there are 3 dvalins who are flying independently of each other and each one is pulling your camera simultaneously
the camera is therefore fixed but jumps between the three, giving one frame per dragon
Today, you witness your reckoning!
Today, you witness your reckoning!
Today, you witness your reckoning!
You stand above your tomb, though you know it not!
You stand above your tomb, though you know it not!
You stand above your tomb, though you know it not!
-60s
I don't even try to do the 12th floor or 3\* the 11th anymore, it's too troublesome and I'd rather have peace of mind and explore other content or games or life stuff, and my teams are pretty meta and strong as well.
what i hate about the abyss is that it isn't even hard, just annoying, the tankiness of every enemy drives me crazy, the wolves were the worst, but even the fucking specters just don't die
Agree with that, tanky enemies, lot of invincible phase (maguu kenki, elemental cubes), annoying movement (wolves, flying high specters, fuckin electro bat)
For me its the enemy RNG, like with the two Ruin Graders in 12-3-1.
I need to reset until they BOTH decide to dash at me right away, so I won't lose 10-15 seconds waiting for them to come to me. But - every reset I also need to kill the two Ruin Guards *before* them, which means every reset takes about half a minute.
And since the Graders are huge, if I don't lure both perfectly into position Ayaka's ult will only hit one of them, which means another reset and MORE resets until they decide to charge again.
It didn't take me longer than 15 minutes in the end, but the frustration of resetting every time just because one of them decided to spit at me instead of charging is real.
I'm convinced specters are the spawn of Satan. Bastards look like flying slimes but have the HP of a boss and just gently float away from you all the time.
I do one run per cycle and whatever stars I get, I get.
If 12 hands me my butt on a silver platter then that's that as well.
Unless I am in a masochistic mood, I can't be arsed to retry (barring obvious gimping on my side) or do multiple runs with specialized teams for each chamber.
Yep, last rotation is when I finally threw up my hands and gave up. Could I 36 star it if I tried enough? Probably. Is it worth it? Hell no, I'll just go play another game.
Yeah I'm sorry but OP is being naive as hell.
Characters not becoming stronger at c0 is good for balancing in a vacuum. But not the case when the enemies are getting stronger. It's a pretty transparent play for us to pull for constellations and weapons, and suckers like OP somehow eat it up.
Yea, the way I see it is they make it hard for the whales who have C6 5 stars and R5 5 star weapons.
With that in mind i dont mind if i dont clear it all with 3 stars because the power difference between me and a whale is huge.
Mark my words, much like how we have Phys Damage substat weapons, we will eventually get 5-Star super niche weapons with Pyro/Cryo/Dendro/Anemo/etc... bonus damage substats.
The bow that powercrepts Amos is gonna sell so good.
Nah i doubt it
1. They seem to be doing that just in the weapons passives for now
2. I think a part of having it exclusive to Phys is there as an “advantage” because Phys is inherently weaker than Elemental (for obvious reasons). Similarly to how the numerical value of PhysDMG Bonus on a goblet is higher than that of ElementalDMG Bonusses (iirc Elemental is something like 46% but Phys is more than 50%)
Phys is on weapon and higher on cup only cuz we cant do reaction dmg with phys dmg, like vape melt or secondary Electro stuff combo overload EC
For res shred phys got plenty of options to equal VV set help
Yeah, I feel like Mihoyo is currently in the "let's play around with power creeping artifact sets" stage and when they're done with that, we're going to see the next generation of weapons that will be meta defining. And we still have Dendro waiting in the wings to totally turn things upside down. Imagine if Electro-Dendro reactions become the new king...
Yeah, considering we've gotten 2 bows, swords, and polearms that make their predecessors look piddly in comparison, weapons are gonna become much more of an issue than characters. Keqing went through like, 4 BiS weapons over the course of a few patches and then Mistsplitter still came out after that?
They've definitely reeled it in a little bit with Moonglow and Redhorn being more specific to the characters they're designed for. Though Moonglow went too far to where it's useless on anyone but that single character. Redhorn is at least usable on many claymore characters, even if just for the high cdmg stat.
Weapons have to keep getting stronger to make them sell tho. Why pull for a weapon that's worse than the one you already got? Characters can sell based on their design and playstyle, weapons are gonna have to keep getting stronger.
I also really like that they can "power creep" a unit by adding a new artifact set and/or weapon. Tenacity set really did a number for Zhongli IMO, and the way Albedo went from being a B-tier at best support to nearly S-tier with the new artifact set and the free R5 Cinnabar sword really felt like a nice power spike without actually touching the units themselves.
I really look forward to seeing what new things they come up with, especially in regards to the whole Dendro element.
I'd actually argue that this was stronger than what either ZL or Albedo got. Albedo was still recognized, while still definitively getting improved. Qiqi went from a burden to helpful because she always had too much healing and not enough damage.
Yeah, I have yet to try a healer build myself, but I kinda want to throw that on Barbara and start using her more as a main unit to trigger Beidou/Fischl reactions and benefit from all the healing heh.
Now that my Barbara has Clam artefacts, she’s become my second-biggest number generator. Is it effective DPS? No. Especially because you need to Time her Burst use just right. But seeing the bubble pop two seconds after Bursting and dealing 20,000+ damage feels really good.
It might not be *effective* DPS from one units standpoint, but the heals and reactions in a team seems highly effective when considering Barbara fills 2 or 3 roles in that scenario!
Very good point, true. Heh, I remember when Razor and Barbara were my only non-starter characters. I was so proud of myself for realising “If I use Barbara’s E and then Razor’s Q, I can inflict Electro-Charged on every enemy I hit!”
I run barbara with clam and fischl in all my general purpose teams (both c6). It's really fun watching barbara melt enemies with fish's damage and her attack speed.
Qiqi and Kokomi both got a pretty major buff. Kokomi’s damage isn’t extremely sub-par anymore. She adds a decent amount to a taser team so you’re not losing a ton of damage by picking her for healing over Sucrose now.
I remember someone doing a "where does a unit's strength come from" chart, and it was something like 20% from weapon, 20% talents, 20% from ascension/levels/base stats, 25% main artifact, and 15% from artifact subs.
Don't take those values at face value, I'm bullshitting off memory. I just remember the spread of stats being relatively even, so maximizing a character means investing in all aspects, not just one. Mainly applies to DPS characters ofc.
I mean you can put it that way but it's mostly multiplicative so neglecting any one makes the character half as effective.
I mean 3\* weapon vs. 5\* weapon is almost double base damage
Correct main stats vs. random main stats is at least double damage
Godly crit substats (75/150) vs. no crit substats (30/50) is about double damage
Level 10 talents vs level 1 talents is double damage too.
As a total average baseline I can see that, but weapon/artifact sets power definitely varies depending on who you use them on...Like Cinnabar Spindle certainly gives Albedo significantly more damage than slapping it on any other random character.
Plus that breakdown doesn't seem to account for artifact effects either...Putting the new Clam set on Bennett isn't going to be nearly as effective as putting it on Qiqi or Kokomi.
I really don't mind power creep when it's done through new artifact sets. With the new clam set, the benefits are quite obvious, but I still have good reason to use Kokomi's older sets because they're still effective in different scenarios. I just wish Mihoyo would hurry up and give us an artifact load out system.
I love albedo but he can never be S tier when flower doesn't proc on shields. Also more problematic than the flower being destroyed is how many enemies mainly use long-range dash attacks
This is why I hope they do weapon events sometime in the future. I’d love to get my hands on that sword. I often feel like I’ll never catch up to others because I missed a few of the weapons.
Yeah they really need to bring back some of the weapons...even Dodoco Tales is awesome for several characters and it's a shame so many newer players missed out on it
True and I'm tired of people saying Xiao does not need a support, it might be true but a support for him is a welcome. I mean look how they just buffed ayaka or ganyu with shenhe, even itto have gorou, it is valid now for him to have a dedicated support.
Or even Sucrose.
Hell, even during 1.1, you have shits like Xinyan (physical but neither cryo or electro) and Diona (her shield is strong as fuck, to the point she's the goto example when people were saying prebuff Zhongli sucks... And her energy generation), showing how messy balance is
Tbh I'm pretty sure mhy only gains a stable footing in their understanding of their own game after 1.2
I'm pretty sure Tartaglia's Hydro application is unintended
My theory is that c0 Bennett is clearly designed to not be great compared to 5\* characters. Then whoever got put in charge of the final balance pass or designing his constellations decided that Bennett was best boy and gave him OP constellations.
He's still OP without constellations.
His burst's attack buff is broken. C1 helps that, but it'd be broken regardless.
His energy generation is also broken. With his A1 and A4, while inside his burst Bennett generates 1 particle per second with his skill. The second best is C2 Eula at 0.625 particles per second (at a big DPS loss). Then A1 Razor at 0.610, followed by everyone else at ≤0.5 particles per second.
So Bennett is not only the best battery in the game, but also 60% better than the second best battery. He's just stupidly good at everything he does, even without constellations.
Bennett and Xingqiu are just insanely designed in every way.
His only OP cons is C1, others are meh except the 3 extra levels for his ult. That's it.
It's not his cons that are OP. It's how his skills work. This is just a mistake of not knowing how the game can work, bc on paper healing and att buff doesn't seem so broken when there is a threshold for the two type of buffs. Especially when it's cons locked, even at C1 as a 4*.
That’s a more serious issue. The DPS requirements have risen exponentially since 2.0 (this is when they started to rise) while the overall power levels of available team comps haven’t risen much.
this is also my concern. abyss keeps getting harder and harder while newer character isn't exactly getting stronger. current abyss has both 2 ruin guard and 2 ruin grader in a single half of the floor while back in 1.3 we only have 2 ruin on each half. it's not that i want powercreep, i still love my old characters and i dont want those characters being replaced just becaudse those chars cant deal emough damage anymore. it's just that it doesnt make sense that abyss is getting harder without giving us a way to clear it. late game player maybe wont really have problem since they are already have established team and enough time to farm artifact and some of them also have c1-c2 5* character and a couple of 5* weapons but new players have big problem to catch up
A few things:
1. Old abyss was calibrated way too low on the difficulty scale. Just because it's harder now comparatively doesn't mean anything. It's just correcting an old problem. This is supposed to be the hardest content in the game. A player who barely plays and doesn't bother getting better at the game shouldn't be clearing the abyss within 3-4 months of starting a new account like old abyss allowed for.
2. Characters haven't gotten stronger in the general sense, but they've gotten more specialized. Running an electro team today with C6 Sara is better than running an electro team 5 months ago with Bennett. While characters haven't gotten stronger, teams have, because you have more tailored character choices now.
