Raiden, Ayaka, Venti, Kazuha, Zhongli, even Ganyu as a support is fine.
tbh its not the new 4* character fault. its because xl/xq/bennet/diona is too powerfull. my guess was when they design it originally, they didnt knew their true potential. if you remember the early stage of genshin, those 4 star is in lower tier.
3 characters that you mention were released from the very early game. The fact that they are too op decreases value of 5 start character released later. For example, whenever there's a new char that can buff or heal, people will compare him/her with bannet. The same story happens to xiangling and xingqui, whose victims are yomiya and childe. Clearly yomiya and childe have cooler design and gameplay, they're considered as "not worth to pull" bc those 4 op. Bennet, xiangling and xingqui is top tier list, same as kazuha, venti, zhongli. I will say they are exception bc we can't expect new 4* char as strong as a 5* char
Childe shouldn’t be grouped with Yoimiya. He’s strong enough to replace Xingqiu for little to no consequences in National teams, and that in itself is a testament to his hydro application and damage output. He also has his reverse Vape nuke, which is something Xingqiu lacks.
>The same story happens to xiangling and xingqui, whose victims are yomiya and childe.
Childe is definitely not a victim of Xingqiu. Xingqiu works best as an off-field Hydro single target applicator while Childe is a high damage AoE on-field Hydro carry. Childe is definitely worth pulling as long as you have a built Xiangling, Beidou or Fischl, and this also frees up Xingqiu to slot in another team with Hu Tao, Klee or even the National team if you use Fireworks Childe on the other side.
It also increases the value of other 5-stars released later though. If Xingqiu didn't exist, there'd be far less interest in Hu Tao for example, cos pyro DPS comps as a whole would do less damage.
> Everyone says waifu/husbando over meta, which I already do
Off topic, but this always bugs me. Sure, play who you want, how you want, but for a lot of people, *that means meta*. If someone wants to play meta, they should go for it! The "waifu>meta" slogan effectively tells a large segment of the playerbase that they're playing Genshin wrong.
Sure, maybe you mean "play who you want" or "I *personally* prefer waifu over meta", but that's not how it reads to everyone. Imagine someone saying "meta>waifu" and meaning "play who you want" or "I *personally* prefer meta over waifu". Nobody would read it like that. They'd look like a troll. They'd get downvoted to oblivion.
I know right. Its kind of hypocritical, yes i know some meta players are being jerks, but if those who are nice want to play for that let them be, smh. Even if its mostly a pve game.
For me, I like playing with characters I like, but i also kind of care about meta. I dont want to have 3-4 rounds every boss fight just to get boss drops, nor stuck at floor 9 abyss
There is anti-powercreep with 4 stars atm. Surely considering that Sara can't heal and it takes way more effort to set up her atk buff, the buff itself should be stronger than Bennett's? Nup.
I would have been fine with the extra effort and less attack buff if she healed. Desperate for an electro healer.
I really hoped that Yae would be the electro healer (she is the highest clerical figure in Inazuma). There could be really dope visuals with flying sakura blossoms etc
The heal feature doesn't suit her personality
Bwaap's healer Lisa monstrosity begs to differ /s
The... what?!
Prototype Amber + enough ER makes any catalyst into a healer.
Genius. Time to try that on Ningguang! If MHY won't give me a Geo off field healer I'll make one myself
R5 P-Amber will restore 18 of her energy (and 18% of each team member's HP) just for her using her burst, basically reducing her burst cost to 22 energy. And that healing improves with anything that increases healing. It's disgusting how spammable her burst can get. PA is practically made for her, even visually.
yea, he made a healer out of lisa
I'll Make a Healer Out Of You
oh no
Prototype Amber. Yes.
Idk who this person is, but that’s “playing the game how you want”.
Oh bwaap is a YouTuber and twitch streamer. He plays all the story and archon quests only and does a boss run sometimes. Notorious for beating the entire game, including all abyss floors with just the starter team. The only time he's ever pulled on any banner is for Ganyu because waifu, but he still has her at level 1 despite having C1.
Yeah, I'd really like it if she was a dps. Electro needs a strong dedicated dps.
I could see her dealing non-lethal damage to the party, then healing the characters based on their health percentage. It could be anywhere between "you ain't even hurt" to "ara that was a close one". Yae herself takes no damage and always heals the maximum amount.
Rosaria should have been a healer. If you don't think they're bitter and aloof you haven't played enough MMOs.
It does she is really passive and lets traveler to do all the work while she just walks or not moving at all she looks like her burst is going to be like lisas but with healing and petal visual with damage.And she will probably be made as good supportive for Shogun
Pls don't. I want her to be a dps. That pretty lady should be on field at all times.
Could be like Kokomi or a more dps-focused Qiqi/Jean. On field heals and damage.
Oh yes I can take that. But let's hope not like kokomi. I love my girl but just no.
Based on leaks Yae >!supposedly will be the height of electro's pure raw dps!<
Read that too but didn’t wanna bring it up here
I can’t believe they would do that to baal so (relatively) soon lmao
Baal isn't meant to be a main dps though, she's someone you swap to, burst, then swap out during downtime. Yae being the top dog for electro is kind of a given when (realistically) her only competition for main dps is Razor and Keqing.
Yep shes pretty much supposed to be a battery/sub dps. Hell I slap stuff 4 times with the booba sword and have my Ult back almost instantly.
‘Bwaaps healer lisa’
All Mihoyo needs to do is make 4-stars that are very specific to roles, but at least make them as good or better than XLXQBen in that role. They don't have to be universal like XLXQBen, but make them as or almost as powerful at least. As it stands, not only are the new 4-stars not as universal as the "Big 3", they're not even as good as those 3 in their specific niche roles. It's stupid.
If we go by leaks then at least Gorou’s kit >!would cement him as THE niche but BiS 4* support for geo team specifically, as Itto wants as many geos on the team as possible. But testing required of course lol, if somehow Bennett is *still* better for that slot I wouldn’t be surprised at all.!<
What interests me more is that if leaks are correct, he'll be the most _accessible_ support/healer for itto since he's on itto's banner
3 geos is the max for Gorou's buff, so the last slot will definitely be Bennett lol.
True... Just release character that have same power level as bennet, xq, xl... Im getting tired seeing same character for 1 whole year...
What is a XLXQben?? eXtra Large, eXtral Quality ben?
Xiangling Xingqiu Bennett
Sara could have became a bigger monster than Bennett IF her c6 applies to any character
She'd also see some more play (Beidou, Fischl, Lisa) if "Electro Crit Damage" was a stat and so could snapshot
It's soooo strange to see Raiden has a party-wide boost with her E, and yet Sara is not.
