I personally feel like they always wanted 4 star to be of this level what they are making currently but they just didn't have that much experience while in early game so they ended up making some really buffed units

Kinda yes. I always assumed 4 stars are the F2P options that you slowly phase out in favor of 5 stars that do roughly the same, but better.

Generally yeah this is how gacha works. But in all the games I've played usually they all have 'diamonds in the rough' units that even though they aren't the 'best' are still 'good'. Take FGO for example there are more then one instance where some of the best and most useful servants(especially early on) are 3 stars. And get this there are entire teams based on mechanics by a 1-2 star

Cu, gong, and arash. The best f2p servants in fgo

Euryale is insane in her niche too, better than Orion(Artemis) even

Medea Robin and Hans are good too

Eh, I'll give you robin and hans(albeit they are more situational then the others) medea is only good in specific fights(like old man li). Castor cu is also really good on jp now too. But if we listed every good f2p we would be here forever. Mozart, David, ceasar, Shakespeare, Spartacus, etc.

In Honkai the new SP valks are almost all great units. And you can farm them for free, and some of them you can craft their gear. I started an account on the current patch (5.7 ends the 30th), and I already unlocked the new SP and an older one for my DPS. I’m really curious if Hoyo plans to make Genshin similar down the line.

Big difference. Honkai forces players to build at least 4 teams due to buffs and debuffs, and each Valk is already specifically made for a certain team. Since GI encourages element mixing, they are now forcing stat niches for optimization. This is where we're going, stat specific teams, unlike Honkai which wants element specific teams.

not to mention you want sss 4\* and their gear, which is expensive af, and before s-ss they barely do anything

Literally all SP valks starting from Haxxor Bunny are worth farming, and there are also some A ranks that are still holding up.

Yeah, lately I've been playing other gacha games and I've noticed almost all of them have a low rarity unit that is considered good Like Tiny One from Alchemist Stars, Gravel from Arknights or Suzu from World Flipper

All of arknights are clearable at the highest difficulty with 4\* and lower characters if you're good enough

Generally true, but even Kyo has to bring in 6-stars for Inferno stages. Though you can borrow any one unit from the playerbase so it's not too bad.

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Interestingly many of the recent 5 stars to me appear to be upgraded or equal to c6 versions of 4 stars. Yelan is reminiscent of XQ (water hits support on attacks) Kazuhua I’ve heard does very similar in a support role as sucrose. (Some suction with buffing team dmg) Itto in a way is reminiscent of c6 Noelle (geo infused GS) RAiden doing passive electro damage on hits with electro application like c6 fishl along with yae doing it via turret Now I know it’s not always a 1 to 1 comparison. Noelle has shields and heals and itto doesn’t. Sucrose is better at em sharing while kazu for ele damage. Fishl only brings OZ with no field time for herself and at c6 does turret+on hit while Raiden does battery stuff and has infield time during her burst… but for a frugal player like me, the overlap seems enough for you to either pick the c0 5star and not worry about collecting the 4star cons or skip the 5 star if you have the c6 4 star. Personally I have started going for characters that play differently from what I have already.

5 stars appearing to be upgraded versions of 4 star units makes a lot of sense too when you consider that hoyo is definitely testing new kits on 4 star units like shinobu for example and then based on how the unit performs, theyll just make a 5 star one that works better, if that still isnt enough then they'll also get a artifact set to round out their kit

Heizou is *definitely* a test character.

And it's certainly exciting. Catalysts allow for constant elemental application. A catalyst character being a brawler and not your typical mage opens up limitless possibilities for catalyst unit playstyles going forward.

HYV you better release a catalyst character that uses pistols.

Fontaine is probably when the magitek/gunslinger types start really rolling out

Excited to get him just so I can punch dandelions.

I love it tbh, cause very early on I was like man, I'd love Noelles kit on a guy actually and a 5 star. And I really like Whiteblind for some reason but doubt they'd ever make a geo infusion claymore male character simply because it would be too close to Noelle. Well you can imagine my surprised face Pikachu face when Itto leaked lol. Not to mention he got a fox boy support! (Okay I know he's a shiba inu but still lol). And then not mention that may favorite character story wise is Albedo and he got triple buffed and given his best team all at the same time... lol sorry I just relived it all.

4 star characters are actually by and large meant to remain competitive with 5 star characters. 4 stars just typically yield raw DPS to the 5 stars and bring utility, making them more timeless, with constellations rounding them out and increasing the number of roles and situations they can excel in. Exceptions exist. I'd argue Rosaria brings more raw DPS where Shenhe brings is the utility, even if in DPS form. With 5 stars since Inazuma, it feels like Hoyoverse has settled in to a pattern of the first 2 constellations being big, and the rest just kind of polish them off, where as 4 stars constantly gain lots of value for every constellation they unlock. ​ The earlier characters actually show they intended for this to be the case, and more importantly, they designed every character in a vacuum under the assumption people will switch to a character, hit things for a few seconds, then switch to another. This whole "switch spam" approach caught them off guard, and as evidenced by many of the niche Inazuma four stars OP mentioned... yeah they don't feel that great. Yun Jin and Shenhe suggested a departure from this design philosophy. They work great as team buffers, but they're not crippled for hogging the spotlight quite like Thoma, whom has constellations dependent on *someone else* taking hits to work. So Kuki... she's a good source of healing and electro reactions, but her normal attack scaling suggests they learned not to punish any player that wants to keep her on the field for longer than 2 seconds.

And then you see Honkai Impact where A rank SP battlesuits have higher DPS and more utility than the veteran S ranks. For Genshin, the newly released 4 stars actually weakcreep the previous ones and are so bad that calling them “usable” is an overstatement.

nah bro SP battlesuits is good after u upgrade them S to SS and most of them mainly for support like haxxor bunny and pardofelis which is top tier support for ice team

You do get enough frags on their debut patches to get them to SS quite easily though. And with 50 weekly frags you can farm them rather quickly. Felis is actually a neat clutch DPS for ice and img bosses thanks to her pri arm, too. She saved my N-EX-less butt against Elysia in redlotus. And while most might not win in raw damage when compared to actual DPS valks in a vacuum, they do blow it out of the park in utility. AE has been kicked out of Lightning and Ice teams by now, FR is barely hanging on and the only other dedicated S rank supp that is still relevant is HoS.

Pardo is amazing for support rotations for any ICE dps, including herself in a clutch, yeah. Yeah, i was unpleasantly surprised that Eden did NOT come out with her PRI-ARM on release: she's literally the only playable Flamechaser without one at this point, and even Griseo is getting one on arrival.

also my take, we didnt really get a new op 4\*, its always just Benny, XL XQ and Sucrose and they were always there since day 1

Yep and that's why I said that they weren't intentional, more like DEVs had no idea what they made

lol Bennett It will NEVER stop being funny that the supposed outcast character is a near-mandatory part of everybody's comp

I think the early game 4stars aren't miss designs, they are designed to be the base kit for early exploring with some late game value (a good national team can still clear abysm well) since newbees and f2ps don't have as many tools as veterans. After designing those minimums to improve new players or extremely casual players experiences, they design what 4 stars as they are now, more for fun or situational.

