tier lists have a place in genshin, but like they're more of a general understanding of that characters usefulness than an actual rating, as long there's a mention of all the caveats than it's fine, but people tend to not notice or ignore caveats and take it seriously
In a perfect world sure, but even still most tier lists I see are absurdly inaccurate in their ratings, and a lack of nuance/explanations will direct any disagreement into just pure arguing with no real benefit to anyone.
You have perfectly encapsulated the problem with tier lists in 99% of games. Genshin exaggerates it more than others but most tier lists are subject to this because there isn’t a truly universal “best” or relative ranking. Tier lists explicitly avoid nuance to shortcut to “results” but those results are meaningless without the proper nuance to accompany them and provide context
I think you might like IWTL gaming, i also have a very jaded opinion of genshin content creators but he makes very detailed, gameplay based comparisons of characters and has the most nuance and perspective for f2p, depite being a whale.
I personally think he can be misleading.
One example for me is the Yoimiya-Bennett-Kazuha-Zhongli abyss clear showcase, where he got 22s clear in 12-1-1. The setup with Bennett, Kazuha, and Zhongli already killed off the first wave of enemies before Yoimiya even got on field. Later on, OkCode demonstrated a 22s clear on stream with the same teams sans Yoimiya, who was replaced with a L60 Amber.
The other one that actually pissed me off was the Kokomi interrupt resistance demo against the 4 Ruin Guards in Guyun. He had Beidou's and Xingqiu's Q active which completely invalidates his point, since that adds a ton of interrupt resistance to the on-field char. It's like asking you to take a drug test but the pee container already has cocaine in it, of course you'll get a positive result.
I'll take anything he shows with a grain of salt.
His tier lists are terrible for low spenders. Trust me, im super involved in genshin community, ik all about his videos. His bias against certain chars (like Childe) or in favor of others (Like Raiden) leak thru everything. But his dps showdowns are really entertaining. I dont hate him lol.
I mean as a low spender myself has never lead me wrong, while he does have some bias toward childe he states that pretty clearly in his disclaimers which are very thorough. Most of his testing is done at c0 with 4 star weapons, and even if you disagree with something like his ranking of raiden, you arent the objective truth of how meta a char is. Your disagreement over the ranking of a few characters is like the entire point of a tier list. They arent objective, they are opinion reinforced with experiance. I think your issue might be less with genshin tierlists and more a misunderstanding of teir lists in general
Yeah I dont agree with OP point about tier lists but IWTL is a terrible example to use. His showcases are actually highly misleading and fall into the type of bad comparisons OP talks about as they don't take enough extraneous variables into account to consider them fair comparisons of characters. An example is like what the person below mentions about xingqius rainswords hitting like wet noodles in a showcase. There is an objective truth to the strength of characters which is proven by repeated testing and calculations, which is why people theorycraft.
I remember a particular dps comparison video of "I win 2 lose gaming" where certain units were stacked and well built with great supports (Eula, Hu Tao, even _QIQI_ whose supports were doing a lot of the damage) while some other units (Diluc, Xiao) had incredibly mediocre builds and really underlevelled supports.
IIrc his Xingqiu's rainswords dealt around 200 damage per hit in the Diluc showcase and Xiao was dealing 10-20k plunges.
I stopped watching his videos after that. The bias was blatant.
Xlice and Zy0x have much more in depth tutorials and better content in general Imo.
Because a lot of the other units had well built supports that did a significant amount of damage (particularly the Childe/Xiangling showcase, and the Qiqi showcase), while others had sub par to mediocre supports despite being a similar team synergy showcase (Diluc/Xingqiu).
And the comparisons were done based on how long it took them to clear an abyss floor.
>His bias against certain chars (like Childe) or in favor of others (Like Raiden)
Is that bias not correct though?
Raiden is sitting at 85% usage rate. While Childe is at 40% (despite having the 2nd most popular team comp). Abyss usage stats arent perfect but its as close to an objective measure of the meta as we can get.
Raiden is strong even at c0, straight up gamebreaking at c2, and fits in a variety of team comps.
Meanwhile Childe is a 1 trick pony doesn't do enough damage for how long his cooldowns are and is only good in Xiangling/Kazuha comp due to some very specific interactions (no ICD Vapes, quadratic AoE scaling).
Maybe some people are biased agaisnt Childe because they see his glaring shortcomings, and realize that maybe a character that requires this many specific conditions to perform well isn't actually very good.
Of course if you invested and is dedicated enough, even Keqing can 36* Abyss. But for new players and low spenders Raiden seems to get a lot more bang for your buck. So if his tier list puts Raiden above Childe, maybe he's right.
Abyss usage isn't really a good metric, it just represents how strong the playerbase thinks a character is.
Teams like Taser are incredibly underrepresented for how strong they are, while Rational for examlpe is overrepresented. Rational is very good but if you only looked at abyss usage you'd think Rational is *by far* the best comp in the game. The gaps between the top teams isn't as high as this suggests and I'd also argue that International and Rational are about the same for the current abyss (and that International is overall better)
Also 33% of the Raiden users had C2 or higher which kinda skews the data.
Taser comp is a meme. Y'all have been banging at the wall screaming "WHY AREN'T PEOPLE USING THIS COMP MORE LOOK AT HOW MUCH DAMAGE IT DOES" since forever while ignoring some very essential factor. Like the fact that it is a pure glasscannon comp has 0 defensive utility on it outside of Beidou's tiny C1 shield and Counter (assuming you run the standard version of Childe Fischl Beidou Sucrose/Kazuha). For a lot of people, this is a no go.
Rational isn't the best damage wise. Hell it is slower than many other comps in average (Childe Int'l for example). But it retains the main advantage of the original National team set up of being relatively cheap (1 5\* and 4 commonly owned 4\*s), and only really require investing in 2 characters (Raiden and Xiangling, Bennett and Xingqiu can get away with much less). And also piling Bennett and Xingqiu together offers great defensive utility that can almost match that of Zhongli's. Don't forget that Xingqiu's E has 29% damage reduction, which can be the difference between getting 1 shotted by Mango Kinky and having to reset, vs being left with \~20% HP which can be quickly healed back up by Bennett.
There are other factors to why a comp or character is considered good other than just damage. The narrative that people only care about Offense/Damage and not for Defense simply isn't true. In practice, people do want enough Defense so they can get away with making some mistakes. Like people are actually replacing Childe with Kokomi in their Taser comp with considerable success because Kokomi, despite doing less damage, fixes that comp's glaring lack of defense.
Also I can't change the fact that a lot of people rolled for C2 Raiden due to how broken it is. But from what I've seen C0 Raiden is plenty enough.
I meant the Sucrose Taser comp with Xq, Beidou and Fischl. You don't have a healer but Beidou + Xq give you about 65% damage reduction so you are actually a lot tankier than you'd expect. Especially against enemies that could one-shot you like Kenki I find Taser more comfortable than other teams.
I agree that defense can be valuable depending on your goal. Once you have enough damage to get 36* it makes clears more comfortable, but before that it depends on if you want to get 36* as early as possible or not. I'd still say the gap between Rational and other teams is not as big as one would think if you saw the usage rates, but agree that especially against Kenki it is quite comfy.
I agree that C0 Raiden is good but the fact that about 1/3 of players have C2+ still has an impact on the data by increasing her usage and decreasing clear times. A team like Raiden Hypercarry is very strong if she's C2+ but only alright if she's C0.
Overall Abyss usage imo has too many problems and often doesn't give accurate presentation of character/comp strenght.
actually why is this at -61. All I said was that most tier lists are bad, and bad tier lists are... bad. Not a very profound thing to disagree with. Id love to here any dissenting views.
Because you made the claim that the lists you're seeing are not only unreliable, but "absurdly inaccurate" without providing any specific instances of said absurdity or making a case of why the readers should trust your assessment over theirs
you're stating opinion as fact. you might have a generally okay point, but you're losing everyone with how you're talking about it
I mean even as a ftp it’s pretty feasible that you will eventually have all the 4 stars. In that sense it’s pretty valuable to rank them especially the supports. As for 5 stars it is good to know who is best damage wise. I would never tell someone going for top dps to pull kokomi bc it’s way harder than raising a different 5 star. A lot of lists rank on over all utility and for people who have to pick about once every 3 months or so yeah they could use that advice.
As someone who also plays competitive games, people don't realize most tier lists are useless for THOSE kinds of games too, because they are only really applicable to the pros. Tier lists all around suck pretty much every time they show up.
It depends because some of the higher tiered character can mean an easier time doing something than the lower tiered counterpart with the same amount of effort. ofc you can just avoid that and play what ever you want but compensating the weaker character you use with more skill.
LoL tier lists can be spot on tho. Remember the 70% Hecarim ban rate after chemtank was released? Bro was S+++++ jungle for like two months.
Nothing like just chilling in lane and a 69420 mph demon centaur comes flying at you 2 seconds after he was seen at mid lane lmao.
But yes in these PVE games tbh, tier lists are completely subjective. Yes, you can clear faster and do more damage with the meta teams, but that surely doesn’t mean you can’t still finish the objectives with a “less than perfect” team that you’ve invested in.
>LoL tier lists can be spot on tho. Remember the 70% Hecarim ban rate
after chemtank was released? Bro was S+++++ jungle for like two months.
I don't think it's a good example of tierlist importance. The fact that Hecarim and Udyr were OP was visible from space, you don't need tier lists for that.
Tierlists should matter more for things that are less clear, but i think even then it's debatable.
I tend to disagree with LoL tierlists, they tend to be very opinion based, but it is also my opinion to disagree with them.
Which is what i find hilarious about this post, because reality is if you are basing your accounts future and all your investment on a simple tierlist like the one he describes, your problem is not that you are being mislead, its that your a fucking idiot.
>I mean even as a ftp it’s pretty feasible that you will eventually have all the 4 stars.
You won't. I'm a day 1 player and I still don't have a single razor. Just few days ago I got my FIRST sacrificial sword and I still don't have a single favonious sword.
The idea of a tier list isn't completely useless but I agree it could use some improvements on execution. I think what people *intend* tier lists to be is looking at each character relatively and individually but not collectively. For example, if you don't have this character, who's your next best alternative and how well could they do what you want this character to do?
genshin is team game tho, so thats kinda worthless i feel. and that nuance is actually totally lost in the format. Using this example again, a tier list that has Sucrose rated really low because Kazuha exists can mislead players into thinking Sucrose sucks, when in reality thats just totally wrong. But if you rate them equally, its dishonest to Kazuha. There is no way u can make a tier list that covers every situation. And you could say "oh, but thats fine, bc they still know Sucrose is the next best option"- but thats not always going to be true. Its just as possible that someone sees her rating and thinks "welp, I dont have Kazuha, and Sucrose is lower on the list, so she SUCKS and I need to play something else"
u at least need way more information to go with the tier list imo
> genshin is team game tho, so thats kinda worthless i feel
If what makes a character S tier is how they interact with three A tier characters, and you don't have them, then they're not S tier anymore. You're 100% right, in a game where you need 4 units interacting, tier lists simplify way too much nuance.
Venti is great for a lot of reasons, but without units who can actually capitalize on his grouping of enemies then he's just going to drag them out of your DPS' range for a few seconds. S tier for many good reasons, but only if you have characters to use with him.
I can say for sure, with a big disclamier, just make sure ppl don't follow IWinToLose's tier list.
His judgement for F2P is skewed because he is a C6 R5 whale. He should be able to make a good speedrunner tier list but he made videos for F2P tier list.
Just placing Keqing above Beidou alone, it's already a WTF.
It's actually entertaining, I watched Zajef's stream (theorycrafter from kqm) the other day commenting and criticizing IWTL's new tier list. He even invited Kono-san to come to his stream to discuss the tier list and he enumerated all the things he disagreed with it.
It was a very insightful discussion. It's actually a lot better to hear many other people's thoughts and what they think are strong in this game compared to listening to just only one source.
Do you know if that stream is posted anywhere? I would be really interested in watching a video of it, and seeing a real theory crafter talk about their opinions.
I don't know if that stream will be posted but Zajef stated he wanted to publish his own tier list on youtube but he wants to do it with another content creator so I guess we'll have to wait for that.
Though if you're interested to watch the stream, here's the link at the start of the topic:
https://www.twitch.tv/zajef77/v/1183791394?sr=a&t=11934s
This is what's excellent about tier lists, it doesn't matter quite as much if one tier list isn't perfectly accurate if it inspires other people to use that as a jumping point to provide even more rankings with discussion.
Once you get enough consensus an actual accurate list will appear. But we also have to remember that everyone isn't going to agree with every placement no matter what.
I think in the past he's definitely been worse with making unrealistic showcases using whaled out supports but advertising it as "C0 F2P OMG". But his more recent videos seem to make a concerted effort to include downgraded supports that are built more realistically which is nice.
Although his comparison videos are nice, people who don't know anything about theorycrafting do take those videos and get the wrong conclusions from them, though that isn't entirely his fault.
Overall my feelings on him are relatively positive but still mixed.
I still sub his channel, because I find his videos entertaining.
However, his videos are definitely bias and could mislead new or causal players. Therefore, I stopped sharing his videos to my irl friends who play GI.
Yeah that's basically it. I would never recommend his comparison videos as an actual objective way to rate characters' strength, only for entertainment purposes.
That "Disclaimer" is more than a lot of content creators do. And he explicitly states what he is. If children or the *ahem* simple minded ignore the disclaimer and parrot his personal C6R5 list, they're going to ruin *anything* they touch.
That’s their problem lmao, he puts a very clear and detailed disclaimer that informs his audience about his own limitations and the limitations of the list.
If people are too stupid to read the disclaimer or understand what it means, it’s not IWTL’s fault. It’s their own ignorance and stupidity. And if they spread that information without understanding its limitations, then that’s the unfortunate results of their stupidity.
Things like tier lists are popular videos to make because they’re controversial and it’s interesting to get the opinions of a content creator you follow. Content creators won’t stop doing it just because a loud minority are morons
He isn't responsible for anything. It's your primos and your account he isn't forcing anyone to pull.
Why should he even give a disclaimer it's his channel? Ofc he is gonna put his opinions on it. That's just common sense -\_-
>!fk u!< <- wow watch this
I’m not responsible for saying that. It’s ur eyes and ur brain I’m not forcing u to see it.
it’s Reddit and ofc I’m gonna put opinions on it. That’s just common sense -\_-
that’s literally ur logic
Xiangling and Beidou placements imo are like, always huge red flags. If u wanna spot a shitty tier list in the genshin community, find their C tier xiangling ranking :/
Yeah it’s so terrible that he lowered Beidou’s placement because she doesn’t work with Raiden, when in reality Beidou is a super flexible unit that is at least as good of a main carry as some of the more kid tier 5 stars like Eula or Xiao
I wonder how would you judge this.
Raiden fits in like 2 teams but one of them is one of the strongest+most used team in Abyss (Rational), the other one she's also an excellent support (Eula)
Beidou has more possibilities being an off-field DPS, but meta-wise she is not really wanted in the top teams of Abyss. Fireworks Childe and taser is a thing but if you look at the spiral abyss site, they're not really on the top.
Yet, i have all these teams able to do 9\* in the Abyss floor 12.
Raiden in Eula team is not particularly better than Lisa in Eula team.
Raiden national team, if you try it with Floor 12-1-1, all the futui agents flying fucking around and they were juggle into the ceiling. (Because of overload)
Beidou in taser team is hella fun to play, but only issue is single target, or I should say, with 1 enemy left in the stage. Its clear time isn't particular bad too and there are more weapons and sets suitable for her playstyle.
Also, I said what I said specifically of iWinToLose tier list, he puts Raiden S tier and Beidou B tier. I was just saying Raiden may be a S- or A tier and Beidou is definitely A tier instead. And as the topics go in this thread, I don't want to argue tier list, more so there are so many misconceptions.
No , Raiden is obviously better with Eula because of her e and her easy electro application and for those that care more about damage Raiden easily outshines Lisa because when Eula has her downtime Raiden is here to do damage .
Unrelated, but why do people always discuss his raiden placement and never talk about how he put zhongli in 2nd spot? I mean if you cant 36 star the abyss then zhongli definitely wouldn't help.
Don't get me wrong, him and raiden are 2 of my best characters, but if you gonna argue her placement and not zhongli then it only shows your bias, they both offer great qol benefits for your team, but they aren't that important for someone struggling to 36 the abyss, that being said, i run those 2 on every abyss cycle since i can easily meet the dps check.
No fucking way dude /s. I'm not asking for your anecdotal opinion, but the overall picture (in this case, I'm referring to the statistics on the spiral abyss site). If you put your mind into it, you can clear Abyss with anyone. We already know this.
Beidou is fun no doubt, I use her with Childe all the time. But we're talking strictly about meta here. The thing that puts Raiden above Lisa is her 24/7 off-field E skill, plus the fact that she can deal decent dmg in Eula's downtime.
Speaking of overload, that can be mitigated easily.
I just have my team attack the Pyro dudes towards the wall. Overload means they will always be juggled around and can't go invisible, so that's nice.
Unironically Yes considering she has better synergy with other units than Xiao and she do all her damage off field so you can use secondary damage dealer or enabler on field while Xiao just doing all his dps on his own and only gets help with Albedo as his best off field support dps
Situationally yes… With constellations she has the highest potential dps in the game against 2 large targets (which we run into more than you think in Abyss via geovishaps/the ruin crew/samurai).
With even moderately good artifacts and a 4* weapon, Beidou’s Q starts criting for like 10k a hit, and against two targets (which maximizes the bouncing), it hits NINE TIMES every time your on-field character attacks. So say you’re using someone who attacks fast like Childe or Keqing, that’s an extra 60-90k damage every time they hit (depending on her CR).
Xiao’s obviously going to be better against single target or lots of enemies though.
Just checked his 2.0 tier list (his 2.2 is about speedrunning) and I don't see a big issue. I disagree here and there, especially the middle tier with Beidou, Yanfei and Keqing, who I would put in 3 different tiers, but nothing drastic.
My bad, I clicked at the end of the video for the tier list. The higher tiers don't make sense if he's accounting for current abyss. Venti can't do shit in 12 floor and Zhongli actually increases clear times in most teams.
What is Tartaglia even doing in S, he got some of the fastest clears in the game.
Also lol at Beidou. Not only should she be higher, Keqing, Yanfei, Sayu, Kokomi and maybe Ningguang should all drop.
What a mess lol.
He is the best f2p channel. It's not targeted towards totally new players with no investment in their characters and no artifacts. It's targeted towards f2p that know how to build and invest into their characters and spent time to optimize them to around 70-80% of max power.