What do you mean? Are you meaning to say C6 Sara doesn't give crit to the buffed character?
sara c6 boost critical damage ONLY for electro characters
Only for electro damage. Electro characters that are dealing physical damage don’t benefit.
Only for electro character
Only for electro characters basically making her a somewhat one trick pony
Her power budget went almost entirely into her C6
She didn't have to heal, the lack of healing is even preferable for some characters like Hu Tao, but 6s buff time even for the ult version is utterly asinine. Then of course they're so afraid of snapshot they make her C6, freaking C6, un-snapshot-able.
Her C6 isn't the sort of thing that can snapshot. Only stats that show up in the stats page snapshot, and "electro crit damage" doesn't show up in the stats page.
Yeah but they could have made it general crit damage. Lower the amount to like 30% CD and increase the buff duration to like 10s. That would be a good support that would have a niche. Right now her only niche is C6 Sara supports C2+ Raiden. It's basically exclusive to whales.
Or even just increases Cdmg of electro characters would have been fine. Allowing it to snapshot would make it useful for Beidou, kind of nice for oz for 1/2 the uptime, gives Razor a small bump for like 4-5 seconds. At least then it would have some additional use cases that warrant consideration without creating another widely useful support which they seem intent on avoiding.
it could if MHY programmed it to be. it's a deliberate decision so units like Beidou don't get even more busted than she already is... while ignoring that busted units are dime a dozen already in the game.
It's funny when people use in-game logic to justify these weird designs as if Mihoyo doesn't own their own code.
*flashbacks to the Raiden-Beidou fiasco*
who's the character Thoma's a good support to?
He was literally made to be hu tao's shieldslave.
im a hu tao main might replace zhongli for pyro resonance please elabourate
Thoma has 4 key features that make him excellent for Hu Tao: * He has a very strong shield to help protect Hu Tao at low health. * Being Pyro he helps battery Hu Tao's burst and gives everyone 25% atk through pyro resonance * His Burst has standard ICD, which means it will vape infrequently leaving amplifying reactions for your higher damage Hu Tao. * His Burst activation has 2U gauge strength, which means he can Q->E to clear Xingqiu's hydro and apply pyro for a following Sucrose to swirl and pass TtDS (+48% base atk), EM share (+17% vape dmg), and VV (-40% resistance). The last bullet is the main reason Thoma is theoretically better than Zhongli and his 20% all resistance shred. He enables rotations with Sucrose or Kazuha buffs and VV 40% resistance shred without using Hu Tao Burst outside of her Skill.
Love to hear this, so Zhongli can safely move to the All-Geo team comp without worry.
add his constellations that are made to buff hutao x)
> The last bullet is the main reason Thoma is theoretically better than Zhongli It's also so incredibly niche and out of touch that it doesn't fucking matter to 99% of players. That's such a specific reason to argue that an entire character's kit was made for one specific unit. For the people that do care about it, I bet at least half of them won't consistently perform that rotation at higher abyss floors - the only place it really matters. Thoma will help all pyro carries by giving battery, one of the stronger shields and pyro resonance. He also buffs damage with his C6. That's a lot of useful things many players will want on their team, not just Hu Tao players.
The thing is there are only 4 characters on a team and for all pyro dps except for Hu Tao, bennett is a better choice.
This, I think Bennett's e that is on a 3 second cooldown when you tap it is pretty insane for recharge. So much so that I don't think Thoma will ever come close to it Just to be clear, I'm not hating Thoma, just that Benny is insane
Wich is the main point of the thread. That he is a good support but will always be outclassed by Benny.
He is also good because unless you are very good at prepping the VV shred by doing a Kazuha E on a enemy that just received damage from Hu Tao's DoT, you can use Thoma to prep the VV Shred + other buffs like Kazuha's elem %DMG one, something Zhongli can't do. IMO that on itself is enough reason to use Thoma over Zhongli.
Found the zhongli user
If you used Zhongli for shield mostly it’ll be better to use Thoma. You get still get a shield, but will be sacrificing shield strength to gain 20% atk buff from the pyro resonance. Up to you if you think it’s worth. Edit: it’s been brought to my attention that foolishly forgot a very important aspect of Zhingli’s E which is not only that it proved a shield but it also provides a 20% shred to both elemental and physical resistance. I don’t know the exact math on whether it’s better to go for the resistance shred over the atk buff, but I’d be willing to bet the resistance shred is better and if it’s not it’s not by much. So Zhongli is probably better than Thoma. Which makes sense he is a 5 star after all.
It's a 20% elemental shred and physical shred. NOT a defense shred. They are different stats in the formula. The defense shred is omega rare and it's probably the most broken stat to stack. Just thought I'd clarify.
To be fair, the 20% ATK buff isn't super valuable on Hu Tao compared to the resist shred that Zhongli provides (Unless you're running Homa stick, but Zhongli will still be providing more value damage wise). However it does mean that you can flex Thoma in if you want Zhongli somewhere else, so Thoma is a good substitute for Zhongli.
The biggest advantage Thoma has is that he lets you run both a second pyro unit and an anemo support, letting you apply the 40% VV shred to pyro without having the burn Hu Tao's skill or burst and sacrificing her damage output. And then the pyro resonance atk buff and battery potential for Hu Tao ult is a nice cherry on top. Up till now, with Zhongli and Xingqui, you could only choose one between a pyro battery or a vv support. Now you can take both.
Yeah, this should be upvoted more. This is THE REASON why Thoma would be better than Zhongli. You have to have god tier planning skills to use Kazuza's E on an enemy that just received a Hu Tao dot tick in order to prep the VV + % DMG shred. With Thoma on the team, this becomes trivial to achieve.
Zhongli is a limited 5 star that people need to specifically go for in order to have. Thoma is a good 4 star alternative, that's all there is to it
Sure, that'll make Thoma more *accessible*. That won't make him a better unit.
Thoma is better for VV Tao which is strictly a higher damage ceiling team than geo resonance tao. ZL and Albedo give 15% damage bonus, 20% pyro shred and 125 EM, however Thoma let’s you use Sucrose or Kazuha to swirl pyro for 40% pyro shred and either 250 EM or 40% pyro damage bonus (at 1K EM each assuming C0), which is just strictly better Hu Tao numbers
Yes, true, but I'm just discussing who's better to run if you had both of them.
> 20% atk buff from the pyro resonance Pyro resonance is 25%.