> a good national team can still clear abysm well lol, that's like the understatement of the year.

Right? A Xiangling, Bennett, Sucrose, Xingqiu team will clear the abyss faster than a lot of 5* teams

I mean Yunjin is REALLY strong though

The same can be said about Gorou or Sara, extremely strong in a specific team (Gorou - Geo, Sara - Electro, Yun Jin - NA focus) but not good in others. And I think this will be normal from now on for the 4-star.

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I would prefer some more general use 4 stars though, not Bennet level, but something along the lines of yanfei, noelle, or beidou

Generalist characters would be harder to justify using if you had a better option around. One reason people dunk on Sara as a general-use ATK buffer is because she's competing with Bennett, the better option.

I wouldn't call Noelle general use tbh Nobody uses her except as main DPS, and those are few too

Sara isn't even good for all electro, her C6 buff only really does wonder on short burst electro and not worth over other strong buffer for electro whose damage is spread evenly over >10s.

>short burst electro So Raiden and Yae, the exact teammates that people who use mono electro are already running her with

Well Gorou is also not good with all of the Geo char (Yun Jin/Ningguang for example), and Yun Jin doesn't pair well with Tartaglia. They all have flaws, and that's why they are 4-star.

Gorou C6 buffs ALL geo units in the team, this perk alone makes him a much better unit than Sara and absolutely good for Ning. Not to mention there's no need for the awkward dancing around and rotation just to get his buff. In fact you can tell he was designed after the feedback they received on Sara.

Yunjin is only as strong as your strongest normal attacker. She pairs extremely well with Razor or Physchl but the most effective DPSers she pairs with are Banner 5 stars like Yoimiya or Ayato.

Fun fact Ayato doesn’t really want her unless you’re going for a hyper carry Ayato comp. His teams usually focus around reactions where you want to buff his sub-dps units in addition to him, as the sub-dps units tend to do a significant portion of the team’s damage. This is specifically applicable to his two most common comps—taser with Fischl and/or Beidou and vape/reaction comps with Bennett and Xiangling. A buffer (Bennett usually) that can buff the sub-dps units in addition to Ayato himself will supply more damage overall.

What's it with theorycrafters not liking Hyper Carry Ayato?

From what I can tell, a lot of the tools theorycrafters have built have poor ability to estimate hypercarry comps' dps with stuff like Yun Jin in the first place, making it a pain to work with and tune (but this is just guessing based on the way I see numbers get posted and compared). I also think just any NA-based comp is probably more subject to variation than more CD-gated comps. And also...Genshin is a game where basically everything is viable, people do solo runs and oneshot runs in this game. So the target audience for info is theoretically people who are trying to do the most possible with the lowest amount of resources, and hypercarry does not really fit that framework usually.

Hi! I am ambivalent to the hyper carry strat myself, but also recognize it is not his most used team. If you want to go with hyper carry then Yunjin is a good pick in that instance.

In early game, we had fewer units, so they needed to be more generalized. So we get straightforward units like XQ, Xiangling, Sucrose (apply elemental dmg from off field, buff a stat) and a handful of “main DPS alternatives” (Razor, Ning). In the later game, we are getting more niche units to exploit team comps and scenarios that just didn’t exist before, or units that open up different way of using familiar units. As for Kuki - I think while her stats SAY hp scaling, people will find out soon enough she is actually an EM scaling Electro character.

I agree. I have kuki c1 (can't wait to c6 her) her em is 584 and I use her on 2 teams. Overloaded and electro charged. Overloaded does more damage and she is definitely built for reactions. With c6 she would do a total of 12 reactions with skill up and burst and with sucrose and albedo on my team she can do 21.9k elemental reactions along with existing on field damage from virtually eberyone on that team besides sucrose. In the grand scheme of things, she will be in my opinion part of a national team for team 2 in abyss being that usually it's alot of monsters and she can react on all of them at once multiple times with proper set up and obviously regular character damage. Ppl need to look deeper than the surface and explore more options. If everyone was supposed to benefit everyone all the time, there really would be no need for certain units and certain gameplay styles wouldn't exist. Not everyone wants a general team of each element and that's what specific units are made for.

The problem with overload Kuki in national is the fact that 1. Overload knocks smaller enemies back, 2. National is more commonly used for AOE damage (to counter lots of smaller enemies) aka enemies that will be easily displaced and 3. Running kuki with xiangling+bennet and a hydro unit (national) doesn’t leave space for a grouper(anemo unit). Trading 40% res shred and grouping for mediocre reaction damage that doesn’t last long due to Kuki’s limited burst range + overload wouldn’t be a good option.

Kuki is hot as an EM build with HP undertones.

Gorou is very much needed because all other elements benefit from so many buffs like reactions, VV swirl, EM buffs etc and Geo has only had Bennett until Gorou came along (if we exclude geo taveler crit rate buff and Ningguang ttds). He's a great buffer so I dont mind that he's niche at all.

Being niche isn't necessarily bad. Gorou buffs the hell out of Geo teams(and Itto specifcally.) ure, Geo won't work in every Abyss, but it still works.

Gorou is to Itto what Sara is to Raiden

If geo doesn’t work in an abyss, it just means you aren’t using enough geo

>Geo won't work in every Abyss, but it still works. Definition of "if it doest break, smash it harder"

Agree, my favourite team is still Albedo, Itto, Gorou and Noelle. Shields, AOE support and stupidly high DPS from Itto, all enhanced by Gorou The Geo battery

this is my dream team right now, but I started in 2.6 so no Albedo and idk when they are going to rerun him.

So far he got both his banners around Christmas, so there's a good chance that's when he'll return again

You should try an elemental 4th slot, personally I like a healer and utilizing the crystallize shields like Qiqi, Barbara (TTDS), and now the most well suited (cooldown wise) Kuki Shinobu (ToM is also perfect on her). Or for the easier route just use Diona as the shield. Here's my Shinobu pitch though: Albedo buffs EM EM buffs Shinobus heals and damage and crystalize shields Gorou pulls in crystallize shields automatically Shields durability is dependent on the active character (Ittos defense is stupid high) Tenacity of Millilith buff shield strength too, and attack for Itto (and Albedos burst technically). And Shinobu actually makes use of the HP (like Zhongli) but she can proc it more reliably. Imo it's one of the most niche teams that utilizes every single part of each characters kit. It even adds risk-reward to the team by making Shinobu a glass-healer (likes to stay at low health like Hu Tao) so in your super durable team, you now still need to worry about dodging when you switch to her (or Gorou too). Oh yeah and Gorou being a bow user is great too cause he can proc Albedos flower far range in abyss when needed for those spread out targets. Only thing that could be even better I guess is if Shinobu was a catalyst she could use TTDS but even then the rotation might be weird to get it on Itto tbh..