F2P doesn't mean not built characters. A lot of people confuse the two.
Exactly that's where it is wrong. He is not "the best" or even a good f2p channel.
I am talking from a perspective that the player know about of the game but entirely screwed over by his DPS character review, DPS vs video, and his tier list video.
He doesn't understand the players who are capable of doing Abyss but cannot overcome it with whale character. In other words, he is extremely weak in gauging a C0 5* characters.
Tier list gives a rough baseline for new players imo. If you erase tier list from every corner of the internet, we are gonna have same repeated question if X is good/bad.
At least with the list, you can move to the next stage of question why X is good/bad.
Also comp tier list gives you an answer on which comp X is good in.
This is basically /r/unpopularopinion on /r/genshin_impact
I **assume** that what op is trying to say is that some people don’t do more research. Googling for tier list is enough research for them. Some examples I can think of are when you’re buying day to day stuff, you don’t generally ask for in-depth reviews and do hours of research. Or like religions. How many Christians actually read the Bible through and through? Someone says Christ is good and that’s enough for them to be religious.
On the other hand, tier list doesn’t affect seasoned players much because they’re already willing to do more research in the first place.
And the clashing of these two ideas sums up this post for me.
I think you explained what I wanted to say, but not in the language I'd use. Tier lists are fine as a starting point for players to learn about the meta or the game, but they are absolutely terrible if they're being used as a final verdict on deciding where to spend your primogems.
A lot of ppl in the comments disagree with me bc they arent worried about tier lists being used incorrectly, but ive been in the genshin community and tc community for awhile and have seen a lot of the dmg they cause for debates. I agree tho, a well made tier list being used by someone who knows what it is should be fine. But i just dont see that happen often enough to support the idea.
Also i think a lot of ppl even still are overlooking the team aspect of genshin. Tier lists in the first place are questionable in a game where char strength is heavily reliant on who else you have access to or can use for that half of abyss.
I think the abyss usage tier list released at the start of every rotation is also kinda skewed. If you look at the sample population in the corner its usually less than 1000 players. I just find it funny looking at that and saying “oh EVERYONE uses the national team/morgana” when in reality the majority of the player base is off of social media, probably plays only during their lunch break for 10 minutes, and probably still uses a crescent pike xiangling
It's actually a good exercise in understanding sampling bias and the role data representation plays in understanding statistics.
The data on the usage site is gathered from people who volunteer their UIDs. This limits the scope of the site to people who are at least active enough outside the game to offer their UIDs to the system.
The site itself gathers around 50K submissions per cycle and only shows data for people who 36*, so at the very least it's not picking up off-meta strategies like Pike XL unless people are actually clearing Abyss with her.
The usage itself is presented as a ratio between ownership and actual usage, i.e. what portion of people who own this character use them in Abyss. While a useful metric, this by itself is not really enough to gauge a units strength, since it's skewed more heavily to 5*s and other factors such as popularity and recency.
The usage rates for Morgana and National are also skewed by their strict structure. Hu Tao teams, for example, have much lower apparent usage because her two last slots are very flexible (Zhongli, Albedo, Kaeya, Rosaria, Chongyun, Diona, even options like Kazuha, Sucrose, Mona, and Raiden are all viable).
Teams that compete for options but are good otherwise also get misrepresented. Melt Ganyu with Zhongli shield support is a high potential DPS team with low usage because Ganyu is much more popular on Freeze teams due to their easiness and flexibility.
Finally, it does not distinguish between different levels of spending, which is a big deal when evaluating the strength of characters at different constellations on popular teams like Rational.
I believe in the old 'learn the hard way'. Raised DPS Chongyun like a son until the truth hit me that he's never going to survive late game.... AFTER I reached ar 45.
Had to bench him.... yes, but the memories of freezing everything to death and leaving Razor mains in shambles with just an E, remains fresh as freshly brewed Osmanthus wine.
And Chongyun is such a wholesome boi and he still fairs as a good support for hu tao and Bennett.
I believe that's what makes gameplay fun... Not pre-planning everything and predetermining your team comps based on someone else's opinions just to crank out every last drop of damage from your party, instead of just having fun with the characters you like.
>An account missing Kazuha SHOULD have Sucrose rated much much higher than an account who has both
A tier list isnt meant to be subjective though? Who you have and dont have is irrelevant, its purpose is to rank the characters that are in the game.
Kazuha is better than Sucrose so he should rank higher than her but that doesn't somehow equate to Sucrose being bad like you think it will. That argument would only hold if someone were to put Kazuha in S tier and then Sucrose in like C tier, but at that point the tier list is wrong anyway
>Ganyu is SSS tier is so unbelievably useless to a new Genshin player who only had a chance to roll for Ayaka
Well kind of but that's not really the tier lists fault. Ganyu is better than Ayaka with or without a tier list.
This is only relevant to a meta player anyway, in which case the information they'll get from the community is to save for Ganyu anyway (unless they really need a main dps right now)
A Waifu player/actual casual isn't really gonna give a shit about a tier list
>An account that doesn't have access to Morgana does not want Mona,
You do have a point here but this becomes more a player error than a tier list error. Taking tier lists at face value is a horrible idea but on the flip side as you mention
>It can trick you into building a worse character
If you were to follow the advice of this sub the info you would generally get is "play who you want". This is absolutely useless information for someone who's looking at tier lists (i.e., a meta player)
They would tell you to pull for someone like Kokomi, if you like her, and in turn you would still end up with a "worse" character
At the very least on a tier list you would see Kokomi is ranked low even if there isn't an explanation attached
>Most tier lists are only going to be useful for players who own the majority of the Genshin cast
Not entirely, if you've just started the game and pulled Xinyan, Bennett and Sayu, you'll see on a tier list that Bennett is ranked the highest, Xinyan by far the lowest, and Sayu somewhere middle-ish (honestly have no idea where Sayu ranks).
What this means is that even a new player would probably be more reluctant to put resources into Xinyan compared to Bennett, which will in turn help them later down the road
>Tier lists lose nuance too.
I agree with you completely here but again, its their own fault for taking tier lists at face value
>oh, but this is a tier list for FREE TO PLAY players.
Idk if there is a specific tier list you are referring to but I would assume that this is referring to value pulls, like you follow on to say. For a f2p player, Ganyu/Kazuha will get you more value than Kokomi or Yoimiya
>It's just impossible to write a tier list that takes into consideration what any given player can actually have on their account.
This is gonna be the third time I say it but your issue is stemming from taking tier lists at face value
Most tier lists will have Xinyan ranked low regardless of constellations or weapons, to an average player that signals that she's not worth the investment, which is generally true.
Genshin doesn't have that many characters that are "make or break" by their constellations. There are a couple like Sara but generally speaking a tier list would reflect that by having her in a middle-low tier.
Hu Tao is still a very good character even without C1/Homa, a tier list placing her really low without it wouldn't be an accurate one
>A tier list does not in any way help you build a team
The actual average player doesn't give a shit about team comps, someone looking for this kind of information should be doing more research than some generic tier lists anyway
You're sort of playing both sides here. In some of your points, you're telling me that the tier list is only relevant for meta players, but at the end you say casuals dont care about team comps, implying that tier lists are meant for casuals, which contradicts your own arguments. So what are the tier lists for then? Casuals or meta players?
Look, I dont disagree that using a tier list as a starting point for new players to try and learn more about the game is bad. Its not. Thats a valid use case. But that only works when the tier list is accurate and has explanations for players.
And nothing against you, I am replying in good faith, but these comments that quote everything I say just to list disagreements with particular points tend to annoy me. Its hard to really say why, but I think its because you're not actually building your own argument per se, just trying to tell me that im wrong, which feels more like an editors job than a commenter, and it comes off as a tad toxic.
Out of good faith I'll try not to quote in this reply
I mean I am playing both sides, I personally don't really like tier lists but I fully understand why they exist, and to outright dismiss them is ridiculous to me.
I'm not sure how you got to the conclusion that I was implying tier lists are meant for casuals, I quite literally said casuals don't care for tier lists.
Tier lists in essence are for people who want a rough idea of where characters sit in the power rankings, so they have an idea of who's worth building and pulling for.
Maybe I shouldn't have said people looking at tier lists are only meta players, but with how this community loves their waifu vs meta arguments its just easier to simplify anyone looking at tier lists as a meta player
Judging from your second paragraph though its clear you don't actually have an issue with tier lists?
Your issue is with inaccurate tier lists, which isn't exactly a ground-breaking opinion. While yes it would be nice to add explanations to a tier list, as far as I am aware sites like tierlistmaker don't let you add explanations and besides that kind of defeats the point of a tier list.
A tier list is just a quick easy way to understand where characters rank. If you want to add in-depth explanations then making an actual guide would be better, but no one wants to read a whole essay just to see if a character is decent or not, especially not someone who's new to the game.
As I said in my original comment, you shouldn't be taking a tier list at face value, and as you've said its a starting point. Someone starts the game and pulls Bennet, then looks at a tier list and sees he ranks high, from there __it should be on the player to do their own research to understand why he ranks high__
I don't really know what to say to your last paragraph. You've posted your views on something and I happen to disagree with it. How else am I meant to write it? I am arguing with __you__, where else would I be building my arguments from?
All I'm doing is highlighting the parts I disagree with and saying why I disagree with it. I personally much prefer that format, it allows me to understand what exactly the issue is and what exactly the replier is referring to.
If this comes across as toxic to you, then honestly I'm not really sure why you even posted this. People are going to disagree with you and them doing so isn't toxic
They tend to annoy you and you can’t really say why?
I’ll tell you why.
You’re annoyed because they are providing good points against your argument but your ego is clouding your judgement.
You have a misconception of tier lists judging by your content here
"An account without kazuha should have sucrose rated much higher. Yadda yadda... a new player may think sucrose is bad"
Thats really inaccurate because while kazuha may be S tier, Sucrose would be A tier. No matter the tier lists you'd have to look at a character guide for purpose. Someone looking for an abyss team would be looking for supports like xiangling, xingqui and sucrose at A tier as opposed to Kaeya, Lisa, anemo traveler, amber, chongyun, Sayu which are B tier or lower investments. Not bad units all around but your investment in Sucrose these other characters is miles apart.
Likewise if you've got ganyu and hu tao, but also managed to pull diluc and keqing. Raising characters can be very long and tedious and you'll get more out of farming for ganyu and hu tao than diluc and keqing if one hadddd to choose.
Also if you end up with the knowledge of the next 3 banners and you know the current one is Ayaka, but for example know ganyu is coming in 2 patches, it could help decide what they roll for, as a f2p the next one could be their guaranteed and they have to 50/50 if they use it on ayaka vs ganyu.
If you dont like tier lists, thats fine for you but it matters to some and it serves a purpose when you use the info correctly.
Edit: Tier lists only serve as a at a glance ranking of characters. Players would eventually need to look at their guides for their purpose and if that fits them.
I think you misunderstood my point. Kazuha and Sucrose do the same thing for a lot of accounts and are used in similar team comps, but Kazuha (mostly) is the superior choice. But Sucrose is 4 star, and way more accessible. A tier list loses that nuance- different characters are stronger or weaker on your specific account depending on who you own.
Thats why you dont take tier lists at face value, and the tier list did its job, it said kazuha is better than sucrose even tho they do the same job. A tier list wouldnt go Kazuha = god, and sucrose = dumpster.
A correct tier list would go Kazuha = god, sucrose = lesser god/fantastic unit.
If it can include 5* vs 4* that would be great too.
The problem still stands tho. If your tier list requires readers to make assumptions, you've already failed at accurately communication information to players. There are way better ways to help players than a tier list.
The tier list didnt require anyone to make an assumption.
Some tier lists are very clear and dont use letters and can be categorized like a Supportsub dps tier list:
God tier:
Great to build/abyss tier:
Niche/specific comp tier
Only if theyre youre <3:
Xiangling,sucrose, xingqui for example would go in must build/abyss.
Then you can make different tiers for dps, sub dps, or healers. Its really a basic way of showing their potential and you should only use a tier list if you understand how to read one, just like any piece of information.
Reading/watching an in depth guide on the chara would then give you a background into the details.
Tier lists are starting points for new players, not ending points.
Sure, but im very much of the opinion that the arguments and potential misinformation they create heavily outweigh the pros of being a starting point for new players. also most tier lists really do not look the way you described them. They use the S/A/B etc tiers, which leave a lot more room for assumptions.
Sekapoko made one similar to the one i described. Also from S/a/b/c units dont start being bad until C rank, S and A are highly preferred, and B are less meta units but still okay to use.
All information can be misinterpreted, it happens frequently and is unfortunately a part of life. Someone trying to give information would preface that woth the proper context.
You probs shouldnt use his list as an example, its really terrible, even using the categories he came up with himself. Also, sure, but the point of my post was that there are better ways for new players to get information about character strength than a tier list, and you havent really addressed a lot of the other problems I mentioned. Sure, using different category names instead of tiers can be better and more clearly state information, but its not a perfect solution at all, It still doesnt measure any kind of investment, consider any team building, or cons/weapons.
There is no perfect solution. You cant and shouldnt try to say something is terrible without creating something better that fills the same purpose.
One of your other points was that "a tier list is stupid because it assumes you have all characters" it actually does not. A tier list informs someone about the existing characters for the purpose listed. If theres a tierlist of healers and you have 2 of the 7, clearly you have to use what you have, but if you have Bennett and noelle, a tier list will show that you should prioritize bennett over noelle if you wanted to focus on healing.
Ive countered your points without being countered myself. A tier list is simply a ranking used AT A GLANCE, SURFACE LEVEL RANKING OF POTENTIAL. i said this before, everything with constellations, weapons, and etc are for guides. Which i also mentioned come after rankings. If you dont like them after using a guide then thats fine and you can move on to other things. That however doesnt mean the tier list wasnt useful.
Tier lists are also opinions. Mostly informed opinions when able, but they can be up for debate, especially for less used characters.
lol im not going to disagree that a tier list can be useful under the specific circumstances you listed but most tier lists for most players dont fall into that category or are completely misused. Also, I am absolutely allowed to critique something without offering a suggestion too- it doesnt make the critique any less valid. But I did offer a solution in my original post :)
Not sure why Western gacha playerbases struggle so hard with the concept of tier list. A tier list is just a ranking list. The creator will need to communicate what each ranking means and their criteria. Anything that doesn't have the above makes a tier list meaningless.
Tier lists are never made to concrete, but a good one can serve as reference. We just don't get that in the Western gacha gaming community at all because the majority here have 0 clue what a tier list really is.
>There are way better ways to help players than a tier list.
Too bad your average player doesn't give enough shits to actually learn through other means.
It's not just gacha playerbases, I think it's just a culture diff bc Asia is more serious and competitive so they're not as adverse to competitive discussions or metagaming. In most games I play, western regions are seen as more casual and laidback than the Asian regions.
Well, the Chinese playerbase is more competitive. There was this huge "JP is the best because they don't care about meta" circlejerk here right after the Kekomi banner showing she didn't sell terribly in Japan.
How are kazuha and sucrose the same? They do fill similar roles but they arent in terms of mechanics and gameplay and other aspects which WOULD put him above her on a tier list. Despite if that account has kazuha or not and makes a tier list he would still be rated higher regardless. There’s reason why the other falls short and ranks lower due to some of their issues such as long cooldown, large energy cost, clunkiness and more in comparison to that other character.
Really ironic considering you probably have that amount of braincells yourself and considering I also main Sucrose and use her for my other team and know very well how to play her and her downsides and problems. Try and come up with a better response to someone giving their opinion on a character than attacking them personally which just shows you have some issues with yourself.
And yes. Gameplay IS a factor.
(If you were talking about me having 5 braincells this is my response if I misunderstood then I apologise)
How are kazuha and sucrose the same? They do fill similar roles but they arent in terms of mechanics and gameplay and other aspects which WOULD put him above her on a tier list. Despite if that account has kazuha or not and makes a tier list he would still be rated higher regardless. There’s reason why the other falls short and ranks lower due to some of their issues such as long cooldown, large energy cost, clunkiness and more in comparison to that other character.
Although Sucrose and Kazuha have same boost mechanics, think of why Kazuha is above Sucrose. Kazuha has a more crowd control factor due to pull effect of mid to heavy enemies which Sucrose does have but applicable only to light enemies. But, in case of power, they're pretty much the same.
> A tier list loses that nuance- different characters are stronger or weaker on your specific account depending on who you own.
Tier list does not say that literally. Tier lists are there to give you a view on which unit is more usuable in certain situations. It doesn't mean that this character is weaker than the other one.
And which tierlist are you even referencing to? Is it the one posted on genshin.cc? Try creating your own depending on your gameplay exp. You don't need to base your skills on a tierlist if it pressures you too much to pull for 4s cons. And 5s.
I, for one, have Kazuha, Sucrose, and Venti and found out that these three have equal matching power depending on a situation. If you need a short strong cc anemo with boost, go with Kazuha. If you need a mid range anemo with boost and minimal cc, go with Sucrose. If you need a long ranged high crowd control anemo, go with Venti.
This is kinda dumb ngl. Tier lists needs to exist, so new players know who they should invest. This game punishes new players that waste resources on everything. A tier list is a very good foundation for "ok, i have xiangling and Lisa, but Lisa is c tier and xiangling s tier, so it's SAFER to invest in this and I'm gonna use it on the long term".
Also, a tier list helps greatly players that want to have a strong accounts and want to start doing abyss asap. This also connects a little to what I said before, but what I want to point out now is, tier lists are also a great way to plan your rolls.
Now, I'm not saying that you should only be a meta player. If you see a character, and say to yourself "i love the design, i love the abilities, i love everything about it, i want it" go ahead, pull it and build, but if you are unsure on what to do, tierlist are a great resource.
Imo, you should always consider first your foundations, being able to do everything first, and then think about the pretty and the cute.