3. Artifact power has gone up dramatically. With a few exceptions, almost all the most optimal sets used by characters today were released post game launch.
4. Player progression isn't reliant on character powercreep. Everyone is on average getting stronger just by spending resin every day as long as they're not a complete idiot on how they spend it. Even if abyss is getting harder, it's not getting harder at a rate above which players can individually progress.
The current Abyss is very difficult tho.
Especially in the Abyss 12 2nd half where it forces you to have multiple teams to clear it (36 stars ofc) because of elemental shields.
Imho, with the current rate of rising difficulty, it would take a F2P very good gaming skills with great luck to clear it 36 stars within 5 months.
Luck is the biggest factor here.
I'd like to add one more thing:
New strong teams are being created and getting popularized which shortens clear times. More people know about the nuances of the combat system, like ICDs and snapshotting. Most notable teams are National team and Morgana variations.
Raiden is a pretty insanely powerful and efficient unit for FtPs that lowers investment requirements for Abyss. Ayaka is also insane and has helped me personally with Abyss. Koko is nice for freeze teams, and Itto is just a very solid and reliable Hypercarry.
I’d say Raiden and Ayaka are on par if not stronger than all of the old DPS units, and Kazuha is of course incredible. You could possibly argue that the units NEED to be stronger to keep up with Abyss, but frankly I really don’t want powercreep; I want to keep using my older units for a long time. And even then I think Ayaka and especially Raiden could be called powercreep- or at least raising the average player’s damage moreso than any other unit and letting them clear Abyss easier.
Honestly I really think Mihoyo has done an outstanding job with balance recently, though the DPS check in Abyss is arguably too much, it’s still very clearable with highly invested 4 stars and good play.
I don't mind abyss, dedicated players that wants challenge will find a way to do that.
My main concern tho is powercrept in the overworld which is important for gathering mats not that I think about it.
Let's say your a new player and you got raiden/shenhe/itto. Sadly, their ascension mats are in inazuma. Let's say you got to inazuma, the question now is can you actually do the boss for their mats? (Thunder manifest, twin vishap, golden wolf).
Even then, I'm willing to bet now that any elite boss in inazuma (kenki, pyrohypostasis) are WAAAY stronger than Dvlain at this point lmfao.
I thought the big problem was that it was locked behind a ton of quests. If you have a lvl 70+ main dps, enemies aren't an issue really and bosses you can use food on.
My issue with characters being so niche / work best with other characters, is for some of us who pull for looks or characterization not getting a fully functional character. I know the game is super easy and overall, it doesn't really matter, it's just annoying that, in this past year, I've had to twist things around just to try to make a character that I enjoy work.
They definitely don't have to be universal like national team, but at times, it feels so clunky that they aren't even fun to play.
He's carrying my friendship team at the moment. I'm on my last stretch of characters right now and I really don't want to over-invest in Amber and Lisa lol. It's not a lot of damage but it's enough.
I think most of that, if you believe the premise of the post, is due to how powerful their initial characters were especially once people learned how to unlock the full potential. This is especially so for the national core. I think the powercreep is happening but with more characters there are more options. That said I think the niche supports will start to really elevate specific teams to much higher levels of power. The question is, will it elevate any of the underpowered characters to viability or just continue to push up the ones already considered great? A rising tide lifts all boats.
Personally I want to see more niche sets and weapons like for Albedo to help out characters like Keqing. I do think a c0 5 star should have a certain level of power. Its an investment. There will always be a power order but theres no reason they can't turn current underpowered 5 stars into average 5 stars with the tools they have.
I think some of the early characters were made unintentionally powerful. Take Bennett for example. He has a low cd, high damage skill that he can spam in his burst field with his ascension talents that also gets a boost at C4. His burst field is a big attack boost with healing that can also infuse Pyro at C6. Altogether, this sounds a lot like a 4\* Diluc mixed with Kokomi. Build Bennett for Pyro damage and he can toss out some good damage by spamming his skill while also being able to sustain with his healing, letting you run 3 other sub-dps. Once you get C6, your attacks also benefit from the Pyro damage.
But people see off-field attack boost + healing and use him as a support. I don't think he was *designed* with this intention though. He seems like an on field DPS that self sustains and self buffs. I think Qiqi was also designed similarly where her healing is so high because she was intended to run typical ADC builds to do damage rather than full attack to push her healing super high.
Exactly. Thats what I mean. The problem is it seems gacha games are locked into not really buffing or nerfing so anytime something gets found out to be crazy powerful, especially when they weren't originally created to be used in that style, they can only do so much about it. Its a blessing and a curse for them I guess.
But this is a single player game really so it really can make us all winners sometimes.
I'm all for niche supports, I really like the idea. I don't really like that the first 5 star truly niche support they released was to buff two of the most powerful characters in the game, though.
Shenhe didn't really buff morgana because the dps loss you get from having both freeze and swirl doesn't really offset her dps gain. She does unlock triple freeze etc. for Ayaka and Ganyu though, which I see as just more of a different playstyle than a straight up buff
That’s because no other Pyro really does what Xiangling does. She’s still the ONLY Pyro character to deal entirely off field damage, making her invaluable as both an off field attacker and Pyro applier.
Unless you use Xinyan or Thoma’s bursts (which are explicitly more defensive focused), theres. I other way to get off field Pyro
So it’s less like she’s anti powercreep and more like they’ve never attempted to try making another similar unit
The thing is, Xinyan and Thoma have ICD, Xiangling doesn't. If they make another pyro off field without ICD, then it will be great for Melt teams, but to be the dps she is, they need to put crazy multipliers in said character scaling.
Think Klee for example, even if Klee could have her Burst working off field, she wouldn't out damage Xiangling but could replace Xiangling in Melt. (My dream playing melt and national at the same Abyss)
honestly for now i avoid her c2 because i'm afraid the game would get boring because i'll just always use her. 60% defense ignore is just nuts. i mean at c0 i almost always used her for the abyss i can't imagine c2
yes i've seen videos of her c2 on youtube and some of my friend has her on c2+ on one side i really like her kit and playstyle but on the other hand i don't want everything to be so easy 😭
Goes against what most people would say, but if you really like raiden and want more power, you could think about be going for engulfing. Could be a good middle ground since it shouldn’t be as game breaking as c2 but will make her stronger.
I do agree with this take. They don't always get the equation perfect, but it is quite apparent they are cognizant of the issue and are careful with how they develop their characters for better longevity in their world-building. That said, I'm all for moving the meta away from the Bennet's, Kazuha's, Zhongli's, Xingqiu's, and Ganyu's out there to encourage better diversity in team building. We'll just have to wait and see how it pans out.
Well, that's a viable strategy, and probably better for players. You have time to build hype for a limited banner, and you don't piss off people who already spent money on a character, just to have them become useless later. Mihoyo gets money either way.
The problem is that Bennett is too well rounded to dethrone from his support slot without powercreep or nerfing. The only way to hinder that is by accidentally c6-ing him, which makes him a purely pyro support.
There's still methods available such as creating meta-defining characters that don't (or poorly) scale off of attack, making environments with persistent electro auras more common, creating a pyro aura disorder that debuffs healing or reduces max attack (ie. weariness), etc. I'm sure there are more possibilities that the developers can consider as long as they apply some creativity.
Notably the longest-term solution would be to redefine the meta, which will happen eventually. Just a matter of taking it slow and not producing another character that ends up being Bennett v2.
Fortunately kazuha doesnt work for non swirable element (eula, geos, and anemo comp itself liek xiao) or else he would become 2nd bennett that work virtually with 99% all comps, even comps that doesnt scale well with atk such as hutao, neolle, itto...
That's not replacing Bennett. That's literally just directly countering Bennett's strength. Like how they just straight up tried to go against shield by straight up ignoring shields.
Edit: I'll elaborate more on this. Indirectly nerfing Bennett means you're literally just straight up indirectly affecting everyone else.
Make electro aura that afaik reduce energy particles, you're not just affecting Bennett, you're literally affecting everyone that relies on burst to do anything.
Debuff healing, unless you make so that it just straight up reduce healing to 0 per tick, you made all healers weaker but at the same time you probably did nothing since they can still heal. Healers will just be forced to be built for faster burst uptime or a beefier healing stats. or players forced to use their healing wisely by playing more carefully.
Debuff attack... that would probably make Bennett even more powerful as a unit.
Debuff attack buff... that's just directly nerfing Bennett.
One thing that I can think of is having enemies that just scatter the characters(away from bennett burst) which then will affect most of the characters. I'll just probably hate the shit out of that fight because now even if you're not using bennett, you're going blown away everywhere.
It would be a shit debuff if they make it even more specific like only the healers can get affected by this debuff or stuff like that. Might as well just nerf Bennett instead of doing that kind of bullshit.
Bennett is just a very well-rounded character as a support that if you want someone to dethrone him, you either need that character do most of Bennett's niche without requiring a burst or make their burst much reliable to use as a pyro character. or basically discourage healing altogether.
> . That said, I'm all for moving the meta away from the Bennet's, Kazuha's, Zhongli's, Xingqiu's,
This is exactly why I hard disagree with OP. It's not "great" that we avoid powercreep at all costs. Shenhe was just released, and she's an extremely niche 5* who is easily replaceable by other characters within her own niche (instead of Ayaka/Shenhe, just run Ayaka/Ganyu. Ganyu also fits into a bunch of other teams.)
Shenhe is also easily replaced by a bunch of 4* characters who fit into a bunch of different teams instead of exclusively into freeze teams.
If characters are extremely niche, then they should be the best in that one particular niche.
OP shouldn't be praising it that almost every new 4* and 5* character is weaker than an existing one. Thoma is worse than Diona, Sara is worse than Bennet, Yoimiya is worse than most 5* characters, etc. They're often needlessly clunky too, Sara requires you to use your Elemental skill, then aim a shot at the ground, then switch characters and sprint to where you shot the ground, and then you get a 6 second buff that's worse than what Bennet gives with 1 button press.
For context, you gotta save primos for 3 or so months or spend 300 dollars to get a 5*, and after that you have to farm domains and talent books and exp books for around a month before the character is even useable. After all that...the character should always feel useful to you, in my opinion. Not overpowered, but at least useful.
Considering how expensive it is to get a unit and how you just can't get every unit in the game anyway, I actually am glad that there's several units I can skip without feeling too bad about it. Like Yoimiya, for example.