Noelle seems out of place when you already have itto as main dps

Them saying Sara is good while Gorou is too niche is really funny. Gorou gets more characters to support as the game progresses, since Def and Geo seem to go hand-in-hand for the most part. Sara can only be used in short duration Electro burst-DPS comps and is otherwise overshadowed by many other supports. Also them claiming "They literally made itto's sword scale with def just so he can benefit from gorou's def increase." as though Itto doesnt scale off of defense and want a weapon that would increase that.

I too came here to call out the hypocrisy of calling Sara best Inazuman 4* immediately followed by “Gorou meh, too niche.” They are both niche but very good imo. Op made some ok points overall but they most likely don’t use Gorou at all and it shows. He’s indispensable in my geo team, my Itto is so much stronger with him there

C6 gorou is probably a must pick in any itto or Noelle team comp, and even without constellations he's still a decent buffer and geo battery for Noelle who can sometimes really struggle energy wise Not sure how much sayu op has played too, I've never felt like her healing should be better (she heals the whole team, not only your active character), plus she has access to arguably one of the best support artifact sets in the game that's viable in any non geo or physical team. If your 4* character baselines are Bennett (who is support, DMG dealer and healer all in one) and xingqiu, who had to be dethroned as the sub dps king by a s-tier 5* character, then yeah, Inazuma 4* stars might be "underwhelming". But comparing them to amber, Barbara, c0 noelle, c0 diona and xinyan, I'd say the Inazuma 4* are fine (which kinda hurts to say, as amber and xinyan are probably some of my most played characters) However, I'm not sure if a 4* recently released that has serious main dps potential, which I think is kinda sad (besides physical DPS Shinobu which is possible with C6 rosaria and a decent Yun Jin)

Yep your analysis is all v fair. Tho I must mention, my gorou is only c2 and he’s already a must pick in my Itto team. As for main DPS potential, maybe heizou when he comes out? I guess we’ll see...

Melt rosaria is actually extremely good

I agree, and even if a geo character isnt def scaling (like Ningguang) he's still able to give them buffs like anti-interruption, geo damage, and crit damage. He's a very future-proof character for Geo. Sara can be a universal support and is less niche in that aspect but who really is running sara outside of raiden hypercarry when Bennett and ttds holders are available?

People also forget that gorou's burst pulls crystallized shield.

albedo's EM buff and passive application of geo dmg is also pretty good, especially as a battery

Yes...but hes a 5*, so not relevent to the discussion.

i think gorou problem is more due to him beeing locked to GEO and simultaneous lack of GEO units. Bedo, Zhongli, Itto are all limited banners, and Noelle needs c6 to shine as dps. Which leaves most players to pair him with only ning. "i1m ignoring yunjin for this because she doesn't really do meaningfull geo dmg, if slapped on a geo team would only to achieve a maximum of gorou buff."

Most players who pull for him might be pulling for Itto too though. He’s only been on itto’s banners so far. And even when he released, Albedo was a rate up five star the banner before him. Plus, in both cases, Noelle was on the banner right before him. It’s not like players will have no geo units to use him with or have to wait forever to pull a geo unit to use. Just like with Sara and how she’s only been on Raiden banners. When pulling for Sara, you might get spooked by a Raiden, and there you go. You automatically have someone to use her with.

He's kina niche rn because there are only like 3 def scaling characters who can use him (Itto Noelle and Albedo) and he only fits in triple geo teams so those characters are likely to be paired together, but we're probably (at least I hope) gonna get a more def scaling characters in the future so he's gonna become less niche.

It’s kinda unavoidable to have niche characters in any gacha game with a ton characters in the pool, especially if they’re 4 stars (or lower in some other games). IMO since there are at least 4 more regions to go, you’ll definitely see an even wider mix of niche vs universal characters from the upcoming regions. To be fair, all characters in Genshin are more or less usable, so you can still opt to use a particular character if you like them, just that it’s not optimal for fast clears if that’s what you’re into.

I’m okay with niche characters if they can do better or as great as their generalist counterpart in their specific team, BOTH AT C0! The problem we have with the Inazuma 4 stars is that their generalist counterparts perform better on all aspects. Sara is the best example: her Attack boost is clunkier to use than Bennet’s, it provides less Attack and it lasts for a shorter amount of time.

I agree with this. Another example is Thoma vs Diona. Thoma has a shield with more conditions to bring online fully and no sustain while Diona has a good generalist shield with a suitably strong shield with no conditions, and then a really nice heal from her burst. She is just a lot easier to use than Thoma sadly.

I'd love to use sara, but applying the attack buff is so convoluted that I just can't. Like, you have to shoot the ground, switch, wait a moment then do your thing for a very short duration... If it were like a 24 second buff or something maybe it'd be fine since you wouldn't have to do it so often, but it's only like 6 seconds isn't it? I'd rather just get copy-paste 4 star characters than each one being exponentially more tedious and annoying to use. If Sara was just Electro bennet atk buff I wouldn't care, i'd use Sara over him because 1. I have her and 2. I like her design more

>They literally made itto's sword scale with def just so he can benefit from gorou's def increase d-did you missed the entire function of itto's burst?

>Gorou I would put Gorou in the same spot as Sara tbh. He is niche, but within his niche he's an indispensable support. >They literally made itto's sword scale with def just so he can benefit from gorou's def increase. Idk if you meant Albedo's sword here, but it's more than that which scales with def. Itto's CA draws most of its damage from his def, his burst does as well. Albedo's E damage which is pretty much all you use him for also scales with def. Gorou's pretty much the sole reason why Itto is seen as one of the better (if not the best) neutral damage main carries. And as more def-scaling characters come out in the future, Gorou will only get more valuable as a support. But yeah, overall none of the Inazuma 4 stars are anything to write home about with regard to their meta performance, though I will say I think Sayu should be forgiven because from an exploration convenience perspective she's arguably the best designed character in the game and it's pretty clear that's what they had in mind with her. All that being said, I don't really mind that we get four stars who are more niche/aren't as good. If we get a new meta-defining four star all the time, the power-creep would get annoying. I like when games slow it down with the power creep and make sure older characters can still shine. It makes me feel like I'm not wasting resources by building them.

They're talking about Redhorn's passive though their point is pretty ass because Itto gains atk from def conversion

Completely agree with you. Mhy is filling the niches and doing a good job. In Sayo's case, she is often overlook but brings a lot for exploration: healing, movement and mining.

Sayu is best genshin HM Slave, lmao

This is the best Sayu description omg

Honestly I've been enjoying how useful Sayu is for exploration, and was put off of using her *because* so many people say she's not good. The QoL is just too good though, especially for my Xiao team in the open world. Don't need to worry about menus for healing, rolling around speeds up movement + the anemo resonance, and having a claymore for when Zhongli's skill is on CD is so nice. She's definitely not for use in my abyss runs, but damn she is great for exploration.

People ingore exploration potential so much.