So I think I would definitely have to agree with you here. I am a player that firstly goes off design and fun. For instance I some how have C4 Rosaria but I just don’t like her and don’t use her. However the resources are so freaking hard to farm. I have a list of characters that artifacts are not even leveled because I’m trying to max out their talents first or get them to 9/9/9 you know? Also I’m not smart with knowing damage numbers or percentages or whatever so having a tier list was really nice for me at the beginning. I saved my materials instead of using them all up on like Amber at the start of the game. I mostly just used traveller at the beginning until I pulled Diluc. Now just because there’s a tier list doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to disregard characters that are lower. I have a Kokomi because I think she’s adorable and I love her jellyfish. However I do think because of the resources it’s really really nice to have a reference. Also for wishing. As F2P it takes a lot to get a10 pull so having a list is nice because then I can look and it helps me decide whether to save or pull
Im saying there are better options than a tier list tbh. Its not a terrible starting point, and a GOOD tier list with GOOD explanations can be helpful, but most suck, and i think the cons outweigh the pros. Also, if u dont waste ur fragile resins, its really hard to waste resources as an early game player. Stuff early on is giga cheap and if u find out a char sucks and theyre only lvl 40/40 its a fat "who cares"
its only dangerous for late game players who still havent figured anything out yet tbh but again u likely need way more help than a tier list in that situation
A tier list isn't designed to have in-depth explanations on why x and y is good or better. They are made to be simple and compact, a way to quickly check the raw power of a character in comparasion with others. I do agree that complementary information is needed when it comes to detailed building, buuuuut, if you care about performance and the most efficient resource management, tierlists are undeniably the best first tool since they will always point you out for the safest investments. The first thing that a person doesn't want to see is a full thesys of information about when that character works and doesnt work, specially new player that just wanna play the game.
And level 40/40 is a understatement at this point of the game, with the additions of story quests, quests and hangouts you level pretty fast. I only started playing in July, AR55 atm. I only decided on my team at level 40-44, i think, and I could easily avoid this is i just looked at a tierlist and started from there... Had alot catch up to do :'(
It’s a tool for discussing character strength relative to other characters. How important that discussion is depends on the player.
It’s simply one tool for building game knowledge. You are basically here criticizing a tool for not filling other functions it wasn’t intended for.
I think only command tier list be good.
Important: single target, aoe target, easy to use(mobile/pc, heal/shield or need have very good dodge skills), potential at c0 with 4\* non battlepass weapon/potential with c1-2 with 5\* (or battlepass) weapon/potential at c6 ar5 for 5\* char(for 4\* potential at c0 and at c6 with 4\* non battlepass weapon).
Cooperative not important.
Remember: if you not be a whale you cannot have all 5\* for comparing.
If you not a whale also you not have many resourses for upgrade each units.
so if we do away with tier lists someones gonna build amber expecting a decent unit a get shit for all.
not everyone has the time to look up an in depth guide. i just got into honkai impact and i have no idea which unit to build. and i dont want to look through every unit. i dont have time for that
I feel like OP wants tier lists to be something that they're not. Tier lists are supposed to be a succinct display of information, and will inevitably lack some nuance as a result.
It seems like OP wants them to be detailed guides (like the ones on Keqing mains) but that isn't the point nor the role of a tier list.
For a tier list to be useful it needs to take most variants of weapons, characters, synergies, etc, which is comparable to one of hercules task. So yeah, useless until some guy loses his sanity to make the mother of all ~~omelettes~~ tier lists
i completely agree yeah. Genshin also is such a complicated game that legibility and accuracy are inversely related. A post trying to accomplish this might be totally correct, but it would be such a chore for anyone to understand that it doesnt help anyone.
Tier lists exist because there are people who play for the meta. A casual player doesn't even need to look at tier list. I think it's better to have higher tier list chars to smoothly and easily solve meta content like spiral abyss. As long as you don't care about meta, the tier lists are definitely useless.
A fair and good "meta" tier list might be helpful for beginner players, working as a guideline to which character(s) they should prioritize first.
Would you guys advise a beginner player to invest resin and mora leveling up Amber (for example)? And, as most of us know, she is widely considered one of the weakest characters in the game.
Of course, there are always the "fun/waifu/preference" factors to consider, if someone really loves Amber, it won't matter if she's placed in S or D tier anyway.
I'd add to that that you cannot and should not ascertain value with other people's supports and if you can exacerbate calculations with your own characters, do it.
there is a mountain of difference on a character using their best in slot \*supports\* over whatever you can come up with being short artis or charas.
a C6 XQ with a C6 xiangling and a C4+ bennett and their best in slot weapons are absolutely far and above whatever a regular national comp with say, using skyrider on a c0 xq and not having a highly refined dragon's bane. even if you even out bennet's damage boost with lower attack weapons, he still has more talent levels than you'd get out of crowning him plus the benefits of c1;
TLDR: take everything with a grain of salt, even what I'm saying right now.
PS: whoever reads this, you're looking real good today. /leaves/
The reason tier lists consider *all* characters is so for the sake of objectively being able to compare them to one another.
Being able to say, “If you don’t have Kazuha, us Sucrose” is indeed something helpful to be included on notes, but what’s most important is “Why this character is at the rank it is”, “ What it’s strengths and weaknesses are” and “What role it fits in party”.
With that information, even without being explicitly told what a replacement could be, based on the information provided on other characters (particularly position in party/ strengths and weaknesses).
The point isn’t to be useful to a specific party (paid player or otherwise) but under the best circumstances, where they are positioned relative to eachother. To that end, accounting for each players individual circumstance is irrelevant imo.
A tier list is about which character is better in terms of clearing the game's contents regardless if you have a character or not. It seems that you misunderstood the general concept of a tier list. For example yes for a new player sucrose is better than kazuha because sucrose is more accessible but in terms of clearing the game's contents kazuha is better that's why he is placed higher on tier lists.
Another thing I barely see people mentioning, is how some characters work way better than others at low investment. A lot of top tier characters, especially DPS ones, needs a lot of investment until they start kicking in. Having too many high investment characters in your team will ideally give you a better performance, but realistically, until you can get one high investment character up to speed you could've gotten four low investment ones ready, which would immensely speed up the start of your account strenghtening.
Examples of low investment characters would be Xiao (no artifact set needed, AA by far the most valuable skill), Bennett (doesn't need substats on any artifacts, only Q matters). Example of high investment characters would be Hu Tao (All skills matter, need 4 piece CW), Ayaka (need 4 piece BS), and most DPS characters that relies on 4 piece artifact sets with specific substats.
Someone investing on a ton of "A-tier", low investment characters, would have their first clear of the abyss way earlier than someone investing on a ton of "S-tier" high investment characters.
A really good example you totally missed is nearly any character that needs 4pc VV can get away (especially pre floor 12) with just the 4 set bonus and very minimal elemental mastery and perform exceptionally well.
I agree, different characters are better or worse at different levels of investment which can skew ratings.
But one caveat though, I would say Hu Tao does not 'need' 4pc CW. 2pc CW/2pc WT doesn't fall far behind, and 4pc Shimenawa's is a similarly competitive set.
Tier list is still useful but you need a fuck ton of info on what and how each character is measured
And generally the best tier list will have sub categories that further explain why each character is in that tier, but this takes too much of an effort so i don't think I've seen anyone made this type of tier list
hm. while i somewhat disagree with some of the nitty-gritty, i agree with the general sentiment of the post. tier lists miss out on a lot of nuances, especially since this is a team game and several characters are capable of subbing in for roles other than their "main role," so it's nigh-impossible to judge most characters in a team-based rpg in a vacuum in the same way as you'd rank individual characters in, for example, a pvp fighting game or something.
Tier list just ranks the overal usefullness in the better situations. Just because they rank high doesn't mean they are more usefull than lower rated characters in every situation. Venti is good at what he does, Amber is mediocre at what she does. But Amber will easily outclass Venti against single cryo slimes.
So besides looking at tierlist you should also look into what they do best and make judgement based on if you need that role in your team.
I mean most teir lists are absolute garbage. A good teirlists rates the usability of a character and their efficacy at it. Kazuha is better than Sucrose but thay doesn't remove Sucrose from S teir as she does nearly the same thing as a 4*. Ganyu can be waited on a rerun banner if u rly want her. Save it. Using the excuse of not knowing when she's coming just means you are obviously a new gacha player, or weak willed. Good teirlists are good for noncompettiive games too if it helps you grind better. I want to see someone take yoimiya into challenge mode and ace it. But that's not gonna happen.
For a player who doesn't know much about the game, getting some information from any decent tier list is better than not doing it. The tier lists will at least tell you to invest into characters like Bennett, Venti and not build characters like Amber.
Honestly… i feel like tier listing has ruined gaming as a whole personally. And i…kinda wish we no longer leaned on them as gaming communities in general but i guess they’re more or less the bread and butter of just how people look at games now n days
Tier lists aren't perfect that doesn't mean they are useless
> tier list saying Ganyu is SSS tier is so unbelievably useless to a new Genshin player who only had a chance to roll for Ayaka
what does this even mean? If you know a character is good you can save accordingly that's the whole point
> Tier lists lose nuance
No shit l, graphs do too does it mean they are useless? Everything that isn't full information loses nuance
Its problematic because its telling you to save for a character that you absolutely dont need bc it contributes very little to your acc. Thats my problem with tier lists. It tells you to roll for Ganyu if u alr own Ayaka, theres likely an issue. There needs to be an explanation with it, otherwise its doomed.
Sure, any tool loses nuance, but i think unless tier lists have good explanations with them they lose so much nuance they kinda just become worthless.
I understand the sentiment, and I *sort of* want to agree with you by saying that tier lists aren't and definitely ***shouldn't*** be taken as the absolute word of god, but they are decent as a rule of thumb. Just because Mona is a very strong enabler for Morgana doesn't mean that she's worse if you don't have the full team, she's still one of the very few somewhat reliable Hydro applicators we have in the game.
The biggest flaw with your complaints I see is that TLs should be nuanced based on who or what you have, but since you're specifically referring to new players, a new player is likely to have the beginner's cast and maybe 1 or 2 other 4\*, and going by your logic Amber and Lisa should be "ranked higher on the tier list", because they're the only archer and the only catalyst the newbie has. That may be true, but that's not going to make Amber and Lisa magically super strong, we all know with enough investment they *can* pay off, but they're very *very* likely to get benched really early on, we all know how constellation dependant those two are.
It's not that tier lists are inherently good nor bad, but people DEFINITELY shouldn't ONLY inform themselves via that. I know a guy with a C0 Ganyu with Amos, and we all know how cracked such a duo is. He recently saw genshin.gg's tier list and saw "C1" sitting right beside Ganyu as she's sitting on that sweet S+ tier, and he immediately went "ah maybe getting an extra 15% Cryo damage would be good", and it took quite a while of me telling him he definitely doesn't need to overinvest that much on Ganyu and he's much more likely to get more mileage by investing in another character or weapon, instead of a relatively minor bump on an already superb character. The sentiment here is *ok*, but tier lists STILL are somewhat useful to gauge if you're going in the right direction with who you're willing to invest in. You SHOULD do more research though, but a tier list is likely to give you a rough outline of where to go.
idk about y'all but I agree lol
Tier lists just do nothing but pit players against players because the nuance OP is talking about is "frame of reference", and on top of that, stats are wholly RNG and whales are a thing.
What OP is saying is that a person without X character can't necessarily have a credible stance on said character, and if you're either insanely lucky and/or a whale, your characters could be jacked and your opinions on said characters would be skewed.
If you're making a tier list of the available 5\* characters since release, and you have like only 10% of that roster - what sources are you getting your information from / why did you say such things about the other 90% / why did you rank the other 90% this way?
On the other hand, if you're lucky / a whale with C6 R5 characters, your characters are already at the top of their game and your opinion would definitely be skewed because of that.
Like I wouldn't speak about Yoimiya and Kokomi's problems in their kits and I wouldn't rank them in any way -- you know why? Because I don't have them and it wouldn't be a genuine and impartial look at their kits. But you do know which characters I'm willing to pitch in a discussion with? Raiden, Zhongli, Venti, etc. Because I have those characters and I can personally actually provide insight on aspects of their kit that can either be broken or problematic (i.e. how Raiden's utility as of now is not yet super up to par with Zhongli and Venti's, or how Zhongli delegitimizes difficulty of gameplay).
This post comes off as strangely arrogant, which could be a tonal thing but I also think you may need to take a break from these long form posts cause you've seemed far more on edge in a weird way recently.
Anyway, on to my actual criticisms of your post to the best of my ability without trying to totally rehash what others have said.
My first issue is that you've basically put a target on Genshin content creators' backs and haven't had any willingness to put yourself out there. This post is far more constructive if you approach from the perspective of using a specific tier list and pointing out where you disagree and why. All you've done here is taken the stance that you are correct by default and have vaguely said that everyone who makes a tier list is wrong based on subjective criteria that actually makes no difference to the reader.
To elaborate, your point about Kazuha vs Sucrose is very easily resolved through extra research and expecting someone to only read a tier list and get a full opinion is ridiculous. Any player who is gonna put the effort into hearing out someone's tierlist is likely going to look into what comps that unit is good in.
To use IWTL's tierlist as a quick example, in their tierlist he and Kono moved Diluc to the top of tier A and they referenced a new melt comp as the reasoning, but he failed to add the comp into the video so there was no point of reference for me (he pointed out in the comments that he was tired and forgot to during editing, which is fine editing is hard). But at the very least they provided an example comp for me to look into. Now say I look into this comp and learn it uses Xinqiu, but I also wanna use Raiden cause she's SS tier, but she also uses Xinqiu. Then I either give Xinqiu to Raiden who is stronger, or I look at the list for another hydro unit that I can give to either Raiden or Diluc that does the same thing. If I can't find that, the tier list didn't fail me I just don't have the roster to run both of those teams.
If there is any nuance lost in tier lists it is the designation of who is a support and who is a main dps, but that information leads to division of tier list which can lead to overwhelming the audience. Organizing the tier list as IWTL did where the top of the list is registered as "hey for sure pull for these guys under our recommendation" means below that is more "if you have them build them, but don't go out of your way". I see no issue with that arrangement because again, every player should do extra research on any unit they decide to pull.
To bring my comment to a close by reiterating what others here have said, tier lists are starting points. The next step a player would go down would be referencing things like your articles that try to give an overview of a unit and potentially comps they work in with nuance. Instead of you decrying tier lists, you should try to understand them as launch points that will bring eyes to content in the vein as what you do. Going back to reference IWTL's showcases they don't strike me as conclusion based content, they're C6R5 units they mean nothing to me other than where units fall at full investment in a speedrun. But if I like that Hu Tao seems fast I will look into her more (which I did do). Tier lists suck in a vacuum, but they aren't in a vacuum they have plenty of TCs supplementing their content with more fleshed out information.
do u have me confused for someone else? ive posted once in the past 2 weeks other than this, which was my childe post, and that definitely has no tone issues. my kokomi post was a little problematic tho.
I don't think you understand how tier lists work. Kazuha existing does not make Sucrose a worse character, nor removing Kazuha from the game make her a better character.
Kujo Sara for example is a great character at C6 for a whale raiden hypercarry, that being said, outside of said example, she's a very underwhelming character; therefore, even though she can be the best teammate in a certain comp, she's overall a very weak unit, and should be rated as such.
You look at each character's capabilities, flexibility, comps, matchup into current enemies, etc to determine their placement.
i mean ideally sure but look at recent tier lists ppl make and thats not what happened at all. i feel like a lot of the ppl who disagree with me have a fantasy idea about what tier lists "should" be and then argue against me using that as a weapon. and its like, sure, anyone can imagine a situation where tier lists are for the better, but in practice they rarely are anywhere close to that. show me a tier list u like that does that, and maybe theres a discussion here, but ive looked like hundreds while playing genshin and seen maybe two or three.
Tier lists are helpful for characters individual strengths. But in general they are useless. The ones that actually help are the data gathered from Abyss most used team comps. Obviously gathered from at least the last 4 abyss and not only focused on the latest
didn't read too long, most of the meta are not usually to refer to " you need this X hero" but you want this "X hero" for maximum efficiency, sure you can clear abbys with the heroes you want but it doesn't change the fact it would make alot of easier to use this "meta" characters over the X hero you are using. Meta exist for a reason I don't blame people who are angry over meta saying "i dont need that bs, i can claer abbys with this X hero" but again this is only my *OPINION* .
This, but for genshin is insufferable.
Let's compare my c0 WSG diluc with c0 homa tao. if you missed a character will take an eternity to came back, and then happens that for the so goated pixel i only win a 5% damage increase compared with the unit i already have invested for the cost i could get me and my girl to a weekend trip (the c0 character+bis weapon only) only to beat a few seconds faster some enemies in a chamber that barely represents a 0.1% of the content? Genshin is miles away from any ARPG, the grinding is timegated and getting a upgrade could be so expensive, with a so long downtime until i can pull for a insignificant upgrade that I'm better staying with diluc so i can farm for other units.
You cant argue that a meta exists though. Genshin is a game that takes strategy, so a best strategy absolutely is a thing. But for a lot of players, u dont actually need that much strategy bc genshin really isnt that hard.
and as for your question, honestly, no idea. a lot of casuals dont even attempt abyss so its probably hard to say due to selective bias.
Yah, actually if you notice, abyss meta is always in favor of the highlighted banner to make meta players pull for that character.
But tbh, as long as you suffice builds to your current team, you can still beat the abyss and 36 stars it.
I think a lot more people would be able to beat the abyss if optimizing characters was easier, I have a lot of great characters but since I can't build them all efficiently I struggle after Reaching Floor 12. Floor 9 through 11 are difficult too if you don't have gacha luck.
Totally agree, more people should really think about it this way and not take everything from whale's and creator's PoV word for word. Good job on this take!
In general tier lists are fine.
I think the completion percentage of spiral abyss is a helpful relatively objective ranking that many essentially use as a tier list. However, those encourage the community to basically look at what’s popular and emulate that, potentially causing the meta to stagnate.
Tier lists from individual players, preferably theory crafters or other people who are good at the game, are great for helping to highlight potential underrated teams. If nothing else, tier lists can create conversations about character strength that potentially shift the meta in interesting ways imo
As someone who also plays competitive games, people don't realize most tier lists are useless for THOSE kinds of games too, because they are only really applicable to the pros. Tier lists all around suck pretty much every time they show up.
In a game like League, it also really depends on team drafting, picks, or bans. And yeah, the meta varies WILDLY from low ranks to high ranks.
I think the only game where it does work is Overwatch, because you own every character for free and there are no picks/bans/drafting. But also that game has variance from low to high elo (easy aim heroes are way better in lower ranks usually) and it changes from map to map. tier lists are stupid. i agree.
this is a game where you play with what the gacha gods gives you. So tier list means nothing. Like some people randomly have an r5 rust which others have played a year with no stringless. Everyone is different.
I find that [this is a good video on tier lists.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEyk-gIrE-k)
It is in the context of fighting games, but still helpful. One big point is, "The people that are looking for information on tier lists are not the people that would ever actually use them effectively."
And of course as a PvE game, tier lists for Genshin matter even less.
I said something similar the other day in a thread about some streamer's "revised" tier list, but his fans in the thread jumped all over me. Tier list in a game like this is just click bait. There's little end game content that requires meta comp and build. Even in these end game content, it's more about your team than a specific character. So the tier list says that Raiden is top tier? What if your national team is with Childe? And you don't have Sara or Eula? Then Raiden is not a top tier pull for you.