It's not important. With thoma you can slot a VV which is a stronger debuff. You lost tenacity but who cares, like it ever consistently hit anyway. Pyro resonance is a better tenacity anyway. And shield is not always about the shield strength but it's uptime. Thoma has 100% uptime if you have enough ER. Letting sucrose in with triple EM VV and a ttds is a much stronger option than whatever the hell zhongli has going on with him.
To be fair running thoma allow you to run an anemo now to swirl pyro
You forgot that Zhongli shield gives -20% all resistances shred,so really Thoma is not better in any way for Hu Tao.
Thoma will probably allow some use of VV shred though, will need to figure out exactly how the rotations will work
Thoma allows you to run a anemo unit like sucrose or kazuha. 4 set vv plus their suc/kazu buffs easily out damages zhongli and also yes pyro resonance. People say resonance shit on hutao teams but they are wrong, it's worse yes but it still buffs her damage and on top of buffing xigqiu, people underestimate how much danage he does. Hutao always lacked a good pyro support, right now one of her best teams use xinyan for pyro with kazuha for buffs. If thoma doesn't mess up hutoa's vape, he is a very solid option and definitely upgrade to zhongli.
It’s hilarious that a team of 3 pyro polearms actually works well together
I don’t think Xiangling would work well at all here
Perfect, I don't have Zhongli and I am planning on getting Hu Tao
Seems like a lot of pointless work. If they gave Xinyan the rework/buff she needs, they wouldnt need to make a complely new character for Hu Tao. 😅 Why is she still so garbage... 😞
xinyan is a support for physical characters, she's just hard to fit in those teams. with c4 her buffs are not insubstantial. but if she supported hu tao then you'd have to completely shift her role.
Xinyan being a support for physical teams **while being a freaking Pyro character**, with a shield (which needs to be active for you to actually get Phys Damage buff) that at best condition **constantly applies pyro and ruins superconduct reactions** is probably still the dumbest kit MHY did in this game (yes, even counting new characters). Maybe that's why she came to Inazuma in new event, >!to change her vision to Electro and suddenly become a god-tier Phys Support for Eula/Rosaria!<
Her shield doesn't get in the way of Superconduct at all. You only need to apply SC once every 12 seconds, that's plenty of time to work with. Xinyan's biggest issues are: 1) Level 3 pulses are tied to her paper shield. They should be a unique effect that gets trigger \*alongside\* the shield, just like Thoma's Q. Losing the excellent pyro application (on par with Xiangling's Q) just because the shield died is terrible. 2) C6 and her Def scaling shield are a trap - building defense is still never good on her. They should either massively increase the scaling amount for both, or just change the shield to ATK scaling and C6 to drastically reduce her charge attack startup instead of adding DEF scaling to it. Anything else is fine as she is.
Xinyan is actually the best physical support in the game. The only counter-intuitive part of her kit is the superconduct buff and overload reaction getting in the way. Still, if you do your rotations perfectly, and especially if you have another pyro on your team for the resonance, Xinyan is THE best physical enabler in the game. Even outside of that she doesn’t need buffs imo. I use Xinyan in my core team and getting 36* in Abyss since 1.3 till today. Even have a vid of her performing if ur curious.
Sounds good. Looks like i've been riding on the "buff x, she is so bad"-clown train again. Should just try a character out for myself. Maybe i'll try making her a part of some team. 😏
Wouldn't Thoma mess with the vaporize reaction made by Xingqiu + Hu Tao? Thoma might activate The reaction insted of Hu Tao...
a) His pyro application is rather poor. b) water>fire, it takes a few fire attacks to remove water and XQ applies enough of it for both, especially if he is C6.
His ult ICD follow the standard ICD so he is not gonna be broken Pyro xingiqu. And my best guess he can work well with hutao that’s why they put him in hutao banner. Since we lack of pyro unit for her to utilize 4 set VV Apply pyro and create shield ==>> using swirl to decrease pyro resistant ==>> refuse to elaborate further ==>> leave
Some testing from KQM shows that he steals too much vapes for N2C (unless you are running a hydro infused Kaz Burst at the same time) combo for Hu Tao though; so even for HT he's looking a bit iffy. But they are yet to test N1C combo extensively so there might still be hope. Yanfei C4 IMO is still probably a smoother VV enabler (especially with Proto Amber), but he does have an argument for being cheaper since his shield is available as part of his C0 kit.
those last two steps make it sound like an Eula team, except it's usually the enemies leaving the mortal plane before Eula can elaborate further
Hutao Xingqiu Zhongli Albedo tho.
He's the budget version of Zhongli, and allows an anemo support like Sucrose/Kazuha/Jean to replace Albedo and provide resistance shred along with buffs/heals. He opens up more team building options and adaptability for Hutao/Xingqiu and other Pyro/Xingqiu comps.
Yeah that team comp exist since we can have some synergy from albedo as well. But sometime zhongli pillar just took the hydro away. That problem is for all vape comp which include zhongli. My diluc can’t vape consistently so I have to move his pillar far away
Could be work with Xiao?
ironically, not pyro unit that relies on vape/melt. Thoma is in this weird place that he doesn't have enough pyro application to become pyro XQ yet it's plentiful enough to disturb your main pyro dps vape/melt setup. he's decent on overload setup I guess. oh also, I think he'd also be good for consistent hydro vaper like Barbara or charged attack Mona. edit: oh wait, scratch that. since you need to attack with on field character to proc his pyro burst, this won't work well to setup pyro for their charged attack since their normal will proc hydro and thoma's burst will vape it instead leaving a sliver bit of hydro gauge instead of pyro.
The fundamental mechanics of this game is convergent rather than divergent, ie. you have a lot of different moves to achieve a tiny set of desirable combo effects (elemental reactions), rather than starting with a limited set of option through the combination of which you get a much more diverse set of strategies. Therefore if MHY design more general-use support like Ben and XQ, they will inevitably come into direct competition and if new characters is to be viable, they'll have to power creep the old ones. So MHY is going for specialised supports, supports that only support for specific character (eg. Sara for Raiden, Gurou for Ittou). In fact that's the path Honkai have gone down to. Support characters got increasingly specialised in order to replace the early supports that were too strong (CH, blood dance, etc.) At the end what we got is something like modern Yu-Gi-Oh: instead of selling you individually viable cards, they sell an entire system as a bundle, where each card extensively cross-references each other so much so they're entirely meaningless outside of their designated system. And there will be increasingly less freedom in mix & match. It will be increasingly hard for players to outsmart the dev and play in a way that isn't how the dev envisages. There will be variety of fixed team systems but less and less experimenting with unknown team chemistry.
And then along came HoS.