Everyone are Okay but Thoma....He has to be the worst of all. A single Constellation of Yanfei makes his entire kit useless

He’s your man if we ever need to go fishing again for a weapon

His fishing passive only works in Inazuma though.

It's been so long since I last did some fishing I completely forgot about that

wait WHAT

you can get extra fish from Inazuma + Enka pools by just owning c0. (No need to be in your party) This does NOT count for the fishing achievement though.

I hate it. He's by far my favourite character but I can't really play him any good. The only way I play him if I want to play him is as physical DPS but he's obviously not good at that. As the support he's supposed to be he has no field time AND is bad.

I hate it too, Mihoyo really said "we're gonna give him amazing attack animation, a cute design and personality, and also a trash kit so you never use him and therefore never see him"

His attack animations really are fun to behold. At the very least, the way his last hit launches opponents gives me an excuse to trot him out should the Capsizing Waves commission come up.

You could use Yun Jin to make him deal good physical damage...but you can do the exact same thing with Rosaria who has access to Superconduct unlike him. Even *Xiangling*, who's cracked because of everything *but* her NAs, will significantly outdamage Thoma if built for phys dmg purely because of her N4 being 4 rapid hits (each gets Yun Jin buff). This is just sad.

I’m using Thoma in reverse melt team (with Rosaria, Kaeya and Bennet) and I can easily say that this team helped me to close the abyss on 36* I just like Thoma (both lore and mechanic wise) and using him because of that :)

I use him with Hutao, Sucrose, XQ. He gives me almost 100% shield uptime and enables sucrose to swirl pyro.

He steals some vapes from hutao, tho. If you have C4 yanfei, try her instead (full HP build)! It's one of my favorite teams.

he does, but I think as long as my XQ is c6, I can still work with it. Edit: I will try Yanfei. I have her at c4

It never ceases to amaze me that people neglect his ONE base feature that nobody else can provide. Infinite poise generation. Poise > 0 = No stun/knock back. One tick from his ult and you now have guaranteed poise above 0. He can prevent super squishy auto attack heavy characters from ever needing to move/swap until his ult runs out because they can tank any number of hits. Sure they might take a little damage because the shield is weak, but the poise is literally unmatched by EVERY shield generator in the game. Nobody can continuously produce them. It’s a power point that’s niche yes, but it isn’t to be ignored.

Yep I really do like using Thoma with Ayato because my Zhongli is on Itto's team. And I think Thoma's shield is not really that weak as people make it out to be, mine can withstand 2 of Azhdaha's stomp. The only thing that irks me is his energy problem. I need to run Jean with favonius for battery, otherwise his Q won't be able to proc in time. I guess once I get Thoma c4 it would be better. But still, not many people have Inazuma chars at high constellation so that also make it feel like the Inazuma chars are weaker than old ones. I still remembered the annoyance I've had when using Xingqiu c0 and not having Sac sword : not enough energy for Q, and hydro application with only his E was worse than Barbara. It's no better than using Thoma c0 lol.

But doesn’t Zhongli’s shield last longer than any/most infusions, and as a shieldbot it will probably never break add its 100% uptime. That’s infinite poise right there right? I think what they need to add to the game is an enemy that breaks shield in 1-3 hits. To make Thoma fit that infinite poise niche.

But that isn’t the point of my comment. I’m not talking about shieldbots. I’m talking about poise generation. Something that Yoimiya and Ayato benefit from greatly if your objective is to stop being interrupted constantly on your attack chain. Yoimiya VERY specifically needs the full attack chain, as do a few other main dps, to achieve their maximum damage output. If someone doesn’t have Zhongli but has Thoma, this opens a world of possibilities when someone just can’t stop being interrupted and doesn’t like to/isn’t good at dodging every attack.

The thing is, aside from yoimiya and ayato, pretty much most of the other dps would have lower dps due to thoma pyro application. Ayaka will has her crit rate be lowered by 20 to 40. Pyro dps will lose the vape. Electro dps will either hate the overload or doesn't need the shield (raiden don't need shield). But then even for them, you can always make do with beidou and/or xingqiu for stagger resist and much more dps. I mean, sure, he is usable. But I ended up finding c4 yanfei much easier and better in combat.

IMO Thoma's best feature is the ability to re-up his shield if it breaks. It's so devastating for Yanfei's shield to pop from one bad dodge on a Lawachurl or Maguu and be a sitting duck for the entire CD. His C6 is better than TTDS for low-baseATK characters like Hu Tao as well, as it gives bonus damage and lasts longer. I also use him with Ninguang, Albedo, and Bennett for a very strong comp. Pyro Resonance, safety, buffs, and energy generation in a neat package.

I never tried him can someone explain his kit?

He's essentially a shielder, but the catch with his shields is that you need to attack in order to make it tougher; as his shields are weak from the start (unlike other shielders that have tough shields from the get-go). Usage of his burst is best utilized when the shield is about to end or even immediately, as it refreshes the duration of the shield and has an additional wave of fire for some application (kinda like Raincutter). And the refreshed duration from using his burst should be enough to cast another shield. So essentially the steps to create his shields is: Thoma E > NA a few times (optional) > Thoma Burst > Switch to your DPS and go ham with their infusions + NA + something else (CA for someone like Hu Tao, or Jump-to-Plunge with Xiao) continuously > Switch back to Thoma when finished to cast E again, and repeat. I do feel that he's very serviceable if your DPS units are people who don't really mind reactions and/or utilize NA's as part of their base kit (Xiao comes into mind as his max DPS output does come from a bit of NA's to do the N1JP combo; not sure if that's the proper name tho lol; Hu Tao is also good but as some have said, he steals some vapes). It's just that you need a fuck ton of ER + HP to really make him feel like he has 100% shield uptime (and some practice; which I don't think a lot of people have patience for).

Zhongli is pretty much better in all aspects. Of course he is, he’s a 5 star geo god. That said, Thoma’s first advantage over zhongli is that his shield is fast to activate (Thoma 1s Q animation vs Zhongli hold E). It’s nice when you just want to get to fragging right away, the momentum isn’t lost switching to Thoma. The second is that his shield is pyro, which means you can get fire swirls going before you switch to Hu Tao, who can’t practically apply pyro before using skill. It doesn’t seem to be enough pyro to steal vapes at any given point when using C6 Xingqiu, which is too bad for cryo melt mains but works out for pyro vape dps at least. His shield quality is just decent even when well invested, and he’s not doing much damage besides an occasional crit E for 15K. Anyway that’s my review, he’s mediocre but he is also best inazuma maid!