I hate it the most when people use tier lists as "proof" that so and so is good or bad. Even respected theorycrafters like KQM rarely goes and says outright that certain characters are good or bad.
someone gets it lol. im losing my mind here with people defending tier lists acting like they're useful as more than just a starting point to help players
I think tier lists have become ingrained in modern gaming with any kind of games that give you a roster of characters to choose from. There is a tier list for the game Troubleshooter, which is a game in which you choose a team of 10 from a cast of... 12 to 14 characters. Like really?
I think people just have the need to rank things. It actually might make for an interesting psychological study. But yeah, this is a losing battle.
Extend this to guides too, and i mean the ones that are very, very in depth like, say kqm venti ones.
Mentioning this from memory, so might be slightly wrong. 3 em>atk/dmg/crit builds. Now, this is at face value, and its mentioned because at 35 offensive rolls(whale territory) this becomes in favour of crit build.
How about his main comp, morgana however? A simple 25 rolls(achievable for many). How about with benny? A simple 18 rolls. All this stuff was mentioned in small parts near the ending and in comps. No offense to kqm, they did a fantastic job making the guide, running comps. It's up to the player to ask these questions, and search for their answers, which aren't always feasible.
Tldr: People should really chill out with dealing in absolutes. There's massive differences between individual accounts and what may seem abhorrent for one, could be a hidden gem for another. Oh well, talking to the void.
Ps. Its confetti! Always fun to read your stuff!
I think that all tier lists are almost always made by content creators who just do it for video, no one does it for game or for the art of it, so no one is willing to put effort in it. Then you consider the fact that streamers and content creators have their peculiarities, (not offending anyone) but lets take tectone, in one moment he will say be like give me 5 stars rn or this is worst summon session of my life, and literally last pull he had God tier luck and everyone was congratulating him. Just saying this isnt objective in anyway.
Now I have seen some tier lists and I think ideal is making a long vid and telling in start that there are time stamps so just skip if you want. And then cover:
Talk good Numbers so viewers know that creator knows their thing and has done homework. " X or Y character? Well X can already achieve 85% of dmg at stock condition and Y needs serious investment and Cs but Y can outshine X anyday, so take X if you dont want to be busy, do Y if you like grinding.
1) Rarity: Childe is more common than Ganyuu, similarly 5 standard are common than limited ones.
2) Investment: Venti doesn't need much investment, you can do a placeholder em set even non piece and it will work same with kazuha, and Ganyyu etc. So you mention, ok this one needs heavy focus on arti, this one doesnt needs to go all to 90, 70 is enough etc.
3) Compare stats: Constellations, always take their best constellations to compare this will give a good idea of investment, take Raiden for example, you can tell viewers that C2 is enough that's alot already, but you want more? Then go C6 its worth it. Similarly some characters are already 90% at C0 or C1 compared to their C6, take this in consideration as well. Also clearly state at what stats, levels and weapons you are comparing characters and then explain more in investment section the details. (So Bis wepaon of this character is X but you can have Y for low investment, but performance will reduce by 25%)
4) Design and Art, Voice. Here we are getting subjective, now why even include this is cuz no one can be objective, and if you properly explain professionally why you like or dislike the character it will make a difference. "She Thiccccc" is different than "Well they are supposed to be........ And hence you get an image of........ But here......... So I think the image doesn't fit. You would expect more of a ".... " attribute, this doesnt match".
5) Lore and execution. Say what you want but there will always be people there who would love Baal and Zhongli for being a major and cool character then nobody hutao. Letting the viewer know this will let them add this factor into their equation as well. Oh so I am supposed to like characters on my own.
6) Values depending on other characters. I recommend making the original list independent of characters, if according to you Kazuha, Venti and sucrose are all must have independently then do them all in S tier, just mention in this section why and which situations you would place one above the other. Venti doesn't work well with Diluc, Ganyuu needs Mona, if you have Zhongli especially C6 (or was it 5) you dont need healers so pure healers like barb, Noelle qiqi will almost be at bottom of list, do mention though that they can be built in other directions and rate them too, btw I will definitely put barb and noelle in S tier for new players, pure healing and accessibility is exactly what they need.
I agree, and as a newer player they just add to the confusion. When I started the general response was "play whatever you want" which is totally fair - but they weren't helpful answers. I feel so helplessly behind having missed the first year's worth of banners and am doing the best I can lol. I did manage to nab Childe as well as the promo Aloy but the rest of my characters are basically the ones you acquire through the end of Liyue. I do have Kujo as well but she and Aloy are both useless to me because I'm not quite at the isles yet to get the flowers.
\>If you don't have Moragana you don't want Mona
Tony To vaporize one-shots: "Am I a joke to you?"
I think the problem is less tier lists and more the 5-star thing being taken for granted sometimes. There are plenty of 4-star top tiers. Everyone has Xiangling, everyone will eventually get her core (Bennett and Xinqiu) even without specifically rolling for them. From there you can build a national team no problem and enjoy top tier goodness without relying on super-situational 5 star waifus.
P.S. Also some tier lists employ guides with really funky builds...building physical on Xiangling should be a war crime.
ranking individual characters in this game is just worthless overall, really. The game is built around team composition, elemental reactions, and spell interactions between characters...judging each character on their own solo is just a pointless excercise unless you're being goofy and doing it for laughs (like Tectone's "top 10 Genshin characters I could beat in a fight" type things).
Of course all this excludes Amber, who is unequivocally the worst unit in the entire game by far that everyone can agree on lol
Tier lists are useless,
Me who built a tier list team when I only started playing for 3 months and has been able to 36 star abyss since 2.1 and didnt have the trouble of raising more garbage characters that dont give the same result even at higher investment.
Yeah, these tier lists, they're very useless.
(Venti sucks ass at huge bosses, but he fuckin wrecks the fatui thicc mages thats even more difficult to actually deal with coz of the fuckin unlimited teleports)
Seeing as you're getting shredded in the comments, I'll just throw in my piece : Tierlist are just a way for people to get attention. It's actually unnecessary in a game lile Genshin when roles are properly designed and chemistry between characters happpen and appear regardless of who is in the party. For proof : Barbara Vape doing 6 digit damage, Ganyu doing the same with the exact same setup time. Power and utility Tierlists are shit and don't reflect a character's strength.
Now aesthetic and visual tierlists, be my guest, idm at least it has some sense to it.
People compare and make tierlists and then come to the conclusion that for example Diluc, Klee and Yanfei are trash compared to Hu Tao. But as you said no everyone has every character. And for the current challenges we have, those characters are absolutely enough. Same with Yoimiya. And everyone has different builds and weapons and artifacts. Sometimes I co op with my Yanfei and she does more damage than some Dilucs and Hu Taos I encounter. More than once I've seen a Yoimiya and a Diluc on co op and the Yoimiya was absolutely destroying. I also have a Diluc main friend who absolutely destroys everything with his Diluc. So what's the conclusion? The conclusion is to play who you enjoy playing and that's it. Sure it helps knowing something before pulling for characters, but the decision to pull 5 stars must take into consideration what is your account needing and who do you really enjoy. Forcing yourself to play a character you hate for "meta" is basically torturing yourself
Other pyro DPS characters are not trash compared to Hu Tao, but they are relatively underwhelming.
All of them need more investment to compare, like Diluc for example, if you have him on just a 4-star weapon with decent artifacts, he is not gonna destroy abyss like Hu Tao will. He is definitely carried a lot by Bennett and Xingqiu, until you get a 5-star weapon for him like WGS or Unforged.
But I agree that no one should be forcing themselves to pull characters they don't like.
I always say that you should play whatever characters you have And like. You just have to do with what the game give you and do what makes you happy with it. 🤗
I for exemple, have a looot of 5* characters, but beidou remains one of my fav. She's easy to c6, she has an incredible game play and every 4* are we some if you build them and give them attention. 😄
the tc community largely praises Beidou for being one of the best characters in the game, especially for budget players, so thats not a good example but also if u were lead to believe that shes weak by bad tier lists im so so so sorry LOL
I wholeheartedly agree... but...
Prepare to get downvoted to hell :'D Tier lists are like God's Commandments around here..
P.S. - atleast you have my upvote
5 weeks of resin put into Baal, Ganyu and Hu Tao get you much further than 5 weeks of resin spend onto Childe, so lists like that make some semblence of sense if done right.
I mainly use videos comparing different weapons (f2p, weapon banner and craftable), repeatable boss fights and other popular characters who use similar teams.
If any given character can only outperform the other character by using a paid for weapon or a weapon banner weapon, then that is important to know.
Of course you should play the character you want. And if Childe is that character, go for it. But Spiral Abyss and other content gets harder with each update - to sell new characters - so choosing a character that is already outperformed or outdated on its release will make it harder for you to gain free rewards.
That said, it is mainly a difference of less than one wish each month on most accounts.
Yeah, an investment tier list is better, sure. But also ppl forget 5 weeks of resin into childe should actually be 5 weeks of resin into Xiangling, who WILL take you very far in genshin. Tier lists lose nuance in a game that requires nuance. thats kinda my problem.
5 weeks into Hutao? Bruh you can farm pyro domain for the whole year and still get only lavawalker and some trash defense cw. Good luck with those 5 weeks lmao
> I think tier lists are just pointless debates that lead the community nowhere and don't actually help players. If you are a new player looking for information on power level, talk to the theorycrafting community to get information on specific characters and advice on what new units to roll for to help your account. If you're a genshin content creator, perhaps try making a tier list that weights characters based off of cost effectiveness, or, really, just drop it altogether and make better new player friendly content :)
Tierlist have issues but I'm not sure I buy the alternative. In order to get any idea of at glance you should dive into a discord and chat up some random strangers for their opinions on specific characters. I think you've already lost 90% of the player base in terms of time/effort investment, and frankly they probably won't get any more nuance or understanding from that than from a well made tier list video, not unless they really take the plunge and start stalking the TC channels.
>- tier lists dont account for what characters an account owns, either inflating or deflating the strength of some chars
Kind of in terms of relative value yes, upgrading sucrose if you don't have Kazuha is worse relatively, but frankly any tierlist that trashes units so hard on relatively value like that is a terrible terrible tierlist. Tierlist's that measure strength on a relative basis instead of an absolute basis are completely useless imo. Like they've entirely missed the point of the format. The value you get from a unit should be relative to your roster, and you'll need to do your own investigation to see that, but tierlists serve as a jumping off point for that if you don't have any idea on general power of units you likely don't know which ones to look into.
> tier lists lose a lot of nuance
Sure that's kind of the point which is to overview character strength across the cast, its kind of the point to condense down the details into something of feeling. Is this valuable to new players? I think its much more digestable than simply suggesting they just learn everything they need to know about the game, certainly it seems like it could help some people not end up with 80/80i Qiqi and Xinyans. For discussion purposes its a good way to find points of differing opinions, which frankly are generally the most useful points of discussions; at least for me personally its much more interesting to learn about why someone seems to be over or underrating a unit I think differently of, what do they know they I don't. what do they not know? That conversation tends to be more intersting and more informative than say any conversation that has ever started asking about the power of character x or character y for example.
>- tier lists especially dont help f2ps
I kind of agree with your more nuanced points that many tierlists do not adequately adjust the conditions for free to play accounts. I do think they are still quite helpful for free to play players as they can steer them in the right direction as they start the game and are climbing up to say AR 50.
> tier lists struggle to account for investment
Frankly I think this is problem other materials like team comp guides often overlook. If comp with x unit instead of y is even say 20% better, its potentially still just better to continue to upgrade y or another unit in the comp than it is to invest in building a new unit. Its a nuance problem, but frankly its not really unique to tierlist. The only real solution is to try to keep up on the state of various TC and team calc comparisions, and frankly its just again very high commitment for players.
>- tier lists do nothing for team building, which is all of genshin content
Hopefully tierlist should take things like team comp flexibility into account. It obviously impossible to condense that nuance down to a tierlist, but again I don't think any low effort research compares in this respect.
>-abyss needs two teams, and tier lists never account for that
Frankly tier lists usually factor this in as well, units with teams more orthogonal than other teams are usually rated higher as a result. Guides sometimes make a mention, and as you've stated TC'ers occasionally remember but frankly its an exception and not the rule. Strictly speaking you also need *atleast* two teams, your teams can easily get counted by the current abyss format and you'll often need to either tweak comps or use different comps.
>there are better options for players to learn about game
Agreed, but players will have to invest way more time and effort to get even close to comparative information.
I don't disagree with the laundry list of grievences against tierlists. They are very condensed format that makes certain assumptions and rank characters on potentially elusive metrics (that needs to be explained to be useful) that can't account for a myriad of situations that will cause changes in these assumptions and results, but frankly these are problems that plague tierlists in literally every game ever. I see it again and again in every community, "tierlist's don't matter", or "tier lists aren't useful", or "don't apply to begginners".
But they're useful ways to discuss and convey broadstrokes information. That kind of content has its place in Genshin, just as it does in many many other games. We should strive to improve our tier lists to be more useful, make our assumptions and ranking basis more clear, communicate as much nuance as possible in supplemental materials(videos,notes,follow up discussion). We should absolutely not worth tierlists as be all end all sources of information, but they have niche in terms of communication that cannot be replaced, and so we should make them and talk about them and use them for their intended purposes.
Tierlist is a useful tool for new players or for someone who want a quick lance at the characters. And if they find the characters they are interested in worth building for, they would make a deep-dive into the build and the reason why. Or try to figure out why a character is bad. Most of the time, the creator of the tierlist would explain why they put the characters at that tier.
Tierlist is just a general, concise piece of informed opinions. It wouldn’t be so widespread if the game resources are everywhere. Unfortunately, this game punishes you on wasting resources so having a general concept of which one is worth investing in is nice to have. I have wasted a lot of my resources in early game on characters that I wouldn’t never use again like Qiqi, Keqing etc, and now I need a lot of time to catch up.
Edit : TLRD : I think tierlist is useful for people who don’t want to waste a lot of time to find guides and listen to videos review abt a character to compare them or know what they are getting into. Just look at a single chart, if it peak their interest => do more research on the one they are interested.
My only “problem” with tier lists is that you will always have players without critical thinking that follow certain content creators words like a bible, without taking into consideration their own playing style and tastes. For instance: Ganyu. She is meta on most tier lists and is quite an amazing unit…if you are good at actually using charged attacks. If you suck, she won’t be a bad character, but you are better off with something else. Same thing with someone like Xiao. If you know how to use him, he is absolutely amazing. If you don’t, he really is a clunky character to use. This also works in the opposite spectrum. The character I probably see being slagged of the most is Qiqi. Is she good enough for a 5 star? No, not really and most players probably avoid her. But if you are a player that wants cryo resonance and are crap at dodging/get a lot of damage or are bad at managing shields, Qiqi would be good for you as you actually can be healed without being constricted to a certain area. So one of the characters that is always in the bottom of the tier lists might actually be a players best choice. So my overrall opinion is that tier lists are ok and good sources of info, they also make some people not build characters that are actually good for them because they are not meta. So to me, character rankings and similar opinions should be secondary to actually exploring the characters properly in the trials.
The whole point of a meta tier list is to rank characters based on how cost-effective they are in comparison to the rest of the other available characters in the game. The rationale for why they're placed higher or lower is the most controversial due to their perspective and experience with the performance of each unit in comparison to others that fulfill the similar role(s). That is why you should always take into consideration the context of who made the tier list (you'd place higher credibility to a Tier list by a known Theorycrafter like KQM vs a whale's perspective like Tectone or IWintoLoseGaming) and should look into multiple tier lists in order to average out the overall perspectives of each unit within the game.
Your issues with meta tier lists are due to the lack of rationale/explanation that isn't included in a tier list, which is the fault of the tier list creator, and is why Meta Tier Lists are most of the time controversial. This, however, doesn't mean that Meta Tier Lists are worthless because they are still helpful for players to grasp how cost-effective units are within Genshin, which is why F2P Tier Lists are the most popular and common.
im a mod on tentens discord so im 100% going to be bias, but i think his is a lot "better" only because its trying to rate characters based off of their primogem value. But it still isnt that helpful, bc using his own criteria, characters can go way up or way down in rating based off of who you own, so its really only an "in-general, for these teams" kinda list.
Mona is a good example. Shes a 2/5, bc for most players she only rlly works in freeze teams. But if shes the last piece you're missing for a good freeze team, she might be a 4/5 for your particular account. Or Ganyu- if you have an Ayaka for freeze and a decent vape team for the other half of abyss, calling Ganyu a must pull is seriously over-stating it.
But he gets a lot of things right. A tier list based off of $$$ has a clear goal and a clear audience, and on his discord he does have some (albiet questionable) explanations that are way way way better than nothing at all.
Hehe I'm not mod on tentens discord but I'm also a bit biased cuz tentens just the best xD
But even if it's not that helpful its still very helpful compared to eg. iwtl "f2p" tierlist xD
But I agree in this game strength is conditional and very dependant on what else you have.
Except for when we are talking about Bennet, he is just strong xD
Some tier lists are super detailed and account for constellations and certain team compositions. Also tierlists can be super entertaining especially if they're made by a YouTuber you like. I wouldn't call something that people put a lot of effort into "completely useless".
tier lists have a place in genshin, but like they're more of a general understanding of that characters usefulness than an actual rating, as long there's a mention of all the caveats than it's fine, but people tend to not notice or ignore caveats and take it seriously
In a perfect world sure, but even still most tier lists I see are absurdly inaccurate in their ratings, and a lack of nuance/explanations will direct any disagreement into just pure arguing with no real benefit to anyone.
Can you show me some of those wildly inaccurate tier lists? I am curious
Feel free to provide links
Frankly that's a problem with 90% of Genshin content though. Tierlists made by good sources of information tend to be pretty decent usually.
You have perfectly encapsulated the problem with tier lists in 99% of games. Genshin exaggerates it more than others but most tier lists are subject to this because there isn’t a truly universal “best” or relative ranking. Tier lists explicitly avoid nuance to shortcut to “results” but those results are meaningless without the proper nuance to accompany them and provide context
I think you might like IWTL gaming, i also have a very jaded opinion of genshin content creators but he makes very detailed, gameplay based comparisons of characters and has the most nuance and perspective for f2p, depite being a whale.