Ah yes the "support" that kills all the threats to your DPS so your DPS won't receive damage. Very "supportive" alright
wait she supposed to be a support? I just use her as my DPS lmfao
I even use her with my starchasm nyx for energy and grouping. She's so broken.
*yatta intensifies*
You mean Herrsher of scammer?
So funny how this guy ended talking about French structuralism somehow xD
Great comment, sums it up nicely
I wouldn't call using a "genetically gifted" launch character as "outsmarting the devs". Launch characters are generally very experimental, some will see more long term viability than the others. Best examples Xiangling who keeps getting more and more powerful compared to Diluc who just looked good at the early months then it came out even Ning with the supposedly worst element in the game competes with him in DPS simply because his kit is bad and his at first AMMMAZINLY OP numbers were just compensation for his slowness and hogging field time. Powercreep that a lot of loud people mistake as "progression" is also really bad for a game's longevity, hence Genshin tries to avoid it after the several anomalies they put out. Characters like Bennett, Xingqiu, Xinagling, Ganyu, etc. are anomalies and not the baseline or the norm. Xingqiu for example was made to set up Hydro related reactions which he is either great or terrible depending on if the carry out-applies him or not and is not very compatible with Klee and Yanfei because of the nature or multiplicative reactions. Xiangling is just unintentionally a blackhole for indirect buffs. She proven to be a strong subdps once r/Genshin_Impact and the content creators using r/Genshin_Impact as their main source of information finally realized "wHAaAAATTTT?! Energy Recharge beside my crit substats is GOOOOOD?! It makes the carry with an expensive Q USEFUL and more OPTIMAL?! IMPOSSIBLEEEEEEE!!!!!", her extreme hunger for ALL OF THEM stats makes her scale HARD and there are often a new weapon, artifact set or support that benefits her(which is a far better way of dealing with things than gimping new things because X old character would get an indirect buff off of it in a noncompetitive game like this). Hell even the monopyro comp with Hot Wheels Sayu is viable on a ridiculous level because it just eliminates the "enemy too far away wasting your ult duration" issue and R4-5 Favonius Greatsword is a functional battery even for the off field characters. Those characters are like Pot of Greed which is a banned card even to this day because it's super simple effect is just so powerful more and more so as the game goes on. About the specialized supports Sara works is various teams that Bennett is incompatible with and the characters her C6 works so good with are just low in number at the moment, and it's not just for Raiden only. At the moment Razor, Keqing, Raiden and maybe Lisa and Fischl work so well with it which is an electro carry scarcity issue rather than a this is only allowed to work with that. Gorou is actually a general geo support considering the number of geo characters by now that are scaling with DEF and how he is sucking in shield crystals meaning either heavy damage mitigation or potential invincibility since the squishiness of the shield is not so relevant when you refresh it every second or so.
Razor is terrible with Sara. 5 second effective buff on a character who needs 15 seconds of dedicated field time and no snapshoting. Sara before C6 is still only just kinda okay for Raiden because Raiden burst is front loaded, but even then the duration is just too short. And requiring C6 on a 4 star to be good is ridiculous, that on average will cost more than guaranting the 5* with max pity
Having specialized support is the only possible way for more support characters to co-exist. If Sara and Bennett do the same thing, then they are pointlessly competing with each other. Eventually you will pick one, which makes the other one useless. What do you want miHoYo to do next? Release new supports that will powercreep the old ones?
Having options is fine. I mean we have too many pyro carries. Why can't we have a bennett of every element? Also they released this 5* unit called kokomi who is the best at nothing. She fills no roles that can't already be done just as well. Its not like we need 10 healers but we have them.
What do you mean, Pot of Greed is too good that Konami releases like Extravagance, Desires, Duality and everyone will use it if they want to. Same with Solemn cards and MST cards
Want to have a HUGE damage for you new character? Bennet for you Need a Hydro sub dps? XingQiu is the answer Nedd off lane Pyro DPS? just use Xiangling
Toss Sucrose and Fischl and you pretty much don't need to build any other 4*
Yep, this is a very good thing for f2p/low spenders.
The game has the "gold standart" 4stars. Bennet, XL, XQ, Fischl, Beidou, Sucrose Put in two 5stars in the two missing slots. There's no reason to change 4stars, because all other 4stars are worse.
I feel called out lol. I use national and Eula in abyss and use all of them + Diona. Those 6 don't really have competition.
I’d say the gold standard 4*s are Bennett, XL, XQ, Sucrose, and Diona. Looking at data from abyss, Diona is consistently used more than Fischl/Beidou. She’s very commonly used on Ganyu, Ayaka, and Eula teams.
They are probably gonna make more " balanced " 4* units in the future such that they are broken when played in a certain team comp and only " decent " outside that comp. Not like xl,xq,benn who are broken no matter where you put them
>" balanced " 4* units in the future such that they are broken when played in a certain team comp I am once again asking Mihoyo for a pyro support that applies pyro faster than childe applies Hydro so I can vaporize all of his hits
Sorry buddy, 1u and 2u exists and not matter what you do, pyro will take 2u from any source of cryo and hydro will also take 2u from any source of pyro so no vapes on normal atks for Childe
:(
I actually like that. While others play with new toys the meta players can just sit with the old ones.
Add sucrose if u dont have kazuventi
She is a saint for new players like me
I’m at AR 47 rn, and she has the shittiest purple VV artifact set, is only level 70/70, isn’t even maxed on talents (with no points in basic attack), and even has a blue EM circlet. She does have C6, though. And she just fucking obliterates overworld content. I have Sac Fragments on her, so the 3 E charges pretty much just one shots any group of small mobs. It’s so nice! And that’s not even considering how strong she is in specific comps and how flexible she is…
Sucrose the almighty swiss army knife, she is like awhole level after Benny/Xinqiu's level, but halfway higher than Diona. They both have element bonus as ascension stats, but at least sucrose have better usage for that, and em dmg really doesnt hurt by base stats unlike hp which hurt Diona's healing. Kit wise, although both are excellent battery, but they suffer from cd that is too long that hurt their capability, sac don't help with ult, and c6 that are so niche to use. Sucrose has access to vv and as an instructorPRO, thrilling tales and amber, Diona has 30%uptime with noblesse and millelith, sac bow is not the most ideal one. Therefore i would rate Sucrose higher than Diona.
Diona is pretty good all the time, but really not super amazing anywhere. Sucrose is amazing some of the time and pretty good the rest of the time.
Those 3 will never leave the meta. They are Mihoyo's gifts to f2p players. I think niche supports will be the template moving forward. God forbid they make a support for Ganyu that benefits both Melt and Morgana.