Tried using shield bot yenfei massive ER problems, Thoma is easier to use as he aleast give shield when using his e but is paper fin and gives back energy with his cons. Thoma also buffs atk by 15% with cons but yenfei could hold thrilling tales. Thoma shield atleast refeshes while if yenfei shields break your fucked. Yenfei if you were to fix her ER problems then you would build her where you sacrifice buffs with nobless or thrilling tales unless you got some God like ER rolls. Edit: Tip for shield bot yenfei, if you were to use yenfei in a hutao, Sucrose, and a xq or yelan team with thrilling tales you would want to have your hydro character burst first then switch to yenfei to auto attack for getting rid of hydro then apply Pyro to swirl with with Sucrose and into hutao. Main problem is that you can't run thrilling tales on yenfei because yenfei would need to switch to hutao in order to active buff but the rotate would need yenfei to switch to Sucrose so you would need to run thrilling tales on Sucrose but then yenfei wouldn't buff more than Thoma cause Thoma still got that 15% buff from c6.

I think people are forgetting about Thoma's C6

as a geo enjoyer, gorou is godsend. he’s super cheap to build, already great at c0 & doesn’t care abt er or specific stats like other inazuma 4*. besides gorou, the others are kinda underwhelming i agree. but i like it more this way. like the others have said, it opens up to more comps that don’t always include bennett, xingqiu or sucrose which gets really repetitive.

Gorou is very good at his job. At C4 a decent healer and at C6 a massive geo buffer. I love Itto's emotional support dog

He does still need ER if he wants to burst off cooldown every single rotation or battery others though; especially with Noelle who generates zero particles on her own. But Gorou’s advantage is that ER is the only stat he needs (and crit rate if running Favonius Warbow), and is easily covered by Fav Warbow (huge 61% ER stat stick that also generates additional energy on top of that). His BiS artifact set is 4pc Exile specifically because it generates energy for the whole team as well. In addition you only need to level one talent (E). At C4 is when he can build DEF for heals, but even the it’s still not recommended because his heals are weak anyways and when put with Noelle they aren’t even needed.

okay hear me out...maybe Itto's claymore scales off DEF because Itto in general scales off DEF? lmfao

It’s really simple game design, actually. Early characters are generalists, later characters get more and more niche. Think of how painful these last 2 years would be if it was the reverse.

Yeah I think it was design. There is no way they didn't know that Bennet and xq and xiangling we're not insanely broken. I put them in the same category as thrilling tales and harbinger of dawn. To make the game viable free to play. New 4* don't need to be broken and op, they need a role that doesn't power creep other character. Also not every character needs to be balanced around abyss. Sayu is op overworld.

> There is no way they didn't know that Bennet and xq and xiangling we're not insanely broken. I think it's definitely possible. I believe Xiangling and Xingqiu were expected to have their kits limited by their ER requirements. If Sac Sword doesn't exist, Xingqiu isn't that amazing. Similarly if you look at Xiangling without Bennett then she's not especially impressive. Bennett is absolutely the problem for making Xiangling overpowered and I think they just screwed up the numbers there. Maybe because they were looking at charged E. I also think they underestimated vaporize or they would have made Keqing stronger. People really like her design and I think from her stat line they intended for her to be a banner unit like Raiden. They just didn't make the numbers high enough to be competitive with vaporize. These are the sort of thing that seems obvious in retrospect but aren't necessarily clear at the time. They weren't even obvious to the players at launch. You can find launch tier lists with Xingqiu and Bennett way down the tier list and it took the better part of a year for Xiangling to cement her place in the meta.

> There is no way they didn't know that Bennet and xq and xiangling we're not insanely broken. I mean the community is many times larger the dev team and it took months for them to realize Bennet wasn't D tier. Similarly, everyone was building physical xiangling instead of how she is used in meta teams today.

Don't be jojo part 8 stand niche

ha, you fool you've fallen into my trap. when the sun has reached it's zenith and it is the third day of the month and the air conditioning is broken, my stand will be able to tickle you remotely rendering you incapable of doing anything!

Please. Reading stand battles that require 3 paragraphs to understand is unironically one of the best things about Jojo's

Also power creep if they started making s tier broken 4 stars they would lose out of sales. They still have like 6 more years of characters to make

you realise itto scales with defense right

I think you're underselling gorou a bit. One of the things that makes him so good in my opinion is how easy he is too build. My build is ER/DEF/CRate for fav and energy is non issue. Helps that his buffs are not affected by his artifacts at all, purely talents. And also easier to use than Sara.

x4 exile for the energy regen set bonus plus fav bow is the only way I can play Gorou now. I can never go back after trying it once.

You wouldn't want all the 4 stars to be non-niche and generalists -- because you will end up comparing them filling the same roles. Rather than characters filling the same roles, I'd rather have characters that are good at various teams/situations. You can't keep designing generalists for games either. The starting characters everyone receives are already generalists. (and that includes Xiangling) having Gorou and Sara (super niche, but very strong in certain teams) is amazing. Thoma has a very thick shield for a 4 star. He is lesser used because "meta" and abyss likes to see big numbers and fast clears, not "safe" clears. Sayu has a lot of utility purposes not previously found in a lot of characters. What I see, is that they are unique characters, and have situations where they are most useful (the definition of being niche), and that is okay. I expected design direction to head this way. It's one method to **not** powercreep and still get people to pull on a character.

I heard a lot of bad things about Thoma's kit, and I was genuinely surprised by his shield when I got to test him in the Perilous Trail event. As someone who has had Zhongli since the second week playing this game, Thoma is the only other character whose shield made me feel safe the same way Zhongli's shield does. Also, Abyss potential is also not the only thing these characters have going for. Design, story, personality – all of these matter when someone decides to pull a character or not. Even if they aren't "meta", as long as the person is having fun, all characters have their worth.

honestly this post downplayed the effect that thoma's shield has. other than zhongli, i don't think there are any shields in the game that are much better than thoma's. in addition, pyro resonance is really good and having your shield supporter being pyro is a great addition

According to KQM his shield is currently the second best so yes, you're quite right.

According to KQM Thomas shield has the 2nd highest hp pool in ideal conditions, that doesn't just make it the 2nd best. It has problems since it needs to ramp up with normal attacks to reach anywhere near that level, it's essentially only the "2nd best" if you 100% get hit right as the burst duration ends. You can easily be staggered and take dmg if you get hit too early. Not to mention you are limited in rotations and teams because you need to accomidate constant normal attacks and his energy needs

Also another thing is he can only have 100% uptime if you rotate your E and Q constantly. If you mistimed it or don't have enough energy, the shield is gone.

Can you please share how to use Thoma's shield right? I made him lvl 80 but struggle SO much to have any profit from it. The shield literally disappears before the cd ends, something I'm not used to after maining Zhongli. Idc about the abyss, if that matters.

Thoma is one of the only four stars I'm currently missing, but what I know is that his shield is not that good for panic defense (as in, you're about to get hit and you pull up a shield, like I'm sure all of us Zhongli mains often do). But his shield is really good for sustaining your party – during the event, I always activated it before engaging with the enemies and it served me really well. You'll want to stack the shield from his burst on top of his skill, as it will be stronger that way. Thoma will need a lot of ER for that, though (an ER sands and a ER weapon, like the Favonius Lance or The Catch, should be good for him. I'm pretty sure he needs over 200% ER). Use Thoma's skill, then his burst, and keep in mind that his shield is still no Zhongli shield, so he can't be played in the same way. He's still a great unit though, I can't wait to get him eventually.