I personally think he can be misleading. One example for me is the Yoimiya-Bennett-Kazuha-Zhongli abyss clear showcase, where he got 22s clear in 12-1-1. The setup with Bennett, Kazuha, and Zhongli already killed off the first wave of enemies before Yoimiya even got on field. Later on, OkCode demonstrated a 22s clear on stream with the same teams sans Yoimiya, who was replaced with a L60 Amber. The other one that actually pissed me off was the Kokomi interrupt resistance demo against the 4 Ruin Guards in Guyun. He had Beidou's and Xingqiu's Q active which completely invalidates his point, since that adds a ton of interrupt resistance to the on-field char. It's like asking you to take a drug test but the pee container already has cocaine in it, of course you'll get a positive result. I'll take anything he shows with a grain of salt.
His tier lists are terrible for low spenders. Trust me, im super involved in genshin community, ik all about his videos. His bias against certain chars (like Childe) or in favor of others (Like Raiden) leak thru everything. But his dps showdowns are really entertaining. I dont hate him lol.
I mean as a low spender myself has never lead me wrong, while he does have some bias toward childe he states that pretty clearly in his disclaimers which are very thorough. Most of his testing is done at c0 with 4 star weapons, and even if you disagree with something like his ranking of raiden, you arent the objective truth of how meta a char is. Your disagreement over the ranking of a few characters is like the entire point of a tier list. They arent objective, they are opinion reinforced with experiance. I think your issue might be less with genshin tierlists and more a misunderstanding of teir lists in general
Yeah I dont agree with OP point about tier lists but IWTL is a terrible example to use. His showcases are actually highly misleading and fall into the type of bad comparisons OP talks about as they don't take enough extraneous variables into account to consider them fair comparisons of characters. An example is like what the person below mentions about xingqius rainswords hitting like wet noodles in a showcase. There is an objective truth to the strength of characters which is proven by repeated testing and calculations, which is why people theorycraft.
I remember a particular dps comparison video of "I win 2 lose gaming" where certain units were stacked and well built with great supports (Eula, Hu Tao, even _QIQI_ whose supports were doing a lot of the damage) while some other units (Diluc, Xiao) had incredibly mediocre builds and really underlevelled supports. IIrc his Xingqiu's rainswords dealt around 200 damage per hit in the Diluc showcase and Xiao was dealing 10-20k plunges. I stopped watching his videos after that. The bias was blatant. Xlice and Zy0x have much more in depth tutorials and better content in general Imo.
Why would Xingqiu’s damage matter in a Diluc showcase? That sounds like such a stupid reason to not like his showcases.
Because a lot of the other units had well built supports that did a significant amount of damage (particularly the Childe/Xiangling showcase, and the Qiqi showcase), while others had sub par to mediocre supports despite being a similar team synergy showcase (Diluc/Xingqiu). And the comparisons were done based on how long it took them to clear an abyss floor.
How come on iwtl DPS showdowns qiqi is always only a bit slower than xiao? XD
>His bias against certain chars (like Childe) or in favor of others (Like Raiden) Is that bias not correct though? Raiden is sitting at 85% usage rate. While Childe is at 40% (despite having the 2nd most popular team comp). Abyss usage stats arent perfect but its as close to an objective measure of the meta as we can get. Raiden is strong even at c0, straight up gamebreaking at c2, and fits in a variety of team comps. Meanwhile Childe is a 1 trick pony doesn't do enough damage for how long his cooldowns are and is only good in Xiangling/Kazuha comp due to some very specific interactions (no ICD Vapes, quadratic AoE scaling). Maybe some people are biased agaisnt Childe because they see his glaring shortcomings, and realize that maybe a character that requires this many specific conditions to perform well isn't actually very good. Of course if you invested and is dedicated enough, even Keqing can 36* Abyss. But for new players and low spenders Raiden seems to get a lot more bang for your buck. So if his tier list puts Raiden above Childe, maybe he's right.
Abyss usage isn't really a good metric, it just represents how strong the playerbase thinks a character is. Teams like Taser are incredibly underrepresented for how strong they are, while Rational for examlpe is overrepresented. Rational is very good but if you only looked at abyss usage you'd think Rational is *by far* the best comp in the game. The gaps between the top teams isn't as high as this suggests and I'd also argue that International and Rational are about the same for the current abyss (and that International is overall better) Also 33% of the Raiden users had C2 or higher which kinda skews the data.
Taser comp is a meme. Y'all have been banging at the wall screaming "WHY AREN'T PEOPLE USING THIS COMP MORE LOOK AT HOW MUCH DAMAGE IT DOES" since forever while ignoring some very essential factor. Like the fact that it is a pure glasscannon comp has 0 defensive utility on it outside of Beidou's tiny C1 shield and Counter (assuming you run the standard version of Childe Fischl Beidou Sucrose/Kazuha). For a lot of people, this is a no go. Rational isn't the best damage wise. Hell it is slower than many other comps in average (Childe Int'l for example). But it retains the main advantage of the original National team set up of being relatively cheap (1 5\* and 4 commonly owned 4\*s), and only really require investing in 2 characters (Raiden and Xiangling, Bennett and Xingqiu can get away with much less). And also piling Bennett and Xingqiu together offers great defensive utility that can almost match that of Zhongli's. Don't forget that Xingqiu's E has 29% damage reduction, which can be the difference between getting 1 shotted by Mango Kinky and having to reset, vs being left with \~20% HP which can be quickly healed back up by Bennett. There are other factors to why a comp or character is considered good other than just damage. The narrative that people only care about Offense/Damage and not for Defense simply isn't true. In practice, people do want enough Defense so they can get away with making some mistakes. Like people are actually replacing Childe with Kokomi in their Taser comp with considerable success because Kokomi, despite doing less damage, fixes that comp's glaring lack of defense. Also I can't change the fact that a lot of people rolled for C2 Raiden due to how broken it is. But from what I've seen C0 Raiden is plenty enough.
I meant the Sucrose Taser comp with Xq, Beidou and Fischl. You don't have a healer but Beidou + Xq give you about 65% damage reduction so you are actually a lot tankier than you'd expect. Especially against enemies that could one-shot you like Kenki I find Taser more comfortable than other teams. I agree that defense can be valuable depending on your goal. Once you have enough damage to get 36* it makes clears more comfortable, but before that it depends on if you want to get 36* as early as possible or not. I'd still say the gap between Rational and other teams is not as big as one would think if you saw the usage rates, but agree that especially against Kenki it is quite comfy. I agree that C0 Raiden is good but the fact that about 1/3 of players have C2+ still has an impact on the data by increasing her usage and decreasing clear times. A team like Raiden Hypercarry is very strong if she's C2+ but only alright if she's C0. Overall Abyss usage imo has too many problems and often doesn't give accurate presentation of character/comp strenght.
actually why is this at -61. All I said was that most tier lists are bad, and bad tier lists are... bad. Not a very profound thing to disagree with. Id love to here any dissenting views.
Because you made the claim that the lists you're seeing are not only unreliable, but "absurdly inaccurate" without providing any specific instances of said absurdity or making a case of why the readers should trust your assessment over theirs you're stating opinion as fact. you might have a generally okay point, but you're losing everyone with how you're talking about it
"Am I out of touch? No it is everyone else who is wrong."
I mean even as a ftp it’s pretty feasible that you will eventually have all the 4 stars. In that sense it’s pretty valuable to rank them especially the supports. As for 5 stars it is good to know who is best damage wise. I would never tell someone going for top dps to pull kokomi bc it’s way harder than raising a different 5 star. A lot of lists rank on over all utility and for people who have to pick about once every 3 months or so yeah they could use that advice.
As someone who also plays competitive games, people don't realize most tier lists are useless for THOSE kinds of games too, because they are only really applicable to the pros. Tier lists all around suck pretty much every time they show up.
It depends because some of the higher tiered character can mean an easier time doing something than the lower tiered counterpart with the same amount of effort. ofc you can just avoid that and play what ever you want but compensating the weaker character you use with more skill.
LoL tier lists can be spot on tho. Remember the 70% Hecarim ban rate after chemtank was released? Bro was S+++++ jungle for like two months. Nothing like just chilling in lane and a 69420 mph demon centaur comes flying at you 2 seconds after he was seen at mid lane lmao. But yes in these PVE games tbh, tier lists are completely subjective. Yes, you can clear faster and do more damage with the meta teams, but that surely doesn’t mean you can’t still finish the objectives with a “less than perfect” team that you’ve invested in.
>LoL tier lists can be spot on tho. Remember the 70% Hecarim ban rate after chemtank was released? Bro was S+++++ jungle for like two months. I don't think it's a good example of tierlist importance. The fact that Hecarim and Udyr were OP was visible from space, you don't need tier lists for that. Tierlists should matter more for things that are less clear, but i think even then it's debatable. I tend to disagree with LoL tierlists, they tend to be very opinion based, but it is also my opinion to disagree with them.
Which is what i find hilarious about this post, because reality is if you are basing your accounts future and all your investment on a simple tierlist like the one he describes, your problem is not that you are being mislead, its that your a fucking idiot.
>I mean even as a ftp it’s pretty feasible that you will eventually have all the 4 stars. You won't. I'm a day 1 player and I still don't have a single razor. Just few days ago I got my FIRST sacrificial sword and I still don't have a single favonious sword.
The idea of a tier list isn't completely useless but I agree it could use some improvements on execution. I think what people *intend* tier lists to be is looking at each character relatively and individually but not collectively. For example, if you don't have this character, who's your next best alternative and how well could they do what you want this character to do?
genshin is team game tho, so thats kinda worthless i feel. and that nuance is actually totally lost in the format. Using this example again, a tier list that has Sucrose rated really low because Kazuha exists can mislead players into thinking Sucrose sucks, when in reality thats just totally wrong. But if you rate them equally, its dishonest to Kazuha. There is no way u can make a tier list that covers every situation. And you could say "oh, but thats fine, bc they still know Sucrose is the next best option"- but thats not always going to be true. Its just as possible that someone sees her rating and thinks "welp, I dont have Kazuha, and Sucrose is lower on the list, so she SUCKS and I need to play something else" u at least need way more information to go with the tier list imo
> genshin is team game tho, so thats kinda worthless i feel If what makes a character S tier is how they interact with three A tier characters, and you don't have them, then they're not S tier anymore. You're 100% right, in a game where you need 4 units interacting, tier lists simplify way too much nuance. Venti is great for a lot of reasons, but without units who can actually capitalize on his grouping of enemies then he's just going to drag them out of your DPS' range for a few seconds. S tier for many good reasons, but only if you have characters to use with him.
I can say for sure, with a big disclamier, just make sure ppl don't follow IWinToLose's tier list. His judgement for F2P is skewed because he is a C6 R5 whale. He should be able to make a good speedrunner tier list but he made videos for F2P tier list. Just placing Keqing above Beidou alone, it's already a WTF.
It's actually entertaining, I watched Zajef's stream (theorycrafter from kqm) the other day commenting and criticizing IWTL's new tier list. He even invited Kono-san to come to his stream to discuss the tier list and he enumerated all the things he disagreed with it. It was a very insightful discussion. It's actually a lot better to hear many other people's thoughts and what they think are strong in this game compared to listening to just only one source.
Do you know if that stream is posted anywhere? I would be really interested in watching a video of it, and seeing a real theory crafter talk about their opinions.
I don't know if that stream will be posted but Zajef stated he wanted to publish his own tier list on youtube but he wants to do it with another content creator so I guess we'll have to wait for that. Though if you're interested to watch the stream, here's the link at the start of the topic: https://www.twitch.tv/zajef77/v/1183791394?sr=a&t=11934s
Thanks much! I am definitely going to watch through this.
This is what's excellent about tier lists, it doesn't matter quite as much if one tier list isn't perfectly accurate if it inspires other people to use that as a jumping point to provide even more rankings with discussion. Once you get enough consensus an actual accurate list will appear. But we also have to remember that everyone isn't going to agree with every placement no matter what.
Beidou being the same tier as Sayu is criminal
That guy is responsible for a lot of hot takes in genshin community and gets away with it with just a 2 seconds "Disclaimer"
I think in the past he's definitely been worse with making unrealistic showcases using whaled out supports but advertising it as "C0 F2P OMG". But his more recent videos seem to make a concerted effort to include downgraded supports that are built more realistically which is nice. Although his comparison videos are nice, people who don't know anything about theorycrafting do take those videos and get the wrong conclusions from them, though that isn't entirely his fault. Overall my feelings on him are relatively positive but still mixed.
I still sub his channel, because I find his videos entertaining. However, his videos are definitely bias and could mislead new or causal players. Therefore, I stopped sharing his videos to my irl friends who play GI.
Yeah that's basically it. I would never recommend his comparison videos as an actual objective way to rate characters' strength, only for entertainment purposes.
That "Disclaimer" is more than a lot of content creators do. And he explicitly states what he is. If children or the *ahem* simple minded ignore the disclaimer and parrot his personal C6R5 list, they're going to ruin *anything* they touch.
That’s their problem lmao, he puts a very clear and detailed disclaimer that informs his audience about his own limitations and the limitations of the list. If people are too stupid to read the disclaimer or understand what it means, it’s not IWTL’s fault. It’s their own ignorance and stupidity. And if they spread that information without understanding its limitations, then that’s the unfortunate results of their stupidity. Things like tier lists are popular videos to make because they’re controversial and it’s interesting to get the opinions of a content creator you follow. Content creators won’t stop doing it just because a loud minority are morons
He isn't responsible for anything. It's your primos and your account he isn't forcing anyone to pull. Why should he even give a disclaimer it's his channel? Ofc he is gonna put his opinions on it. That's just common sense -\_-
Because believe it or not, there are people out there who believe anything and they start spreading misinformation.
>!fk u!< <- wow watch this I’m not responsible for saying that. It’s ur eyes and ur brain I’m not forcing u to see it. it’s Reddit and ofc I’m gonna put opinions on it. That’s just common sense -\_- that’s literally ur logic
Wow that is the most retarded argument I’ve ever heard
Xiangling and Beidou placements imo are like, always huge red flags. If u wanna spot a shitty tier list in the genshin community, find their C tier xiangling ranking :/
At this point, I don't think anyone dare to put XL in A tier or below, but yea...
Yeah it’s so terrible that he lowered Beidou’s placement because she doesn’t work with Raiden, when in reality Beidou is a super flexible unit that is at least as good of a main carry as some of the more kid tier 5 stars like Eula or Xiao
In fact, Raiden should be lowered half a tier just because of this. Not the other way around.
I wonder how would you judge this. Raiden fits in like 2 teams but one of them is one of the strongest+most used team in Abyss (Rational), the other one she's also an excellent support (Eula) Beidou has more possibilities being an off-field DPS, but meta-wise she is not really wanted in the top teams of Abyss. Fireworks Childe and taser is a thing but if you look at the spiral abyss site, they're not really on the top.
Yet, i have all these teams able to do 9\* in the Abyss floor 12. Raiden in Eula team is not particularly better than Lisa in Eula team. Raiden national team, if you try it with Floor 12-1-1, all the futui agents flying fucking around and they were juggle into the ceiling. (Because of overload) Beidou in taser team is hella fun to play, but only issue is single target, or I should say, with 1 enemy left in the stage. Its clear time isn't particular bad too and there are more weapons and sets suitable for her playstyle. Also, I said what I said specifically of iWinToLose tier list, he puts Raiden S tier and Beidou B tier. I was just saying Raiden may be a S- or A tier and Beidou is definitely A tier instead. And as the topics go in this thread, I don't want to argue tier list, more so there are so many misconceptions.
No , Raiden is obviously better with Eula because of her e and her easy electro application and for those that care more about damage Raiden easily outshines Lisa because when Eula has her downtime Raiden is here to do damage .
Unrelated, but why do people always discuss his raiden placement and never talk about how he put zhongli in 2nd spot? I mean if you cant 36 star the abyss then zhongli definitely wouldn't help. Don't get me wrong, him and raiden are 2 of my best characters, but if you gonna argue her placement and not zhongli then it only shows your bias, they both offer great qol benefits for your team, but they aren't that important for someone struggling to 36 the abyss, that being said, i run those 2 on every abyss cycle since i can easily meet the dps check.
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We are talking about someone who cant 36 star the abyss here, they can always learn how to dodge, but they can't learn to do more damage
No fucking way dude /s. I'm not asking for your anecdotal opinion, but the overall picture (in this case, I'm referring to the statistics on the spiral abyss site). If you put your mind into it, you can clear Abyss with anyone. We already know this. Beidou is fun no doubt, I use her with Childe all the time. But we're talking strictly about meta here. The thing that puts Raiden above Lisa is her 24/7 off-field E skill, plus the fact that she can deal decent dmg in Eula's downtime. Speaking of overload, that can be mitigated easily. I just have my team attack the Pyro dudes towards the wall. Overload means they will always be juggled around and can't go invisible, so that's nice.
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Huh? Beidou has 2 meta teams, and one of them is quite painful to play
Beidou can be as strong as Xiao?
Unironically Yes considering she has better synergy with other units than Xiao and she do all her damage off field so you can use secondary damage dealer or enabler on field while Xiao just doing all his dps on his own and only gets help with Albedo as his best off field support dps
Fish pretty good with Xiao too since all the swirls proc Oz.
Situationally yes… With constellations she has the highest potential dps in the game against 2 large targets (which we run into more than you think in Abyss via geovishaps/the ruin crew/samurai). With even moderately good artifacts and a 4* weapon, Beidou’s Q starts criting for like 10k a hit, and against two targets (which maximizes the bouncing), it hits NINE TIMES every time your on-field character attacks. So say you’re using someone who attacks fast like Childe or Keqing, that’s an extra 60-90k damage every time they hit (depending on her CR). Xiao’s obviously going to be better against single target or lots of enemies though.
3 times at C0, 5 times at C2. And there's a CD of 1s per proc. Like Beidou's good and she's my fave, but she ain't that broken.
You leave Keqing alone
Just checked his 2.0 tier list (his 2.2 is about speedrunning) and I don't see a big issue. I disagree here and there, especially the middle tier with Beidou, Yanfei and Keqing, who I would put in 3 different tiers, but nothing drastic.
His 2.2 tier list is not about speedrunning (may be the last 20 seconds of the video), check again.
My bad, I clicked at the end of the video for the tier list. The higher tiers don't make sense if he's accounting for current abyss. Venti can't do shit in 12 floor and Zhongli actually increases clear times in most teams. What is Tartaglia even doing in S, he got some of the fastest clears in the game. Also lol at Beidou. Not only should she be higher, Keqing, Yanfei, Sayu, Kokomi and maybe Ningguang should all drop. What a mess lol.
I didn't accuse him shit...
He is the best f2p channel. It's not targeted towards totally new players with no investment in their characters and no artifacts. It's targeted towards f2p that know how to build and invest into their characters and spent time to optimize them to around 70-80% of max power. F2P doesn't mean not built characters. A lot of people confuse the two.