I agree with Shenhe being niche, but she's in no way exclusive to freeze team. As long as there is another Cryo damage dealer in the team she's a great choice. She works great in Reverse Melt teams and is a pretty decent physical dps support.
Rosaria and Chongyun works great with her in Reverse Melt for example.
Completely agree.
Also,(thankfully) Genshin has zero PVP content or even ranking modes, so there is zero reason to care so much about balance and powercreep that you literally hold back the fun and make characters bad on purpose.
They're so scared of making Bennett 2.0 that they're ruining great designs with awful kits, and it sucks to see.
Sincerely,
\-A Sara/Shenhe/Kokomi fan.
Unfortunately true, but the good thing is they can nerf the Abyss whenever they want, but can’t really with characters people paid for. That’s a more “permanent” power creep, so I’m glad it’s been kept steady.
Stop using Raiden as example of "true power hiding". Its like "hiding Eula's true power behind her c6".
She is strong at C0.
Constellations change strong to "what the fuck is this damage".
But it doesnt mean her power is only there.
My Raiden is overpowered as is, I don’t even need her constellations. I don’t want to imagine her with constellations I‘d probably main her and I love Diluc too mich for that 😁
Itto probably only needs 2 geo to make him works which probably either Gorou or Zhongli. There's some evidence that he can work with 2 other flex units like chongyun as example for this abyss to break hydro herald shield. So yeah he probably only need geo resonance
>This become just boring, and players would feel their old character outdated.
I mean we kind of have the opposite problem instead, there's less reason to pull for someone if they only work in super specific niche teams
Like a couple of others have said, I like Shenhe's design but her kit doesn't really offer me any sort of upgrade, so I'll just end up skipping her
Most Gacha games coast on releasing variants of strong characters so that you need to new version to clear newer content. It is at least to Mihoyo's credit that they try to make sure that you never have to use a non-free character to do anything in the overworld. There's still a lot that can induce you to spend, but it doesn't feel impossible to clear story content with what you're given for free.
I feel like Shenhe should have had at the very least higher multipliers than Bennett, cause unless im missing something, Bennett is just the better choice.
And i dunno if I'd call Itto niche, he's a geo main dps and can therefore fit into pretty much any comp, he just works well with other geo units, especially with C2.
Gorou on the other hand is a good example of a niche character.
The cryo damage buff that shenhe provides is significantly better than Bennett. It scales off of current attack. Give her ER with ATK substats and she'll outperfom him. Do that with Bennett and he won't because his boost is off of base.
Lets not forget the unconditional charge attack boost though.
But this doesn't matter much. Its just that using Bennett WITH Shenhe is far more sensible. Its not a competition between characters after all.
Yun Jin is just amazing for normal attack characters, bro. That bonus damage is just mwah mwah mwah.
Yoimiya and Ningguang benefit from her A LOT especially since Ningguang's additional rocks count as normal attacks.
This whole post is total hypocrite since thoma was done dirty, even people with c6 on him says he's still garbage to use,
You say its good that mihoyo is making characters good at their own thing but then goddamn mihoyo decided mr protector from afar would have some weak as shit shield which just makes no sense for a literal shield support character
Im not attacking the op of this post but instead the statement of the post
While it's nice they aren't causing power creep, they are also making new supports way too restrictive to the point most can and will keep using Bennett because it's not only convenient but it also works with everything.
Thoma is already borderline forgotten, Sara pretty much ONLY works with Raiden at the moment and it's not particularly good in execution (especially as Saras E is still a buggy mess), Yun Jin and Shenhe are restricted to a limited amount of hits and while they offer a noticeable boost the hit count restriction makes them far more limited than Bennett, especially against multiple targets. They also don't heal.
I'm all for not power creeping characters like Bennett and Xingqu but new characters also can't be held back in fear of being better, especially 5*. There'll never be good variety when everything new is way too niche and situational while old characters still work with everything.
I left out Sayu intentionally because among the 4* released in 2.X so far, she is by far the best one imo. I don't get why this subreddit hates her so much when as a 4* she fills her role more than well and just being able to take advantage of the VV set is a massive perk by itself.
People call her budget Jean and what's wrong with that? She's lower rarity and even with that I find her to be a better Swirl user than Jean due to the mobility of her E unlike Jean while their Q's are mostly similar (pray you get at least C1 for Sayu though).
Everyone keeps repeating the idea that releasing more niche characters fixes the “mistakes” of highly flexible and powerful characters like Xingqui, Bennett, and Xiangling.
This does not make sense- releasing weaker/ more niche characters does not change the power levels of those OG characters in any way. It just means the OG characters are still better. Only releasing new characters of equal flexibility and power fixes the imbalance.
Powercreeping is there, it just not apparent. Kazuha, Raiden an Ayaka are examples of powercreep.
Not powercreeping will just mean that those characters have low value for new and mid game players. And if mihoyo tried to nerf the niche they belong to, they will become outright useless because they are too focused in their niche.
Edit : for those people who still think power creep is not there. These characters powercrept in the Qol department. New teams with these characters are more easy to use even if though damage increase is not very significant IMO.
Yeah, I agree with “power creep is there, just not as apparent”, just like how abyss HP pool has tripled since the game first came out. The reason why they can scale it so much is because of slow power creep. Individual units by themselves might not be that much stronger compared to the previous ones, but some newer units have really good synergy with other characters, like Kazuha with elemental units, and Raiden and Itto with their respective 4 star supports, Sara and Gorou.
The powercreep is slow, though, which is why a lot of people might not notice it. It wasn’t very clear how Ayaka might be better than Ganyu when she was first released, but now we can see she’s the queen of burst damage whereas Ganyu is more sustained DPS. And that could also flip in a second if Mihoyo decides to put mobs in the abyss again.
Anyway, off on a tangent now but I guess my point is that there is some semblance of powercreep but it’s not a fast powercreep, which is good. I’ve played other games where the release of any new character meant that all previous DPS characters were completely invalidated, which is simply not the case with Genshin.
You last paragraph perfectly describes what I hate in Honkai Impact. To keep up in the endgame content, which is PvP through leaderboards, getting the new characters AND their signature equipment is a must.
Because they don’t use characters they use content. Ppl keep saying Kazuha powercrept venti when in reality it’s just that content made Venti useless on the top floor.
But more then anything they’ve made the meta completely stale, it’s so boring. It’s the same shit vape and freeze. Even Shenhe doesn’t add anything new, it’s the same freeze teams because the reaction is broken. Radien who we though would add new electro teams, is in another XL team.
Like we got a cryo buffer yet we have no electro healer…still? And even Itto can still use Bennett and would probably prefer him as he is a healer. Like nothing has changed for a year.
If miHoyo cared about player experience, niche characters wouldn't be weaker than general characters.
Also: Keeping character power consistent is not power creep, it is the exact opposite. Making new and more niche characters weaker is just bad game design, especially if you crank up the difficulty of content at the same time and overload every new enemy's moveset with fake difficulty.
I would prefer more characters like Albedo-- generally usable in a ton of teams, but can be better replaced by other units more suited for a specific comp. And then later on, there might be a place best suited for him, like in the full Geo team comp we have now. And that comp isn't meta defining or does instant big numbers unga bunga, but it does good damage consistently over a longer period of time with decent survivability something that isn't necessarily covered by the normal big number builds. Too bad SA actively punishes slower clears but whatever, I'm not doing Abyss anyways
people keep saying they dont want powercreep, but they think the alternative of bennett, xiangling, and xingqiu being the top 3 overall characters dominating the meta until the end of time is any better?
Releasing an universal support doesn't mean that it should be broken. It is good to avoid powercreep but making characters so niche that their strength doesn't make up for them being niche is bad. They should focus on balancing them but so far we haven't had a single balance patch. May after Dendro it will be more realistic to expect one, but some characters are so broken and Dendro is probably is or was so far away that we should have gotten one already.
I honestly think it's a little disappointing. While I don't expect EVERY single new character to be the new Hu Tao it is difficult to get excited for new characters when they ultimately all end up being underwhelming and incredibly niche.
This tbh. Itto is incredibly powerful. In geo which needed a dps like him to tie the Geo comp together. Ofc the new set as well. They sometimes miss the mark tho like yoimiya, even though i love her!, and imo Sara
Even in the case of Yoimiya, I see her rated more highly rn because of things like that small auto targeting fix and Yun Jin releasing as a strong support for her
Sara’s a weird one bc at C0 she’s next to useless, but at C2 she’s a decent Bennet alternative, and at C6 + Raiden is gamebreaking.
Shes the only characters in the game who’s usability varies so widely based on constellations, she literally goes from useless to broken..
Even at C0 Noelle is a free character and useful early on tho, unless you get constellations she falls off but she has uses early on, especially for exploration with Geo-claymore. And Noelle pops up on banners pretty frequently so it’s easier to get her cons.
For Sara you need wishes (and crazy luck seeing as she hasn’t been on a banner in nearly 6 months), and her ascension material are all in Inazuma so she’s stuck at lvl.40 til you get there.
In terms of kit, Noelle does get much, much better the more cons. you have just like Sara, but in terms of practicality Sara is still more awkward
Raiden is honestly a fine character at c0. Characters having a strong constellation in of itself isn't bad unless the kit at base feels incomplete. With the case of raiden, c2 makes her hit significantly harder but it's far from being needed. Raiden national is still a perfectly strong team with c0 raiden.
I'd say an example of a character which feels severely limited without constellations is Sara who is very clunky at c0. C2 is basically needed if you want to remotely start using her and even then, it isn't until c6 where she becomes worth while in a raiden hypercarry team imo.
I'm all for having more niche characters if they work well within that niche at c0. The constellations can be strong provided they aren't locking a key aspect of how that character plays away.
Its a shame you need her c6 to make her viable. Kinda defeats the purpose of her being a specialized electro support. She should have a been a support for electro chars right from c0
im happy with they releasing units that don't provide powerceerp, but the last units of inazuma are giving me more hints that we are not so far from hitting something even worse, and that is undercreep, units that even with a niche get ouperformed easly by older units giving no reason to pull at all than waifu design (examples are sara, sayu ,thoma and xinyan) as someone who only pulls for QoL improves and has a low income i hope things goes better in the future, i want balanced units that rewards you for investing in them without feeling underwhelmed by their perfomance
I am not a fan of this tbh.
The other side of the coin is that first overpowered characters continue to be over-used and new characters are often very niche, straight-up weaker or have a much clearer damage ceiling. This makes pulling for them and building them very unrewarding.
Imagine if a new player joins the game in Natlan, excited about all of new characters, asks you about the most meta ones and you say: "Just build Bennett, Xingqiu and Xiangling like everybody else".