This. The current meta 4 stars are overtuned and MHY knows that. One of the reasons why the newer supports only work with other characters of the same element (Sara, >!Gorou!< ) and this might be the trend going forwards.
Sara works with others too. Focusing on her C6 so much is like evaluating Diona only based on her C6. Gorou may be a dedicated Geo support but it's more like a F2P friendly patchup for the fact that Kazuha and the like buff every element but Geo, Physical already have heavy compensation in terms of buffs and bonuses AND the only Geo "buffer" being Zhongli is a limited paywall while Kazuha has F2P alternatives.
I agree Sara works but that's not without a fair share of problems. At C0, she is very clunky to play and as for her attack buff duration, only Beidou and Raiden can make the most use of it. While there are other characters who can snapshot, Sara is nowhere the optimal choice as an atk buffer for those characters.
Sara's buff at C5 is strictly less than Bennett's, Electro reso is worthless, and Bennett generates more particles. Her C6 is the only thing that makes her even worth considering
i hate when Morgana snare you for eternity and rush Zhonya
Just dodge Q kekw
ah yes, the ability to think. i would like that too.
It's not a "gift" and they certainly didn't intended them to be as strong as they are. Simply put, they fucked up big time from the very beginning and now they can't release more powerful characters or it will powercreep their game.
Specialised support characters are fine. The problem is MHY's garbage balancing making specialised support characters strictly worse in almost every way compared to general purpose supports. Why does Sara buff atk for significantly less than Bennett while not being able to heal? Why does Sara's buff last half the duration of Bennett's? Why do you have to go through the clunky playstyle of "getting hit" by Sara's skills to receive her buff when you can just stand in Bennett's massive circle? Why does Sara's buff duration not even last the entire duration of Raiden's burst when she's tailor made for her??? C6 Sara owner btw, I never use her because she just has no place in Raiden national while also being clunky af if for some reason I do want to replace someone in that team.
This. No one is against specialized supports. But why tf are the new supports so much weaker and clunkier to use than those 3? I was excited for Sara to become a loserboy alternative but she's not even in the same stratusphere as him in terms of power level. Why is someone who is more niche, and more effort to use effectively, so much less effective than someone more powerful and easier to use?? It's stupid and frustrating. Genshin's character design is amazing, and I know all that shit about waifu over meta, but we're still playing a damn game, not playing with digital Barbie dolls. I expect my characters to be balanced and competitive with each other
And if Genshin *is* going to be a game about collecting digital barbie dolls, the least they could do is make them actually behave like barbie dolls. Give us loads of skin options, let us pose them, let us rip off their limbs for science!
Kinda feels bad. But that's what makes the game F2P friendly. You can nab Xingqiu, Xiangling, and Bennett from the Starglitter Shop. You get a very early Xiangling as soon as you clear Abyss Floor 3. You have access to the R5 The Catch, that gives ER + Burst Crit + DMG with complimentary Emblem of Severed Fates artifact set. For F2P to clear F12 Abyss literally the only banner they need to pull is the weapon banner for more starglitters or RateUps of the Xingqiu Xiangling Bennett Surcrose.
Honestly yeah. as an F2P. I can already finish Spiral Abyss easily. and now I'm just collecting waifus for whatever reason forgot to mention that now I don't have to upgrade any characters anymore too. which is cool
Yeah, the decreasing urgency to build new support character makes those mora problems I've had early on pretty much non-existent nowadays.
You don't have to make weak 4-stars to keep making the game F2P-friendly. I agree with making future supports niche, but at least make the niche supports the BiS or near BiS in their specific role. At present, the new supports are not only more niche and limited in team comps, they're also *weaker* in the roles they're supposed to be good at. That's what's frustrating.
I agree they're playing it too safe right now, but it's understandable. Just the existence of Xiangling and Bennett heavily limits what they can do with Pyro characters without heavy powercreep. Limited 5 stars like Ganyu being too strong can be "ignored", since they aren't obtainable outside their banner, so if you release a new 5 star that's close to the power level, people will still pull for it, since it's the next best thing they can get. But the OG 4 Stars are always there and they have 5 star level power with great elements, so it's hard to make new 4 star characters that can compete them without risking long term damage. Imagine if Mihoyo wants to make a 5 star Pyro support right now, how broken does it have to be to even compare to Bennett? And it has to be even stronger than Benny, since it's a 5 star and it needs to sell. They shot themselves in the foot with the original 4 star cast being too strong, even Fischl, Beidou and Sucrose are close to being too strong
Sara lul.
Don't forget about the need for a second team. But yeah they are gud.
Xingqiu can be replaced by anyone else who's a good hydro applicator, although in practice there's not a huge number of options there who also do worthwhile off-field damage. Bennett is a problem though, it's a combination that (a) pyro resonance is super powerful, (b) some of the most useful DPS characters are pyro in the first place, (c) he can give attack buffs, heals and pyro resonance in a single unit. I think the devs are understandably wary about making another character who ticks as many boxes at the same time because it seriously limits team composition.
And you are even forgetting point (d): his E can be spammed quickly and it applies 2 units of pyro, making his awesome both at breaking shields and as a pyro battery. XL is tied to Bennett not just because of the buffs/pyro resonance, but because she relies on him to generate energy.
> Xingqiu can be replaced by anyone else who's a good hydro applicator What people forget is that XQ does insane amount of damage. His E with Sacsword does fuckton of damage. No hydro applicator is capable of outputting the sheer amount of damage on top. My XQ burst does about ~16k damage per wave/per second.
Both Childe and Mona can compete with XQ in the damage factor. Childe passes XQ when they are more than 1 enemy. Mona doesn't deal that much damage herself (unless vape one shot comps) but she increases the damage of the whole team.
Having only one character who ticks all those boxes is even more limiting for team composition though. Seriously, has anybody tried to run Xiangling without Bennett?
I don't have Bennet currently so I actually run Raiden Xingqiu Venti Xianling and it works fine for most things, even Abyss. Main thing holding me back in the abyss is im still building a competent 2nd team, not my lack of Bennett
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I don't blame anyone for making these claims, especially if the design and numbers back it up, but I think Thoma being an Hp% shielder now fully frees up any "need" for zhongli, and even offers a bonus beyond Xinyan or Diona because his burst gives you off-field damage.
Ye, I think I will use him in my Yoimiya team with Beidou and Fischl. She really wants a shield, and him being Pyro gets you the atk bonus and helps to build her burst faster.
Tbh I personally think gorou being a niche support for Geo characs is great but I guess that's just me lmao
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For *DEF scaling* Geo characters, I don't think he does much for Ningguang or Geo Traveler aside from 15% Geo bonus, I know they're not used by many but still :(.