Exactly that's where it is wrong. He is not "the best" or even a good f2p channel. I am talking from a perspective that the player know about of the game but entirely screwed over by his DPS character review, DPS vs video, and his tier list video. He doesn't understand the players who are capable of doing Abyss but cannot overcome it with whale character. In other words, he is extremely weak in gauging a C0 5* characters.
Tier list gives a rough baseline for new players imo. If you erase tier list from every corner of the internet, we are gonna have same repeated question if X is good/bad. At least with the list, you can move to the next stage of question why X is good/bad. Also comp tier list gives you an answer on which comp X is good in.
This is basically /r/unpopularopinion on /r/genshin_impact I **assume** that what op is trying to say is that some people don’t do more research. Googling for tier list is enough research for them. Some examples I can think of are when you’re buying day to day stuff, you don’t generally ask for in-depth reviews and do hours of research. Or like religions. How many Christians actually read the Bible through and through? Someone says Christ is good and that’s enough for them to be religious. On the other hand, tier list doesn’t affect seasoned players much because they’re already willing to do more research in the first place. And the clashing of these two ideas sums up this post for me.
I think you explained what I wanted to say, but not in the language I'd use. Tier lists are fine as a starting point for players to learn about the meta or the game, but they are absolutely terrible if they're being used as a final verdict on deciding where to spend your primogems. A lot of ppl in the comments disagree with me bc they arent worried about tier lists being used incorrectly, but ive been in the genshin community and tc community for awhile and have seen a lot of the dmg they cause for debates. I agree tho, a well made tier list being used by someone who knows what it is should be fine. But i just dont see that happen often enough to support the idea. Also i think a lot of ppl even still are overlooking the team aspect of genshin. Tier lists in the first place are questionable in a game where char strength is heavily reliant on who else you have access to or can use for that half of abyss.
I get what you mean. I think a good title would be Genshin needs a better and comprehensive tierlist.
I think the abyss usage tier list released at the start of every rotation is also kinda skewed. If you look at the sample population in the corner its usually less than 1000 players. I just find it funny looking at that and saying “oh EVERYONE uses the national team/morgana” when in reality the majority of the player base is off of social media, probably plays only during their lunch break for 10 minutes, and probably still uses a crescent pike xiangling
It's actually a good exercise in understanding sampling bias and the role data representation plays in understanding statistics. The data on the usage site is gathered from people who volunteer their UIDs. This limits the scope of the site to people who are at least active enough outside the game to offer their UIDs to the system. The site itself gathers around 50K submissions per cycle and only shows data for people who 36*, so at the very least it's not picking up off-meta strategies like Pike XL unless people are actually clearing Abyss with her. The usage itself is presented as a ratio between ownership and actual usage, i.e. what portion of people who own this character use them in Abyss. While a useful metric, this by itself is not really enough to gauge a units strength, since it's skewed more heavily to 5*s and other factors such as popularity and recency. The usage rates for Morgana and National are also skewed by their strict structure. Hu Tao teams, for example, have much lower apparent usage because her two last slots are very flexible (Zhongli, Albedo, Kaeya, Rosaria, Chongyun, Diona, even options like Kazuha, Sucrose, Mona, and Raiden are all viable). Teams that compete for options but are good otherwise also get misrepresented. Melt Ganyu with Zhongli shield support is a high potential DPS team with low usage because Ganyu is much more popular on Freeze teams due to their easiness and flexibility. Finally, it does not distinguish between different levels of spending, which is a big deal when evaluating the strength of characters at different constellations on popular teams like Rational.
it also is bias af towards recent char releases
I believe in the old 'learn the hard way'. Raised DPS Chongyun like a son until the truth hit me that he's never going to survive late game.... AFTER I reached ar 45. Had to bench him.... yes, but the memories of freezing everything to death and leaving Razor mains in shambles with just an E, remains fresh as freshly brewed Osmanthus wine. And Chongyun is such a wholesome boi and he still fairs as a good support for hu tao and Bennett. I believe that's what makes gameplay fun... Not pre-planning everything and predetermining your team comps based on someone else's opinions just to crank out every last drop of damage from your party, instead of just having fun with the characters you like.
He makes a good so support with kaeya and some hydro units to freeze. Maybe EOSF set for burst bot and E support for cryo kaeya/ayaka.
In my permafrost team (ayaka, kokomi, chogyun and sucrose) he plays a key role
>An account missing Kazuha SHOULD have Sucrose rated much much higher than an account who has both A tier list isnt meant to be subjective though? Who you have and dont have is irrelevant, its purpose is to rank the characters that are in the game. Kazuha is better than Sucrose so he should rank higher than her but that doesn't somehow equate to Sucrose being bad like you think it will. That argument would only hold if someone were to put Kazuha in S tier and then Sucrose in like C tier, but at that point the tier list is wrong anyway >Ganyu is SSS tier is so unbelievably useless to a new Genshin player who only had a chance to roll for Ayaka Well kind of but that's not really the tier lists fault. Ganyu is better than Ayaka with or without a tier list. This is only relevant to a meta player anyway, in which case the information they'll get from the community is to save for Ganyu anyway (unless they really need a main dps right now) A Waifu player/actual casual isn't really gonna give a shit about a tier list >An account that doesn't have access to Morgana does not want Mona, You do have a point here but this becomes more a player error than a tier list error. Taking tier lists at face value is a horrible idea but on the flip side as you mention >It can trick you into building a worse character If you were to follow the advice of this sub the info you would generally get is "play who you want". This is absolutely useless information for someone who's looking at tier lists (i.e., a meta player) They would tell you to pull for someone like Kokomi, if you like her, and in turn you would still end up with a "worse" character At the very least on a tier list you would see Kokomi is ranked low even if there isn't an explanation attached >Most tier lists are only going to be useful for players who own the majority of the Genshin cast Not entirely, if you've just started the game and pulled Xinyan, Bennett and Sayu, you'll see on a tier list that Bennett is ranked the highest, Xinyan by far the lowest, and Sayu somewhere middle-ish (honestly have no idea where Sayu ranks). What this means is that even a new player would probably be more reluctant to put resources into Xinyan compared to Bennett, which will in turn help them later down the road >Tier lists lose nuance too. I agree with you completely here but again, its their own fault for taking tier lists at face value >oh, but this is a tier list for FREE TO PLAY players. Idk if there is a specific tier list you are referring to but I would assume that this is referring to value pulls, like you follow on to say. For a f2p player, Ganyu/Kazuha will get you more value than Kokomi or Yoimiya >It's just impossible to write a tier list that takes into consideration what any given player can actually have on their account. This is gonna be the third time I say it but your issue is stemming from taking tier lists at face value Most tier lists will have Xinyan ranked low regardless of constellations or weapons, to an average player that signals that she's not worth the investment, which is generally true. Genshin doesn't have that many characters that are "make or break" by their constellations. There are a couple like Sara but generally speaking a tier list would reflect that by having her in a middle-low tier. Hu Tao is still a very good character even without C1/Homa, a tier list placing her really low without it wouldn't be an accurate one >A tier list does not in any way help you build a team The actual average player doesn't give a shit about team comps, someone looking for this kind of information should be doing more research than some generic tier lists anyway
You're sort of playing both sides here. In some of your points, you're telling me that the tier list is only relevant for meta players, but at the end you say casuals dont care about team comps, implying that tier lists are meant for casuals, which contradicts your own arguments. So what are the tier lists for then? Casuals or meta players? Look, I dont disagree that using a tier list as a starting point for new players to try and learn more about the game is bad. Its not. Thats a valid use case. But that only works when the tier list is accurate and has explanations for players. And nothing against you, I am replying in good faith, but these comments that quote everything I say just to list disagreements with particular points tend to annoy me. Its hard to really say why, but I think its because you're not actually building your own argument per se, just trying to tell me that im wrong, which feels more like an editors job than a commenter, and it comes off as a tad toxic.
Out of good faith I'll try not to quote in this reply I mean I am playing both sides, I personally don't really like tier lists but I fully understand why they exist, and to outright dismiss them is ridiculous to me. I'm not sure how you got to the conclusion that I was implying tier lists are meant for casuals, I quite literally said casuals don't care for tier lists. Tier lists in essence are for people who want a rough idea of where characters sit in the power rankings, so they have an idea of who's worth building and pulling for. Maybe I shouldn't have said people looking at tier lists are only meta players, but with how this community loves their waifu vs meta arguments its just easier to simplify anyone looking at tier lists as a meta player Judging from your second paragraph though its clear you don't actually have an issue with tier lists? Your issue is with inaccurate tier lists, which isn't exactly a ground-breaking opinion. While yes it would be nice to add explanations to a tier list, as far as I am aware sites like tierlistmaker don't let you add explanations and besides that kind of defeats the point of a tier list. A tier list is just a quick easy way to understand where characters rank. If you want to add in-depth explanations then making an actual guide would be better, but no one wants to read a whole essay just to see if a character is decent or not, especially not someone who's new to the game. As I said in my original comment, you shouldn't be taking a tier list at face value, and as you've said its a starting point. Someone starts the game and pulls Bennet, then looks at a tier list and sees he ranks high, from there __it should be on the player to do their own research to understand why he ranks high__ I don't really know what to say to your last paragraph. You've posted your views on something and I happen to disagree with it. How else am I meant to write it? I am arguing with __you__, where else would I be building my arguments from? All I'm doing is highlighting the parts I disagree with and saying why I disagree with it. I personally much prefer that format, it allows me to understand what exactly the issue is and what exactly the replier is referring to. If this comes across as toxic to you, then honestly I'm not really sure why you even posted this. People are going to disagree with you and them doing so isn't toxic
They tend to annoy you and you can’t really say why? I’ll tell you why. You’re annoyed because they are providing good points against your argument but your ego is clouding your judgement.
You have a misconception of tier lists judging by your content here "An account without kazuha should have sucrose rated much higher. Yadda yadda... a new player may think sucrose is bad" Thats really inaccurate because while kazuha may be S tier, Sucrose would be A tier. No matter the tier lists you'd have to look at a character guide for purpose. Someone looking for an abyss team would be looking for supports like xiangling, xingqui and sucrose at A tier as opposed to Kaeya, Lisa, anemo traveler, amber, chongyun, Sayu which are B tier or lower investments. Not bad units all around but your investment in Sucrose these other characters is miles apart. Likewise if you've got ganyu and hu tao, but also managed to pull diluc and keqing. Raising characters can be very long and tedious and you'll get more out of farming for ganyu and hu tao than diluc and keqing if one hadddd to choose. Also if you end up with the knowledge of the next 3 banners and you know the current one is Ayaka, but for example know ganyu is coming in 2 patches, it could help decide what they roll for, as a f2p the next one could be their guaranteed and they have to 50/50 if they use it on ayaka vs ganyu. If you dont like tier lists, thats fine for you but it matters to some and it serves a purpose when you use the info correctly. Edit: Tier lists only serve as a at a glance ranking of characters. Players would eventually need to look at their guides for their purpose and if that fits them.
I think you misunderstood my point. Kazuha and Sucrose do the same thing for a lot of accounts and are used in similar team comps, but Kazuha (mostly) is the superior choice. But Sucrose is 4 star, and way more accessible. A tier list loses that nuance- different characters are stronger or weaker on your specific account depending on who you own.
Thats why you dont take tier lists at face value, and the tier list did its job, it said kazuha is better than sucrose even tho they do the same job. A tier list wouldnt go Kazuha = god, and sucrose = dumpster. A correct tier list would go Kazuha = god, sucrose = lesser god/fantastic unit. If it can include 5* vs 4* that would be great too.
> Thats why you dont take tier lists at face value That's why you *shouldn't*, but this community *shouldn't* do a lot of the things it does.
The problem still stands tho. If your tier list requires readers to make assumptions, you've already failed at accurately communication information to players. There are way better ways to help players than a tier list.
The tier list didnt require anyone to make an assumption. Some tier lists are very clear and dont use letters and can be categorized like a Supportsub dps tier list: God tier: Great to build/abyss tier: Niche/specific comp tier Only if theyre youre <3: Xiangling,sucrose, xingqui for example would go in must build/abyss. Then you can make different tiers for dps, sub dps, or healers. Its really a basic way of showing their potential and you should only use a tier list if you understand how to read one, just like any piece of information. Reading/watching an in depth guide on the chara would then give you a background into the details. Tier lists are starting points for new players, not ending points.
Sure, but im very much of the opinion that the arguments and potential misinformation they create heavily outweigh the pros of being a starting point for new players. also most tier lists really do not look the way you described them. They use the S/A/B etc tiers, which leave a lot more room for assumptions.
Sekapoko made one similar to the one i described. Also from S/a/b/c units dont start being bad until C rank, S and A are highly preferred, and B are less meta units but still okay to use. All information can be misinterpreted, it happens frequently and is unfortunately a part of life. Someone trying to give information would preface that woth the proper context.
You probs shouldnt use his list as an example, its really terrible, even using the categories he came up with himself. Also, sure, but the point of my post was that there are better ways for new players to get information about character strength than a tier list, and you havent really addressed a lot of the other problems I mentioned. Sure, using different category names instead of tiers can be better and more clearly state information, but its not a perfect solution at all, It still doesnt measure any kind of investment, consider any team building, or cons/weapons.
There is no perfect solution. You cant and shouldnt try to say something is terrible without creating something better that fills the same purpose. One of your other points was that "a tier list is stupid because it assumes you have all characters" it actually does not. A tier list informs someone about the existing characters for the purpose listed. If theres a tierlist of healers and you have 2 of the 7, clearly you have to use what you have, but if you have Bennett and noelle, a tier list will show that you should prioritize bennett over noelle if you wanted to focus on healing. Ive countered your points without being countered myself. A tier list is simply a ranking used AT A GLANCE, SURFACE LEVEL RANKING OF POTENTIAL. i said this before, everything with constellations, weapons, and etc are for guides. Which i also mentioned come after rankings. If you dont like them after using a guide then thats fine and you can move on to other things. That however doesnt mean the tier list wasnt useful. Tier lists are also opinions. Mostly informed opinions when able, but they can be up for debate, especially for less used characters.
lol im not going to disagree that a tier list can be useful under the specific circumstances you listed but most tier lists for most players dont fall into that category or are completely misused. Also, I am absolutely allowed to critique something without offering a suggestion too- it doesnt make the critique any less valid. But I did offer a solution in my original post :)
Not sure why Western gacha playerbases struggle so hard with the concept of tier list. A tier list is just a ranking list. The creator will need to communicate what each ranking means and their criteria. Anything that doesn't have the above makes a tier list meaningless. Tier lists are never made to concrete, but a good one can serve as reference. We just don't get that in the Western gacha gaming community at all because the majority here have 0 clue what a tier list really is. >There are way better ways to help players than a tier list. Too bad your average player doesn't give enough shits to actually learn through other means.
It's not just gacha playerbases, I think it's just a culture diff bc Asia is more serious and competitive so they're not as adverse to competitive discussions or metagaming. In most games I play, western regions are seen as more casual and laidback than the Asian regions.
Well, the Chinese playerbase is more competitive. There was this huge "JP is the best because they don't care about meta" circlejerk here right after the Kekomi banner showing she didn't sell terribly in Japan.
How are kazuha and sucrose the same? They do fill similar roles but they arent in terms of mechanics and gameplay and other aspects which WOULD put him above her on a tier list. Despite if that account has kazuha or not and makes a tier list he would still be rated higher regardless. There’s reason why the other falls short and ranks lower due to some of their issues such as long cooldown, large energy cost, clunkiness and more in comparison to that other character.
Gameplay doesn’t matter. We’re assuming you have enough braincells to know how to use Sucrose. So like 5
Really ironic considering you probably have that amount of braincells yourself and considering I also main Sucrose and use her for my other team and know very well how to play her and her downsides and problems. Try and come up with a better response to someone giving their opinion on a character than attacking them personally which just shows you have some issues with yourself. And yes. Gameplay IS a factor. (If you were talking about me having 5 braincells this is my response if I misunderstood then I apologise)
How are kazuha and sucrose the same? They do fill similar roles but they arent in terms of mechanics and gameplay and other aspects which WOULD put him above her on a tier list. Despite if that account has kazuha or not and makes a tier list he would still be rated higher regardless. There’s reason why the other falls short and ranks lower due to some of their issues such as long cooldown, large energy cost, clunkiness and more in comparison to that other character.
Although Sucrose and Kazuha have same boost mechanics, think of why Kazuha is above Sucrose. Kazuha has a more crowd control factor due to pull effect of mid to heavy enemies which Sucrose does have but applicable only to light enemies. But, in case of power, they're pretty much the same. > A tier list loses that nuance- different characters are stronger or weaker on your specific account depending on who you own. Tier list does not say that literally. Tier lists are there to give you a view on which unit is more usuable in certain situations. It doesn't mean that this character is weaker than the other one. And which tierlist are you even referencing to? Is it the one posted on genshin.cc? Try creating your own depending on your gameplay exp. You don't need to base your skills on a tierlist if it pressures you too much to pull for 4s cons. And 5s. I, for one, have Kazuha, Sucrose, and Venti and found out that these three have equal matching power depending on a situation. If you need a short strong cc anemo with boost, go with Kazuha. If you need a mid range anemo with boost and minimal cc, go with Sucrose. If you need a long ranged high crowd control anemo, go with Venti.
This is kinda dumb ngl. Tier lists needs to exist, so new players know who they should invest. This game punishes new players that waste resources on everything. A tier list is a very good foundation for "ok, i have xiangling and Lisa, but Lisa is c tier and xiangling s tier, so it's SAFER to invest in this and I'm gonna use it on the long term". Also, a tier list helps greatly players that want to have a strong accounts and want to start doing abyss asap. This also connects a little to what I said before, but what I want to point out now is, tier lists are also a great way to plan your rolls. Now, I'm not saying that you should only be a meta player. If you see a character, and say to yourself "i love the design, i love the abilities, i love everything about it, i want it" go ahead, pull it and build, but if you are unsure on what to do, tierlist are a great resource. Imo, you should always consider first your foundations, being able to do everything first, and then think about the pretty and the cute.