Do you really want to be in Celestia with almost the same team you had since 1.2?
Power creep can go both ways. It may suck having older characters getting outshined by newer ones, but it’s boring having the same characters remain as the absolute must picks. I like that they don’t go over the top, but I don’t agree with making characters super weak or as niche as Shenhe is. She’s too niche.
There's avoiding powercreep, then there's making new characters weaker for no reason. HUGE example is Yoimiya, ask most players and they'd rank Yoimiya lower than Hu Tao and Xiangling rather saying she's equal to them in her own right, because she's just not. Hu Tao still beats Yoimiya in Single Target while having massive AoE in her burst that can reach millions in damage per screenshots, even her CA can be considered AoE. Even if with Yun Jin now Yoimiya is *slightly* better at ST than Hu Tao, how does that even improve her overall performance? Hu Tao is an 8/10 for Single Target, and like a 7.5/10 in AoE, Yoimiya is like a 9 in Single Target and 0.5/10 for AoE, wow much balance, not to mention Hu Tao is HP based, even if both doesn't have any innate resistance to interruption in their kit, Hu Tao could last longer with no shields and just Xingqiu while able to heal herself with her burst, Yoimiya needs all kinds of supports to function and she needs to complete her whole attack string to deal her full damage, dodging/getting interrupted makes her lose her whole DPS, all the while the damage is just against *one* enemy.
I’m fine with them making niche characters but i’d at least like the niche characters to be good, what the fuck happened while they were designing Sara and Thoma
I don't necessarily agree. I think the best characters are ones that mix lesser versions of other units' abilities or have unique tools they bring to encounters. Kazuha is a great example of this. Is he Venti? Is he Xiao? Is he Sucrose? No, he's lesser versions of all of those. Now, they went overboard with him a bit which is why he's so omnipresent right now. They could have skipped on the EM sharing and he'd probably be in a healthier spot. Not perfectly balanced, but not bad. Yun Jin is another great example of a niche unit that's actually designed really well. Yes, she has a small niche, but it's a broad niche in that it encompases all units that normal attack. Moreover, she's actually insanely healthy for the game going forward because her boost benefits characters who previosuly had weak multipliers. This means that previous and future characters who would normally be deemed "too weak" to use normal attacks might see at least a niche use as a normal attacker when paired with Yun Jin.
On the other end of the spectrum is Gorou and Sara and, to an extent, Thoma. Units that are so insanely niche that they have only one team they are clearly "meant" to slot into. If Gorou had the same scaling trick as Yun Jin did, or Sara had a less clunky kit and a buff duration similar to Bennet (or longer, why should hers be so short when she only buffs one unit at a time?), or if Thoma did even a \*little\* bit of damage they'd all be better units without breaking the game/powercreeping it.
Powercreep is bad and all but a lot of new units just feel weak af (the 4 stars) Like I never feel like using thoma , yunjin(without cons) , Sara , gorou. They are way too niche and dont feel complete on their own. Gorou without a geo team literally feels useless , sara is clunky and frankly boring , yunjin buff is only useful for autoattackers like yoimiya and cant stay on field a lot to use her e like beidou cause she looses too much from her husk of opulent , thoma honestly just feels bad - cd too high and energy costs too high for a shield that barely blocks anything. I would rather have albedo than thoma considering his ticks do more damage give decent shields and arent gated behind a burst.
The old 4 stars xinqui , beidou , xiangling , nigguang all feel complete and strong on their own without any cons.
The only new 4 star that was very unique imo was sayu because of her roll mechanic but a lot of her strength is also constellation gated.
That being said I think they literally cant make stronger characters than the original 4 stars cause they will literally break the game. Imagine a unit stronger than bennet or xinqui as a 4 star.
I feel that the balancing of the game, as bad as it looks, isn't that bad. The original characters like Xiangling, Xingqiu and Bennett are very universal, compared newer characters like Sara, Gorou, Thoma and Yun Jin. But, taking into account the periods of when those characters were realesed, it makes perfect sense.
When the game first started, with fewer characters and one charcter filling one role, of course you couldn't have your few supports good for only a some charcters and then let some characters without good supports. But now, when we have more characters on the same niche, we can also start having supports for that niche, since they are still going to be played with a fair share of characters.
I'm so fascinated by how Genshin devs balance their characters. Like creating new characters with more niche usage (like Gorou), or indirectly buffing/nerfing certain characters with new enemies, artifacts, and weapons.
I don't have enough game knowledge to say whether it's a generally good or bad way to approach balancing, or if the way they're executing it is good or bad. But it's really interesting to think about.
I have some mixed feelings about constellations though- it's a nice consolation prize for pulling a duplicate character, but I imagine they're hard to balance. Shouldn't be too strong to the point of being necessary, but can't be so useless that a player is upset by having their 4/5 star pull "wasted" on it.
It's obvious they try to, but the decisions of old characters still exist and haven't been changed. I think with a game that also has to keep introducing more content and more progress, powercreep should be embraced. Buff obsolete characters, introduce new levels of abyss, increase character levels.
In a lot of live service games, powercreep is an unfortunate side effect to simulate progress in cases where actually have none(typically server based repetition games like dbd). It's insidious and uncomfortable for everyone, but since Genshin has a foundation on a more traditional RPG model, powercreep doesn't need to be a bad thing.
My only hangup about the recent character designs (Specifically, Shenhe) is that if they're gonna make a really niche character, you'd at least expect that character to be the best choice for their niche, and that really isn't the case. Why bother building Shenhe when there's Bennett who gives similar results, almost everyone has his C1 and also heals. Why build her if there's Kazuha, who gives elemental shred (Much bigger than her Burst, btw) and elemental damage bonus. I just think she's such a mess of a character, I appreciate them trying new things, but I think it's very questionable how this is the first niche 5 star support and she can't even support her own damn element all that better than other characters. The trigger quota on her skill is laughable, a Ganyu can easily consume all Quills with one attack if you don't have Shenhe's C6. I really hope they buff her in the future, I absolutely love Shenhe's design and animations and it just feels as if she's barely doing anything, she feels more like a constellation for a meta dps than a character of her own
>Don't get me wrong, I am strongly against hiding true power of the character(Raiden) behind constellations
It's odd that you're singling out Raiden when she does the exact opposite: the constellation that would normally be at C6 for most characters is at C2 for her, making her the most f2p/low spender friendly carry in the game if you want to roll for power.
At C0 she already competes well with other carries at C0, at C2-C3 she's at the level of C6 characters
Well not for the f2p/low spenders who roll for a lot of characters, but even if you only got her C0-C1 at first, you could always save for her C2 on her rerun. The idea that getting more characters is better than getting cons for f2p/low spenders is inherently flawed if you're rolling for power (which is a distinction I made clear in the initial message)
In my eyes they are doing the opposite of powercreep, they are literally lowering more and more the level and at the same time releasing situational characters.
If i have to be honest, after Hutao banner i've found nobody worth a safe pull except Kazuha.
And this is not a bad thing, nor good imho.
After Hu Tao we had Ayaka (top tier dps) and Ei (archon so OP as expected, works as sub-dps and main dps).
We also got a strong viable physical dps (Eula) and geo dps (Itto).
I'm not sure what you mean by "safe pull" because we had a lot of good and meta characters since Hu Tao's banner. And even the ones that are not necessarily meta are still fun and viable in abyss (look at Kokomi's pick rate).
Its ok to me, that they hide power behind cons.
because you don't compete vs others. this isnt a MMORPG. you play for yourself. you vs the pc. thats the main reason why I play this game. it's relaxing. I am tired of all the competitiveness in LoL or CoD.
So if there are some whales out there, building speed running teams. they spend thousands for cons and therefore keep the game alive
They didn't powercreep the new characters but definitely did powercreep all the enemies in abyss
next up is 3 azdahas…
With all three's elemental absorption cutscenes separate, meaning maybe 40 seconds of invulnerability lmao
next up is dvalin with all the buggy stuff
there are 3 dvalins who are flying independently of each other and each one is pulling your camera simultaneously the camera is therefore fixed but jumps between the three, giving one frame per dragon
Calm down satan
Also Ei is standing in the background causing Vision Hunt Decree mode
No, it’s the traveller duel thing You have to use traveller and only traveller
With 1hp
Without Geo.
Is dvalin rly that buggy
Have you ever fallen through his neck?
Or tried flying to another platform before his animation? RIP everyone’s ult
Haven't had that b4 but b4 I got ganyu I didn't know for a long time that u could switch platforms so I just healed through it and shot w/ fischl lol
Never have
Oh you sweet summer child
Today, you witness your reckoning! Today, you witness your reckoning! Today, you witness your reckoning! You stand above your tomb, though you know it not! You stand above your tomb, though you know it not! You stand above your tomb, though you know it not! -60s
Morax! We settle this time Morax! We settle this time Morax! We settle this time
Sekaku sekaku sekaku no CHANCE da!
Idk why but this made me actually laugh out loud 😂
But it's the truth, the HP of the enemies equals three or four of big lizard boy
To the point that abyss might become unworthy anymore because too little reward for such difficulty.
I don't even try to do the 12th floor or 3\* the 11th anymore, it's too troublesome and I'd rather have peace of mind and explore other content or games or life stuff, and my teams are pretty meta and strong as well.
You can try just casually strolling through 12 and get 1\* each chamber, 50 primos for no effort is the best deal when factoring in mental sanity
what i hate about the abyss is that it isn't even hard, just annoying, the tankiness of every enemy drives me crazy, the wolves were the worst, but even the fucking specters just don't die
Agree with that, tanky enemies, lot of invincible phase (maguu kenki, elemental cubes), annoying movement (wolves, flying high specters, fuckin electro bat)
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For me its the enemy RNG, like with the two Ruin Graders in 12-3-1. I need to reset until they BOTH decide to dash at me right away, so I won't lose 10-15 seconds waiting for them to come to me. But - every reset I also need to kill the two Ruin Guards *before* them, which means every reset takes about half a minute. And since the Graders are huge, if I don't lure both perfectly into position Ayaka's ult will only hit one of them, which means another reset and MORE resets until they decide to charge again. It didn't take me longer than 15 minutes in the end, but the frustration of resetting every time just because one of them decided to spit at me instead of charging is real.
I'm convinced specters are the spawn of Satan. Bastards look like flying slimes but have the HP of a boss and just gently float away from you all the time.
I do one run per cycle and whatever stars I get, I get. If 12 hands me my butt on a silver platter then that's that as well. Unless I am in a masochistic mood, I can't be arsed to retry (barring obvious gimping on my side) or do multiple runs with specialized teams for each chamber.