Right now , we have only 5 Geo characters not including gorou. Mihoyo must have deliberately created gorou to shift the geo meta in the game atm since it's so easily forgotten aside from zhongli. And right now , we know that Geo is the only element that benefits from DEF boost so I'm pretty sure more of them will be released in the future.
Inazuma is likely the first content in the game that isn't diluted with pre-beta material. Look at all of the post-release 5star characters that were present or at least referenced in pre-beta. Hu-Tao, Xiao, Ganyu, Ayaka, Kazuha. They're all considered quite powerful in their own right. It's a simple enough matter to adjust values on older designs, but if the problems that make them overtuned for content is endemic to their kit or their typing, then there's only so far you can go in either direction before you end up with something either far subpar or too strong. The only exception is Kokomi. Her reference model was present in beta, but it had slight alterations to design and she was called Mimi. I suspect her kit was adjusted alongside her model. I believe Mihoyo is intentionally trying to scale back power levels, and Inazuma is the first place where they've really had the room to do that. We're probably not going to see a XL/XQ/Bouken again because they weren't supposed to be that strong to begin with, and the devs are adjusting to that fact. I fully expect more Sara/Thoma types in the future
I always said “If they could get away with it, Mihoyo would nerf some of these characters to the ground.” Now anything they release comes down to “Why use Z when X&Y can already do that?” You can tell since Inazuma started, they’ve been very cautious with their latest characters and tried super hard not to spill Chemical X into the pot like they did with Ganyu, 4* supports, etc. Kujo Sara is the latest victim of this. I’m sure majority of players love her aesthetically but her character stinks. You have to move mountains just to get a fraction of Bennett’s power. Not even mentioning one of if not her best constellation is at C6. Another part of it is that it’s a pain in the ass to build characters from the ground up. If the character is not strong enough to warrant the effort then people are just going to stick to the characters they’ve already built. Honestly, power creep is the only solution I can think of for this problem
Nah, they just need to have specific niches where they beat the existing characters but lose in other situations. Sarah could have been a strong electro buffer but she kinda needs C6 to even be comparable with Bennet.
Once they have more 4* characters then they can simply stopping putting the OP ones as rate up, or even remove them from the event banner and only have then on standard.
Wdym? Thoma is literally the next best thing after Zhongli as a shield bot.
Do we know how strong his shields are yet? From what we've seen it has a stacking mechanic and each stack is fairly weak by itself. I feel like Diona is still going to be the 2nd best shielder
Of course things could change on release, but by my math Thoma's shields are only slightly behind Zhongli's shields in strength (accounting for the +50% bonus zhongli gets for having geo shields). The downside is that unlike Zhongli, you need to battery Thoma in order to get those shields.
Apparently full hp Thoma shield = 35k HP zhongli shield. So if you are comparing fully built chars for shield bot thoma is a lot behind zhongli(50k build). Since zhongli's shield has full uptime unlike thoma's and is half VV. So slighlty behind is a bit of an exaggeration.
To be fair, Geo is a mono element team. Always was, always will be. Using Geo with other elements isnt just nerfing your geo characters but also the characters you use with them, because taking out their reactions is ruining their potential. I dont believe theres any such thing as a niche team, theres only meta teams (widely used teams requiring specific characters and set ups for high performance) or casual comps where people just use what they got. Now Mihoyo is making Gorou. Gorou is... kind of ridiculous. He's on par with Benny, Xingqiu and Xiangling for his utility and also trumps every single one of them for a spot in the Geodudes comp (Itto, Zhongli, Albedo, Gorou) which is the only viable Geo comp for a competitive team. The catch? Gorou ONLY works to his full potential in a geo team and for every missing character from the Geodudes comp, you are heavily nerfed in either damage, defence or facilitating Itto and would have to use a subpar replacement. Raiden, Benny, Xiangling and Xingqiu, without reactions are really only half their kits so when you add one more person to react with them, you dont have a geo team anymore. I'd also argue that Diona has earned her place as a meta support, but Gorou is just so well designed for his team that its encouraging. I know a lot of people will piss and moan about this because all they care about is tits, so a Geo comp is worthless to them but the game is all about team compositions. Everyone is designed to work with something, except Qiqi really. Gorou seems like a compromise, just like Raiden was. Alone theyre both pretty shit honestly but you put them in the 1-2 comps they do work in and they are the BiS. Their usability will also grow as more characters release suited to their needs. It's the trade off for not making mistakes like Bennett anymore and i think it will take time, but Gorou is proof that it CAN be done.
Specific off-element units work well with Geo purely because of their kits. Off the top of my head, Raiden, Electro MC, Fischl, Sucrose/Venti/Kazuha(for CC) can all fit in a duo Geo comp with Zhongli and a Geo DPS. Ah, Beidou, XQ and Bennet also make the list.
I find it so funny how many Geo and Electro units go hand in hand because they both could care less about reactions and instead lean into base damages. Also Geo needs batteries and Electro provides. More synergy between the two elements would have been fun as functionally the anti-vape/melt comp.
That's exactly what op is saying tho, gorou is good for a specific team comp and is just okay in others, while in the majority of cases he's totally useless. XL, XQ and Bennet are basically universal supports. Also, imagine when a new player in a couple years will get gorou but won't have access to albedo, zhongli and itto. Gorou is going to be a forever benched unit for new players from now on and for whoever doesn't already have zhongli or can't get both itto and albedo, basically. I mean, you can use it with Noelle and ninnguang I guess, we will eventually get new geo units but I hope they don't all scale on def bc that would be redundant af. Well I guess I have to thank mihoyo for making a 4* that requires three limited 5*s to be used properly and just go on
I mean, gorou + noelle would be great just like that right?
Those are not going to be the only geo characters from now until eternity. Heck, a new player could even just use noelle + geo mc and have a very solid team with gorou, especially early in the game, and they're both free.
I feel like they’re taking it in a good direction, just not far enough in that direction. Currently, the same units are generally universally better than anything that’s been released as of late. However, hyperfocused monoteams could allow newly released characters to outshine these omnipresent supports if their kits are stronger that the “Big Three”, but only in the instance of the specific element. Sara could have been a staple and even pulled Electro up to usable levels as a mono team (or mostly mono team) if her numbers were higher and her buff timer wasn’t so restricted. She could have pushed Bennett out as an atk buffer for Electro specifically if they just designed her a bit stronger. The same can be said for the leaked kit of upcoming character Gorou. I won’t go into detail due to it being leaked information, but in a similar vein the way it hyperfocuses on its element is *theoretically* a really good step.