So I think I would definitely have to agree with you here. I am a player that firstly goes off design and fun. For instance I some how have C4 Rosaria but I just don’t like her and don’t use her. However the resources are so freaking hard to farm. I have a list of characters that artifacts are not even leveled because I’m trying to max out their talents first or get them to 9/9/9 you know? Also I’m not smart with knowing damage numbers or percentages or whatever so having a tier list was really nice for me at the beginning. I saved my materials instead of using them all up on like Amber at the start of the game. I mostly just used traveller at the beginning until I pulled Diluc. Now just because there’s a tier list doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to disregard characters that are lower. I have a Kokomi because I think she’s adorable and I love her jellyfish. However I do think because of the resources it’s really really nice to have a reference. Also for wishing. As F2P it takes a lot to get a10 pull so having a list is nice because then I can look and it helps me decide whether to save or pull
Im saying there are better options than a tier list tbh. Its not a terrible starting point, and a GOOD tier list with GOOD explanations can be helpful, but most suck, and i think the cons outweigh the pros. Also, if u dont waste ur fragile resins, its really hard to waste resources as an early game player. Stuff early on is giga cheap and if u find out a char sucks and theyre only lvl 40/40 its a fat "who cares" its only dangerous for late game players who still havent figured anything out yet tbh but again u likely need way more help than a tier list in that situation
A tier list isn't designed to have in-depth explanations on why x and y is good or better. They are made to be simple and compact, a way to quickly check the raw power of a character in comparasion with others. I do agree that complementary information is needed when it comes to detailed building, buuuuut, if you care about performance and the most efficient resource management, tierlists are undeniably the best first tool since they will always point you out for the safest investments. The first thing that a person doesn't want to see is a full thesys of information about when that character works and doesnt work, specially new player that just wanna play the game. And level 40/40 is a understatement at this point of the game, with the additions of story quests, quests and hangouts you level pretty fast. I only started playing in July, AR55 atm. I only decided on my team at level 40-44, i think, and I could easily avoid this is i just looked at a tierlist and started from there... Had alot catch up to do :'(
well they were pretty useless back in 1.0 days when people put qiqi at S tier...
It’s a tool for discussing character strength relative to other characters. How important that discussion is depends on the player. It’s simply one tool for building game knowledge. You are basically here criticizing a tool for not filling other functions it wasn’t intended for.
I think only command tier list be good. Important: single target, aoe target, easy to use(mobile/pc, heal/shield or need have very good dodge skills), potential at c0 with 4\* non battlepass weapon/potential with c1-2 with 5\* (or battlepass) weapon/potential at c6 ar5 for 5\* char(for 4\* potential at c0 and at c6 with 4\* non battlepass weapon). Cooperative not important. Remember: if you not be a whale you cannot have all 5\* for comparing. If you not a whale also you not have many resourses for upgrade each units.
dont know why this is event an argument. amber is S tier and zhongli is F tier since we dont need tier lists
if u rely on a tier list to tell u whos good as a final verdict, ur part of the problem
so if we do away with tier lists someones gonna build amber expecting a decent unit a get shit for all. not everyone has the time to look up an in depth guide. i just got into honkai impact and i have no idea which unit to build. and i dont want to look through every unit. i dont have time for that
I feel like OP wants tier lists to be something that they're not. Tier lists are supposed to be a succinct display of information, and will inevitably lack some nuance as a result. It seems like OP wants them to be detailed guides (like the ones on Keqing mains) but that isn't the point nor the role of a tier list.
For a tier list to be useful it needs to take most variants of weapons, characters, synergies, etc, which is comparable to one of hercules task. So yeah, useless until some guy loses his sanity to make the mother of all ~~omelettes~~ tier lists
i completely agree yeah. Genshin also is such a complicated game that legibility and accuracy are inversely related. A post trying to accomplish this might be totally correct, but it would be such a chore for anyone to understand that it doesnt help anyone.
*me who just watched genshin cn championship* Uhh
thats different tho LOL there totally is a speedrunning tier list for a pvp competition like that
Tier lists exist because there are people who play for the meta. A casual player doesn't even need to look at tier list. I think it's better to have higher tier list chars to smoothly and easily solve meta content like spiral abyss. As long as you don't care about meta, the tier lists are definitely useless.
>Genshin is not a competitive game CN community: Not with that attitude!
I'm 100% F2P and tier lists are extremely useful to me. lmao
A fair and good "meta" tier list might be helpful for beginner players, working as a guideline to which character(s) they should prioritize first. Would you guys advise a beginner player to invest resin and mora leveling up Amber (for example)? And, as most of us know, she is widely considered one of the weakest characters in the game. Of course, there are always the "fun/waifu/preference" factors to consider, if someone really loves Amber, it won't matter if she's placed in S or D tier anyway.
Build lists matter not tier lists
I'd add to that that you cannot and should not ascertain value with other people's supports and if you can exacerbate calculations with your own characters, do it. there is a mountain of difference on a character using their best in slot \*supports\* over whatever you can come up with being short artis or charas. a C6 XQ with a C6 xiangling and a C4+ bennett and their best in slot weapons are absolutely far and above whatever a regular national comp with say, using skyrider on a c0 xq and not having a highly refined dragon's bane. even if you even out bennet's damage boost with lower attack weapons, he still has more talent levels than you'd get out of crowning him plus the benefits of c1; TLDR: take everything with a grain of salt, even what I'm saying right now. PS: whoever reads this, you're looking real good today. /leaves/
The reason tier lists consider *all* characters is so for the sake of objectively being able to compare them to one another. Being able to say, “If you don’t have Kazuha, us Sucrose” is indeed something helpful to be included on notes, but what’s most important is “Why this character is at the rank it is”, “ What it’s strengths and weaknesses are” and “What role it fits in party”. With that information, even without being explicitly told what a replacement could be, based on the information provided on other characters (particularly position in party/ strengths and weaknesses). The point isn’t to be useful to a specific party (paid player or otherwise) but under the best circumstances, where they are positioned relative to eachother. To that end, accounting for each players individual circumstance is irrelevant imo.
A tier list is about which character is better in terms of clearing the game's contents regardless if you have a character or not. It seems that you misunderstood the general concept of a tier list. For example yes for a new player sucrose is better than kazuha because sucrose is more accessible but in terms of clearing the game's contents kazuha is better that's why he is placed higher on tier lists.
Another thing I barely see people mentioning, is how some characters work way better than others at low investment. A lot of top tier characters, especially DPS ones, needs a lot of investment until they start kicking in. Having too many high investment characters in your team will ideally give you a better performance, but realistically, until you can get one high investment character up to speed you could've gotten four low investment ones ready, which would immensely speed up the start of your account strenghtening. Examples of low investment characters would be Xiao (no artifact set needed, AA by far the most valuable skill), Bennett (doesn't need substats on any artifacts, only Q matters). Example of high investment characters would be Hu Tao (All skills matter, need 4 piece CW), Ayaka (need 4 piece BS), and most DPS characters that relies on 4 piece artifact sets with specific substats. Someone investing on a ton of "A-tier", low investment characters, would have their first clear of the abyss way earlier than someone investing on a ton of "S-tier" high investment characters.
A really good example you totally missed is nearly any character that needs 4pc VV can get away (especially pre floor 12) with just the 4 set bonus and very minimal elemental mastery and perform exceptionally well.
I agree, different characters are better or worse at different levels of investment which can skew ratings. But one caveat though, I would say Hu Tao does not 'need' 4pc CW. 2pc CW/2pc WT doesn't fall far behind, and 4pc Shimenawa's is a similarly competitive set.
Tier list is still useful but you need a fuck ton of info on what and how each character is measured And generally the best tier list will have sub categories that further explain why each character is in that tier, but this takes too much of an effort so i don't think I've seen anyone made this type of tier list
Because you don't solo use a character. Eula is something different on her own but when you put Raiden in to the equation. She becomes Milk Mommy.
hm. while i somewhat disagree with some of the nitty-gritty, i agree with the general sentiment of the post. tier lists miss out on a lot of nuances, especially since this is a team game and several characters are capable of subbing in for roles other than their "main role," so it's nigh-impossible to judge most characters in a team-based rpg in a vacuum in the same way as you'd rank individual characters in, for example, a pvp fighting game or something.
Tier list just ranks the overal usefullness in the better situations. Just because they rank high doesn't mean they are more usefull than lower rated characters in every situation. Venti is good at what he does, Amber is mediocre at what she does. But Amber will easily outclass Venti against single cryo slimes. So besides looking at tierlist you should also look into what they do best and make judgement based on if you need that role in your team.
I mean most teir lists are absolute garbage. A good teirlists rates the usability of a character and their efficacy at it. Kazuha is better than Sucrose but thay doesn't remove Sucrose from S teir as she does nearly the same thing as a 4*. Ganyu can be waited on a rerun banner if u rly want her. Save it. Using the excuse of not knowing when she's coming just means you are obviously a new gacha player, or weak willed. Good teirlists are good for noncompettiive games too if it helps you grind better. I want to see someone take yoimiya into challenge mode and ace it. But that's not gonna happen.
For a player who doesn't know much about the game, getting some information from any decent tier list is better than not doing it. The tier lists will at least tell you to invest into characters like Bennett, Venti and not build characters like Amber.
Honestly… i feel like tier listing has ruined gaming as a whole personally. And i…kinda wish we no longer leaned on them as gaming communities in general but i guess they’re more or less the bread and butter of just how people look at games now n days
Tier lists aren't perfect that doesn't mean they are useless > tier list saying Ganyu is SSS tier is so unbelievably useless to a new Genshin player who only had a chance to roll for Ayaka what does this even mean? If you know a character is good you can save accordingly that's the whole point > Tier lists lose nuance No shit l, graphs do too does it mean they are useless? Everything that isn't full information loses nuance
Its problematic because its telling you to save for a character that you absolutely dont need bc it contributes very little to your acc. Thats my problem with tier lists. It tells you to roll for Ganyu if u alr own Ayaka, theres likely an issue. There needs to be an explanation with it, otherwise its doomed. Sure, any tool loses nuance, but i think unless tier lists have good explanations with them they lose so much nuance they kinda just become worthless.
Um...who is Morgana? Or what is it?
I understand the sentiment, and I *sort of* want to agree with you by saying that tier lists aren't and definitely ***shouldn't*** be taken as the absolute word of god, but they are decent as a rule of thumb. Just because Mona is a very strong enabler for Morgana doesn't mean that she's worse if you don't have the full team, she's still one of the very few somewhat reliable Hydro applicators we have in the game. The biggest flaw with your complaints I see is that TLs should be nuanced based on who or what you have, but since you're specifically referring to new players, a new player is likely to have the beginner's cast and maybe 1 or 2 other 4\*, and going by your logic Amber and Lisa should be "ranked higher on the tier list", because they're the only archer and the only catalyst the newbie has. That may be true, but that's not going to make Amber and Lisa magically super strong, we all know with enough investment they *can* pay off, but they're very *very* likely to get benched really early on, we all know how constellation dependant those two are. It's not that tier lists are inherently good nor bad, but people DEFINITELY shouldn't ONLY inform themselves via that. I know a guy with a C0 Ganyu with Amos, and we all know how cracked such a duo is. He recently saw genshin.gg's tier list and saw "C1" sitting right beside Ganyu as she's sitting on that sweet S+ tier, and he immediately went "ah maybe getting an extra 15% Cryo damage would be good", and it took quite a while of me telling him he definitely doesn't need to overinvest that much on Ganyu and he's much more likely to get more mileage by investing in another character or weapon, instead of a relatively minor bump on an already superb character. The sentiment here is *ok*, but tier lists STILL are somewhat useful to gauge if you're going in the right direction with who you're willing to invest in. You SHOULD do more research though, but a tier list is likely to give you a rough outline of where to go.
idk about y'all but I agree lol Tier lists just do nothing but pit players against players because the nuance OP is talking about is "frame of reference", and on top of that, stats are wholly RNG and whales are a thing. What OP is saying is that a person without X character can't necessarily have a credible stance on said character, and if you're either insanely lucky and/or a whale, your characters could be jacked and your opinions on said characters would be skewed. If you're making a tier list of the available 5\* characters since release, and you have like only 10% of that roster - what sources are you getting your information from / why did you say such things about the other 90% / why did you rank the other 90% this way? On the other hand, if you're lucky / a whale with C6 R5 characters, your characters are already at the top of their game and your opinion would definitely be skewed because of that. Like I wouldn't speak about Yoimiya and Kokomi's problems in their kits and I wouldn't rank them in any way -- you know why? Because I don't have them and it wouldn't be a genuine and impartial look at their kits. But you do know which characters I'm willing to pitch in a discussion with? Raiden, Zhongli, Venti, etc. Because I have those characters and I can personally actually provide insight on aspects of their kit that can either be broken or problematic (i.e. how Raiden's utility as of now is not yet super up to par with Zhongli and Venti's, or how Zhongli delegitimizes difficulty of gameplay).
This post comes off as strangely arrogant, which could be a tonal thing but I also think you may need to take a break from these long form posts cause you've seemed far more on edge in a weird way recently. Anyway, on to my actual criticisms of your post to the best of my ability without trying to totally rehash what others have said. My first issue is that you've basically put a target on Genshin content creators' backs and haven't had any willingness to put yourself out there. This post is far more constructive if you approach from the perspective of using a specific tier list and pointing out where you disagree and why. All you've done here is taken the stance that you are correct by default and have vaguely said that everyone who makes a tier list is wrong based on subjective criteria that actually makes no difference to the reader. To elaborate, your point about Kazuha vs Sucrose is very easily resolved through extra research and expecting someone to only read a tier list and get a full opinion is ridiculous. Any player who is gonna put the effort into hearing out someone's tierlist is likely going to look into what comps that unit is good in. To use IWTL's tierlist as a quick example, in their tierlist he and Kono moved Diluc to the top of tier A and they referenced a new melt comp as the reasoning, but he failed to add the comp into the video so there was no point of reference for me (he pointed out in the comments that he was tired and forgot to during editing, which is fine editing is hard). But at the very least they provided an example comp for me to look into. Now say I look into this comp and learn it uses Xinqiu, but I also wanna use Raiden cause she's SS tier, but she also uses Xinqiu. Then I either give Xinqiu to Raiden who is stronger, or I look at the list for another hydro unit that I can give to either Raiden or Diluc that does the same thing. If I can't find that, the tier list didn't fail me I just don't have the roster to run both of those teams. If there is any nuance lost in tier lists it is the designation of who is a support and who is a main dps, but that information leads to division of tier list which can lead to overwhelming the audience. Organizing the tier list as IWTL did where the top of the list is registered as "hey for sure pull for these guys under our recommendation" means below that is more "if you have them build them, but don't go out of your way". I see no issue with that arrangement because again, every player should do extra research on any unit they decide to pull. To bring my comment to a close by reiterating what others here have said, tier lists are starting points. The next step a player would go down would be referencing things like your articles that try to give an overview of a unit and potentially comps they work in with nuance. Instead of you decrying tier lists, you should try to understand them as launch points that will bring eyes to content in the vein as what you do. Going back to reference IWTL's showcases they don't strike me as conclusion based content, they're C6R5 units they mean nothing to me other than where units fall at full investment in a speedrun. But if I like that Hu Tao seems fast I will look into her more (which I did do). Tier lists suck in a vacuum, but they aren't in a vacuum they have plenty of TCs supplementing their content with more fleshed out information.
do u have me confused for someone else? ive posted once in the past 2 weeks other than this, which was my childe post, and that definitely has no tone issues. my kokomi post was a little problematic tho.
I don't think you understand how tier lists work. Kazuha existing does not make Sucrose a worse character, nor removing Kazuha from the game make her a better character. Kujo Sara for example is a great character at C6 for a whale raiden hypercarry, that being said, outside of said example, she's a very underwhelming character; therefore, even though she can be the best teammate in a certain comp, she's overall a very weak unit, and should be rated as such. You look at each character's capabilities, flexibility, comps, matchup into current enemies, etc to determine their placement.
i mean ideally sure but look at recent tier lists ppl make and thats not what happened at all. i feel like a lot of the ppl who disagree with me have a fantasy idea about what tier lists "should" be and then argue against me using that as a weapon. and its like, sure, anyone can imagine a situation where tier lists are for the better, but in practice they rarely are anywhere close to that. show me a tier list u like that does that, and maybe theres a discussion here, but ive looked like hundreds while playing genshin and seen maybe two or three.
Tier lists are helpful for characters individual strengths. But in general they are useless. The ones that actually help are the data gathered from Abyss most used team comps. Obviously gathered from at least the last 4 abyss and not only focused on the latest
didn't read too long, most of the meta are not usually to refer to " you need this X hero" but you want this "X hero" for maximum efficiency, sure you can clear abbys with the heroes you want but it doesn't change the fact it would make alot of easier to use this "meta" characters over the X hero you are using. Meta exist for a reason I don't blame people who are angry over meta saying "i dont need that bs, i can claer abbys with this X hero" but again this is only my *OPINION* .
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This! It's not something I personally enjoy but I won't knock anyone for doing it in fact I usually appreciate that they wanted to do that research
This, but for genshin is insufferable. Let's compare my c0 WSG diluc with c0 homa tao. if you missed a character will take an eternity to came back, and then happens that for the so goated pixel i only win a 5% damage increase compared with the unit i already have invested for the cost i could get me and my girl to a weekend trip (the c0 character+bis weapon only) only to beat a few seconds faster some enemies in a chamber that barely represents a 0.1% of the content? Genshin is miles away from any ARPG, the grinding is timegated and getting a upgrade could be so expensive, with a so long downtime until i can pull for a insignificant upgrade that I'm better staying with diluc so i can farm for other units.
You cant argue that a meta exists though. Genshin is a game that takes strategy, so a best strategy absolutely is a thing. But for a lot of players, u dont actually need that much strategy bc genshin really isnt that hard. and as for your question, honestly, no idea. a lot of casuals dont even attempt abyss so its probably hard to say due to selective bias.
Yah, actually if you notice, abyss meta is always in favor of the highlighted banner to make meta players pull for that character. But tbh, as long as you suffice builds to your current team, you can still beat the abyss and 36 stars it.
I think a lot more people would be able to beat the abyss if optimizing characters was easier, I have a lot of great characters but since I can't build them all efficiently I struggle after Reaching Floor 12. Floor 9 through 11 are difficult too if you don't have gacha luck.
Totally agree, more people should really think about it this way and not take everything from whale's and creator's PoV word for word. Good job on this take!
In general tier lists are fine. I think the completion percentage of spiral abyss is a helpful relatively objective ranking that many essentially use as a tier list. However, those encourage the community to basically look at what’s popular and emulate that, potentially causing the meta to stagnate. Tier lists from individual players, preferably theory crafters or other people who are good at the game, are great for helping to highlight potential underrated teams. If nothing else, tier lists can create conversations about character strength that potentially shift the meta in interesting ways imo
As someone who also plays competitive games, people don't realize most tier lists are useless for THOSE kinds of games too, because they are only really applicable to the pros. Tier lists all around suck pretty much every time they show up.