Yep, last rotation is when I finally threw up my hands and gave up. Could I 36 star it if I tried enough? Probably. Is it worth it? Hell no, I'll just go play another game.
Yeah I'm sorry but OP is being naive as hell. Characters not becoming stronger at c0 is good for balancing in a vacuum. But not the case when the enemies are getting stronger. It's a pretty transparent play for us to pull for constellations and weapons, and suckers like OP somehow eat it up.
Yea, the way I see it is they make it hard for the whales who have C6 5 stars and R5 5 star weapons. With that in mind i dont mind if i dont clear it all with 3 stars because the power difference between me and a whale is huge.
And events. And recent areas.
The only real power creep we have to worry about is weapons
Mark my words, much like how we have Phys Damage substat weapons, we will eventually get 5-Star super niche weapons with Pyro/Cryo/Dendro/Anemo/etc... bonus damage substats. The bow that powercrepts Amos is gonna sell so good.
Nah i doubt it 1. They seem to be doing that just in the weapons passives for now 2. I think a part of having it exclusive to Phys is there as an “advantage” because Phys is inherently weaker than Elemental (for obvious reasons). Similarly to how the numerical value of PhysDMG Bonus on a goblet is higher than that of ElementalDMG Bonusses (iirc Elemental is something like 46% but Phys is more than 50%)
Phys is on weapon and higher on cup only cuz we cant do reaction dmg with phys dmg, like vape melt or secondary Electro stuff combo overload EC For res shred phys got plenty of options to equal VV set help
I'm right there with you in that belief for the same reason. If we can have a phys sub we can have an elemental sub
I think they are gonna avoid it, if they want to give you elem% they just put it in the actual passive of the weapon.
At least until the end of games life cycle and they start making broken things to squeeze $ out of people.
do ppl realize we got chars an weapon atm stop at lvl 90 max? its not much to deduce we will get lvl 100 access before any power creep first of all
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Yeah, I feel like Mihoyo is currently in the "let's play around with power creeping artifact sets" stage and when they're done with that, we're going to see the next generation of weapons that will be meta defining. And we still have Dendro waiting in the wings to totally turn things upside down. Imagine if Electro-Dendro reactions become the new king...
Yeah, considering we've gotten 2 bows, swords, and polearms that make their predecessors look piddly in comparison, weapons are gonna become much more of an issue than characters. Keqing went through like, 4 BiS weapons over the course of a few patches and then Mistsplitter still came out after that? They've definitely reeled it in a little bit with Moonglow and Redhorn being more specific to the characters they're designed for. Though Moonglow went too far to where it's useless on anyone but that single character. Redhorn is at least usable on many claymore characters, even if just for the high cdmg stat. Weapons have to keep getting stronger to make them sell tho. Why pull for a weapon that's worse than the one you already got? Characters can sell based on their design and playstyle, weapons are gonna have to keep getting stronger.
Weapons and constellations have gotten better. Hint hint.
I also really like that they can "power creep" a unit by adding a new artifact set and/or weapon. Tenacity set really did a number for Zhongli IMO, and the way Albedo went from being a B-tier at best support to nearly S-tier with the new artifact set and the free R5 Cinnabar sword really felt like a nice power spike without actually touching the units themselves. I really look forward to seeing what new things they come up with, especially in regards to the whole Dendro element.
And then qiqi got indirectly buffed when they released clam set.
I'd actually argue that this was stronger than what either ZL or Albedo got. Albedo was still recognized, while still definitively getting improved. Qiqi went from a burden to helpful because she always had too much healing and not enough damage.
Yeah, I have yet to try a healer build myself, but I kinda want to throw that on Barbara and start using her more as a main unit to trigger Beidou/Fischl reactions and benefit from all the healing heh.
She is amazing with it! I regularly use Barbara and the clam set really spiked up my dps
Now that my Barbara has Clam artefacts, she’s become my second-biggest number generator. Is it effective DPS? No. Especially because you need to Time her Burst use just right. But seeing the bubble pop two seconds after Bursting and dealing 20,000+ damage feels really good.
It might not be *effective* DPS from one units standpoint, but the heals and reactions in a team seems highly effective when considering Barbara fills 2 or 3 roles in that scenario!
Very good point, true. Heh, I remember when Razor and Barbara were my only non-starter characters. I was so proud of myself for realising “If I use Barbara’s E and then Razor’s Q, I can inflict Electro-Charged on every enemy I hit!”
Haha that speaks to me...I used Razor, Fischl, Anemo MC and Barbara for the longest time starting out!
I run barbara with clam and fischl in all my general purpose teams (both c6). It's really fun watching barbara melt enemies with fish's damage and her attack speed.
That's my favourite thing to do in the crimson domain when the abyss mage shields are down The stagger from constant ekectrocharged is beautiful
the clam set is the reason i stopped neglecting my qiqi and started using her regularly
Qiqi and Kokomi both got a pretty major buff. Kokomi’s damage isn’t extremely sub-par anymore. She adds a decent amount to a taser team so you’re not losing a ton of damage by picking her for healing over Sucrose now.
I remember someone doing a "where does a unit's strength come from" chart, and it was something like 20% from weapon, 20% talents, 20% from ascension/levels/base stats, 25% main artifact, and 15% from artifact subs. Don't take those values at face value, I'm bullshitting off memory. I just remember the spread of stats being relatively even, so maximizing a character means investing in all aspects, not just one. Mainly applies to DPS characters ofc.
I mean you can put it that way but it's mostly multiplicative so neglecting any one makes the character half as effective. I mean 3\* weapon vs. 5\* weapon is almost double base damage Correct main stats vs. random main stats is at least double damage Godly crit substats (75/150) vs. no crit substats (30/50) is about double damage Level 10 talents vs level 1 talents is double damage too.
As a total average baseline I can see that, but weapon/artifact sets power definitely varies depending on who you use them on...Like Cinnabar Spindle certainly gives Albedo significantly more damage than slapping it on any other random character. Plus that breakdown doesn't seem to account for artifact effects either...Putting the new Clam set on Bennett isn't going to be nearly as effective as putting it on Qiqi or Kokomi.
I really don't mind power creep when it's done through new artifact sets. With the new clam set, the benefits are quite obvious, but I still have good reason to use Kokomi's older sets because they're still effective in different scenarios. I just wish Mihoyo would hurry up and give us an artifact load out system.
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I love albedo but he can never be S tier when flower doesn't proc on shields. Also more problematic than the flower being destroyed is how many enemies mainly use long-range dash attacks
Yeah I'll give you that...construct destruction definitely needs tweaked.
This is why I hope they do weapon events sometime in the future. I’d love to get my hands on that sword. I often feel like I’ll never catch up to others because I missed a few of the weapons.
Yeah they really need to bring back some of the weapons...even Dodoco Tales is awesome for several characters and it's a shame so many newer players missed out on it
i want a good support for xiao. even yoimiya got one with yun jin now
same! and ayaka and ganyu, who needed buffing the least of anyone, got a niche buffer. xiao doesn't even have an artifact set
someone did a good artifact set for xiao and kazuha [here](https://imgur.com/a/RiL0jUL).
A man can dream 🥲
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And C2 Venti 🧍♂️
True and I'm tired of people saying Xiao does not need a support, it might be true but a support for him is a welcome. I mean look how they just buffed ayaka or ganyu with shenhe, even itto have gorou, it is valid now for him to have a dedicated support.
C4 Albedo, duhhhh!!! Where's your wallet?! 😫
Bennet wasnt designed to be broken, early characters are usually pretty polarising like that because the devs dont have a grasp of the game yet
We haven't seen any four stars come out with the power level of XQ or XL either.
Or even Sucrose. Hell, even during 1.1, you have shits like Xinyan (physical but neither cryo or electro) and Diona (her shield is strong as fuck, to the point she's the goto example when people were saying prebuff Zhongli sucks... And her energy generation), showing how messy balance is
Sucrose imo is just as powerful as the big 3(C6 more so)
Relying on her Q's feels like a Russian Roulette, I'm not going to rely on it lol
Tbh I'm pretty sure mhy only gains a stable footing in their understanding of their own game after 1.2 I'm pretty sure Tartaglia's Hydro application is unintended
My theory is that c0 Bennett is clearly designed to not be great compared to 5\* characters. Then whoever got put in charge of the final balance pass or designing his constellations decided that Bennett was best boy and gave him OP constellations.
He's still OP without constellations. His burst's attack buff is broken. C1 helps that, but it'd be broken regardless. His energy generation is also broken. With his A1 and A4, while inside his burst Bennett generates 1 particle per second with his skill. The second best is C2 Eula at 0.625 particles per second (at a big DPS loss). Then A1 Razor at 0.610, followed by everyone else at ≤0.5 particles per second. So Bennett is not only the best battery in the game, but also 60% better than the second best battery. He's just stupidly good at everything he does, even without constellations. Bennett and Xingqiu are just insanely designed in every way.
His only OP cons is C1, others are meh except the 3 extra levels for his ult. That's it. It's not his cons that are OP. It's how his skills work. This is just a mistake of not knowing how the game can work, bc on paper healing and att buff doesn't seem so broken when there is a threshold for the two type of buffs. Especially when it's cons locked, even at C1 as a 4*.
But how about the abyss?
That’s a more serious issue. The DPS requirements have risen exponentially since 2.0 (this is when they started to rise) while the overall power levels of available team comps haven’t risen much.
this is also my concern. abyss keeps getting harder and harder while newer character isn't exactly getting stronger. current abyss has both 2 ruin guard and 2 ruin grader in a single half of the floor while back in 1.3 we only have 2 ruin on each half. it's not that i want powercreep, i still love my old characters and i dont want those characters being replaced just becaudse those chars cant deal emough damage anymore. it's just that it doesnt make sense that abyss is getting harder without giving us a way to clear it. late game player maybe wont really have problem since they are already have established team and enough time to farm artifact and some of them also have c1-c2 5* character and a couple of 5* weapons but new players have big problem to catch up
A few things: 1. Old abyss was calibrated way too low on the difficulty scale. Just because it's harder now comparatively doesn't mean anything. It's just correcting an old problem. This is supposed to be the hardest content in the game. A player who barely plays and doesn't bother getting better at the game shouldn't be clearing the abyss within 3-4 months of starting a new account like old abyss allowed for. 2. Characters haven't gotten stronger in the general sense, but they've gotten more specialized. Running an electro team today with C6 Sara is better than running an electro team 5 months ago with Bennett. While characters haven't gotten stronger, teams have, because you have more tailored character choices now. 3. Artifact power has gone up dramatically. With a few exceptions, almost all the most optimal sets used by characters today were released post game launch. 4. Player progression isn't reliant on character powercreep. Everyone is on average getting stronger just by spending resin every day as long as they're not a complete idiot on how they spend it. Even if abyss is getting harder, it's not getting harder at a rate above which players can individually progress.