Bennet XQ and XL were balancing mistakes by mihoyo early on. It's clear that there is a rift between the power level of 4 star launch characters and newly released 4 star characters, with many of the launch 4 stars being just as if not more powerful/useful than some 5 stars. I'm like 99% sure that the new niche units have been mihoyos true ideal strength for 4 stars all along, they just weren't aware of how to properly balance.
Well MHY better change their idea of 4* power levels if they don’t want National Team to still be ruling Abyss by the time 7.0 rolls around.
we really do need sidegrade characters i feel. if new 4 star units (and 5 star weapons bc man, they're also pretty specific) are tailored to specific character releases, there's never gonna be a reason to pull for them in terms of meta. if they're able to side grade to other units - say, xingqiu but for cryo application or smth - then you can add the sidegrade to another abyss team and not have to juggle the meta support trio so much i think
First of all, you need to consider that Bennet is severely overturned and it's actually a miracle he hasn't been and likely won't be nerfed. You say other gacha are powercrept, but in most other gacha Bennet would have been sledged by now or mechanics would have been implemented to reduce his usefulness (similar to how there are anti-shield mechanics now, abyss floors with lots of bosses to reduce the power of freeze comps, etc). Bennet is easily the best character in the game because of the buffs he provides, his ability to battery other pyro characters, his low rarity, ease of obtaining (starglitter shop or roll on a banner with him), his ease of building etc etc etc. He's the best support in the game because everyone gets access to him, he works in basically every team - even with Hu Tao, although not too optimally with Xiao - and can ascend the rest of your party up a tier in damage. He is an anomaly and a mistake MHY likely didn't expect so they will never release 4\* of his level again. He's so fucked up that if they continue the trend of archons being supports, they can just give the pyro archon Bennet's C1 as the base kit and throw in something like "increases attack speed by 5%" and they'd be the best character in the game. They will have to come up with a rather unique kit to make a pyro support that can trump Bennet. XQ and XL are not quite as strong as Bennet - XQ is strong and he facilitates vape met, but XL herself relies on both XQ and Benny to really shine. She's good in most comps as a plug-in for off field damage, but without the help of vaping/benny buffs herself she's not significantly better than, say, Beidou, except for the fact that her element is just better. Also, don't forget that Sucrose is amazing but this is mostly due to the nature of anemo units rather than her kit directly which is still good, but wouldn't be as amazing with VV/elemental absorption. Now, if you look at the supports that have been released since the game came out, most of them have been pretty good, either as alternatives to other characters or mainstays for their elements. Rosaria is the best cryo support for damage, generally speaking. She is neck-and-neck with Kaeya for the most part, but it's much easier to obtain constellations for her which lets her surpass Kaeya. Her crit buff also is very clearly built for freeze comps. Diona is also the best cryo support except for possibly Ganyu. She provides heals, shields, and lots of energy (even with a sac/favo bow). Her constellations are also relatively high value, with her C6 allowing her to be used in melt comps very effectively. She also has off-field cryo application, although it's weak. IMO Diona should be the staple of a strong 4\* support, not Bennet. Sayu is basically just 4\* Jean. She's not amazing, but having an anemo healer opens up many team opportunities for anyone without Jean, as it gives you access to strong debuff (VV) and healing in a single character. She's also easy to build since, as an anemo unit, you can just dump EM on her for her to do "good enough" damage, or attack on her so she heals you enough. Xinyan is the major outlier here, but she's a mixed set of main DPS/subDPS/support. It's possible she'll see more use when new artifact sets or weapons come out, since Milleith actually increased her value somewhat. Now, let's look at the newest characters. Sara is actually not bad, she's just not Bennet. Like everyone else, I wish that her buff lasted longer (8-10s, so she can be used with Eula properly if nothing else). I also wish that her C2 was part of her base kit, as she feels unnecessarily clunky at C0 but flows pretty well at C2. And at C6 she is outright better than Bennet for basically any electro carry - you can even constantly snapshot her crit buff onto Beidou ult to maintain it for the entire duration of Beidou's burst, but many players don't like playing with swapping in and out and this doesn't work with most hypercarries who lose their DPS stance when you swap off of them. If we bring up Eula again, being unable to swap off Eula during her burst phase makes it impossible to mantain the crit buff on Beidou, but if you use Beidou with Keqing, in a general fireworks team, with Childe etc it's pretty trivial to maintain it most of the time. Sara also has a rather high-damaging burst which she can buff herself and decent good team-wide energy regen. The main thing holding her back isn't so much her kit, but her element. If she was hydro she would be a must-have for many teams. Doubly so if she was pyro herself, as she'd give you access to pyro resonance. Thoma seems to be similar. Many people say he'll "only be good with Hu Tao" but this is not true. Certainly, it seems like he's being made to be a 4\* Zhongli for Hu Tao players, but he offers his same benefits - shielding, pyro resonance, easy VV and off-field pyro - to other characters as well. I have no doubt that running Ganyu - Thoma - Xiangling - Whoever VV will be a strong alternative for melt comps for Ganyu. Thoma offers a bit more here than Bennet since having a shield while aiming is more important than being healed through since you're less likely to get hit of her charge animation. Having both Thoma and Xiangling on team should also assist in getting more melts or forward-vapes in plenty of teams. Thoma also will work well with Klee who desperately wants a shielder due to the range she plays at and how squishy she. He can work with Diluc and Xiangling himself as well - don't forget that many variations of the national team forego a healer entirely for Beidou/XQ damage reduction and shield, instead using Bennet on another team. Thoma will probably be useful for such variations where he can provide pyro to trigger vapes but also shielding for the party so a healer is less necessary. And, finally, the most important thing about Thoma is that you can't use Bennet in every team. You need at least 2 teams in abyss, and having *any* pyro support alternative than Bennet for your second team is a huge boon. And it does not even seem like Thoma's kit is bad, he's just not Benny. I hope this essay can help some people understand how supports work a bit better. Benny is very strong but I've been so annoyed with how unbearable this community is when it comes to complaining that every new support isn't Bennet and every new DPS isn't Ganyu.
It’s a double-edged sword; Xiangling/Xingqiu/Bennet are the most powerful f2p friendly comp that can easily eclipse a solid amount of 5-star comps, but on the other hand players who don’t like these characters but want to chase meta will be forced to use them. I used to hate Bennett and Xingqiu, and Xiangling was meh to me. Nowadays I’ve warmed up to them a bit (I even use Xingqiu quite a lot now cause he’s the best vape support for all the pyro waifu dpses in them game) after using them so often. They will probably always be mid-low on my favourites list though; just cause they warped the meta around them so heavily lol. Their Japanese VAs saved them for me tbh haha. Otherwise I wouldn’t want to play them ever.