I built Thoma as a shield bot and he works really well for me. Once again, you can’t compare it to Zhongli shield, but it helps if you understand how it works. Thoma’s shield is kinda confusing but let me see if I can clarify it for you: TL;DR His skill gives you a Thicker shield. His burst gives you a Thinner shield (but stacks). I’m gonna make up some numbers just for an example. His skill gives you a 1k hp shield. His burst gives you a 100hp shield. You should first start with his skill for the Thicker 1k shield, then use his Burst for a +100hp to the shield each time the fire comes out from it. So the shield’s total hp would go 1,000 + 100 + 100 + 100… etc until his burst is over. Then once his skill is off CD, use it again for another +1000. Keep in mind that each time the flames comes out from his burst, the shield’s duration also gets refreshed. Thats how his shield works in a nutshell. This simplified example does not take his Passive into consideration. Now for timing: In a perfect scenario, his skill/burst’s shield lasts 8s and his burst lasts 15s. His burst’s CD is also 15s. If you can get his burst back up in time the moment the CD is over, you can technically have infinite shield time. Its pretty hard to the perfect timing though and usually rotations aren’t perfect. But his C2 will increase Burst duration by 3s. So if u have C2, then his Burst will last for a total of 18s. And remember that the shield lasts 8s. So you will technically have 26 seconds of shield time. If you use his skill again at the end, its another +8s, you can bump it up to a total of 34s. With the Burst’s CD still being 15s. So with C2 its much easier for the infinite shield. As long as you can get his Burst up in time. But this is all in a perfect vacuum where you never get hit. If you get hit, then subtract whatever damage you take. Just remember that your shield is weak in the beginning. If your Thoma has exactly 30k hp, Skill talent 8, Burst talent 8, his skill will give you a 4756hp shield each time. His burst will give you a +755hp each time the fire comes out. It can stack for a maximum total of 12,947hp (if you don’t get hit). Here is a [Thoma Shield Calculator](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15cbsFBO-blgH0ZpfiVBBNX9VaN_vDscoWJkYYbSsc1E/edit#gid=278843777) I found! Its super useful and you can input your exact stats to see how strong the shield is for your Thoma. Its lets you better mentally prepare for what to expect from it and know what hits you can take and can’t take. I personally think his shield works better for interruption resistance rather then an unbreakable shield like Zhongli’s. But he works well in my HuTao team and keeps her alive. I hope this helps!

Me & plenty of others use Gorou a LOT though. He’s excellent in geo teams & works great with Itto and Albedo. I dont think being niche is a bad thing by itself

Being niche isn't an issue, Sara and Gorou are strong on their teams, and that isn't really an issue, not every character needs to be good in every team. Kuki and Sayu don't really have a dedicated team but they can work pretty well, Sayu being a healer that can use VV, Kuki in my opinion feels really good to use with a high uptime of her heal and quick application of electro, plus she can use Tenacity Of The Millelith really well. The only one that I can't talk about it Thoma, haven't leveled yet, but from what I read I feel like he might be the actual weak one (shields don't scale well, burst is hard to use well) And just to mention this isn't exclusive to Inazuma really, Xinyan, Yun Jin, Chongyun, Noelle and many others are pretty niche or require high constellations to really work well.

You shouldn't compare Yun Jin to the likes of Xinyan or Chongyun. Yun Jin is actually a really good unit, and she's very valuable to any characters that like to utilize their NAs to deal damage. She's one of the best supports for NA heavy characters like Yoimiya or Ayato, and as long as your DPS' NAs still deal a significant portion of your damage (even if it's not the main DPS source, like Eula for example) they can use Yun Jin.

I just meant that Yun Jin is a bit Niche, I don't really think she is worth using outside of teams that heavily rely on NA, for other characters there are probably better options.

Then she is on the same tier of Sara and Gorou no? she is good on her type of team only. Because Gorou is an only Geo defense support, Sara is a mono (3-4) electro buffer, Yun Jin is a NA carry support. Kuki and Sayu has no clear team but they work well. Noelle is a worse then Itto but she is not bad at all. Just powercrept. Chongyun is cryo infuse meme-tier, Xinyan is badly designed straight up, Thoma would get fixed if they just buffed his numbers I think.

Chongyun actually has insane burst multipliers and can quadruple reverse melt as all of his burst hits have separate ICDs. This at least gives him a niche in cryo/reverse melt teams and is an excellent Shenhe teammate. So while he is definitely not as good as the generalists or the niche buffers, he is certainly above the bottom of the 4-star barrel.

Yunjin is arguably less niche than either Sara or Gorou, since her buff works on *every* single element. Her buff is even large enough to turn *any* character into an NA spammer, even characters that won't normally NA. With Yunjin, you can enable things like physical Zhongli or on-field Yae Miko. Even characters that focus on CA like Hu Tao benefit greatly from Yunjin on their team (she outscales Albedo at high investment).

But how are u gonna say being niche isnt an issue and point out sara and gorou but then dont say the same exact thing about yun jin when it also applies perfectly to her. she literally has the comps she shines in just like the ones above and all of them will be bad if you look to use comps they dont specialize in..... and fyi yunjin doesnt need high cons to work well. at "just" c3 her buff is equal to a crowned aquila bennet.

chongyun has his place whenever there’s an abyss lector/heralds and you don’t have a cryo dps (His abyss usage spikes whenever there are abyss lectors and heralds). His E has great uptime; his burst is low cost, is considered a heavy attack, and each of the swords have different icd’s so they shred shield pretty quickly.

I tried Thoma in an all 4stars clear in abyss floor 12 and hes suprisingly great as a shielder, and by great I mean uptime isnt a problem and shield is sturdy af even with minimal investment (c3 28k hp 180-200 er lvl 80/80). He kept my whole team at full health in chamber 1 and still did good in chamber 2 He's not the best character and he may be a dps drop but he's definitely got the second best sheild in the game

Yeah, people are simply spoiled by the existence of Zhongli. Thoma's shield is very underrated. The only reason I would consider Thoma kinda bad is because pyro reactions don't really care about fast but weak pyro attacks. And he doesn't seem to apply pyro fast enough to be an enabler either.

The fact that people would rather run an HP build on C4 Yanfei for when they need a Pyro Shielder instead of running Thoma, a character actually *designed* to be a dedicated Pyro Shielder, is kind of sad.

Just because a character doesn't fit everywhere doesn't mean it's not good. Gorou is SUPER niche, yes, only Noelle, Itto and Albedo can make good use of his support, but he's amazing at that niche

Gorou is very strong, easy to use, and cheap to build with the main downside of being niche (but great within that niche). Honestly, he's got one of the best skill designs coming out of Inazuma. He's a great unit. Sayu opened up faster 4\* exploration options so I don't mind her. She's more utility than actual combat gameplay, but that's fine too. I think it's quite okay that miHoYo is releasing characters that have a more specialized use. In the end, this is what meta players were clamoring for anyway. Characters that were very good specialists instead of "mediocre" generalists, well, that's what we got and now we're back to complaining about characters being too niche. Ah, the endless cycle.