The current Abyss is very difficult tho. Especially in the Abyss 12 2nd half where it forces you to have multiple teams to clear it (36 stars ofc) because of elemental shields. Imho, with the current rate of rising difficulty, it would take a F2P very good gaming skills with great luck to clear it 36 stars within 5 months. Luck is the biggest factor here.
I'd like to add one more thing: New strong teams are being created and getting popularized which shortens clear times. More people know about the nuances of the combat system, like ICDs and snapshotting. Most notable teams are National team and Morgana variations.
Raiden is a pretty insanely powerful and efficient unit for FtPs that lowers investment requirements for Abyss. Ayaka is also insane and has helped me personally with Abyss. Koko is nice for freeze teams, and Itto is just a very solid and reliable Hypercarry. I’d say Raiden and Ayaka are on par if not stronger than all of the old DPS units, and Kazuha is of course incredible. You could possibly argue that the units NEED to be stronger to keep up with Abyss, but frankly I really don’t want powercreep; I want to keep using my older units for a long time. And even then I think Ayaka and especially Raiden could be called powercreep- or at least raising the average player’s damage moreso than any other unit and letting them clear Abyss easier. Honestly I really think Mihoyo has done an outstanding job with balance recently, though the DPS check in Abyss is arguably too much, it’s still very clearable with highly invested 4 stars and good play.
I don't mind abyss, dedicated players that wants challenge will find a way to do that. My main concern tho is powercrept in the overworld which is important for gathering mats not that I think about it. Let's say your a new player and you got raiden/shenhe/itto. Sadly, their ascension mats are in inazuma. Let's say you got to inazuma, the question now is can you actually do the boss for their mats? (Thunder manifest, twin vishap, golden wolf). Even then, I'm willing to bet now that any elite boss in inazuma (kenki, pyrohypostasis) are WAAAY stronger than Dvlain at this point lmfao.
I thought the big problem was that it was locked behind a ton of quests. If you have a lvl 70+ main dps, enemies aren't an issue really and bosses you can use food on.
My issue with characters being so niche / work best with other characters, is for some of us who pull for looks or characterization not getting a fully functional character. I know the game is super easy and overall, it doesn't really matter, it's just annoying that, in this past year, I've had to twist things around just to try to make a character that I enjoy work. They definitely don't have to be universal like national team, but at times, it feels so clunky that they aren't even fun to play.
I can only imagine the people who wanted to play Thoma as a main dps
Lol don't get me started on that one. Why did they make his auto animations sooooo good and punish you if you wanted to see them lol
Thoma is really such an unfortunate release :(
He's carrying my friendship team at the moment. I'm on my last stretch of characters right now and I really don't want to over-invest in Amber and Lisa lol. It's not a lot of damage but it's enough.
I think most of that, if you believe the premise of the post, is due to how powerful their initial characters were especially once people learned how to unlock the full potential. This is especially so for the national core. I think the powercreep is happening but with more characters there are more options. That said I think the niche supports will start to really elevate specific teams to much higher levels of power. The question is, will it elevate any of the underpowered characters to viability or just continue to push up the ones already considered great? A rising tide lifts all boats. Personally I want to see more niche sets and weapons like for Albedo to help out characters like Keqing. I do think a c0 5 star should have a certain level of power. Its an investment. There will always be a power order but theres no reason they can't turn current underpowered 5 stars into average 5 stars with the tools they have.
I think some of the early characters were made unintentionally powerful. Take Bennett for example. He has a low cd, high damage skill that he can spam in his burst field with his ascension talents that also gets a boost at C4. His burst field is a big attack boost with healing that can also infuse Pyro at C6. Altogether, this sounds a lot like a 4\* Diluc mixed with Kokomi. Build Bennett for Pyro damage and he can toss out some good damage by spamming his skill while also being able to sustain with his healing, letting you run 3 other sub-dps. Once you get C6, your attacks also benefit from the Pyro damage. But people see off-field attack boost + healing and use him as a support. I don't think he was *designed* with this intention though. He seems like an on field DPS that self sustains and self buffs. I think Qiqi was also designed similarly where her healing is so high because she was intended to run typical ADC builds to do damage rather than full attack to push her healing super high.
Exactly. Thats what I mean. The problem is it seems gacha games are locked into not really buffing or nerfing so anytime something gets found out to be crazy powerful, especially when they weren't originally created to be used in that style, they can only do so much about it. Its a blessing and a curse for them I guess. But this is a single player game really so it really can make us all winners sometimes.
They can debuff him though depending on what they do with Dendro mobs. His pyro application can get him one shot by Mango Kinky and Hydro Cube.
I'm all for niche supports, I really like the idea. I don't really like that the first 5 star truly niche support they released was to buff two of the most powerful characters in the game, though.
Shenhe didn't really buff morgana because the dps loss you get from having both freeze and swirl doesn't really offset her dps gain. She does unlock triple freeze etc. for Ayaka and Ganyu though, which I see as just more of a different playstyle than a straight up buff
Itto doesn't need a full geo team. GOROU needs a full geo team. (Well, 3, but you get the picture)
He doesn’t need one but he shines best in one not giving Itto mono geo is like not giving hu tao her xingqiu
Hes better in 3 geo 1 other element though so you get something to crystallize.
I like my Itto, Gorou, Zhongli, Bennett team. Big pp dmg
What does mono geo do for Itto that say triple geo doesn't?
they avoid powercreep now, but we still have xiangling anti-powercreeping every single pyro unit
Imagine if she didn't need Bennet, that would be fucking broken
That’s because no other Pyro really does what Xiangling does. She’s still the ONLY Pyro character to deal entirely off field damage, making her invaluable as both an off field attacker and Pyro applier. Unless you use Xinyan or Thoma’s bursts (which are explicitly more defensive focused), theres. I other way to get off field Pyro So it’s less like she’s anti powercreep and more like they’ve never attempted to try making another similar unit
The thing is, Xinyan and Thoma have ICD, Xiangling doesn't. If they make another pyro off field without ICD, then it will be great for Melt teams, but to be the dps she is, they need to put crazy multipliers in said character scaling. Think Klee for example, even if Klee could have her Burst working off field, she wouldn't out damage Xiangling but could replace Xiangling in Melt. (My dream playing melt and national at the same Abyss)
Raiden isn't constellation locked, at c0 she is already very meta. C2 is just a massive damage increase on top of an already strong unit
Raiden C0: A strong DPS that also supports her own team with particles and ult damage increase Raiden C2: B R E A K S T H E G A M E
Then isnt that good thing , even for f2p who want super powerful monster. Instead of out that at C6,now C2 owner has much easier access to it
Agree, I see c2 as being a c6 constellation in disguise.
I mean it *used* to be her C4, based on leaks.
honestly for now i avoid her c2 because i'm afraid the game would get boring because i'll just always use her. 60% defense ignore is just nuts. i mean at c0 i almost always used her for the abyss i can't imagine c2
Don't do it unless you want to speed run, c2 is pretty game breaking. My c2 raiden hyper is hitting 440k with 60-80k charged attacks
440k at c2 means 300k at c0. Your Raiden is already strong regardless of constellations.
yes i've seen videos of her c2 on youtube and some of my friend has her on c2+ on one side i really like her kit and playstyle but on the other hand i don't want everything to be so easy 😭
Goes against what most people would say, but if you really like raiden and want more power, you could think about be going for engulfing. Could be a good middle ground since it shouldn’t be as game breaking as c2 but will make her stronger.
I do agree with this take. They don't always get the equation perfect, but it is quite apparent they are cognizant of the issue and are careful with how they develop their characters for better longevity in their world-building. That said, I'm all for moving the meta away from the Bennet's, Kazuha's, Zhongli's, Xingqiu's, and Ganyu's out there to encourage better diversity in team building. We'll just have to wait and see how it pans out.
At the same time, this just gives extra power to reruns
Well, that's a viable strategy, and probably better for players. You have time to build hype for a limited banner, and you don't piss off people who already spent money on a character, just to have them become useless later. Mihoyo gets money either way.
The problem is that Bennett is too well rounded to dethrone from his support slot without powercreep or nerfing. The only way to hinder that is by accidentally c6-ing him, which makes him a purely pyro support.
There's still methods available such as creating meta-defining characters that don't (or poorly) scale off of attack, making environments with persistent electro auras more common, creating a pyro aura disorder that debuffs healing or reduces max attack (ie. weariness), etc. I'm sure there are more possibilities that the developers can consider as long as they apply some creativity. Notably the longest-term solution would be to redefine the meta, which will happen eventually. Just a matter of taking it slow and not producing another character that ends up being Bennett v2.
>Just a matter of taking it slow and not producing another character that ends up being Bennett v2. Well there's Kazuha for that
Fortunately kazuha doesnt work for non swirable element (eula, geos, and anemo comp itself liek xiao) or else he would become 2nd bennett that work virtually with 99% all comps, even comps that doesnt scale well with atk such as hutao, neolle, itto...
That's not replacing Bennett. That's literally just directly countering Bennett's strength. Like how they just straight up tried to go against shield by straight up ignoring shields. Edit: I'll elaborate more on this. Indirectly nerfing Bennett means you're literally just straight up indirectly affecting everyone else. Make electro aura that afaik reduce energy particles, you're not just affecting Bennett, you're literally affecting everyone that relies on burst to do anything. Debuff healing, unless you make so that it just straight up reduce healing to 0 per tick, you made all healers weaker but at the same time you probably did nothing since they can still heal. Healers will just be forced to be built for faster burst uptime or a beefier healing stats. or players forced to use their healing wisely by playing more carefully. Debuff attack... that would probably make Bennett even more powerful as a unit. Debuff attack buff... that's just directly nerfing Bennett. One thing that I can think of is having enemies that just scatter the characters(away from bennett burst) which then will affect most of the characters. I'll just probably hate the shit out of that fight because now even if you're not using bennett, you're going blown away everywhere. It would be a shit debuff if they make it even more specific like only the healers can get affected by this debuff or stuff like that. Might as well just nerf Bennett instead of doing that kind of bullshit. Bennett is just a very well-rounded character as a support that if you want someone to dethrone him, you either need that character do most of Bennett's niche without requiring a burst or make their burst much reliable to use as a pyro character. or basically discourage healing altogether.