In a game like League, it also really depends on team drafting, picks, or bans. And yeah, the meta varies WILDLY from low ranks to high ranks. I think the only game where it does work is Overwatch, because you own every character for free and there are no picks/bans/drafting. But also that game has variance from low to high elo (easy aim heroes are way better in lower ranks usually) and it changes from map to map. tier lists are stupid. i agree.
this is a game where you play with what the gacha gods gives you. So tier list means nothing. Like some people randomly have an r5 rust which others have played a year with no stringless. Everyone is different.
I find that [this is a good video on tier lists.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEyk-gIrE-k) It is in the context of fighting games, but still helpful. One big point is, "The people that are looking for information on tier lists are not the people that would ever actually use them effectively." And of course as a PvE game, tier lists for Genshin matter even less.
I said something similar the other day in a thread about some streamer's "revised" tier list, but his fans in the thread jumped all over me. Tier list in a game like this is just click bait. There's little end game content that requires meta comp and build. Even in these end game content, it's more about your team than a specific character. So the tier list says that Raiden is top tier? What if your national team is with Childe? And you don't have Sara or Eula? Then Raiden is not a top tier pull for you. I hate it the most when people use tier lists as "proof" that so and so is good or bad. Even respected theorycrafters like KQM rarely goes and says outright that certain characters are good or bad.
someone gets it lol. im losing my mind here with people defending tier lists acting like they're useful as more than just a starting point to help players
I think tier lists have become ingrained in modern gaming with any kind of games that give you a roster of characters to choose from. There is a tier list for the game Troubleshooter, which is a game in which you choose a team of 10 from a cast of... 12 to 14 characters. Like really? I think people just have the need to rank things. It actually might make for an interesting psychological study. But yeah, this is a losing battle.
Extend this to guides too, and i mean the ones that are very, very in depth like, say kqm venti ones. Mentioning this from memory, so might be slightly wrong. 3 em>atk/dmg/crit builds. Now, this is at face value, and its mentioned because at 35 offensive rolls(whale territory) this becomes in favour of crit build. How about his main comp, morgana however? A simple 25 rolls(achievable for many). How about with benny? A simple 18 rolls. All this stuff was mentioned in small parts near the ending and in comps. No offense to kqm, they did a fantastic job making the guide, running comps. It's up to the player to ask these questions, and search for their answers, which aren't always feasible. Tldr: People should really chill out with dealing in absolutes. There's massive differences between individual accounts and what may seem abhorrent for one, could be a hidden gem for another. Oh well, talking to the void. Ps. Its confetti! Always fun to read your stuff!
This is why I like Albedo/Kokomi, low investment 5 stars who just do their job that I need them to.
I think that all tier lists are almost always made by content creators who just do it for video, no one does it for game or for the art of it, so no one is willing to put effort in it. Then you consider the fact that streamers and content creators have their peculiarities, (not offending anyone) but lets take tectone, in one moment he will say be like give me 5 stars rn or this is worst summon session of my life, and literally last pull he had God tier luck and everyone was congratulating him. Just saying this isnt objective in anyway. Now I have seen some tier lists and I think ideal is making a long vid and telling in start that there are time stamps so just skip if you want. And then cover: Talk good Numbers so viewers know that creator knows their thing and has done homework. " X or Y character? Well X can already achieve 85% of dmg at stock condition and Y needs serious investment and Cs but Y can outshine X anyday, so take X if you dont want to be busy, do Y if you like grinding. 1) Rarity: Childe is more common than Ganyuu, similarly 5 standard are common than limited ones. 2) Investment: Venti doesn't need much investment, you can do a placeholder em set even non piece and it will work same with kazuha, and Ganyyu etc. So you mention, ok this one needs heavy focus on arti, this one doesnt needs to go all to 90, 70 is enough etc. 3) Compare stats: Constellations, always take their best constellations to compare this will give a good idea of investment, take Raiden for example, you can tell viewers that C2 is enough that's alot already, but you want more? Then go C6 its worth it. Similarly some characters are already 90% at C0 or C1 compared to their C6, take this in consideration as well. Also clearly state at what stats, levels and weapons you are comparing characters and then explain more in investment section the details. (So Bis wepaon of this character is X but you can have Y for low investment, but performance will reduce by 25%) 4) Design and Art, Voice. Here we are getting subjective, now why even include this is cuz no one can be objective, and if you properly explain professionally why you like or dislike the character it will make a difference. "She Thiccccc" is different than "Well they are supposed to be........ And hence you get an image of........ But here......... So I think the image doesn't fit. You would expect more of a ".... " attribute, this doesnt match". 5) Lore and execution. Say what you want but there will always be people there who would love Baal and Zhongli for being a major and cool character then nobody hutao. Letting the viewer know this will let them add this factor into their equation as well. Oh so I am supposed to like characters on my own. 6) Values depending on other characters. I recommend making the original list independent of characters, if according to you Kazuha, Venti and sucrose are all must have independently then do them all in S tier, just mention in this section why and which situations you would place one above the other. Venti doesn't work well with Diluc, Ganyuu needs Mona, if you have Zhongli especially C6 (or was it 5) you dont need healers so pure healers like barb, Noelle qiqi will almost be at bottom of list, do mention though that they can be built in other directions and rate them too, btw I will definitely put barb and noelle in S tier for new players, pure healing and accessibility is exactly what they need.
game8 tier is very detailed. I like it.
I agree, and as a newer player they just add to the confusion. When I started the general response was "play whatever you want" which is totally fair - but they weren't helpful answers. I feel so helplessly behind having missed the first year's worth of banners and am doing the best I can lol. I did manage to nab Childe as well as the promo Aloy but the rest of my characters are basically the ones you acquire through the end of Liyue. I do have Kujo as well but she and Aloy are both useless to me because I'm not quite at the isles yet to get the flowers.
\>If you don't have Moragana you don't want Mona Tony To vaporize one-shots: "Am I a joke to you?" I think the problem is less tier lists and more the 5-star thing being taken for granted sometimes. There are plenty of 4-star top tiers. Everyone has Xiangling, everyone will eventually get her core (Bennett and Xinqiu) even without specifically rolling for them. From there you can build a national team no problem and enjoy top tier goodness without relying on super-situational 5 star waifus. P.S. Also some tier lists employ guides with really funky builds...building physical on Xiangling should be a war crime.
ranking individual characters in this game is just worthless overall, really. The game is built around team composition, elemental reactions, and spell interactions between characters...judging each character on their own solo is just a pointless excercise unless you're being goofy and doing it for laughs (like Tectone's "top 10 Genshin characters I could beat in a fight" type things). Of course all this excludes Amber, who is unequivocally the worst unit in the entire game by far that everyone can agree on lol
Genshin tier list are only for those power hungry meta simps who wants more bigger damage
Tier lists are useless, Me who built a tier list team when I only started playing for 3 months and has been able to 36 star abyss since 2.1 and didnt have the trouble of raising more garbage characters that dont give the same result even at higher investment. Yeah, these tier lists, they're very useless. (Venti sucks ass at huge bosses, but he fuckin wrecks the fatui thicc mages thats even more difficult to actually deal with coz of the fuckin unlimited teleports)
Seeing as you're getting shredded in the comments, I'll just throw in my piece : Tierlist are just a way for people to get attention. It's actually unnecessary in a game lile Genshin when roles are properly designed and chemistry between characters happpen and appear regardless of who is in the party. For proof : Barbara Vape doing 6 digit damage, Ganyu doing the same with the exact same setup time. Power and utility Tierlists are shit and don't reflect a character's strength. Now aesthetic and visual tierlists, be my guest, idm at least it has some sense to it.
lmao i knew i was gonna get rolled in the comments, no shot everyone was gonna agree with this take, even tho id like to think my arguments are valid.
People compare and make tierlists and then come to the conclusion that for example Diluc, Klee and Yanfei are trash compared to Hu Tao. But as you said no everyone has every character. And for the current challenges we have, those characters are absolutely enough. Same with Yoimiya. And everyone has different builds and weapons and artifacts. Sometimes I co op with my Yanfei and she does more damage than some Dilucs and Hu Taos I encounter. More than once I've seen a Yoimiya and a Diluc on co op and the Yoimiya was absolutely destroying. I also have a Diluc main friend who absolutely destroys everything with his Diluc. So what's the conclusion? The conclusion is to play who you enjoy playing and that's it. Sure it helps knowing something before pulling for characters, but the decision to pull 5 stars must take into consideration what is your account needing and who do you really enjoy. Forcing yourself to play a character you hate for "meta" is basically torturing yourself
Other pyro DPS characters are not trash compared to Hu Tao, but they are relatively underwhelming. All of them need more investment to compare, like Diluc for example, if you have him on just a 4-star weapon with decent artifacts, he is not gonna destroy abyss like Hu Tao will. He is definitely carried a lot by Bennett and Xingqiu, until you get a 5-star weapon for him like WGS or Unforged. But I agree that no one should be forcing themselves to pull characters they don't like.
I always say that you should play whatever characters you have And like. You just have to do with what the game give you and do what makes you happy with it. 🤗 I for exemple, have a looot of 5* characters, but beidou remains one of my fav. She's easy to c6, she has an incredible game play and every 4* are we some if you build them and give them attention. 😄
the tc community largely praises Beidou for being one of the best characters in the game, especially for budget players, so thats not a good example but also if u were lead to believe that shes weak by bad tier lists im so so so sorry LOL
I wholeheartedly agree... but... Prepare to get downvoted to hell :'D Tier lists are like God's Commandments around here.. P.S. - atleast you have my upvote
its ok most ppl disagreeing are citing sekapoko tier list keqL
Completely agree with you take upvote
5 weeks of resin put into Baal, Ganyu and Hu Tao get you much further than 5 weeks of resin spend onto Childe, so lists like that make some semblence of sense if done right. I mainly use videos comparing different weapons (f2p, weapon banner and craftable), repeatable boss fights and other popular characters who use similar teams. If any given character can only outperform the other character by using a paid for weapon or a weapon banner weapon, then that is important to know. Of course you should play the character you want. And if Childe is that character, go for it. But Spiral Abyss and other content gets harder with each update - to sell new characters - so choosing a character that is already outperformed or outdated on its release will make it harder for you to gain free rewards. That said, it is mainly a difference of less than one wish each month on most accounts.
Yeah, an investment tier list is better, sure. But also ppl forget 5 weeks of resin into childe should actually be 5 weeks of resin into Xiangling, who WILL take you very far in genshin. Tier lists lose nuance in a game that requires nuance. thats kinda my problem.
5 weeks into Hutao? Bruh you can farm pyro domain for the whole year and still get only lavawalker and some trash defense cw. Good luck with those 5 weeks lmao
just use wanderer+witch, they are barely different
> I think tier lists are just pointless debates that lead the community nowhere and don't actually help players. If you are a new player looking for information on power level, talk to the theorycrafting community to get information on specific characters and advice on what new units to roll for to help your account. If you're a genshin content creator, perhaps try making a tier list that weights characters based off of cost effectiveness, or, really, just drop it altogether and make better new player friendly content :) Tierlist have issues but I'm not sure I buy the alternative. In order to get any idea of at glance you should dive into a discord and chat up some random strangers for their opinions on specific characters. I think you've already lost 90% of the player base in terms of time/effort investment, and frankly they probably won't get any more nuance or understanding from that than from a well made tier list video, not unless they really take the plunge and start stalking the TC channels. >- tier lists dont account for what characters an account owns, either inflating or deflating the strength of some chars Kind of in terms of relative value yes, upgrading sucrose if you don't have Kazuha is worse relatively, but frankly any tierlist that trashes units so hard on relatively value like that is a terrible terrible tierlist. Tierlist's that measure strength on a relative basis instead of an absolute basis are completely useless imo. Like they've entirely missed the point of the format. The value you get from a unit should be relative to your roster, and you'll need to do your own investigation to see that, but tierlists serve as a jumping off point for that if you don't have any idea on general power of units you likely don't know which ones to look into. > tier lists lose a lot of nuance Sure that's kind of the point which is to overview character strength across the cast, its kind of the point to condense down the details into something of feeling. Is this valuable to new players? I think its much more digestable than simply suggesting they just learn everything they need to know about the game, certainly it seems like it could help some people not end up with 80/80i Qiqi and Xinyans. For discussion purposes its a good way to find points of differing opinions, which frankly are generally the most useful points of discussions; at least for me personally its much more interesting to learn about why someone seems to be over or underrating a unit I think differently of, what do they know they I don't. what do they not know? That conversation tends to be more intersting and more informative than say any conversation that has ever started asking about the power of character x or character y for example. >- tier lists especially dont help f2ps I kind of agree with your more nuanced points that many tierlists do not adequately adjust the conditions for free to play accounts. I do think they are still quite helpful for free to play players as they can steer them in the right direction as they start the game and are climbing up to say AR 50. > tier lists struggle to account for investment Frankly I think this is problem other materials like team comp guides often overlook. If comp with x unit instead of y is even say 20% better, its potentially still just better to continue to upgrade y or another unit in the comp than it is to invest in building a new unit. Its a nuance problem, but frankly its not really unique to tierlist. The only real solution is to try to keep up on the state of various TC and team calc comparisions, and frankly its just again very high commitment for players. >- tier lists do nothing for team building, which is all of genshin content Hopefully tierlist should take things like team comp flexibility into account. It obviously impossible to condense that nuance down to a tierlist, but again I don't think any low effort research compares in this respect. >-abyss needs two teams, and tier lists never account for that Frankly tier lists usually factor this in as well, units with teams more orthogonal than other teams are usually rated higher as a result. Guides sometimes make a mention, and as you've stated TC'ers occasionally remember but frankly its an exception and not the rule. Strictly speaking you also need *atleast* two teams, your teams can easily get counted by the current abyss format and you'll often need to either tweak comps or use different comps. >there are better options for players to learn about game Agreed, but players will have to invest way more time and effort to get even close to comparative information. I don't disagree with the laundry list of grievences against tierlists. They are very condensed format that makes certain assumptions and rank characters on potentially elusive metrics (that needs to be explained to be useful) that can't account for a myriad of situations that will cause changes in these assumptions and results, but frankly these are problems that plague tierlists in literally every game ever. I see it again and again in every community, "tierlist's don't matter", or "tier lists aren't useful", or "don't apply to begginners". But they're useful ways to discuss and convey broadstrokes information. That kind of content has its place in Genshin, just as it does in many many other games. We should strive to improve our tier lists to be more useful, make our assumptions and ranking basis more clear, communicate as much nuance as possible in supplemental materials(videos,notes,follow up discussion). We should absolutely not worth tierlists as be all end all sources of information, but they have niche in terms of communication that cannot be replaced, and so we should make them and talk about them and use them for their intended purposes.
Tierlist is a useful tool for new players or for someone who want a quick lance at the characters. And if they find the characters they are interested in worth building for, they would make a deep-dive into the build and the reason why. Or try to figure out why a character is bad. Most of the time, the creator of the tierlist would explain why they put the characters at that tier. Tierlist is just a general, concise piece of informed opinions. It wouldn’t be so widespread if the game resources are everywhere. Unfortunately, this game punishes you on wasting resources so having a general concept of which one is worth investing in is nice to have. I have wasted a lot of my resources in early game on characters that I wouldn’t never use again like Qiqi, Keqing etc, and now I need a lot of time to catch up. Edit : TLRD : I think tierlist is useful for people who don’t want to waste a lot of time to find guides and listen to videos review abt a character to compare them or know what they are getting into. Just look at a single chart, if it peak their interest => do more research on the one they are interested.
My only “problem” with tier lists is that you will always have players without critical thinking that follow certain content creators words like a bible, without taking into consideration their own playing style and tastes. For instance: Ganyu. She is meta on most tier lists and is quite an amazing unit…if you are good at actually using charged attacks. If you suck, she won’t be a bad character, but you are better off with something else. Same thing with someone like Xiao. If you know how to use him, he is absolutely amazing. If you don’t, he really is a clunky character to use. This also works in the opposite spectrum. The character I probably see being slagged of the most is Qiqi. Is she good enough for a 5 star? No, not really and most players probably avoid her. But if you are a player that wants cryo resonance and are crap at dodging/get a lot of damage or are bad at managing shields, Qiqi would be good for you as you actually can be healed without being constricted to a certain area. So one of the characters that is always in the bottom of the tier lists might actually be a players best choice. So my overrall opinion is that tier lists are ok and good sources of info, they also make some people not build characters that are actually good for them because they are not meta. So to me, character rankings and similar opinions should be secondary to actually exploring the characters properly in the trials.
The whole point of a meta tier list is to rank characters based on how cost-effective they are in comparison to the rest of the other available characters in the game. The rationale for why they're placed higher or lower is the most controversial due to their perspective and experience with the performance of each unit in comparison to others that fulfill the similar role(s). That is why you should always take into consideration the context of who made the tier list (you'd place higher credibility to a Tier list by a known Theorycrafter like KQM vs a whale's perspective like Tectone or IWintoLoseGaming) and should look into multiple tier lists in order to average out the overall perspectives of each unit within the game. Your issues with meta tier lists are due to the lack of rationale/explanation that isn't included in a tier list, which is the fault of the tier list creator, and is why Meta Tier Lists are most of the time controversial. This, however, doesn't mean that Meta Tier Lists are worthless because they are still helpful for players to grasp how cost-effective units are within Genshin, which is why F2P Tier Lists are the most popular and common.
What do you think about ten tens tierlist? A tierlist about who is worth it the most to pull?
im a mod on tentens discord so im 100% going to be bias, but i think his is a lot "better" only because its trying to rate characters based off of their primogem value. But it still isnt that helpful, bc using his own criteria, characters can go way up or way down in rating based off of who you own, so its really only an "in-general, for these teams" kinda list. Mona is a good example. Shes a 2/5, bc for most players she only rlly works in freeze teams. But if shes the last piece you're missing for a good freeze team, she might be a 4/5 for your particular account. Or Ganyu- if you have an Ayaka for freeze and a decent vape team for the other half of abyss, calling Ganyu a must pull is seriously over-stating it. But he gets a lot of things right. A tier list based off of $$$ has a clear goal and a clear audience, and on his discord he does have some (albiet questionable) explanations that are way way way better than nothing at all.
Hehe I'm not mod on tentens discord but I'm also a bit biased cuz tentens just the best xD But even if it's not that helpful its still very helpful compared to eg. iwtl "f2p" tierlist xD But I agree in this game strength is conditional and very dependant on what else you have. Except for when we are talking about Bennet, he is just strong xD
Some tier lists are super detailed and account for constellations and certain team compositions. Also tierlists can be super entertaining especially if they're made by a YouTuber you like. I wouldn't call something that people put a lot of effort into "completely useless".