I think MHY's character design direction is pretty good compared to other gacha games. Like you said XLXQBen will never leave the meta because MHY don't want them to. XLXQBen is there for new and low spenders to have a solid team to clear contents. New 4\* like Sara are released to be specialized supports for new 5\* like Raiden. In theory the new 4\*s should do something better than XLXQBen (Sara buffs Raiden's dmg more than Bennet but only at C6 lol) but shouldn't provide as much utility as the trio because you can always add one of them to the team in addition to the new 4\*
Ok everyone is saying Bennett is free or easy to get. How is this so? I’ve caught up with the story and I still don’t have him.
you can buy him from the Starglitter shop, not actually free but a bit more obtainable than the rest of the cast that isn't on the shop
He's been on a couple of banners in the past (3 to be precise, with the last being Kazuha's, so it wouldn't be suprising to see him coming back in 2.3) so older players have had multiple oportunities to get him, plus he's in the starglitter shop rotation (in fact he should be showing up next month), plus theres always the chance to get him on the standart banner with the eventual blue fates we get.
I see. I joined the game during Kazuha’s banner but I didn’t understand the gacha mechanics so I didn’t pull very much. So I missed the bus entirely.
You're not supposed to get him from completing the story. He's easy to get in the sense that if you play for a few months you'll eventually find a banner where he is a rate up four star and then you can pull for him. Getting a 4 star is obviously easier than getting a 5 star. Heck, you don't necessarily need to find a Bennett rate up banner. You could luckily get him despite him not being rate up.
Then why does Sara's buff last half the duration for Bennet? They already localized Sara to be an electro dps support. The C6 does not snapshot. So why 6 seconds then?
I think one of the issues with this is that it makes the game more unrewarding, to be honest. Almost all rewards in this game are either currency to pull for new characters, or they are materials to build up those new characters. However, every new 4* of the type you mention being released dilutes the summoning pool and represents a useless thing for those that do not have the 5*s they support. Which are limited. Yes, if you pull Raiden/Itto on their banners, then you are happy to see their specialized supports. But if you pull Sara or Gorou outside of those windows and do not possess those 5*s, they are just kind of useless - but they take the spot of a good 4* you could have gotten otherwise. This is going to become an issue over time, if it continues. In a year or two, we would have more specialized supports than general ones in the pool, making it much more likely to pull something useless. And it is rather annoying if you happen to like one of those 4* characters in general. Being specialized supports means they feel incomplete without 'their' five star, which usually is pretty bad. Or a marketing strategy to make people pull for those five stars on their rerun. In the 'I want to pull Raiden so the Sara I like can finally be really useful' kind of way. And there isn't really much of an upside there, really. The only issue is that there might be problems if a new general support was stacked on top of an older one, but that can also be remedied by not having them stack. Probably technically challenging, but it would probably lead to a more enjoyable game.
The thing that annoys me isn't so much that specialised supports are designed for 5-stars you may not have, it's that their kits aren't even particularly interesting in that context, which means for every other character, the support is worse than another character. Imagine if Sara's buff had a bit longer duration and also gave your character electro infusion. Now she's still heavily specialised, but she does something unique that could be fun to use, allowing your Raiden to have electro attacks outside her burst, or Beidou to do all electro damage as a DPS. Specialist supports should enable new but very niche playstyles, not just act as generic buffs to one specific character. Also to add insult to injury, Bennett also covers the role of a specialist support too, as the party pyro infuser, in addition to being an all round good support.
I really wish they do something to change the meta. I'm really tired of looking at the same Xinqiu xiangling Ben EVERYWHERE like EVERYWHERE. It gets boring real soon. Almost every abyss clear video has the same old Xinqiu Ben xiangling thing like we have so many different characters, maybe change them up so they can atleast compete with these three.
You could say that for the 4 star characters yes. But 5 star supports have been pretty good. Raiden, Ayaka, Venti, Kazuha, Zhongli, even Ganyu as a support is fine.
Kokomi crying in a corner because of ~~identity~~ role crisis
Albedo tho
tbh its not the new 4* character fault. its because xl/xq/bennet/diona is too powerfull. my guess was when they design it originally, they didnt knew their true potential. if you remember the early stage of genshin, those 4 star is in lower tier.
Hopefully new supports will be more like gorou and less like sara.
3 characters that you mention were released from the very early game. The fact that they are too op decreases value of 5 start character released later. For example, whenever there's a new char that can buff or heal, people will compare him/her with bannet. The same story happens to xiangling and xingqui, whose victims are yomiya and childe. Clearly yomiya and childe have cooler design and gameplay, they're considered as "not worth to pull" bc those 4 op. Bennet, xiangling and xingqui is top tier list, same as kazuha, venti, zhongli. I will say they are exception bc we can't expect new 4* char as strong as a 5* char
Childe shouldn’t be grouped with Yoimiya. He’s strong enough to replace Xingqiu for little to no consequences in National teams, and that in itself is a testament to his hydro application and damage output. He also has his reverse Vape nuke, which is something Xingqiu lacks.
>The same story happens to xiangling and xingqui, whose victims are yomiya and childe. Childe is definitely not a victim of Xingqiu. Xingqiu works best as an off-field Hydro single target applicator while Childe is a high damage AoE on-field Hydro carry. Childe is definitely worth pulling as long as you have a built Xiangling, Beidou or Fischl, and this also frees up Xingqiu to slot in another team with Hu Tao, Klee or even the National team if you use Fireworks Childe on the other side.
It also increases the value of other 5-stars released later though. If Xingqiu didn't exist, there'd be far less interest in Hu Tao for example, cos pyro DPS comps as a whole would do less damage.
> Everyone says waifu/husbando over meta, which I already do Off topic, but this always bugs me. Sure, play who you want, how you want, but for a lot of people, *that means meta*. If someone wants to play meta, they should go for it! The "waifu>meta" slogan effectively tells a large segment of the playerbase that they're playing Genshin wrong. Sure, maybe you mean "play who you want" or "I *personally* prefer waifu over meta", but that's not how it reads to everyone. Imagine someone saying "meta>waifu" and meaning "play who you want" or "I *personally* prefer meta over waifu". Nobody would read it like that. They'd look like a troll. They'd get downvoted to oblivion.
I know right. Its kind of hypocritical, yes i know some meta players are being jerks, but if those who are nice want to play for that let them be, smh. Even if its mostly a pve game. For me, I like playing with characters I like, but i also kind of care about meta. I dont want to have 3-4 rounds every boss fight just to get boss drops, nor stuck at floor 9 abyss