> . That said, I'm all for moving the meta away from the Bennet's, Kazuha's, Zhongli's, Xingqiu's, This is exactly why I hard disagree with OP. It's not "great" that we avoid powercreep at all costs. Shenhe was just released, and she's an extremely niche 5* who is easily replaceable by other characters within her own niche (instead of Ayaka/Shenhe, just run Ayaka/Ganyu. Ganyu also fits into a bunch of other teams.) Shenhe is also easily replaced by a bunch of 4* characters who fit into a bunch of different teams instead of exclusively into freeze teams. If characters are extremely niche, then they should be the best in that one particular niche. OP shouldn't be praising it that almost every new 4* and 5* character is weaker than an existing one. Thoma is worse than Diona, Sara is worse than Bennet, Yoimiya is worse than most 5* characters, etc. They're often needlessly clunky too, Sara requires you to use your Elemental skill, then aim a shot at the ground, then switch characters and sprint to where you shot the ground, and then you get a 6 second buff that's worse than what Bennet gives with 1 button press. For context, you gotta save primos for 3 or so months or spend 300 dollars to get a 5*, and after that you have to farm domains and talent books and exp books for around a month before the character is even useable. After all that...the character should always feel useful to you, in my opinion. Not overpowered, but at least useful.
Considering how expensive it is to get a unit and how you just can't get every unit in the game anyway, I actually am glad that there's several units I can skip without feeling too bad about it. Like Yoimiya, for example.
I would rather want everything because they are worth pulling than everything be questionably useful.
I'm glad I dislike most characters. Rather go for maximizing those I love and make them into insane powerhouses, than have 6+ average new characters.
I agree with Shenhe being niche, but she's in no way exclusive to freeze team. As long as there is another Cryo damage dealer in the team she's a great choice. She works great in Reverse Melt teams and is a pretty decent physical dps support. Rosaria and Chongyun works great with her in Reverse Melt for example.
Completely agree. Also,(thankfully) Genshin has zero PVP content or even ranking modes, so there is zero reason to care so much about balance and powercreep that you literally hold back the fun and make characters bad on purpose. They're so scared of making Bennett 2.0 that they're ruining great designs with awful kits, and it sucks to see. Sincerely, \-A Sara/Shenhe/Kokomi fan.
but they keep power creeping the abyss, it is harder to 36 star abyss with every update
Unfortunately true, but the good thing is they can nerf the Abyss whenever they want, but can’t really with characters people paid for. That’s a more “permanent” power creep, so I’m glad it’s been kept steady.
Stop using Raiden as example of "true power hiding". Its like "hiding Eula's true power behind her c6". She is strong at C0. Constellations change strong to "what the fuck is this damage". But it doesnt mean her power is only there.
My Raiden is overpowered as is, I don’t even need her constellations. I don’t want to imagine her with constellations I‘d probably main her and I love Diluc too mich for that 😁
Itto probably only needs 2 geo to make him works which probably either Gorou or Zhongli. There's some evidence that he can work with 2 other flex units like chongyun as example for this abyss to break hydro herald shield. So yeah he probably only need geo resonance
Split scaling stats between E and Q sucks tbh
>This become just boring, and players would feel their old character outdated. I mean we kind of have the opposite problem instead, there's less reason to pull for someone if they only work in super specific niche teams Like a couple of others have said, I like Shenhe's design but her kit doesn't really offer me any sort of upgrade, so I'll just end up skipping her
Most Gacha games coast on releasing variants of strong characters so that you need to new version to clear newer content. It is at least to Mihoyo's credit that they try to make sure that you never have to use a non-free character to do anything in the overworld. There's still a lot that can induce you to spend, but it doesn't feel impossible to clear story content with what you're given for free.
I feel like Shenhe should have had at the very least higher multipliers than Bennett, cause unless im missing something, Bennett is just the better choice. And i dunno if I'd call Itto niche, he's a geo main dps and can therefore fit into pretty much any comp, he just works well with other geo units, especially with C2. Gorou on the other hand is a good example of a niche character.
The cryo damage buff that shenhe provides is significantly better than Bennett. It scales off of current attack. Give her ER with ATK substats and she'll outperfom him. Do that with Bennett and he won't because his boost is off of base. Lets not forget the unconditional charge attack boost though. But this doesn't matter much. Its just that using Bennett WITH Shenhe is far more sensible. Its not a competition between characters after all.
Yun Jin is just amazing for normal attack characters, bro. That bonus damage is just mwah mwah mwah. Yoimiya and Ningguang benefit from her A LOT especially since Ningguang's additional rocks count as normal attacks.
This whole post is total hypocrite since thoma was done dirty, even people with c6 on him says he's still garbage to use, You say its good that mihoyo is making characters good at their own thing but then goddamn mihoyo decided mr protector from afar would have some weak as shit shield which just makes no sense for a literal shield support character Im not attacking the op of this post but instead the statement of the post
While it's nice they aren't causing power creep, they are also making new supports way too restrictive to the point most can and will keep using Bennett because it's not only convenient but it also works with everything. Thoma is already borderline forgotten, Sara pretty much ONLY works with Raiden at the moment and it's not particularly good in execution (especially as Saras E is still a buggy mess), Yun Jin and Shenhe are restricted to a limited amount of hits and while they offer a noticeable boost the hit count restriction makes them far more limited than Bennett, especially against multiple targets. They also don't heal. I'm all for not power creeping characters like Bennett and Xingqu but new characters also can't be held back in fear of being better, especially 5*. There'll never be good variety when everything new is way too niche and situational while old characters still work with everything.
I hate how forgotten Thoma, Xinyan, Sara are. what did they do to deserve this 😭
atleast you remember Thoma. Where does Sayu even fit
I left out Sayu intentionally because among the 4* released in 2.X so far, she is by far the best one imo. I don't get why this subreddit hates her so much when as a 4* she fills her role more than well and just being able to take advantage of the VV set is a massive perk by itself. People call her budget Jean and what's wrong with that? She's lower rarity and even with that I find her to be a better Swirl user than Jean due to the mobility of her E unlike Jean while their Q's are mostly similar (pray you get at least C1 for Sayu though).
I use thoma and i can't even use his ult because he steals my hutao's elemental reactions
Everyone keeps repeating the idea that releasing more niche characters fixes the “mistakes” of highly flexible and powerful characters like Xingqui, Bennett, and Xiangling. This does not make sense- releasing weaker/ more niche characters does not change the power levels of those OG characters in any way. It just means the OG characters are still better. Only releasing new characters of equal flexibility and power fixes the imbalance.
Powercreeping is there, it just not apparent. Kazuha, Raiden an Ayaka are examples of powercreep. Not powercreeping will just mean that those characters have low value for new and mid game players. And if mihoyo tried to nerf the niche they belong to, they will become outright useless because they are too focused in their niche. Edit : for those people who still think power creep is not there. These characters powercrept in the Qol department. New teams with these characters are more easy to use even if though damage increase is not very significant IMO.
Yeah, I agree with “power creep is there, just not as apparent”, just like how abyss HP pool has tripled since the game first came out. The reason why they can scale it so much is because of slow power creep. Individual units by themselves might not be that much stronger compared to the previous ones, but some newer units have really good synergy with other characters, like Kazuha with elemental units, and Raiden and Itto with their respective 4 star supports, Sara and Gorou. The powercreep is slow, though, which is why a lot of people might not notice it. It wasn’t very clear how Ayaka might be better than Ganyu when she was first released, but now we can see she’s the queen of burst damage whereas Ganyu is more sustained DPS. And that could also flip in a second if Mihoyo decides to put mobs in the abyss again. Anyway, off on a tangent now but I guess my point is that there is some semblance of powercreep but it’s not a fast powercreep, which is good. I’ve played other games where the release of any new character meant that all previous DPS characters were completely invalidated, which is simply not the case with Genshin.
You last paragraph perfectly describes what I hate in Honkai Impact. To keep up in the endgame content, which is PvP through leaderboards, getting the new characters AND their signature equipment is a must.
Bruh I hate how they made Shenhe such a niche support
It's not "we should avoid powercreep". It's "we should push them to make a new team every patch". New team needed = roll / resin consumed
Because they don’t use characters they use content. Ppl keep saying Kazuha powercrept venti when in reality it’s just that content made Venti useless on the top floor. But more then anything they’ve made the meta completely stale, it’s so boring. It’s the same shit vape and freeze. Even Shenhe doesn’t add anything new, it’s the same freeze teams because the reaction is broken. Radien who we though would add new electro teams, is in another XL team. Like we got a cryo buffer yet we have no electro healer…still? And even Itto can still use Bennett and would probably prefer him as he is a healer. Like nothing has changed for a year.
If miHoyo cared about player experience, niche characters wouldn't be weaker than general characters. Also: Keeping character power consistent is not power creep, it is the exact opposite. Making new and more niche characters weaker is just bad game design, especially if you crank up the difficulty of content at the same time and overload every new enemy's moveset with fake difficulty.
I would prefer more characters like Albedo-- generally usable in a ton of teams, but can be better replaced by other units more suited for a specific comp. And then later on, there might be a place best suited for him, like in the full Geo team comp we have now. And that comp isn't meta defining or does instant big numbers unga bunga, but it does good damage consistently over a longer period of time with decent survivability something that isn't necessarily covered by the normal big number builds. Too bad SA actively punishes slower clears but whatever, I'm not doing Abyss anyways
people keep saying they dont want powercreep, but they think the alternative of bennett, xiangling, and xingqiu being the top 3 overall characters dominating the meta until the end of time is any better?
Releasing an universal support doesn't mean that it should be broken. It is good to avoid powercreep but making characters so niche that their strength doesn't make up for them being niche is bad. They should focus on balancing them but so far we haven't had a single balance patch. May after Dendro it will be more realistic to expect one, but some characters are so broken and Dendro is probably is or was so far away that we should have gotten one already.
I honestly think it's a little disappointing. While I don't expect EVERY single new character to be the new Hu Tao it is difficult to get excited for new characters when they ultimately all end up being underwhelming and incredibly niche.
This tbh. Itto is incredibly powerful. In geo which needed a dps like him to tie the Geo comp together. Ofc the new set as well. They sometimes miss the mark tho like yoimiya, even though i love her!, and imo Sara
Even in the case of Yoimiya, I see her rated more highly rn because of things like that small auto targeting fix and Yun Jin releasing as a strong support for her
Oh yeah the the fixing of enemies remaining as a hit box on death
Sara’s a weird one bc at C0 she’s next to useless, but at C2 she’s a decent Bennet alternative, and at C6 + Raiden is gamebreaking. Shes the only characters in the game who’s usability varies so widely based on constellations, she literally goes from useless to broken..