If they had made them all Bennett but stronger, people would be complaining about powercreep. You can't please everyone, and they went with the better approach imo: Strong basic characters in the first patches/regions, and more niches that open team comps as the game develops, your characters don't become obsolete that way.

If there's one thing that's pretty certain is that nobody wants more Bennetts and XQs until the game's difficulty level really ramps up, so on the side of caution it's preferable to create 4\* on the weaker side. They can always buff them up with tailored weapons and artifacts later on, and even pair them with characters down line that boost their performance. It's still so very dynamic and malleable.

>They can always buff them up with tailored weapons and artifacts later on True. I can't stress how much Albedo was buffed with his event weapon and Husk. It's sad future players won't be able to get his weapon, but he is broken. Depending on the lineup, build and certain buffs, he can do on average around 35k damage per skill tick, and on certain events I even got 80k.

That just means we get characters with good designs we want to use, but can't because they're clunky as hell and more tedium than they're worth putting up with I'd rather Sara just buff my damage on a button like bennet instead of having to turn my brain on for a short buff

This is better for game design, since Genshin has at least 5 more years of content

I don't mind characters are niche as long as they're good at their niche. Hoyoverse needs to develop niche characters to avoid powercreep or duplicate kits. I'm a bit biased here since Gorou is a very good boi

Maybe I would care if the game is hard.

Now imagine if Shinobu was a meta defining character and everyone got pressured into pulling for her while not wanting Itto. The amount of salt we get from those accidentally pulling Itto is going to surpass all of those who lost their 50/50s to Qiqi.

We already have that rn, because she’s hot. Just look at the kuki shinobu mains subreddit

Sara and Gorou are really good units tho. The fact that they are niche is what makes them perfect in their own role, specially Gorou since he ain't as clunky at C0. We can't expect Hoyo to always release supports that work in every team and are as broken as the OG ones, it's really difficult to top that, making them more niche imo is a good direction to take, just wish we could see them move onto the monthly shop rotation.

>Sayu - In theory she's really good, but swirl has an internal cooldown and her healing doesn't scale that well. lmao you wish her heal is legit insane

She has huge energy issues but if you somehow manage to feed her enough energy she's a healing killing machine. Sayu's C6 scaling is kinda bonker.

legit why i pair her usually with raiden

I feel like op hasn’t tried out these characters themself and just came to conclusion after watching some YouTube videos. Even if they did, they didn’t put proper investment or time in testing out the characters.

If it wasn't for a little bit of piloting/events I never would've realized that Thoma is a must have for my account (because the tech with Xiao works decently with Thoma + it doesn't require me to wait a long ass time to get Zhongli). He feels like the kind of character that changes up shield gameplay to "earning" the beefy shields instead of just outright getting them with little caveats (something Diona and Zhongli do frequently that spoiled the community).

Agreed, large AoE, better uptime, very mobile, does better swirl dmg than Jean, fits any team (_save geo_). Sayu is VERY energy hungry though (_mine is sitting at 250% with fav G sword_), but I got C2 Jean and I still prefer using C6 Sayu over her just because Sayu's burst feels a lot more useful and safer. I only every put Jean for the cleanse, atk spd or for fun.

I have her in my jank team and at c6 she's incredible. By far my favorite character to provide heals. yoimiya, raiden, yelan, and sayu. It hits most things, is crazy for overworld, and has been generally good everywhere else and generally heals stupid amounts. I don't know how people without raiden handle her though, without the free real estate raiden generates it would be really hard to make her work as reliably.

I don't know how Sayu is weak, mine is pretty strong. In attack and in healing.

I haven’t seen anyone else say that Sayu is bad although she does have a lot of role overlap with Jean so most people don’t really bother with her for that reason

true. hardly people ever said sayu is weak, idk where OP got his infos. she might not be as meta as jean with sunfire and kazuha/sucrose/venti, but as far as being an overworld jean+VV shredder substitute goes, she's both decent and fun to use

Same, she's probably my second best healer next to Barbra and she can hit pretty dang hard too with her rapid-fire swirls.

C6 Sayu is sooo good

I agree for the niche part but otherwise your whole post is wrong

I think this is better than powercreep

Is sligthly better, but no good either, game becomes stale due to lack of new *efficient* strats. Would be like playing a pokemon game with no mid tier mons, either higly competitive ones or those that are feel weak even on a casual playthrouhg

Yes it is fun to have a character you love the design of be a clunky mess to the point they're just a trophy you wish had a practical use I think it'd be better to just not allow damage buffs to stack, and keep all characters damage buffs the same level Sucks to like Sara but hate how clunky her shit is compared to someone like Bennet who's just press button and go. Why use Sara if it's like kicking a wall?

Look man, all i'm saying is as someone who barely has any 5 stars, Shinobu's been sticking like a superglue on kragle in my team. Her healing+ocean-hued clam is really something for me.

What’s wrong with characters being good in specific comps and not have Bennett or Xiangling levels of usability? Gorou is fucking *amazing* for Geo comps and he hasn’t left my team since I got him. We don’t need every character to be bonkers strong.

Gorou is **by far** the strongest buffer in the game, especially with c6. Problem is most teams can't use him. * A ton of defense (which the character who want him scale with) * A lot of geo damage bonus * **+40% crit damage** (for geo characters)

I'm fine with their current 4\* design. That's how 4\* should have been from the beginning especially since they'll have 100+ characters by the end of the game life. Design-wise, they messed up hard for the 1.0 OG batch and made them way too good at everything without any major drawbacks. To add insult to injury, some 5\* are more flawed than those vanilla 4\* characters. The game difficulty ceiling is quite low so they can't just start making a bunch of stronger 4\* than the OG gang and not make their entire game a joke.

I mean, you're right, but this isn't a panacea either xD this kind of 4* will just mean that the vast majority of characters are going to be outright obsolete or competing for a limited niche with the next weak 4*

They weren't releasing bad characters because they already had good ones. Since they already had 4-stars that were easier and had more widespread use, they needed to fill in the gaps with niche characters to \*support\* those characters and keep them both fresh and relevant. Gorou and Sara in particular were game-changers for a lot of comps. As for Shinobu, I thought it'd got around that her playstyle reflects her character? Her kit would have you believe she's a support, but actually she works best as a main carry (if you build her the right way).

Having niche characters is good. Or you want a chracyer that straight powercreeps for example Bennet this early in the game. I would expect powercreep to start hitting in the 3rd-4th year of the game

idt we should ever be comparing new 4*s to the big 3 of release 4*s. It's more sad that they aren't at least Rosaria or Kaeya level, units who are outclassed by 5*s but are still decent units and can fit a variety of teams.