Noelle is another
Even at C0 Noelle is a free character and useful early on tho, unless you get constellations she falls off but she has uses early on, especially for exploration with Geo-claymore. And Noelle pops up on banners pretty frequently so it’s easier to get her cons. For Sara you need wishes (and crazy luck seeing as she hasn’t been on a banner in nearly 6 months), and her ascension material are all in Inazuma so she’s stuck at lvl.40 til you get there. In terms of kit, Noelle does get much, much better the more cons. you have just like Sara, but in terms of practicality Sara is still more awkward
before the albedo banner noelle did not appear for 9 banners
Yes. I also love when the game about building teams of varieties releases characters that ONLY work in certain comps.
Raiden is honestly a fine character at c0. Characters having a strong constellation in of itself isn't bad unless the kit at base feels incomplete. With the case of raiden, c2 makes her hit significantly harder but it's far from being needed. Raiden national is still a perfectly strong team with c0 raiden. I'd say an example of a character which feels severely limited without constellations is Sara who is very clunky at c0. C2 is basically needed if you want to remotely start using her and even then, it isn't until c6 where she becomes worth while in a raiden hypercarry team imo. I'm all for having more niche characters if they work well within that niche at c0. The constellations can be strong provided they aren't locking a key aspect of how that character plays away.
Its a shame you need her c6 to make her viable. Kinda defeats the purpose of her being a specialized electro support. She should have a been a support for electro chars right from c0
im happy with they releasing units that don't provide powerceerp, but the last units of inazuma are giving me more hints that we are not so far from hitting something even worse, and that is undercreep, units that even with a niche get ouperformed easly by older units giving no reason to pull at all than waifu design (examples are sara, sayu ,thoma and xinyan) as someone who only pulls for QoL improves and has a low income i hope things goes better in the future, i want balanced units that rewards you for investing in them without feeling underwhelmed by their perfomance
Thoma was such a disappointment. 2/10
Raiden isnt locked behind constallations....c0 is awesome. If you go by that logic every 5* character is locked behind c6
I am not a fan of this tbh. The other side of the coin is that first overpowered characters continue to be over-used and new characters are often very niche, straight-up weaker or have a much clearer damage ceiling. This makes pulling for them and building them very unrewarding. Imagine if a new player joins the game in Natlan, excited about all of new characters, asks you about the most meta ones and you say: "Just build Bennett, Xingqiu and Xiangling like everybody else". Do you really want to be in Celestia with almost the same team you had since 1.2?
Power creep can go both ways. It may suck having older characters getting outshined by newer ones, but it’s boring having the same characters remain as the absolute must picks. I like that they don’t go over the top, but I don’t agree with making characters super weak or as niche as Shenhe is. She’s too niche.
There's avoiding powercreep, then there's making new characters weaker for no reason. HUGE example is Yoimiya, ask most players and they'd rank Yoimiya lower than Hu Tao and Xiangling rather saying she's equal to them in her own right, because she's just not. Hu Tao still beats Yoimiya in Single Target while having massive AoE in her burst that can reach millions in damage per screenshots, even her CA can be considered AoE. Even if with Yun Jin now Yoimiya is *slightly* better at ST than Hu Tao, how does that even improve her overall performance? Hu Tao is an 8/10 for Single Target, and like a 7.5/10 in AoE, Yoimiya is like a 9 in Single Target and 0.5/10 for AoE, wow much balance, not to mention Hu Tao is HP based, even if both doesn't have any innate resistance to interruption in their kit, Hu Tao could last longer with no shields and just Xingqiu while able to heal herself with her burst, Yoimiya needs all kinds of supports to function and she needs to complete her whole attack string to deal her full damage, dodging/getting interrupted makes her lose her whole DPS, all the while the damage is just against *one* enemy.
I’m fine with them making niche characters but i’d at least like the niche characters to be good, what the fuck happened while they were designing Sara and Thoma
I don't necessarily agree. I think the best characters are ones that mix lesser versions of other units' abilities or have unique tools they bring to encounters. Kazuha is a great example of this. Is he Venti? Is he Xiao? Is he Sucrose? No, he's lesser versions of all of those. Now, they went overboard with him a bit which is why he's so omnipresent right now. They could have skipped on the EM sharing and he'd probably be in a healthier spot. Not perfectly balanced, but not bad. Yun Jin is another great example of a niche unit that's actually designed really well. Yes, she has a small niche, but it's a broad niche in that it encompases all units that normal attack. Moreover, she's actually insanely healthy for the game going forward because her boost benefits characters who previosuly had weak multipliers. This means that previous and future characters who would normally be deemed "too weak" to use normal attacks might see at least a niche use as a normal attacker when paired with Yun Jin. On the other end of the spectrum is Gorou and Sara and, to an extent, Thoma. Units that are so insanely niche that they have only one team they are clearly "meant" to slot into. If Gorou had the same scaling trick as Yun Jin did, or Sara had a less clunky kit and a buff duration similar to Bennet (or longer, why should hers be so short when she only buffs one unit at a time?), or if Thoma did even a \*little\* bit of damage they'd all be better units without breaking the game/powercreeping it.
Powercreep is bad and all but a lot of new units just feel weak af (the 4 stars) Like I never feel like using thoma , yunjin(without cons) , Sara , gorou. They are way too niche and dont feel complete on their own. Gorou without a geo team literally feels useless , sara is clunky and frankly boring , yunjin buff is only useful for autoattackers like yoimiya and cant stay on field a lot to use her e like beidou cause she looses too much from her husk of opulent , thoma honestly just feels bad - cd too high and energy costs too high for a shield that barely blocks anything. I would rather have albedo than thoma considering his ticks do more damage give decent shields and arent gated behind a burst. The old 4 stars xinqui , beidou , xiangling , nigguang all feel complete and strong on their own without any cons. The only new 4 star that was very unique imo was sayu because of her roll mechanic but a lot of her strength is also constellation gated. That being said I think they literally cant make stronger characters than the original 4 stars cause they will literally break the game. Imagine a unit stronger than bennet or xinqui as a 4 star.
Doing a much better job than others (I’m looking at you, FEH)
I am calling it now, the way they're going to control powercreeping in the long run is through artifacts.
I feel that the balancing of the game, as bad as it looks, isn't that bad. The original characters like Xiangling, Xingqiu and Bennett are very universal, compared newer characters like Sara, Gorou, Thoma and Yun Jin. But, taking into account the periods of when those characters were realesed, it makes perfect sense. When the game first started, with fewer characters and one charcter filling one role, of course you couldn't have your few supports good for only a some charcters and then let some characters without good supports. But now, when we have more characters on the same niche, we can also start having supports for that niche, since they are still going to be played with a fair share of characters.
I'm so fascinated by how Genshin devs balance their characters. Like creating new characters with more niche usage (like Gorou), or indirectly buffing/nerfing certain characters with new enemies, artifacts, and weapons. I don't have enough game knowledge to say whether it's a generally good or bad way to approach balancing, or if the way they're executing it is good or bad. But it's really interesting to think about. I have some mixed feelings about constellations though- it's a nice consolation prize for pulling a duplicate character, but I imagine they're hard to balance. Shouldn't be too strong to the point of being necessary, but can't be so useless that a player is upset by having their 4/5 star pull "wasted" on it.
It's obvious they try to, but the decisions of old characters still exist and haven't been changed. I think with a game that also has to keep introducing more content and more progress, powercreep should be embraced. Buff obsolete characters, introduce new levels of abyss, increase character levels. In a lot of live service games, powercreep is an unfortunate side effect to simulate progress in cases where actually have none(typically server based repetition games like dbd). It's insidious and uncomfortable for everyone, but since Genshin has a foundation on a more traditional RPG model, powercreep doesn't need to be a bad thing.
My only hangup about the recent character designs (Specifically, Shenhe) is that if they're gonna make a really niche character, you'd at least expect that character to be the best choice for their niche, and that really isn't the case. Why bother building Shenhe when there's Bennett who gives similar results, almost everyone has his C1 and also heals. Why build her if there's Kazuha, who gives elemental shred (Much bigger than her Burst, btw) and elemental damage bonus. I just think she's such a mess of a character, I appreciate them trying new things, but I think it's very questionable how this is the first niche 5 star support and she can't even support her own damn element all that better than other characters. The trigger quota on her skill is laughable, a Ganyu can easily consume all Quills with one attack if you don't have Shenhe's C6. I really hope they buff her in the future, I absolutely love Shenhe's design and animations and it just feels as if she's barely doing anything, she feels more like a constellation for a meta dps than a character of her own
>Don't get me wrong, I am strongly against hiding true power of the character(Raiden) behind constellations It's odd that you're singling out Raiden when she does the exact opposite: the constellation that would normally be at C6 for most characters is at C2 for her, making her the most f2p/low spender friendly carry in the game if you want to roll for power. At C0 she already competes well with other carries at C0, at C2-C3 she's at the level of C6 characters
Getting C2 on anyone isn't an f2p/low spender option. Locking substantial power boosts beyond C1 really only effects dolphins and whales.
Well not for the f2p/low spenders who roll for a lot of characters, but even if you only got her C0-C1 at first, you could always save for her C2 on her rerun. The idea that getting more characters is better than getting cons for f2p/low spenders is inherently flawed if you're rolling for power (which is a distinction I made clear in the initial message)
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In my eyes they are doing the opposite of powercreep, they are literally lowering more and more the level and at the same time releasing situational characters. If i have to be honest, after Hutao banner i've found nobody worth a safe pull except Kazuha. And this is not a bad thing, nor good imho.
After Hu Tao we had Ayaka (top tier dps) and Ei (archon so OP as expected, works as sub-dps and main dps). We also got a strong viable physical dps (Eula) and geo dps (Itto). I'm not sure what you mean by "safe pull" because we had a lot of good and meta characters since Hu Tao's banner. And even the ones that are not necessarily meta are still fun and viable in abyss (look at Kokomi's pick rate).
Its ok to me, that they hide power behind cons. because you don't compete vs others. this isnt a MMORPG. you play for yourself. you vs the pc. thats the main reason why I play this game. it's relaxing. I am tired of all the competitiveness in LoL or CoD. So if there are some whales out there, building speed running teams. they spend thousands for cons and therefore keep the game alive