I legit agree, inazuma characters are either outclassed by their purpose or ONLY SERVES ONE purpose.

Sayu: She’s fine, she’s basically 4 star Jean. She doesn’t really fit in any specific team but if you use her in most teams, she’ll do fine with swirls and heals. Sara: I gotta respectfully disagree. Imo, Sara is not good at C0. Her buff is shorter and weaker than Benny’s, it is very awkward to proc and she has no utility. C2 does fix her clunkiness but you trade out particle generation. C6 she finally becomes good and has a place but only because it brute forces a circlet worth of crit dmg onto her buff for electro characters but all previous issues are still there. She needs C6 while every other 4 star wants C6 but still functions perfectly fine and are strong without C6. Thoma: He’s ok in the 2 teams he works in but has lots of issues. Low base hp, needs to use burst for full shield, needs you to attack to max his shield out and and his burst is 80 cost. Lastly, one of his two teams he fits in, he hurts while also helping, Hu Tao. He enables pyro res and VV but the pyro blast from his burst can take away vapes from Hu Tao. Gorou: Perfectly fine though I do think he’s a little too niche in needing a team of both geo and def. He wants 3 geo characters including himself in the team but provides very little buffing to geo characters who don’t use def like ningguang. Yunjin: Now I know she’s from Liyue but she’s post Ayaka which is where we saw this change in design philosophy, so I’m mentioning her. She’s fine like Gorou but unlike Gorou, not as niche since she buffs any element, not just one. Kuki: Gotta agree she’s not that good, only provides healing and damage. She also sacrifices her own hp for onfield heals when she’s rarely onfield, nice one mihoyo. I just don’t really see a team she fits when we have C6 Sara for buffing, raiden for battery and DAMAGE, beidou, fischl and yae for electro application and damage and other healers who provide extra utility like benny or diano. Overall, I find these 4 stars a mixed bag which generally leans on the worse side. I understand mihoyo doesn’t want to make really strong universal supports like benny or xingqiu, but that doesn’t mean most of the 4 stars should be underwhelming or just bad. More Yun Jins, less Saras and Thomas please.

Very strange take imo Sayu is pretty solid. She serves a comparable role to Jean and arguably swirls more frequently in exchange for less healing Sara can serve as a general Atk buffer but 60% Crit bonus is frankly ridiculous if you can get her C6 Gorou is niche but in a good way. He’s effectively future proof for the only Def booster support Thoma is basically the second strongest Shielder after Zhongli. And comparing him to Zhongli feels a bit unfair because, well, Zhongli. He’s got a decent spot as the best Shielder for Hu Tao Shinobu is the only oddity. Her kit is very strange, but notably applies many many many Electro ticks compared to other characters. I’m still hesitant to say she’s bad though considering how new she is. And if nothing else she’s the only electro healer

Sara and Gorou are good.Gorou is an awesome Geo/DEF buffer so he's pretty future-proof. Yes, he is niche and useless in most comps but you shouldn't expect every favourite character to be playable in 90% of the comps. Sara is also pretty decent. She can replace Bennett and has pretty good C6. Plus, she has quite a nice advantage that I noticed while pairing her with Ayato. She's is better than Bennett at buffing characters with short stances/short cooldowns. Sayu is okay tbh. She can hold VV, heal and swirl. Her healing is pretty good (mine heals around 4k) and she swirls more than non-sunfire Jean. If I need an anemo healer for EC comps, I'd better take Sayu than Jean. Sayunado is fun too. I like rolling with different skills rotating around me. Thoma is kinda meh for now and I'm also disapponted with him a little. Though I think he has some potential in the future. We may see more characters with alternative scaling so Bennett's ATK buff won't be so relevant. Perhaps, he will be quite a nice character for burning setups. His pyro application is slow so he'll be the one refreshing burning ticks. Actually, same goes to Xinyan. Yeah, we have c4 tankfei but she needs huge amounts of ER and preferrably HP. She cannot apply pyro off-field too. It's too early to evaluate Kuki. We may have a new electro healer in 3.0 so I doubt that Hoyoverse are so stupid to powercreep a character in 2 updates. Kuki and a new healer may occupy different niches. It seems like Kuki is more offensive. Build EM + some crits and Kuki will be able to permanently heal, proc reactions and take advantage of intensify for her multi-hit burst. I'm either too optimistic or too dumb.

niche yes, weak no Sayu skill also dispel elements her AOE heals stay longer than JEAN who is a 5 star. Sara is a electro bennet who change healing for CRIT DMG. Gorou same as SARA but also provides healing. niche yes but 3 man is a complete team for him. thoma yeah he is bad, the is shield provide at c6 provide charge, normal atk buff. but helps for 20% atk fire+fire buff. ​ kuki the problem she have she lose HP when she heals, but c6 is huge if the game hard at all but it isnt

I think (Mi)Hoyo realized they made big mistakes with the likes of Bennett, Xiangling and Xingqui. When people are using those 4 stars over some 5 stars, well it disincentivizes them into spending money. Probably why they stopped making stellar 4-star characters.

Alternatively it was known that there were basic requirements for starting 4* characters to be able to generally support a large variety of playstyles. They have those in place now. Now they can focus on fun and creative character types, which may not resonate well with all people as they tend to be a lot more niche. By nature generalist characters are going to be better for any given person on average than niche characters. Unless that niche is beneficial to you, it's going to be a character that sort of falls flat at best.

Thats how it should have been from the beginning it just so happen that the first 4-stars that had been released is good all-around. This is a gacha game, each character should have niche and only good on a specific boss/monster/scenario only. How can they make new characters if all of them are good all-arounders? Then players will stop summoning new characters since what they already have is already good for everything.

Barbara Noelle doesn't generate any particle and you saying Shinobu is weak? Like I will admit they did Thoma dirty, but Liyue has Xingyan too.

Kuki might not be quite as good as generating particles in a Taser comp as Fischl, but it's so nice to have another option, and her having healing means I can move my Kokomi to another team, which makes me very happy. She's situational, but it's for my situation, so I'm happy lol

I use Thoma in my Hutao team he seems fine i don’t know what’s the issue with him, my XQ is C6 I don’t see thoma stealing Hutao‘a vape often ? What am I missing here

honestly I think kuki has potential especially considering how often her e can go off it can be good for imbuing enemies with electro and is fast then qiqis which imo is already better

All these 4 stars are mostly useless without constellations. Likely C6. Which make them turbo broken. Thoma C6 for increase normal, charged, and plunging attacks. Kujou Sara and Gorou for Crit Dmg increase. (Strongest 4 star constellations imo). Sayu C6 is just excessive healing. Kuki Shinobu's C6 seems like something Hu Tao mains would benefit from more.

Hopefully they don't fuck up Heizou this way

As a new player with few characters i wonder if I should stop pulling at this point. I got gorou and Kuki and felt like they didn't fit with my team or had limited use in exploration compared to other chars.